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''Darkness Spoken'' gathers together Ingeborg
Bachmann's two celebrated books of poetry, as well as
early and late poems not collected in book form, over
100 of them appearing in English for the first time, as
well as 25 poems never before published in German.
Bachmann is considered one of the most important poets
to emerge in postwar German letters, and this volume
represents the largest collection available in English
translation. Influencing numerous writers from Thomas
Bernhard to Christa Wolf to Elfriede Jelinek (winner of
the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature), Bachmann's poetic
investigation into the nature and limits of language in
the face of historical violence remains unmatched in its
ability to combine philosophical insight with haunting
lyricism.Bachmann was born in 1926 in Klagenfurt,
Austria. She studied philosophy at the universities of
Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna. In 1953 she received the
poetry prize from Gruppe 47 for her first volume,
''Borrowed Time'' (''Die gestundete Zeit''). Her second
collection, ''Invocation of the Great Bear'' (''Anrufung
des groen Baren''), appeared in 1956. Her various awards
include the Georg Buchner Prize, the Berlin Critics
Prize, the Bremen Award, and the Austrian State Prize
for Literature. Writing and publishing essays, opera
libretti, short stories, and novels as well, she divided
her time between Munich, Zurich, Berlin, and Rome, where
she died from a fire in her apartment in 1973.Peter
Filkins has published two volumes of poetry, ''What She
Knew'' (1998) and ''After Homer'' (2002), and has
translated Bachmann's ''The Book of Franza'' and
''Requiem for Fanny Goldmann.'' He is the recipient of
an Outstanding Translation Award from the American
Literary Translators Association and the Berlin Prize
from the American Academy in Berlin. He teaches at
Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington,
Massachusetts. |
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