Sovereignties in Question Quotes

“Beyond or before everything that could be thought, read, or said of [the poem], beyond or before all the possible translations, a mark remains and is here re-marked: it is a certain limit to interpretation. In the end, it is in all certainty impossible to put a stop to the meaning or the reference of [the poem], the meaning or the reference to which it bears witness or responds. Whatever one might say about it, and this can be drawn out ad infinitum, there is a line. It is not only marked by the poem. It is the poem, poetics, and the poetics of the poem – which conceals itself by exhibiting its concealment as such. But it is this “as such” that turns out to be doomed to the “perhaps.” Probable and improbable (possible but removed from proof), this “as such” takes place as poem, as this poem, irreplaceably, in it, where nothing or no one can reply in its place, where it is silent, where it keeps its secret, all the while telling us that there is a secret, revealing the secret it is keeping as a secret, not revealing it, as it continues to bear witness that one cannot bear witness for the witness, who in the end remains alone and without witness. — Jacques Derrida, Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan (Fordham University Press October 1, 2005)”
― Jacques Derrida, Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan