Georg Trakl: New Translations by Daniele Pantano

Georg Trakl

Towards the end of last year, I did a couple of posts on Georg Trakl. At that time Daniele Pantano, a poet whose work has appeared in Lilliput, got in touch to let me know he was working on a volume of Trakl translations of his own.

Forthcoming in 2013 is The Collected Works of Georg Trakl, translated by Daniele Pantano and published by Black Lawrence Press. The book will include all of his poems, plays, fragments, drafts and letters and will be well over 1,000 pages. The timing of publication will dovetail with the centenary of Trak's death (November 3, 1914). Daniele has been generous enough to share a number of poems from the forthcoming manuscript and, in turn, I've selected a few to share with readers of The Hut.

Trakl is a master at building his poems on finely wrought imagery, so finely that meaning is evoked rather than plainly stated:

My Heart At Evening

At nightfall you hear the bats shriek.
Two black horses leap across the meadow.
The red maple rustles.
The small inn along the way appears to the traveler.
Delicious the young wine and nuts.
Delicious: to stagger drunk in the darkening forest.
Cruel bells ring through black branches.
Dew drips on the face.

Frequently, there is an ominous, portentous quality in Trakl's poems. Along with this almost macabre feeling, the imagery can be close to cinematic in its execution:

Decay

In the evening, when the bells ring peace,
I follow the miraculous flights of birds
That in long flocks, like lines of pious pilgrims,
Vanish in clear autumnal skies.

Strolling through the dusky garden
I dream after their brighter fates
And barely feel the hour hands move.
Thus above clouds I follow their journeys.

Then a whiff of decay makes me tremble.
The blackbird laments in the leafless branches.
The red wines sways on rusty trellises,

While like the pale children's death-dance
Around dark rims of weathered fountains,
Blue asters bow and shiver in the wind.

Here the birds bring a lighter note, flying off to more hopeful fates, by implication leaving a darker, foreboding landscape. This fate enters with the smell of decay. The blackbirds left behind are lamenting, while blue asters are reminiscent of some horrific death-dance of children. Though what that fate might be is left unstated by the narrator, its implication is every bit as fearful as an awful noise in the next room, the rattling of a locked doorknob about to give way.





Landscape 2nd Version

September evening; the shepherds' dark calls echo
Through the twilight village; fire sparks in the forge.
Violently a black horse rears up; the maid's hyacinthine locks
Strain at the heat of its purple nostrils.
Softly the doe's scream freezes at the forest's edge
And the yellow flowers of autumn
Bend mutely over the pond's blue face.
A tree burned down in red flames; bats flutter up with dark faces.

Pantano has done a nice job translating a very difficult poet in the selection that I read. The difficulty in translating Trakl comes from his very simplicity; there is so much implied in his core set of images, resonating in archetypal ways, that this is no doubt a formidable challenge for any translator. I'll be looking forward to reading the full volume when it appears.

There is no announcement yet on the Black Lawrence Press site of a specific date in 2013 for publication. Thanks once again to Daniele Pantano for sharing his translations and allowing another view of the excellent work of Georg Trakl. I'll keep you posted on any forthcoming news about this collection when I get it.

Meanwhile, if you'd like to see more before 2013, Erbacce Press, Liverpool, has published a chapbook of Pantano's Trakl translations entitiled In an Abandoned Room: Selected Poems by Georg Trakl. He tells me it is selling well at (heads up: a blaring version of "Paperback Writer" will greet you when you click):

http://erbacce-press.webeden.co.uk/#/georg-trakl/4532137163

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This week's featured broadside is Lilliput #114, entitled Slides, by long time small press icon, Hugh Fox. Fox was right there at the beginning of the small press movement that grew out of the Beat writers and the mimeo revolution. He is something on an institution in himself. It has been a privilege to publish his work in Lillie occasionally over the years. Slides is what the name implies, a series of images, in this case 12, that flash quietly before us in the dark, some of which remain long after the lights are turned back on and the drinks are refreshed. I particularly like this one, which closes out the set and quite simply captures a moment in time.

12.

Reaching down into the grass
boiling with crickets, lifting a moth
off the wall as carefully as I can and
letting it out into the night, only it falls
on to the front porch instead of
flying away.

Hugh Fox

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Least we forget, today is the birthday of Jack Kerouac, whose work has given great pleasure to unsung millions. As I'm wont to do, when I think of Jack I like to walk across the room and open up his Book of Haikus randomly to see what he is about these days:

Ah, the birds
--at dawn
my mother and father

Jack Kerouac

If ever there was a poem in the spirit of Issa, this it. Truly lovely and all-embracing in its compassion and implied detail.



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And the final song goes to Master Issa:

when will it become
a cricket's nest?
my white hair

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

20 Poems by Georg Trakl, translated by James Wright and Robert Bly

For translation, so below

A while back, I did a post on Georg Trakl, mentioning the translations by James Wright and Robert Bly, entitled 20 Poems (available online as a .pdf here). I've finally found the time to read through the translations a couple of times and my enthusiasm for his work is unabated.

The appeal to Wright and Bly is apparent; these two poets, known for their "involvement" in the deep image movement, find essential source material in Trakl's work. The poems revolve around the images, many of which appear as motifs, even in such a small selection of Trakl's work. The abiding feeling I get is one of evocation; the poems do not posit answer or philosophy or even present an open-ended question. It seems to me that they are really the stuff of archetype, a kind of dream-like essence that dwells firmly in the border between the conscious and unconscious. A dream-poetry, a Jungian poetry, probing into the uninterpretable human spirit.


In Hellbrun

Once more following the blue grief of the evening
Down the hill, to the springtime fishpond–
As if the shadow of those dead for a long time were
------hovering above,
The shadows of church dignitaries, of noble ladies–
Their flowers bloom so soon, the earnest violets
In the earth at evening, and the clear water washes
From the blue spring. The oaks turn green
In such a ghostly way over the forgotten footsteps
------of the dead
The golden clouds over the fishpond.

The best of Trakl's work is firmly grounded in nature; one thinks of Wright's The Branch Will Not Break, the most naturalistic of his works. In actual execution, the work itself feels closer to Bly than Wright; better than Bly, hitting a universal chord Bly frequently speaks of but doesn't quite achieve lyrically. This is, of course, strictly a matter of taste. Trakl's work is haunting and it lingers with me long after I've put it down and, siren-like, summons my return as to an elusive, spirit-infused wood.

What is hinted at in many poems is most explicitly sketched in the following, which conjures a sort of contiguous sense of all time. There is an historical tapestry here, yet that seems to be something of a background against which a larger story is unfolding, one that mixes equally the sadness and sweetness of existence itself.

Song of the Western Countries

Oh the nighttime beating of the soul’s wings:
Herders of sheep once, we walked along the forests
-------that were growing dark,
And the red deer, the green flower and the speaking
river followed us
In humility. Oh the old old note of the cricket,
Blood blooming on the altarstone,
And the cry of the lonely bird over the green silence
-------of the pool.

And you Crusades, and glowing punishment
Of the flesh, purple fruits that fell to earth
In the garden at dusk, where young and holy men
-------walked,
Enlisted men of war now, waking up out of wounds
-------and dreams about stars.
Oh the soft cornflowers of the night.

And you long ages of tranquility and golden
-------harvests,
When as peaceful monks we pressed out the purple
-------grapes;
And around us the hill and forest shone strangely.
The hunts for wild beasts, the castles, and at night,
-------the rest,
When man in his room sat thinking justice,
And in noiseless prayer fought for the living head
-------of God.

And this bitter hour of defeat,
When we behold a stony face in the black waters.
But radiating light, the lovers lift their silver eyelids:
They are one body. Incense streams from rose-
-------colored pillows
And the sweet song of those risen from the dead.

The overall mood is of dread, foreboding. All of history comes to Trakl's point in time; World War I and its coming horrors, of which he was a victim, are pre-figured here through the lens of history, yet Trakl is not after the political. The most salient point, his true focus, is humanness, human existence. There is a sense of loss: the loss of nature and a related innocence. Two of Trakl's poems I highlighted in an earlier post capture nature before this loss. Not many of his predominately naturalistic poems are contained in the selection by Wright and Bly, though naturalistic elements permeate the work throughout.

Just as Trakl's poems seem to dwell in a place between the conscious and unconscious, they also seem to inhabit an imagined space between the poems of Wright and Bly themselves. Here is the stuff of dreams, and something more:

In Venice

Silence in the rented room.
The candlestick flickers with silver light
Before the singing breath
Of the lonely man;
Enchanted rosecloud.

Black swarms of flies
Darken the stony space,
And the head of the man who has no home
Is numb from the agony
Of the golden day.

The motionless sea grows dark.
Star and black voyages
Vanished on the canal.
Child, your sickly smile
Followed me softly in my sleep.

The sense of foreboding in Trakl is the main focus of the 20 poems translated in this little collection. In "Birth," there seems to be a balance achieved between the prophetic and the pastoral; ironically that balance seems to be man himself.

Birth

These mountains: blackness, silence, and snow.
The red hunter climbs down from the forest;
Oh the mossy gaze of the wild thing.

The peace of the mother: under black firs
The sleeping hands open by themselves
When the cold moon seems ready to fall.

The birth of man. Each night
Blue water washes over the rockbase of the cliff;
The fallen angel stares at his reflection with sighs,

Something pale wakes up in a suffocating room.
The eyes
Of the stony old woman shine, two moons.

The cry of the woman in labor. The night troubles
The boy’s sleep with black wings,
With snow, which falls with ease out of the purple
-------clouds.

Perhaps the two threads of nature lost and coming dread are inextricably woven together. As with Wright's work, I want to read hopefulness in the natural world, even with its built-in dread, and not the loss of nature due to man's perception of being outside of or over nature. As with Wright, however, one doesn't get one's wish. What one does get is a unique, poetic panorama, a haunting vision that's is at once powerful, delicate and a thing of beauty: the poetry of Georg Trakl.

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Pictured above is Trakl's grave marker, with his poem "Music in the Mirabell" inscribed in stone. As may become apparent in the poem, Mirabell is a garden. Here is an English translation of what is described as the "second version" by Alexander Stillmarker, in a volume I just purchased, Poems and Prose, published by Northwestern University.

Music in the Mirabell

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.

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I've been deliberating on what to feature from the Lilliput archives since, over the years, I've featured poems from the full run of regular issues in this blog,. Should I highlight "Brobdingnag" feature poems (poems over the usual 10 line limit), of which there have been 57 to date? Or perhaps poems from the 45 broadside issues, featuring the work of individual poets? Or perhaps poems from the 20 "Modest Proposal Chapbooks" that have seen the light of day? An interesting dilemma.

I decided to feature poems from the broadsides and leave the longer poems and chapbooks for some future time. So, here from the poet David Chorlton's 2008 Lilliput broadside, Venetian Sequence (Venice, twice in one post), is his poem "Of Sighs." The title refers to the famous bridge in Venice named "The Bridge of Sighs." The bridge was named by Byron, who helped popularize the myth that prisoners headed toward their execution got one final look at the lovely Venice through one of the bridge's small windows and sighed. David here extends the prisoner's imagined experience to what might be heard:

Of Sighs

From the sentence to the executioner
the way is short and the windows
on the bridge prevent the prisoner
from looking at his reflection
in the water below, although he can hear,
between the words of his accusers,
the murmur of the pigeons
nesting in the mane of a lion’s head.

For another poem from the 15 poem sequence, "Paganini," check out this post from when the broadside originally appeared in March 2008. For more info on Lillie broadsides, check here.

There have been many musical pieces referencing this famous bridge. In rock, there is Robin Trower's rendition. In folk, there is a song by legendary Ralph McTell, which seems only to be related to the bridge by title. Here is an instrumental by one of my favorite world fusion band's, John McLaughlin's Shakti:

And the master's final word:

a pigeon cries--
even deep in the Thousand Islands
it's Buddha's world

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don


PS. For those of you receiving posts via email, you may not see icon for Grooveshark song (or YouTube videos in other posts). Just sayin' ... you might want to click through.

Georg Trakl and James Wright

I mentioned in last week's post on James Wright's "Milkweed" that, while doing some research, I discovered Wright's love for the work of Georg Trakl. I recently finished Trakl's Autumn Sonata: Selected Poems, translated by Daniel Simko, and I thoroughly understand Wright's attraction. Here's a standout poem that shares a tonal quality similar to Wright:

In Springtime

Snow sank softly from the dark footsteps.
In the shade of a tree
Lovers raise their rosy eyelids.

The dark calls of sailors are always followed
By stars and night;
The oars beat softly in time.

Soon the violets will begin to blossom
By the crumbling wall,
The lonely man's temples softly turn green.

Georg Trakl

The nature imagery is reminiscent of work in The Branch Will Not Break. The closing revelation is not, however, typical of Trakl and, in this case, really stands out. Like all great poets, Trakl works the same territory over and over, tilling and re-tilling his garden to bring forth myriad varieties of the genus lyrical. Some images are so constant as to be all pervasive: a deer, tentative and feeding at forests' edge; the sound of bells, blending together as they fade; the clarity of twilight; autumn's pervasive sadness; the sensed presence of the dead, all around us; small details of village life, with human activity strangely absent; and a deep, resonant melancholy.

I was totally taken over by this work. It dominated me for the last few weeks and, though it is as different from my own as possibly could be imagined, it stimulated me to write and write and write. Wright of The Branch Will Not Break shares with Trakl the approach of recording in detail, imagistically, what is about him. In Wright, it gives the sense of the present moment, of seeing what the poet sees as it is observed. With Trakl, there is a sense of the eternal quality of what is observed. A denouement often results from these images of Wright; with Trakl, normally the images and tone are the end in and of themselves. Wright's images aren't in any sense repetitive; Trakl's are very much so and, though this might challenge the modern reader, it is this repetitiveness that gives them their eternal, immortal quality. Trakl's work is predominately in the 3rd person, Wright utilizes a 1st person persona in many cases, particularly in Branch. Both share a quality of sadness that occasionally implies unnamed, past transgressions. The flawed quality of human nature is never far from the surface in the work of both these fine poets. Here is another haunting piece by Trakl:




Hohenburg (Second Version)

No one at home. Autumn fills the rooms;
Moon-bright sonata
And the awakening at the edge of the twilit forest.

You always think of the white face of mankind
Far from the turmoil of the times–
A green branch bends willingly over the one dreaming.

Cross and evening.
The star of the one singing embraces him with purple arms
As it rises to the empty windows.

Therefore, the stranger trembles in the darkness
As he softly raises his eyelids over a human shape.
In the distance, the silver voice of the wind in the hallway.

Georg Trakl

I've yet to read the twenty poems by Trakl translated by Wright and Robert Bly (pdf file). I am looking forward to it very much. I'll close these thoughts with Wright's poem, "I Was Afraid of Dying." The library poetry discussion group I co-moderate will be considering three poems by James Wright next week, which I am also looking forward to. It will be difficult, indeed, to keep my enthusiasm for his work in check. I have a feeling others will match it.





I Was Afraid of Dying

Once,
I was afraid of dying
In a field of dry weeds.
But now,
All day long I have been walking among damp fields,
Trying to keep still, listening
To insects that move patiently.
Perhaps they are sampling the fresh dew that gathers slowly
In empty snail shells
And in the secret shelters of sparrow feathers fallen on the
------earth.

James Wright

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The submission period for the 2nd Annual Bashô Haiku Challenge has ended and the response was excellent. This year there are 99 entries from all over; the UK, Eastern Europe, Japan, and New Zealand are all well represented, as well as the US. The total is close to 500 haiku. Last year there were 34 entries with around 150 poems. So, the reading period has begun and it will be taking quite some time, no doubt.

I'll keep everybody posted on my progress.




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This week's featured issue of Lilliput Review is #153, from November 2006. Enjoy.

Vespers

In this life where, from the womb,
---we step from dark to darkness,
what joy when a few fireflies
---rise up
------------to light our way.

Dan Stryk

Black Bread
-- found phrase (after a poem by Anna Akmatova)

Made of tears, blood and bile, mixed to
a paste of black sorrow and yeasty obedience,
you rise like an envelope full of stale air.
Pounded, meek and quiet into a mass of hope,
fibrous connections tearing, kneaded
again and again, torn and prayered, cornered.
I taste your salty promises of flesh and suckle
the finger offered. I breathe the moist air
made of grief tissue. I eat the corpse proffered.

Lita Sorenson

Credo

Never turn away from
a blessing,
no matter how
severe

Greg Watson

full moon
half moon

I
just don't know

Ed Baker

And Issa's parting word(s) ...







in every direction
ten thousand blessings...
croaking frogs

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don