Chapter IV: The 'Lustmord' Dramas

Andrew Webber

From Sexuality and the Sense of Self in the Works of Georg Trakl and Robert Musil (1990), pp. 57-74, doi:10.59860/td.c7bd20f

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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.  This chapter focuses on Trakl's three extant dramatic torsos, all of which represent variations on the theme of the 'Lustmord', the traumatic scene of sexual violence which is the common denominator of Trakl's mythopoeic constructions, the common experience of his personal repertory of mythical figures. The perverse carnage of these grotesque 'blood-weddings' probably accounts for their critical neglect. However, Trakl scholarship remains partial as long as it circumvents the less palatable reaches of the oeuvre. These should be seen not simply as some aberrant aesthetic transgression, but as symptomatic of a tension, which obtains throughout the corpus, between lyrical form and the deforming forces of aggression and decay.

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