page_title: Todesfuge
section_title: Origins, composition and publication
hierarchical_section_title: Todesfuge / Origins, composition and publication
caption_attribution_description: English: Austrian author Rose Ausländer 1939
context_page_description: "Todesfuge" is a German language poem written by the Romanian-born poet Paul Celan probably around 1945 and first published in 1948. It is one of his best-known and often-anthologized poems. Despite critics claiming that the lyrical finesse and aesthetic of the poem did not do justice to the cruelty of the Holocaust, others regard the poem as one that "combines mysteriously compelling imagery with rhythmic variations and structural patterns that are both elusive and pronounced". At the same time it has been regarded as a "masterful description of horror and death in a concentration camp". Celan was born to a Jewish family in Cernauti, Romania; his parents died in a camp during the Second World War, and Celan himself was a prisoner for a time in a work camp.
  The poem has reached international relevance by being considered to be one of the most important poems of the post-war period and the most relevant example of Trümmerliteratur.
context_section_description: "It was clear to every reader from the start that ['Todesfuge'] was concerned with camps and the Endlösung der Judenfrage (The Final Solution to the Jewish Question), made doubly poignant by the circumstance that the author was known to be a Jew from Eastern Europe." However although it has often been assumed to reflect the author's own experiences, Celan himself was never a prisoner in a death camp; the poem reflects more directly the experiences recounted to him.
  The exact date of composition of the poem is not known; a date of 1944 or 1945 seems to be most likely.
  The poem contains direct references, or apparent references, to other contemporary works. The oxymoronic image of "black milk" appeared in a poem published in 1939 by Rose Ausländer. Ausländer herself is recorded as saying that this usage by Celan was "self-explanatory, as the poet may take all material to transmute in his own poetry. It's an honour to me that a great poet found a stimulus in my own modest work".
  The relationship of "Todesfuge" to the poem "ER" (HIM) by the poet Immanuel Weissglas is more problematic. Written in the early 1940s (the exact date is unknown), "ER" includes lines about "Gretchen's golden hair", "digging graves in the air", "playing with snakes", and "Death, the German Master", all of which occur in "Todesfuge". Weissglas (1920–1979) was like Celan, a native of Cernauti/Czernowitz in the Bukovina, and the two were at school together, and knew each other in the immediate post-war period in Bucharest, when they were also both acquainted with Rose Ausländer. It was probably Weissglas, who had been interned in Transnistria with Celan's parents, who told Celan of his parents' deaths and their circumstances. "ER" was written in the early 1940s (the exact date is unknown), and was never published. It was part of a typescript collection by Weissglas, Gottes Mühlen in Berlin (God's Mills in Berlin), which however Celan would almost certainly have read. However, the tone and form of "ER" and "Todesfuge" are completely different. Jean Bollack wrote of "Todesfuge" that Celan "rearranges [the] elements [of "ER"] without adding any new ones; the elements are the same, but he manages to create something completely different using them".
  "Todesfuge" 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", derived from the syllables of "Antschel", Celan's real name. The original German version appeared in the 1948 Der Sand aus den Urnen, Celan's first collection of poems; but this edition was small, and was withdrawn because of its many misprints. The poem first became well-known when it was included in Celan's 1952 collection, Mohn und Gedächtnis. It has since appeared in numerous anthologies and translations.
caption: Rose Ausländer (photo from 1939)
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