"Death Fugue" translation analysis

"Death Fugue," by Paul Celan, gives insight into the choice of words made by the translator. In the comparison of the translations by John Felstiner, and Christopher Middleton, the differences are even found in the titles.

The lines that stuck with me from both translations has some striking differences, but through the inconsistencies I was able to get a feel for what Celan was likely trying to communicate in the original German.
Middleton's first lines are written thus:

Black milk of daybreak we drink it at nightfall


we drink it at noon in the morning we drink it at night


we drink it and drink it 

we are digging a grave in the sky it is ample to lie there

..............................

And Felstiner's version as:

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

..............................

Both translations use the same phrase "black milk," which I thought was very shocking. Something black which is supposed to be white. This may be literal, or an ironic metaphor speaking of impending death or the poisonous hate and mistreatment the Jewish prisoners receive at all hours of the day.
The translations differ in the last line the examples above, with Middleton's providing some rhyme to ground the reader, with the word "ample" as a possible implication for the abundance of heaven, but the absurd action of digging a grave in the sky shatters any form of comfort.
Felstiner's translation, though similar, has even more black irony, due to sounding less like a metaphor and more like the sick commands or orders the prisoners would hear screamed at them constantly.

The second part of the poem which stood out for me was an echo of the first.

Middleton:

He shouts play sweeter death's music death comes as a 

            master from Germany 

he shouts stroke darker the strings and as smoke you 

           shall climb to the sky

then you'll have a grave in the clouds it is ample to lie 


            there


 Here Middleton uses a syntax that is not common in English, so one can assume he was attempting to provide a more literal translation of the command. The reader by this point in the reading of his translation could still see the image of a "grave in the clouds" as a notion of heaven, especially with the return of the word "ample," although I don't think I have heard a more haunting or horrifying depiction of hell on earth from a poem.


Felstiner translates the same passage:

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 


Felstiner chooses words to show horrors and atrocities in an equally effective way, although the effect is somewhat different from Middleton's. With the word "scrape," he gives the reader the ugliness of a vivid sound. One can hear the word scrape. It is not a pretty word, especially if it is referring to strings on a violin, in the midst of prisoners digging their own graves. This specificity of horror is expanded with the notion of a choice by the master from Deutschland to burn the prisoners to save room that burying them in cramped graves would take.

Stanza analysis from Auden's "September 1, 1939"

"September 1, 1939"
 third stanza:

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To and apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
the enlightenment driven away, 
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.


This stanza from Auden's widely popular poem provides droves of historical information even in the first line, 
with the connotations of the name "Thucydides." After working as a general for an Athenian military commander, Thucydides was blamed for the fall of a strategic city to the Spartans. He was then banished for this, and seeing it as fate, chose to look at war and other events from an unbiased perspective. Hugely influential in western history and society, Thucydides is known as the father of scientific history. His expansive tome of the Pelopnnesian war recounts not only historical facts, but provides detailed conclusions based on evidence and analysis of cause and effect. Scholars have traditionally viewed the core of Thucydides' work as teaching the necessity of leaders for the function of democratic government, but that democratic government can also be endangered by leaders.
This idea comes out further in the lines of this stanza, with the implication of "what dictators do," and "the elderly rubbish they talk."

The line in the stanza speaking of "the enlightenment driven away," could be related to Thucydides having been grouped in along with Thomas Hobbes and Machiavelli, as a father of political realism, or realpolitik, which emphasizes the priority of the nation's well being in military and economy over the ideals of society and human morals and dignity. This ironic twist in the history of the historian, as the twisting of words into something else, much like dictators twisting democracy into something ugly is what Auden speaks of causing grief and suffering.