Todesfuge is a German language

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 poem written by the Romanian poet Paul Celan

Paul Celan

Paul Celan was a poet and translator...

 and first published in 1948. It is Celan's most famous poem.

Composition and Publication

The exact date of composition is not known, though scholars believe that it could have been written as early as 1944. The poem was first published in a Romanian translation titled "Tangoul Mortii" ("Tango of Death")in 1947; Celan's close friend Petre Solomon was the translator. This version was also the first poem to be published under the pseudonym "Celan," an anagram for "Ancel," Celan's real name. The original German version appeared in the 1948 Der Sand aus den Urnen ("Sand from the Urns"), Celan's first collection of poems."Todesfuge" has since appeared in numerous anthologies.

Meaning of the title

The structure of the poem is similar to that of a fugue

Fugue

In music, a fugue is a compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition....

: the phrases are recombined, which is typical for a fugue. The title can also be seen as a reference to "death music" (Todesmusik): prisoners in concentration camps were forced to play music to other prisoners waiting for their death in gas chambers.

Summary

Like most of Celan's poetry, "Todesfuge" is highly enigmatic and resists being reduced to a single meaning. The first stanza opens with the striking image "Schwarze Milch der Frühe," which can be translated as "Black milk of dawn." This line is repeated at the beginning of three of the remaining six stanzas, invoking the repetitive structure of the fugue. The speaking voice in the poem is mostly a collective "We," who are imagined as drinking this "Black milk," digging graves both in the air and in the earth, and being ordered to sing and dance and dig by an unnamed "He." This individual, who is counterposed to the collective "we," writes letters to Germany, plays with snakes, and is ready to use the gun in his belt as he gives orders. One of the most haunting aspects of the poem is its frequent allusion to hair: the theme first appears in the first stanza, in which "He" uses the phrase "your golden hair Margarete" in the letter that he writes to Germany. The poem repeats the same phrase in the second stanza, but turns it into a double-image: "your golden hair Margarete / your ashen hair Sulamith" ("dein goldenes Haar Margarete / Dein aschenes Haar Sulamith"). This is then repeated through the rest of the poem, and constitutes the concluding couplet.

"Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland"

The most frequently-quoted expression in the poem is "der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland."

der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau	Death Death Death is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....  is a Master from Germany his eye is blue He shoots you with shot made of lead he shoots you level and true

The line is often used in antifascist context, and found in graffiti and posters. It is also used in music, often in altered form, eg. by the Black Metal

Black metal

Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....

-Band Eisregen

Eisregen

Eisregen is a German death metal / black metal band which formed in 1995. The members are from Tambach-Dietharz, a village in Thuringia.- History :In English, Eisregen translates to "Ice Rain"...

 (their Hexenhaus contains "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Thüringen"). The poem is used in a song by seminal German punk band Slime

Slime (band)

Slime is a German punk rock band, founded in 1979 and disbanded in 1994. The pre-Slime band was called Screamer, and the post-Slime band is – contrary to the occasional rumors – not Emils , but Rubberslime, with the member Elf...

, "Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland." Rüdiger Safranski

Rüdiger Safranski

Rüdiger Safranski is a German philosopher and author.- Life :...

 titled his biography of Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...

, who was involved with the Nazi party, Ein Meister aus Deutschland.

External links

• Todesfuge
• Death Fugue an English translation
• Death Fugue another English translation
• Paul Celan - Black Milk (Todesfuge) An English translation read aloud by the translator