Spectral Twilight
October 3rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Spectral Twilight
Georg Trakl
Silence at the forest’s edge encounters
A dark beast;
On the hill, evening’s breeze quietly fades,
The plaint of the blackbird hushes
And the gentle flutes of autumn
Fall silent in the reeds.
You float on black clouds
Drunk on poppies
The nocturnal pond,
The starry sky.
Forever sounds the lunar voice of the sister
Through the spectral night.
(Translated by Glenn Wallis)
__________
My commentary.
It is the silence of matter annihilating the sacred dream—mind’s weft, the works of the yearning spirit.
Are you not a dark beast? Did you think your were a god? For the gods are the wind and their naming. Silence is a mode of mute beasts, who live in the forest, our home, of timber, stone, and shit.
The gentle flutes of autumn fall silent in the reeds; the beast and the blackbird respond.
Languidly, we gaze into the nocturnal pond, beguiled by our own reflection. We see ourselves everywhere. The danger here, though, is more than the willfulness of our human narcissism. Hovering above the earth in the black wisdom of our “knowing,” that poppy of forever makes us drunk.
But the poet has the kindness to remind us that the night is spectral. Long before forever, every star in the nocturnal pond will burn out. Our heaven, once lit, however dimly, by our pale lunar sister, will become perfect darkness. The resplendent glories of heaven and earth will become coal-like husks of collapsed matter. Stellar corpses will lumber, for one final instant, through space. Then, the last atom will dissolve.
The poet awakens in us a searing, living memory of our ancestral scope. His “edge” is a line of horizon that renders facile all notions of homo sapiens as guardians of the axis mundi, and of earth, indeed, the cosmos, as “home.” How much more so does Trakl’s edge obliterate fantasies of an unscathed exit, such as heaven or rebirth? How infinitesimally puny does the ostensible cognitive fizzle known as “enlightenment” appear against the cosmic catastrophe. This is ancestral anamnesis. It means: remember, remember! Remember what you are!
The German original:
Geistliche Dämmerung
Georg Trakl
Stille begegnet am Saum des Waldes
Ein dunkles Wild;
Am Hügel endet leise der Abendwind,
Verstummt die Klage der Amsel
Und die sanften Flöten des Herbstes
Schweigen im Rohr.
Auf schwarzer Wolke
Befährst du trunken von Mohn
Den nächtigen Weiher,
Den Sternenhimmel.
Immer tönt der Schwester mondene Stimme
Durch die geistliche Nacht.
Painting by Victoria Veedell.
