Paul Celan
Paul Celan
Paul Celanwas a Romanian-born German language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți, in the then Kingdom of Romania, and adopted the pseudonym "Paul Celan".. He became one of the major German-language poets of the post-World War II era...
NationalityRomanian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth23 November 1920
CountryRomania
strong world hours
Illegibility of this world. All things twice over. The strong clocks justify the splitting hour, hoarsely. You , clamped into your deepest part, climb out of yourself for ever.
bears witness
no one bears witness for the witness
eye blood wind
With a changing key, you unlock the house where the snow of what’s silenced drifts. Just like the blood that bursts from Your eye or mouth or ear, so your key changes. Changing your key changes the word That may drift with flakes. Just like the wind that rebuffs you, Clenched round your word is the snow.
loss light darkness
Reachable, near and not lost, there remained in the midst of the losses this one thing: language. It, the language, remained, not lost, yes, in spite of everything. But it had to pass through its own answerlessness, pass through frightful muting, pass through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech. It passed through and gave back no words for that which happened; yet it passed through this happening. Passed through and could come to light again, “enriched” by all this.
once-upon-a-time scent way
rush of pine scent (once upon a time), the unlicensed conviction there ought to be another way of saying this.
language
The language with which I make my poems has nothing to do with one spoken here, or anywhere.
holocaust black bitterness
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown.
heart dark stones
The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosophers Stone.
lasts splinters knots
How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.
heart eye names
Count up the almonds, Count what was bitter and kept you waking, Count me in too: I sought your eye when you glanced up and no one would see you, I spun that secret thread Where the dew you mused on Slid down to pitchers Tended by a word that reached no one’s heart. There you first fully entered the name that is yours, you stepped to yourself on steady feet, the hammers swung free in the belfry of your silence, things overheard thrust through to you, what’s dead put it’s arm around you too, and the three of you walked through the evening. Render me bitter. Number me among the almonds
rowing
you're rowing by wordlight
invisible enough
who is invisible enough to see you
spring bird tree
Spring: trees flying up to their birds
language
I went with my very being toward language.