The Promise of Pain: (Di)spiriting the Geist of Heidegger’s Trakl

Several times in Geschlecht III, as well is in the volume Of Spirit, Jacques Derrida notes the following peculiar feature about Martin Heidegger’s reading of the poet Georg Trakl: Heidegger insists that the core of Trakl’s work is more original, more essential, and more promising than anything on offer in the metaphysical and Christian traditions; however, Heidegger’s description of that core (which he himself seems to sign on to) does little more than to repeat the very same content of the these traditions. Heidegger’s discourse, in other words, remains plagued by what it endeavors to purge. And yet, for all that—and at times even despite itself—his reading of Trakl provides a fertile re-reading of the nature of being and of our beleaguered relation to it.

In what follows I will critically examine Heidegger’s interpretation of Trakl, focusing in particular on a possibility it opens up but just as soon forecloses: namely, the idea that spirit is inherently and insuperably riven. Rather than allowing for the inevitability of discord, distress, and dissemination—as his own logic seems to demand—Heidegger tranquilizes the pain of being, turning it into a force of gathering and an actor in a rather conventional three-part drama about ontological history.