Grodek (poem)
Grodek is a poem by Georg Trakl that keeps alive the memory of the Battle of Gródek (1914) in eastern Galicia (now the Ukraine ): At the beginning of the First World War, a bitter battle between Russian and Austro-Hungarian troops took place near Gródek .
Language and form
Like several of Trakl's poems, Grodek begins with the two words Am Abend . The poem consists of 17 verses of different lengths. All lines except one end with a noun ; only the eighth line, in which "an angry God" is mentioned, breaks this pattern. The division into verses does not correspond to the orthographic and content division. Furthermore, there are no rhymes , no continuous metric grid , but a free rhythmic pattern, which is mainly based on three syllables ( Amphibrachys , Dactylus ). The linguistic style is strongly influenced by the Austrian linguistic melody , which has specific rhythmic consequences due to the number of syllables (see line 2, the golden levels and last line, the unborn grandchildren ).
The poem
Grodek.
In the evening the autumn forests
resound of
deadly weapons, the golden plains
And blue lakes, over which the sun
rolls gloomy; The night embraces
dying warriors, the wild lament of
their broken mouths.
But still
red clouds gathers in the willow ground, in which an angry god dwells
The shed blood, moonlit coolness;
All streets flow into black decay.
Under the golden branches of the night and stars
The sister's shadow swayed through the silent grove,
To greet the spirits of the heroes, the bleeding heads;
And the dark flutes of autumn sound softly in the reed.
O proud grief! You brazen altars
The hot flame of the spirit feeds a great pain today,
The unborn grandchildren.
Historical context
Trakl titled this poem with the name of the city in which he experienced the Battle of Gródek in early September 1914 as a drug attorney in a field hospital . This battle is considered particularly cruel in terms of human fates. Trakl, to whom this field of activity was assigned after being drafted into the Austro-Hungarian Army because of his knowledge of pharmaceuticals (→ main article Georg Trakl ), was unable to even alleviate the suffering of the injured under the adverse circumstances (including the lack of narcotics for necessary operations ) . Standing under this impression, he wrote the poem Grodek . As his nervous condition deteriorated, he was admitted to a Krakow military hospital, where he succumbed to cardiac paralysis in connection with an overdose of cocaine in early November 1914 . It is not clear whether the overdose was accidental or intentional.
Grodek is probably Trakl's last poem and was published in Der Brenner magazine shortly after his death .
reception
The visual artist Beate Passow created a work in 2015 with the title Grodek . The text of the poem is embroidered on a green map on which the poet's shadow lies. Trakl's handwriting served as a model for the form of the script. The letters cast small shadows. They appear three-dimensional, as if they were moving across the landscape. The map is a NASA satellite map . This creates an intellectual connection to the military purpose of maps, to material for the control of missiles or cruise missiles . The area shown belongs politically to different states, but no borders are visible. This is a reminder of how much boundaries are subject to political development, how relative they are.
Web links
- Analysis and interpretation by Grodek
- Interpretation by Grodek
- Lyric analysis Trakl: Grodek
- Video of a recitation of this poem or only audio (mp3) on literaturtoene.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ukrainian name of the place: Horodok / Gorodok.
- ↑ Georg Trakl (Brenner prints)
- ↑ The manuscript Biblioteca Augustana ( Memento of the original dated December 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. differs from the first edition in the burner . It is the version from the so-called "letter of will" dated October 27, 2014 to Ludwig von Ficker.
- ↑ Scan of the first burner publication in Der Brenner
- ^ Basil, Otto. Trakl. Hamburg: Rowohlt 9 1978, p. 146 u. 156
- ^ Lexicon of Expressionism , ISBN 2-85056-128-2
- ↑ a b c d Beate Passow: a literary approach to the drug issue in the First World War - MQ Blog. In: mqw.at. June 28, 2015, accessed May 24, 2017 .
