It flows from one part to another like a slow-moving river near the sea. Moreover, the lines of the poem don’t end anywhere in the middle.

However, in the translated version of the text, there is no such rhyme scheme or metrical scheme but in the actual version, there are some instances of slant rhymes. The poem presents the stream of thoughts that appears and fades away organically in the mind. This form of writing is also known as the “ stream-of-consciousness” technique. ‘Death Fugue’ by Paul Celan is a composition that appears like a string of thoughts that interplays in the body of the text to represent the state of a Jewish man’s mind. Such men have blue eyes, either reflecting the pacification in killing his fellow human beings or representing their unsympathetic hearts. Apart from that, the depiction of the commander in the poem presents how the mind of a dictator works. Each line says what a Jew was going through in such a horrific environment of the camp. Moreover, the theme of suffering is present throughout the poem. It is the “living death” of those who suffered inside the concentration camps. Here, the reference to death isn’t the normal one. The most important theme of the poem is death. ‘Death Fugue’ by Paul Celan consists of several themes like suffering, death, inhumanity, surrealism, and authoritarianism. This death song voices those who knew they were going to die sooner or later. However, it also seems that the song represents the mental state of the confined men in the concentration camps. It is a death song that arises from the heart of a sufferer who longs for it.

Here, it is simply not a musical composition. The subject of the musical theme in the introduction section gets repeated frequently in the work for the sake of emphasis. Fugue is a type of musical composition in which two or more voices are occurring simultaneously throughout the verse. ‘Death Fugue’ by Paul Celan in German named as ‘Todesfuge’. The only thing that helped them to somehow survive such a living death was the “Black milk of dawn”. Each day revolved as an unending night that began from the evening and ended in the darkness of night.

Moreover, there was not a “day” in their lives.

The insurmountable pain, that breaks the heart into pieces not even leaving the soul apart. And the last but foremost emotion is pain. The other emotion is fear for the commandant who metaphorically “plays with the snakes”. One emotion is love for a family member who was either killed or confined in another concentration camp. Each thought comes and goes, mixed with different kinds of emotions. The person represents his co-sufferers and expresses his thoughts about his mental state. ‘Death Fugue’ by Paul Celan presents a speaker who is not alone in the poem. ‘Death Fugue’ by Paul Celan presents the thoughts of a Jewish person who was confined in a concentration camp.

Poems of Paul Celan by Paul Celan