As a poet of witness, Celan fills nearly every line of “Deathfugue” with disjointed verbal material from many sources, including descriptions of specific moments in the camps. Simultaneously, he refers to music, Bach, Wagner, the tango, perhaps, and German drinking songs, to literature including, Genesis, Faust’s blonde heroine Margareta from Goethe, and the Jewish beauty, dark-haired Shulamith, from the Bible’s "Song of Songs." In its earliest published version, in a book discussing his experience translating the poet called Paul Celan: Poet Survivor Jew, Felstiner explains that the first printed version of the poem, originally written in German, appeared in Romanian as “Tangoul Morţii” or “Tango of Death.” There seems to be a strong connection with the poem and music from the camps; often an orchestra would accompany the arrival of people to the camps on trains.
At any rate, Celan changed the musical form mentioned in the earlier title to “Fugue,” an effect that strengthens the reference to the repetitive structure and recurrent motifs of the poem itself, while simultaneously referring to classical German composers such as Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who both used the form with its repetitions of an initial musical statement.
Felstiner talks about the minimalism and the lack of accessibility of the poem as a difficulty in translating it to English. Celan himself recognized the need for a sense of encounter for the reader similar to the one that occurred for him as writer (Felstiner xvi). For me, that is always what must happen in the creating of a work and in the communication of that work with the reader or audience. The poem is not so much a representation of the thing, it is a thing in and of itself. The translator of the poem also makes the point that although the poem appears metaphoric on many levels, and no doubt is, at the same time much of it takes as its material actual scenes from the camps that are quite literal.
In looking at lines of the poem specifically, certain images repeat and intensify as the poem accelerates. The poem begins with the following lines that change as the poem progresses, as the theme and variations manifest.
Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margarete
writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling,
he whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he commands us to play up for the dance.
The “black milk”—what is that about? We are in the camps. Celan has directly landed us there. Milk is usually thought of as nourishing: this milk does not nourish. The two words come directly after the title and seems linked inextricably—black milk/deathfugue. As a writer myself, I hesitate to play the game of this-line-means-this. I’m more comfortable talking about what the poem does, how the poet works. Fugue-like, the black milk repeats and repeats throughout the poem as “we drink and we drink,” with its echoes of the German beer hall. Drink what? Death, ash, grief, emptiness? “We shovel a grave in the air.” We shovel and shovel while a “man lives in the house he plays with his vipers.” This line will repeat with variations throughout the poem. This man has power in the camps, “he lives in the house” and writes “your golden hair Margarete.”
Each of these lines will return, each time more horrible, faster, and in bizarre ways more accessible. Each phrase or part of phrase is disjointed, cubistic almost. Yet the whole is clear and black. Felstiner, as translator makes a brave leap with this poem as he moves through it. He translates less and less to English as he trains his reader to read the German. By the end of the poem we are entirely in German and the sense of abomination barely allows us to breathe.
The two women in the poem need another note. Margarete is Goethe’s heroine in “Faust.” Celan places Goethe and Margarete, as the heart of Germany’s enlightenment, blonde here, and a romantic ideal. How indeed to reconcile her presence with Shulamith, the Jewish maiden, now with her ashen hair, who has been transformed from the earlier line, “the stars are all sparkling…he whistles his Jews into rows.” At the end of the poem we have Death as the master. Ashen-haired Shulamith, the final word.
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith
