Ingeborg Bachmann's Complete Works Published by Actes Sud

Actes Sud has published a comprehensive collection of writings by Austrian poet and novelist Ingeborg Bachmann, reviewed by Patrick Amine in art press. Thomas Bernhard called Bachmann the most intelligent and important poet of Austria. She left Austria and settled permanently in Rome in 1965, where she died in 1973 in a fire in her room—a death that remains ambiguous, accident or suicide. In 1953 she won the Group 47 prize for 'Die gestundete Zeit' and became known for her Frankfurt lectures on poetry, which discuss Baudelaire and Svevo and are included in this volume. Nine other works appear, including 'Das dreißigste Jahr', 'Franza' (unfinished novel), 'Der gute Gott von Manhattan', 'Briefe an Felician', 'Drei Wege zum See', 'Requiem für Fanny Goldman', and the remarkable 'Was ich in Rom sah und hörte'. Bachmann wrote, 'No new world without a new language,' and her writing is characterized by lyrical explosions, staccato prose, and a seismographic quality that reveals childhood fears. Bernhard noted she had 'very early found the door to hell' and was broken by the world around her, persecuted even abroad by the baseness of her homeland. For Bachmann, the self is the seat of all dramas: 'All these games, you invented them, number games and word games, dream games and love games.' This collection marks an important rediscovery.