Er ist wohl kein Opfer des Krieges. Es war mir immer unbegreiflich, daß er leben konnte. Sein Irrsinn rang mit göttlichen Dingen [...].
He was hardly a victim of war. It was always incomprehensible to me that he could live at all. His insanity wrestled with godly things ...
Karl Kraus: Briefe an Sidonie Nádherný I, 83. Zitiert nach: Gerald Stieg: Der Brenner und die Fackel. Salzburg: Otto Müller 1976, 270.
Letter to Sidonie Nádherný, on 13/14 of November, 1914.
I imagine that even the initiated experiences these views and insights as an outsider pressed against panes of glass: for Trakl's experience occurs like mirror images and fills its entire space, which, like the space in the mirror, cannot be entered.
Rainer Maria Rilke after reading Georg Trakl's first volume of poetry Sebastian in Dream, published posthumously in 1915.
quoted in Ignaz Zangerle, ed., Erinnerung an Georg Trakl: Zeugnisse und Briefe, 2nd edition (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1959), p. 11.