Ingeborg Bachmann

Bachmann's doctoral dissertation expresses her growing disillusionment with Heideggerian existentialism, which was in part resolved through her growing interest in Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus significantly influenced her relationship to language.[8] During her lifetime, Bachmann was known mostly for her two collections of poetry, Die gestundete Zeit and Anrufung des Grossen Bären.[9]

Bachmann's literary work focuses on themes like personal boundaries, establishment of the truth, and philosophy of language, the latter in the tradition of Wittgenstein. Many of her prose works represent the struggles of women to survive and to find a voice in post-war society. She also addresses the histories of imperialism and fascism, in particular, the persistence of imperialist ideas in the present.[10] Fascism was a recurring theme in her writings. In her novel Der Fall Franza (The Case of Franza) Bachmann argued that fascism had not died in 1945 but had survived in the German speaking world of the 1960s in human relations and particularly in men's oppression of women. In Germany the achievements of the women's rights campaign at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century had been systematically undone by the fascist Nazi regime in the 1930s. Bachmann's engagement with fascism followed that of other women writers who in the immediate post-war period dealt with fascism from a woman's perspective, such as Anna Seghers, Ilse Aichinger, Ingeborg Drewitz and Christa Wolf.[11]

Bachmann was also in the vanguard of Austrian women writers who discovered in their private lives the political realities from which they attempted to achieve emancipation. Bachmann's writings and those of Barbara Frischmuth, Brigitte Schwaiger and Anna Mitgutsch were widely published in Germany. Male Austrian authors such as Franz Innerhofer, Josef Winkler and Peter Turrini wrote equally popular works on traumatic experiences of socialisation. Often these authors produced their works for major German publishing houses. After Bachmann's death in 1973 Austrian writers such as Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke and Elfriede Jelinek continued the tradition of Austrian literature in Germany.[12]

Between November 1959 and February 1960 Bachmann gave five lectures on poetics at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Known as the Frankfurter Vorlesungen: Probleme zeitgenössischer Dichtung (Frankfurt Lectures: Problems of Contemporary Writings) they are historically and substantively Bachmann's central work. In it she explained recurring themes in her early literary publications and she discussed the function of literature in society.[13] Bachmann insisted that literature had to be viewed in its historic context, thus foreshadowing a rising interest in studying the connection between literary discourse and the contemporary understanding of history.[14]

In the first lecture on Fragen und Scheinfragen (Questions and Pseudo Questions) Bachmann focused on the role of writers in the post-war society and lists essential questions that are "destructive and frightening in their simplicity". They are: why write? What do we mean by change and why do we want it through art? What are the limitations of the writer who wants to bring about change? Bachmann asserted that the great literary accomplishments of the 20th century were expressions in language and thus the poetic moral and intellectual renewal. In her mind the writer's new thinking and experience formed the core of the literary works. This in turn lets a writer come closer to a new language. She stressed that a new language was inhabited by a new spirit. Thus a writer may despair over the importance of language and she cited Hugo von Hofmannsthal's Ein Brief (1902) as the first articulation of this problem.[15]

The second lecture Über Gedichte (On Poems) distinguishes poetry with its new power to grasp reality in its language, from other genres such as novels and plays. With reference to Günter Eich and Stefan George she identified a new generation of poet-prophets whose mission it was to lead the world to the discovery of an "ever purer heaven of art". She set these poets apart from the surrealists who aspired to violence and the futurists who claimed that "war is beautiful". She argued that these two movements exemplified art-for-art's sake and that the careers of Gottfried Benn and Ezra Pound exemplified the friendship between pure aestheticism with political barbarism. She referenced Kafka on the need to "take the axe to the frozen sea in us" and the refusal to remain silent about the crimes in our world. In the lecture she also named writings of Nelly Sachs, Marie Luise Kaschnitz, Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Paul Celan as examples of new poetry.[16]

In the third lecture on Das schreibende Ich (The Writing "I") Bachmann addressed the question of the first-person narrator. She was concerned with the accountability and authority, the authenticity and reliability of a person of narrating a work. She distinguished between the unproblematic "I" in letters and diaries which conceal the person from the author, and the unproblematic "I" in memoirs. She argued that Henry Miller and Louis-Ferdinand Céline placed themselves and their own personal experience directly at the centre of their novels. She referenced Tolstoy's The Kreuzer Sonata and Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead as first-person narrators of the inner story. She argued that narrators could provide a new treatment of time (for example Italo Svevo), of material (for example Proust) or of space (for example Hans Henny Jahnn). Bachmann asserted that in the modern novel the "I" had shifted and the narrator no longer lives the story, instead the story is in the narrator.[17]

In the fourth lecture Der Umgang mit Namen (The Close association with Names) Bachmann explored how names could have a life of their own. She discussed the use of names in contemporary literature. She identified "denied names" such as in Kafka's The Castle, "ironic naming" by Thomas Mann, "name games" in James Joyce's Ulysses and instances where the identity of the character is not secured by a name but by the context, such as in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.[18]

In the fifth lecture on Literatur als Utopie (Literature as Utopia) she turned to the question of what makes literature utopian. She argued that it was the process that was set in motion in the writer and reader as a result of their interaction with literature that made a work utopian. She argued that literature could make us aware of the lack, both in the work and in our own world. Readers could remove this lack by giving the work a chance in our time. Thus she argued each work of literature is "a realm which reaches forward and has unknown limits".[19] Bachmann's understanding of utopia as direction rather than a goal, and her argument that it was the function of literature to take an utopian direction stemmed from Robert Musil who had analysed European modernism in his dissertation on Ernst Mach.[20]

The Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, awarded annually in Klagenfurt since 1977, is named after her.[30]

The Dreamed Ones (Die Geträumten; 2016), is a feature film based on the almost 20-year correspondence between Bachmann and poet Paul Celan.[31] It was directed by Ruth Beckermann, and won several awards.[32]

A biographical film, Ingeborg Bachmann – Journey into the Desert, starring Vicky Krieps as Bachmann and directed by Margarethe von Trotta, premiered at 73rd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2023, and gets a cinema release on 26 October 2023.[33] The film focuses on her relationship with Max Frisch and the impact it had on her life. It also depicts her friends, composer Hans Werner Henze, and writer Adolf Opel, with whom she travelled to Egypt to experience the desert.[34]

• 1953: Die gestundete Zeit.
• 1956: Anrufung des Grossen Bären.
• 2000: Ich weiß keine bessere Welt. (Unpublished Poems)
  • 2006: Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann. translator Peter Filkins, Zephyr Press, ISBN 978-0-939010-84-4.

• 1952: Ein Geschäft mit Träumen.
• 1955: Die Zikaden.
• 1959: Der gute Gott von Manhattan (won the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden in 1959).
• 2011: Die Radiofamilie.
  • The Radio Family, translated by Mike Mitchell (2014). ISBN 9780857421913.

• 1960: Der Prinz von Homburg.
• 1965: Der junge Lord.

• Das dreißigste Jahr (1961).
  • The Thirtieth Year, translated by Michael Bullock (1964).
• Simultan (1972).
  • Three Paths to the Lake, translated by Mary Fran Gilbert (1989). The eponymous short story in this collection was adapted as a film by Michael Haneke in 1976.

• Malina (1971).
  • Malina. Translated by Philip Boehm (1990; revised 2019). ISBN 9780241366240.

• Der Fall Franza / Requiem für Fanny Goldmann (Piper, 1979).
  • The Book of Franza and Requiem for Fanny Goldmann, translated by Peter Filkins (Evanstons: Northwestern University Press, 2010). ISBN 978-0810127548.
• "Todesarten"-Projekt (Piper, 1995). Compiles:
  • Todesarten, Ein Ort für Zufalle, Wüstenbuch, Requiem für Fanny Goldmann, Goldmann/Rottwitz-Roman und andere Texte
  • Das Buch Franza
  • Malina (2 v. )
  • Der "Simultan"-Band und andere späte Erzählungen.
• Das Buch Goldmann, ed. by Marie Luise Wandruszka (Munich; Berlin: Piper; Suhrkamp, 2022). ISBN 978-3518426012.

• 1959: Die Wahrheit ist dem Menschen zumutbar (poetological speech at a German presentation of awards).
• 1955: Frankfurter Vorlesungen (lecture on problems of contemporary literature).
  • The Critical Writings of Ingeborg Bachmann, ed. and trans. by Karen R. Achberger and Karl Ivan Solibakke (Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House 2021). ISBN 9781571139443.
• 1983 [interviews from 1953–1973], Wir müssen wahre Sätze finden. Gespräche und Interviews, ed. by Christine Koschel and Inge von Weidenbaum (Munich: Piper, 1983). ISBN 9783492027243.

• Bachmann, Ingeborg; Henze, Hans Werner; Höller, Hans (2004). Briefe einer Freundschaft (in German). München: Piper. ISBN 3-492-04608-8. OCLC 56492391.
• ——; Celan, Paul; Celan-Lestrange, Gisèle; Frisch, Max; Badiou, Bertrand (2008). Herzzeit : Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, der Briefwechsel : mit den Briefwechseln zwischen Paul Celan und Max Frisch sowie zwischen Ingeborg Bachmann und Gisele Celan-Lestrange (in German). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ISBN 978-3-518-42033-1. OCLC 244654481.
  • ——; Celan, Paul; Badiou, Bertrand (2010). Correspondence : Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan : with the correspondences between Paul Celan and Max Frisch and between Ingeborg Bachmann and Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. London: Seagull Books. ISBN 978-1-906497-44-6. OCLC 457149489.
• ——; Bischof, Peter (1991). Briefe an Felician. München: Piper. ISBN 3-492-03585-X. OCLC 28093251.
  • ——; Searls, Damion (2004). Letters to Felician. København: Green Integer. ISBN 1-931243-16-6. OCLC 55591384.
• ——; Höller, Hans (2010). Kriegstagebuch : mit Briefen von Jack Hamesh an Ingeborg Bachmann (in German). Berlin: Suhrkamp. ISBN 978-3-518-42145-1. OCLC 613308412.
  • ——; Hamesh, Jack; Höller, Hans; Mitchell, Mike (2011). War diary : with letters from Jack Hamesh. London: Seagull Books. ISBN 978-0-85742-008-4. OCLC 758953009.
• ——; Schiffermüller, Isolde; Pelloni, Gabriella (2017). "Male oscuro" : Aufzeichnungen aus der Zeit der Krankheit : Traumnotate, Briefe, Brief- und Redeentwürfe (in German). München. ISBN 978-3-518-42602-9. OCLC 988090978.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• ——; Frisch, Max; Höller, Hans; Langer, Renate; Strässle, Thomas; Wiedemann, Barbara (2022). »Wir haben es nicht gut gemacht.« der Briefwechsel : mit Briefen von Verwandten, Freunden und Bekannten (in German). München. ISBN 978-3-518-43069-9. OCLC 1350789492.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)[35]

• Bachmann, Ingeborg; Pichl, Robert; Wallner, Friedrich (1985). Die kritische Aufnahme der Existentialphilosophie Martin Heideggers (in German). München: Piper. ISBN 3-492-02786-5. OCLC 19351796.