LA ANGUSTIA COMO MANIFESTACIÓN DE LO UNHEIMLICH EN EL DECENIO EXPRESIONISTA: KAFKA & CO. A VUELTAS CON KIERKEGAARD

El presente artículo aborda la relación entre la angustia y el miedo y el concepto de lo unheimlich en la literatura escrita en lengua alemana durante el decenio expresionista (1910-1923). La profunda crisis del yo desencadenada por la inestabilidad consustancial a esta época hizo especialmente prolífico el tratamiento de la angustia —como muestra la relevancia del texto de Kierkegaard El concepto del miedo— en autores como Alfred Döblin, Georg Heym, Robert Musil o Georg Trakl. Asimismo, se analizará la obra de Kafka en tanto continúa siendo paradigmática de dicha relación, a la que ha de sumarse la noción de culpa. Abstract: This article presents the relationship between anxiety and fear and the unheimlich concept in the German literature of the Expressionist Decade (1910-1923). The deep crisis of the ego brought about by the inherent instability of this period made the treatment of anxiety especially prolific. Its relevance is clearly shown in Kierkegaard’s text The Concept of Fear, but it also had a great impact on such authors as Alfred Döblin, Georg Heym, Robert Musil or Georg Trakl. Furthermore, the paper focuses on Kafka’s literature as it is paradigmatic of this relationship, to which guilt should be added.

James McAuley’s Verse Collection Music Late At Night: Poems 1970-1973 and Georg Trakl’s Poetry

The article discusses James McAuley’s translations of the poems by the Austrian poet Georg Trakl (1887-1914), as well as the latter’s influence on McAuley’s own late verse in Music Late at Night: Poems 1970-1973. This is especially true of Trakl’s collection of verse Music in the Mirabell Garden translated by McAuley. Some of James McAuley’s early and later work also bears an indelible stamp of Trakl’s poetry.

Zum Briefwechsel von Georg Trakl und dem Kurt Wolff Verlag

The correspondence between Georg Trakl and the Kurt Wolff publishing house can serve as an example to demonstrate the different approaches of the two historical-critical Trakl editions. As about half of the letters are undated, the editors often had to guess their chronology. The already reconstructed letters are especially problematic because their sources are letters with an uncertain dating. In this paper, three letters are newly dated. Moreover, the double publication of a reconstructed and a surviving letter can be proved.

Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi offers a captivating account of the relationship between human life and material forms. Rossi says that he came to “the great questions”, and to his discovery of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Georg Trakl through Adolf Loos (Rossi 1982: 46). I will outline some connections between Loos, Trakl, and Wittgenstein that might help us to grasp the way in which Rossi’s assertive attitude concerning architecture gradually leans towards “forgetting architecture”. (The goal is not to try and justify how they might have influenced Rossi; rather the aim is to try to understand Rossi’s work with those connections as a backdrop; to outline a constellation of affinities.) The running thread being the internal relation between the object and the subject, i.e., “construction and the artist’s own life” (Lombardo 2003: 97). I will conclude by considering architectural form on the page, that is to say, in Rossi’s plans, “a graphic variation of the handwritten manuscript”, and drawings, “where a line is no longer a line, but writing” (Rossi 1981: 6), and finally by considering what he says about his architecture, namely, that it stands “mute and cold,” though it will still “creak” (Rossi 1981: 44), and give rise to “new meanings”.

We, the Unborn: On Derrida’s Geschlecht III

The article pursues the theme of “the unborn” in the poetry of Georg Trakl and in the commentaries on Trakl’s poetry by Heidegger (in Unterwegs zur Sprache) and Derrida (in Geschlecht III). It continues a decades-long conversation with Trakl, Heidegger, and Derrida developed most recently in Phantoms of the Other: Four Generations of Derrida’s Geschlecht (Albany: SUNY Press, 2015) and in “Derrida, Heidegger, and the Magnetism of the Trakl House,” Philosophy Today, 64:2 (Spring 2020), 1–24.

Heidegger’s Trakl-Marginalia

In this article, I analyze Heidegger’s marginalia in his personal copy of the 1946 Zurich edition of poems by Georg Trakl, which I discovered several years ago while conducting research in the castle of Heidegger’s hometown of Meßkirch. Although Heidegger’s marginalia in this volume are not extensive, they are significant for three reasons: they provide valuable insight into his reading of the spirit of Trakl’s poetic work and into the place in which Heidegger situates it; they frequently shed light on topics often left in the shadows by Heidegger and his expositors, topics such as (auto)biography, sexual difference, and Christianity; and they bear on Heidegger’s lifelong engagement with the status of being and even, at times, seem to call into question his published positions on it.

Wirklichkeit und Unwirklichkeit bei Georg Trakl

ZusammenfassungTrakl konfrontiert ein materialistisches und ein idealistisches Wirklichkeitskonzept, um die Alltagsrealität als defizient zu kritisieren und auf poetische Weise eine geistige Gegenwirklichkeit orphischer Innerlichkeit zu gewinnen. Er benutzt dazu in Anlehnung an antike und christliche Vorbilder eine traditionelle Bildlichkeit, wonach der Tod als Schattenwelt, das Leben als Traum oder Theaterspiel erscheint, und eine in sich stimmige Symbolik. Zuletzt aber scheitert auch diese rein subjektive Sinnsuche der Erinnerung an bessere Zeiten an der unheilbaren Sinnlosigkeit der sozialen und kulturellen Gegenwart.