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Paul Celan Biography

Paul Celan (/ˈsɛlæn/; German: [ˈtseːlaːn]; 23 November 1920 – c. 20 April 1970) was a Romanian-born German language poet and translator. He was born as Paul Antschel to a Jewish family in Cernăuți (German: Czernowitz), in the then Kingdom of Romania (now Chernivtsy, Ukraine), and adopted the pseudonym "Paul Celan". He became one of the major German-language poets of the post-World War II era.

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Paul Celan Quotes

Read! Read all the time, the understanding will come by itself.

Come, Read, Time, Understanding

They've healed me to pieces.

Healed, Pieces

I went with my very being toward language.

Language, Toward

who is invisible enough to see you

Enough, Invisible, See

The two heart-grey puddles: two mouthsfull of silence.

Heart, Mouthsfull, Puddles, Silence, Two

Spring: trees flying up to their birds

Bird, Flying, Spring, Tree, Trees

We are told that when Hölderlin went 'mad,' he constantly repeated, 'Nothing is happening to me, nothing is happening to me. '

Constantly, Happenings, Hölderlin, Mad, Nothing, Told

rush of pine scent (once upon a time), the unlicensed conviction there ought to be another way of saying this.

Once Upon A Time, Rush, Scent, Time, Unlicensed, Way

With wine and being lost, with less and less of both: I rode through the snow, do you read me I rode God far--I rode God near, he sang, it was our last ride over the hurdled humans. They cowered when they heard us overhead, they wrote, they lied our neighing into one of their image-ridden languages.

Heard, Languages, Lasts, Lost, Snow, Wine

There's nothing in the world for which a poet will give up writing, not even he is a Jew and the language of his poems is German.

German, Giving Up, Nothing, Poet, World, Writing

A nothing we were, are, shall remain, flowering: the nothing--, the no one's rose.

Flowering, Holocaust, Nothing, Rose

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.

Darkness, Frightful, Light, Loss, Pass, Passed

The heart hid still in the dark, hard as the Philosophers Stone.

Dark, Heart, Hid, Stones

He speaks truly who speaks the shade.

Shade, Speak, Speaks

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at sundown.

Bitterness, Black, Drink, Holocaust, Sundown

How you die out in me: down to the last worn-out knot of breath you're there, with a splinter of life.

Breath, Die, Knots, Lasts, Splinter, Splinters

Each arrow you shoot off carries its own target into the decidedly secret tangle

Arrows, Secret, Shoot, Tangle, Target

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.

Blood, Changing, Eye, Keys, Rebuffs, Whats

The poem is lonely. It is lonely and en route. Its author stays with it. Does this very fact not place the poem already here, at its inception, in the encounter, in the mystery of encounter?

Inception, Loneliness, Lonely, Poem, Poetry

Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.

Basic, Hands, Inspirational, Poem, See, Writing

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