Boris Kobe's Tarot Cards from Allach Concentration Camp

Boris Kobe, Tarot, 1945

From The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota:

Boris Kobe (1905 - 1981) – Slovenian architect and painter was a political prisoner at the concentration camp of Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau. Reproductions of the cards were provided courtesy of the Slovenian delegation to the Stockholm International Conference in the year 2000 to all educators.

Slovenia’s major contribution at the International Conference was an installation of concentration camp tarot cards of Kobe – which in a unique way, created a special monument to historical memory.

The contextual framework and point of departure of the art project is a deck of tarot cards made in the Allach concentration camp in Germany by Kobe, a Slovene architect and painter. As a whole, this work of art represents a visual summary of life in a concentration camp, the main vehicle of which consists of Kobe's tragic and humiliating sequences spiced with acrid humor. At the same time, this tiny exhibit is a miniature chronicle of the twilight of humanity brought about by Nazism, which regarded a human being, and therefore the artist himself, as a mere number.

The installation has the character of an integral work of art or an ambience that, apart from the visual and spatial elements, is enriched by music. The artistic metamorphosis of the traditional danse macabre theme is the focus of the projection, which emphasizes the phenomenon of violence as the greatest evil of 20th century European history.

Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau, was ten miles from the main camp and was liberated on April 22, 1945 by American forces, 42nd Rainbow Division

After the war, Kobe did no more work as far as is known about his camp experiences. He was, however, a major Slovenian architect. One of his major projects was the restoration of the Ljubljana Castle. Plečnik was the major architect but Boris Kobe was also involved in creating elaborate plans for the castle. His contribution to its renovation is not insignificant, though it is not as well known as Plečnik's.

via Metafilter

Paul Celan: Todesfugue: "Play death more sweetly..."

Auschwitz Orchestra.
Prisoners' orchestra during a Sunday concert for the SS-men in Auschwitz.
The orchestra was probably conducted by the inmate Franciszek Nierychlo. (1941)

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 where you won't lie too cramped
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
he writes it and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling he whistles his hounds to stay close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the ground
he commands us play up for the dance

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 where you won't lie too cramped

He shouts dig this earth deeper you lot there you others sing up and play
he grabs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are so blue
stick your spades deeper you lot there you others play on for the dancing

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margareta
you aschenes Haar Shulamith he plays with his vipers

He shouts play death more sweetly this Death is a master from Deutschland
he shouts scrape your strings darker you'll rise up as smoke to the sky
you'll then have a grave in the clouds where you won't lie too cramped

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evening and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your goldenes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants us a grave in the air
he plays with his vipers and daydreams der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland

dein goldenes Haar Margarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

Translation by John Felstiner from Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. Yale University Press, 1995. (Apologies for the forced line breaks created by Blogger.)

From Felstiner:

[I]n 1964 he had written:

Water needles
stitch up the split
shadow- he fights his way
deeper down,
free.

About 20 April 1970, around Passover, Celan went from the bridge into the Seine and, though a strong swimmer, drowned unobserved.... On 1 May a fisherman came upon his body seven miles downstream.

A biography of Holderlin was found then on Celan's desk, open to an underlined passage: "Sometimes this genius goes dark and sinks down into the bitter well of his heart." Celan did not, I noticed, underline the rest of that sentence in the Holderlin biography: "but mostly his apocalyptic star glitters wondrously."

People have said that Celan took his own life at forty-nine because valid speech in German was impossible after or about Auschwitz. Yet this was the impossibility that incited him: "Spills of mire I swallowed, inside the tower." And he did speak - more validly than anyone could ever have been imagined.

More Celan:
Wikipedia: Paul Celan
Paul Celan Homepage
Little Blue Light: Paul Celan
Norton Poets Online
Black Milk of Language by Ruth Franklin

A tense debate has long existed about the translation of poetry. One view was epitomized by Vladimir Nabokov, who fiercely believed that only literal paraphrase, supported by copious commentary, can do justice to a poem in translation. As he once quipped:

What is translation? On a platter
A poet's pale and glaring head,
A parrot's screech, a monkey's chatter,
And profanation of the dead.

The opposing view has been championed by George Steiner, who agrees that perfect translation, of either poetry or prose, is impossible--but concludes more pessimistically that, in the most exact sense, nothing can truly be transmitted by translation, because different systems of grammar have different ways of signifying, even with regard to the simplest words or phrases. Steiner describes various languages as nets piled atop one another, overlapping in some places but disjunctive at others: "No two languages mesh perfectly, no two languages ... see the world in the same order."