The Gentle Apocalypse
Truth and Meaning in the Poetry of Georg Trakl
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Boydell & Brewer Ltd
Published:27th Feb '20
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Through close readings of poems covering the span of Georg Trakl's lyric output, this study traces the evolution of his strangely mild and beautiful vision of the end of days. Like much German-language poetry of the years preceding the First World War, the poems of Georg Trakl (1887-1914) are imbued with a sense of historical crisis, but what sets his work apart is the mildness and restraint of his images of universal disintegration. Trakl typically couched his vision of the end of days in images of migrating birds, abandoned houses, and closing eyelids, making his poetry at once apocalyptic, rustic, and intimate. The argument made in this study is that this vision amounts to a unitary worldview with tightly interwoven affective, ethical, social, historical, and cosmological dimensions. Often termed hermetic and obscure, Trakl's poems become more accessible when viewed in relation to the evolution of his methods and concerns across different phases, and the idiosyncrasies of his strangely beautiful later works make sense as elements of a sophisticated system of expression committed to "truth" as a transcendental order. Through close readings of poems covering the span of his lyric output, this study traces the evolution of Trakl's distinctive style and themes while attending closely to biographical and cultural contexts.
Millington's meticulously researched study provides helpful tools [for reconnecting with Trakl's work] . . . . [It] is a major step forward in-not only English-Trakl scholarship. * Austrian Studies *
Millington's book is on the whole a marvelous achievement that makes for an ideal introduction to Trakl for the uninitiated and an important contribution to the field of Trakl studies with an abundance of new insights for those already familiar with the Austrian poet and his reception. * MONATSHEFTE *
Anyone working closely with Georg Trakl's poetry will no doubt find it necessary to consult Richard Millington's volume. * GERMAN QUARTERLY *
Millington forges a necessary, accessible, and profitable middle path into Trakl scholarship by synthesizing the best aspects of several past critical approaches while avoiding the overly polarizing methods employed by each. * GERMANIC REVIEW *
While other scholars have approached Trakl's work chronologically, Millington's study provides a clear through line in Trakl's development as a writer by focusing on the interplay of form and content, rewarding the reader of this study with new insights into familiar poems... Millington's highly readable, insightful, compellingly articulated study is a welcome addition to the scholarship on Georg Trakl's poetry * JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN STUDIES *
For readers who already have a deep knowledge of Trakl's work, Millington's superb monograph that combines close textual analysis with wonderfully well informed intra and intertextual readings must come as a welcome answer to many of the stubborn riddles of Trakl's poetry. For someone less familiar with Trakl, this monograph comes as a revelation - a revelation of the intense power and sorrow of Trakl's poetic voice but also of the infinite capacity of the lyric mode to capture the world in crisis and to give an ethical voice to humanity's shared suffering. * LIMBUS *
ISBN: 9781571135889
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 610g
278 pages