The Solitary Poem

The article "The Solitary Poem" provides the context surrounding the process of creation of Celan's Todestango (Tangoul Morţii). I argue that the poem is a translation which Celan made together with his friend Petre Solomon, and published on 2 May 1947 in the Bucharest Marxist review Contemporanul, before the publication of the German poem with the definitive title Todesfuge (Fuga Morţii). Compiling textual evidence from texts by Emil Cioran, Benjamin Fondane, and Paul Celan himself, and matching it with historical references of the WWII, Holocaust, and its aftermath, I read the Romanian version of the poem as a representation of a secret "interlocutor" who struggles to "survive" through the text of Tangoul Morţii, where the meeting between the Other and the unconscious memory of a date in the future takes place.