Trakl's 'Hymnen An Die Nacht'

The temporal placement of these poems and images in Trakl’s life and the connection to drug associated texts suggests that the Trakl’s utilization of color is not only a poetic device utilized to demonstrate the tides of isolation and dissolution experienced and reflected in the culture in which Trakl participated, but it is a clear connection between his poetry and the visual art and literature produced during and shortly after his life. Trakl uses unique poetic devices to render the cultural atmosphere of apprehension and isolation present during the First World War. He empties the body of humanity and consciousness enabled by cocaine to escape and create a space in which the creative mind can exist separately from the emptiness and decay …show more content…
Already, the poem harkens to the Romantic tradition, emblematic of poets like Coleridge and most especially Novalis, who writes a series entitled Hymnen an die Nacht in which the speaker “celebrates nocturnal mysteries revealed to him in a state of half spontaneous, half artificially provoked intoxication.” Benn’s poem at once recalls the Romantic emphasis on irrationality, subjectivity, and transcendental aspiration while looking forward and examining the modes of cognition and expression that are characteristic of …show more content…
Instead, the use of cocaine as a catalyst for escapism begins with the onset of the First World War and continues to intermingle with the aforementioned “frenetic artistic activity” of the avant-garde. By examining the poetry from Benn’s “Brussels Spring”, it can be argued that this motivation for the consumption of cocaine begins to evolve before the war is even ended. The “great emptiness” that the Expressionist poets capture most uniquely and their anticipation of a reactionary recreation of Kultur is evidence for establishing their significance within the study of the Expressionist movement and the early 20th century as a