Reading in Innsbruck
Trakl gave his only public reading of his works at an event organized by the magazine Der Brenner on 12/10/1913. The main part of the evening, starting at 7:30 p.m. in the music association hall at Museumstrasse 17a, saw the “Brenner” co-worker Robert Michel read from a novella and an unpublished novel. The following press comments give an impression of Trakl's appearance between these two blocks:
Trakl's reading, however, spoke with the convincing strength of an odd spiritual personality.
Unfortunately, the poet read too weakly,
as if out of concealments, from pasts or futures and only later one could recognize words and sentences in the monotonous prayerful trace-like speech of this already outwardly strange person, then pictures and rhythms, which form his futuristic poetry.
With him everything becomes image or parable,
barters
in his soul into other expressionistic possibilities, which are not appropriate for humans today,
but nevertheless are delivered so convincingly that one believes their possibility. However, when will this poet's time arrive? -
Because a poet, bartering everything in himself, is certainly this quiet human, each of his poems persuades of this, operating like revelations.
But the public, today and tomorrow, won't understand him for a long time, and the paid applauders, who did so loudly, least of all.
(Allgemeiner Tiroler Anzeiger Nr. 286, 12/13/1913)
Georg Trakl harvested rich applause with his brilliant poems (The Young Maid - Sebastian in Dream - Evening Muse - Elis - Sonja - Afra - Kaspar Hauser Song - Helian), although his kind of reading is better suited for an intimate gathering than for a large hall and occasionally he spoke so soft that his voice became barely audible. The evening was a literary event for Innsbruck, for which the organizers will receive the connoisseurs' full thanks.
(Innsbrucker illustrierte Neueste Nachrichten Nr. 12, 12/14/1913)