it the clear knowledge of the "madman" who sees and senses other things than the reporters of the latest news who spend themselves chronicling the current happening, whose future is never more than a prolongation of today's events, a future that is forever without the advent of a destiny which concerns man for once at the source of his being?
The poet sees the soul, "something strange," destined to follow a path that leads not to decay, but on the contrary to a going under. This going under yields and submits to the mighty death in which he who died early leads the way. The brother, singing, follows him in death. Following the stranger, the dying friend passes through the ghostly night of the years or apartness. His singing is the "Song of a Captured Blackbird," a poem dedicated to L. v. Ficker. The blackbird is the bird that called Ells to go under. It is the birdvoice of the deathlike one. The bird is captured in the solitude of the golden footfalls that correspond to the ride of the golden boat on which Elis' heart crosses the blue night's starry pond, and thus shows to the soul the course of its essential being.
Something strange is the soul on the earth.
The soul journeys toward the land of evening, which is pervaded by the spirit of apartness and is, in keeping with that spirit, "ghostly."
All formulas are dangerous. They force whatever is said into the superficiality of instant opinion and are apt to corrupt our thinking. But they may also be of help, at least as a prompting and a starting point for sustained reflection. With these reservations, we may venture this formulation:
A discussion of the site of Georg Trakl's poetic work shows him to be the poet of the yet concealed evening land.
Something strange is the soul on the earth.
The sentence occurs in the poem "Springtime of the Soul" (142 f.). The verse that leads over into that final stanza where the sentence belongs, runs:
Mighty dying and the singing flame in the heart.