Ingeborg Bachmann Quotes

The facts that make the world real
these depend on the unreal in order to be recognised by it.

He would like to burrow under the earth like a bulb, like a root, to where it is still warm. To hibernate with his thoughts and feelings. To remain silent with a shrivelling mouth. He wishes that all the statements, insults, promises he has uttered would become invalid, forgotten by everyone and he himself forgotten too.
But no sooner is he secured in the silence, no sooner does he fancy that he has wrapped himself up like a chrysalis, than he is no longer right. A wet, cold wind blows his absence of expectations around the corner, over a flower-stall filled with evergreens and flowers for the dead. And suddenly he is holding in his hands the snowdrops that he didn't want to buy
he who wanted to go empty-handed! The bells of the snowdrops begin to ring wildly and soundlessly, and he goes to where his ruin awaits him. Filled with expectation as never before, with the expectation and the desire for salvation accumulated through all the years.

And I don't believe in this materialism, in this consumer society, in this capitalism, in this outrageous horror that happens / takes place here ... . I really do believe in something, and I call it "a day will come." And one day it will come. Well, probably it won't come, since they've always destroyed it for us ... . It won't come, and I believe in it anyway. Because if I can't believe in it anymore then I can't write anymore either.

Tell me, love, what I can't explain:
Should I spend this short, horrid time
with thoughts only, and alone
know no love and give none?
Must one think? Won't he be missed?

The simple task of getting dressed and undressed was a real strain, but nothing could compare with her addiction to deep sleep ...

And everything stayed unsaid.

I am writing with my burnt hand about the nature of fire.

I myself am a person who has never resigned myself, who is absolutely never resigned, who can't imagine it at all. I simply observe, and I observe in so many people, and often very quickly, a resignation that terrifies me, that's it.

I can no longer see a path in any path.

What actually is possible, however, is transformation. And the transformative effect that emanates from new works leads us to new perception, to a new feeling, new consciousness

I am a dead man who wanders
registered nowhere

Nonetheless even in capitulation there is still hope, and this hope of human beings never ends, will never end.

I don't take drugs, I take books.

All of this is such a long and dark and untellable story (untellable as all stories are). Meanwhile, one can only hold onto what is tangible and look at one's fingers, try to look into someone's eyes, and write down the sentences that are spoken, so that something is said by which one can begin to glimpse what really happened.

My share, it should be lost.

I'll worship animals in the night, I'll lay violent hands on the holiest icons, I'll clutch at all lies, I'll grow bestial in my dreams and will allow myself to be slaughtered like a beast.

Elisabeth had not had her future and her parents had not had theirs, there was nothing to this so-called future which was always promised to the young.

Ivan and I: the world converging.
Malina and I, since we are one: the world diverging.

There was only one hope she didn't and wouldn't allow herself to hold on to: that if, in almost thirty years, she hadn't found a man, not a single one, who was exclusively significant for her, who had become inevitable to her, someone who was strong and brought her the mystery she had been waiting for, not a single one who was really a man and not an eccentric, a weakling or one of the needy the world was full of - then the man simply didn't exist, and as long as this New Man did not exist, one could only be friendly and kind to one another, for a while. There was nothing more to make of it, and it would be best if women and men kept their distance and had nothing to do with each other until both had found their way out of the tangle and confusion, the discrepancy inherent in all relationships.

My favorite, how did you put it now? Landscapes, animals, plants? Favorite what? Books, music, architecture, painting? I don't have any favorite animals, no favorite mosquitoes, favorite beetles, favorite worms, even with the best will in the world I cannot tell you which birds or fish or predators I prefer, it would also be difficult for me to have to choose much more generally.

I have only one life story to tell, but Gerda must have several, for although by and large I know her past and know enough people who have known her from a child, when she talks about herself there are an infinite number of deviations, indeed not even deviations, because there is no line from which she could deviate, there are simply a large number of versions and interpretations of her life. When she is in a good mood and becomes talkative, she no sooner thinks of a detail than her life story takes a different turn.

Miranda doesn't dream, she simply rests. When Miranda's eyes are at ease, her mind is at peace.

What of those loving, accepting, understanding voices? Do you hear them? Or do you only hear what hurts?

With the aid of a minute correction - that of the dispersing lens - in a gold frame perched on her nose, Miranda can see into hell.

One could only be nice to each other for a while. That was the best one could do. Men and women should best keep at a safe distance, having nothing to do with each other until both had found their way out of their misunderstanding, their confusion or the disruption of all relationships. One day, something else might come. But only then. Something strong. Something mysterious. Something greater to which everyone could submit.

Our field is the sky,
tilled by the sweat of motors,
in the face of night,
at the risk of our dreams
... . ... ... ... ...
Who lived there? Whose hands were pure?
Who glowed in the night,
A ghost to other ghosts?
Who lives down below? Who cries ... .
Who has lost the key to their house?
Who can't find their bed, who is sleeping
on the steps of the stairs? When morning comes, who will
dare interpret the silvery trace: look above me ... When the
water pushes the watermill wheel once again,
who will dare remember the night?

If I had not immersed myself in books, in stories and legends, in newspapers, in reports, if everything communicable had not grown up in me, I should have been a nonentity, a collection of uncomprehended events. (And that might have been a good thing, then I should have thought of something new.) That I can see, that I can hear, are things I do not deserve; but my feelings, those I truly deserve, these herons over white beaches, these wanderers by night, the hungry vagabonds that take my heart as their highroad. I wish I could call out to all those who believe in their unique brains and the hard currency of their thoughts: be of good faith! But these coins which you clink together have been withdrawn from circulation, only you don't know it yet....Admit that when you really pay, with your lives, you do so only beyond the barrier, when you have said farewell to everything that is so dear to you--to landing-places, flying-bases, and only from there do you embark on your own path and your journey from imagined stop to imagined stop, travellers who must not be concerned with arriving.

But only the witnesses feel fear, a maddening fear, for what they could bring to light is even larger than the sun that is measured and gauged and set down down in a study.

In the end he'll find out what's going on with me, since we still have the rest of our lives. Maybe not ahead of us, maybe just today, but we do have our lives, there's no doubt about that.

No new world without a new language.

You wouldn't believe it, but apart from a few drunks, a few sex murderers and other men who get into the papers where they are designated as criminals of passion, no normal man with normal drives has the obvious idea that a normal woman would like to be quite normally raped. Part of it is that men aren't normal, but people are incapable of even imagining all the ramifications of the male disease, so accustomed have they become to men's mistakes in judgment and their phenomenal lack of instinct.