Between Liebestod and Gegenzeit: Bachmann’s Radio Plays as a Feminist Rewriting of Celan’s Poetics

Abstract

Ingeborg Bachmann’s (1926-1973) literary trajectory has often been examined through her poetic and intellectual exchanges with Paul Celan (1920-1970).^[i] While scholarship has extensively explored their intertextual relationship in poetry, correspondence, and Malina, her radio plays remain critically understudied. This oversight obscures a key phase in her literary evolution, particularly concerning her transformation of Celan’s poetics. This article argues that these plays provide a crucial but overlooked space where Bachmann’s engagement with Celan did not fade but evolved. This study challenges the assumption that Bachmann distanced herself from Celan’s influence after their romance ended. It argues that her radio plays reconfigure rather than reject his poetics.^[ii] While themes of trauma, rupture, and memory persist, they are reshaped within a new formal and ideological framework. Ein Geschäft mit Träumen (1952) and Die Zikaden (1955) continue to resonate with Celan’s concerns about postwar amnesia and the limitations of language as testimony. However, Der gute Gott von Manhattan (1958) signifies a shift: rather than moving beyond Celan’s influence, Bachmann channels it toward a feminist critique of systemic violence and power structures. Her radio plays create a transitional space where Celan’s presence lingers but is actively reinterpreted. Their correspondence is often marked by miscommunication, foreshadowing the fragmented dialogues and disrupted speech found in these works.^[iii] By highlighting her radio plays as a crucial element in studies of her literary evolution, this article reconsiders Bachmann’s relationship with Celan as a process of active reworking rather than rejection, broadening the scope of existing scholarship beyond poetry and Malina.

[i] Paul Celan (1920–1970) was a Jewish poet who wrote in German. He was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, a historically contested region that has been under Austrian, Romanian, Soviet, and later Nazi control. The Holocaust had a profound impact on his life: his parents were deported to Michalowska, a Nazi labor camp, where they perished in 1942. As a survivor, Celan carried the burden of this trauma into his poetry, creating a hermetic and cryptic aesthetic while continually seeking new forms of expression.

[ii] Scholarly discourse often divides Bachmann’s creative output into two distinct phases: the lyrical brilliance of her early poetry and the enigmatic depths of her later prose. The 1961 publication of her novel The Thirtieth Year (Das dreißigste Jahr) marked this transition.  It signaled not a departure from her poetic roots but a transformation—an evolution of form rather than vision. Though her prose maintained the luminous cadence of her poetry, critics often perceived it as opaque, arguing that its complex plots often dissolved into fantasy and appeared disconnected from reality.

[iii] See: Badiou, Bertrand, and Barbara Wiedemann. “‘Let Us Find the Words’: The Correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan.” In Herzzeit: Ingeborg Bachmann, Paul Celan, Der Briefwechsel: Mit den Briefwechseln zwischen Paul Celan und Max Frisch sowie zwischen Ingeborg Bachmann und Gisèle Celan-Lestrange, edited by Bertrand Badiou et al., 215–23. Suhrkamp, 2008.

For more information, see Wimmer, Gernot, ed. Ingeborg Bachmann und Paul Celan: Historisch-poetische Korrelationen. Walter de Gruyter, 2014.

Also refer to: Bachmann, Ingeborg, and Paul Celan. Correspondence: Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan. Edited by Bertrand Badiou et al. Translated by Wieland Hoban. Seagull Books, 2010, and Böttiger, Helmut. Wir sagen uns Dunkles: Die Liebesgeschichte zwischen Ingeborg Bachmann und Paul Celan. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2017.