second colon. Then follows the simple phrase "One generation." The word "One" is stressed. As far as I can see it is the only word so stressed in Trakl's work. This emphatic "one generation" contains the key note in which Trakl's poetic work silently sounds the mystery. The unity of the one kinship arises from the race which, along "the lunar paths of the departed," gathers together and enfolds the discord of the generations into the gentler two-fold-which does so in virtue of its apartness, the stiller stillness reigning within it, in virtue of its "forest sagas," its "measure and law."

The "one" in "one generation" does not mean one as opposed to two. Nor does it mean the monotony of dull equality. "One generation" here does not refer to a biological fact at all, to a "single" or "identical" gender. In the emphatic "one generation" there is hidden that unifying force which unifies in virtue of the ghostly night's gathering blue. The word speaks from the song which sings of evening. Accordingly, the word "generation" here retains the full manifold meaning mentioned earlier. For one thing, it names the historical generation of man, man· kind as distinct from all other living beings (plants and animals). Next, the word "generation" names the races, tribes, clans, and families of mankind. At the same time, the word always refers to the twofoldness of the sexes.

The force which marks the tribes of mankind as the simple oneness of "one generation," and thus restores them and mankind itself to the stiller childhood, acts by prompting the soul to set out toward the "blue spring." The soul sings of the blue spring by keeping it silent. The poem "In the Dark" (144) begins:

The soul keeps the blue spring in silence.

"Keep silent" is here used transitively. Trakl's poem sings of the land of evening. It is one single nil that the right race may come to be, and to speak the Harne of the spirit into gentleness. In the "Kaspar Hauser Song" (109) we read how God addressed Kaspar Hauser:

God spoke a gentle flame to his heart:
O man!