Page 31 - GALIET ILLUSION: Rousseau IV

is a Master from Deutschland.77 The Jews and Europeans must endure terror and death, just as Trojans endured theirs, for their sublime feminine sakes. Not only must Nazi party officials obey their oaths, just as Helen’s former suitors had to obey their oaths, but once the Trojans blatantly refuse to return Helen in Book 7, they must war. Indeed, “the terms of death,” say the Argives, “hang over them [the Trojans].”78 Death not only is a Master from Argos, but also a Master from Troy. Argos wars to recover Helen, Troy to preserve her. Both Trojans and Argives must obey their Masters of Beauty and Death 3⁄4 Prince Paris, King Priam and King Menelaus 3⁄4 the supreme autocrats transfixed by Lady Beauty’s terrible sublime gaze. Eichmann’s officials must also obey their superiors, and become allegories for Hitler’s beast-men, the Masters of Death, that “live in the house, that play with their vipers, and write, when it grows dark to “Deutschland your golden hair Margareta.”79 They, too, for Lady Beauty’s sake, must be the beast-men that,
From Stanza 3
“Shout[s] jab the earth deeper you lot there you others sing up
and play
Grab[s] for the rod in their [his] belt they [he] swing[s] it their
[his] eyes are so blue
jab your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the
dancing”
Celan, Death Fugue
77 Celan, Paul. “Death Fugue.” Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan. Trans. John Felstiner. New York: W.W.W. Norton, 2001. 31
78 Homer. The Iliad. Trans. by Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951. Il.,7.402
79 Celan, Paul. “Death Fugue.” Selected Poems and Prose of Paul Celan. Trans. John Felstiner. New York: W.W.W. Norton, 2001. 31
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