Georg Trakl

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Georg Trakl
Georg Trakl
A poem by Trakl inscribed on a plaque in Mirabell Garden, Salzburg.
A poem by Trakl inscribed on a plaque in Mirabell Garden, Salzburg.

Georg Trakl (February 3, 1887 – November 3, 1914) was a pre-eminent Austrian poet.

Contents

[edit] Life and work

Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg. His father, Tobias, was a dealer in hardware, while his mother, Maria, was a housewife with strong interests in art and music.

Trakl attended a Catholic elementary school, although his parents were Protestants. He matriculated in 1897 at the Salzburg Staatsgymnasium, where he studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Around 1904, Trakl began to write poetry.

After dropping out of high school in 1905, Trakl worked for a pharmacist for three years and decided to pursue pharmacy as a career. It was at this time that he experimented with playwriting, but his two short plays, All Souls' Day and Fata Morgana, failed onstage.

In 1908, Trakl moved to Vienna to study pharmacy, and fell in with a group of local artists and bohemians who helped him to publish some of his poems. Trakl's father died in 1910, shortly before Trakl received his pharmacy certificate; thereafter, Trakl enlisted in the army for a yearlong stint. His return to civilian life in Salzburg was a disaster, and he reenlisted, serving as a pharmacist at a hospital in Innsbruck. There he also met the local artistic community, which recognized his budding talent. Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of the journal Der Brenner, became his patron: he regularly printed Trakl's work and endeavored to find him a publisher to produce a collection of poems. The result of these efforts was Gedichte (Poems), published by Kurt Wolff in Leipzig in the summer of 1913. Ficker also brought Trakl to the attention of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who anonymously provided him with a sizable stipend so that he could concentrate on his writing.

On the outbreak of World War I, Trakl was sent as a medical official to attend to soldiers in Galicia (comprising portions of modern-day Ukraine and Poland). Trakl suffered frequent bouts of depression[citation needed], exacerbated by the horror of caring for severely wounded soldiers. During one such incident in Grodek, Trakl had to steward the recovery of some ninety soldiers wounded in the fierce campaign against the Russians. He tried to shoot himself from the strain, but his comrades prevented him. Hospitalized in Krakow and placed under close observation, Trakl lapsed into deeper depression and wrote to Ficker for advice. Ficker convinced him to contact Wittgenstein. Upon receiving Trakl's note, Wittgenstein went to the hospital, but found that Trakl had committed suicide from an overdose of cocaine three days before.

[edit] Critical appraisal

Trakl's richly symbolic poetry stands at the forefront of the literary arm of the Austro-German expressionist movement.

[edit] Online texts

[edit] Bibliography

Selected titles:

  • Der Herbst des Einsamen (The Autumn of The Lonely), 1920
  • Gesang des Abgeschiedenen (Song of The Departed), 1933

In English:

  • DECLINE: 12 POEMS trans. Michael Hamburger, Guido Morris / Latin Press, 1952
  • Twenty Poems of George Trakl, trans. James Wright & Robert Bly, The Sixties Press, 1961
  • Selected Poems, Christopher Middleton, Jonathan Cape, 1968
  • Georg Trakl: A Profile, ed. Frank Graziano, Logbridge-Rhodes, 1983
  • The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems of Georg Trakl, 1887-1914, trans. Jamshid Shirani & A. Maziar, Ibex Publishers, 1994
  • Song of the West: Selected Poems, trans. Robert Firmage, North Point Press, 1988
  • Autumn Sonata: Selected Poems of Georg Trakl, trans. Daniel Simko, Asphodel Press, 1998
  • Poems and Prose, Bilingual edition, trans. Alexander Stillmark, Libris, 2001

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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