Autumn Sonata [Paperback]

Georg Trakl (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 28, 1998

Georg Trakl's poems are considered some of the most difficult for any translator to tackle; his German is dense and sometimes almost impenetrable. Daniel Simko's collection Autumn Sonata, has been lauded for the "simplicity and directness" of its translations, accomplished with out sacrificing the drama of Trakl's rich imagery.Suffering from manic depressive episodes and haunted by his experiences tending the wounded and dying during World War One, Trakl's poems reflect a sense of lostness: nightmare visions and disembodied voices provide an often eccentric perspective of reality. Though he yearns for deliverance, there poems do not anticipate it. Instead, they map the interior landscape of a brilliant, though troubled, spirit.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Haunted by the "cold radiance" of death, Trakl's poems and two prose pieces collected in this bilingual volume create a romantically heightened interior world of suffering and hoped-for transcendence. "Gone is the gold of day" from this intensely imagined realm, where autumnal imagery--a "stubble-field," a "brown tree that stands alone"--suggests the beginnings of a spiritual and physical "black decomposition." Austrian-born Trakl (1887-1914), who died an apparent suicide by cocaine overdose, was compelled in his writing by "an angry God" and "the icy wave of eternity," and viewed death as an elevating and terrifying power more potent than mortal experience ("The dance of the living appears unreal / And strangely dispersed"). Eminently visual, his work evokes a sometimes frantic sense of doom and a longing for deliverance (a "blue moment") not expected to take place. The prose is relatively direct and visceral; its ferocity of feeling is effectively conveyed by poet Simko, who faces a more difficult task--and occasionally waxes prosaic--in translating Trakl's highly charged, elliptical verse.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

All Souls
At Night
Autumn Evening
The Blessing Of Women
Childhood
De Profundis
Downfall
Dream And Derangement
Evening Melancholy
Evening Song
Grodeck
Helian
Hohenburg
Horror
Hymns For A Rosary: Amen
Hymns For A Rosary: Nearness Of Death
Hymns For A Rosary: To The Sister
In An Old Album
In Springtime
In The East
In The Red Foliage Filled With Guitars
In Venice
Kaspar Hauser Song
Lament
Landscape
Mankind
My Heart At Evening
Nightly Surrender
Nocturne
On The Moor
On The Way
Passion
Psalm
The Rats
Rest And Silence
A Romance To Night
Rondel
Sleep
Sonja
Summer
Three Glimpses Into An Opal: 1
Three Glimpses Into An Opal: 2
Three Glimpses Into An Opal: 3
To The Boy Elis
Transfiguration
Transformation Of Evil
Trumpets
Whispered In The Afternoon
Winter Night
-- Table of Poems from Poem Finder® --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Moyer Bell and its subsidiaries; 2 Revised edition (May 28, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559212519
• ISBN-13: 978-1559212519
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,399,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Expressionism Straight, April 11, 2005

By 

T. J. Stewart (Cincinnati, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Autumn Sonata (Paperback)

Fans of German Expressionism owe a debt of gratitude to Simko for this book. Trying to find a book from this era can be extremely difficult. Other famous authors of the period (Gottfried Benn, Georg Heym) are almost impossible to find.

The book presents both the original German text, and a very good English translation. Trakl's poetry is bittersweet, the meter almost hynoptic. The reader confronts a collage of colors and emotions in a Trakl poem.

Trakl died young, a victim of WWI. No bullet killed him, but rather he killed himself while working at a military hospital. Although his poems reveal his grief, and his despair, the reader finds himself somehow empowered by them. Out of his suffering came some of the most beautiful poems in the German language.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the last gold of fallen stars, January 5, 2003

By 

M. Friedman (New York Area) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Autumn Sonata: Selected Poems of Georg Trakl (Paperback)

Georg Trakl is the greatest German poet most english readers have never heard of. Most of his best poetry dates from the period just before and during his service in the Austrian Army during the First World War and this makes him a brief contemporary of Rilke. However, while Rilke's verses are each a world of incandescent beauty and spiritual profundity, Trakl's are intimations of death, decay and expressions of a world trapped in a cycle of hell. His poems are intensely expressionistic, dark and powerful. Simko's translation is excellent; though he makes a few word choices from the German that might be open to debate, he does an excellent job of preserving the poems' structure while transmitting their power in English. My only quibble is that I would have liked it if the selection of poems was broader.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a brilliant translation, September 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Autumn Sonata (Paperback)

Here is an oportunity to read a great poet in an original -- and I say it seriously -- Daniel Simko has produced a brilliant translation of a German visionary. This is Trakl at his very best.