Chapter I: Introduction

Andrew Webber

From Sexuality and the Sense of Self in the Works of Georg Trakl and Robert Musil (1990), pp. 1-16, doi:10.59860/td.c59be7e

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Part of the book: Sexuality and the Sense of Self in the Works of Georg Trakl and Robert Musil

Andrew Webber

MHRA Texts and Dissertations 30

Bithell Series of Dissertations 15

Modern Humanities Research Association for the Institute of Germanic Studies

ModernGermanPoetryFictionPhilosophyopen


Abstract.  At first sight Trakl and Musil are not an obvious pairing: the one generally regarded as the quintessential lyric poet, a creator of highly personal and hermetic poetic landscapes, the other best known for his epic depiction of a society's death-throes. There is no evidence that the two ever encountered one another, or indeed read each other's work. But, as Webber shows, they do indeed meet in a common, central thematic preoccupation: their treatment of sexuality. The parallels are remarkable: in both writers there is a pursuit of a narcissistic ideal figured as a unio mystica with the sister; and in either case the ideal of androgynous union is beset by collapse into its antithesis, in the motif of the 'Lustmord'. This sexual conflict is fundamental to more general problematics of selfhood in both authors.

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