The Selected Poems of Georg Trakl

This volume collects the prose works, the mature poetry, photographs and the surviving letters of the Austrian poet Georg Trakl (1887 - 1914). Amid the turbulence and decay of pre WWI Europe, Trakl struggled to maintain the affirmative harmony of his interior landscape against a backdrop or drug abuse, poverty, forbidden love and war. The poems produced in this volume are filled with a passionate lyricism that reflects Trakl’s struggles with his inner daemons. Influenced by both Rimbaud and Baudelaire, he took great pains to craft each poem into a spiritual journey. He died of an overdose of cocaine at age 27 at a Military Garrison Hospital in Krakow where he was under observation for severe depression after suffering a breakdown while single-handedly caring for 90 badly wounded soldiers at the battle of Grodek.