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A los treinta años
This is a collection of stories written by a distinguished German author who died in 1973. Reading these stories entails abandoning the terms of one's own comfort. The author's relentless vision demands that readers allows themselves to be hypnotised, taken over by her repetitive cadences and burning images of grief and loss. And yet, in the beauty of her images there is a tremendous affirmation of the world.
231 pages, hardcover
First published January 1, 1961
128 people are currently reading
3204 people want to read
About the author
Ingeborg Bachmann
183 books612 followers“What actually is possible, however, is transformation. And the transformative effect that emanates from new works leads us to new perception, to a new feeling, new consciousness.” This sentence from Ingeborg Bachmann’s Frankfurt Lectures on Poetics (1959-60) can also be applied to her own self-consciousness as an author, and to the history of her reception. Whether in the form of lyric poetry, short prose, radio plays, libretti, lectures and essays or longer fiction, Bachmann’s œuvre had as its goal and effect “to draw people into the experiences of the writers,” into “new experiences of suffering.” (GuI 139-140). But it was especially her penetrating and artistically original representation of female subjectivity within male-dominated society that unleashed a new wave in the reception of her works.
Although Bachmann’s spectacular early fame derived from her lyric poetry (she received the prestigious Prize of the Gruppe 47 in 1954), she turned more and more towards prose during the 1950’s, having experienced severe doubts about the validity of poetic language. The stories in the collection Das dreißigste Jahr (The Thirtieth Year; 1961) typically present a sudden insight into the inadequacy of the world and its “orders” (e.g. of language, law, politics, or gender roles) and reveal a utopian longing for and effort to imagine a new and truer order. The two stories told from an explicitly female perspective, “Ein Schritt nach Gomorrha” (“A Step towards Gomorrah”) and “Undine geht” (“Undine Goes/Leaves”), are among the earliest feminist texts in postwar German-language literature. Undine accuses male humanity of having ruined not only her life as a woman but the world in general: “You monsters named Hans!” In her later prose (Malina 1971; Simultan 1972; and the posthumously published Der Fall Franza und Requiem für Fanny Goldmann) Bachmann was again ahead of her time, often employing experimental forms to portray women as they are damaged or even destroyed by patriarchal society, in this case modern Vienna. Here one sees how intertwined Bachmann’s preoccupation with female identity and patriarchy is with her diagnosis of the sickness of our age: “I’ve reflected about this question already: where does fascism begin? It doesn’t begin with the first bombs that were dropped…. It begins in relationships between people. Fascism lies at the root of the relationship between a man and a woman….”(GuI 144)
As the daughter of a teacher and a mother who hadn’t been allowed to go to university, Bachmann enjoyed the support and encouragement of both parents; after the war she studied philosophy, German literature and psychology in Innsbruck, Graz and Vienna. She wrote her doctoral dissertation (1950) on the critical reception of Heidegger, whose ideas she condemned as “a seduction … to German irrationality of thought” (GuI 137). From 1957 to 1963, the time of her troubled relationship with Swiss author Max Frisch, Bachmann alternated between Zurich and Rome. She rejected marriage as “an impossible institution. Impossible for a woman who works and thinks and wants something herself” (GuI 144).
From the end of 1965 on Bachmann resided in Rome. Despite her precarious health—she was addicted to pills for years following a faulty medical procedure—she traveled to Poland in 1973. She was just planning a move to Vienna when she died of complications following an accidental fire.
Joey Horsley
Although Bachmann’s spectacular early fame derived from her lyric poetry (she received the prestigious Prize of the Gruppe 47 in 1954), she turned more and more towards prose during the 1950’s, having experienced severe doubts about the validity of poetic language. The stories in the collection Das dreißigste Jahr (The Thirtieth Year; 1961) typically present a sudden insight into the inadequacy of the world and its “orders” (e.g. of language, law, politics, or gender roles) and reveal a utopian longing for and effort to imagine a new and truer order. The two stories told from an explicitly female perspective, “Ein Schritt nach Gomorrha” (“A Step towards Gomorrah”) and “Undine geht” (“Undine Goes/Leaves”), are among the earliest feminist texts in postwar German-language literature. Undine accuses male humanity of having ruined not only her life as a woman but the world in general: “You monsters named Hans!” In her later prose (Malina 1971; Simultan 1972; and the posthumously published Der Fall Franza und Requiem für Fanny Goldmann) Bachmann was again ahead of her time, often employing experimental forms to portray women as they are damaged or even destroyed by patriarchal society, in this case modern Vienna. Here one sees how intertwined Bachmann’s preoccupation with female identity and patriarchy is with her diagnosis of the sickness of our age: “I’ve reflected about this question already: where does fascism begin? It doesn’t begin with the first bombs that were dropped…. It begins in relationships between people. Fascism lies at the root of the relationship between a man and a woman….”(GuI 144)
As the daughter of a teacher and a mother who hadn’t been allowed to go to university, Bachmann enjoyed the support and encouragement of both parents; after the war she studied philosophy, German literature and psychology in Innsbruck, Graz and Vienna. She wrote her doctoral dissertation (1950) on the critical reception of Heidegger, whose ideas she condemned as “a seduction … to German irrationality of thought” (GuI 137). From 1957 to 1963, the time of her troubled relationship with Swiss author Max Frisch, Bachmann alternated between Zurich and Rome. She rejected marriage as “an impossible institution. Impossible for a woman who works and thinks and wants something herself” (GuI 144).
From the end of 1965 on Bachmann resided in Rome. Despite her precarious health—she was addicted to pills for years following a faulty medical procedure—she traveled to Poland in 1973. She was just planning a move to Vienna when she died of complications following an accidental fire.
Joey Horsley
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 160 reviews
June 20, 2020
Youth in an Austrian Town
The Thirtieth Year
Everything
Among Murderers and Madmen
A Step Towards Gomorrah
A Wildermuth
Undine Goes
Reading these seven stories, plus some poetry from a couple of years ago, makes me wonder just how an Austrian writer like Elfriede Jelinek can be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and not Bachmann. Had she not died untimely aged forty-seven then surely she would have at least been considered. She is, for me anyway, by far the better writer, and could even be seen as the female equivalent to Heinrich Böll, as they are alike in some ways and cover similar themes. Bachmann has influenced the likes of Günter Grass, Christa Wolf, Peter Handke and Max Frisch, of whom she had a relationship with up until 1962, before becoming blighted by alcoholism and drugs in her later years.
The Thirtieth Year was her first collection of short-stories and has been acclaimed as a major work in the post-war era. Haunting, powerful, and brilliantly conceived, the seven tightly constructed stories focus on men and women who lead outwardly normal lives, but whose inner tensions mirror the conflicts and contradictions of a society still coming to terms with the devastating effects of Hitler's regime. Tensions seem to surface at moments of crisis for Bachmann's characters, who experience unexpected self-revelations, but are generally powerless to change the course of their lives. She explores the strained relationships that succumb to the nature of guilt and self-awareness with an immediacy and shrewdness that worked ever so well.
These narratives are not written in the conventional sense, they are rather moments of reflection, impressionistic monologues that delve deep into the troubled waters in which the protagonists find themselves. After 'Youth in an Austrian Town', in which a childhood of dreaded obedience is recalled, 'The Thirtieth Year' sees a man take stock of his life after being involved in a bad car accident. 'Everything' was an affecting look at the mourning process after a father loses interest in his Son before he is accidentally killed. The other four stories see a confrontation with an unknown murder, a Judge suffering a nervous breakdown, a woman tasting life outside of her patriarchal marriage, before closing with the shortest story about the inhumane world being seen by the water nymph Undine.
Bachmann shows human turmoil and breakdown not merely in wavering existential terms, as she realistically portraits her characters bound to their specific social context. Apart from the last story, which was too short and different from the rest, they were all masterfully written.
October 17, 2018
Quando volano le nuvole
“Chi mai vorrà parlarmi di foglie che cadono e di morte bianca di fronte a quest'albero, chi impedirmi di conservarne l'immagine negli occhi e di credere che per me continuerà a risplendere per sempre come in quest'ora e che su di esso non grava la legge del mondo?”
Spesso mi sveglio al mattino scordandomi di aver sognato e tutto a un tratto mi sento privo di forze che servano ad alzarsi, una luce impietosa e perfetta colpisce la zona del mio sguardo sprovvista del coraggio per affrontare una nuova giornata. Ingeborg Bachmann era una poetessa, scriveva per la radio e si ritirò con questo testo nella prosa, nel 1961. Il mondo che Bachmann descrive è doloroso e minaccioso, mette con le spalle al muro, mentre tutto sembra passibile di revoca, la scrittrice stessa si sente revocabile. Qual è allora la possibilità di sopravvivere? Cercare l'altro stato, quell'area dove la facoltà di ricordare si coniuga con la forza della protezione, dove ci si innamora senza sapere di cosa, dove una sorta di dolcezza permette di sfuggire ai silenzi e alle falsità delle relazioni, trovando un assoluto che non è nella verità velenosa, ma nel rimedio radicale del dubbio, sui sentimenti, sui fatti, sulle trasparenze dei nostri impegni. La Bachmann indaga l'orecchio dell'anima e si imbatte in una buona nostalgia, un desiderio barbarico di diversità. Questi racconti sono dedicati all'amore, alla libertà, alla prigione, alla carne forte e oscura, alle stanze segrete, ai sogni tormentosi, alle verità rifiutate: a quella responsabilità che ha nome genitore, a quel delitto detto guerra, alla geometria della giustizia, alla parte più intima e animale dell'essere umano (”la fiera azzurra”). Nei diversi racconti, si legge di persone che crescono e rinascono, di giochi nei parchi, di coscienze e casualità, di viaggi e illusione, di matrimoni sotto il segno della luna, di virilità e memoria, di passioni nascoste, di sdoppiamenti e accuse. Per poter aprire una porta, si deve dare una violenza, o minimo un'attendibile trasformazione. Insomma, in questo libro non c'è proprietà né buoni consigli, ma la prospettiva di una nuova via; ci sono solo le vittime e i mendicanti, il male e le finzioni, la natura rappresentata senza inganni dalle vicende umane, come acqua, pietre, foglie e un'umile notte”.
“Non essere in nessun luogo, in nessun luogo restare”.
“Chi mai vorrà parlarmi di foglie che cadono e di morte bianca di fronte a quest'albero, chi impedirmi di conservarne l'immagine negli occhi e di credere che per me continuerà a risplendere per sempre come in quest'ora e che su di esso non grava la legge del mondo?”
Spesso mi sveglio al mattino scordandomi di aver sognato e tutto a un tratto mi sento privo di forze che servano ad alzarsi, una luce impietosa e perfetta colpisce la zona del mio sguardo sprovvista del coraggio per affrontare una nuova giornata. Ingeborg Bachmann era una poetessa, scriveva per la radio e si ritirò con questo testo nella prosa, nel 1961. Il mondo che Bachmann descrive è doloroso e minaccioso, mette con le spalle al muro, mentre tutto sembra passibile di revoca, la scrittrice stessa si sente revocabile. Qual è allora la possibilità di sopravvivere? Cercare l'altro stato, quell'area dove la facoltà di ricordare si coniuga con la forza della protezione, dove ci si innamora senza sapere di cosa, dove una sorta di dolcezza permette di sfuggire ai silenzi e alle falsità delle relazioni, trovando un assoluto che non è nella verità velenosa, ma nel rimedio radicale del dubbio, sui sentimenti, sui fatti, sulle trasparenze dei nostri impegni. La Bachmann indaga l'orecchio dell'anima e si imbatte in una buona nostalgia, un desiderio barbarico di diversità. Questi racconti sono dedicati all'amore, alla libertà, alla prigione, alla carne forte e oscura, alle stanze segrete, ai sogni tormentosi, alle verità rifiutate: a quella responsabilità che ha nome genitore, a quel delitto detto guerra, alla geometria della giustizia, alla parte più intima e animale dell'essere umano (”la fiera azzurra”). Nei diversi racconti, si legge di persone che crescono e rinascono, di giochi nei parchi, di coscienze e casualità, di viaggi e illusione, di matrimoni sotto il segno della luna, di virilità e memoria, di passioni nascoste, di sdoppiamenti e accuse. Per poter aprire una porta, si deve dare una violenza, o minimo un'attendibile trasformazione. Insomma, in questo libro non c'è proprietà né buoni consigli, ma la prospettiva di una nuova via; ci sono solo le vittime e i mendicanti, il male e le finzioni, la natura rappresentata senza inganni dalle vicende umane, come acqua, pietre, foglie e un'umile notte”.
“Non essere in nessun luogo, in nessun luogo restare”.
March 7, 2025
Zbirka “Trideseta godina”, objavljena 1961. godine, predstavlja prvi prozni iskorak velike austrijske pesnikinje Ingeborg Bahman. Upravo u tom prelasku iz poezije u prozu leži njena ključna osobenost — nešto što se može doživeti kao vrlina ili mana, u zavisnosti od čitalačkog ukusa. Kada veliki pesnk (a Ingeborg je zaista bila pesnička gromada), kroči u prozu, on sa sobom neizbežno unosi i sopstveni lirski prtljag. Tako stanja, autorefleksije i unutrašnji monolozi često preuzimaju primat nad onim što bismo očekivali od klasične naracije.
To, naravno, ne znači da u ovim pričama nema zapleta i raspleta — itekako ih ima, i to vrlo raznolikih — ali je meni ponekad u Bahmaninom pripovedanju falilo za koji gram više narativizacije. Ono u čemu je ona neprikosnoveni majstor, osim jezika, jeste dubina u koju zariva skalpel kroz svoje junake. Tu je prava mesarka: seče pravo u srž, ali rez ostavlja gotovo nevidljiv. I dok junaci stoje tako ogoljeni, ona ti nehajno, kao da stoji za mesarskim pultom, sa cigarom među zubima, baci u ruke kesu pažljivo odmerenih parčića očaja — egzistencijalnog, ljubavnog, jezičkog, identitetskog i društvenog. Prijatno.
Zbirka se sastoji od sedam priča, a svaka se bavi nekom vrstom unutrašnje borbe: između ličnog i društvenog, želja i strahova, neizgovorljivog i jezika. Naravno, svaki dobar pisac jeste opsednut jezikom, ali Ingeborg je opsednuta jezikom na način karakterističan za austrijske pisce — kao nečim što nije samo sredstvo izražavanja, već i prostor krize i preispitivanja.
To, naravno, ne znači da u ovim pričama nema zapleta i raspleta — itekako ih ima, i to vrlo raznolikih — ali je meni ponekad u Bahmaninom pripovedanju falilo za koji gram više narativizacije. Ono u čemu je ona neprikosnoveni majstor, osim jezika, jeste dubina u koju zariva skalpel kroz svoje junake. Tu je prava mesarka: seče pravo u srž, ali rez ostavlja gotovo nevidljiv. I dok junaci stoje tako ogoljeni, ona ti nehajno, kao da stoji za mesarskim pultom, sa cigarom među zubima, baci u ruke kesu pažljivo odmerenih parčića očaja — egzistencijalnog, ljubavnog, jezičkog, identitetskog i društvenog. Prijatno.
Zbirka se sastoji od sedam priča, a svaka se bavi nekom vrstom unutrašnje borbe: između ličnog i društvenog, želja i strahova, neizgovorljivog i jezika. Naravno, svaki dobar pisac jeste opsednut jezikom, ali Ingeborg je opsednuta jezikom na način karakterističan za austrijske pisce — kao nečim što nije samo sredstvo izražavanja, već i prostor krize i preispitivanja.
February 14, 2018
Ich mag Bachmanns Sprachfbulierkunst, fast alle Geschichten waren aber derartig langweilig und über total nutzlose Figuren, die sich einen Wolf schwafeln über total sinnlose Dinge, die kein Schwein interessieren.
Das beginnt beim Dreißigsten Jahr Ich bin grad 50 geworden und meine Midlifecrisis ist ein Lercherlschas gegen die Quarterlifecrisis des Protagonisten - nicht auszuhalten dieses Gewinsel - da wünscht man sich, dass ihm endlich was passiert, damit er einen Grund hat zu lamentieren, und zack ist er da der Autounfall - leider erwischts den anderen. Dem Tode entronnen, entdeckt er nach Monaten der Rekonvaleszenz ein weißes Haar - was für ein lächerliches Drama, nicht mal der Erwähnung wert. Hat dieser Mehlwurm von einem Mann keine anderen Probleme?"
Die Geschichte des Mannes der sein Kind nicht annehmen konnte, ist sosolala nicht ganz so unspannend wie alle anderen, die vom Richter, der über Wahrheit schwafelt, ist auf jeden Fall die perfekte Medikation gegen Schlafstörungen und zwei andere sind nicht der Rede wert.
Lediglich die Kurzgeschichte Unter Mördern und Irren ist grandios. Nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg sitzen Täter und Opfer wieder an einem Tisch in einem Gasthaus. Sie sind voneinander abhängig und geschäftlich miteinander verflochten - die Täter haben es wieder zu was gebracht. Grandiose Beschreibung des Nachkriegsösterreich und wie die Juden mit der laschen Entnazifizierung umgingen.
Fazit: Schöne Sprache aber die Geschichten, die Bachmann erzählt, sind fast nicht der Rede wert. Komisch, dass sie auch so oft das Innenleben von Männern beleuchten und den Kern von männlichen Archetypen festnageln wollte. Das hätte sie als Frau vielleicht lassen sollen, denn es ist ihr meiner Meinung nach überhaupt nicht gelungen.
Das beginnt beim Dreißigsten Jahr Ich bin grad 50 geworden und meine Midlifecrisis ist ein Lercherlschas gegen die Quarterlifecrisis des Protagonisten - nicht auszuhalten dieses Gewinsel - da wünscht man sich, dass ihm endlich was passiert, damit er einen Grund hat zu lamentieren, und zack ist er da der Autounfall - leider erwischts den anderen. Dem Tode entronnen, entdeckt er nach Monaten der Rekonvaleszenz ein weißes Haar - was für ein lächerliches Drama, nicht mal der Erwähnung wert. Hat dieser Mehlwurm von einem Mann keine anderen Probleme?"
Die Geschichte des Mannes der sein Kind nicht annehmen konnte, ist sosolala nicht ganz so unspannend wie alle anderen, die vom Richter, der über Wahrheit schwafelt, ist auf jeden Fall die perfekte Medikation gegen Schlafstörungen und zwei andere sind nicht der Rede wert.
Lediglich die Kurzgeschichte Unter Mördern und Irren ist grandios. Nach dem zweiten Weltkrieg sitzen Täter und Opfer wieder an einem Tisch in einem Gasthaus. Sie sind voneinander abhängig und geschäftlich miteinander verflochten - die Täter haben es wieder zu was gebracht. Grandiose Beschreibung des Nachkriegsösterreich und wie die Juden mit der laschen Entnazifizierung umgingen.
Fazit: Schöne Sprache aber die Geschichten, die Bachmann erzählt, sind fast nicht der Rede wert. Komisch, dass sie auch so oft das Innenleben von Männern beleuchten und den Kern von männlichen Archetypen festnageln wollte. Das hätte sie als Frau vielleicht lassen sollen, denn es ist ihr meiner Meinung nach überhaupt nicht gelungen.
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September 27, 2024A collection of seven stories, all stemming from between 1956 and 1957 and which appeared in print between 1959 and 1962.
They are all post-war stories from an Austrian-born writer. Reading, I noticed something strange, only two of the stories had a female viewpoint character, many of the stories are narrated in the first person and that narrator is always male.
Well, you might say, fiction has been so long dominated by the male persona that even women writers must have tended to conform to it, and indeed the ready presence of male literary role models may well have made it easy, perhaps even natural for women writers to adopt a male voice. But that wasn't the issue for me, nor do I think that I require or expect an attempt by a writer to be proportional representative in their expression. No, there was something peculiar about those narrators and their voices.
The last story in this collection offered me a clue, in it the narrator discusses all the men, all the monsters, called Hans, who she can never forget. These relationships must have all been brief, because she has a lot of Hanses to talk about.
My thought was then that Bachmann was coming to terms with men she had known and dealt with through fiction, was her challenge to herself was to explore why they were so weird, capable only of bizarre and harmful relationships . In one, for instance, a father falls out of love with his son when he watches him doing something perfectly normal. Or maybe the experience of being a woman in Austria was a driver - I think of the story in which the mother is religious but never goes to church because it is only when the rest of the family is out in church that she has an opportunity to have a bath and wash her hair in privacy.
I the first story (youth in an Austrian Town), I loved that the airfield was next to the cemetery. What a juxtaposition, I thought, the heavens and the underworld side by side. But, of course, perhaps that wasn't a metaphor but simply how they were positioned.
Anyway, this collection was a really interesting discovery for me, a writer to explore I think.
They are all post-war stories from an Austrian-born writer. Reading, I noticed something strange, only two of the stories had a female viewpoint character, many of the stories are narrated in the first person and that narrator is always male.
Well, you might say, fiction has been so long dominated by the male persona that even women writers must have tended to conform to it, and indeed the ready presence of male literary role models may well have made it easy, perhaps even natural for women writers to adopt a male voice. But that wasn't the issue for me, nor do I think that I require or expect an attempt by a writer to be proportional representative in their expression. No, there was something peculiar about those narrators and their voices.
The last story in this collection offered me a clue, in it the narrator discusses all the men, all the monsters, called Hans, who she can never forget. These relationships must have all been brief, because she has a lot of Hanses to talk about.
My thought was then that Bachmann was coming to terms with men she had known and dealt with through fiction, was her challenge to herself was to explore why they were so weird, capable only of bizarre and harmful relationships . In one, for instance, a father falls out of love with his son when he watches him doing something perfectly normal. Or maybe the experience of being a woman in Austria was a driver - I think of the story in which the mother is religious but never goes to church because it is only when the rest of the family is out in church that she has an opportunity to have a bath and wash her hair in privacy.
I the first story (youth in an Austrian Town), I loved that the airfield was next to the cemetery. What a juxtaposition, I thought, the heavens and the underworld side by side. But, of course, perhaps that wasn't a metaphor but simply how they were positioned.
Anyway, this collection was a really interesting discovery for me, a writer to explore I think.
April 11, 2022
:О :О :О
Где је опција за хиљаду звездица?
Буквално сам на моменте устајала, одлагала књигу и крстила се у неверици хахаха, полудела сам од ове књиге колико је савршена, не зовем упомоћ јер ми је лепо у том полуђењу
"Разумеш ли ти то добро? Нећу никада делити твоју усамљеност, јер имам своју, од раније, још одавно"
Где је опција за хиљаду звездица?
Буквално сам на моменте устајала, одлагала књигу и крстила се у неверици хахаха, полудела сам од ове књиге колико је савршена, не зовем упомоћ јер ми је лепо у том полуђењу
"Разумеш ли ти то добро? Нећу никада делити твоју усамљеност, јер имам своју, од раније, још одавно"
November 11, 2013
I have heard of Ingeborg Bachmann before, but I have never got around to reading her books. When one of my friends recommended her books highly, I thought I will read some of Bachmann’s books.
The first book I read was ‘The Thirtieth Year’. It is a collection of short stories. It has seven short stories. Some of them are short, but most of them are around 30-40 pages. My favourite story was the title story ‘The Thirtieth Year’. It is about a man who turns thirty and looks back at his past life and remembers his old friends and enemies and the beautiful moments and love he had and the quarrels he got into. This man also thinks about the future and contemplates on what he should be doing with his life. That is all what the plot is about. It can be told in two sentences. It is also described as a short story. Well, who is dear Inge trying to fool? This is no ordinary short story. Well, scratch out that adjective ‘ordinary’. That sentence should read ‘This is no short story’. I find it extremely difficult to describe what this beautiful piece of art is. The best I can come up with is that it is concentrated, exquisite poetry with profound philosophical insights which looks deceptively like a short story. I don’t know how Ingeborg Bachmann managed to pull that of, but she has. The first paragraph of the story grabs your attention – cunning Inge doesn’t miss that first paragraph trick :
When a person enters his thirtieth year people will not stop calling him young. But he himself, although he can discover no changes in himself, becomes unsure; he feels as though he were no longer entitled to claim to be young. And one morning he wakes up, on a day which he will forget, and suddenly lies there unable to get up, struck by harsh rays of light and denuded of every weapon and all courage with which to face the new day...
and the story doesn’t let you go till the end. I found beautiful, deep insights in every page and my highlighting pen was working nonstop. If you don’t believe me, check out these passages, some of my favourite ones.
He will free himself from the people who surround him and if possible he will not go to new ones. He can no longer live among people. They paralyse him, they have explained him according to their own judgment. As soon as a man stays some time in one place he is transmuted into too many shapes, hearsay shapes, and has less and less right to appeal to his own self. Therefore he wishes, henceforth and for ever, to appear in his true shape. He cannot start this here, where he has been living for a long time; but he will do it there, where he will be free.
Why have I spent a whole summer trying to destroy myself in intoxication or to intensify my feelings in intoxication? – Only to avoid becoming aware that I am an abandoned instrument upon which someone, a long time ago, struck a few notes on which I helplessly produce variations, out of which I try furiously to make a piece of sound that bears my handwriting. My handwriting! As if it were important for something to bear my handwriting! Flashes of lightning have passed through trees and split them. Madness has come upon men and inwardly broken them in pieces. Swarms of locusts have descended upon the fields and left the trail of their devouring. Floods have devastated hills and torrents the mountainsides. Earthquakes have not ceased. These are handwritings, the only ones.
He has spent so many useless hours with other people, and although he made no use of the hours now either, he did bend them towards him and sniff at them. He came to enjoy time; its taste was pure and good.
Today he was another man. He felt good only when he was alone, he no longer made demands, demolished the edifice of his wishes, gave up his hopes and became simpler day by day. He began to think humbly of the world. He sought a duty, he wanted to serve. To plant a tree. To procreate a child. Is that modest enough? Is that simple enough?
Love was unbearable. It expected nothing, demanded nothing and gave nothing. It did not allow itself to be fenced in, cultivated and planted with feelings, but stepped over all boundaries and smashed down all feelings.
Men do not love freedom. Wherever it has come into being they have quarrelled with it. I love freedom which I too must betray a thousand times over. This unworthy world is the result of the uninterrupted spurning of freedom.
Did you like them?
My second favourite story or stories rather – there are two actually and I liked both of them equally well – were ‘A Step Towards Gomorrah’ and ‘A Wildermuth’.
Looking at the title, you would have guessed what ‘A Step Towards Gomorrah’ was about. It is about a happily married musician Charlotte, who during the course of an evening, finds herself attracted towards another woman, an attraction which throws light on her present life. Though she is happily married, this new found attraction promises something which will satisfy a deep yearning in her heart and change her life in a profoundly beautiful way. Well, but that is the beauty of a magical evening – there is so much of promise, but when we get up the next morning we have to get back to our mundane life. And Charlotte has to pick up her husband at the railway station the next day morning. Does she or doesn’t she? Does she accept her present mundane life and chug along or does she allow the evening’s promise to flower? You have to read the story to find out. My favourite lines from the story were these :
The arrogance to insist on her own unhappiness, her own loneliness, had always been in her, but only now did it venture to emerge; it blossomed, ran wild, smothered her. She was unredeemable and nobody should have the effrontery to redeem her…
‘A Wildermuth’ is about a judge who tries to find the truth about everything, starting with the cases which come up before him in court. The first part of the story talks about a case which is being argued in his court. Towards the end of the hearing, the judge gets up and starts shouting ‘Stop telling the truth’ or something similar. The second part of the story is told in the first person from the judge’s perspective and it describes how his fascination for the truth started and how it all ended up with his saying ‘Stop telling the truth’. The first part of the story reads like a legal thriller and we hope that there will be twists and turns and we also hope that the person who is charged for murder is really innocent or he has really good reasons for committing the murder. Things don’t turn out that way though. The second part of the story is a philosophical meditation on the nature of truth and whether it can be really ascertained. The judge’s point of view, at the end of the story, is presented in these passages :
Yes, what then is the truth about myself, about anyone? The truth can be defined only in respect of point-like, minute moments of action, steps in the process of feeling, the most minute steps, about one drop after another out of the thought stream. But then it would no longer be possible to deduce that a person had such massive characteristics as ‘thrifty’, ‘good-natured’, ‘cowardly’, ‘thoughtless’. All the thousand thousandths of a second of liking, desire, aversion, calm, agitation that one passes through – what can be deduced from them? One thing only : that a man has done much and suffered much…
…why…must we tell the truth, my friends? Why should we in fact choose this damned truth? So that we should not slip into lies, for lies are human handiwork and the truth is only half human handiwork, for there must be something on the other side – where the facts are – to correspond to it. There must first be something on the other side for a truth to exist. It cannot exist alone.
I’m after the truth. But the further after it I go the further away it is, flickering like a will-o’-the-wisp at all times, at all places, over very object. As though it were only tangible, as though it only had solidity, if one doesn’t move, doesn’t ask many questions, rests content with the crudest facts. It must be set for medium temperatures, medium looks, medium words. Then the result is a continual cheap agreement between object and word, feeling and word, deed and word. The well brought up word that is forced to accept this mute world of buttons and hearts with compassion. Indolent, apathetic word set on agreement at all costs.
And beyond this there are nothing but opinions, slick assertions, opinions about opinions and an opinion about the truth that is worse than the opinions about all truths…
I also liked the story ‘Everything’ which is about a man who wants his son to be different in a fundamental way when compared to other children but when his son turns out like everyone else he stops loving his son. (My summary is inadequate though – this is not exactly what happens, as what happens in the story is more complex than that. That is also one of the themes of this story – the inadequacy of language.) As the narrator describes it :
It was all the same to me whether Fipps went to the grammar school later or not, whether he developed into something worthwhile or not. A worker wants to see his son a doctor, a doctor wants to see his son at least a doctor. I don’t understand that. I didn’t want Fipps to become either cleverer or better than us. Nor did I want to be loved by him; there was no need for him to obey me, no need for him to bend to my will. No, I wanted…I only wanted him to begin from the beginning, to show me with a single gesture that he didn’t have to reflect our gestures. I didn’t see anything new in him. I was newborn, but he wasn’t! It was I, yes, I was the first man and had gambled everything away, and done nothing!
The other stories in the book were interesting too. ‘Undine Goes’ is about a mermaid / water nymph who reveals her own perspective on human beings – on how humans do terrible things but are also endlessly fascinating and how it is very difficult to resist loving them. ‘Among Murderers and Madmen’ is about a few people who were on opposite sides during the war (the Second World War) – some were part of the persecuting side and the others were part of the persecuted side – now sit on the same table as friends and have dinner and the consequences of that. In ‘Youth in an Austrian Town’, the narrator looks back at his childhood in an Austrian town, when dramatic things were afoot and things changed irrevocably. This story had one of my favourite first sentences – it was actually the second sentence, but I am taking poetic licence here :
“The first tree…is so ablaze with autumn, such an immense patch of gold, that it looks like a torch dropped by an angel.”
When I read that sentence, I knew that I was going to love the rest of the book. I was not wrong.
One of the recurring themes across the stories is the inadequacy of language, on how language is imperfect and approximate and how it obscures more than it reveals while trying to describe people, places, events, things, feelings, the atmosphere of a time and place and how we try to be more and more precise and use new words in different layers to describe old ones so that the core meaning at the centre could be revealed. And how we often end up making things more obscure than when we started. It made me think about what Philip Larkin once said about a good poem (as described in the book “It must be Beautiful”) :
A good poem is like an onion. On the outside, both are pleasingly smooth and intriguing, and they become more and more so, as their successive layers of meaning are revealed. His aim was to write the perfect onion.
I can’t resist comparing Ingeborg Bachmann with one of my favourite writers Marlen Haushofer, because both of them are Austrian and both of them had parallel careers. (Bachmann was, of course, more famous of the two in her life time.) The main difference between them, which jumps at me, is this. While reading a Marlen Haushofer novel one gets a feeling that one is talking to one’s mother or one’s favourite aunt and hearing family stories of the past. There is a lot of warmth and love in that conversation. While reading an Ingeborg Bachmann book, the experience is different. It is like having an intellectual conversation with a philosopher who shares her profound insights on the human condition. It is probably because of their backgrounds – Haushofer studied literature and was a homemaker and a writer while Bachmann studied philosophy and was an academic and a writer. Both so different and both such a pleasure to read.
Though Ingeborg Bachmann was a renowned writer in her time, she wrote only a few books. I could find only seven of them in English translation – two collections of short stories, one novel, one collection of two novel fragments, one collection of poetry (published as two different collections, originally), a collection of letters that she and Paul Celan wrote to each other and a war diary. I want to read all of them some day.
The edition of ‘The Thirtieth Year’ I read has a wonderful introduction by Karen Achberger which gives an overview of Ingeborg Bachmann’s life and her work and also discusses all the stories in the book and the themes they explore.
I think you know this already, but I have to say it nevertheless. I loved Ingeborg Bachmann’s ‘The Thirtieth Year’. It is a wonderful piece of poetry in prose which conveys lyrical impressions of people and places and reveals philosophical insights into the human condition. I can’t wait to read my next Bachmann book.
Have you read ‘The Thirtieth Year’ or any other book by Ingeborg Bachmann?
The first book I read was ‘The Thirtieth Year’. It is a collection of short stories. It has seven short stories. Some of them are short, but most of them are around 30-40 pages. My favourite story was the title story ‘The Thirtieth Year’. It is about a man who turns thirty and looks back at his past life and remembers his old friends and enemies and the beautiful moments and love he had and the quarrels he got into. This man also thinks about the future and contemplates on what he should be doing with his life. That is all what the plot is about. It can be told in two sentences. It is also described as a short story. Well, who is dear Inge trying to fool? This is no ordinary short story. Well, scratch out that adjective ‘ordinary’. That sentence should read ‘This is no short story’. I find it extremely difficult to describe what this beautiful piece of art is. The best I can come up with is that it is concentrated, exquisite poetry with profound philosophical insights which looks deceptively like a short story. I don’t know how Ingeborg Bachmann managed to pull that of, but she has. The first paragraph of the story grabs your attention – cunning Inge doesn’t miss that first paragraph trick :
When a person enters his thirtieth year people will not stop calling him young. But he himself, although he can discover no changes in himself, becomes unsure; he feels as though he were no longer entitled to claim to be young. And one morning he wakes up, on a day which he will forget, and suddenly lies there unable to get up, struck by harsh rays of light and denuded of every weapon and all courage with which to face the new day...
and the story doesn’t let you go till the end. I found beautiful, deep insights in every page and my highlighting pen was working nonstop. If you don’t believe me, check out these passages, some of my favourite ones.
He will free himself from the people who surround him and if possible he will not go to new ones. He can no longer live among people. They paralyse him, they have explained him according to their own judgment. As soon as a man stays some time in one place he is transmuted into too many shapes, hearsay shapes, and has less and less right to appeal to his own self. Therefore he wishes, henceforth and for ever, to appear in his true shape. He cannot start this here, where he has been living for a long time; but he will do it there, where he will be free.
Why have I spent a whole summer trying to destroy myself in intoxication or to intensify my feelings in intoxication? – Only to avoid becoming aware that I am an abandoned instrument upon which someone, a long time ago, struck a few notes on which I helplessly produce variations, out of which I try furiously to make a piece of sound that bears my handwriting. My handwriting! As if it were important for something to bear my handwriting! Flashes of lightning have passed through trees and split them. Madness has come upon men and inwardly broken them in pieces. Swarms of locusts have descended upon the fields and left the trail of their devouring. Floods have devastated hills and torrents the mountainsides. Earthquakes have not ceased. These are handwritings, the only ones.
He has spent so many useless hours with other people, and although he made no use of the hours now either, he did bend them towards him and sniff at them. He came to enjoy time; its taste was pure and good.
Today he was another man. He felt good only when he was alone, he no longer made demands, demolished the edifice of his wishes, gave up his hopes and became simpler day by day. He began to think humbly of the world. He sought a duty, he wanted to serve. To plant a tree. To procreate a child. Is that modest enough? Is that simple enough?
Love was unbearable. It expected nothing, demanded nothing and gave nothing. It did not allow itself to be fenced in, cultivated and planted with feelings, but stepped over all boundaries and smashed down all feelings.
Men do not love freedom. Wherever it has come into being they have quarrelled with it. I love freedom which I too must betray a thousand times over. This unworthy world is the result of the uninterrupted spurning of freedom.
Did you like them?
My second favourite story or stories rather – there are two actually and I liked both of them equally well – were ‘A Step Towards Gomorrah’ and ‘A Wildermuth’.
Looking at the title, you would have guessed what ‘A Step Towards Gomorrah’ was about. It is about a happily married musician Charlotte, who during the course of an evening, finds herself attracted towards another woman, an attraction which throws light on her present life. Though she is happily married, this new found attraction promises something which will satisfy a deep yearning in her heart and change her life in a profoundly beautiful way. Well, but that is the beauty of a magical evening – there is so much of promise, but when we get up the next morning we have to get back to our mundane life. And Charlotte has to pick up her husband at the railway station the next day morning. Does she or doesn’t she? Does she accept her present mundane life and chug along or does she allow the evening’s promise to flower? You have to read the story to find out. My favourite lines from the story were these :
The arrogance to insist on her own unhappiness, her own loneliness, had always been in her, but only now did it venture to emerge; it blossomed, ran wild, smothered her. She was unredeemable and nobody should have the effrontery to redeem her…
‘A Wildermuth’ is about a judge who tries to find the truth about everything, starting with the cases which come up before him in court. The first part of the story talks about a case which is being argued in his court. Towards the end of the hearing, the judge gets up and starts shouting ‘Stop telling the truth’ or something similar. The second part of the story is told in the first person from the judge’s perspective and it describes how his fascination for the truth started and how it all ended up with his saying ‘Stop telling the truth’. The first part of the story reads like a legal thriller and we hope that there will be twists and turns and we also hope that the person who is charged for murder is really innocent or he has really good reasons for committing the murder. Things don’t turn out that way though. The second part of the story is a philosophical meditation on the nature of truth and whether it can be really ascertained. The judge’s point of view, at the end of the story, is presented in these passages :
Yes, what then is the truth about myself, about anyone? The truth can be defined only in respect of point-like, minute moments of action, steps in the process of feeling, the most minute steps, about one drop after another out of the thought stream. But then it would no longer be possible to deduce that a person had such massive characteristics as ‘thrifty’, ‘good-natured’, ‘cowardly’, ‘thoughtless’. All the thousand thousandths of a second of liking, desire, aversion, calm, agitation that one passes through – what can be deduced from them? One thing only : that a man has done much and suffered much…
…why…must we tell the truth, my friends? Why should we in fact choose this damned truth? So that we should not slip into lies, for lies are human handiwork and the truth is only half human handiwork, for there must be something on the other side – where the facts are – to correspond to it. There must first be something on the other side for a truth to exist. It cannot exist alone.
I’m after the truth. But the further after it I go the further away it is, flickering like a will-o’-the-wisp at all times, at all places, over very object. As though it were only tangible, as though it only had solidity, if one doesn’t move, doesn’t ask many questions, rests content with the crudest facts. It must be set for medium temperatures, medium looks, medium words. Then the result is a continual cheap agreement between object and word, feeling and word, deed and word. The well brought up word that is forced to accept this mute world of buttons and hearts with compassion. Indolent, apathetic word set on agreement at all costs.
And beyond this there are nothing but opinions, slick assertions, opinions about opinions and an opinion about the truth that is worse than the opinions about all truths…
I also liked the story ‘Everything’ which is about a man who wants his son to be different in a fundamental way when compared to other children but when his son turns out like everyone else he stops loving his son. (My summary is inadequate though – this is not exactly what happens, as what happens in the story is more complex than that. That is also one of the themes of this story – the inadequacy of language.) As the narrator describes it :
It was all the same to me whether Fipps went to the grammar school later or not, whether he developed into something worthwhile or not. A worker wants to see his son a doctor, a doctor wants to see his son at least a doctor. I don’t understand that. I didn’t want Fipps to become either cleverer or better than us. Nor did I want to be loved by him; there was no need for him to obey me, no need for him to bend to my will. No, I wanted…I only wanted him to begin from the beginning, to show me with a single gesture that he didn’t have to reflect our gestures. I didn’t see anything new in him. I was newborn, but he wasn’t! It was I, yes, I was the first man and had gambled everything away, and done nothing!
The other stories in the book were interesting too. ‘Undine Goes’ is about a mermaid / water nymph who reveals her own perspective on human beings – on how humans do terrible things but are also endlessly fascinating and how it is very difficult to resist loving them. ‘Among Murderers and Madmen’ is about a few people who were on opposite sides during the war (the Second World War) – some were part of the persecuting side and the others were part of the persecuted side – now sit on the same table as friends and have dinner and the consequences of that. In ‘Youth in an Austrian Town’, the narrator looks back at his childhood in an Austrian town, when dramatic things were afoot and things changed irrevocably. This story had one of my favourite first sentences – it was actually the second sentence, but I am taking poetic licence here :
“The first tree…is so ablaze with autumn, such an immense patch of gold, that it looks like a torch dropped by an angel.”
When I read that sentence, I knew that I was going to love the rest of the book. I was not wrong.
One of the recurring themes across the stories is the inadequacy of language, on how language is imperfect and approximate and how it obscures more than it reveals while trying to describe people, places, events, things, feelings, the atmosphere of a time and place and how we try to be more and more precise and use new words in different layers to describe old ones so that the core meaning at the centre could be revealed. And how we often end up making things more obscure than when we started. It made me think about what Philip Larkin once said about a good poem (as described in the book “It must be Beautiful”) :
A good poem is like an onion. On the outside, both are pleasingly smooth and intriguing, and they become more and more so, as their successive layers of meaning are revealed. His aim was to write the perfect onion.
I can’t resist comparing Ingeborg Bachmann with one of my favourite writers Marlen Haushofer, because both of them are Austrian and both of them had parallel careers. (Bachmann was, of course, more famous of the two in her life time.) The main difference between them, which jumps at me, is this. While reading a Marlen Haushofer novel one gets a feeling that one is talking to one’s mother or one’s favourite aunt and hearing family stories of the past. There is a lot of warmth and love in that conversation. While reading an Ingeborg Bachmann book, the experience is different. It is like having an intellectual conversation with a philosopher who shares her profound insights on the human condition. It is probably because of their backgrounds – Haushofer studied literature and was a homemaker and a writer while Bachmann studied philosophy and was an academic and a writer. Both so different and both such a pleasure to read.
Though Ingeborg Bachmann was a renowned writer in her time, she wrote only a few books. I could find only seven of them in English translation – two collections of short stories, one novel, one collection of two novel fragments, one collection of poetry (published as two different collections, originally), a collection of letters that she and Paul Celan wrote to each other and a war diary. I want to read all of them some day.
The edition of ‘The Thirtieth Year’ I read has a wonderful introduction by Karen Achberger which gives an overview of Ingeborg Bachmann’s life and her work and also discusses all the stories in the book and the themes they explore.
I think you know this already, but I have to say it nevertheless. I loved Ingeborg Bachmann’s ‘The Thirtieth Year’. It is a wonderful piece of poetry in prose which conveys lyrical impressions of people and places and reveals philosophical insights into the human condition. I can’t wait to read my next Bachmann book.
Have you read ‘The Thirtieth Year’ or any other book by Ingeborg Bachmann?
February 10, 2017
هذا النوع من الكتب الذي يفنيك فيه، ويتنزع منك الخمسة نجوم بكامل ارادتك.
حصّالة ١٨٤ صفحة من إسراء وانغبورغ باخمان مشاعر تبدو كإقتباسات وليس العكس، تحرق أيما تناقض يُعبّر عنه، ستعِده أن لا تتأخر، لأن الجمال مُريب، لم تعد ثمة حماية، تمضي الآلام مرة اخرى
بصورة مختلفة.
-ولكن لا شيء يساوي الذي فيك، ولاشيء يساوي العالم الذي فيك.
لم أعد أستطيع أن أرى في أي طريق مخرجاً. ما كان علينا أن ننجو.
-أشعر أن حزننا مثل قوس يصل من إحدى نهايتي العالم الى النهاية الاخرى.
حصّالة ١٨٤ صفحة من إسراء وانغبورغ باخمان مشاعر تبدو كإقتباسات وليس العكس، تحرق أيما تناقض يُعبّر عنه، ستعِده أن لا تتأخر، لأن الجمال مُريب، لم تعد ثمة حماية، تمضي الآلام مرة اخرى
بصورة مختلفة.
-ولكن لا شيء يساوي الذي فيك، ولاشيء يساوي العالم الذي فيك.
لم أعد أستطيع أن أرى في أي طريق مخرجاً. ما كان علينا أن ننجو.
-أشعر أن حزننا مثل قوس يصل من إحدى نهايتي العالم الى النهاية الاخرى.
July 24, 2007
Ingeborg Bachmann was an Austrian writer, who died in 1973. I first read this collection of stories in 1978, while preparing for a German language exam at the Goethe Institute (the title story of the collection was part of the assigned reading list).
It's hard to describe the appeal of these stories. Often as not, the narrator is well-traveled, European, slightly world-weary, not particularly sympathetic, so that's not it. I suspect it's her exploration of themes such as the choices made by successful people, and the consequences of those choices, difficulties in communicating, questions of language and translation - topics that resonate with me for one reason or another. These stories are probably not for everyone, but I still return to this collection every few years.
It's hard to describe the appeal of these stories. Often as not, the narrator is well-traveled, European, slightly world-weary, not particularly sympathetic, so that's not it. I suspect it's her exploration of themes such as the choices made by successful people, and the consequences of those choices, difficulties in communicating, questions of language and translation - topics that resonate with me for one reason or another. These stories are probably not for everyone, but I still return to this collection every few years.
September 25, 2024
Книга вперто не хотіла мені йти - хоч я вперто хотіла її прочитати.
Мені сподобалося перше оповідання - про таких бідних дітей, які росли в війну і втратили сенси в цьому світі. ...але вони були австрійцями, ну а мені не шкода агресорів - тому післясмак залишився змішаним.
Всі ж інші тексти максимально не резонували і не хотіли відкриватися. Я читала слова, але вони проходили повз.
Мені сподобалося перше оповідання - про таких бідних дітей, які росли в війну і втратили сенси в цьому світі. ...але вони були австрійцями, ну а мені не шкода агресорів - тому післясмак залишився змішаним.
Всі ж інші тексти максимально не резонували і не хотіли відкриватися. Я читала слова, але вони проходили повз.
September 1, 2023
Bachmanni teravapilgulisi ja halastamatuid novelle iseloomustavad uljas keel, läbinägelikkus ja tundeenergia. Ta tegelased on alatasa eksistentsiaalsel ristteel ja sorgivad skalpelliga nii eneses kui end ümbritsevas. Ka Bachmann elas ja kirjutas kirega, kaaslaseks vahe ja täpne sõna, mille piiratus oli samal ajal ta loominguliseks käivitajaks ja kinnisideeks. Kriipiv ja laetud kraam - soovitan sajaga!
April 15, 2024
Збірка оповідань, у якій кожен текст ставить інше запитання до базових запитань, ставить під сумнів людську прошивку, присіпується до того, що таке стосунки, хто така людина, чим є правда і мова.
April 20, 2018
— O dia-a-dia das crianças numa cidade em guerra...
"Podem esquecer o latim e começar a aprender a distinguir os ruídos dos motores no céu. Já não têm de se lavar frequentemente; ninguém se preocupa já com as suas unhas sujas."
— Quando, por vezes, é necessário ver a morte na frente para se valorizar a vida e sossegar das angústias existenciais...
"levanta-te e caminha! Não tens nenhum osso partido."
— A impotência de um pai para impedir que o filho se converta em mais um elemento, igual a todos, de uma sociedade de pessoas infelizes...
"Eu poderia poupar-lhe a culpabilidade, o amor e toda a fatalidade, e libertá-lo para uma outra vida."
e a destruição que a perda de um filho provoca num casal e na mente de cada um dos pais...
"Quando nos sentamos como duas personagens petrificadas à mesa, sinto a nossa tristeza como um arco que vai de uma ponta à outra do mundo — de Hanna a mim — e que nesse arco retesado está preparada uma seta, pronta a atingir o céu imóvel em pleno coração."
— Charlotte tem um casamento sólido sustentado "pela bondade, pela benevolência, pelo apoio, segurança, protecção, fidelidade, toda uma série de coisas respeitáveis que ajudavam a viver." No dia em que Mara a tenta seduzir, Charlotte entra em luta consigo própria e questiona as suas escolhas...
— Desde criança que o juiz Wildermuth é um defensor da Verdade, a qual procurou durante toda a sua vida. Até ao dia em que num julgamento de um crime simples, cuja prova da verdade era um botão de casaco, tem um colapso ao aperceber-se que persegue uma quimera...
"Ah tu, palavra bem domesticada que caridosamente te encarregas deste mundo de botões e corações! Palavra pacata, apática, pronta à concordância em qualquer utilização.
E para além disso acabam por existir só opiniões, afirmações ousadas, opiniões sobre opiniões e uma opinião sobre a verdade pior do que todas as opiniões sobre todas as verdades, pela qual tu por vezes podes ser encostado à parede ou condenado à fogueira, pois que, sendo a opinião em si já tão terrível, quanto o não será mais a verdade."
São estes alguns dos temas dos sete contos intitulados:
e que vão muito além das histórias e personagens.
=================================
"Sob um céu estranho
sombras rosas
sombras
numa terra estranha
entre rosas e sombras
numa água estranha
a minha sombra"
— Ingeborg Bachmann (poema do livro "O Tema Aprazado")
Ingeborg Bachmann nasceu em Klagenfurt, Áustria, no dia 25 de Junho de 1926 e morreu em Roma, Itália, no dia 17 de Outubro de 1973.
Doutorada em Filosofia, iniciou a sua carreira literária com a poesia, abandonando-a mais tarde dedicando-se à prosa, na qual abordava temas sociais. Teve um relacionamento amoroso com Paul Celan que influenciou a expressão poética de ambos.
Morreu aos 47 anos devido a graves queimaduras resultantes de um incêndio, que deflagrou no quarto do hotel em que estava hospedada, que se supõe ter tido origem num cigarro não apagado.
"Podem esquecer o latim e começar a aprender a distinguir os ruídos dos motores no céu. Já não têm de se lavar frequentemente; ninguém se preocupa já com as suas unhas sujas."
— Quando, por vezes, é necessário ver a morte na frente para se valorizar a vida e sossegar das angústias existenciais...
"levanta-te e caminha! Não tens nenhum osso partido."
— A impotência de um pai para impedir que o filho se converta em mais um elemento, igual a todos, de uma sociedade de pessoas infelizes...
"Eu poderia poupar-lhe a culpabilidade, o amor e toda a fatalidade, e libertá-lo para uma outra vida."
e a destruição que a perda de um filho provoca num casal e na mente de cada um dos pais...
"Quando nos sentamos como duas personagens petrificadas à mesa, sinto a nossa tristeza como um arco que vai de uma ponta à outra do mundo — de Hanna a mim — e que nesse arco retesado está preparada uma seta, pronta a atingir o céu imóvel em pleno coração."
— Charlotte tem um casamento sólido sustentado "pela bondade, pela benevolência, pelo apoio, segurança, protecção, fidelidade, toda uma série de coisas respeitáveis que ajudavam a viver." No dia em que Mara a tenta seduzir, Charlotte entra em luta consigo própria e questiona as suas escolhas...
— Desde criança que o juiz Wildermuth é um defensor da Verdade, a qual procurou durante toda a sua vida. Até ao dia em que num julgamento de um crime simples, cuja prova da verdade era um botão de casaco, tem um colapso ao aperceber-se que persegue uma quimera...
"Ah tu, palavra bem domesticada que caridosamente te encarregas deste mundo de botões e corações! Palavra pacata, apática, pronta à concordância em qualquer utilização.
E para além disso acabam por existir só opiniões, afirmações ousadas, opiniões sobre opiniões e uma opinião sobre a verdade pior do que todas as opiniões sobre todas as verdades, pela qual tu por vezes podes ser encostado à parede ou condenado à fogueira, pois que, sendo a opinião em si já tão terrível, quanto o não será mais a verdade."
São estes alguns dos temas dos sete contos intitulados:
Juventude Numa Cidade Austríaca
Trinta Anos
Tudo
Entre Assassinos E Loucos
A Um Passo De Gomorra
A Verdade
O Adeus De Ondina
e que vão muito além das histórias e personagens.
=================================
"Sob um céu estranho
sombras rosas
sombras
numa terra estranha
entre rosas e sombras
numa água estranha
a minha sombra"
— Ingeborg Bachmann (poema do livro "O Tema Aprazado")
Ingeborg Bachmann nasceu em Klagenfurt, Áustria, no dia 25 de Junho de 1926 e morreu em Roma, Itália, no dia 17 de Outubro de 1973.
Doutorada em Filosofia, iniciou a sua carreira literária com a poesia, abandonando-a mais tarde dedicando-se à prosa, na qual abordava temas sociais. Teve um relacionamento amoroso com Paul Celan que influenciou a expressão poética de ambos.
Morreu aos 47 anos devido a graves queimaduras resultantes de um incêndio, que deflagrou no quarto do hotel em que estava hospedada, que se supõe ter tido origem num cigarro não apagado.
May 14, 2019
This is my first exposure to Bachmann. The second half of these stories are great! The first half, while finely spun, are a little less engaging for all their freshness. The earlier pieces especially smack of Thomas Bernhard, who was clearly influenced by her and maybe even taking a cue from Musil. The first few selections are more expressionistic and meandering, whereas the later pieces are more narrative, more engaging, and much more broodworthy.
These make it worth it:
"Among Murderers and Madmen" is about a group of friends who quietly mull over their disparate roles in the war, whether victim or persecutor.
"A Step Towards Gomorrah" is about a musician who hosts a party; one of her guests, a red-skirted young woman lingers, and the musician struggles with the various arguments for her to turn gay and screw the girl.
"A Wildermuth" is about a truth-suckling judge overseeing a case of a rural fool who murdered his father and happens to have the same surname.
These make it worth it:
"Among Murderers and Madmen" is about a group of friends who quietly mull over their disparate roles in the war, whether victim or persecutor.
"A Step Towards Gomorrah" is about a musician who hosts a party; one of her guests, a red-skirted young woman lingers, and the musician struggles with the various arguments for her to turn gay and screw the girl.
"A Wildermuth" is about a truth-suckling judge overseeing a case of a rural fool who murdered his father and happens to have the same surname.
January 25, 2024
«Але ніщо не дорівнює тому, що в тобі, і ніщо не дорівнює світові в тобі…»
Сім оповідань - суцільне поле для роздумів. Стільки тонкощів, неочікуваних тем, несподіваних моментів і поворотів, і водночас як ніжна розповідь, такий собі монолог про все на світі.
Глибоко.
«Чому лише невелике число систем стало панівним? Тому що ми вперто тримаємося звичок, боїмося мислення, яке виходить за межі приписів і заборон, боїмося свободи. Люди не люблять свободи. Хай де вона поставала, вони нею нехтували»
Сім оповідань - суцільне поле для роздумів. Стільки тонкощів, неочікуваних тем, несподіваних моментів і поворотів, і водночас як ніжна розповідь, такий собі монолог про все на світі.
Глибоко.
«Чому лише невелике число систем стало панівним? Тому що ми вперто тримаємося звичок, боїмося мислення, яке виходить за межі приписів і заборон, боїмося свободи. Люди не люблять свободи. Хай де вона поставала, вони нею нехтували»
October 30, 2025
3,25 🌟
красиво, влучно, феміністично – важливі теми, але не можу читати оповіді без сюжету і з роздумами, які постійно перескакують з одного на інше.
хороша книжка, просто не моє.
красиво, влучно, феміністично – важливі теми, але не можу читати оповіді без сюжету і з роздумами, які постійно перескакують з одного на інше.
хороша книжка, просто не моє.
February 21, 2022
Last year I read Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina. It was one of my most masochistic reading experiences immersing myself in it over 4 days, but I think of it often and it (along with Sebald’s works) has had a sort of impact on my reading direction in the past year in several ways.
Now I am going back through some of Bachmann’s other works. I have recently read her Kreigstagebuch (a few ‘war diary’ entries plus several letters from a Jewish soldier she had a brief relationship with in 1944). I think this small collection is more to be appreciated by those who are already familiar with Bachmann and her work.
I then read her short story collection The Thirtieth Year. A much more lucid experience than Malina, maybe with a bit more of a poet’s touch on the page, but still difficult in its own way. Similar to Malina, these stories depict existential breakdowns in their various forms, but these breakdowns, moments of repulsive revelations, are very much rooted in the context of society and the times—namely the years after the Second World War. Sometimes The War is mentioned directly or plays a central role in the story, but more often, its presence is only felt obliquely, through characters unable to cope with the world or characters facing the impotency of language to describe that which is unsayable or, more importantly, to bring about a new world in which the atrocities of The War can never be repeated: “No new world without a new language.”
More quotes:
“The arrogance to insist on her own unhappiness, her own loneliness, had always been in her, but only now did it venture to emerge; it blossomed, ran wild, smothered her. She was unredeemable and nobody should have the effrontery to redeem her, to know the millennium in which the red-blossoming rods that had grown inseparably entangled would spring apart and leave the path open. Come, sleep, come, thousand years, that I may be awoken by another hand.”
“If I had not immersed myself in books, in stories and legends, in newspapers, in reports, if everything communicable had not grown up in me, I should have been a nonentity, a collection of uncomprehended events. (And that might have been a good thing, then I should have thought of something new.) That I can see, that I can hear, are things I do not deserve; but my feelings, those I truly deserve, these herons over white beaches, these wanderers by night, the hungry vagabonds that take my heart as their highroad.”
4.5*
Now I am going back through some of Bachmann’s other works. I have recently read her Kreigstagebuch (a few ‘war diary’ entries plus several letters from a Jewish soldier she had a brief relationship with in 1944). I think this small collection is more to be appreciated by those who are already familiar with Bachmann and her work.
I then read her short story collection The Thirtieth Year. A much more lucid experience than Malina, maybe with a bit more of a poet’s touch on the page, but still difficult in its own way. Similar to Malina, these stories depict existential breakdowns in their various forms, but these breakdowns, moments of repulsive revelations, are very much rooted in the context of society and the times—namely the years after the Second World War. Sometimes The War is mentioned directly or plays a central role in the story, but more often, its presence is only felt obliquely, through characters unable to cope with the world or characters facing the impotency of language to describe that which is unsayable or, more importantly, to bring about a new world in which the atrocities of The War can never be repeated: “No new world without a new language.”
More quotes:
“The arrogance to insist on her own unhappiness, her own loneliness, had always been in her, but only now did it venture to emerge; it blossomed, ran wild, smothered her. She was unredeemable and nobody should have the effrontery to redeem her, to know the millennium in which the red-blossoming rods that had grown inseparably entangled would spring apart and leave the path open. Come, sleep, come, thousand years, that I may be awoken by another hand.”
“If I had not immersed myself in books, in stories and legends, in newspapers, in reports, if everything communicable had not grown up in me, I should have been a nonentity, a collection of uncomprehended events. (And that might have been a good thing, then I should have thought of something new.) That I can see, that I can hear, are things I do not deserve; but my feelings, those I truly deserve, these herons over white beaches, these wanderers by night, the hungry vagabonds that take my heart as their highroad.”
4.5*
August 1, 2023
Читала з олівцем. Спочатку не заходило, не могла налаштуватися, а потім втягнулася і почала розуміти. Там така велика концентрація сенсів, що просто доводилося перечитувати і хотілося ділитися. Ніби - о, боже, ось це відчуття, або цей феномен влучно описано словами. Шикарна книга
August 24, 2020
Bachmanns Sprachgewalt ist ungemein beeindruckend.
April 27, 2019
Remarkable and difficult. Difficult in the same way that a writer such as Franz Kafka or Raduan Nassar is 'difficult', in other words the ideas can be complex and expressed in convoluted passages that are sometimes quite long. But this is no way detracts from the fact that (like Kafka or Nassar) her work flows. These stories nearly always avoid the obvious. And they often state profound truths that someone needed to say (most forcefully for me in the story 'A Wildermuth', which is about the very nature of Truth itself, and how it might not be all it is claimed to be).
Although written in the 1950s and early 1960s most of these pieces haven't dated at all. The only one that seems perhaps a little quaint is 'A Step Towards Gomorrah' because its theme, once shocking, now is rather tame. I was especially impressed with 'Among Murderers and Madmen', a story about the social awkwardness of living just after the war in a country where terrible things were (perhaps) done by the people you are now friendly with. The title story is also a masterpiece. I will confess that these stories required me to make a special effort of concentration, but they were worth it.
In fact these stories are hardly stories as such. They are fictive speculations combining philosophical and moral ideas, ironies, psychological insights and anecdotes or memories. They are intense but also coolly controlled. I am very glad I discovered Bachmann by chance a few months ago (I bought this book in a library sale).
Although written in the 1950s and early 1960s most of these pieces haven't dated at all. The only one that seems perhaps a little quaint is 'A Step Towards Gomorrah' because its theme, once shocking, now is rather tame. I was especially impressed with 'Among Murderers and Madmen', a story about the social awkwardness of living just after the war in a country where terrible things were (perhaps) done by the people you are now friendly with. The title story is also a masterpiece. I will confess that these stories required me to make a special effort of concentration, but they were worth it.
In fact these stories are hardly stories as such. They are fictive speculations combining philosophical and moral ideas, ironies, psychological insights and anecdotes or memories. They are intense but also coolly controlled. I am very glad I discovered Bachmann by chance a few months ago (I bought this book in a library sale).
August 15, 2023
¡Qué maravilla! ¡Mi Bachmann favorita de lo que he leído! Creo que _Todo_ es de los mejores cuentos que he leído en mi vida, y he quedado fascinado por el juego temático en _Un Wildermuth_. Bachmann es la maestra de la incomodidad y el desasosiego tontos, de estos que parecen que no vienen de ningún lado pero que se lo acaban llevando todo por delante, y la manera en la que aquí hace coincidir ese malestar propio del estado del bienestar con la Europa de postguerra me ha parecido interesantísima. La traducción nueva de Cecylia Dreymüller en Tres Molins es gloria bendita para los que venimos de leer las ediciones de los 80. Recomendadísimo.
December 1, 2022
Ranking der Erzählungen und Lieblingsstellen:
1. Das dreißigste Jahr („Darum möchte er sich, von nun an und für immer, in seiner wirklichen Gestalt zeigen. Hier, wo er seit langem sesshaft ist, kann er damit nicht beginnen, aber dort wird er es tun, wo er frei sein wird. Er kommt an und trifft in Rom auf die Gestalt, die er den anderen damals zurückgelassen hat. Sie wird ihm aufgezwungen wie eine Zwangsjacke. (…) Er wird sich nie und nirgends mehr befreien können, von vorn beginnen können. So nicht. Er wartet ab.“)
2. Jugend in einer österreichischen Stadt
3. Ein Schritt nach Gomorrha („Könnte dieses Geschlecht doch noch einmal nach einer Frucht greifen, noch einmal Zorn erregen, sich einmal noch entscheiden für seine Erde! Ein andres Erwachen, eine andere Scham erleben! Dieses Geschlecht war niemals festgelegt.“)
4. Ein Wildermuth („Ja, was ist denn die Wahrheit über mich, über irgendeinen? Die ließe sich doch nur sagen über punktartige, allerkleinste Handlungsmomente, Gefühlsschritte, die allerkleinsten, über Tropfen um Tropfen aus dem Gedankenstrom. Dann ließe sich aber schon nicht mehr folgern, dass einer solch massive Eigenschaften hätte wie ‚sparsam‘, ‚gutmütig‘, ‚feig‘, ‚leichtsinnig‘. Alle die tausend Tausendstelsekunden von Gefallen, Angst, Begierde, Abscheu, Ruhe, Erregung, die einer durchmacht, worauf sollen die schließen lassen! Müssen sie schließen lassen? Auf eins doch nur: dass er von vielem gehabt und gelitten hat …“)
5. Unter Mördern und Irren
6. Alles
7. Undine geht
1. Das dreißigste Jahr („Darum möchte er sich, von nun an und für immer, in seiner wirklichen Gestalt zeigen. Hier, wo er seit langem sesshaft ist, kann er damit nicht beginnen, aber dort wird er es tun, wo er frei sein wird. Er kommt an und trifft in Rom auf die Gestalt, die er den anderen damals zurückgelassen hat. Sie wird ihm aufgezwungen wie eine Zwangsjacke. (…) Er wird sich nie und nirgends mehr befreien können, von vorn beginnen können. So nicht. Er wartet ab.“)
2. Jugend in einer österreichischen Stadt
3. Ein Schritt nach Gomorrha („Könnte dieses Geschlecht doch noch einmal nach einer Frucht greifen, noch einmal Zorn erregen, sich einmal noch entscheiden für seine Erde! Ein andres Erwachen, eine andere Scham erleben! Dieses Geschlecht war niemals festgelegt.“)
4. Ein Wildermuth („Ja, was ist denn die Wahrheit über mich, über irgendeinen? Die ließe sich doch nur sagen über punktartige, allerkleinste Handlungsmomente, Gefühlsschritte, die allerkleinsten, über Tropfen um Tropfen aus dem Gedankenstrom. Dann ließe sich aber schon nicht mehr folgern, dass einer solch massive Eigenschaften hätte wie ‚sparsam‘, ‚gutmütig‘, ‚feig‘, ‚leichtsinnig‘. Alle die tausend Tausendstelsekunden von Gefallen, Angst, Begierde, Abscheu, Ruhe, Erregung, die einer durchmacht, worauf sollen die schließen lassen! Müssen sie schließen lassen? Auf eins doch nur: dass er von vielem gehabt und gelitten hat …“)
5. Unter Mördern und Irren
6. Alles
7. Undine geht
April 21, 2024
deca oči ranjave čitanjem
September 11, 2023
sain aru, et mingile osale minust nii meeldib ja meeldiks, aga kuidagi lõpuni ei läinud naha vahele, äkki sellepärast, et olen ise (juba) kuskil mujal. või selline minevikumina toitmise tunne oli neid jutukesi lugedes – äkki oleks mõnel teisel ajal rohkem südame külge hakanud. igastahes võtan kunagi tulevikus uuesti kätte. praegu suht kehvasti ilukirjandusega niikuinii ka, see võib samuti põhjus olla.
September 21, 2024
На ту мить вона взагалі не знала, чому була з чоловіками і чому за одного з них вийшла. Абсурд якийсь. Вона подумки засміялася і вкусила себе за руку, щоб не заснути
January 7, 2024
Пронизливі короткі замальовки про життя, смерть, втрату і вибір. Неймовірно вдалий переклад, дуже образний і чуттєвий стиль написання. Спочатку варто увійти в перше оповідання поступово вчитуючись, щоби потім закінчити всі інші на одному подиху.
July 18, 2025
So knjige, zaradi katerih se je splačalo trpeti pri Banfiju. To je ena izmed teh.
Read
September 2, 2024Потім ще раз перечитаю. Є речі, які сподобалися, а є ті, що залишили байдужою. То вже непогано.
June 14, 2020
The author, who died in 1973 at age 46, is considered one of the premier writers of post-war Europe. This collection of stories, first published in 1961 in German (as Das dreißigste Jahr) and in 1964 in an English translation by Michael Bullock, covers a range of concepts and themes, but converges in an intense battle of the sexes. Bachmann, more famous for her plays and poetry than for her fiction (her only novel, Malina, was made into a film in 1991), was also a literary critic and philosopher, and her fiction reflects a preoccupation with complex ideas and intellectual abstractions. The loosely dramatic stories collected in this volume are constructed around the clashing rational and irrational impulses that drive human thought and behaviour. They explore ways in which logic and a sense of social responsibility can break down when primal urges take over the human psyche. In "The Thirtieth Year" a young man just turning thirty drops out of his highly structured and emotionally reticent existence and for a year lives a life of pure feeling. In "A Step Towards Gomorrah," deeply ambivalent and conflicted Charlotte succumbs to the naked advances of a much younger woman named Mara, even while she is anticipating the return home of her partner Franz from a business trip. And in "A Wildermuth," respected High Court Judge Wildermuth, who for his entire career has placed the pursuit of truth above all else, suffers a crisis of identity while presiding over a murder case in which the accused shares his last name, ultimately losing faith in his beliefs and his vocation. Throughout the volume, one can detect the author's love-hate relationship with her characters and her profound distrust of human nature. The Thirtieth Year is an iconic volume and a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution of European fiction in the years between WWII and German reunification.
August 5, 2017
A volte sembra di leggere lamette, e rasoi. Racconti molto dissimili - a volte lenti, complessi, altre più scorrevoli - ma pervasi di un sentire che - verrebbe da dire - sembra tipicamente *austriaco*. La stessa aria di Bernhard, di Hoffmannstal, di Schnitzler. La stessa aria delle foreste in quota, rarefatta, gelida, impietosa. Dialoghi (in alcuni punti) che ricordano quelli di Deserto Rosso, di Antonioni. Gli anni d'altronde erano quelli; il malessere, probabilmente, anche. Sempre più utile di questi tempi di plastica, comunque.
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