Trakl, Georg - Dennis Sampson (review date 1989)

Dennis Sampson (review date 1989)

SOURCE: A review of Song of the West, in The Hudson Review, Vol. 42, No. 3, Autumn 1989, pp. 508-10.

[Trakl's fevered, Christian mysticism is discussed in the following excerpt.]

Baudelaire said that Chopin's music was "like a bird of bright plumage fluttering over the horrors of the abyss," and this is an appropriate image for anyone wanting to understand the poetry of Georg Trakl. Asked why he never entered a monastery, that mysterious early twentieth-century German poet responded that he was a Protestant and had "no right to depart from hell." Does this give you an idea what to expect from this writer? Song of the West, translated by Robert Firmage, is marked by lyrical grace, phantasmagoric images that beg to give shape to the spiritual in which Trakl triedpermanently to live. References relating particularly to the Passion and Resurrection appear and disappear: "Golden blooms the tree...

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