Page 39 - GALIET BEAUTY´S LURE: WAR Helen of Troy and Margareta of Germany IV

cruelty, but also, in between Troy and Holocaust, she weaves the veins of Heine’s 1844 weavers. The cadences in Todesfuge, adds Mr. Falstiner, summon The Silesian Weavers, Heine’s protest ballad denouncing repression,
“We’re busy weaving day and night Old Germany, we weave your shroud, We weave the threefold curse in it, We weave and we weave it!”70
Heine, The Silesian Weavers
Stanza 2
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night we drink you at morning and midday
we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes he writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair Margareta
Your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped”
Celan, Death Fugue
Lady Beauty weaves and lures to abysmal laments. The Silesians weave the struggles they endure for Germany’s sake, while Lady Beauty weaves the barbarisms of Troy and Nazi Germany endured for her sake. In Troy, she weaves the tensions between Achaeans and Trojans; in Auschwitz, the struggles amongst Germans, Jews, and the disfranchised. In Troy, she weaves the Dance of Death; in Auschwitz, the Tango
70 Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. New Haven, 1995. 37.
· 39 ·