Song of the West: Selected Poems of Georg Trakl

by Georg Trakl

The influential German poet presents forty-seven poems characterized by an intensely personal point of view and a deeply psychological nature and presented in both English and German

Genres: Poetry, Literature

123 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2011

About the author

Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

It has been a good day, one rife with sunshine and accomplishment. I picked this volume up at a registration only book sale today and while i have longed to read Trakl I honestly knew next to nothing. Likely I was expecting a German-language Mayakovsky. That is not who Trakl was. His biography is outlandish. Born in 1887 in Salzburg into a self-made wealthy household, the poet along with his siblings suffered from parental apathy. The poet apparently developed a strong emotional and intellectual bond with his sister, and likely a sexual one as well, He had chemical issues as a teen and also issues with impulse control: he threw himself in front of a team of horses and also walked into a lake until he was pulled from safety. His addiction issues were exacerbated by his best friend who's father was a pharmacist. He lacked the rigor for school or work and drifted.

Then the war came.

Routed by the Russians he ordered by the Austrian army to provide medical care for the severely wounded who couldn't be moved from the battle field. His medical training consisted of his time working at his friend's family pharmacy. He witnessed the unspeakable and likely had a mental collapse, but before he could be diagnosed he died from an overdose of cocaine. He was 27. Damn.
His images are stark but largely rural. Thus, I hesitate to call him expressionistic as such. I can't admit to being overwhelmed.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful. Disturbing. Expressionism 101. Trackl's personal history is hard to ignore, but still, the poet taps into the whole Fin de siècle thing, which expands his voice in a way he probably never anticipated. His influence on Kafka and Celan are obvious. If you've seen Nosferatu, or The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, or Vampyre, you'll know what I mean. Atmosphere and mood dominate. A brown hill with a distant cross, blasted trees, dark forests, monks, an important sister figure, the ghost of a child. Whew! Awesome stuff, but not for everyone. This is poetry that straddles the line between nightmares and dreams -- and succeeds, but at great cost.

[George Witte · Rating 4 out of 5]

These poems have started to colonize my mind--a form of possession akin to reading the Grimm Brothers tales, or Rimbaud's poems, or Edgar Allen Poe's poems and stories. They are not "likeable" in a conventional sense; there is no narrator, no I, and they move intuitively rather than by any logic other than their own. Again and again Trakl returns to certain words and images--the sister, silver, blue, crystal, the forest or woods, generalized landscapes of lake and sky and field--and by rearranging them creates a charged, obsessive atmosphere in which something immense always seems about to happen or arrive. I have read these poems and the two insightful essays by the translator with care, and recommend this book to anyone who loves Rilke, Rimbaud, or is seeking a discovery.

[Caitlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars not for the poetry (Trakl was a genius) but for the translations. I much prefer the translations in the collections "To the Silenced" and "Autumn Sonata."

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

I felt my insides collapse under the polarity of reason.

[Steve Mossberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't speak to the quality of the translation here, but the rationale behind hit and the case Firmage makes for his viewpoints are both compelling. Trakl, particularly in the progression that the translator selects for his works, does not get better with volume. Central to Firmage's and Heidegger's theses on the poets work is the belief that individual poems are cut from a giant cloth and that that Trakl uses particular elemental words and repetition to dismantle the linguistic mechanism he is using in the first place. This achieves startling effects in the work itself, but a real sense of diminishing returns when attempting to traverse the collection with any kind of pace or focused effort. That said -- the poetry is individual and beautiful, and the commentary is enlightening.

[George Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Robert Firmage captures the essential nature of Trakl's poetry by staying true to the simple opacity of many images and fundamental shifts in tone. He remains one of the best mediums for the experience of this dark Austrian visionary.

[Phinehas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very fine translation by Robert Firmage, who also provides an excellent introduction and afterward.

[aya · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Frederick Ezeala]

Autumn is always dark .

[Judy Borenin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am torn between this edition, translated by Robert Firmage and The Last Gold of Expired Stars: Complete Poems of Georg Trakl translated by Jim Doss and Werner Schmitz. It's got me digging into the German language again. At least I can read the German (without knowing what I'm saying for the most part) to hear the rhythm of Trakl. So far, after having completed Song of the Departed, I'm leaning toward the translations put forth by Doss and Schmitz which capture the precision of Trakl's words. Firmage sacrifices specific meanings to keep Trakl's rhymes, and loses some darkness in the process. Overall, this volume is valuable as an introduction to Trakl who was a major influence on Rilke. It is important to read as many poems at one time to absorb the colors and nuances of Trakl's world.

[Gilbert Wesley Purdy · Rating 4 out of 5]

'Trakl had had a brief success, some years earlier, in Salzburg, having a one-act play performed and writing prose. Robert Firmage informs us, in the introduction to Song of the Departed, that "at this time Trakl began to wear dandified clothes and long hair and to spend hours at a time drinking wine in brothels and country taverns." But, upon the failure of a second play, he destroyed all he had written and concentrated entirely on his pharmacy studies at the University of Vienna, and his personal exploration of drugs. He probably would have drifted away from his pharmacology studies, as well, if it hadn't been the source of supply for a growing drug habit.'

Click here to read the full review at Eclectica Magazine.

[Cameron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I came to Trakl by way of Heidegger and Rilke's hero-worship of his work and I don't have better words for this collection other than to say it's among the most haunting and strangely beautiful verse I've ever read. The bleakness of these poems really leaves behind a residue. His imagery is very dark and death-obsessed - disconcertingly so, even - and always circling some unspeakable matter laying just out of reach. There's much of the Romantics, Nietzsche and particularly Rimbaud in the fragmented set of symbols and motifs of these visions. Overall incredible stuff - not sure why this guy's oeuvre hasn't received more widespread recognition.

[Oakley C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across Georg Trakl due to Christian Hawkey's brilliant Ventrakl. Trakl's poetry is at the limits of romanticism-hummingbird feathers and fish skeletons stand guard over a creek bank in the middle of reddening evening forest just before summer tips into Autumn. At times this obsessive cataloging of fecundity and decay viscerally transports the reader into space of aesthetic arrest that is liberating as it is suffocating. At other times Trakl's verbiage and never adjective-less nouns come across as (almost) intentionally risible. Heavy? Sure. Too heavy? At times. Worth it? Absolutely!