I came to the Austrian German poet Trakl depressed and didn’t leave any happier. His short oeuvre, written in the final years before the first world war, is not for the faint of heart. There is very little joy to be found here, and what beauty there is in his poems is tainted by an overwhelming sense of decay. But what Trakl does offer, above and beyond his despair and endless talk of decline, is a unique view of the world, and a unique language of symbols for appreciating it. Each of his poems is a mysterious mood-piece, filled with images whose interpretations are never definite. Rilke’s view, that reading Trakl is like being “an outsider pressed against panes of glass”, looking into a space of experience which “like the space in a mirror, cannot be entered”, hits the mark.
Georg Trakl. Intensely sad, his poems reflect a sensibility that felt deeply the spiritual turbulence of his age. A turbulence that continues into our own and leaves his poetry mysterious and fresh even now.
Trakl is a strange poet, but he is also one whose work is tragically beautiful, and I hope to show that in these few translations below. His concerns seem perfect for our own age. The empty spiritual gulf left by religion’s decline, the feeling of foreboding as the world enters a new era without any ballast or sense that we are prepared for its challenges, and even the loss of a deep understanding of and connection to the natural world – all these are just as relevant now as they were as the First World War erupted. To face Trakl’s dark world is to be given a way of visualising the darkness of our own. So let’s begin.
The Poems
Trakl’s poems are made up of short and simple sentences, that are nonetheless often hard to understand. There’s a lot of ambiguity due to the syntax and punctuation, and whenever I’ve met something unclear, I’ve aimed to convey that same uncertainty in the English. After all, I’m trying to translate a mood and an atmosphere, not a technical document. If I have managed that, then I can be happy with how these have turned out. Following the poems is a bit about Trakl’s life and a conclusion.
Dark breath in green twigs. Blue blossoms float around the face Of the lonely one, his golden step Dying under the olive tree. The night is filled with the fluttering of drunk wings. So quietly bleeds out humility, Dew, which slowly drips from the blossoming thorn. The mercy of shining arms Embraces a breaking heart.
This painting (Starry Night), by Edvard Munch, strikes me as a good representation of my feeling as I read the final two stanzas of “Spiritual Twilight.” Munch was working at about the same time as Trakl and I feel like both of them are often similar in tone and image.
Spiritual Twilight (DE) Silence encounters at the forest’s hem Its dark quarry. On the hill the evening wind ends quietly,
The blackbird’s cries are stilled, And the soft flutes of autumn Go silent in their pipes.
On a black cloud You sail, drunk on the poppy, The ponds of the night,
The stars in the heavens. The sister’s lunar voice is always calling Through the spirit’s night.
The Sun (DE) Daily comes the yellow sun across the hill. The forest, the dark beast, man – hunter or shepherd – All are beautiful.
Reddish rises the fish in the green pond. Under the round heavens The fisherman quietly rows in his blue boat.
Slowly ripens the grape, the grain. When the day silently ends, A good and an evil is prepared.
When the world becomes night, The wanderer quietly lifts his heavy eyes; The sun breaks out of a gloomy chasm.
The Sun, also by Munch. I wonder if, had Trakl lived to grow older, he too would have found way of looking at and representing the world that moved beyond fear and anxiety.
In Spring (DE) Softly sank from dark steps the snow; In the shadow of the tree The lovers raise their rosy lids.
Star and night always follow The dark calls of the mariners; And the oars beat softly in time.
Soon on the ruined wall blooms The violet; The temples of the lonely one silently grow green.
Remembrance, a buried hope, Preserves this brown wood frame, Where dahlias hang above - An ever stiller homecoming; The ruined garden, the dark reflection Of childhood years, So that from blue lids the tears plunge Unstoppably. Now swim the glassy minutes Of gloom Over and into the night.
Who was Trakl? Biography and its Absence
Georg Trakl was born in 1887 and died towards the end of 1914, likely by his own hand. He was born in Salzburg to a family of not great financial means, but all the same this is where he was most happy. His relations with his sister Grete, herself a musical prodigy, may well have been incestuous. In his poems Trakl often writes about the “sister”, but it’s difficult to know what to make of that. What is more clear is that Trakl developed a drug addiction that he supported through becoming a pharmacist. Once war broke out Trakl joined the Austro-Hungarian army as a medical officer on the Eastern Front. By this point his mood was extremely unstable and the experience of the battle of Grodek, though it led to perhaps is most famous poem, also led to Trakl’s final breakdown and probable suicide of a cocaine overdose.
Yet all of this is almost irrelevant in the poems. As is clear above, Trakl hides himself from view. The experience of reading his work is rather like floating through a deep fog. There is nothing so solid as an “I”, even a lyrical “I”, to hold on to. The places of his life certainly make their appearances, including Grodek itself, but always more as symbols and maps of an internal world than as real settings, at least it seems that way to me.
The lovely German edition of Trakl’s work from Reclam which I’ve been reading also includes many of his letters. But these, too, are not of much use for understanding his poems. We can hear Trakl’s own voice, always in pain, and always suffering. It only caused me to feel a terrible and futile desire to help the poor man, but the poems remained – perhaps thankfully – impenetrable. “I was terribly sick for a few days, I think from a mourning that cannot be put into words”. Shortly before he dies he writes “I feel like I’ve already almost passed over into the beyond”. What I like about him so much is that his sensibility really does seem to belong to another world, no matter how much suffering seems to be involved.
“I feel like I’ve already almost passed over into the beyond.” The painting is Munch’s Self Portrait in Hell. Trakl’s work, like Munch’s, is filled with religious symbolism. Ultimately, any positive message in Trakl lurks within this Christian impulse.
Conclusion – Religion and the Poppy
Probably my favourite pieces here are the first two. The
image of the blackbird, of the innocent forced to suffer its way through the
world, lies at the heart of Trakl’s whole project, and the bird’s short and
brutal poem strikes me as being particularly beautiful. But it also contains
within it a rare hint at redemption. Trakl’s religious inclinations are, as
with so much else about him, not entirely clear. But for me at least, this poem
has a spiritual angle to it: the suggestion that for all our suffering there
may lurk at the end of the tunnel a kind of salvation. It’s not unlike
Dostoevsky, in its way.
As for “Spiritual Twilight”, I love its tone and sense of
mystery. For me it really conveys that world of abstract rumination we fall
into somewhere in the depths of our despair. It is a weightless poem, just as
we, in our thoughts, are weightless too. But one day we must open our eyes. And
that is where the challenge lies.
The last word on all this should go to Trakl himself. This
is how he describes himself, towards the end of his life: “Too little love, too
little justice and mercy, and always too little love; too much hardness, pride,
and all sorts of transgressions – this is me. I am certain that I only refrain
from evil out of cowardice and weakness and in doing so shame even that part of
me.”
I hope, having read a few of his poems, you have a sense that for all the mercy and love he did not receive himself, he was more than willing to give plenty of it out to those who needed it in his work. The strange thing is, for all his despair, I find myself feeling less alone for reading in his company. And that’s why I think he’s a fantastic poet.
I really like Theodor Storm as a poet because he seems to me to be incredibly conventional. There is almost nothing special about either the form or the content of Storm’s poetry, but these little pieces are (forgive the translations if they don’t convey this) perfectly crafted all the same. There is no danger of ambition getting in the way of the message. While it is true that Storm wrote longer poems that I haven’t translated here, even those are all limited in formal and thematic scope. It seems he understood his talents and never thought it was worth the danger of trying to move beyond them, something he did in the formal experimentation of his novellas.
Theodor Storm, author of poems and novellas, was born and lived most of his life on the shores of the North Sea. His most famous poem “The Town”/Die Stadt (not translated here), takes his hometown of Husum as its setting.
Storm was born in 1817 in Husum, a small town in the duchy of Schleswig, at that time ruled by the Danish crown, even though it contained a sizeable German population. He studied law further south, wrote poems and novellas (I’ve written on Aquis Submersus here, and Immensee here), and returned to Husum after it had come under Prussian rule following a brief war with Denmark. There is a political slant to his work at times, but this doesn’t come across in the selection I’ve translated. I don’t feel the patriotism translates well without notes and I’m not sure it’d be enjoyable with them either.
Storm died at the age of 70 from cancer, shortly after
completing “The Rider on the White Horse”, perhaps his greatest
novella.
The Poems
I’ve translated several of Storm’s poems. His topics within them range from life and love to death and decay. My only regret with them is that I haven’t yet translated his more nature-based poems. I find them particularly beautiful. But that means I’m harder on myself – I want to do them justice. Since I myself grew up by a grey and northern coastline, I’m especially fond of Storm’s poetry dealing with his homeland.
But anyway, here are the poems. Following them will be a few
comments.
Beginning of the End
It's just a point, not even pain - It's just a feeling you perceive - And yet it hangs around your thoughts, And yet it makes it hard to breathe.
And when you try to tell your friends, You find you cannot find the words. You tell yourself: "this is no end." And yet there's no peace from its birth.
And now the world becomes so strange, And quietly your hopes depart, Until you see at last - at last! - That death's dark arrow's found your heart.
Insomnia
I woke from dreams in worried fright - Why is the lark's song out in the night?
The day's gone by, the morning's still far, Down onto my pillow there shines a star.
Yet on and on there floats the lark's song - O voice of day, what has gone wrong?
Early Morning
Above the roof the sun's gold shines, And cocks begin to crow the time; The one crows here, the other there, Their call rings out from everywhere. Now in the distance dies the cry - There's nothing more to fill the sky. Oh brave old cocks, sing on your song! They are still sleeping, sleeping on.
A Whisper
It is a whisper in the night, And yet it set my peace to flight. I feel it's there, it wants to say Some thing but cannot find the way.
Is it love's words, their secrets thrown Into the wind, blown far from home? Or is it pain from future days That hopes to help me change my ways?
Husum, Storm’s birthplace and home for much of his life. It’s a lovely little town and the Storm Museum there is worth visiting if you’re ever in the area. Photo by Bernd Untiedt (CC BY-SA 3.0)
"One body and one soul..."
One body and one soul, as once we were, - Seen thus, how great your death to me appears. As you, alone, within the grave decay, So too feel I, myself, decay up here.
"A man held once..."
A man held once by loving arms, Need never ask in life for alms. If he must die far off, alone, Still yet he'll feel those blessed hours, When her mouth loved with all its powers, And now in death she'll stay his own.
Consolation Whatever happens, come what may! If you still live I'll love this day.
The feeling goes, the world to roam - Wherever you are, that's my home.
I see your lovely face before me, And know the future cannot hurt me.
Closing Remarks
If I had to write about these in an essay, I’d find more to say than I will say now. But essays are always unnatural; they just get in the way of enjoying the simplicity of the poetry. Storm’s poetry is often about love, about the changes in love brought by death and separation. In this he seems quite similar to another major German poet of the same period, Eduard Mörike. But Storm’s poetry, at least here, also has a much greater sense of apprehension and anxiety about it. Death is always just around the corner, and however beautiful the natural world is there’s also a sense that Storm is not always certain that he can correctly interpret the world’s symbols. The gap between perception and his understanding seems to torment him, as in “Insomnia” and “A Whisper” – both end in questions.
I hope you enjoyed my translations. If you have any comments, why not leave a comment? If you want more German poetry, I have a piece on Hugo von Hofmannsthal here.
Immensee is perhaps the best known of Theodor Storm’s novellas, and like many of them it is a tale of thwarted love and missed opportunities. Unlike Storm’s Aquis Submersus, which I have written about here, and which is characterised by elements of tragedy and drama, Immensee is a much more symbolic work where the main focus is on “Stimmung”, or mood. What follows is a summary of the story of Immensee, followed by some ways of looking at the meaning of the tale. Translations from the German are mine.
An old American cover for Immensee. It shows one of the novella’s key symbols – the white lily.
The Plot of Immensee
Immensee tells the brief story of two children,
Reinhard and Elisabeth, who at first seem destined to marry. Through ten
vignettes, each no more than a few pages, we follow the two as they grow from
children into adults, and then become separated through Elisabeth’s marriage to
another man, Erich. The opening and final vignettes, both titled “The Old Man” are
set considerably later than the rest of scenes, and show Reinhard as an old
man, lonely and unfulfilled as he reminisces upon the disappointment of the
past and his own role in sealing his fate.
The first of the reminiscences is entitled “The children” and
shows the two children – Reinhard aged ten, and Elisabeth only five – playing
together in the height of summer. Their joy with each other is palpable – they
dance and sing, and the section ends with them returning home, “springing hand
in hand together”. The next section, “In the Forest” takes place seven years
later, as Reinhard is preparing to leave for further study in a different town.
The two children are tasked with locating strawberries and Reinhard claims he
knows a place, but when they arrive, exhausted, it is dark and there are none
left on the bushes. A brief division is seen between the children, as Elisabeth
says the place makes her afraid, while Reinhard talks of its beauty. In either
case, they leave empty handed, and Reinhard’s final day is a disappointment.
“There Stood the Child on the Road” sees Reinhard already at
university on Christmas Eve. Like a good student we find him drinking in a bar,
where a gypsy woman is playing music. Reinhard stands and makes a toast “to
your beautiful, sinful eyes!” and tries to give her money, but she rebuffs him
when he refuses to stay for her. He leaves the bar and goes outside onto the
street, and then home, where he finds a gift of cookies from Elisabeth has
arrived. In her letter she berates him for not having written or sent her any
fairy tales as he had promised. Overcome with guilt, Reinhard goes out and buys
a coral cross for her, and then begins writing letters home to her and his
mother.
“At home” sees Reinhard home and with Elisabeth, but he
finds her changed. There are pauses where earlier there would be conversation,
and she often turns her back to him. He also discovers that in the place of the
bird he had sent her another boy, Erich, has given her a luxurious cage with a canary
inside it. She doesn’t seem interested in what he has written either. But
before he departs, he seems to rekindle his passion for her, and reassure
himself of her faithfulness. He tells her he has a secret, “and when in two
years I am back here you shall learn what it is!” – undoubtedly a proposal. But
in “A Letter”, the shortest of the vignettes of Immensee, we learn that Elisabeth
has agreed to be married to Erich, after refusing for some time. Reinhard, perhaps
to build expectation, hadn’t written to her since they parted…
“Immensee” has Reinhard come to Immensee, the estate that Erich has inherited and which has given him the means to win over both Elisabeth and (more importantly) her mother. He has come at Erich’s invitation, not his wife’s, because Erich wishes to surprise Elisabeth by showing her her old friend. And for most of the scene we don’t even see her. When Reinhard finally does, she appears unfamiliar, as “the white and girlish form of a woman”. Both of them appear changed to one another, and Reinhard ends up starting to go for walks alone in the evenings, where on one occasion the heavens break open and he is soaked.
“My Mother Wanted It” has the family – Erich, Elisabeth, and
her mother – sitting around one evening with Reinhard also present. Together
Elisabeth and Reinhard sing a popular Romantic ballad, and then, emboldened,
Reinhard reads one of his poems – he is a writer – which is clearly about
Elisabeth’s marriage to Erich and her loss of Reinhard. She grows embarrassed
and leaves the room. Reinhard also goes outside, and approaches the lake that
lies in the centre of the Immensee Estate. There he sees a white lily, and he
tries to swim out to it. He gets very close, but is unable to make it to the
lily. He leaves, sodden and disappointed.
In “Elisabeth”, the final vignette, Reinhard tries to
reminisce upon the past together with Elisabeth, but she rejects him, even the
idea of going looking for strawberries – “it’s not the time for strawberries
now”. Having failed, Reinhard heads back to the house. On the way he meets the
gypsy, now an old woman, who asks for alms. He gives her his money and then
asks her what else she wants, but she says there’s nothing else. At the house
Reinhard finds he cannot write anymore and decides to leave as soon as
possible. The next morning he aims to leave without notice, but she finds him
in time to confirm her suspicions that he will never come again. And then
Reinhard is gone.
His memories exhausted, the aged Reinhard sees before him
the water lily again and decides to get to work. His creativity is gone, but
there remains within him a capacity for academic study. This is to be his fate.
So that’s the plot of Immensee. Now for a few bits
and pieces towards thinking about it.
The Novella’s Structure: Poetry and Vignettes
I mentioned above that Immensee is divided into ten
vignettes, or scenes, ranging from Elisabeth and Reinhard’s youths up to
Reinhard’s old age. What is the significance of the structure? Each of the
scenes is able to function as an independent unit, similar to separate poems in
a cycle. Each scene brings with it a different mood, with its own symbols and
ideas. They function as separate memories, while nonetheless forming part of a
coherent whole – Reinhard’s understanding of his failed relationship with
Elisabeth. The containment of these scenes within Reinhard’s memory serves to
contain his central despair over his failure and bring order to the
meaninglessness and chaos of his life. By organising his memories Reinhard can
come to understand them and move on. The novella thus moves from the first
scene’s initial pain at being reminded of Elisabeth, to Reinhard moving on through
academic work at the end.
By using vignettes and focusing on the mood, the structure
of Immensee has significance outside of Reinhard’s perspective too. Not
only does the structure bring order to Reinhard’s life, it also makes it
beautiful. In this way Storm takes what is ultimately a tragic story and imbues
it with a redemptive quality – he makes it into art. In this way, he predicts
Nietzsche’s command that our suffering must be made into art so that it can
have value.
Immensee also makes use of poetry. Storm was a
wonderful poet as well as a writer and a few of the poems in Immensee
are also found in my collection of his poetry. The use of poetry serves to
enhance the feeling that the vignettes are poetic themselves. The song of the
gypsy is important because it stresses the fragility of existence, warning Reinhard
of the danger of his hopes for Elisabeth and his ultimate fate.
Today and just today, Am I so beautiful. Tomorrow, oh tomorrow, All this will pass away. And only in this hour, Can I call you my own. For death, alas my death Will find me all alone.
The poetry that Reinhard reads to Elisabeth is also
significant. Reinhard thinks, perhaps, that the beauty of his artistic talent
will be enough to win the old Elisabeth back to him. But he is sorely mistaken.
In this way we see that poetry and the artistic structure of Immensee
more broadly is designed to redeem the world but not grant us riches in it.
The Symbols and Details of Immensee
Immensee is full of symbols and symbolic content and
here I’ll only focus on the things that strike me as particularly significant.
After all, our essays are only so long.
Colours, Light and Dark. According to my notes from the
first time I read Immensee the colours of the novella get progressively
darker as it progresses. Reading it through this time, I don’t think it’s an
exact science. Nonetheless, there is a clear movement from light to dark. When
the children are first playing it is summer and bright outside. But by the time
of their first problems, in the forest, it is dark. Immensee itself, for
Reinhard at least, is marked by its darkness. The weather there is always bad
and stormy, reflecting his own increasingly sad state of mind.
From an early American edition of Immensee, I find the picture accurately shows the kind of (perhaps excessive) Romanticism of the story.
Names. I’m not sure what the significance of any of the characters’ names in Immensee is, but there is one point I’d like to mention. In “A Letter” we learn that Reinhard’s second name is Werner after his landlady brings in the letter from Elisabeth’s mother. It is something of a jarring moment for the reader, as up till then Reinhard has only been called Reinhard – we come to know him by that name. It is significant because it reflects the jarring nature of the news the letter contains: the person Reinhard thought he knew, Elisabeth, has changed completely from his idea. The intimacy they had shared is lost, and Reinhard thus becomes (albeit temporarily in the text) Mr Werner. But it is enough.
Immensee itself is also a significant name. “Imme” is a poetic variant of the German word for bee, so the estate’s name is something like “bee-lake”. Bees are used throughout literature for their associations with productivity and hard, collective work. This is exactly what we see on Erich’s estate: a world of practical achievements in his factory and workers that stands in complete contrast to Reinhard’s unacknowledged, intellectual world. So in its own way, even the novella’s title is there to show what Reinhard lacks.
The Bird. Reinhard sends Elisabeth a linnet, a small bird. But the bird, we learn in “There Stood the Child on the Road”, has died. And when Reinhard goes home he sees a new bird, a canary, in a new golden cage. The cage represents the riches of Erich, having inherited the estate at Immensee, and perhaps the bird in the cage may be read as Elisabeth herself, her heart now caught by another. In any case, the incident with the birds shows clearly how Reinhard’s role in her life is being usurped by another.
The Coral Cross. The significance of the coral cross seems
to me rather to be its lack of significance to the plot. In a work full of
echoes, symbols and connections the cross is notable in that it does not
reappear, but rather is forgotten. The faith that the cross implies turns out
not to be present in Elisabeth – or at least, the faith is eventually overcome.
It is, in a sense, a red herring among symbols because of its lack of use. Instead,
it comes to symbolise Reinhard’s failure.
The White Lily. This is the main symbol of the whole of Immensee.
It appears both in “My Mother Wanted it” but also in the final vignette, as a
vision before Reinhard’s eyes. Reinhard swims into the centre of the lake to
try to capture the beauty of the lily, but he is defeated. And thus it comes to
represent all that is unreachable, unattainable, especially in terms of beauty.
But at the same time, its beauty is great, and thus when Reinhard thinks about
it towards the end of the novella it comes as a sort of consolation. It cannot
be reached, but it remains in his memory, just as Elisabeth herself does.
Ways of Approaching Immensee: Romanticism and Social
Constraints
There are lots of different ways of approaching writing
about Immensee and here are those that caught my eye while thinking
about the novella.
Parent-child conflict. How very banal. Nonetheless, there is
a social angle to the novella that’s well worth exploring. Elisabeth is put
under a lot of pressure by her mother to be with Erich, rather than with
Reinhard. The reason for this seems to be that Erich is far more monetarily
successful and has a greater social status, while Reinhard is simply a writer.
When Reinhard comes to visit Immensee, Erich shows him all of the industry
being built on the land, including a spirits factory. Reinhard, however, ends
the novella still renting rooms, rather than owning houses.
Reinhard’s failure to be with Elisabeth is the result of his
reluctance to tell her his feelings outright – instead he wants to wait too
years before surprising her with a proposal. But Reinhard’s failure is also the
failure of the Romantic sensibility more broadly. Immensee, in the
version we now read, was published in 1851, some time after the Romantics of
the German lands, such as Heine, had already given up on Romanticism or died. The
novella is far enough beyond Romanticism to treat its ideas with scepticism and
irony.
A relatively young Theodor Storm. Immensee was an early-career hit, but it’s not my favourite story of his. The Rider on the White Horse (Der Schimmelreiter) takes that prize. I also love his poems.
This attitude manifests itself in the way Reinhard is
treated. He makes up fairy tales for Elisabeth and writes poetry, and seems to
see great power in gestures and in art. But as a result, he waits to tell
Elisabeth of his feelings, including making the ridiculous decision not to send
any letters for two years, all of which means that Erich is able to propose
instead. When, at Immensee itself, he comes to sing with Elisabeth, he tries to
talk about his passion for the music, but nobody pays any attention to his
lyricism on the subject. Reinhard, the Romantic, is out of touch and unable to
communicate properly with the modern people surrounding him. His passionate
verses fail to seduce or please Elisabeth – instead they only upset her. Immensee
thus presents the collision of the Romantic sensibility with reality and its
subsequent failure to impress.
No doubt the art is beautiful, as Immensee itself is.
But it is also useless for Reinhard’s pursuit of his worldly aims. He needs
money and status if he’s to get anywhere when he has a rival like Erich.
Conclusion
Storm’s novella has remained popular for over one hundred and fifty years, and given what I’ve discussed above I hope it’s possible to see why that’s the case. Not only is the work short and structured in a way that makes it easy to read a few pages of at a time, it is also highly symbolic, making it richly rewarding to read it repeatedly. Its clearly symbolic quality makes it prime fodder for classroom syllabuses, because it’s hard to find something in the work that doesn’t mean something. I would know about that – I first had to read it back in school, though I’m not sure I actually did, as my copy was eerily devoid of annotations when I came to read it through last week.
The topic of the novella also helps it. Frustrated love is something that is easy to relate to, and as a result the distance between Storm’s time and our own seems far less than it actually was. For who hasn’t found, in the course of their lives, some small regret for a relationship that could have been, if only we’d just stopped and had the confidence to act in time? A gloomy memory, no doubt, but at least in Immensee old Storm turns the sentiment into art. In a way, our sufferings are thereby redeemed.
