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Autumn Sonata Georg Trakl Books

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Autumn Sonata Georg Trakl Books

Georg Trakl is the greatest German poet most english readers have never heard of. Most of his best poetry dates from the period just before and during his service in the Austrian Army during the First World War and this makes him a brief contemporary of Rilke. However, while Rilke's verses are each a world of incandescent beauty and spiritual profundity, Trakl's are intimations of death, decay and expressions of a world trapped in a cycle of hell. His poems are intensely expressionistic, dark and powerful. Simko's translation is excellent; though he makes a few word choices from the German that might be open to debate, he does an excellent job of preserving the poems' structure while transmitting their power in English. My only quibble is that I would have liked it if the selection of poems was broader.


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Autumn Sonata Georg Trakl Books Reviews

There were a few poems that didn't seem to fully blossom but the vast majority are exciting, some shockingly good. Some of the absolute best poetry I've read in years.
In 1914, my great uncle died in a Cracow sanitorium--the causeof death was overdose on narcotics, most probably a suicide. Throughmy earlier years, I was read my uncle's poetry at bedtime and warned of the danger that awaits the poet in this cruel heartless world. As a teenager, I experimented with poetry yearning to transcend the souless quest for social mastery that is adolescence. Finally, upon the eve that I was to lose my arm in an effort to attain a Villonesque apprehension of the reality of the gallows, I was approached by the ghost of my great Uncle, Georg Trakl, who recited to me his last poem, Grodek--whereupon my desire to versify became a crest of shame. . .for I was a player of games where he was a player of the sacred flute of pan. . .My silence is a song in reverence to the author of the poem Grodek
Fans of German Expressionism owe a debt of gratitude to Simko for this book. Trying to find a book from this era can be extremely difficult. Other famous authors of the period (Gottfried Benn, Georg Heym) are almost impossible to find.

The book presents both the original German text, and a very good English translation. Trakl's poetry is bittersweet, the meter almost hynoptic. The reader confronts a collage of colors and emotions in a Trakl poem.

Trakl died young, a victim of WWI. No bullet killed him, but rather he killed himself while working at a military hospital. Although his poems reveal his grief, and his despair, the reader finds himself somehow empowered by them. Out of his suffering came some of the most beautiful poems in the German language.
Trakl strolls through the dream of a child decaying under blood-red leaves. Silver waters shimmer and recieve the sky's terrible unction. In the elderbush, a wolf devours an Angel, or an Angel expires like the sigh of a golden flame falling into a mythic well whose pit is the open mouth of the man gasping as his murderer confronts him. In the knife is reflected the compassionate face of your melancholy sister, or is it a vengeful God's purple laughter? Your face goes cold as the child speaks your name.
Perfect
Georg Trakl is the greatest German poet most english readers have never heard of. Most of his best poetry dates from the period just before and during his service in the Austrian Army during the First World War and this makes him a brief contemporary of Rilke. However, while Rilke's verses are each a world of incandescent beauty and spiritual profundity, Trakl's are intimations of death, decay and expressions of a world trapped in a cycle of hell. His poems are intensely expressionistic, dark and powerful. Simko's translation is excellent; though he makes a few word choices from the German that might be open to debate, he does an excellent job of preserving the poems' structure while transmitting their power in English. My only quibble is that I would have liked it if the selection of poems was broader.