Max Frisch to Ingeborg Bachmann: “We shall be a disgrace to each other” | papilla

They were the most famous couple in the world of German literature: the Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann, 32, a shining literary star since the great success of his poems. The prayer of the Great Bear And late time, and Swiss Max Frisch, 15, the famous author of novels I’m not calm And Homo fabre. When they met in 1958 in Paris, where Bachmann was visiting her former lover Paul Celan, she was …

They were the most famous couple in the world of German literature: the Austrian Ingeborg Bachmann, 32, a shining literary star since the great success of his poems. The prayer of the Great Bear And late time, and Swiss Max Frisch, 15, the famous author of novels I’m not calm And Homo fabre. When they met in 1958 in Paris, where Bachmann was visiting her former lover Paul Celan, they began a love affair in which they both indulged recklessly while trying to maintain their independence and sexual freedom. His brave project of an open relationship, far from the social norms of the time, lasted four years and ended in defeat.

“We did not do well,” Frisch admitted in a letter, and that was the title of the huge volume (over a thousand pages) of correspondence that was finally published, with the considered approval of Ingeborg Bachmann’s brothers. The sensation it aroused in Germany, where within a few months it had become so unexpected best sellernot due solely to the emotional intensity of the nearly 300 letters, nor to their undeniable literary beauty or their human depth.

These truly heartbreaking correspondences reveal, above all, the intimate interconnection between writing and the lives of exceptional artists. This allows us for the first time to trace the widely speculated subjective background to the action of both. This in Frisch’s case is elaborated upon—even with verbatim quotations from Bachmann’s letters—mainly in his novels Suppose my name is Jantenbin After Bachman’s death in 1973, V.I Montauk. And this, in Bachmann’s case, has been translated into stories in the thirtieth And in his perception of his fictional and nonfiction cycle forms of death

In spite of the undeniable folly involved in publishing the letters—which both correspondents expressly opposed—it is justified by the literary knowledge and new biographical knowledge they contribute. Now the multiple mysteries surrounding Bachmann’s personality (to which she contributed greatly) can be definitively refuted. And Bachmann’s influence is evident, for example, on the works of Hans Magnus Enzensberger, with whom he had Connection Only in 1960, when he released his second poetry collection, country language.

Although the most important thing is revealed almost in passing: the fatal scale of the pedagogical conditioning that doomed the Freedom Pact is understood. Bachmann broke down over her contradictory desire to be a devoted wife and a successful freelance writer. Frisch was unable to suppress his fatherly care and jealousy, apart from his inferiority complex towards his partner’s mentality. By the subtle instinct of the old fox, he already warned in one of the first letters: “We will be ashamed of each other.”

Despite this, the two climb up that delirious emotional slide that has been their relationship with the idealism and devotion that move them. After Frisch’s first discourse (lost but summarized in Montauk) to congratulate him on his theatrical radio piece The good god of ManhattanBachmann offers the unknown but beloved writer to visit him in Zurich and stay for a few days. Then, after crushing them in Paris, she vanishes without a trace, but sends him four poems that amount to a fervent declaration of love… albeit mixed with dark premonitions, as in ‘Hotel de la Paix’: ‘The walls fall silent a load of roses, and from Through the carpet you can see the earth and soil. / The lamp breaks its heart from light. / Darkness. Steps. / The latch was moved before death. “

This unpredictability, this graceful gesture, but also the offbeat trait, would be characteristic of the next four years of correspondence. The letters document a tragic struggle for stability that was never attainable, and which also failed in large part due to the circumstances of two extreme lives, with constant grueling travels, intense social contact and indiscriminate consumption of alcohol and pills (the latter sanctioned by the person). doctor of both). Fresh pays for it with acute hepatitis; Bachmann with successive bouts of exhaustion and nervous breakdown after separating from Frisch. “We were a famous couple, unfortunately,” Frisch sums up.

However, participation in joint action is more important than assumed. Bachmann not only accompanied and authorized the writing Suppose my name is Jantenbin, about the failed love of a supposedly blind writer with an eccentric actress—a version of Bachmann—but he corrected the galleys and was pleased with Frisch’s achievement. And the same enthusiasm that Frisch gave to stories in the thirtiethWhere he was a model of cerebral and calculating males. It’s admirable how they encourage each other to work out and worry about texting each other constantly, even after the relationship ends.

Still, the emotional drain from experiencing free love is appalling, and what happens when Frisch discovers Bachmann has proposed to her, first to an Enzensberger, then to another, is even less impressive. Then begins the long downward spiral, in which neither the care of two highly respected lovers nor the memory of a past happiness saves them from an utter disaster. “We didn’t get over it well in the end, neither of us,” Frisch notes resignedly Montauk.

Reading the letters—to which was added a letter concerning Bachmann’s father, his former lovers and new husbands—one now understands something more than what must happen. As in all love relationships, of course, not everything is black or white, and there are no only ghouls and victims. For better or for worse, writers offset their crises through literature, which has been a very flexible exhibition space for both of them. In this sense, and from the present edition of her correspondence, as that of Max Frisch, Ingeborg Bachmann’s legend will undoubtedly have to be revised.

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