SOURCE: "Georg Trakl," in The German Poets of the First World War. Croom Helm, 1985, pp. 19-37, 168-70.

The following excerpt analyzes Trakl's work from its perspective on war, highlighting its Kafkaesque images and techniques while citing "Kafka's verdict, that Trakl had too much imagination…. [and the imagination which drove him out of his mind also made him a superb poet."]

Georg Trakl was the most considerable Austrian poet to see active service in 1914-18. The war, when it finally came, must have seemed a mere extension of his inner world, for he lived in a haunting and at times terrifying world of Spenglerian visions, a 'proving-ground for world-destruction' (Karl Kraus) if ever there was one. He raged not against the dying of the light, but against its relentlessness, praying in vain to be able to forget his visions. In his poetry the 'infernal chaos of rhythms and images'...