The Damned by Georg Trakl

Georg Trakl (1887-1914) was born in Salzburg, Austria, to a middle-class family. He received his pharmacy training at the University of Vienna, where he began experimenting with drugs and writing. Trakl was able to focus on his poetry thanks to the support of a monthly publisher and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and his first collection was published in 1913. He volunteered as a lieutenant in the army medical corps the following year, but after witnessing the anguish of the critically wounded soldiers, he became quite disturbed. He was taken to a military hospital for observation, where he died of a cocaine overdose, maybe accidently.

Alexander Stillmark is a University College London Emeritus Reader in German. He is the author of a number of comparative studies and publications, particularly on Austrian literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Austrian Federal Chancellor's office awarded Stillmark the translation prize for Trakl's Poetry and Prose.