“I call my shadow like a dog. And go.”. — Anna Kamieńska; tr. Clare Cavanagh.

“It’s as if, as she wanders through the house, she were walking around herself, going around her own body.”. — Marguerite Duras; tr. Alison Strayer.

“Language exists because nothing exists between those who express themselves. All language is therefore a language of prayer. Held in the dark, without sleep.”. — Lynn Xu.

Paul Celan to Gisèle Celan-Lestrange:. “I sleep poorly here: the human landscape in this woeful country (unaware of its woes) is saddening indeed.”.

[still echoing, after all these years]. Paul Celan to Ilana Shmueli:. “I see you, as you are departing in the night, see you passing over into this night, and wish I were there, at the other end, to take you up into the unsayable.”.

Paul Celan would never meet Samuel Beckett, despite telling Franz Wurm, “He is probably the only person here with whom I could have gotten along.”. Paul Celan to Gisèle Celan-Lestrange:. “Adorno went, from here, to see Beckett (no one knows where he is. ).”.

Gisèle Celan-Lestrange to Paul Celan: . “During the thunderstorm, I thought a lot of You—maybe in Paris your little room was also full of light, of this terrible fire that does nothing but enter and leave.”.

reading Paul Celan (Letters to Gisèle) as translated by Jason Kavett.

“I wake up. I want complete silence. No good mornings. No breakfast discussion. Nothing.”. — Kate Braverman.

“Have you thought of me often? I ask simply because I feel the presence of things, a kind of chorus.”. — Kate Braverman.

E.M. Cioran:. “I know why I am sad, but I do not know why I am melancholy.”.

Friederike Mayröcker:. “you must break out, she said, out of reality, but break it down with you, down into the abyss as you fall.”.

“I don’t especially trust the last days of June, but have often determined that I especially like people who were born in summer.”. — Ingeborg Bachmann; tr. Philip Boehm.

Anselm Kiefer, für Ingeborg Bachmann, 2023-25

reading Hélène Bessette (Lili is Crying) as translated by Kate Briggs.

“the soft blueness of the night with its thousands of hands”. — Hélène Bessette; tr. Kate Briggs.

reading Hélène Bessette (Lili is Crying) as translated by Kate Briggs.

“Plants are silent about themselves.”. — C.O. Jellema; tr. Flowerville.

the creatures one encounters along the edge of sleep:. “Immediately, she fell into a hapless, jagged doze, only to wake moments later, frightened back from the horizon of unconsciousness, for she had seen a turtle there.”. — Stacey Levine.

RT @timesflow: I keep returning to this space to be among others who live with books.