2 posts tagged “bachmann”
The most intelligent and famous female poet that our country has produced in the present century died in a hospital in Rome from the effects of scalds and burns that she must have sustained in her bathtub, according to the authorities. I used to go on trips with her, and on these trips I shared many of her philosophical views, as well as her views on the course of the world and the course of history, which had frightened her all her life. Many attempts on her part to return her native Austria, however, came to grief because of the shamelessness of her female rivals and the stupidity of the Viennese authorities. The news of her death reminded me that she was the first guest in my then still completely empty house. She was always on the run and had always seen people for what they really were, as a slow-witted, stupid, thoughtless mass that one simply has to break with. Like me, she had early in life discovered the entrance to hell, and entered this hell even though there was a danger of perishing in this hell at a very early age. People are trying to decide whether her death was an accident or whether it was suicide. Those who believe in the poet's suicide keep saying that she was broken by herself, whereas in reality and in the nature of things she was broken by her environment and, at bottom, by the meanness of her homeland, which persecuted her at every turn even when she was abroad, just as it does so many others. -- "Rome," Thomas Bernhard, in The Voice Imitator
b. June 25, 1926
In den Bäumen kann ich keine Bäume mehr sehen.
Die Äste haben nicht die Blätter, die sie in den Wind halten.
Die Früchte sind süß, aber ohne Liebe, sie sättigen nicht einmal
Was soll nur werden?
Vor meinen Augen flieht der Wald.
Vor meinem Ohr schließen die Vögel den Mund.
Für mich wird keine Wiese zum Bett.
Ich bin satt von der Zeit und hungre nach ihr.
Was soll nur werden?
Auf den Bergen werden nachts die Feuer brennen.
Soll ich mich aufmachen?
Mich allem wieder nähern?
Ich kann in keinem Weg mehr einen Weg sehen.