Venice not only
expresses
the manifold fullness of Western culture, but it also asks to be believed.
Trakl - Falling to the Stars- Georg Trakl’s “In Venedig” in Light of Venice Poems by Nietzsche and Rilke
RICHARD BLOCK
University of Washington
Falling to the Stars:
Georg Trakl's "In Venedig" in Light of Venice Poems by Nietzsche and Rilke
In "Tod in Venedig," Thomas Mann describes Venice as "die unwahrschein- lichstederSta? dte"(IV,578). SituatedbetweenOrientandOccidentandhov- eringbetweenthisworldandanunderworld,Venicebeckonswithitsimprob- able charms. As Rilke sees it, "Venedig will geglaubt werden" (Briefe 1914-21, IV, 203). Venice not only expresses the manifold fullness of Western culture, but it also asks to be believed. It invites an interlocutor, and as the narrator in Mann's story remarks, it possesses "eine unwiderstehliche Anziehungskraft" (IV 574). 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
210 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005
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.
214 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005
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.
Venice not only expresses the manifold fullness of Western culture, but it also asks to be believed. It invites an interlocutor, and as the narrator in Mann's story remarks, it possesses "eine unwiderstehliche Anziehungskraft" (IV 574). 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.
TheGermanQuarterly78. 2(Spring2005) 207
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THE GERMAN QUARTERLY
Spring 2005
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
210 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005
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
212 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005
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.
214 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005
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.
University of Washington
Falling to the Stars:
Georg Trakl's "In Venedig" in Light of Venice Poems by Nietzsche and Rilke
In "Tod in Venedig," Thomas Mann describes Venice as "die unwahrschein- lichstederSta? dte"(IV,578). SituatedbetweenOrientandOccidentandhov- eringbetweenthisworldandanunderworld,Venicebeckonswithitsimprob- able charms. As Rilke sees it, "Venedig will geglaubt werden" (Briefe 1914-21, IV, 203). Venice not only expresses the manifold fullness of Western culture, but it also asks to be believed. It invites an interlocutor, and as the narrator in Mann's story remarks, it possesses "eine unwiderstehliche Anziehungskraft" (IV 574). 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
210 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005
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
212 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005
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.
214 THE GERMAN QUARTERLY Spring 2005
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.
Venice not only expresses the manifold fullness of Western culture, but it also asks to be believed. It invites an interlocutor, and as the narrator in Mann's story remarks, it possesses "eine unwiderstehliche Anziehungskraft" (IV 574). 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.
TheGermanQuarterly78. 2(Spring2005) 207
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Spring 2005
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.
