A private utopia
The life of anti-war writer Ingerborg Bachmann is the subject of the Levention Museum’s latest exhibition
“I want war to come to an end”. This sentence from Ingerborg Bachmann’s novel Malina could stand as a motto for her entire work. Her poems, radio plays, short stories, novels, and essays in literary theory present a large body of anti-war writing covering many genres and forms.
In a 1964 emotional diary entry Bachmann wishes “that everyone, without distinction and for ever, be permitted to live and work, and eat and sleep without fear… and to also have the right to stubbornly demand that the difficulties of conducting peace shall find no thoughtless partial solutions, no emphatic and sentimental ones, no solutions that are dangerous in the long term and cobbled together in the short term”. If only the artist knew that over thirty years after her death, her views would be simply idealised and classed as nothing more than ‘utopian ideals’ in this age of political turmoil plagued by war and human disaster.
This great Austrian writer was born in 1926 in Klangenfurt and at the tender age of twelve, she experienced the ‘Anschluss’ annexation of Austria by Hitler’s Germany – an event thatwhich caused herpromoted deep- seated shock and was to that determined her future life. The march of Nazi troops into her town was never to be forgotten, as she continually returns to this sad period on numerous occasions throughout her lifetime works.
“Watching people around her going to war and never to return, she began to realise the horrific truths of fighting. In her town things felt wrong and empty, her childhood was unfortunately tainted by the idea of disaster and death,” said Exhibition curator, Loukia Hadjigavriel, curator of a current exhibition at Nicosia’s Levention Museum on Bachmann.explains that Bachmann was strongly driven to write against war by these sad events of her childhood:
“Watching people around her going to war and never to return, she began to realise the horrific truths of fighting. In her town things felt wrong and empty, her childhood was unfortunately tainted by the idea of disaster and death”.
It was after Bachmann’s studies in the 1950s that her writing really developed and she achieved renowned with her first volume of poetry, Die gestundete Zeit (Borrowed Time, 1953). She was laterconsequently awarded the prize of the German literary movement ‘Gruppe 47’, and went on to become the most famous young female poet in post-war German literature.
Her renown as a poet made it difficult for her to gain recognition among the critics as a prose writer. It was not until the late 1970s that her volumes of short stories, The Thirteenth Year (1961) Simultaneous (1972), and her only novel to be published during her lifetime Malina (1971), gained recognition as important contemporary literature. Her life came to a tragic end in 1973 as she died from the inhalation of harmful smoke, caused by a fire in her house.
Bachmann’s writings form a singular attempt, through images, music and mythical allusions, to reach beyond the limits of what can be expressed with words, and speak the unspeakable. She pondered alienation and oppression, violence, torture and destruction in her poems and prose. Her poetry shows the influence of ancient antiquity, surrealism and such diverse writers as Klopstock and Rilke. The tone of her poems, written in precise and formally elegant style, is mostly sombre. Dark, powerful images refer to private anguished experiences, mythology, sterile human relationships and arid social events. In her prose works, Bachmann moved more on a social level, although her writings were highly introspective and used lyrical elements. Fascist threats and women’s experiences in a hostile, post-war, patriarchal society, especially set in everyday family life, became equally important and overlapping themes.
“War is no longer declared, it’s prolonged. The outrageous has become the norm”, she wrote in Borrowed Time. “The hero stays far from the action. The weakling has moved into the war zone. The day’s uniform is patience, its medal the wrenched star of hope above the heart”.
As Hadjigavriel emphasises, “Bachmann did not just focus on the scars left by the Second World War,- she problematised the idea of war in general. She writes about the beauty of nature and how it should not be destroyed with bombs, how children should grow up in a natural environment with no nuclear threat. Her thoughts on nuclear war have great implications for our society today and will surely touch the heart of any contemporary reader,” Hadjigavriel said.
The current multi-media exhibition held at the Leventionum Museum in Nicosia, highlightsplaces Bachmann’s Writing against War, a hitherto under-represented aspect of her works, in the centre of attention. A commentary accompanies the exhibited pictures and texts, which are presented in biographical chronological ordery for ease of viewingtransparency. Oversized photographs of war sites provide an interesting visual historical background.
Hitherto unpublished texts will also be shown at this exhibition for the first time, including Bachmann’s war diary from 1945 and unpublished photos from her private estate. Original sound recordings, never before broadcast will be presented, and the last film portrait of Bachmann made in Rome in 1973, will be screened. This video stands in effect as a last will and testament by the poet, in which she holds up her own private utopia of peace in defiance of the ongoing history of war and violence.
Writing Against War
Exhibition on the literary work and concepts of Austrian author Ingeborg Bachmann. Until June 15. Leventionum Museum, 17 Hippocrates St, Laiki Yitonia, Nicosia. Daily 8am-10pm. Tel: 22-661475
Bachman to music
Concert commemorating the life of Ingeborg Bachmann with the Austrian Haydn-Trio. May 28 and 29. Leventionum Museum garden, 17 Hippocrates Str, Laiki Yitonia, Nicosia. 8.30 pm. Tel: 22-661475.
