When a poet goes to war with his language

[ambitious_wench]

Today's Writer's Almanac holds a small tragedy. Paul Celan was a Romanian Jew whose mother tongue was German. His parents were murdered in the Shoa (Holocaust).

the New York times Did a review of Celan's poetry, and I'd like to include a bit of it here.

For a Jewish poet who lost both his parents in a Nazi death camp and who came of age poetically during the Holocaust, it was not at all clear that his native German had any songs left to sing. Born in 1920 into the largely Jewish, German-speaking city of Czernowitz in Romania, Celan (a pseudonym formed from the Romanian spelling of his original name, Antschel) shared with his beloved mother a passion for German poetry. His own early verse offers precious, at times even sentimental homage to the German Romantic tradition from Novalis to Rilke. But after the horrific turn in history that transformed his mother tongue into his mother's murderers' tongue, Celan could not simply continue in this vein. ''And can you bear, Mother, as once on a time, / the gentle, the German, the pain-laden rhyme?'' he asks in a self-consciously melodic poem written in 1944, a year after receiving news of his parents' deaths. Then he answered his own question with a German poem whose cold musicality has become part of our collective memory of the Holocaust. ''Black milk of daybreak we drink it at evening / we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night,'' begins his now famous ''Deathfugue'' in John Felstiner's innovative translation. The nurturing milk of a poet's mother tongue has gone ''black,'' its poisonous, death-bringing music inextricably tied to the murder of his people.

From "A Poet At War with His Language", a New York Times Review

The complete poem with hyperlinked annotations translated by John Felstiner can be found here:

"The Death Fugue"

Death Fugue

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 Marguerite
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 orders us strike up and play 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 Margeurite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
He shouts jab this 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 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 Margeurite
your aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise then in 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 is ein Meister aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Shulamith

Paul Celan
(Translated by John Felstiner)

Comments

[fallonmay.livejournal.com]

Hello, I just found your journal, and I'm going to add you to my friend's list. Please don't feel pressured to add me back, I won't be offended. ^_^

I recited that poem in German for a competition in High School, and reading it brought back the feeling of...desolation I felt then, upon reciting it. I didn't even think I'd remember it after all this time, but...

Schwarze milche der fruhe, wir trinken sie abends.

I suppose I should give my memory more credit.

[ambitious-wench.livejournal.com]

Hello, Fallonmay. Welcome. Most of my posts are friends only, but don't let that scare you off. May I ask how you found my journal?

Edie

[fallonmay.livejournal.com]

The Hardcore Victorian livejournal. ^_^ I saw your screen name and said to myself "there's a woman after my own heart". I work at the Renn. Faire, and then "She who sings about fruit" tickled me pink, because I'm a singer/minstrel type.