His paths run through the blue of night. The light that gives his steps their radiance is cool. The closing words of a poem devoted specifically to the "departed one" speak of "the lunar paths of the departed" (171). To us, departed also means deceased. But into what kind of death has the stranger died? In his poem "Psalm" (57), Trakl says:
The madman has died
The next stanza says:
They bury the stranger.
In the "Seven-Song of Death" he is called the "white stranger."
The last stanza of "Psalm" ends with this line:
In his grave the white magician plays with his snakes.
The dead one lives in his grave. He lives in his chamber, so quietly and lost in thought that he plays with his snakes. They cannot harm him. They have not been strangled, but their malice has been transformed. In the poem "The Accursed" (113), on the other hand, we find:
A nest of scarlet-colored snakes rears up
Lazily in her churned-up lap.
(Compare 155 and 157)
The dead one is the madman. Does the word mean someone who is mentally ill? Madness here does not mean a mind filled with senseless delusions. The madman's mind senses—senses in fact as no one else does. Even so, he does not have the sense of the others. He is of another mind. The departed one is a man apart, a madman, because he has taken his way in another direction. From that other direction, his madness may be called "gentle," for his mind pursues a greater stillness. A poem that refers to the stranger simply as "he yonder," the other one, sings:
But the other descended the stone steps of the Mönchsberg,
A blue smile on his face and strangely ensheathed
In his quieter childhood and died.
This poem is called "To One who Died Young" (129). The