Georg Trakl is mainly seen today as a tormented creative consciousness with a keen sensitivity for poetic and esthetic transfiguration of personal psychic processes. The paper explores the poet’s biography, as well as selections from his poems, in the light of his schizophrenic geniality and alleged suicide, looking to see how such recurrent motifs like the sister and the poor Kasper Hauser inform Trakl’s writing, articulated as “incomplete penance” for an “unresolved blood guilt” and marked by a deep fascination for the mirror and specular reflections. pp. 85–91

Keywords: poète maudit, sister, blood guilt