Critical Writings of Ingeborg Bachmann

INGEBORG BACHMANN was an Austrian poet and author, regarded as one of the major voices of German-language literature in the 20th century. KAREN R. ACHBERGER is Professor of German at St. Olaf College. KARL IVAN SOLIBAKKE is Associate Professor of German and Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences for Budget and Long-Range Planning at Syracuse University.

• AcknowledgmentsNotes on TranslationIntroduction1. Autobiographical Writings and Intimate ReflectionsBiographical NoteGroup 47Attempt at an AutobiographyOn Giuseppe UngarettiAdmittedlyWitold Gombrowicz2. PhilosophyCommentaryThe Vienna Circle: Logical Positivism-Philosophy as ScienceLudwig Wittgenstein-A Chapter of the Most Recent History of PhilosophyLogic as MysticismThe Sayable and the Unsayable3. Modern LiteratureCommentaryFranz Kafka: AmerikaInto the MillenniumThe Man Without QualitiesThe World of Marcel Proust: Views of a PandemoniumPlaying Watten and Other Writings (On Thomas Bernhard) An AttemptBertolt Brecht: Preface to an Anthology of His PoetryThe Bell Jar / The Quintessential Horror (On Sylvia Plath)4. Visual Rhetoric and PoeticsCommentaryWhat I Saw and Heard in RomeThe Love of God and Affliction: The Path of Simone WeilOn the Trail of LanguageTo What End Poems?On the Genesis of the Title "In Apulia"The Poem Addressing the Reader5. MusicCommentaryWondrous MusicMusic and PoetryGenesis of a LibrettoOtelloHommage à Maria CallasNotes on the Libretto6. The Frankfurt Lectures and Other SpeechesCommentaryTruth is Within Human Reach (Acceptance Speech for the Radio Play Prize of the German Union of the War Blind)The First Frankfurt Lecture: Problems of Contemporary LiteratureI. Questions and Pseudo-QuestionsThe Second Frankfurt Lecture: On PoemsThe Third Frankfurt Lecture: Concerning the IThe Fourth Frankfurt Lecture: NamesThe Fifth Frankfurt Lecture: Literature as UtopiaOn Receiving the Anton Wildgans PrizeBibliographyIndex

Though best known today for her poems and novels, Bachmann was a serious student of philosophy, an incisive essayist, and an influential commentator on Europe's postwar intellectual and artistic scene. [This] new volume of her critical writings . . . makes this other dimension of her work available to readers in English for the first time. . . . [T]hough Bachmann felt language to be an obstacle to the full expression of being, only when immersed in it does she feel herself. Achberger and Solibakke help us to see behind this self-imposed curtain. . . . The Critical Writings remind us that Bachmann's utopian pursuit, though cut short, aimed for so much more - and that amid the collapse of proofs in our own day, the salvo of the future remains ours to write.