Surrender to Night
Collected Poems of Georg Trakl
Published on 4. April 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
304 pages
978-1-78227-517-6 (ISBN)
Description
In Georg Trakl's brief, tragic life he produced a body of work of intense visual power. Dense, imagistic and full of unnerving symbolism, his poems occupy a critical space in German Expressionism.
Until his death on the Eastern Front in 1914, Trakl honed a singular poetic voice to express the horror he saw in the world around him, culminating in the starkly powerful war poems for which he is best known.
This edition includes all of Trakl's major poems alongside a judicious selection of the best of his uncollected work, all rendered in vividly clear English by translator and poet Will Stone. With a biography, a critical introduction and a chronology of Trakl's life, this collection promises to reinvigorate interest in this under-appreciated poet.
Until his death on the Eastern Front in 1914, Trakl honed a singular poetic voice to express the horror he saw in the world around him, culminating in the starkly powerful war poems for which he is best known.
This edition includes all of Trakl's major poems alongside a judicious selection of the best of his uncollected work, all rendered in vividly clear English by translator and poet Will Stone. With a biography, a critical introduction and a chronology of Trakl's life, this collection promises to reinvigorate interest in this under-appreciated poet.
Reviews / Votes
For me the Trakl poem is an object of sublime existence * Rainer Maria Rilke * The translations are crisp and arresting, while exuding the melancholy and enigmatic power of the original texts. Perhaps the most important point to note is that the texts do not obviously read as translations. They stand alone * TLS * Will Stone's 'Helian' is a masterpiece. It reads not like an original, but like the original-you know that feeling you have when you read Baudelaire's Raven, which makes you feel you are actually reading Poe... The main achievement however is Stone's ability to capture that whole grand arc of 'Helian', the single poem as cycle, which is one of the few pieces in any language to warrant a place beside Hoelderlin. Stone's Trakl is simply one of the great poetic translations from the German, a version to set beside Luke's Goethe or Spender / Leishman's Duino Elegies -- Professor Jeremy Adler, King's College LondonMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 165 mm
Width: 120 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-78227-517-6 (9781782275176)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
04/2019
Pushkin Press
€9.59
Available for download
Persons
Georg Trakl (1887-1914) was born in Salzburg, Austria, and spent his youth there. He began writing poetry at age 13 and later became apprentice to a pharmacist in Salzburg, then went on to take a degree in pharmacy at the University of Vienna. Following his father's death in 1910 Trakl enlisted in the army, eventually working in the military hospital in Innsbruck. With the outbreak of World War I, Trakl volunteered as a medical orderly and attended soldiers at the Eastern Front in Galicia. After the battle of Grodek, he suffered a mental collapse and was confined to a military hospital in Krakow where he died of a cocaine overdose.