The work of poet Georg Trakl, a leading Austrian-German expressionist,
has been praised by many, including his contemporaries Rainer Maria
Rilke and Else Lasker-Schüler, as well as his patron Ludwig
Wittgenstein, who famously wrote that while he did not truly understand
Trakl's poems, they had the tone of a "truly ingenious person," which
pleased him. This difficulty in understanding Trakl's poems is not
unique. Since the first publication of his work in 1913, there has been
endless discussion about how the verses should be understood, leading to
controversies over the most accurate way to translate them.
In a refreshing contrast to previous translated collections of Trakl's
work, James Reidel is mindful of how the poet himself wished to be read,
emphasizing the order and content of the verses to achieve a musical
effect. Trakl's verses were also marked by allegiance to both the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a fact which Reidel honors with
impressive research into the historicity of the poet's language.
Collected Poems gathers Trakl's early, middle, and late work, ranging
widely, from his haunting prose pieces to his darkly beautiful poems
documenting the first bloody weeks of World War I on the Eastern Front.
