Georg Trakl: life and death of a scandal-ridden poet

Who was Georg Trakl?

Born in 1887, the fifth of seven children, Georg Trakl grew up on Waagplatz in Salzburg's Old Town. His father was a successful hardware dealer. Being addicted to opium, his mother entrusted their education – as befitted their social status – to a French governess, Marie Boring, who taught them about French literature and the Catholic faith. This was to have a considerable influence on Trakl's later work. He dropped out of school at the age of 17, having experimented with drugs, and joined "Apollo", the local poets' circle. His new career as an apprentice pharmacist gave him easy access to drugs. Trakl was a frequent client of brothels, though usually just to chat with the prostitutes. He is also reputed to have had an incestuous relationship with his sister Gretl, four years his junior; their affinity was in fact very intimate. He studied pharmacy in Vienna and gained a diploma in 1910. His father died that same year, and the family ran into financial difficulties. Trakl remained in Vienna and enlisted in the army for a year. His subsequent attempts to establish himself as a pharmacist in Salzburg were unsuccessful. He re-enlisted and served at a hospital in Innsbruck, where his patron Ludwig von Ficker – editor of the art and literature journal Der Brenner – introduced the young Trakl to the local art and literary scene, which included Karl Kraus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Adolf Loos and Oskar Kokoschka. The outbreak of the devastating First World War was to put an end to his young life.

The 27 Club

Thus Georg Trakl enters the long list of the 27 Club. Members are mainly musicians, artists or celebrities noted for their high-risk lifestyles, such as Jim Morrison or Amy Winehouse, who died as a result of drug addiction. The number refers to their age at the time of death.

The poem plaques in Salzburg

A keen walker, Trakl often worked his observations into his poems. The plaques placed at the most prominent points in his wanderings allow us to follow in his footsteps and to share his perceptions.

Railway bridge

We start at the railway bridge over the River Salzach in the Elisabeth-Vorstadt district, and try to imagine this area in Trakl's day – full of railway building works and the railway itself, its workshops and installations. On the site of the present thermal power station was Salzburg's slaughterhouse, surrounded by miserable dwellings where workers' families lived crowded together. Trakl describes the evening ambience in this neglected, poverty-stricken district when the föhn wind is blowing. This strong, warm wind causes malaise in weather-sensitive people, often with dizziness, headaches or nervous tension. Distorted perception makes sounds and colours seem more intense, distances shorter and the immediate surroundings larger.

Suburb in Foehn (1913)

In the evening the site lies deserted and brown,
The air pervaded with a horrid stench.
The thunder of a train from the bridge curve -
And sparrows flutter about bush and fence.

Cowering huts, paths scattered woozily,
In the gardens confusion and movement,
Sometimes howls swell out of stuffy stirring,
In a group of children a red dress flies.

By the rubbish a rat's choir whistles amorously.
In baskets women carry entrails,
A vile procession full of filth and mange,
They emerge from the twilight.

And a canal suddenly vomits fat blood
From the slaughterhouse down into the still river.
The foehn winds tinge meagre shrubs more colourfully
And the redness slowly creeps through the flood.

A whispering, that drowns in dim sleep.
Shapes juggle up on the drains,
Perhaps the memory of an earlier life
Which rises and sinks with the warm winds.

From clouds gleaming avenues surface,
Fulfilled with beautiful chariots, daring riders.
Then one also sees a boat failing on cliffs
And sometimes rose-coloured mosques.

Christuskirche

If we walk along the river towards town, we soon see on the left the Protestant Christuskirche. Under the rule of the Catholic prince-archbishops, Protestants were deported from Salzburg, and not until after secularisation in 1803 were they able to re-establish themselves. The first Protestant church was built in 1868, and 19 years later Georg Trakl was christened there. During his schooldays, he attended religious instruction in the vicarage twice a week and was later confirmed in this church.

The poem Winter evening, written in December 1913, was chosen because of its vivid New Testament imagery, which evokes associations with Christmas. A comforting glow in the wintry night offers a traveller the chance of leaving the darkness behind him.

Winter evening (1913)

When snow falls against the window,
Long sounds the evening bell…
For so many has the table
Been prepared, the house set in order.
From their wandering, many
Come on dark paths to this gateway.
The tree of grace is flowering in gold
Out of the cool sap of the earth.
In stillness, wanderer, step in:
Grief has worn the threshold into stone.
But see: in pure light, glowing
There on the table: bread and wine.

Mirabell Garden

Our walk takes us on to the Mirabell Garden, one of Trakl's favourite haunts. In 1909, his good-looking, cultivated sister Hermine moved with her newly-wed husband Erich von Rauterberg into an apartment in the Mirabell Palace, where they stayed for a few years. At this time, her brother was already in Vienna, sorely missing his "beautiful town".

Here, as in so many of his poems, Trakl makes use of the aesthetic of symbolism, a 19th-century literary movement. The idea is to make words comprehensible in their universality by merging their senses. Dim shadows flit through the dreamlike images taken from music, visual and performing arts, conjuring up the atmosphere of the Mirabell Garden in the evening.

Music in the Mirabell (1912)

A fountain sings. Clouds, white and tender,
Are set in the clear blueness
Engrossed, silent people walk
At evening through the ancient garden.

Ancestral marble has grown grey.
A flight of birds seeks far horizons.
A faun with lifeless pupils peers
At shadows gliding into darkness.

The leaves fall red from the old tree
And circle in through open windows.
A fiery gleam ignites indoors
And conjures up wan ghosts of fear.

A white stranger steps into the house.
A dog runs wild through ruined passages.
The maid extinguishes a lamp,
At night are heard sonata sounds.

Hedge theatre in the Mirabell Garden

We linger in this baroque garden, passing the fountain and on to the geometric, maze-like hedge theatre, where we find our way to a small stage with an orchestra pit and an open-air auditorium.

Here, it is easy to follow Trakl's poem, as he sees – in a vague memory – a weeping child, stumbling across the stage, its halting gait reflected in the German metre.

Nature theatre (1907)

Now I step through the slender gate!
Promiscuous step in the avenues
Drifts away and quiet waft of words
From people, passersby.

I stand before a green stage!
Begin, begin again, you play
Of lost days, without crime and punishment,
Ghostly only, strange and cool!

To the melody of the early days
I see myself going up there again,
A child whose quiet, forgotten lament
I see weeping, strange to my understanding.

You wondering face turned to the evening,
Was I once this, that now makes me weep,
Like your still unfinished gestures
That point to the night mutely and shuddering.

Engel pharmacy, Linzergasse 5

Leaving the Mirabell Garden, we cross the Makartplatz and pass by the Mozart residence towards Fischer von Erlach's baroque Holy Trinity Church. Following the narrow street to the right, we arrive in the Linzer Gasse, site of the former pharmacy "Zum Weissen Engel", where Trakl trained for three years after dropping out of school. This training qualified him for his later pharmaceutical studies in Vienna, though on the other hand it gave him easy access to drugs.

The Poem Im Dunkel may refer to the nearby Way of the Cross on the Kapuzinerberg, now named after Stefan Zweig. In the evening it is the scene of lovers' trysts or lone wanderers.

In Darkness (1914)

The soul silences the blue springtime.
Under moist evening branches
The forehead of lovers sank in shudders.
O the greening cross.

In dark conversation
Man and woman knew each other.
Along the bleak wall
The lonely one wanders with his stars.

Over the moon-brightened forest ways
The wilderness
Of forgotten hunts sank; gaze of blue
Breaks from decayed rocks.

Mozartplatz

Down the Linzer Gasse and crossing the River Salzach on the Staatsbrücke, we proceed to the famous Getreidegasse, turn left into the Judengasse, and arrive at the Waagplatz, birthplace of Georg Trakl.

On the wall of what is now the Georg Trakl Research and Memorial Centre, we find an almost jaunty eulogy to the town of his birth – perhaps written in Vienna, in a fit of nostalgia.

The beautiful town (1913)

Ancient squares in sunlit silence.
Deep engrossed in blue and gold
Dreamlike gentle nuns are hastening
Under sultry beeches' silence.

Out of brown illumined churches
Gaze pure images of death,
Lovely scutcheons of great princes.
Crowns are shimmering in the churches.

Horses rise out of the fountain.
Claws of blossom in trees threaten.
Boys confused in dreams are playing
Still at evening by the fountain.

Young girls standing in the gateways,
Shyly look upon life's gayness.
Their moist lips are ever trembling
And they wait beside the gateways.

Fluttering sounds of bells are pealing,
Marching time and cries of watches.
Strangers listen on the stairways.
High in blueness organs pealing.

Bright-toned instruments are singing.
Through the leafy frame of gardens
Purls the laughter of fine women.
Quietly young mothers singing.

Secret breath by flowering windows
Smell of incense, tar and lilac.
Silvery tired eyelids flimmer
Through the flowers by the windows

St Peter's cemetery

From the Mozartplatz we cross the Residenzplatz, pass in front of the Cathedral and cross the Kapitelplatz to the hushed enchantment of St Peter's cemetery. In Trakl's day, no burials took place there, the neglected cemetery having fallen into disrepair.

Here the young poet harks back to the tradition of romanticising death. His description uses baroque stylistic elements illustrating the contradiction between flourishing life and pallid death.

St Peter's Cemetery (1909)

Rocky isolation is all around.
Death's pale flowers shudder
On graves which mourn in darkness -
But this mourning has no agony.

The heaven smiles down silently
In this dream-locked garden,
Where silent pilgrims wait.
The cross wakes on each grave.

The church rises up like a prayer
Before a picture of eternal grace,
A few lights burn under the arcades
Mutely pleading for poor souls -

Meanwhile the trees bloom in the night
To wrap the countenance of death
In their beauty's glimmering abundance,
Making the dead dream deeper.

Mönchsberg

We cross the cemetery and the two adjacent monastery courtyards into the Toscanini courtyard. From here, the Clemens Holzmeister staircase winds its way up the Mönchsberg. At the bastion, we have a remarkable view over the former centre of papal power, with its domes, towers and Fortress. Georg Trakl loved to retreat to the Mönchsberg. Solitary paths though woods and meadows may have provided him with the material and the inspiration for this poem.

On the Mönchsberg (1913)

Where in the shadow of autumnal elms the decayed path sinks downward,
Far from the huts of foliage, sleeping shepherds,
Always the dark figure of coolness follows the wanderer

Over the bony footbridge, the hyacinthine voice of the boy,
Quietly telling the forgotten legend of the forest,
Softer a sick shape now the wild lament of the brother.

Thus a scanty green touches the knee of the stranger,
The petrified head;
Nearer the blue spring murmurs the lament of women.

Hellbrunn

Let us follow the paths Trakl may have taken, up to the Richterhöhe viewpoint. A magnificent panorama spreads out to the south-west, and we can make out the Hellbrunner Berg with the Monatsschlössl (said to have been built in a month). Around this hill lies the park, with gardens and fountains, over 400 years old – another favourite haunt of our young poet. In his day, the Hellbrunn summer palace and its grounds were the property of the emperor. We warmly recommend a visit to Hellbrunn, and now take our leave, for our walk ends here.

The adolescent poet loved Hellbrunn, and often remained there overnight. Anyone who has contemplated the artfully arranged ponds at twilight will understand Trakl's imagery here.

The three ponds in Hellbrunn (1914)

Wandering along the black walls
Of evening, silverly the lyre
Of Orpheus sounds forth in the dark pond
But spring drips in showers
From the branches in wild showers
Of the night wind silverly the lyre
Of Orpheus sounds forth in the dark pond
Dying away at greening walls.

Far away palace and hill shine.
Voices of women, who long ago passed away,
Weave tenderly and darkly coloured
Over the white nymphish mirror.
Lament their fleeting fate
And the day dissolves in the green
Whispers in the reeds and hover back -
A thrush frolics with them.

The waters shimmer greenish-blue
And calmly the cypresses breathe
And their gloom immeasurable
Flows over into the evening-blue.
Tritons emerge from the flood,
Decay trickles through the walls
The moon wraps itself in green veils
And wanders slowly on the flood.

A walk with Georg Trakl takes us on other paths through Salzburg, showing us its beauty in a different, more profound light. We bow our thanks to the great poet who has opened our eyes.