I

“Grodek”

Am Abend tönen die herbstlichen Wälder
Von tödlichen Waffen, die goldnen Ebenen
Und blauen Seen, darüber die Sonne
Düstrer hinrollt; umfängt die Nacht
Sterbende Krieger, die wilde Klage
Ihrer zerbrochenen Münder.
Doch stille sammelt im Weidengrund
Rotes Gewölk, darin ein zürnender Gott wohnt
Das vergoßne Blut sich, mondne Kühle;
Alle Straßen münden in schwarze Verwesung.
Unter goldenem Gezweig der Nacht und Sternen
Es schwangt der Schwester Schatten durch den schweigenden Hain,
Zu grüßen die Geister der Helden, die blutenden Häupter;
Und leise tönen im Rohr die dunklen Flöten des Herbstes.
O stolzere Trauer! ihr ehernen Altäre
Die heiße Flamme des Geistes nährt heute ein gewaltiger Schmerz,
Die ungebornen Enkel.

—By Georg Trakl

II

A.
“Buns and Chou Chou prepare for Spidermania, and consider their own cartoon fantasies.”—bucket of corn!

Got to love those bunnies.

Paddy Longlegs, indeed.

I quack me up.

“I'm average. I must have superpowers.”

B.
YouTube and similar services provide great possibilities for the adaptation of works of art in other media—such as students and other folks reading poems and setting them to background noise and pictures. And calling it a film. As an example I give you Isabella Dobija reading Trakl's poem in a film by Sebastian Müller.

It is read too quickly. The microphone picks up too many noises from her arid, sticky mouth. There is no rhythm, only a haste to be done, no feeling that the words make any sense to her. The images have one speed, and no arc.

Trakl is “the” poet of evening: as Leitgeb points out, “Abend” is the second most frequent noun in his poetry, surpassed only by the analogous “Schatten.” It is also featured prominently; for at least thirty lines some form of “Abend” (“Abends,” “Am Abend,” “Am Abendgarten”) is the first significant word, while twelve poems in the complete work, including the first and last of Die Dichtungen, begin with an adverbial mention of evening.

Brown, Russell E., “Time of Day in Early Expressionist Poetry.” In: PMLA. Vol. 84, No. 1. 1969 p. 20.

Trakl's poem is famous enough that it is canonical. Or perhaps the reverse is true. It has been instrumentalized. Like school trips to the museum, Shakespeare in the English classroom, and other dead culture, and yet is there not a little question begging going on? The culture is dead not because that is its essence but because we treat it is a tool or instrument for our “improvement.” It is distant, or better: removed, it is a duty, not an interaction or appropriation.

Another video explores the world of Georg Trakl ... set to soothing music.

C.
First performance? Magnificent. The lighting cues? Perfect. The main actress gets better and better, and last night her facial expressions were at times so frozen, so frightening ... let me exlain. The audience would laugh at the “wrong parts” because they are, on one level, funny, but it's not ha-ha humor. It's dark. Up in the lighting booth my colleague and I read along in the script and made bets as to when the audience would laugh. A serious comment about spousal abuse? Yep. Laughter. But in the fifth act her performance stopped them, choked the laughter. No more twitching in chairs, clearing throats, scanning the stage. There was but one presence in the light, all attention was focused there, and you barely dared breathe.

The applause and accolades extended beyond expectation, but there is always an amount of self-satisfaction, back-patting, and feedback-looping that goes on with productions.

So we left. Off to a party, and when that proved to be decidedly non-alcholic, off to the beer-serving student union we went.

One down; two to go. Thus you'll hear about this from me again.

D.
As far as background goes, Grodek was the location of a WWI battle or two, and it is to that battle that Trakl alludes. Trakl was a pharmacist and called to the front. If you want to talk about PTSD and similar things, the first WW is obviously a good place to start, if not the only one.

Trakl attempted to kill himself with a gun, was stopped by his comrades, and placed under observation. Another colleague/comrade wrote to Wittgenstein, but by the time Wittgenstein arrived, Trakl had succeeded—with an overdose of cocaine.

Now I want to read Wittgenstein's Poker.

While the poem clearly alludes to the battle, or to the slaughter of war in general (the blood and weapons and dead and dying soldiers), Trakl mixes this barbaric human creation with the natural world, applies elements of the mythic (a bloody red god of war), and introduces the archetypical and psychological, such as the image of the sister, or rather, the sister's shadow.

The poem is a mess of clauses and phrases, some causally or grammatically linked by relative clauses and similar devices, but note the lack of conjunctions, the lack of ands and buts and ors, of thats and becauses. There's a yet, and here or there a lonely and, but mostly just commas, neutral and nonjudgmental. Both linearity, a progression from A to B, as well as a play within a hierarchy, nested loops and returns and echoes, are unsettled, avoided. It's the ultimate run-on but just structured enough—thematically, the overbearing colors—that it's more than a list, a mere collection of words or images.

III

“Grodek”

At evening the woods of autumn are full of the sound
Of the weapons of death, golden fields
And blue lakes, over which the darkening sun
Rolls down; night gathers in
Dying recruits, the animal cries
Of their burst mouths.
Yet a red cloud, in which a furious god,
The spilled blood itself, has its home, silently
Gathers, a moonlike coolness in the willow bottoms;
All the roads spread out into the black mold.
Under the gold branches of the night and stars
The sister's shadow falters through the diminishing grove,
To greet the ghosts of the heroes, bleeding heads;
And from the reeds the sound of the dark flutes of autumn rises.
O prouder grief! you bronze altars,
The hot flame of the spirit is fed today by a more monstrous pain,
The unborn grandchildren.

—Translated by James Wright and Robert Bly