Kafka calls out its demons, Trakl gets its putrefaction... Kubin
sees its dust and mold, and like Horst Lange, whose work he illustrated, he sees the expanding swamps, the unstoppable spread of brush and swamp. Our world has gotten old. Kubin documents its catastrophe. His images, pulled out of the rubble, translate no words but see this world as
Todessymbolik, a grand astral theater where the powerful breath of Saturn expresses the hieroglyphs of death. Universal life is described here at the end of its cycle. When a cycle nears its end and comes to the questionable
Abendland, in the gray color of the swamp, the realms are confused. The line does not contain forms in flight, but it splits them open, it chops them up and mixes the pieces together. Girls fly like birds over the swamp. Fish-men and toad-men hunt weird beasts together. A death arrow hits a farmer from a tree, or the bird of evil omen crashes into his house from a leaden sky. The sun remains ever hidden behind thick clouds that rise up from a sour earth.
- Massimo Cacciari,
Posthumous People: Vienna at the Turning Point
