Still Songs: Music In and Around the Poetry of Paul Celan

In the shadow of one of the darkest chapters of human history emerges a poem whose very title is a haunting metaphor: 'Todesfuge' or 'Death Fugue'. This poem, far from being a mere literary exercise, weaves the complex, paradoxical relationship between poetry and music into its very fabric. The title alone signals a profound tension — it claims to be a fugue, a form of musical composition renowned for its mastery of counterpoint and polyphony, yet it is not literally music but a verbal poem. This metaphorical identification challenges us to understand the poem as both 'is' and 'is not' a musical fugue, a paradox that invites continuous reinterpretation.

The poem’s structure, with its repeated motifs such as 'Black milk of daybreak' and the chilling refrain 'Death is a master from Germany', echoes the contrapuntal techniques of a fugue — repetition, variation, and overlapping voices — but these are realized through language. The 'voices' are not sung but read, imagined as a multiplicity of suffering and command. In this way, the poem becomes a metaphorical fugue, where the voices of victims and perpetrators intertwine, intersect, and clash.

Yet, the metaphor extends beyond formal analogy. The poem’s imagery draws on the grim historical reality of concentration camps, where music was perversely employed: Jewish prisoners were forced to perform music as they dug graves or faced execution. This brutal inversion of music’s traditional role as a source of beauty and transcendence is embedded in the poem’s lines. The commandant 'plays with the serpents', a symbol of both danger and perverse mastery, while the victims 'dig a grave in the breezes' — a grave that is simultaneously literal and metaphorical, spatial and spiritual.

Early critics misunderstood this musical metaphor, often reading the poem as an aestheticization or transcendence of horror. Yet the poem itself problematizes these readings by highlighting how music, rather than offering escape, is complicit in the machinery of death. It exposes the German musical tradition, epitomized by Bach and the fugue form, as intertwined with the cultural forces enabling atrocity.

Thus, the poem’s metaphorical musicality is not innocent or purely artistic; it is charged with survivor’s guilt, cultural critique, and a profound self-reflexivity. The poem’s 'fugue' is a site where art and history collide, where mastery becomes complicity, and where voices are both silenced and forced to sing.

As we move forward, we will explore how this metaphorical interplay between music and poetry unfolds across Celan’s work, how it evolves from Romantic notions of song to complex reflections on trauma, and how it resonates in the musical compositions inspired by his poetry. This journey begins with understanding the profound dynamics of musical metaphor in 'Todesfuge', a poem that remains a powerful testament to the interwoven legacies of art and history.

Let us now turn to the broader tradition of poetic musicality, where the song and the lullaby carry their own promises and perils.