Trakl, Georg (Salzburg, 1887-1914, Cracow), grew up in a comfortable middle-class environment, left grammar school early and trained as a pharmacist. He took to drugs and eventually became an addict; he was particularly attached to his similarly addicted pianist sister, who died in 1917. Trakl qualified in 1910, served a year as a volunteer (see Einjähriger) in the army medical service, but experienced considerable difficulty in finding an appointment. He was greatly helped by friends, especially L. von Ficker (1880-1967), who also published his early poems in his periodical Der Brenner.
Trakl's first volume of verse was Gedichte (1913); Sebastian im Traum (1915) was published posthumously. His poetry is at all times rich, heavily loaded with imagery of autumn and its associated colours, but is devoid of any affectation, such as commonly accompanies the fin de siècle mood. Trakl was acutely conscious that his world, both personal and external, was breaking apart (‘entzweibricht’ is his own word), and this gave rise to a state of suffering (Leid), which is the keynote of his poetry. Deep anxiety about his sister and about his own subsistence (drugs and drink made him dependent on the help of friends), then the outbreak of war, his call-up as a reserve officer in the medical services, and the primitive and inadequate conditions in which he had to tend excessive numbers of men wounded in the battle of Grodek in Galicia, all overtaxed his resources, and he was sent to hospital at Cracow, where he died of an overdose of cocaine. Whether he intended his death is uncertain. Trakl's poetry developed in his last year or two from the strophic form of the early poems to a hymnic mode, which, while owing something to Hölderlin, is in its stark spareness, concentrated and elliptical syntax, and quivering personal tone, his own unique creation. His quality was early recognized by Rilke, and his influence on later, especially Expressionist, poetry was considerable. Among poems which should be mentioned are ‘Seele des Lebens’, ‘Verklärter Herbst’, ‘An die Verstummten’, ‘Unterwegs’, ‘Klage’, and ‘Grodek’, one of the most celebrated poems of the 1914-18 War. Poems left in his papers were published in 1939 as Aus goldenem Kelch.
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Georg Trakl
Oxford Companion to German Literature:
Georg Trakl |
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Featured Videos:
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Columbia Encyclopedia:
Georg Trakl |
Bibliography
See selection of his poems ed. by C. Middleton (1968); biography by H. S. Lindenberger (1971); study by T. J. Casey (1964).
Wikipedia on Answers.com:
Georg Trakl |
| Georg Trakl | |
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| Born | 3 February 1887 Salzburg, Duchy of Salzburg |
| Died | 3 November 1914 (aged 27) Kraków, Austria-Hungary (now Poland) |
| Occupation | Pharmacist |
| Citizenship | Austro-Hungarian |
| Alma mater | University of Vienna (pharmacy) |
| Literary movement | Expressionism |
Georg Trakl (3 February 1887, Salzburg – 3 November 1914, Kraków) was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.[1]
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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),[2] was a dealer of 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. As a high school student, he began visiting brothels, where he enjoyed giving rambling monologues to the aging prostitutes. At age 15, he began drinking alcohol, and using opium, chloroform, and other drugs. By the time he was forced to quit school in 1905, he was a drug addict. Many critics think that Trakl suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia.
After quitting high school, Trakl worked for a pharmacist for three years and decided to adopt pharmacy as a career. It was during this time that he experimented with playwriting, but his two short plays, All Souls' Day and Fata Morgana, were not successful.
In 1908, Trakl moved to Vienna to study pharmacy, and became acquainted with some local artists who helped him publish some of his poems. Trakl's father died in 1910, soon 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 unsuccessful and he re-enlisted, serving as a pharmacist at a hospital in Innsbruck. There he also met the local artistic community. Ludwig von Ficker, the editor of the journal Der Brenner (and son of the historian Julius von Ficker), 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 during 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 became acquainted with a group of avant-garde artists involved with the well-regarded literary journal Der Brenner, a journal that began the Kierkegaard revival in the German-speaking countries.
At the beginning of World War I, Trakl was sent as a medical official to attend soldiers in Galicia (comprising portions of modern-day Ukraine and Poland). Trakl suffered frequent bouts of depression.[3] 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 at a military hospital in Kraków and observed closely, Trakl lapsed into worse depression and wrote to Ficker for advice. Ficker convinced him to communicate with Wittgenstein. Upon receiving Trakl's note, Wittgenstein went to the hospital, but found that Trakl had died of a cocaine overdose.[4] Trakl was buried at Kraków's Rakowicki Cemetery on 6 November 1914, but on 7 October 1925, as a result of the efforts by Ficker, his remains were transferred to Mühlau near Innsbruck (where they now repose next to Ficker's).
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, ed. Christopher Middleton, trans. Robert Grenier et al., Jonathan Cape, 1968 [5]
- 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
See also
- List of Austrians
- List of Austrian writers
- Sebastian im Traum, 2004 orchestral composition by Hans Werner Henze based on Trakl's work.
Georg Trakl, POEMS and PROSE, A Bilingual Edition, translated from the German and with an Introduction and Notes by Alexander Stillmark, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois 2005.
References
- ^ "Georg Trakl" (in German). Project Gutenberg. Spiegel Online. http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/?id=19&autor=Trakl,%20%20Georg&autor_vorname=%20Georg&autor_nachname=Trakl.
- ^ Hardware dealer Tobias Trakl from West Hungary relocated to Wiener Neustadt for professional reasons. [1], [2], [3], [4]
- ^ "Georg Trakl - Life and work, Critical appraisal, Online texts, Bibliography". http://encyclopedia.stateuniversity.com/pages/8356/Georg-Trakl.html. Retrieved 9 December 2009.
- ^ James Wright and Robert Bly (2008-08-22). "Georg Trakl: Twenty Poems". Scribd. http://www.scribd.com/doc/4956922/Georg-Trakl-Twenty-Poems. Retrieved 22 April 2009.
- ^ Library of Congress catalogue listing, retrieved 2011-06-25.
External links
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German Wikisource has original text related to this article: |
- Hearing Heidegger and Saussure Trakl's poem, "A Winter Evening," in Heidegger's theory of language.
Online texts
- Red Yucca - German Poetry in Translation (trans. Eric Plattner)
- Translation of Trakl Poem
- 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
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