Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann

Bol Partner

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 grossen 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.

Bol

Darkness Spoken is the most complete volume of Ingeborg Bachmann’s poetry in English and German. Considered one of the premiere poets of her generation, Bachmann’s various awards include the Georg Büchner Prize, the Berlin Critics Prize, the Bremen Award, and the Austrian State Prize for literature. Darkness Spoken collects her two celebrated books of poetry, as well as the early and late poems not collected in book form. First published by Zephyr Press in 2006, the volume also contains 129 poems released from Bachmann’s archives that had never been translated before. Twenty-five of them also appeared in German for the first time. Continued research by Peter Fikins on Bachmann’s writing since 2006 as well as his current work on Bachmann’s biography (forthcoming in 2026 from Yale University Press), has drawn him even closer to Bachmann’s poems and deepened his understanding of their context and meaning. For this second revised edition, roughly a quarter of the poems have benefitted from revisions in word choice for the purposes of greater clarity, better syntax or rhythm, or in a few instances, corrections in punctuation and of interpretive errors. Eight poems from Bachmann's youth have also been added that did not appear in the first edition. A few lacunae in the German have also been corrected, allowing this volume to remain the most complete edition of Bachmann’s poetry.

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Pagina's: 688, Editie: 2nd Revised ed., Paperback, Zephyr Press