Only truthful hands write true poems. I cannot see any basic difference between a handshake and a poem.
Interpretation
Honesty is fundamental in art, as it reflects the truth in poetry and human connections.
This quote by Paul Celan emphasizes the interconnection between truthfulness and artistic expression. He suggests that just as a handshake symbolizes genuine human interaction and trust, a poem crafted with sincerity conveys authentic emotion and experience. The implication is that both art and human relationships thrive on honest engagement, which leads to the creation of meaningful, impactful work.
In practice
In a poetry workshop, to encourage authenticity in writing.
With a changing key, you unlock the house where the snow of whatβs 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.
Poetry is a sort of homecoming.
A poem, as a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the βnot always greatly hopeful-belief that somewhere and sometime it could wash up on land, on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are under way: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable Thou, toward an addressable reality.
Each arrow you shoot off carries its own target into the decidedly secret tangle
no one bears witness for the witness
in the air, there your root remains, there, in the air
The man is either mad, or he is making verses.
With age, art and life become one.
It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are.
The only way to avoid being unhappy is to close yourself up in Art and to count for nothing all the rest.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion, all in one.
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