Autumn of the Lonely

Autumn of the Lonely
by Georg Trakl
(Translated by Glenn Wallis)

Dark autumn returns full of fruit and bounty,
Golden luster of beautiful summer days.
A pure blue alights out of a fallen hull;
The flight of birds resounds from ancient sagas.
The wine is pressed, the mild silence
Suffused with the quiet answer of dark questions.

And here and there a cross on a desolate hill;
In the red forest a herd is lost.
A cloud wanders over the surface of a pond;
The peasant’s calm gesture rests.
Quietly, the blue wing of evening stirs
A roof of dry straw, the black earth.

Soon stars will nest in the brows of the weary one;
In cool rooms a silent modesty returns
And angels step quietly out of the blue
Eyes of the lovers, who suffer more softly now.
The reed breathes; a boney horror attacks
When the thaw drips blackly from barren fields.
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Der Herbst des Einsamen

Der dunkle Herbst kehrt ein voll Frucht und Fülle,
Vergilbter Glanz von schönen Sommertagen.
Ein reines Blau tritt aus verfallener Hülle;
Der Flug der Vögel tönt von alten Sagen.
Gekeltert ist der Wein, die milde Stille
Erfüllt von leiser Antwort dunkler Fragen.

Und hier und dort ein Kreuz auf ödem Hügel;
Im roten Wald verliert sich eine Herde.
Die Wolke wandert übern Weiherspiegel;
Es ruht des Landmanns ruhige Geberde.
Sehr leise rührt des Abends blauer Flügel
Ein Dach von dürrem Stroh, die schwarze Erde.

Bald nisten Sterne in des Müden Brauen;
In kühle Stuben kehrt ein still Bescheiden
Und Engel treten leise aus den blauen
Augen der Liebenden, die sanfter leiden.
Es rauscht das Rohr; anfällt ein knöchern Grauen,
Wenn schwarz der Tau tropft von den kahlen Weiden.
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The Silence of Georg Trakl

The poems of Georg Trakl have a magnificent silence in them. It is very rare that he himself talks—for the most part he allows the images to speak for him. Most of the images, anyway, are images of silent things.

In a good poem made by Trakl images follow one another in a way that is somehow stately. The images have a mysterious connection with each other. The rhythm is slow and heavy, like the mood of someone in a dream. Wings of dragonflies, toads, the gravestones of cemeteries, leaves, and war helmets give off strange colors, brilliant and sombre colors—they live in too deep a joy to be gay. At the same time they live surrounded by a darkness without roads. Everywhere there is the suggestion of this dark silence:

The yellow flowers
Bend without words over the blue pond

The silence is the silence of things that could speak, but choose not to. The German language has a word for deliberately keeping silence, which English does not have. Trakl uses this word “schweigen” often. When he says “the flowers/Bend without words over the blue pond”, we realise that the flowers have a voice, and that Trakl hears it. They keep their silence in the poems. Since he doesn’t put false speeches into the mouths of plants, nature has more and more confidence in him. As his poems grow, more and more creatures live in his poems—first it was only wild ducks and rats, but then oak trees, deer, decaying wall- paper, ponds, herds of sheep, trumpets, and finally steel helmets, armies, wounded men, battlefield nurses, and the blood that had run from the wounds that day.

[From a preface by James Wright and Robert Bly]

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For more on Georg Trakl (Austrian; 1887-1914), go here.

From Wersch’s Trakl site:

Trakl gave his only public reading of his works at an event organized by the magazine Der Brenner on 12/10/1913. The main part of the evening, starting at 7:30 p.m. in the music association hall at Museumstrasse 17a, saw the “Brenner” co-worker Robert Michael read from a novella and an unpublished novel. The following press comments give an impression of Trakl’s appearance between these two blocks:

Trakl’s reading, however, spoke with the convincing strength of an odd spiritual personality. Unfortunately, the poet read too weakly, as if out of concealments, from pasts or futures and only later one could recognize words and sentences in the monotonous prayerful trace-like speech of this already outwardly strange person, then pictures and rhythms, which form his futuristic poetry. With him everything becomes image or parable, barters in his soul into other expressionistic possibilities, which are not appropriate for humans today, but nevertheless are delivered so convincingly that one believes their possibility. However, when will this poet’s time arrive? – Because a poet, bartering everything in himself, is certainly this quiet human, each of his poems persuades of this, operating like revelations. But the public, today and tomorrow, won’t understand him for a long time, and the paid applauders, who did so loudly, least of all.
(Allgemeiner Tiroler Anzeiger Nr. 286, 12/13/1913)