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At the Burning Abyss: Experiencing the Georg Trakl Poem
Franz Fühmann’s magnum opus.
At the Burning Abyss is a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry.
Picking up where his last book, The Jew Car , left off, Fühmann probes his own susceptibility to ideology’s seductions—Nazism, then socialism—and examines their antidote, the goad of Trakl’s enigmatic verses. He confronts Trakl’s “unlivable life,” as his poetry transcends the panaceas of black-and-white ideology, ultimately bringing a painful, necessary understanding of “the whole human in victories and triumphs as in distress and defeat, in temptation and obsession, in splendor and in ordure.”
In 1982, the German edition of At the Burning Abyss won the West German Scholl Siblings Prize, celebrating its “courage to resist inhumanity.” At a time of political extremism and polarization, has lost none of its urgency.
At the Burning Abyss is a gripping and profoundly personal encounter with the great expressionist poet Georg Trakl. It is a taking stock of two troubled lives, a turbulent century, and the liberating power of poetry.
Picking up where his last book, The Jew Car , left off, Fühmann probes his own susceptibility to ideology’s seductions—Nazism, then socialism—and examines their antidote, the goad of Trakl’s enigmatic verses. He confronts Trakl’s “unlivable life,” as his poetry transcends the panaceas of black-and-white ideology, ultimately bringing a painful, necessary understanding of “the whole human in victories and triumphs as in distress and defeat, in temptation and obsession, in splendor and in ordure.”
In 1982, the German edition of At the Burning Abyss won the West German Scholl Siblings Prize, celebrating its “courage to resist inhumanity.” At a time of political extremism and polarization, has lost none of its urgency.
232 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
Franz Fühmann
109 books8 followersFranz Fühmann (15 January 1922 – 8 July 1984) was a German writer who lived and worked in East Germany. He wrote in a variety of formats, including short stories, essays, screenplays and children's books.
Notable awards
Heinrich Mann Prize 1956
National Prize of East Germany 1957 and 1974
Deutscher Kritikerpreis 1977
Geschwister-Scholl-Preis 1982
Notable awards
Heinrich Mann Prize 1956
National Prize of East Germany 1957 and 1974
Deutscher Kritikerpreis 1977
Geschwister-Scholl-Preis 1982
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 21, 2018
As Fühmann says several times, this is not an autobiography, it is a book about his experience of Georg Trakl's poetry. As a young soldier in the German forces, he first encounters Trakl just before the end of the Second World War and, although he is forced to abandon his book, traces of the poems remain with him during his years in a Soviet POW camp where he is converted from Nazism to Socialism. Rediscovering Trakl in the 1950s triggers another crisis of faith but through his study of the poetry and reading about Trakl's he comes to understand himself.
A passionate, captivating account of how poetry can be read, understood, and taken to heart. A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2018/01/20/a-...
A passionate, captivating account of how poetry can be read, understood, and taken to heart. A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2018/01/20/a-...
September 12, 2020
Brilliant fusion of memoir, history and a remarkable personal response to Georg Trakl's dark and beautiful poetry.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews