Georg Trakl (1887-1914) was an Austrian-German expressionist
poet. Georg Trakl (1887-1914) was born into a middle-class family
in Salzburg, Austria. He trained as a pharmacist at the University
of Vienna where he started to experiment with drugs and began
writing. The patronage of a periodical publisher and the
philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein enabled Trakl to concentrate on his
poetry and he brought out his first volume in 1913. The following
year he enlisted as a lieutenant in the army medical corps,
however, he became very distraught after witnessing the agony of
the seriously wounded soldiers. He was sent for observation to a
military hospital, where he died of an overdose of cocaine,
possibly inadvertently.
Alexander Stillmark is Emeritus Reader in German
at University College London. He is the author of numerous
comparative studies and articles, especially on Austrian nineteenth
and twentieth century literature. Stillmark was awarded the
translation prize by the Austrian Federal Chancellors office for
Trakl's Poems and Prose.
Trakl's poetry is for me a thing of sublime existence."" - Rainer
Maria Rilke
""Alexander Stillmark's selection of around 125 poems, including
most of the major ones, is well designed, reflecting Trakl's wish
for individual poems to be printed within larger cycles, and the
translations themselves are accurate, unfailingly thoughtful and
often very moving."" - Times Literary Supplement
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