{"id":2332,"date":"2012-04-19T21:08:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-19T21:08:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjhblog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2012\/04\/19\/your-golden-hair-margarete-1980-anselm-kiefer\/"},"modified":"2018-06-27T16:52:23","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T16:52:23","slug":"your-golden-hair-margarete-1980-anselm-kiefer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2012\/04\/19\/your-golden-hair-margarete-1980-anselm-kiefer\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='gallery-1' class='gallery galleryid-2332 gallery-columns-3 gallery-size-thumbnail'><figure class='gallery-item'>\n\t\t\t<div class='gallery-icon landscape'>\n\t\t\t\t<a href='https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/2012\/04\/19\/your-golden-hair-margarete-1980-anselm-kiefer\/attachment\/2333\/'><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/tumblr_m2qw1kCmLp1r3qmd1o1_r1_1280-150x150.jpg\" class=\"attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/toah\/works-of-art\/2000.96.7\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Your Golden Hair, Margarete<\/strong>, 1980<\/a><br \/>Anselm Kiefer (German, born 1945)<br \/>Watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on paper<\/p>\n<div>The artist <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anselm_Kiefer\" target=\"_blank\">Anselm Kiefer<\/a> (who was recently awarded the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lbi.org\/2011\/12\/leo-baeck-medal-awarded-artist-anselm-kiefer\/\" target=\"_blank\">Leo Baeck Medal<\/a>) was inspired\u00a0by Paul Celan&rsquo;s poem &ldquo;Death Fugue&rdquo; (&ldquo;Todesfuge&rdquo;) to create more than 30 paintings, painted photographs and watercolors, each of which somehow refers to the poem.\u00a0You can see that the above painting &ndash; which is one of this series &ndash; contains a line from the poem, translated as: &ldquo;Your golden hair, Margarete.&rdquo; (Click on the painting for an enlarged view.)<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/toah\/works-of-art\/2000.96.7\" target=\"_blank\">The Metropolitan Museum of Art website<\/a> explains the connection between the above work and the poem that inspired it:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div>Celan&rsquo;s &ldquo;Death Fugue,&rdquo; widely read and anthologized in postwar Germany, is set in an extermination camp. Its narrative voice, in the first person plural, is that of the camp&rsquo;s Jewish inmates who suffer under the strict watch of the camp&rsquo;s blue-eyed commandant. Singing &ldquo;your golden hair, Margarete \/ your ashen hair, Shulamith,&rdquo; the narrators contrast German womanhood, as personified by Margarete, to whom the commandant addresses letters at night (she is named after Goethe&rsquo;s heroine, Gretchen, in <em>Faust<\/em>), and Jewish womanhood (Shulamith was King Solomon&rsquo;s dark-haired beloved in the <em>Song of Songs<\/em>). Here, as in most of Kiefer&rsquo;s <em>Margarete<\/em> works, the German heroine is depicted only by the synecdoche of her &ldquo;golden hair,&rdquo; in the form of sheaves of wheat in the countryside.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Note:<\/strong> The Google Art Project offers high resolution views of three additional artworks by Anselm Kiefer. You can access them by\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.googleartproject.com\/artist\/anselm-kiefer\/4126244\/\" target=\"_blank\">clicking here<\/a>. (Be sure to try out Google&rsquo;s zoom function so that you can examine the artworks&rsquo; astonishing details!) Two of these paintings are held by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the other can be found in The Toledo Museum of Art.<\/p>\n<p><strong>In honor of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ushmm.org\/remembrance\/dor\/\" target=\"_blank\">Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day)<\/a> and as part of our ongoing <a href=\"http:\/\/16thstreet.tumblr.com\/post\/20292327684\/in-celebration-of-national-poetry-month-16th\" target=\"_blank\">National Poetry Month<\/a> series, we now turn to the chilling poem that inspired the above work of art.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Paul Celan (born Paul Antschel) was a Holocaust survivor who wrote in German and whose work has had a strong influence on both poetry and the visual arts in postwar Europe. The poem &ldquo;Death Fugue&rdquo; is sometimes cited in the ongoing debates around Theodor Adorno&rsquo;s famously quoted (and often misquoted) comment that it is &ldquo;barbaric&rdquo; to write poetry after Auschwitz.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Death Fugue<\/strong><br \/>by Paul Celan\u00a0<br \/>translated by Jerome Rothenberg\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Black milk of morning we drink you at dusk<br \/>we drink you at noontime and dawn we drink you at night<br \/>we drink and drink<br \/>we scoop out a grave in the sky where it\u2019s roomy to lie<br \/>There\u2019s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes<br \/>who writes when it\u2019s nightfall <em>nach Deutschland<\/em> your golden hair Margareta\u00a0<br \/>he writes it and walks from the house and the stars all start flashing he whistles his dogs to draw near<br \/>whistles his Jews to appear starts us scooping a grave out of sand<br \/>he commands us to play for the dance\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Black milk of morning we drink you at night<br \/>we drink you at dawn and noontime we drink you at dusk<br \/>we drink and drink<br \/>There\u2019s a man in this house who cultivates snakes and who writes<br \/>who writes when it\u2019s nightfall <em>nach Deutschland<\/em> your golden hair Margareta<br \/>your ashen hair Shulamite we scoop out a grave in the sky where it\u2019s roomy to lie<br \/>He calls jab it deep in the soil you lot there you other men sing and play<br \/>he tugs at the sword in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue<br \/>jab your spades deeper you men you other men you others play up again for the dance<\/p>\n<p>Black milk of morning we drink you at night<br \/>we drink you at noontime and dawntime we drink you at dusktime<br \/>we drink and drink<br \/>there\u2019s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta<br \/>your ashen hair Shulamite he cultivates snakes\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>He calls play that death thing more sweetly Death is a gang-boss <em>aus Deutschland<\/em><br \/>he calls scrape that fiddle more darkly then hover like smoke in the air<br \/>then scoop out a grave in the clouds where it\u2019s roomy to lie\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Black milk of morning we drink you at night<br \/>we drink you at noontime Death is a gang-boss <em>aus Deutschland<\/em><br \/>we drink you at dusktime and dawntime we drink and drink<br \/>Death is a gang-boss <em>aus Deutschland<\/em> his eye is blue<br \/>he shoots you with leaden bullets his aim is true<br \/>there\u2019s a man in this house your golden hair Margareta<br \/>he sets his dogs on our trail he gives us a grave in the sky<br \/>he cultivates snakes and he dreams Death is a gang-boss <em>aus Deutschland<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>your golden hair Margareta<br \/>your ashen hair Shulamite<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>You can read more about Paul Celan&rsquo;s life and work by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.poets.org\/poet.php\/prmPID\/316\" target=\"_blank\">clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><em>Submitted by Renate Evers, David Brown and Michael Simonson, Leo Baeck Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Your Golden Hair, Margarete, 1980Anselm Kiefer (German, born 1945)Watercolor, gouache, and acrylic on paper The artist Anselm Kiefer (who was recently awarded the Leo Baeck Medal) was inspired\u00a0by Paul Celan&rsquo;s poem &ldquo;Death Fugue&rdquo; (&ldquo;Todesfuge&rdquo;) to create more than 30 paintings, painted photographs and watercolors, each of which somehow refers to the poem.\u00a0You can see that the above painting &ndash; which is one of this&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"gallery","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1210,1211,42,962,1208,1207,1209,133],"class_list":["post-2332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-gallery","hentry","category-blog-post","tag-anselm-kiefer","tag-jerome-rothenberg","tag-leo-baeck-institute","tag-national-poetry-month","tag-paul-antschel","tag-paul-celan","tag-theodor-adorno","tag-yom-hashoah","post_format-post-format-gallery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2332"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2332\/revisions\/2334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cjh.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}