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Georg Trakl

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

Georg Trakl (3 February 1887, Waagplatz 2 (or 3), Salzburg – 3 November 1914, Kraków) was a pre-eminent Austrian poet.

[edit] Life and work

Trakl was born and lived the first 18 years of his life in Salzburg, Austria. His father, Tobias Trakl (11 June 1837, Ödenburg/Sopron - 1910)^[1], was a dealer in hardware from Hungary, while his mother, Maria Catharina Halik (17 May 1852, Wiener Neustadt - 1925), was a housewife of Czech descent 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. At age 13, Trakl began to write poetry. In high school, he began visiting brothels, where he enjoyed giving rambling monologues to the aging prostitutes. At 15, he began drinking, and using opium, chloroform, and other drugs. By the time he was forced to drop out of school in 1905, he was a full-blown drug addict. Georg graduated from his moody adolescence to become a deeply disturbed and clearly mentally ill adult. Many critics think that Trakl suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia.

After dropping out of high school, 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 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 year-long stint. His return to civilian life in Salzburg was a disaster and he re-enlisted, 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.

In 1912, he was stationed in Innsbruck, Austria, where he fell in with a group of avant-garde artists involved with the highly regarded literary journal Der Brenner, a journal that spearheaded the Kierkegaard revival in the German speaking world.

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^[2], exacerbated by the horror of caring for severely wounded soldiers. During one such incident in Gródek, 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 Kraków 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.^[3]

[edit] Online texts

• Ten poems (English) by George Trakl
• Twenty Poems, trans. by James Wright and Robert Bly — PDF file of a 1961 translation, listed in Bibliography
• The Complete Writings of Georg Trakl in English - translations by Wersch and Jim Doss

[edit] Bibliography

Selected titles:

• Gedichte (Poems), 1913
• Sebastian im Traum (Sebastian in the Dream), poetry 1915
• 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
• In an Abandoned Room: Selected Poems by Georg Trakl, trans. Daniele Pantano, Erbacce Press, Liverpool, 2008

[edit] See also

• List of Austrians
• List of Austrian writers
• Sebastian im Traum, 2004 orchestral composition by Hans Werner Henze based on Trakl's work.

[edit] References

1. ^ Eisenhändler Tobias Trakl siedelte aus beruflichen Gründen aus Westungarn ins Wiener Neustadt. [1], [2], [3], [4]
2. ^ "Georg Trakl - Life and work, Critical appraisal, Online texts, Bibliography". http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/8356/Georg-Trakl.html. 
3. ^ James Wright and Robert Bly (2008-08-22). "Georg Trakl: Twenty Poems". Scribd. http://www.scribd.com/doc/4956922/Georg-Trakl-Twenty-Poems. 

[edit] External links

• Brief, general overview
• A site with many links, in German only. (Click British flag for English text.)
• Hearing Heidegger and Saussure Trakl's poem, "A Winter Evening," in Heidegger's theory of language.
• Translation of Trakl Poem

German Wikisource has original text related to this article: Georg Trakl