Georg Trakl's Ghosts: Haunted Poems at the End of History

Abstract

Georg Trakl has been described by Bernhard Böschenstein as a “poet of post‐history.” In his rich but enigmatic poems, the perspective is imagined near the end‐point of the arc of history, where the speaker observes signs of advancing natural and cultural decay. One characteristic of Trakl's historical end stage is the encroachment of the supernatural sphere upon the natural, as boundaries are loosened between past and present, life and death, real and spectral. A clear development can be detected in Trakl's treatment of the supernatural theme. The earlier poems have naturalistic settings whose familiarity is progressively undermined by ghostly apparitions. In the later ones, the supernatural element becomes more pervasive, as historical and mythical relations become manifest spatially and climactic events from the speaker's life history and cultural tradition are re‐enacted in abject form. This essay plots the historical and supernatural themes through Trakl's work via discussion of specific poems.