Poems and Prose

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