Celan's "Deathfugue"

BLOG PROMPT: Interpret the theme of death and martyrdom in one of Paul Celan’s poems.

     The tragic weight of loss that Paul Celan experienced thematically defined his writing. After losing both his parents in Nazi prison camps and spending a great deal of time during WWII in a forced labor camp, Celan “managed to write poetry that spoke directly about the unspeakable” (1467).  Celan thematically focuses on death and martyrdom to not only express his own loss but also the loss of a civilization that would allow such atrocities.

     In “Deathfugue” one of Celan’s most hauntingly moving poems he describes the horrors of concentration life using a refrain of short rhythmic lines to symbolically convey the “Tango of Death” (“the dance music that an SS commander forced prisoners to play during marches and executions” (1468)). The reader moves through the poem taking aesthetic pleasure in the rhythmic movement of the refrain but being unsettlingly aware that the beautiful rhythm is representative of large scale chaos where not even music can lend itself to civility.  The rhythm and music become a symbol of how lost civilization has become, and how everyone plays a dark martyred role in maintaining the chaos; “Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at midday Death is a master…we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink this Death is ein Meister…” (1470).

     In “Deathfugue” Celan also uses the symbolism of hair color to express a decayed civilization that defines roles of worth and worthlessness by arbitrary standards. “The poem contrasts the golden hair of the commander’s beloved Margareta (a typically German name) with the dark hair of the Jewish Shulamith, a prisoner in the camp” (1468). Margareta’s golden hair represents those ‘fortunate’ enough to be defined by roles of ‘worth’. Her hair symbolizes light and the opportunity for life and is supposed to awaken a dark Germany; “he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margareta” (1469). This faulty logic is immediately revealed when contrasted with the dark hair of Shulamith. Shulamith’s hair is described as ashen which symbolizes the bodies burned in the concentration camps; “Your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air where you won’t lie too cramped” (1469). The darkness over Germany is revealed as the horrific acts perpetrated against the Jews. This contrast reveals that  Margareta’s light does not  remove the darkness over Germany but in fact creates it; “a man lives in the house your goldness Haar Margarete he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air he plays with his vipers and daydreams der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland” (1470). 

Works Cited 

Celan, Paul. “Deathfugue.” Trans. John Felstiner. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 1650 to the Present. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2013. 1469. Print. Vol. 2 of The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 2 vols.