Editing Ingeborg Bachmann (section)

=== Lectures ===
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.<ref name="Achberger1">{{Cite book |title=Understanding Ingeborg Bachmann: Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature, Band 1 |last=Achberger |first=Karen |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |date=1995 |isbn= 978-0-87249-994-2|pages= [https://archive.org/details/understandinging0000achb/page/60 60]|url= https://archive.org/details/understandinging0000achb/page/60}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Achberger1" />
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 listed some essential questions that she defines "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? According to Karen Achberger <blockquote>Bachmann views the great literary accomplishments of the twentieth century as expressions in language and poetic form of a moral and intellectual renewal in the individual writers; it is the writer's new thinking and experiencing that forms the core of their literary works, and lets them come closer to a new language. (…) Bachmann stresses the need for a new language inhabited by a new spirit. (…) She also associates literary renewal with writers on the verge of silence due to self-doubt and despair over the impotence of language and she cites in this context [[Hugo von Hofmannsthal|Hofmannsthal]]'s ''[[The Lord Chandos Letter|Ein Brief]]'' (1902) … as the first articulation of this dilemma.<ref name="Achberger1" /></blockquote>

In the second lecture, ''Über Gedichte'' (On Poetry), she distinguished 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 consisted in leading the world to the discovery of an "ever purer heaven of art" (George). Bachmann set these poets apart from the [[Surrealism|Surrealists]] who aspired to violence and the [[Futurism|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 "easy friendship between pure aestheticism with political barbarism" (Achberger). She referenced [[Kafka]] on the need (with his words) to "take the axe to the frozen sea in us" and refuse to remain indifferent to the injustices that are perpetrated before our eyes. In the lecture she also named writings of [[Nelly Sachs]], [[Marie Luise Kaschnitz]], [[Hans Magnus Enzensberger]] and [[Paul Celan]] as examples of his concept of new poetry.<ref name="Achberger2">{{Cite book|title= Understanding Ingeborg Bachmann: Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature, Band 1|author= Karen Achberger|publisher= Univ of South Carolina Press|year= 1995|isbn= 978-0-87249-994-2|pages= [https://archive.org/details/understandinging0000achb/page/61 61–62]|url= https://archive.org/details/understandinging0000achb/page/61}}</ref>

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 the person in the position of narrating the work" (Achberger). She distinguished between the unproblematic "I" in letters and diaries, which conceals the person from the author, and the unproblematic "I" in memoirs, in which a "'naive' handling of the first person is requested (Achberger). She argued that [[Henry Miller]] and [[Louis-Ferdinand Céline|Céline]] placed "themselves and their personal experience directly at the centre of their novels" (Achberger). She referenced [[Tolstoy]]'s ''[[The Kreutzer Sonata]]'' and [[Dostoyevsky]]'s ''[[The House of the Dead (novel)|The House of Dead]]'' as first-person narrators of the inner story. She also 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]]). According to Bachmann, in the modern novel the "I" had "shifted: the narrator no longer lives in the story, but rather, the story lives inside the narrator" (Achberger).<ref name="Achberger2" />

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 (novel)|The Castle]]'', "ironic naming" by [[Thomas Mann]], "name games" in [[James Joyce|Joyce]]'s ''[[Ulysses (novel)|Ulysses]]'' and instances where the identity of the character is not secured by a name but by the context, such as in [[William Faulkner|Faulkner]]'s ''[[The Sound and the Fury]]''.<ref name="Achberger3">{{Cite book|title= Understanding Ingeborg Bachmann: Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature, Band 1|author= Karen Achberger|publisher= Univ of South Carolina Press|year= 1995|isbn= 978-0-87249-994-2|pages= [https://archive.org/details/understandinging0000achb/page/63 63]|url= https://archive.org/details/understandinging0000achb/page/63}}</ref>
[[File:Klagenfurt - Musilhaus - Ingeborg Bachmann.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Graffiti portrait of Bachmann at the [[Robert Musil]] Museum in [[Klagenfurt]].]]
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, which made a work utopian. She argued that literature could make us aware of a 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 that each work of literature is "a realm which reaches forward and has unknown limits".<ref name="Achberger1" /> Bachmann's understanding of utopia as a 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 1908 dissertation on [[Ernst Mach]], ''Beitrag zur Beurteilung der Lehren Machs'' (Contribution to the assessment of Mach's theories.<ref name="Achberger3" />