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Autumn Sonata: Selected Poems

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Georg Trakl's poems are considered some of the most difficult for any translator to tackle; his German is dense and sometimes almost impenetrable. Daniel Simko's collection Autumn Sonata, has been lauded for the "simplicity and directness" of its translations, accomplished with out sacrificing the drama of Trakl's rich imagery. Suffering from manic depressive episodes and haunted by his experiences tending the wounded and dying during World War One, Trakl's poems reflect a sense of lostness: nightmare visions and disembodied voices provide an often eccentric perspective of reality. Though he yearns for deliverance, there poems do not anticipate it. Instead, they map the interior landscape of a brilliant, though troubled, spirit.

160 pages, Paperback

First published May 28, 1998

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About the author

Georg Trakl

161 books208 followers
Georg Trakl was an Austrian poet. He is considered one of the most important Austrian Expressionists.

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5 stars
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114 (27%)
3 stars
36 (8%)
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
Profile Image for Steven Godin.
2,782 reviews3,391 followers
April 10, 2021

Anxiety.
Hallucinations.
Pessimism.
chloroform.
Opium.
Veronal.
Cocaine.
Delirium.
Madness.

Of course he raised the eyebrows of the local physician.

Of course he wrote poetry—damn right great poetry— like this.


September evening; the calls of the shepherds make a mournful sound
Through the twilit village. Fire sputters in the foundry.
A black horse rears violently. The servant-girl's hyacinth locks
Long for the fervor of its purple nostrils.
At the edge of the forest a doe moans quietly
And the golden flowers of autumn
Lean silently over the blue face of a pond.
A tree is consumed by red flames. Bats flutter up with dim faces.

- - -

In the courtyard a white autumn moon is shining.
Fantastic shadows fall from the edge of the roof.
Silence lives in empty windows;
Suddenly, rats emerge softy

And scurry here and there, squeaking.
A foul gray mist from the latrine
Follows them.
The ghostly moonlight glitters on it.

They squabble greedily, as if insane,
Filling house and barn
Overflowing with fruit and grain.
Icy fields complain in the darkness.

- - -

I saw myself walking through deserted rooms.
The stars were dancing madly against their blue background.
Dogs howled in the fields,
A wild wind screamed in the trees.

Yet suddenly: silence. A fever's dull glow
Sends poisonous flowers blossoming from my mouth,
And how the dew falls, pale and shimmering, from the branches
As if from a wound, and falls, and falls like blood.

- - -

The sisters are long gone. They have left to stay with white, old men.
At night the sleeper found them under the columns of the hallway,
Back from their sad pilgrimages.

How their hair stands stiffened with filth and worms,
As he stands there with silver feet,
And the deceased begin emerging from empty rooms.

And you, psalms, in the fiery midnight rains,
When the servants beat their gentle eyes with nettles,
The childlike fruits of the elder tree
Lean astonished over an empty grave.

Yellowing moons roll gently
Over the fevered bed sheets of the young
Before the silence of winter follows.
Profile Image for S̶e̶a̶n̶.
980 reviews582 followers
February 22, 2020
Pass through the veil into the dead-adjacent word fields of Georg Trakl, where ‘the waters rush like fire’ and ‘bloodbranches stir the crystal stars’. Trakl, deep stalwart poet of the forever melancholy, never maudlin in the perpetual fading light of his blood-red sunsets, striding down deserted lanes outside of time, always autumnal even in ‘Summer’ where ‘the lament of the cuckoo grows quiet in the woods’ and ‘the leaves of the chestnut stir no more’. The color blue recurs. As does the beloved sister, moving ghostly through these lines, among the falling rotten fruit and through the damp fields beneath a high-flying flock of wild birds, their cries yet fading in the void left by their departure. One of my favorite poets, whose words I never tire of reading, even despite their having passed through the sieve of translation...
The water flows darkly over the beautiful play of fish,
Hours of sorrow, the sun silencing us;
It is the soul of a stranger on this earth. Ghostly blue
Twilight falls over the beaten-down forest and a dark bell
Rings for a long time in the village; safe passage,
The myrrh blooms silently over the white lids of the dead.
Profile Image for Vesna.
239 reviews169 followers
August 25, 2021
It was interesting to read Trakl’s poems in two translations side by side, a generous selection in Autumn Sonata: Selected Poems translated by Daniel Simko and a shorter Twenty Poems of Georg Trakl rendered by two poets, James Wright and Robert Bly. I had a sense that their own poetic language somewhat interfered with Trakl’s and found Simko’s versions more effective.

Wittgenstein famously wrote about Trakl’s poems: “I do not understand them; but their tone delights me. It is the tone of true genius.” These were the earlier poems that he read at the time, written in rhyme and less gloomy than the later ones. His poems in the later period of his short life, which are best known today and presented in both volumes, turned much darker and they “mesmerize” more than “delight” but otherwise Wittgenstein’s words resonate to this day.

When I read lines like “Silence lives in empty windows” or “The lonely wander quietly in the hall of stars”, Rilke’s words about the “sublime presence” in Trakl’s poetry immediately came to mind. We repeatedly encounter the same types of figures that reappear throughout his poems, the pictorial images that inhabit his visions (sun, stars, moonlight, trees, birds, night, clouds, horses, sea, pond), and the certain set of colors in his expressionist palette (blue, rosy, white, red, silver, gold, black, purple, green). Only seemingly repetitive, their symbolism is mysterious, undergoing metaphoric transformations in different poems, and remaining elusive to interpretation. Yet they quietly haunt through their “silences” (as Wright & Bly phrase it though without acknowledging that Rilke already said it decades before them) that express the moods of anguish, melancholy, madness, decay, and ultimately (nearing) death. These dark moods permeate Trakl’s poetry both in his visions of the outer landscape of humanity as well as mirrors of the interior landscape of his tormented mind.
In an Old Album

You keep returning, melancholy,
The gentleness of the lonely soul.
A golden day glows toward its end.

Humbly, a patient man yields to pain
Reciting harmony and gentle madness.
Look, it’s already growing dark.

Again the night returns and a dying man grieves,
And another grieves with him.

Shuddering under the autumn stars,
Each year, the head sinks lower and lower.


In Springtime

Snow sank softly from the dark footsteps.
In the shade of a tree
Lovers raise their rosy eyelids.

The dark calls of sailors are always followed
By stars and night;
The oars beat softly in time.

Soon the violets will begin to blossom
By the crumbling wall,
The lonely man’s temples softly turn green.
Shattered by the carnage he witnessed as a military pharmacist in the first months of WW1, Trakl was committed to a mental hospital where he soon took his own life at the age of 27 (Wittgenstein’s generous financial support arrived too late, Tralk was already dead). He wrote only a few war poems but with such emotional power and anguish that they are most anthologized today. "Lament" is one of the last poems he wrote.
Lament

Sleep and death, the dark eagles
Dive around this head all night long:
The icy wave of eternity
Would engulf the golden image of man.
His purple body
Lies shattered against terrible reefs,
And a dark voice laments
Over the sea.
Sister of stormy sorrows,
Look at that fearful sinking boat
Beneath the stars,
The silent face of night.
Profile Image for sajad.
75 reviews
September 4, 2024
Men and women, sad companions,
Scatter blue and red flowers today
On their faintly lit graves.
They move like helpless puppets just before death.
And how they appear filled with fear and humility,
Like shadows, standing behind black bushes.
Laments of the unborn grieve in the autumn wind,
And lights drift, confused.
The sighs of lovers breathe in branches
Where the bodies of a mother and her child are decomposing.
The dance of the living appears unreal
And strangely dispersed in the evening wind.
Their life is so troubled, full of desolate plagues.
God take pity on women’s hell and torment
And those hopeless laments of death.
The lonely wander quietly in the hall of stars.
Profile Image for Ana.
Author 17 books84 followers
February 20, 2008
The superior translation.
Profile Image for Illiterate.
2,782 reviews56 followers
February 8, 2025
Late romantic melancholy/despair over a decaying/sick world. Too gothic/histrionic for me. Top tip: Helian.
Profile Image for Unpil.
245 reviews11 followers
September 1, 2021
If Thanatos can be drenched in colors, it will resemble the haunting imageries in Trakl's poems.

*   *   *

Grodek
Second Version

In the evening, the autumn woods ring
With deadly weapons, the sun rolls somberly
Over the golden plains and blue lakes,
And night embraces
The dying warriors, the wild lament
Of their broken mouths.
Red clouds, spilled blood, gather silently over the meadow,
Where an angry God lives, a cold moon;
All roads end in black decay.
Under the golden branches of night and stars,
A sister's shadow staggers through the silent grove
To greet the ghosts of heroes, the bloodied heads,
And the dark flutes of autumn keep playing softly in the reeds.
O prouder grief! You, brass altars,
Today the hot flame of the spirit is fed by a more violent pain—
The grandsons still unborn.

*   *   *

De Profundis

There is a stubble-field wher a black rain is falling.
There is a brown tree that stands alone.
There is a hissing wind that encircles the empty shacks.
How melancholy this evening is.

Near the village
A gentle orphan gathers sparse corn.
Her eyes widen, round and golden in the dusk,
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

On their way home
The shepherds found her sweet body
Rotting in the bushes.

I am a shadow far from the dark villages—
I drank the silence of God
From a spring in the woods.

Cold metal steps on my forehead.
Spiders search for my heart.
There is a light that dies in my mouth.

At night I found myself in a pasture,
Rigid with refuse and the dust of stars.
In the hazelbush
Crystal angels kept on ringing.

*   *   *

The Rats

In the courtyard a white autumn moon is shining.
Fantastic shadows fall from the edge of the roof.
Silence lives in empty windows;
Suddenly, rats emerge softly

And scurry here and there, squeaking.
A foul gray mist from the latrine
Follows them.
The ghostly moonlight glitters on it.

They squabble greedily, as if insane,
Filling house and barn
Overflowing with fruit and grain.
Icy fields complain in the darkness.

*   *   *

Landscape
Second Version

September evening; the calls of the shepherds make a mournful sound
Through the twilit village. Fire sputters in the foundry.
A black horse rears violently. The servant-girl's hyacinth locks
Long for the fervor of its purple nostrils.
At the edge of the forest a doe moans quietly
And the golden flowers of autumn
Lean silently over the blue face of a pond.
A tree is consumed by red flames. Bats flutter up with dim faces.

*   *   *

To The Boy Elis

Elis, when the blackbird calls out in the dark forest,
That is your doom.
Your lips drink in the coolness of the blue rocky spring.

When your forehead bleeds faintly
Leave the ancient legends
And dark interpretations of birdflight.

Yet with gentle footsteps you walk into the night
That hangs full of purple grapes,
And move your arms more beautifully in this blue.

A thornbush rustles
Where your moonlike eyes are.
O Elis, how long ago did you die.

Your body is a hyacinth
Into which a monk dips his waxy fingers.
Our silence is a black cave

From which at times a gentle animal emerges
And slowly closes its heavy eyelids.
A black dew drips onto your temples,

The last gold of fallen stars.

*   *   *

At Night

The blue of my eyes is extinguished in this night,
The red gold of my heart. And how still the light continued to burn.
Your blue coat embraced him.
Your red mouth sealed a friend's madness.

*   *   *

Downfall (to Karl Borromaeus Heinrich)
Fifth Version

Above the white pond
Wild birds have flown away.
In the evening, an icy wind blows from our stars.

Above our graves
Night leans down with its shattered forehead.
Under the oaks, we rock in a silver skiff.

The town's white walls keep ringing.
Beneath the arches of thorns,
O my brother, we are the blind clockhands climbing toward midnight.
Profile Image for Caitlin.
83 reviews164 followers
October 9, 2020
"There is a stubble-field where a black rain is falling.
There is a brown tree that stands alone.
There is a hissing wind that encircles the empty shacks.
How melancholy this evening is.

Near the village
A gentle orphan gathers sparse corn.
Her eyes widen, round and golden in the dusk,
And her womb awaits the heavenly bridegroom.

On their way home
The shepherds found her sweet body
Rotting in the bushes.

I am a shadow far from the dark villages--
I drank the silence of God
From a spring in the woods.

Cold metal steps on my forehead.
Spiders search for my heart.
There is a light that dies in my mouth.

At night I found myself in a pasture,
Rigid with refuse and the dust of stars.
In the hazelbush
Crystal angels kept on ringing."

-- "De Profundis"
Profile Image for Alexander.
77 reviews18 followers
April 30, 2021
Psychosis and War for a traumatized addict. Short lived line of flight into a spiral without a bottom, ungrazed pastures of deeply rooted text signifying the deepest parts of his soul; verses of melancholy for yesterday’s contemplation of tomorrow at a pond with opium and a broken mind
Profile Image for João Sousa.
55 reviews6 followers
July 20, 2016
Feels like sharp glass shaped death. Served not violently but very smoothly.
Profile Image for Scott Milton.
44 reviews
June 7, 2025
"Shuddering under the autumn stars,
each year, the head sinks lower and lower."
267 reviews18 followers
August 14, 2018
3 Sterne

Ich verstehe eigentlich nicht, warum diese Sammlung von Georg Trakl so viel Anerkennung gefunden hat, aber es sind einige sehr interessante Gedichte dabei. Im Gegensatz zu den Gedichten, die ich in der Schule lese, würde ich diese Gedichte gerne analysieren, da die vorgestellten Themen interessant sind und weiteres Engagement des Lesers erfordern. Aber diese Gedichte haben mich nicht so ergriffen, wie ich dachte, und es war ein bisschen schwierig, das Buch durchzuarbeiten das Buch zu kommen. Deshalb kann ich dieses Buch nur mit drei Sternen bewerten.
42 reviews1 follower
December 24, 2020
For a schizo dude, it's wild how clear the poetry is. Each poem contains bottomless blackness, loads of religious evocation in each individual phrase. I would argue the body of work itself is the real masterpiece together because of how specific and unique the vibe is.
Profile Image for Diwan Mal.
18 reviews1 follower
October 11, 2025
This is so Lars von trier &
A story I read in 9th grade about choking waif her blood leaves a mark on husband's hand and have to shed every few week w cutlass of dr fren
Profile Image for Parkregulation.
4 reviews2 followers
Want to read
February 27, 2022
몽상과 착란 (읻다)
A Romance to Night 27 밤의 로망스 = 26
Horror 29 X
In the Red Foliage Filled with Guitars . . 31 기타 소리 가득한 나뭇잎 사이로… = 28
Evening Melancholy 33 저녁의 음울 = 30
Rondel 35 롱델 = 32
The Blessing ofWomen 37 여인의 복 = 33
My Heart at Evening 39 저녁, 나의 마음 = 47
All Souls 41 만령절 = 50
In an Old Album 43 오래된 방명록에 쓰다 = 58
Mankind 45 인류 = 62
De Profundis 47 심연에서 = 66
Trumpets 49 트럼펫 = 68
The Rats 51 들쥐들 = 75
Whispered in the Afternoon 53 오후에 흘려보낸 속삭임 = 78
Psalm 55 시편 = 79
Hymns for a Rosary 59 묵주기도송 = 82
Autumn Evening 65 가을 저녁 = 87
Evening Song 67 저녁 노래 = 93
Three Glimpses into an Opal 69 오팔 안을 세 번 들여다 봄 = 94
Nocturne 75 밤의 노래 = 97
Helian 77 헬리안 = 98
Childhood 87 어린 시절 = 108
On the Way 89 길 위에서 = 112
Landscape 93 풍경 = 114
To the Boy Elis 95 소년 엘리스에게 = 115
Hohenburg 97 호엔부르크 = 120
Sebastian in Dream 99 꿈속의 제바스티안 = 121
On the Moor 105 늪지에서 = 125
In Springtime 107 봄 = 126
Kaspar Hauser Song 109 카스파 하우저 = 129
At Night 111 밤 = 131
Sonja 113 소냐 = 141
Afra 115 아프라 = 144
Rest and Silence 117 고요와 침묵 = 148
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Chris Gray.
107 reviews1 follower
May 9, 2024
Some poems were definitely more than three stars for me, and some less. Lots of fantastic, dark imagery.

My favorite, Evening Melancholy, is one of the simpler ones here.

Some other nice lines:

(from Sleep)

At nightfall, white birds flutter up
Over collapsing cities
Of steel.

(from Nightly Surrender)

Mooncloud! At night
Wild fruit falls black from the tree
And space becomes a grave,
And this earthly journey a dream.
Profile Image for Chris.
185 reviews
November 9, 2022
"Herrlich: betrunken zu taumeln in dämmernden Wald."
Profile Image for Von Rietberg.
6 reviews
April 18, 2013
His dark and immensely sad poetry helped me to go over a
dark period in my own life. His poetic language is truly original and possess an Unearthly atmosphere.
Compared to the other expressionistic poets, he`s language is the most suggestive, and one of the Profoundest in early modernism in General.
Profile Image for Judith.
9 reviews2 followers
March 20, 2008
Instructive for style and translation. As for content, not for reading in one go. Unless death obsession is your thing.
Profile Image for Fernando.
62 reviews3 followers
July 3, 2012
Triste, porém de uma beleza sem igual.
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