The Genesis of Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge”?

From the renowned biography “Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew” by John Felstiner, Professor Emeritus of English at Stanford University and author of many standard works on Paul Celan, we learn (p. 28) on the genesis of Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” as follows:

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“Celan once remarked, that ‘Todesfuge’ arose from something he read about Jews playing dance tunes in a Nazi camp. He might have seen a pamphlet dated 29 August 1944, on ‘The Lublin Extermination Camp’ (Maidanek). In July 1944 the Red Army took Maidanek, and what they discovered was publicized worldwide, as propaganda. This pamphlet, issued by Moscow’s Foreign Languages Publishing House, appeared in various cities and languages. Written by Konstantin Simonov, it reports that tangos and fox-trots were played during camp functions, and it contains other details suggestive of ‘Todesfuge’.

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CLICK ON THE FRONT COVERS TO DOWNLOAD PDF VERSIONS OF THE PAMPHLETS

The earliest notice of Celan’s poem may connect it to the Simonov pamphlet. ‘Todesfuge’ first appeared not in German but in Romanian (it was Celan’s first published poem and his first under the name “Celan”). In May 1947, the Bucharest magazine Contemporanul printed Petre Solomon’s translation, prefacing it with the note: ‘The poem whose translation we are publishing is built upon the evocation of a real fact. In Lublin, as in many other ‘Nazi death camps,’ one group of the condemned were forced to sing nostalgic songs while others dug graves.'”

Deathfugue – First Publication (Romanian)

Reasons enough for me to track Konstantin Simonov and – Eureka! – I succeeded to figure out, that Konstantin Simonov visited Czernowitz while touring the fronts in June 1944. His report, headlined “ONLY ONE-THIRD OF CZERNOWITZ’ 80,000 JEWS REMAIN ALIVE, RUSSIAN CORRESPONDENT REPORTS” was published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) on June 21, 1944:

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Is it to keen to assume a possible personal meeting between Paul Celan and Konstantin Simonov during his visit in June 1944? John Felstiner wrote:

“I’m grateful for your sharing the news of his visit, and yes, it’s certainly *possible* they met. But who can confirm it? […] If you look at the Preface of my Celan anthology (Norton), you’ll see he wrote to a Czernowitz exile friend in Russia on July 1st, ’44: ‘I’ve come to Kiev for two days…” So at least it appears he may have been in Czernowitz a week earlier. A bit later in my book I mention PC translating Simonov. What a story in the making!”

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Just imagine how exciting it was for me, to get such an encouraging feedback! Provided that my guess is correct, we might have identified another small piece of the puzzle related to the genesis of Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge”! But who can confirm it? – Back to you, Czernowitzers!

Sidi and Falik

Czernowitz going Hollywood.
Stars of fame for Sidi Tal and her husband Falik Pinkus.  On top of the circles are the first names and on the bottom are the last. Looks like those stars are in front of the Philharmonic Hall (across from my childhood home)  Sidi and Falik look just like I remember them. Only the stars are there, the pictures are for illustration  purposes only.
Enjoy
Anna Kofner

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Let your Eyes…

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Zwiegestalt 2006
Aloys Rump’s series of art works on Paul Celan

The blog post with the pictures of:

Synagogues of Khust, Shargorod, Bolekhiv, Palace of Tsadik Friedman of Ruzhyn in Sadhora (Czernowitz), Cemeteries of Bila Cerkva, Czernowitz, Medzhibozh, Bolekhiv

There it is, in so many places

ended with the citation of Paul Celan’s poem:

Lass dein Aug in der Kammer sein eine Kerze,
den Blick einen Docht,
lass mich blind genug sein,
ihn zu entzünden.

This was translated into English:

Let your eyes become a candle in the chamber,
your glance a canon,
let me become blind enough
to light it.

Some of our friends rightly protested against the use of canon instead wick of the German word Docht. When you take a look at the French version of the whole text including the poem (at the same site)

Il est, en tant de lieux

you will find the usual translation of Docht i.e. wick and not canon. Should one conclude that the translator into English was simply mistaken or that he thought to have a reason to change the word into another so different one? We don’t know from the site who the translator into English was, although the name of the author of the French translation is given. But ignoring the Docht the rest is very well done. So he might, and surely deserves to be given the credit to have had a reasonable purpose in using this poetical freedom in translation. The whole poem has 2 verses:

ZWIEGESTALT (about 1954)

Lass dein Aug in der Kammer sein eine Kerze,
den Blick einen Docht,
lass mich blind genug sein,
ihn zu entzünden.

Nein.
Lass anderes sein.

Tritt vor dein Haus,
schirr deinen scheckigen Traum an,
laß seine Hufe reden
zum Schnee, den du fortbliest
vom First meiner
Seele.

Zwiegestalt is a typical Celan creation of combining German words, zwei (two) and Gestalt, playing on the word Zwielicht which means so much as twilight. Should we translate it as Doubleshape or Twigestalt or Twishape into English?

The two shapes correspond of course to the two parts of the poem interrupted but also joined by the categorical:

No,
Let different be,

I won’t even try to translate the second part into English – no doubt that one reason it was not given here is the difficulty to render into another language the symbolism Celan creates in these lines in German. Another reason for not citing the whole poem is of course the relevance of the first part only of the poem to the pictures, the search for presence of those that are not anymore.

The main idea of the second part is to give an active alternative to the passive behavior of his interlocutor by demanding of him to implement his colorful dreams, have the strength of a horse and wipe away any sad thoughts. (Here I have to admit the guilt of free interpretation and may be some exaggeration). It remains an open question if the poem is about two persons, or at least connected to another addressed person, or is a pure monologue with himself, like a lot of other poetry by Celan and others.

Whatever the contrast between the two different verses of Celan’s poem is meant to represent, its features are of a strict personal intention. A reader may find many oppositions according to his own way of reading. Passive/active or pessimist/optimist or internal/external or subject/object or static/dynamic, there is so much to chose from these few lines that open a vast territory of psychology or even philosophy, that one could say that even for reasonable associations to the text the sky is the limit. But I can’t find any trace of an idea of murder, hate, repent, social injustice or collective indifference to the past. Indeed there is nothing “social” or “general” here in Celan that might connect to the pictures. Except may be blindness.

The first verse is cited because of the blindness of the people now living. If we accept that Celan is cited here not only with the intention to give a nice literary strong finish to an otherwise beautiful and sensitive report, then only the subject of blindness can be responsible for this inclusion. But what sort of blindness of the locals to the past atrocities to a former population of the region is here intended to be shown? Is it at random, contingent, or in principle, a quasi conscious effort to get away from that past so unpleasant or even difficult to live with? Are they just lost in the misery of their daily life that does not give them the time to look back, or are they denying on purpose the past of the region? Accidental or lawful behavior?

The translator votes for the last version and explicates it by the use of the word canon instead wick. True, any reader might associate by himself a wick to be the principal part of a candle without which all the burning and light giving would not take place. The wax being there only for sheltering and shielding it. But canon makes the connection stronger. It is both the guideline of ecclesiastical behavior and the meaning that was used by philosophers like Mills or Kant, of rule or principle of right thinking. It is not a matter of accidental choice, it is “the” choice you make as part of your reasoned behavior. We could say, not a matter of temperament but of character, of some people or of humanity as such. To take Celan out of context:

Has the world become blind enough for a sufficient time in order to light it? Can the question : “Where are you” be answered in any positive way? We know that somehow there must be a candle that might give light enough to see the truth of the canon but for the moment we can only feel it as a gaze that surrounds those lost places of Galicia or Bucovina, a gaze from the past that looks upon the present but can’t be seen.

Berti Glaubach

Younger and Older Kids from Bukovina and Bessarabia

480479_514846651885483_260365461_nStudents and teachers in a classroom of the first Jewish kindergarten, Czernowitz; ca. 1920s. Affiliated with Po‘ale Tsiyon, this was one of many schools known as “Borokhov” schools, which taught both Zionism and Yiddish culture. A portrait of Borokhov hangs in the background. (YIVO)

535812_514842025219279_178879659_nYoung men and women reading newspapers at the Labor Zionist Eliezer Shteynbarg Reading Room, Lipcani-Târg, Romania (now Lipcani, Moldova), 1930s. Pictures on the wall include portraits of Yiddish authors Sholem Aleichem, Eliezer Steinbarg, and Yitskhok Leybush Peretz and Zionist ideologue Ber Borokhov. (YIVO)