Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) in conversation with Stan Rogal
Harder days are coming.
The time of debt delayed, revocable,
becoming visible on the horizon.
Soon you will have to buckle your shoes
and drive the dogs back to the bog farms.
— from: The Time of Debt Delayed
It was a lovely warm spring day, June, early afternoon. I was in the Annex, having just finished a tasty ramen lunch at Kenzo’s, now set to jaywalk the busy street toward BMV, when I spotted a telephone kiosk on the corner of Major and Bloor. I couldn’t recall seeing a kiosk there any time previous and approached it with some no small measure of curiosity and intrigue. As I neared, the telephone rang. The event seemed well-beyond the merely coincidental and so I naturally assumed the call must be for me (beyond coincidental being an understatement since the kiosk looked to have been vandalized, the phone book lying shredded on the ground, the machine itself torn from its housing and tilted to one side, hanging by a screw, the black connecting cable ripped free exposing the bare coloured wires inside. It couldn’t possibly have rang, yet, it had). I reached for the receiver and noticed that it, too, was disconnected from the body of the machine, the cord dangling. I said hello and was answered by a voice that sounded mechanical, though it could have been a person speaking robotically and covering the mouthpiece with a handkerchief, as a rough-and-tumble ruse. Fine. I listened.
Good day, Stan. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves an interview with one Ingeborg Bachmann. She is — as is always the case — a formerly well-known, well-respected poet, now deceased. We have arranged the interview for four o’clock this afternoon at the Sol Melia Hotel in Little Italy. You will meet with her to ascertain the reason or reasons for her abrupt appearance from the beyond. As always, should you be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions. This message will self-destruct in five seconds.
As I listened, it occurred to me that even the powers-that-be must get bored from time to time and have need to invent ways to entertain themselves, but I thought that lifting a trope from Mission Impossible was maybe sinking a bit low. I asked: who is this? even knowing I wouldn’t get an answer. All I heard was someone’s muffled laughter before the line went dead. Fine. It was just past one. I had time to browse BMV, ascertain the exact address of the hotel, and walk down to College street, near Christie. Ingeborg Bachmann? Interesting. I was somewhat familiar with her and her work, having bumped into her on-and-off over the years, especially an article in Sulfur magazine, accompanied by the usual Google search. As an Austrian having spent most of her relatively short life in metropolitan Europe, I wasn’t sure how well-known she was to most Canadians other than myself and I wondered what the circumstances might be surrounding her recent incarnation in Toronto.
I reached my destination at the appointed hour, checked in with the hotel clerk, ascended a flight of stairs and knocked on the door, which was ajar. A voice said come in. I entered the room and closed the door behind me. A woman sat up in bed wearing a hotel-issued white bathrobe and fuzzy white slippers. She held a cigarette in one hand, a water glass of red wine in the other and an ashtray in her lap. I surveyed the room, recalling a quote I’d read written by a friend of Ingeborg’s: “I was deeply shocked by the magnitude of her tablet collection. It must have been 100 per day, the bin was full of empty boxes. She looked bad, she was wax-like and pale and her whole body was covered in bruises. I wondered what could have caused them. Then, when I saw how she dropped the Gauloise that she smoked and let it burn off on her arm, I realized: the bruises were burns caused by falling cigarettes. The numerous tablets had made her body insensible to pain.”
I couldn’t help but notice the empty pill and alcohol bottles and the full ashtrays scattered about — though the woman herself appeared well-kept, attractive, her dirty-blonde hair nicely combed, wearing a modicum amount of make-up, her skin unblemished — and I wondered if much of the hotel room mess had been staged for her arrival to make it appear familiar and comfortable. The same with locating her in Little Italy, since, while she’d been born in Austria, she’d died in Rome, where she had taken up residence for several years. It made some sense given she was prone to depression, anxiety and mood swings. Best to help her acclimatize slowly and gently before introducing her to the reality of the situation — that is, dragged back from the dead, different time, different place — and the reason for her being here.
She smiled pleasantly, flashing two rows of sturdy squares of white teeth, and gestured with a hand toward a chair near the bed. I walked over, sat down, and placed my recorder on the night table. She pointed out an open wine bottle and a glass alongside my recorder. I poured myself a generous shot.
Ingeborg Bachmann: I understand that I am to be interviewed by you, is that correct?
Stan Rogal: Yes, if you’d do me the honour.
IB: Of course! After all, we’ve both been summoned, yes? To play our parts in the unfolding drama? (She took a drag from her cigarette, tilted back her head, and blew smoke toward the ceiling.)
SR: Uh-huh. And…are you comfortable?
IB: Comfortable? What an odd question. How do you mean?
SR: I noticed several signs posted on walls on my way up warning there was no smoking anywhere in the building.
IB: Ah, I see. Well, I haven’t been outside my room since I arrived, so… (She shrugged.) Besides, the various materials (she indicated packs of cigarettes, matches, ashtrays) were already provided, so, I assumed…
SR: Right. And no one mentioned any other concerns around smoking? The possible dangers, and so on.
IB: Oh, you mean, like, in bed? (She waved her cigaretted hand around her head.) In my information package it was noted that my robe, as well as the bedding, had been treated with some sort of fire retardant. As a precaution. Not that I feel in the mood at the moment to set myself on fire again, whether accidentally or deliberately. (She grinned and widened her eyes.)
SR: And which was it, if you don’t mind me asking?
IB: To be honest, I’m not sure. I’d been taking a lot of medications at the time and wasn’t quite in my right mind. In fact, as I recall, I died more from drug withdrawal in the hospital rather than due to my burns. (She tugged her sleeves and checked out her arms.) Which have healed nicely, it seems.
SR: As a point of interest, you may have been brought back at a prior age to the fire. It happens.
IB: How curious! And how exciting! (She took a large swig of wine. I followed suit.)
SR: You mentioned an information package? Did it explain why you’re here?
IB: It did. It seems that the local Austrian Cultural Society is celebrating the one-hundredth year of my birth, Jun 25, 1926, by presenting a retrospective of my work over the weekend beginning tonight, including a staged reading of my play, The Good God of Manhattan, as well as more recent films based on my relationships with Paul Celan and Max Frisch. Apparently there’s a cinema nearby where the festivities will take place.
SR: The Royal, yes, almost next door. And happy birthday, by the way, I hadn’t made the connection. (I raised my glass and we toasted.) I realize that you wrote radio plays, stage plays, librettos, short stories, essays, a novel, and also did translations, but you began — and this is my special interest and that of my readers — as a poet. And quite successfully, too.
IB: Yes. (She rocked her head and smoked, shyly flattered, I thought.) I suppose that’s true.
SR: Your poetry has been described as being feminist in the confessional or autotheory style, sombre, surreal writing that often dealt with women in failed love relationships, the tentative connection between art and humanity, and the inadequacy of language. Is that an accurate assessment?
IB: Ha! As far as it goes, given “the inadequacy of language,” which every serious writer has to constantly struggle with. (She topped up our glasses.)
SR: That struggle seems very clear in your poem, “In the Storm of Roses,” where you wrote: “Wherever we turn in the storm of roses, / the night is lit up by thorns, and the thunder / of leaves, once so quiet within the bushes, / rumbling at our heels.” Even the traditionally beautiful image of the rose is not enough to calm the storm. In fact, it becomes part of the storm and used to terrorize. It’s a very different outlook from those poets who regard nature as a symbol of serene beauty.
IB: Raleigh said: “No use going to the country, it will bring us no peace.” Big dog eats little dog. One thing eats another, no? It’s the same everywhere.
SR: Do you think growing up during the war maybe tainted your outlook toward the world in some large respect? In your poem, “Every Day,” you said: “War is no longer declared, / just continued. The unheard-of / has become commonplace.”
IB: I wouldn’t doubt it. I grew up surrounded by war. Between the Nazi bombs falling and the Allied bombs falling, there was no escape. That, plus the fact my father was a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi who sexually abused me as a child. Him along with a friend of his. As for my mother, she sided with my father. More from fear, I think, than loyalty.
SR: I’m sorry.
IB: Yeah, me too. (She butted her cigarette in the ashtray and lit another.) And tell me, has anything changed, or is the world still committing the same atrocities, the same abominations, over and over, one against the other?
SR: The same, I’m afraid. (We sat for a moment, silent, sipped our wine. I let out a sigh.) Anyway, on a brighter note. You published your first volume of poetry, Mortgaged Time, in 1953, which won you the coveted literary prize of the Group 47 and with it, instant fame. You were even the subject of a cover story in the mass-circulation Der Spiegel magazine in 1954.
IB: The cover story turned out to be somewhat of a two-edged sword, I’m afraid. There was the so-called fame, yes, but at a price. I was young, you understand, twenty-eight, energetic, vivacious even, with cropped hair and bold lipstick, the very image of a young iconoclast. The magazine article played more heavily on these features — packaged and sold me as a commodity in order to sell more magazines — and I could never rid myself of the image of being a beautiful blonde who had somehow become, of all things, a writer — sensuous yet intellectual, a cosmopolite from a provincial town in Austria, strangely succeeding in a world traditionally dominated by men. How could this be? Well, I might just as well have gained such notoriety for having two heads.
SR: I see the point you’re making, and while I’m sure you’d have preferred more focus by the magazine on your writing than your looks, the recognition did open a number of doors for you, isn’t that right? Opportunities that were more concerned with you as a poet.
IB: Yes, though I’m not sure the two facets were easily separated by this point.
SR: In the film noir, Farewell My Lovely, Claire Trevor said to Dick Powell, “Mmm, you’ve got a nice build for a private detective.” Dick answered…
IB: “It gets me around.” Ha! You’re saying accept the good with the bad.
SR: I’m saying you don’t have much choice in the matter. You need a container, might as well be an attractive one.
IB: Is that a compliment?
SR: It’s an observation. (I poured us more wine.) You had a love affair with famed poet Paul Celan for several years, who championed you as a writer. You were invited to the United States in 1955 by Harvard University where Henry Kissinger had organized a seminar for talented European writers and intellectuals. The two of you became lovers.
IB: (She threw her head back, laughed, took a quick puff on her cigarette.) You’re saying, perhaps, that the lady doth protest too much.
SR: Maybe a little. (I lifted my hand and formed a small space between my thumb and index finger.) A soupçon.
IB: Fine, yes, Henry and I had an affair. It was exciting, though a bit of a disaster. What else is new? After all, he was married with two children. The relationship couldn’t go anywhere. He wanted some excitement in his life. Called me his “bizarre poetess.” (She shook her head madly, bugged her eyes, stuck out her tongue and made a guttural noise.) Poor Henry. He was heartbroken when I ended the affair. But it wasn’t just the family, you see. For all the talk about his involvement in world peace talks, his hands were as bloody as the rest of them. We were at odds politically, since I was strictly anti-war, anti-killing.
SR: Uh-huh. In 1956 you published your second book of poems, Invocation to the Great Bear, which won even more critical acclaim, and in 1959 you became the first holder of the newly created chair in Poetics at the University of Frankfurt. More honours included membership in the West Berlin Academy of Arts, an Austrian National Medal, and a Georg Büchner Prize from the Academy for Language and Literature. Regarded as one of the major voices of German-language literature in the 20th century, in 1963 you were nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by German philologist Harald Patzer. Whew! Pretty impressive.
IB: Yes. I suppose I could be accused of having amassed ‘an embarrassment of riches,’ as they say in the vernacular.
SR: And yet, for all of your success, you were unhappy, depressed, even, clinically, for which you were prescribed medications.
IB: You sound surprised, why? You think everyone who is successful is happy? There’s a long history of so-called successful people who have suffered from what we call in German, weltschmerz, or world-weariness. Existential angst. Ennui. Poe’s Conqueror Worm. The list goes on. Many try to cope through drugs or alcohol. Many commit suicide. It’s my understanding that a majority of comedians and clowns are clinically depressed, and who attempt to hide behind a mask of laughter. I was simply one of many functional depressives.
SR: Yes, in one poem you wrote: “The sick know / that a colour, a breath of air, / a hard step, indeed / a whimper of grass in the world / turns the heart inside / the body, causing them to hope / for peace the more they sense / war, as the war goes on.” You blame your condition on what happened to you as a child during the war?
IB: In part, though not totally.
SR: Then what?
IB: (She laughed, knocked back the remains of her wine and poured us more.) That shit-heel Ludwig Wittgenstein.
SR: Really? (I grinned.) I thought you were a fan of his ideas. A devout adherent, in fact.
IB: That’s true, I was. Am. But he was a blessing and a curse. I mean, how can I be a writer when he states: “All I know is what I have words for.” And: “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.” As a writer, my only tools are my words. How can I go on when I know that my words lack any real power to either communicate any true meaning or make any real change? How can I go on when I know that I’m limited by the very tools I depend upon?
SR: Right. Tough love. Didn’t he also say: “Only describe, don’t explain.”
IB: That’s right. Not enough to rip out my tongue, he wants to cut me off at the knees as well; render me completely powerless. I might as well be a monkey banging away at the typewriter keys hoping to produce something of value by complete accident.
SR: Still, you continued writing, why?
IB: Because…as much as I might’ve agreed with him, I was determined to try to work around my — and language’s — limitations. I was a writer, after all, what else was I good for?
SR: You did, of course, stop writing poetry after your second book, despite the accolades. Why was that?
IB: I felt that I’d said what I needed to say with poetry; used what I needed to use. I didn’t want to be one of those poets who repeats themselves book after book, poem after poem: the same images, the same themes, the same words until they became cliches. Do you understand?
SR: Oh, yeah. In fact, more of today’s poets could take a lesson. I think you even said to detractors: “Quitting involves strength, not weakness.” I may be paraphrasing.
IB: Yes. (She leaned toward me slightly and whispered past an upraised hand.) Though between you, me, and the bedpost, I did continue to write poetry, I just never put together and submitted another collection. It became one of those guilty pleasures. (She crushed her cigarette and lit another.) You know, not only was Wittgenstein a philosopher and linguist, he also had a talent for plumbing and carpentry. In fact, his neighbours only knew him in those capacities and would call on him to fix things for them when they were in need, and he obliged, never feeling unrecognized or belittled on any level. Incredible, yes? Anyway, he used these skills as an analogy to writing, saying that language, words, should be thought of as tools in a tool-box: “there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, nails and screws. The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects.” I decided to write fiction because I thought it would give me more tools to play with and experiment with. Besides, I wasn’t about to allow a man to tell me that my chosen vocation and skills were limited, no matter how damn smart or clever he was. (There was a knock on the door and a voice called out from the hallway: Ms Bachmann, we’re ready for you.) It’s my entourage. I’m to have the full celebrity treatment: hair, make-up, nails, eyebrows, jewelry, a new frock, a spray of perfume, a puff of powder, and so on, the corpse to be made presentable for general public viewing. (She rolled a sleeve and pressed the lit end of her cigarette on her arm, producing a round burn mark, followed by a second burn a few inches higher. She didn’t flinch, simply smiled, sighed, and slit her eyes.) Ahh, that’s better. As I’m sure you’re aware, habits are the hardest things to break. Also, when I looked into the mirror earlier, I barely recognized myself. Gone were the distinguishing scars, the horse hair shirt, the barbed wire panties. It frightened me. (She took a deep drag, exhaled, grabbed the empty wine bottle and gave it a shake.) Now, if you wouldn’t mind, be a love and bring me another one of these. There’s a case sitting on the floor beside the dresser. You can let them in as you leave. (She fluttered her fingers toward the door.) Thank you. It was lovely speaking with you, really.
SR: Of course. (I did as I was asked, gathered my belongings, and made way for the others to enter and perform their appointed tasks.)
I checked the various media the next couple of days to see if there was any coverage of the event. As I more or less expected, there was nothing. Wittgenstein said: “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” In the case of Ingeborg Bachmann, I felt there was much to speak of, both in terms of her literary legacy and her life as the ‘bizarre poetess.’ A love affair with Henry Kissinger? It boggles the mind. Of course, that’s just my opinion. Unfortunately, there’s little interest in poets or poetry these days either within the media or the public at large. Perhaps if she’d gone up in flames in her hotel room, someone may have taken notice. Though even then, I wouldn’t hold my breath. Bachmann herself was well aware when she said: “Poetry like bread? That bread would have to grind between the teeth and reawaken the hunger before it stills it. And this poetry will have to be sharp with insight and bitter with longing in order to be able to stir the sleep of people. For we are asleep, are sleepers, from fear of having to look at ourselves and our world.”
Well said, Ingeborg. Well spoken. One can only hope that on your next hundredth-year birthday, the world treats you better; will be — at the very least — open and more welcoming, crazy as it sounds.
Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto along with his artist partner Jacquie Jacobs. His work has appeared almost magically in numerous magazines and anthologies. The author of several books, plus a handful of chapbooks, a 13th poetry collection was published in March 2025 with ecw press. Co-founder of Bald Ego Theatre and former coordinator of the popular Idler Pub Reading Series.
