Café Mouffe: Paul Celan’s Todesfuge – a blind flaneur

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Café Mouffe: Paul Celan’s Todesfuge

0 February 5, 2010 at 5:32pm by Mark Willis

After a week of searching for the renewal of thought in inner speech, let there be its full expression in external; speech, through poetry. Had Osip Mandelstam survived Stalin’s labor camps, I imagine him bearing witness with the fierce urgency of Paul Celan, who wrote Todesfuge in the aftermath of the Holocaust. This recitation was recorded sometime before his suicide in Paris in 1970. The performance by Diamanda Galas, which ends too abruptly in the clip, was given in Madrid in 2008.

See the German text. This English translation was made by John Felstiner, Paul Celan – Poet, Survivor, Jew, New Haven 1995. [via celan-projekt.de]

Death Fugue/Paul Celan

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 Margareta
he 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.

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margareta
Your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won’t lie too cramped

He shouts jab the earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are so blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margareta
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly this Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you’ll rise then as smoke to the sky
you’ll have a grave then in the clouds there you won’t lie too cramped

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes 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

dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith

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