Trakl, Georg (1887–1914)

Austrian poet. His work is characterized by opaque metaphorical language and a unique use of colour symbolism; for example, in ‘Der Herbst des Einsamen/The Solitary Man's Autumn’ and ‘Helian’. His aesthetic of putrefaction and decay drew on French Symbolism, particularly the work of Arthur Rimbaud and Maurice Maeterlinck, but Trakl's poetic voice is wholly original.

Trakl was born in Salzburg. He became a solitary introvert, whose intensely melancholic state led to an obsession with decay and transience. The poem ‘Grodek’ conveys his traumatic experiences as a medical orderly on the eastern front in World War I. His death from an overdose of cocaine in a military hospital in November 1914 was probably suicide.