2023-10-17 08:23:48
In Austria there is only one city that can be called a major city, and that is Vienna. Everywhere else, like Ingeborg Bachmann, born in Klagenfurt in 1926, you grow up in the provinces or in the countryside. In the mid-1940s, the writer moved to Vienna, as evidenced by her literary “Ungargassenland,” among other things. Further stations followed, Zurich, Berlin, Rome.
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If one believes the geography and the media coverage surrounding the annual ‘Bachmann Prize’, Klagenfurt is located on Lake Wörthersee. The only certainty in Bachmann’s work is this: “Bohemia is by the sea”, one of her most famous poems. Its title makes it clear on what matter this narrator can be trusted: that the places in the poetic text can be thought of as utopias. Their situation is fictional, but precisely anchored: “If the bridges here are intact, I’m walking on good ground.”
There are Austrian provincial towns where you can live, but their structure is not very urban, apart from a small old town center and a few high-rise buildings. This must be said before you start reading Ingeborg Bachmann’s autobiographical story “Youth in an Austrian City” to find out something about the poet’s beginnings: “One rarely moved to this city from another city because theirs temptations were too small; “People came from the villages because the farms were too small (…).” This is less a text about youth than about childhood, and it is suitable as an introduction to reading Bachmann.
In my case it was a re-reading, and I started with the author’s “Complete Stories”. “On nice October days, coming from Radetzkystrasse, you can see a group of trees in the sun next to the city theater.” Such are the beginnings of Ingeborg Bachmann. You have to read carefully not to miss how carefully it is written, word for word. The exact location, Radetzkystrasse, meets an approximate, everyday and generalizable possibility: seeing a group of trees in the sun. And then there is the tree whose leaves glow so brightly red in autumn that the city can now be “recognized” in its light. What a movement of the gaze is undertaken in the description!
Old words, new words
For Bachmann, seeing and writing often take place through recognition and remembering. Rarely is there no room for doubt: that things are or will remain as they appeared the first time. “The children take off old words and put on new ones.” Because the metaphors and phrases in our language don’t wear out through use: “I don’t like anything anymore,” she wrote in her last poem, “No Delicatessen,” published during her lifetime.
Ingeborg Bachmann achieved early success as an author, already in her twenties. She is praised for her poetry, discussed and put on the cover of “Spiegel” – with a photo that hardly looks like her. In general, there are numerous portraits of the author, and some of them have become almost iconic. Images of fame and posthumous fame. The inscription on a house wall, Beatrixgasse 26, Vienna: “Ingeborg Bachmann lived in this house from 1946 to 1949”. Critics then resented her later turning away from writing poetry. Today professional perception has changed, probably in favor of her prose.
Ingeborg Bachmann, 1964
What: Kurt Husnik
Many of these images are currently gathered in an exhibition at the Vienna Literature Museum entitled “Homage”, printed in the accompanying catalog in the book series of the literary archive at Zsolnay Verlag: Ingeborg Bachmann at the typewriter, 1950s. Ingeborg Bachmann signing in 1964, both hands full. Ingeborg Bachmann in Rome 1967/68, in a red cape with yellow lining she looks like a prince from a Czech fairy tale film. Ingeborg Bachmann on the streets of Rome in 1968, deep in conversation with a stallholder while buying tomatoes. The latter could be a protagonist from “What I Saw and Heard in Rome”. However, it would not be very precise if, when reading the above-mentioned essay, Rome were confused with Rome: the word with the city, the text with tourism.
When I grew up in a small Austrian town, formerly a market town, I began reading literary texts from Bachmann and Celan, without knowing at the time about their connection, love and friendship. I was able to read the impressive correspondence “Herzzeit” much later, published in 2009. A teacher at the high school had tried to attract the few young readers in the class at the time; he also suggested Handke, Bernhard, HC Artmann, Ilse Aichinger. This resulted in a typical Austrian reading book of 20th century literature. “The children read their eyes sore,” says Bachmann’s story. If you didn’t want to read, you had to go skiing in the winter. In summer you still had the opportunity to practice trampoline jumping in the forest pool.
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Summers in Vienna are different today, especially hotter. The leaves of the chestnut trees on the Ringstrasse change color early, eaten by the larvae of the leaf miner. A few years ago I met “Malina”, Bachmann’s only novel, which, like the “Types of Death”, did not remain a fragment, was reread. In summer, on the shore. According to the waltz music, Vienna is located on the Danube, but you can’t even see the river from the city. You have to drive a little further out for this. I found “Malina” great, with the laughter and splashing of the swimmers, stand-up paddlers and pedal boaters in the background. I really had to laugh sometimes! The novel was made into a film in the early 1990s; I vaguely remember the meaningful faces of Isabelle Huppert and Mathieu Carrière. Elfriede Jelinek wrote the script. You can check out what Jelinek has to say about Bachmann (in an interview with Boris Manner in 1990) on YouTube. “Stable video,” commented one user below.
Youth in an Austrian city: stability? Perhaps. Wanderlust, and the longing desire to go away. Later, during my studies, read again: with Hans Höller in Salzburg at the Institute for German Studies, author of numerous secondary texts on Ingeborg Bachmann. (Co-)editor of the last poems and numerous correspondence that were published by Piper and Suhrkamp, Bachmann’s house publishers during his lifetime. I recently only wanted to read briefly into Ingeborg Bachmann’s correspondence with Max Frisch, “We didn’t do it well”, one of the most recent publications of this kind, but it got stuck for nights.
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Recently, the question of the admissibility of publications that link the author’s biography even more closely with the work, make private matters public, and provide insight into the poet’s private sphere, which she expressly wanted to avoid during her lifetime, has been heard more frequently. At the same time, Ingeborg Bachmann was a writer who cleverly used her appearance for her own work. We now have the opportunity to convince ourselves of the literary content of this letter. As documents, they provide an opportunity for further discussion, generate attention on the book market and, it is hoped, convey an understanding of their work. As a writer I am against it, but as a reader I am amoral – and far too curious.
Put Bachmann aside and stop reading for a long time? These phases also exist in the reader’s life. Today I also perceive the atmosphere of the ‘post-war period’ in their texts, more strongly than when I was a student. This image of women and men, the pathos and the sometimes high tone, trained on the myths of ancient Greece, on Hölderlin, Rilke, Heidegger. The spirit of optimism in these years, and all the disappointments that politics, life and love presented again. For her and him. For the you and me in these texts: “For Paul – / exchanged in order to be comforted / Ingeborg / in December 1953,” is the dedication of “The Hours of Time,” quoting Paul Celan. This repetition of individual movements and motifs, the continuing playing, can be found in Bachmann’s entire work.
And this is what happens to the reader who has been reading Bachmann since her youth: that individual terms and lines have become catchy tunes, insider jokes, running gags of literature, linguistic anchors and handholds. “Delete the lupins!” is another one of those strange sentences that you can no longer forget. Delete the lupins: as if they were burning red, the flowers.
Beginnings of poems that remain
Did I say earlier: post-war period? Ingeborg Bachmann always wanted to contradict the idea that the war was over: “The war will no longer be declared, but will continue,” says her famous poem “All Days”. I know the beginning of the poem, like many of Bachmann’s beginnings, by heart. How the beginnings of her poems and stories, with their bold imperatives or vague inventories, are perhaps preferable to the endings, which are tragic or overly strategically questioning.
End of August in 2023, on the banks of the Danube. Fireworks are shot into the black night sky, and for minutes they unfold their spray, bright red. At the end the horn of an excursion boat sounds and the passengers clap. “The Danube is the Danube!” shouts the neighbor across the street. Summer is over, applause. They clap because they don’t want to say goodbye.
The city theater still stands at the end of Radetzkystrasse in Klagenfurt. There are benches in front of it from which you can see the deciduous trees, both old and newly planted. Maybe this October they will shine so brightly and red again that you can recognize something in their light.
The writer Teresa Präauer, born in 1979, lives in Vienna. Her most recent novel “Cooking in the Wrong Century” (Wallstein) was on the longlist for the German Book Prize.
The Ingeborg Bachmann exhibition mentioned in the text can be seen in the Literaturhaus Vienna until November 5th, 2023. It will be shown in the Literaturhaus Munich from December 14th, 2023 (until June 2nd, 2024). The Catalog for the exhibition was published by Zsolnay-Verlag and is also worth reading as just a book.
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