Paul Celan, Margarita and Gardel's Tango of Death

IBARLUCÍA, RICARDO

Roma

Congreso; IV International Musicological Society Congress; 2012

This paper aims to investigate the sense of Paul Celan's statement about the arrogance of poetry that refers to Auschwitz "under the perspective of the nightingale or the thrush" in connection with Todesfuge, whose original title was Todestango. It discusses John Felstiner" interpretation of the poem as a direct reference to a tango-song called Plegaria (1929) that was played during the executions at the Lublin camp in order to demonstrate, trough the examination of documents that have not been considered by the critics up to the date, that such Todestango mobilize, unblocks and recreates a broader web topics, metaphors and symbolic references "among which the tragic figure of Margarita that tango inherited from Charles Gounod's Faust and El tango de la muerte (1926) by Carlos Gardel are located- where the romantic and operatic lyricism of tango constitutes the consummation, over the domain of mass culture, of the kitsch of death rejected by Celan as nazi poetry.