Georg Trakl > Quotes

“I do not have easy days at home now and I drift between fear and helplessness in sunny rooms where it is unspeakably cold. Strange shudders of transformation, bodily experienced to the point of vulnerability, visions of mysteries until the certainty of having died, ecstasies to the point of stony petrifaction, and a continuation of dreaming sad dreams.”
― Georg Trakl

“Your body is a hyacinth,
Into which a monk dips his waxy fingers.
Our silence is a black cavern,
From which a soft animal steps at times
And slowly lowers heavy eyelids.
On your temples black dew drips,
The last gold of expired stars”
― Georg Trakl

“Cold metal walks across my forehead,
spiders search for my heart.
It is a light that goes out in my mouth...”
― Georg Trakl

“At the Moor

Wanderer in the black wind; quietly the dry reeds whisper
In the stillness of the moor. In the gray sky
A flock of wild birds follows;
Slanting over gloomy waters.

Turmoil. In decayed hut
The spirit of putrescence flutters with black wings.
Crippled birches in the autumn wind.

Evening in deserted tavern. The way home is scented all around
By the soft gloom of grazing herds;
Apparition of the night; toads plunge from brown waters.”
― Georg Trakl

“In den einsamen Stunden des Geistes ist es schön in der Sonne zu gehn,
an den gelben Mauern des Sommers hin
”
― Georg Trakl

“A world without fairy tales and myths would be as drab as life without music”
― Georg Trakl

“Vom Schatten eines Hauchs geboren
Wir wandeln in Verlassenheit
Und sind im Ewigen verloren,
Gleich Opfern unwissend, wozu sie geweiht.”
― Georg Trakl

“In an old family album

Ever again you return, Melancholy,
O meekness of the solitary soul.
A golden day glows and expires.

Humbly the patient man surrenders to pain
Ringing with melodious sound and soft madness.
Look! There's the twilight.

Night returns once more and a mortal thing laments
And another suffers in sympathy.

Shuddering under autumn stars
Yearly the head is bowed deeper.

-Georg Trakl (1887-1914)”
― Georg Trakl In an old family album

“It is a stubble field, where a black rain is falling.
It is a brown tree, that stands alone.
It is a hissing wind, that encircles empty houses.
How melancholy the evening is.
A while later,
The soft orphan garners the sparse ears of corn.
Her eyes graze, round and golden, in the twilight
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.
On the way home
The shepherd found the sweet body
Decayed in a bush of thorns.
I am a shadow far from darkening villages.
I drank the silence of God
Out of the stream in the trees.
Cold metal walks on my forehead.
Spiders search for my heart.
It is a light that goes out in my mouth.
At night, I found myself on a pasture,
Covered with rubbish and the dust of stars.
In a hazel thicket
Angels of crystal rang out once more.”
― Georg Trakl

“Under ancient cypress trees, weeping dreams are harvested from sleep.”
― Georg Trakl

“المسْني أيها الموت؛ أنا الآن رجلٌ مكتمل”
― Georg Trakl

“MARCELLUS: But look, Agathon, what strange dark light is glowing amongst the clouds. You would think a sea of flame is blazing behind the clouds. A divine fire! And the sky is like a blue bell. It's as if one can hear it tolling in deep, solemn tones. You might even suspect that up there above us, in unattainable heights, something is taking place of which we shall never know. But at times we can sense it, when that vast silence has settled over the earth. And yet! All this is very confusing. The gods have to pose insoluble riddles for us humans. And the earth does not rescue us from the cunning of the gods; for it too is full of things that confound the senses. Both things and humans confuse me. True enough! Things are very taciturn! And the human soul won't yield up its riddles. You ask and it keeps silent.

AGATHON: Let's live and not ask questions. Life is full of beauty.”
― Georg Trakl, Gedichte und Prosa

“أيها المسافر ادخل بدَعةٍ،
الألم حجّر العتبة.
هنا فى الضوء الخالص، يشعّ
على الطاولة، خبزٌ ونبيذ.”
― Georg Trakl

“The thrush called strangeness into the sunset.”
― Georg Trakl, Sebastian in Dream

“A whore who with icy shudders gives birth to a small dead child.”
― Georg Trakl

“At evening the autumnal forests resound
With deadly weapons, the golden plains
And blue lakes, above them the sun
Rolls more darkly by; night enfolds
The dying warriors, the wild lament
Of their broken mouths.
But in the grassy vale the spilled blood,
Red clouds in which an angry god lives,
Gathers softly, lunar coldness;
All roads lead to black decay.
Beneath the golden boughs of night and stars
The sister’s shadow reels through the silent grove
To greet the ghosts of heroes, their bleeding heads;
And the dark flutes of autumn sound softly in the reeds.
O prouder sorrow! you brazen altars
Today an immense anguish feeds the mind’s hot flame,
The unborn descendants.”
― Georg Trakl

“قلبي في المساء
عندما يأتي المساء تسمع صيحات الخفافيش.
حصانان أسودان مقيدان في المرعى،
القيقب الأحمر يحدث حفيفاً،
الشخص الذي يمشي على طول الطريق يرى أمامه حانة
صغيرة.
البندق والخمر الجديدة لهما طعم لذيذ،
لذيذ: ترنح السكران في الغابة الداجية.
أجراس القرية، مؤلم سماعها، يتردد صداها عبر أغصان
التنوب السوداء،
ندىً يتشكل على الوجه”
― georg trakl

“Purple cloud covered his head so that he silently attacked his own blood and likeness, a lunar countenance; stonily sank away into emptiness, when in a broken mirror a dying youth, the sister, appeared; the night engulfed the cursed race.”
― Georg Trakl

“Our silence is a black cavern.”
― Georg Trakl

“Under the trimmed willows, where brown children
are playing
And leaves tumbling, the trumpets blow. A quaking
of cemeteries.
Banners of scarlet rattle through a sadness of maple
trees,
Riders along rye-fields, empty mills.
Or shepherds sing during the night, and stags step
delicately
Into the circle of their fire, the grove’s sorrow
immensely old,
Dancing, they loom up from one black wall;
Banners of scarlet, laughter, insanity, trumpets”
― Georg Trakl

“On silver soles I climbed down the thorny stairs, and I walked into the white-washed room. A light
burned there silently, and without speaking I wrapped my head in purple linen; and the earth threw out a
childlike body, a creature of the moon, that slowly stepped out of the darkness of my shadow, with broken
arms, stony waterfalls sank away, fluffy snow”
― Georg Trakl

“Not your dark poisons again,
White sleep!
This fantastically strange garden
Of trees in deepening twilight
Fills up with serpents, nightmoths,
Spiders, bats.
Approaching stranger!
Your abandoned shadow
In the red of evening
Is a dark pirate ship
Of the salty oceans of confusion.
White birds from the outskirts of the night
Flutter out over the shuddering cities
Of steel.”
― Georg Trakl, Twenty Poems of Georg Trakl

“Shepherds buried the sun in the naked forest.
With a net of hair
A fisherman hauled the moon from the icy pond.

The pale man dwells
In a blue crystal, his cheek at rest against his stars,
Or he bows his head in crimson sleep.

But the black flight of birds always touches
The watcher, the holiness of blue flowers;
The nearby silence thinks forgotten things, extinguished angels.

Again the brow turns night in moonlit stone;
A radiant youth,
The sister appears in autumn and black putrefaction.”
― Georg Trakl

“.
الشمس
تشرق الشمس الذهبية كل يوم على التلة.
الأيكة جميلة، والحيوانات المتوحشة كذلك،
أيضا الرجل: صيادا كان أو مزارعا.

السمك الأحمر يقفز في البركة الخضراء.
تحت قبة السماء
صياد السمك يسافر برفق في زورقه الأزرق الصغير.

البذرة، عناقيد العنب، تنضج على مهل.
وعندما يصل اليوم الهادئ إلى نهايته،
تكون تهيئة كل من الخير والشر قد تمت.

وبحلول الليل،
دون أدنى شك يرفع المسافر جفنيه الثقيلين،
الشمس تهرب من الوديان الكئيبة.”
― Georg Trakl

“The dark eagles, sleep and death,
Rustle all night around my head:
The golden statue of man
Is swallowed by the icy comber
Of eternity. On the frightening reef
The purple remains go to pieces,
And the dark voice mourns
Over the sea.
Sister in my wild despair
Look, a precarious skiff is sinking
Under the stars,
The face of night whose voice is fading.”
― Georg Trakl, Twenty Poems of Georg Trakl

“Grodek

في المساء غابة الخريف ملآى بأصوات
أسلحة الموت، الحقول الذهبية
والبحيرات الزرقاء، عبر الشمس المظلمة
التي تغرب، الليل يجمع فيه
مجندون يحتضرون، الحيوانات تصرخ
بأفواهها المنفجرة.
حتى الغيمة حمراء، حيث الله غاضب،
الدم المراق نفسه وصل إلى بيته، بصمت
يحشد، رباطة جأش مارس في قيعان الصفصاف،
كل الطرقات تمتد إلى القبر الأسود.
تحت الأغصان الذهبية في الليل والنجوم
أخت الظلال تترنح عبر الأيكة المنكمشة،
لتحيي أرواح الأبطال، برؤوسهم المدماة،
ومن القصب أصوات مزامير الخريف الكئيبة تعلو.
أيتها المصيبة الأبية! مذبحك البرونزي،
شعلة الروح الملتهبة لقمت اليوم بالمزيد من،
أحفاد مقبلون”
― Georg Trakl

“Spiders seek my heart.
There is a light that dies in my mouth.

At night I found myself upon a heath,
Thick with filth and stardust.
In the hazel copse
Crystal angels have chimed again.”
― Georg Trakl, To The Silenced

“The dead paint a sneering silence on the walls
With their white hands.”
― Georg Trakl

“الظلام ممتلىء بهمس الاجوبة على اسئلة الليل”
― Georg Trakl

“O, the thrill when each knows its own guilt, travels the thorny paths. Thus did he find the white form of the child in the thorn bush, bleeding after the cloak of its bride-groom. Yet he stood before her buried in his steely hair, mute and suffering. O, the radiant angels scattered by the purple night winds. Long nights did he dwell in a crystal cave and leprosy grew all silvery upon his brow. A shadow, he walked down the boundary path beneath autumnal stars. Snow fell and the blue darkness filled the house. As a blind man's, Father's harsh voice resounded and called up dread. Woe, the bowed appearance of women. Beneath petrified hands fruit and implements mouldered to the appalled race. A wolf devoured the first-born and my sisters fled into dark gardens to skeletal old men. A deranged seer, that man sang by the derelict walls and God's wind consumed his voice. O ecstasy of death. O you children of a midnight race. All silver the evil flowers of the blood shimmer about that man's brow, the cold moon within his broken eyes. O, the creatures of night; O, those who are accursed.”
― Georg Trakl, Poems and Prose