No More Learning

The question that this essay poses is whether one can accept that invitation, surrender to the city's spell and, unlike Mann's Aschenbach, still chart a course out of Venice. In the poems under consideration here, Venice becomes a trope for a metaphysical or self-enclosed totality in which one hov- ers between this world and the underworld or between Orient and Occident. Venice expresses the manifold fullness of Western culture because the dichoto- mies it both invites and reflects are the cultural and existential determinants of the self's attempt to anchor and orient itself. Venice, in other words, is a self-organizing principle. But as this chiasmus suggests, all moves in Venice are prescribed; one world merely mirrors the other. As will be shown, those who write about Venice only reproduce this discourse of self-mirroring, and that discourse proves to be as irresistible and inescapable as the city itself. On the basis of Venice poems by Nietzsche and Rilke, I intend to show how Venice comes to stand in for the impossibility of the self to escape its own dialectic or metaphysical enclosure. While Nietzsche's and Rilke's poems on Venice fail to allow for the self's escape, the potential for such an escape is realized in a Venice poem by Georg Trakl for which I will trace its subversive strategy.
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I. The Clever Self: Nietzsche's Venice Poem
An der Bru? cke stand
ju? ngst ich in brauner Nacht.
Fernher kam Gesang:
goldener Tropfen quoll's
U? ber die zitternde Fla? che weg.
Gondeln, Lichter, Musik--
trunken schwamm's in die Da? mmrung hinaus
Meine Seele, ein Saitenspiel,
Sang sich, unsichtbar beru? hrt,
Heimlich ein Gondellied dazu,
Zitternd vor bunter Seligkeit.
--Ho? rte Jemand ihr zu? . . . (Nietzsche VI, 291).
Nietzsche's Venice poem appeared in its final form in 1888, untitled and part of a larger discussion about music, entitled "Intermezzo. " That discus- sion was incorporated into Nietzsche contra Wagner. Only later was the poem transferred to the seventh section of Ecce Homo, "Warum ich so klug bin. " The originary experience of the poem appears to contrast sharply with the fre- quent self-citation that characterizes Ecce Homo and is hardly consistent with the glib, parodic, and often self-congratulatory tone of the work (Allemann 46). Whereas in Ecce Homo Nietzsche often appears to be a "Hanswurst," parodically citing and overcoming the originary claims of much of his work, the poem "Venedig" apparently privileges the primary experience. The experi- ence that inspired the poem, Nietzsche later recalled, occurred in 1885 on his last night in Venice as he listened to the Arsenalotti on the Grand Canal: "The final night at the Rialto Bridge brought me to a type of music that brought me to tears" (as cited, Grundlehner 299). It is worth noting the double movement described by the statement: he is brought to the music only to have it brought back to him. Music, as we know, represents for Nietzsche a translation of the images that initially confront us. Already in Die Geburt der Trago? die he had written, ". . . das Wort, das Bild, der Begriff sucht einen der Musik analogen Ausdruck und erleidet jetzt die Gewalt der Musik an sich" (I, 49). The primary identification with the power of music leads, on the one hand, to an initial valorization of the image as the only possible poetic expression of that originary principle. On the other, it prepares for a dismissal or renunciation of that image as nothing other than appearance. As Allemann observes, "Er sucht den a? sthetischen Schein und durchschaut ihn zugleich" (55). Parody, one might argue, is the self-conscious execution of that overcoming of all being as mere appearance. What one discovers in "Venedig" is that the struc- ture of its movements, not the tone, is descriptive of a self-overcoming similar to that found in parody. Its somber tone is merely expressive of Nietzsche's
BLOCK: Trakl 209
own despair in being unable to replace the dream-like images of Apollo with anything save for an image descriptive of that overcoming. The melancholy tone of "Venedig" results, not so much as Grundlehner argues, from the recog- nition of one's own alienation, confirmed in the poem's final unanswered question ("Ho? rte Jemand ihr zu? "), but rather from the tragic recognition that one cannot escape the presence of oneself. Just as in the opening lines of the poem, in which Nietzsche envisions himself as he once stood on the bridge in the brown night, all that ever presents itself to one are dream-like projections of one's own projecting, of one looking out on oneself looking out. As Nietz- sche wrote in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, there is no end to the process, just an eternal re-configuration of the process of seeing oneself see through one's projections: ". . . und wo stu? nde der Mensch nicht an Abgru? nden! Ist sehen nicht selber--Abgru? nde sehen? " (IV, 199). The position of the lyrical "I" will therefore not change throughout the poem. On the bridge, he maintains the position of one always crossing over--with the exception that he never arrives anywhere. He is, in effect, an U? bermensch, always looking over what he over- comes. Only in this posture, as Zarathustra says he must, can mankind be surpassed; the poet must remain at the overpass (IV, 148).
The use of the past tense in the poem emphasizes Nietzsche's attempt to retain his position at the overpass. It is the conscious reconstitution of some- thing not present, intentionally a dream-like projection. As something already displaced in time, it brings into sharper focus that moment in which such dream-like projections are surpassed, dissolved by the music they both seek and out of which they emerge. That the overcoming of a projected self is the more enduring image of the poem is emphasized by the "ju? ngst ich" at the beginning of the second line. The rhythm of that line (and in this instance I am using the term in a traditional sense, i. e. , as it relates to prosody), which reverses that of the previous one, demands an elision of any apparent break between the temporal adverb and the subject. The elision suggests that the presence of the self is a passing phenomenon, tied to relative positions in time. It is therefore as vaguely present as the adverb ("ju? ngst") itself is. The remainder of the first stanza presents a gradual dissolution of those impres- sions which have helped situate the "I" of the second line. "Zitternd" and "trunken schwamm's," for example, not only evoke the Dionysian music that the images of the stanza seek, but also suggest an undoing of the fixed con- tours of objects or being that a view from the bridge might otherwise offer. Moreover, the spatial descriptions ("fernher " and "weg. . . hinaus") are so indis- tinct that the three nouns, "Gondeln, Lichter, Musik" can effect only impres- sionistically. The ellipsis which concludes the stanza underscores how this process is without end; what the dusk or brown night has brought about continues indefinitely: the dissolution of temporal and spatial borders.
Upon first reading, the opening four lines of the second stanza might serve as confirmation of the poet's celebration of his complete immersion in and
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identification with the music of Venice. His soul sings the music that in the first stanza was, at least in part, the result of analogous images returning to their origin, of the dissolution of the city into the brown night. The de-em- phasis of the visual, the use once again of musical imagery, and the repetition of the word "zittern" render this stanza a virtual echo of the first. The soul has not found a perfect correlative in Venice; rather the dissolution of Venice in the opening stanza is echoed in the second. Just as Nietzsche's remark about the event that inspired the poem described a double movement, the poem de- scribes and then repeats in the second stanza the self's reappropriation of what it itself had initially projected. That the "I" sings a "Gondellied" and not a tune of his own making could suggest that he is still responsive to a Venice outside himself, but it more likely signals a final appropriation of the city now that all visual markers of its otherness have been dissolved. After all, it is a song of the soul that he sings to himself. The poem that was to stand in contrast to the self-citation characteristic of Ecce Homo becomes in the end a figuration of self-citation. What the first stanza initiated through its evocation of a past, which in turn had the poet looking upon the lyrical "I" as it dissolved into evening, is rendered explicit in the poem's second half. As the image of Venice recedes, it describes in that movement the process by which all appearances are unmasked as insufficient projections of a self, which has identified itself ineffably with the Dionysian. The question that concludes the poem does not, therefore, disrupt the sentiments that preceded it but rather continues and re-figures them once again. The question is a form of self-questioning, which by its very structure reveals that what is standing over and against the questioner is only himself. There is no response since the question is its own form of response; the question describes once again the process just enacted: one seeing oneself see oneself. The respondent, in the very posing of the ques- tion, has already been passed over.
Now we are in a position to understand why Nietzsche chose to include thepoeminasectionentitled,"Warumichsoklugbin. "Hiscleverness,stated in one fashion, is making everything his own; nothing stands apart for long that is not soon returned to him. Stated otherwise, it is the impossibility of Nietzsche losing himself. He is the ever vigilant one who sees himself see him- self behind the mask of all appearance. He never arrives beyond the mask, for the mask is all there is. The difference now is that the one worn by the U? bermensch standing at the overpass is a mask of unmasking "Ja, hinab auf mich selber sehn und noch auf meine Sterne: das erst hiesse mir mein Gipfel, das blieb mir noch zuru? ck als mein letzter" (IV, 194). Of course, the poem could just as easily have remained a part of "Intermezzo," and in a certain fash- ion it did. Just as Nietzsche never leaves the bridge, there is no movement save for the one of being stranded in between. There is no way back to an originary ground, an "Ureinen" as Nietzsche calls it in Die Geburt der Trago? die, and conse- quently, there is no final ground, no teleological end. The discussion about
BLOCK: Trakl 211 self-preservation and self-defense that follows the poem in Ecce Homo can
therefore only be considered, once again, as redundant.
II. The Poet's Will: Rilke's Venice Poem
Spa? therbst in Venedig
Nun treibt die Stadt schon nicht mehr wie ein Ko? der, der alle aufgetauchten Tage fa? ngt.
Die gla? sernen Pala? ste klingen spro? der
an deinen Blick. Und aus dem Garten ha? ngt
der Sommer wie ein Haufen Marionetten kopfu? ber, mu? de, umgebracht.
Aber vom Grund aus alten Waldskeletten steigt Willen auf: als sollte u? ber Nacht
der General des Meeres die Galeeren verdoppeln in dem wachen Arsenal,
um schon die na? chste Morgenluft zu teeren
mit einer Flotte, welche ruderschlagend
sich dra? ngt und ja? h, mit allen Flaggen tagend,
den grossen Wind hat, strahlend und fatal. (Rilke 365-66).
Rilke's poem is an apparent reversal of the dissolution of otherness that haunts Nietzsche's remembrance of his final evening there. Part of the second volume of the Neue Gedichte from 1908, the poem seeks, as do all the other so-called Dinggedichte, to "realize a classical synthesis between subject and ob- ject" (Jayne 208). Rather than betray itself as nothing other than the momen- tary, insubstantial image of a will always seeking to re-collect its analogous disseminations, Venice seemingly emerges potently and undeniably in oppo- sition to the poet's appropriating voice or gaze. For Nietzsche what was re-configured at dusk was the self 's overcoming of itself. Rilke, too, describes the time of day in which contours are re-drawn in fading light, but in this instance, something appears to resist the philosopher 's hammer: the heart or will of a city determined to assert itself ("Venedig will geglaubt werden"). But has Rilke truly escaped the Nietzschean labyrinth of the self or merely re- versed its movement? Is the Venice that comes to assert itself anything other than a projection of the poet's will? What results may not be the sort of seeing oneself that occurred in Nietzsche's poem, but it may just as well be a progres- sive displacement and overcoming of images. And those images, in turn, may be descriptive of the poet discovering his own self projected upon what pres- ents itself to the poet. In that case, the image of strength at the poem's end
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would be nothing other than an expression of the unflappable will of the poet, which discovers that nothing can move outside its sphere and cross over to another side. The classical synthesis of subject and object alluded to above would only be an expression of the self's insurmountability. That also explains Rilke's remarks about Venice to Gisela von Heydt in 1908 when he described Venice as coursed ("durchblutet") with will, seeking to come to it- self, and finally, of having found itself (Briefe an Heydt 146). As Richard Exner has suggested, the same could be said of Rilke, struggling without visible talent to find himself as a poet (Exner 58-63).
The Venice of the poem's opening line is clearly one to be overcome. Rilke's language, "Nun treibt die Stadt schon nicht mehr," may not place him, as Nietzsche's did, on a bridge overlooking the city, but it does position the poet or reader at a moment of transition and crossing over. The upbeat which begins the verse emphasizes in addition the introduction of a new order to the city. The listless Venice to be overcome is initially suggested by the synasthesia oftheverse. Veniceinsummerisnotsubstantiveorenduringenoughtomain- tain its character; its lack of resolution deteriorates into a blending of all sen- sory phenomena. It is fading into Nietzsche's brown night. In particular, the use of a simile likening the summer to a pile of limp marionettes is evidence of Venice's insubstantiality; it can assert itself over and against the poet no more than Nietzsche's--seeking as well analogous forms. The expression of weakness in these felicitious images is confirmed, by the use of rather fragile adjectives and adverbs: "gla? sernen," "spro? der," and finally "kopfu? ber," "mu? de," and "umgebracht. " In the context developed here, the list should be read literally--"brought around" (umgebracht) full circle in the rhythm of becoming and decaying, or in the terms of Nietzsche's Venice, brought back to that which offers itself up as mere appearance, mere simile. The comparison with marionettes reinforces that Rilke's Venice lacks a command of the self; it is pulled and directed by something beyond its control. Its feebleness is further underlined by the remarkable number of long vowels as well as the assonance and alliteration of, for example, the second line. Although one could remark that a similar play of sounds occurs in the penultimate line of the poem, in the second line those sounds, like the verb which concludes it ("fa? ngt"), are caught or arrested, and run almost indistinguishably to the end of their sentence. In the other instance, the commas that set off the phrase, as well as the greater contrast in vowels immediately before and after, lend definition and resolu- tion to the phrase. The feebleness of this Venice is yet further expressed by the inability, so to speak, of the sentences to effect a syntax and order their lan- guageaccordingtoanythingotherthanthedrifting("Trieb")thatpushesthe phrases droningly forward. Following the first sentence, in which a relative clause provides some evidence of an ability to fashion connections beyond those handed over to the natural order of language, all signs of finesse disap- pear. The "Und" that begins the third sentence, rather than forging a connec-
BLOCK: Trakl 213
tion with the preceding phrase, demonstrates that even the simplest of con- nections, let alone a substantive integration of elements into something more than their appearance, is beyond reach. And so it is not surprising that the first half of the poem ends with a run of three adjectives, whose apparent referent is either non-descript "(Haufen") or simply without will ("Marionetten"). They are, one might say, adjectives virtually afloat, in need of substance or a substantive. As a listing, they confirm the listlessness of summertime Venice.
The dissolution of the city merely provides a clearing to prepare for the emergenceofitsessence. Incontrasttothe"und"oflinefour,the"Aber"that introduces the seventh line engineers a dramatic reversal of the previous decline. The verbs themselves are more active and assertive. In the place of "ha? ngen" or "treiben" one finds, for example, "verdoppeln" and "dra? ngen. " Most notable is the use of "aufsteigen" to describe the will. In the first half of the poem that which came into view merely surfaced ("aufgetauchten"). The strength of the autumnal city is emphasized now by the upbeat that falls on "steigt" at the beginning of line eight. In fact, nearly every gesture that signaled enervation in the early lines is reversed to demonstrate irrepressible strength in the latter. The last eight lines are a single sentence, uniquely fash- ioning a complex principle of organization in defiance of the mundane or traditional lures ("Ko? der") of language. Just how exceptionally crafted that sentence is, is evidenced by the poly-syllabic rhymes (e. g. , "ruderschlagend," "tagend") that distinguish the true Venice rising from sunken planks, or, as the German "Waldskeletten" suggests, from the skeletal remains of aestival Ven- ice. What were similes are now replaced by an assertion preceded by a colon: an assertion of something actual standing over and above that which preceded it. Its commanding presence defies comparison. Even the use of the subjunc- tive ("als sollte") carries with it a suggestion of the imperative or a demonstra- tion of resolute will. The military motif, therefore, simply brings into view what stylistically Rilke had begun to assert, the might of a "Weltinnenraum" exhibiting its "unimpeded draw" (Foti 3). One also should not overlook how the synaesthesic blur of the opening lines is refashioned in the latter half. More than one critic has noted, for example, how the assonance effected by "Meeres," "Galeeren," and "teeren," with their echo of short "e"s in the second syllable, produces a trumpet-like call of attention to the emerging Venice; the assonance announces a summoning forth (Blume 348). Whereas the introduc- tion of various sensory fields in the first part of the poem results from a lack of resolution as the city drifts toward exhaustion, here it fosters and lends added clarity to the draw of the true Venice. The triumph of the autumnal city is most convincingly achieved with the final word of the poem, "fatal. " The word clearly evokes the meaning, "fatum," suggesting the destinal truth of what presences itself glowingly ("strahlend") by poem's end. Just as the aesti- val Venice was fated to be overcome by the assertion or draw of its essence, so too is the pedestrian use of "fatal" supplanted by its original one.
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The impact of the poem considerably depends on its formal aspects -- re- calling de Man's observation that the "meaning of the poems is the conquest of the technical skills which they illustrate by their acoustic success" (31). More than acoustics, however, constitute the technical mastery of the poem. And if we recall Exner 's remarks above, which tie Rilke's own fate to the one he portrays of Venice, the meaning of the poem becomes even clearer. Its tech- nical mastery signals the presencing of the accomplished poet. An image of completeness on all sides emerges; the "Weltinnenraum" that draws the true Venice forth in unimpeded fashion is nothing other than the absolute charac- ter of the self reflected in the poetic trope that I have chosen to call Venice. 1
In Rilke, we hear the language of overcoming the all-too human reminis- cent of Nietzsche. If in Nietzsche we were left with an image of the self seeing itself overcome itself, of unmasking the unmasking of itself, in Rilke it is merely the reverse, a mask of masking. Although an ironic structure of self-consciousness may be missing in Rilke's poem, the totality achieving its brilliance in late autumn is every much as descriptive of the poet's heroic struggle as Nietzsche's figuration of the U? bermensch. Everything is a re-con- figuration of the will's totalizing urge, and both poems are images of that configuration. That Rilke's poem repeats the appropriative gesture of Nietz- sche's is borne out by the rhymes in the second stanza that join the aestival and autumnal cities.
The movement may be reversed, but in each the notion of presence is conditioned by what it surpasses, inextricably bound to a rhythm that generates images of the will's overcoming. The poems, therefore, never break from what they seek to overcome; they merely re-present it. No wonder Rilke soon wearied of writing Dinggedichte, cognizant of the violence he had done the object. In the poem "Wendung" from 1914 he confronts that very problem: "Denn des Anschauns, siehe, ist eine Grenze. [. . . ] Werk des Gesichts ist getan,/tue nun Herz-werk/an den Bildern in dir, jenen gefan- genen; denn du/u? berwa? ltigtest sie: aber nun kennst du sie nicht" (Rilke, Aus. G77). TheimagesofVenice,whicharelikewiseaworkofsight,areimprisoned "within the poet's subjectivity" (Jayne 208). At some point, Rilke recognized what the poem truly documented: that his Venice was every much a projec- tion of his own destiny as was Nietzsche's. To re-invoke the language of the introduction to this paper, he was still in Venice.
The above discussion of two Venice poems by Nietzsche and Rilke is not to suggest that these, in effect, are identical poems. The movements traced in each are clearly different; one leads into the black night; the other seems to emerge out of the deepening autumnal colors of Venice. The point is that they expose the opposing terms in a dialectic of the self. Both poems are ultimately constellated around the poet; each attends in opposing fashion to the rhythm of the will overcoming itself. The structure is one of absolute immanence, in which nothing escapes or elides the controls of a master voice.
BLOCK: Trakl 215 III. Formulas of Division and Dissolution: Trakl's Poetic Language
Georg Trakl may seem like a most improbable poet to articulate resistance totheinclusiverhythmsofVenice;thatis,toformulateameansforexpressing the expressionless or that which is not already anticipated by the self-mirror- ing discourse of Venice. 2 But in his last full collection of poems, Sebastian im Traum, Trakl began the final section ("Gesang des Abgeschiedenen") with the poem "In Venedig. "3 As the poem's title indicates, writing about Venice or beinginVeniceispartofalargermovementofdeparture,ofnotbeing"in,"but rather of being apart insofar as that is the state that follows departure. That movement, in turn, is the climactic stage of being in a dream and suggests that one never truly leaves the dream-like improbability of Venice, but instead finds oneself uncannily returning to the place from which one intended to depart. It might, however, also describe an opposite movement, one that escapes the determinations of the very language constitutive of that move- ment's enactment. Just as any dream, and in this case Sebastian's, can never fully succumb to the traps of language, never fully offer itself up to its rhythms or expressions, so, too, might one seek in the apparent ceaseless return to Venice a trace of what has already departed, of something that resists the intentions and appropriations of a poet who otherwise remains the apparent prisoner of that city, which by now we have come to understand as a trope to signify the totalizing structure of the self 's dialectic. As Veronique Foti writes, such poetry would be "displaced into a pastness incapable of ever being brought to immediacy and presence [. . . ] It [could] be articulated and heard only on the way, in the temporal distension and non-fulfillment of itineracy" (20). Such non-presence, not being "in Venice," depends upon the poet taking leave from his language or the language taking leave from the poet. 4
A long tradition of critical literature has pointed to the tragedy of Trakl's personal life as evidence of his inability to escape the insoluble divisions that rent his life in two; he is said to have been inextricably trapped in its totalizing rhythms. 5 W. H. Rey summarizes the observations of these readers when he writes:
Die angefu? hrten Beispiele deuten schon darauf hin, dass unter Trakls Zwielicht ein einheitliches besta? ndiges Weltbild nicht zu gewinnen ist. Darin besteht sein Urleid, dass sich die Sehnsucht der Seele nicht mit der Da? monie des Lebens, das Ewige nicht mit dem Verga? nglichen, die Vision der Verso? hnung nicht mit den Er- lebnissen der Zerspaltenheit vereinbaren lassen. Die Antithetik seiner Erfah- rungs- und Darstellungsweise ist so radikal, dass eine wertbesta? ndige Synthese nicht zustande kommt. (7)
Rhythm is the movement between these unresolved extremes. Since these extremes are all encompassing--as is Venice--and since no synthesis is possi- ble, that rhythm is totalizing. Trakl's so-called 106th letter to Herrn von Ficker,6 in which he describes his own life as trapped in the very rhythms of the
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division characteristic of his poetry, supports the claim: "Ja, verehrter Freund, mein Leben ist in wenigen Tagen unsa? glich zerbrochen worden und es bleibt nur ein sprachloser Schmerz, den selbst die Bitternis versagt. Es [ist] ein so namenloses Unglu? ck, wenn einem die Welt entzweibricht" (I, 530). Such bio- graphical notes have helped render more convincing readings of Trakl that seek in his poetry a document of irreconcilable self-division. These readings, however, impose a conceptual unity upon that which is itself only when it resists such unity.
Heidegger 's 1953 essay on Trakl, "Die Sprache im Gedicht," is best under- stood as a proleptic response to such readings. Heidegger refers Trakl's rup- tured discourse to a gathering point or place ("Ort"), which is always dislo- cated into the expressionless. 7 His "thinking dialogue" ("denkende Zwie- sprache") with Trakl's poetry is not an attempt to impose a conceptual structure upon the poem, rather, the discussion ("Er-o? rt-erung") is an attempt to specify the site of that poetry. That site, then, is the space of apartness ("Abgeschiedenheit"; 161) and marks humankind's return to the beginnings of its stiller nature. But it could also be argued that Heidegger seeks to render Trakl's poetry comfortable. His reading wants to soften the dissipation of Western civilization by gathering the poetic outbursts of "non-consignable intensities" to a quiet homecoming (Land 13). While the site of such silence or apartness, which gathers Trakl's poems into one, is what allows those poems to break from the hierarchy of conceptual thought and regain their intensity, this homecoming is nothing other than a pre-determined destination that prevents Heidegger's montage of poetic fragments from arriving nowhere. 8 The question that arises is therefore the following: how does one situate a reading of Trakl without re-connecting his voice to a master reader (e. g. , Rey) or a site of re-collection (e. g. , Heidegger)? As such, it is not necessary to iden- tify, as Heidegger does, the stranger who haunts many of Trakl's poems, but rather to identify what that figure is estranged from; we might thus witness him go under and depart but resist capturing him according to a master script. As we will see, "going under " or "falling" are terms which Trakl himself uses to describe Venice's promise.
Trakl's language is characterized not only by stylistic devices that reverse or signal a reversal of the imagery but also by a limited vocabulary that sug- gests an inability to engage difference. Readers have noted a certain ossifica- tion of terms that result, to paraphrase Heidegger, in the impression of all poems being the same poem. 9 In his attempt to free himself from the concep- tual reifications typical of rational perception, Trakl's art or techne is to dis- solve the boundaries of the objects and allow them to assume the attributes of the ambient setting. Kudszus has described it as follows: "Statt individueller Identita? t finden sich partielle Verbindungen und Fusionen mit Teilen der Natur " ("Sprachverlauf " 167). 10 As Kudszus has further remarked, in contrast to Ho? lderlin, whom Trakl read extensively toward the end of his life, the space
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opened up by such clearing of traditional conceptual categories (or as he calls it, "Grenzen-auflo? sung") is not an open one; rather, it is densely filled with im- ages of a re-constituted world ("Sprachverlauf " 169-70). For Trakl, the world that surpasses the everyday is in the systematicity of its reconstitution every bit as reified as the traditional categories of perception it sought to move be- yond.
V. A Sickly Smile: Trakl's Venice Poem
In Venedig
Stille in na? chtigem Zimmer. Silbern flackert der Leuchter Vor dem singenden Odem Des Einsamen;
Zaubrisches Rosengewo? lk.
Schwa? rzlicher Fliegenschwarm Verdunkelt den steinernen Raum Und es starrt von der Qual
Des goldenen Tags das Haupt Des Heimatlosen.
Reglos nachtet das Meer.
Stern und schwa? rzliche Fahrt Entschwand am Kanal.
Kind, dein kra? nkliches La? cheln
Folgte mir leise im Schlaf. (Trakl I, 131).
Trakl's poem was written in March of 1914, eight months after his return from Venice in August of the previous year (II, 232). It is testimony of sorts to a strategy for departing Venice. More specifically, the poem makes mention of a lonesome or homeless figure, but that figure's departure is the result of a specific process. It is only after following the dialectical movement to its point of petrification that the figure is able to resist the irrepressible sweep of that movement and follow a course of departure at the horizon of the canal. This departure need not be understood as active leave-taking. The poem's progres- sively dialectical rhythm comes to bracket out that figure to the point where the figure can only be said to have taken leave. The figure's departure signals what the dialectic produces but cannot contain.
The stillness in the room that establishes the opening mood of the poem does not oppose or contradict the singing breath of the lonesome one two lines later. Rather, as a fragment, punctuated nonetheless by a period, the nocturnal stillness marks a halt to the everyday conceptual categories that would other-
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wise assign the singing to the figure rather than his breath. That the move- ment of the breath seems to effect a silver flickering of light in front of the breath emphasizes a dissolution of categories of causality. The source of the silver is itself uncertain. It may be the candlestick, or maybe it is the result of filtered moonlight with what would otherwise be the yellow light of the candles. It might also be the hue assumed by the singing breath of the lone- some one. In any case, the silver is detached from any definitive source, and that break lends the room a surprising, if not dazzling, cast. Flickering implies the instability of the perceptual field, which in this case announces a silver brilliance hardly expected of flickering candlelight. It could also be said to give one "breathing room," and so given the space to move about, the breath can be said to be singing. The summary phrase that concludes the stanza ("Zau- brisches Rosengewo? lk") is hardly surprising. "Magical" correctly describes a space in which attributes move about independently from their agent or sub- stantive. Clouds could refer to singing silver breath. Since these clouds are rosy, they more likely express a continued dissolution of fixed contours. The unanticipated change of color merely re-affirms how the stillness has released the room from the markers of a reified consciousness; the room can appear in a manner defiant to the established categories of our understanding.
Not unexpectedly, the apparent openness of the room soon closes in upon itself in darkened petrification ("Schwa? rzlicher Fliegenschwarm/Verdunkelt den steinernen Raum . . . "). What provokes this sudden transformation is, if we refer to the language used above, Trakl's conscious attention to the sup- pressed counter rhythm of the opening stanza. In the specific language of the poem, the black swarm can be said to be the counter rhythm of the silver flick- ering. The room is silver as long as one follows the movements of light, but flickering can occur only if these moments of light are counterpoised by ones of blackness. It is Trakl taking note of that second movement that accounts for the abrupt change in atmosphere. That the torment of this movement is fixed to the daytime only confirms the reversal. Surprising about the stanza is how quickly the movement petrifies. In "Die Nacht," for example, the poem tra- verses a startling series of images in "hunting down god" before it comes to configure the futility of its movement. "In Venedig," presents us with an image of that insolubility less than half way into the poem and essentially reformulates that image in lines eight and nine: "es starrt. . . das Haupt. " If we recall that the poem begins the final section of Sebastian im Traum, the image is hardly pre-mature. As the first moment in the song of the departed one, "In Venedig" serves to point toward a path that leads away from a movement whose petrification has been traced and rehearsed in the previous sections. In the poem "Winternacht" that concludes the previous section "Siebengesang des Todes," images of frost and ice, stone and metal abound (128). That Trakl has not yet happened upon a path to escape the ossification of being tossed back and forth is confirmed in that poem's final lines. The black sleep of win-
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ter and the flaying of God's vultures are followed at the eastern gate by the sil- ver entry of the rosy day. (I, 128, emph. mine). "In Venedig" merely repeats in its imagery and movement what has just transpired. What it must now signal is not merely a conscious re-invocation of rhythm and counter rhythm but also a break or halt in the dialectic's relentlessness.
A suggestion of such a break can be found in the beginning of the eighth line: "Und es starrt . . . " Rather than rely on formulaic devices to effect yet another reversal, Trakl chooses instead to pursue the counter rhythm further. Both the conjunction and the verb serve to extend the movement of the previ- ous line. Movement out of this torment ("Qual") is prepared by the "es. " As an empty subject, it displaces the sentence's actual subject to the point of home- lessness ("das Haupt des Heimatlosen"). The head, which in "Die Nacht" served as figuration of the dialectic's ineluctability, now leads to a space resis- tant to that dialectic's totalizing rhythms. For by definition, the homeless one is always departing, eluding in his wandering any form of containment.
The first three lines of the final stanza complete the shadowy landscape of departure: "Reglos nachtet das Meer. /Stern und schwa? rzliche Fahrt/Ent- schwand am Kanal. " The first line emphasizes how the prevailing force of the dialectic has been broken. The next two present a siting of departure from that force field. One could even argue that the use of "ent-schwand" instead of "ver-schwand" suggests that in this instance disappearance is enacted by virtue of a breaking away from what had previously held that course ("Fahrt") --not by the figure but by the poem's rehearsal of its own dialectic. The break portrayed by the verse's imagery is enacted literally with the apostrophe that begins the poem's final sentence: "Kind, dein kra? nkliches La? cheln/Folgte mir leise im Schlaf. " It is a speaking outside of the previous narrative of the poem, a gesture uncontained by the poem's previous dialectical rhythm. Moreover, the unidentified child with its sickly smile becomes an autoformation of the poem, demonstrating its independence from the will of the subject. The child, like the homeless one, stands irretrievably outside; the mark of its mortality, its sickliness, assures that it cannot be appropriated and preserved under reified structures of consciousness. The poem has forced and traced the move- ments of the dialectic to a point of rupture and has now broken free of its paralysis and fear--its petrification. It has configured its own route of escape by attending to the signs of its finitude, by picking up in the unexpressed counter rhythm the going-under of what has surfaced. In other words, Trakl can forgo the compulsion to represent the omnipresence of the will. What Heidegger says of Trakl's use of the word "leise" is particularly fitting here:
Immer kehrt in Trakls Dichtung dieses "so leise" wieder. Wir meinen, "leise" be- deutet nur: kaum merklich fu? r das Ohr. In dieser Bedeutung wird das Genannte auf unser Vorstellen bezogen. Aber "leise" heisst: langsam, gelisian heisst "glei- ten. " Das Leise ist das Entgleitende (XII, 39).
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The use of the past tense in the last stanza of the poem supports Heidegger 's claim. That shift from the present tense, coeval with the introduction of the lyrical "I" (mir), signals that the "I" has already moved on.
One could also remark that the sickly smile, by contradicting what one would ordinarily expect of youthful expression, is already eliding expecta- tions. More important for this discussion is--in keeping with Heidegger's remarks--how the smile is consistent with a notion of departure, how it conceals or holds back. In departing one slips away like the homeless into the uncharted. Likewise, a child's sickly smile conceals in its smile what ails the child. Or more accurately, it reveals what it conceals; namely, that the smile is a mask placed over what will soon defeat that expression. The smile does not offer itself up fully; it slips away quietly. It likewise announces its own depar- ture; just how long can a sick child maintain its smile? That is also what accompanies Trakl into sleep; perhaps it is even what he dreams of, or, if we attend to the work's title, what "Sebastian im Traume" dreams. Like sleep or dream, the smile is withheld from the wakeful gaze of the appropriating self. It will present itself neither fully nor enduringly enough, always charting at its corners its demise, preserving in its sickliness its secret. And so that smile is what necessarily brings Trakl to rest from the ceaseless oscillations and torment that haunt and animate the imagery of his poems.
VI. Suspended in the Mirror of the Sea: Trakl in Limbo
Thetitleofthepoemthatfollows"InVenedig"describesascloselyaspos- sible the site of the departed one: "Vorho? lle" (I, 132-33). He/she is in a perma- nently transitional stage that never ends up anywhere--somewhere in re- move from the dialectical rhythm that had tossed the poet into heaven and then hell. Not that a similar and equally dramatic shift in the imagistic register of the following poems does not occur. On the contrary, departure depends on an enactment of attending to the counter rhythm of what is expressed; it executes a break from the apparent totality of Venice. To stop enacting is to offer oneself up for re-appropriation. Hell's antechamber is reserved for those who remain as nameless as the child or as siteless as the homeless.
Nietzsche's "Venedig" is evidence of the torment of being on the inside. Any attempt at self-overcoming or coming over to another side only inscribes him more stubbornly in the structure of what was to be overcome. Rilke moves away from the totality engineered by his language. He often ap- proaches it with distrust, although such distrust does not appear to erode the basis for belief in totality. Rilke's poem functions as a substitute, and while the incompleteness or speciousness of its gesture cannot remain masked for long, it nonetheless enlists Rilke in its economy. "Fatal" about Venice may be not only its radiance but its fading back into the sea as well. Its destinal truth is the
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revealed fabrication of its figure. Language, which would allow the complete- ness of the inner world to presence itself, is unreliable, unable to legitimate anything outside itself and so sustain the claims of its absolute expressivity. What this "absence of a reliable referent" brings about, however, is a shift in those claims (de Man 47). In the third sonnet of the second part of Die Sonette an Orpheus, Rilke compares the mirror to the interstices of time and asserts that no one has ever knowingly described it (508-09). The suggestion is that what presences itself, even in the poem, is temporally dislocated from its essence, from the horizon that allowed it to show itself. The final stanza performsthatdislocation:"AberdieScho? nstewirdbleiben,bis/dru? beninihre enthaltenen Wangen/eindrang der klare gelo?