| Georg Trakl |
Article Index for Georg |
Website Links For Georg |
Information AboutGeorg Trakl |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT GEORG TRAKL | |
| austrian writers | |
| austrian poets | |
| drug-related suicides | |
| german-language poets | |
| austrians of czech descent | |
| writers who committed suicide | |
| 1887 births | |
| 1914 deaths | |
|
Georg Trakl ( February 3 , 1887 – November 3 , 1914 ), pre-eminent Austrian poet. LIFE AND WORK Trakl was born and lived the first eighteen years of his life in Salzburg . His father Tobias was a dealer in hardware, while his mother Maria was a housewife with strong interests in art and music. Trakl attended a Catholic elementary school, although his parents were Protestants. He matriculated in 1897 at the Salzburg Staatsgymnasium, where he studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Around 1904, Trakl began to write poetry. After dropping out of high school in 1905, Trakl worked for a pharmacist for three years and decided to pursue pharmacy as a career. It was at this time that he experimented with playwriting, but his two short plays, ''All Souls' Day'' and ''Fata Morgana'', failed onstage. In 1908, Trakl moved to , who anonymously provided him with a sizable stipend so that he could concentrate on his writing. On the outbreak of World War I , Trakl was sent as a medical official to attend to soldiers in Galicia (comprising portions modern-day Ukraine and Poland ). His suffered frequent bouts of Depression , exacerbated by the horror of caring for severely wounded soldiers. During one such incident in Grodek, Trakl had to steward the recovery of some ninety soldiers wounded in the fierce campaign against the Russians. He tried to shoot himself from the strain, but his comrades prevented him. Hospitalized in Krakow and placed under close observation, Trakl lapsed into deeper depression and wrote to Ficker for advice. Ficker convinced him to contact Wittgenstein. On receiving Trakl's note, Wittgenstein went to the hospital, but found that Trakl had committed Suicide from an overdose of Cocaine three days before. CRITICAL APPRAISAL Trakl's richly symbolic poetry stands at the forefront of the literary arm of the Austro-German expressionist movement. ONLINE TEXTS
BIBLIOGRAPHY Selected titles:
In English:
SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|