Description: Georg Trakl is recognized as one of the leading figures of the Austro-German expressionist movement during the early twentieth century. Marked by nightmarish visions of disintegration, death, and murder, as well as of natural decay, his poetry has influenced poets, painters, musicians, and playwrights for more than a century. Translated and edited by Daniele Pantano, Nocturne: 111 Poems offers a vivid introduction to one of the most important voices in twentieth-century world poetry. Trakl's poems bear haunting witness to a world devoid of faith, meaning, and hope. Truth is what Trakl attempts to detect through his striking lyric visions, in which the speaker's unconscious horror mirrors the horrors of reality, as we cope with our human condition. Nevertheless, Trakl captures glimpses of beauty in this wasteland, often equated with erotic or familial relationships, and seen only in contrast with death, corruption, and decay. Darkly introspective, Trakl's poems bear a disquieting new resonance in the present day.
Review Quotes: "It's the tone of a true genius." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
"For me the Trakl poem is an object of sublime existence." -Rainer Maria Rilke "The lofty stance, the cosmic range, and the haunting music of Trakl's poetry now mark him, with Rilke, as perhaps the last great representative of what could be called the sublime tradition in German." -Herbert Lindenberger