Anselm Kiefer is extremely literate. Many of his works were inspired by the poems of Paul Celan. The diviner is a figure in Celan's poem "Abend der Worte" (Evening of words):
Evening of words - diviner in silence!
one step and another
a third, the trace of which
your shadow does not obliterate:
the scar of time
opens up
and floods the land with blood
the hounds of the word-night, the hounds
are now giving tongue
right inside you:
they celebrate the wilder thirst
the wilder hunger...
A last moon besteads you
a long silver bone
- naked as the path you came along
throws he to the pack,
but it saves you not:
the ray that you awakened,
froths ever nearer
and atop swims a fruit
into which you bit years ago.