This is the most complete edition of Georg Trakl's work in Russian—for the first time, it includes surviving fragments of his youthful dramas, drafts, and edited versions. It offers nothing less than a new understanding of the unique poetics that provided the structural foundations for the entire "expressionist decade" in German literature (Gottfried Benn) and paved the way for the formation of a new artistic language so desperately needed by the era.
The story of love for a sister is revealed not as a forbidden “strawberry,” but—simultaneously without hypocrisy and without idealization: as the basis for a mythopoetic description of the beauty and horrors of a dying world and as a unique understanding of the Sacrifice.
In the afterword, the author of the translation reveals his intention and shares personal, not at all academic comments—the perspective of someone who has lived with the poet’s words for more than thirty years and, it seems, has found a way to convey in Russian the intonation of his inner light and darkness.