person
Azrael
also: Azrael, angel of death
In Islamic and Jewish tradition, the angel who separates the soul from the body at death. In Trakl's Rosary Songs (Gedichte, section 40), 'Azrael's shadow' darkens a brown garden at the hour of dying — death arriving not with terror but with quiet inevitability.
Reading notes
- Poems §40 Azrael
Azrael is the angel of death in Islamic tradition and in some strands of Jewish mysticism, responsible for separating the soul from the body at the moment of death. Trakl absorbed the figure from his wide reading across religious traditions.