The Dreamed Ones (2016) - full transcript
Based on the almost 20-year correspondence between the poet Ingeborg Bachmann and the poet Paul Celan.
THE DREAMED ONES
a film by Ruth Beckermann
Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan
meet in Vienna in the spring of 1948.
She is studying philosophy.
As a poet she is still unknown.
He has already made a name for himself
as a poet.
He has fled to Vienna from his hometown...
Czernovitz via Bucharest and Budapest...
and is headed for Paris.
His Jewish parents were killed
in a German concentration camp in Ukraine.
Her father was a soldier
and came home from the war alive.
She never spoke of the fact
that he belonged to the Nazi Party.
When they first meet,
she is 21 and he is 27.
In Egypt
For Ingeborg
Thou shalt say to the strange woman's eye:
be the water!
Thou shalt seek in the stranger's eye
those whom thou knowest to be in the water.
Thou shalt call them from the water:
Ruth! Noemi! Miriam!
Thou shalt adorn them
when thou liest with the stranger.
Thou shalt adorn them
with the cloud-hair of the stranger.
Thou shalt say to Ruth, to Miriam and Noemi:
Behold, I sleep next to her!
Thou shalt adorn the stranger next to thee
most beautifully of all.
Thou shalt adorn her with the pain for Ruth,
for Miriam and Noemi.
Thou shalt say to the stranger:
Behold, I slept next to these!
Vienna, 23 May 1948
To the meticulous one,
22 years after her birthday
From the unmeticulous one
Vienna, Christmas 1948
Dear, dear Paul,
Three months ago, someone suddenly gave me
your book of poems as a gift.
I didn't know it had come out.
It was like this,
the ground was
so light and buoyant beneath me,
and my hand trembled a little,
a tiny, tiny bit.
I still do not know what last spring meant.
You know me,
I always want to know everything very precisely.
It was beautiful- and so were the poems,
and the poem we made together.
Today you are dear to me and so present.
I want to tell you that at all costs.
I often neglected to do so at the time.
Much, much love!
Yours, Ingeborg
Vienna, 12 April 1949
Spring is almost here, so strange
and unforgettable it was last year.
Never again
willl walk through the Stadtpark...
without knowing
that it can be the whole world...
and without becoming the small fish
from back then again.
Now I understand
that it was right for you to go to Paris.
What would you say
if I suddenly turned up there this fall?
Paul, dear Paul,
I long for you and our fairy tale.
What shalll do?
My thoughts
are constantly preoccupied with you,
I ponder these things often
and talk to you,
and take your strange,
dark head in my hands...
and want to push the weight
off your chest,
free your hand with the carnations
and hear you sing.
Nothing has happened to make me suddenly
think about you more intensely.
Everything is as usual.
I have work and success,
and there are somehow men around me,
but it means little to me:
Beautiful and gloomy things are spread
over my fleeting days.
Paris, 20 June 1949
Ingeborg,
This year I am "imprecise" and late.
But perhaps it is only...
because I want no one except
you to be there...
when I place poppies,
a great many poppies,
andmemory,
just as much memory,
two great glowing bouquets...
on your birthday table.
I have been looking forward
to this moment for weeks.
Vienna, 24 June 1949
My dear,
Because I hadn't been thinking about it at all,
your card positively flew in today,
straight into my heart.
Yes, it is true, I am very fond of you,
I never said it back then.
I felt the poppies again,
deeply, very deeply;
you performed such wonderful magic,
I will never forget it.
Sometimes all I want is to leave
and go to Paris,
to feel you touch my hands,
touch me completely with flowers,
and then, once again, to not know where
you have come from and where you are going.
To me you are from India
or an even more distant, dark brown country,
to me you are desert and sea
and everything that is secret.
I shall be in Paris in mid-August,
only for a few days.
Take me to the Seine, let us gaze into it...
until we become small fish
and recognize each other again.
Paris, 4 August 1949
Ingeborg, my love,
Just a few quick lines...
to tell you how happyl am that you are coming.
I am full of impatience, mylove.
Yours, Paul
So...
The distance is the same as always.
Maybe a little higher.
That looks good, yes...
Yes...
Can I speak off to the side?
- Off to the side... A little, but...
Like this. Okay.
So you can see the text...
Is that okay?
Fine.
I have to readjust the microphones
because we changed the signal levels...
Take 8, rolling...
Paris, 20 August 1949
Paris, 20 August 1949
So you will not be coming for two months.
Why?
You will not tell me;
will not say for how long...
or whether you will receive
your scholarship.
In the meantime we can- you suggest -
"exchange letters".
Do you know, Ingeborg,
why I so seldom wrote to you this past year?
Not only because Paris
had forced me into a terrible silence...
from which I could not escape;
also because I did not know what you thought
about those brief weeks in Vienna.
You know, one must always make
the big decisions alone.
Maybe I am mistaken,
maybe we are evading each other...
exactly where we would so like to meet,
maybe we are both to blame.
Still, I sometimes tell myself...
that my silence
might be more understandable than yours,
for the darkness that imposes it upon me
is older.
One long year has passed now,
a year in which I am sure you have experienced
a great deal.
But you have not told me how far
our own May and June lie behind this year.
How far away or how close are you, Ingeborg?
Tell me...
so that I know whether
you will close your eyes if I kiss you now.
Vienna, 25 August 1949
Dearest, Do you remember our first
telephone conversations?
How difficult it was;
there was always something choking me.
To me you are you,
to me you are not "to blame" for anything.
You need not say anything,
but the slightest word makes me happy.
I do not know why I want you or what for,
and am glad,
normally, I know it all too well.
Do you remember your desperation...
about my openness in certain matters?
I do not know what you want to know
and what not,
but you can imagine that the time since you...
has not been devoid of relationships
with other men.
But nothing lasting has developed;
I do not stay anywhere for long,
I am more restless than ever
and cannot promise anyone anything.
How long ago are our May and June
compared to all this, you ask.
Not one day, my dear!
To me May and June is tonight or tomorrow noon
and will be for many years.
It is a beautiful love in which I live with you,
and only because
I am afraid to say too much...
do I not say it is the most beautiful.
Dear, dear Paul,
Now it is November.
The letter I wrote in August is still lying here-
everything is so sad.
Maybe you have been waiting for it.
Will you still accept it now?
I have the feeling I do not say enough,
that I cannot help you.
I should come,
look at you, take you out,
kiss you and hold you
so that you will not drift away.
Please believe that I shall come one day
and bring you back.
It frightens me tremendously
to see you floating out into a great sea,
but I mean to build a ship
and bring you back home from your forlornness.
But you must also do your part
and not make it too difficult for me.
Write to me soon, please, and tell me
whether you still want to hear from me,
whether you can still accept
my tenderness and my love,
whether anything else
can help you,
whether you still reach for me sometimes and
darken me with that heavy dream...
in which I want to become light.
I am very much with you.
Yours, Ingeborg.
Let's take a break, please.
Then it ends up like a fat sausage.
You put in too much.
- Too much?
That's not going to work.
Now hold on.
Good things take time.
If it's too tight,
it doesn't taste as good.
Are you done already?
Sure, look at yours...
Look, it's a total cripple.
I always make cripples.
Right. I always...
- And it mustn't be too tight.
Or it doesn't taste good.
It's just a stupid cigarette.
It really...
It's about tobacco pleasure.
- You have to trim this whisker.
Can you play something some time?
What?
- In there.
Play something?
- You.
Oh, yeah.
- On the piano.
I'll accompany you.
On vocals?
- Yes.
Please do.
Maybe it will be a
terrific...
collaboration in the end.
Horrific.
You said that.
Vienna, 6 September 1950
I have been very sick in recent weeks;
a nervous breakdown and all its symptoms
paralyzed me and made me incapable...
of reacting in the right way
or deciding anything.
Forgive me if you can,
and help me get away from here!
Can you try
to send me an invitation?
I could leave here in October,
and by then I should have enough money...
to get through the first while in Paris,
so that I am not too much of a burden to you.
Dear Paul, it is difficult for me
to write more...
because I sense
things will only be resolved...
when I see you face to face,
hold your hand,
and tell you everything, absolutely everything.
Paris, 7 September 1950
My dear Ingeborg,
Here is the letter in which Frau Dr. Rosenberg
invites you to Paris.
I hope it will be sufficient
to acquire the French visa.
Please take the necessary steps immediately,
and let me know
if everything takes its normal course.
You have suffered grief, Ingeborg.
I am sorry to hear that.
But I believe Paris can make you forget
your grief: this grief in particular.
And perhaps I can assist Paris in doing so.
Give me an answer soon.
Dearest,
I long so much for a little security...
that I am almost afraid I shall find it soon.
I look forward to and fear
what lies ahead;
the fear is still greater.
Please try to be good to me
and to hold on to me!
Sometimes I think everything
is a muddled dream...
and neither you nor Paris exist,
and crushing me is...
the terrible hundred-headed hydra
of poverty that refuses to let me go.
I am supposed to pick up myvisa on October 5.
I will let you know about my departure soon.
Dear Ingeborg, It is half past four
and I must go see my student now.
It was our first rendezvous in Paris;
my heart is beating so loudly.
I still have to give two lessons today.
They are far away, and I will not be back
before quarter to nine.
The socket for your iron
is in the lamp,
but make sure to close the door, so that
no one in the hotel notices you are ironing.
And give a little thought to what swept over me
when I spoke to you.
Vienna, March 1951
Now everything is as quiet as
after bombings during the war...
when the smoke cleared
and one discovered...
that one's house was gone,
and one didn't know what to say;
and what is there to say?
I may be going to Paris again this fall.
But even if I have to stay here,
I shall not be sad.
I have had and taken so much,
that it could see me through for a long time;
but even if it doesn't -
one can get by on so little.
When the time comes, we will not be allowed
to take much luggage anyway,
maybe none at all.
Write but don't spare the details,
go ahead and tell me that the curtain
in our window burned up again...
and people are watching us from the street.
Yours with all my heart, Ingeborg.
As if they couldn't take me seriously.
I wasn't thinking about
what exactly I wanted...
or how I envisioned my composition.
"But it's nothing..."
It took ages for us to see eye to eye...
"But it's so simple... It's nothing..."
Always dissing you somehow?
- Yes, always.
It's not really tangible,
but you feel it constantly.
And the organist I played with just now
confirmed it too.
At first he was skeptical about my music...
and all his musician colleagues too.
Now that everyone...
sees what it actually is...
what they have a problem with...
it's so extreme...
and they're stuck in this...
pattern of counting.
They have to be able to count everything...
There's a form for everything.
What?
- For every type of composition...
there is a name
and a form and a template and a...
It's ordered.
There's a system
and you have to follow it.
Yes.
I see.
Or you don't have to follow it, but...
It's all very simple that way, but...
they don't make anything of it... not really...
They don't compose,
none of them.
They wouldn't have the guts.
How does this go?
What they do is somehow so extreme.
But they just do what they're told.
They just sit there and wait.
Look how he sits at the drums.
The civil servants among the artists,
kind of like that.
But that's just it,
this is a huge burden for a lot of people.
I mean they know so much
and are so absolutely full...
of great things,
but are caught up in this
do-as-you're-told mentality.
It must be so awful.
Vienna, 27 June 1951
Dear, dear Paul,
The many letters I have written to you,
the wrong ones and the right ones-
I never had the courage to send them off.
Do you still remember that we were
very happy together in spite of everything,
even in our worst moments,
when we were our worst enemies?
Why do you no longer sense
that I still want to go to you...
with my mad, confused and contradictory heart,
which still works against you from time to time?
I am slowly starting to understand
whyl resisted you so strongly,
whyl may never stop doing so.
I love you and I do not want to love you;
it is too much and too difficult,
but I love you-
today I will tell you, even at the risk...
that you will no longer be able
nor want to hear it.
It is difficult to reply to these
letters, Ingeborg, you know that,
you know it better than I do.
I mean that the outlines
of your own person will appear...
clearer to you than to me, as I-
not least
through your persistent silence-
am faced with problems
whose solution only produces a further problem.
I would be glad if I could tell myself that you
took what happened as what it really was:
as something that cannot be retracted,
but certainly recalled
through faithful remembering.
You have gotten more out of life, Inge,
than most of your contemporaries.
No door has remained closed to you,
and new doors are opening all the time.
You have no reason to be impatient,
Ingeborg,
and if I could make one request, it is this:
Consider how readily
everything is at your disposal.
And now be a little more sparing
with your demands.
I am telling you all this to warn you
of a certain success:
It is only short-lived,
and people with somber dispositions like you...
should know how to steer clear of it.
Dear Inge, I shall close now...
with the request
to write to me more often and regularly.
All my love and best wishes,
Paul
Your response to the most intimate parts
of my letters hits me like a cold wind,
but I understand and respect you too much...
to let any bitterness grow inside me.
What you call my successes,
which you have always...
viewed with skepticism
as I have also begun to do,
strike me as questionable,
so that I wonder what people envy me for.
The fact that I make demands, even excessive
ones does not seem reprehensible to me.
That is true, of all the things you accuse me of.
And also that I am impatient and dissatisfied.
But my restlessness does not push me,
of this I am quite sure,
toward paths on which one loses oneself.
You have often accused me
of having no connection to your poems.
Please, I ask you to abandon this notion.
Sometimes I live and breathe only through them.
Sometimes the poem seems like a mask...
that only exists because from time to time
the others need something...
to hide their sanctified,
grotesque everyday faces.
Can you tell? I act,
I wander past all the houses in the area,
I am running after myself.
If only I really knew what hour has struck!
But was it really in front of my door,
the stone I am trying to roll away?
Oh, the word only comes to me through the air
and comes-
I fear once again-
in my sleep.
Dear Paul,
I know that you no longer love me,
that you no longer think about taking me in-
and yet I cannot help still hoping,
working with the hope of a life
together with you...
and building a foundation that
could give us a degree of financial security...
and- whether here or there-
make it possible for us to begin anew.
I yearn for you in a painful way,
and yet I am sometimes glad...
that I currently have no opportunity
to go to you.
My dear Ingeborg,
This life seems to be a series
of missed opportunities,
and it is perhaps better
not to puzzle over them for too long,
otherwise no words would ever flow.
Let us no longer speak of things
that are irretrievable, Inge.
All they do is reopen the old wound,
they stir up anger and ill will in me,
they rouse what is past.
With a few words,
which time scatters before you
at not so small intervals,
you create confusion that I must treat
with the same harshness...
with which I treated you in the past.
When I read your letter yesterday,
again and again, I felt very miserable.
Would you find it unpleasant to see me again?
Please do not come to Paris on my account!
We would only bring each other pain-
you to me and I to you.
What would be the use of that, hm?
I will not go to Paris on your account.
However, I may go anyway,
sooner or later-
my work could easily require it.
Your disgust and anger are understandable-
what I do not understand,
and I must say this-
is this terrible irreconcilability,
this mentality of
"never forgive and never forget",
the frightful distrust you convey to me.
I no longer have any way to make amends,
and that is the worst thing
that can happen to a person.
My situation is becoming
increasingly eerie.
I risked everything and lost everything.
In the next few days I will be sending
you back the ring you gave me last year.
I was less surprised by your wish
to have the ring back...
than by the memory you associate with it.
I would have understood
that it is important to you...
to keep this family memento,
and for that reason alone I would not
have hesitated for a moment to return it to you.
I would certainly not have misunderstood
nor been offended either.
The suspicion you utter in your heart
toward me...
seems so monstrous to me that even now,
two days after learning of it,
I still have to pull myself together
to be able to think clearly...
and refrain from showing the bitterness
and despair threatening to close in upon me.
Paul,
Is that what you think?
This ring, whose history I knew-
and that this history is sacred to me
is something...
you could not touch
in all your accusations-
do you really think I could have taken this ring
on a whim, simply because I saw it and liked it?
I will not justify myself to you,
nor am I concerned with being right,
for this is not about you and me,
at least not for me.
All that matters here is
whether what I stand for can hold its own...
against what this ring stands for.
And I say to you that my conscience
in respect to the dead...
who wore this ring is clear.
I accepted it as a gift from you,
and wore it or kept it safe,
always mindful of its significance.
Today I understand many things more clearly:
I know that you despise me and that
you harbor profound suspicion toward me,
and I feel sorry for you-
for I have no access to your suspicion.
The fact that I love you anyway
has since then become my business.
In August I shall be moving to Italy,
and I will not return.
It is, of course,
an awful shame that she...
didn't send it off.
Inge.
Particularly in the letters
where somehow...
Where she just really
tells how she feels, and...
I think she was probably just...
It had to do with pride...
With her own?
- Yes.
She simply decided to wordlessly...
To let it go without comment?
So it was a conscious decision, you think?
A conscious process?
- Definitely.
Sure, it's a conscious process
if you don't...
If you leave the letter at home
and don't mail it, but...
The role of the lamenter also probably,
or definitely...
got to be too much for her.
And he seems to be unpredictable a lot.
But you think...
it was to protect herself and not him?
I think so.
- Yes.
That's all the more reason,
from my perspective now,
for me to say...
If I heard Anja said...
Or if a friend said
you talked that way...
or said something about me,
especially then I'd go and ask you:
"What was that?"
Tell me yourself.
What did you say? Is it true?
Or what's the...?
I'd want to hear the accusation
directly from that person...
and if that's how it is,
then tell me to my face,
or write to me directly...
But if this awful thing
takes on such proportions...
Well, I...
I would demand
that the other person...
"If that's how it is, then tell me!"
One could respond to that.
- Not me.
No?
I totally understand
that she wrote that letter.
I can totally imagine
how she felt writing it,
and I also totally understand
that afterward she didn't...
want to mail it.
I can absolutely imagine it.
But I'm talking about a...
process...
That before that somehow...
If a friend tells me...
I already start to question...
That's where the craziness starts.
All that shouldn't...
Apparently it wasn't even directed
at her personally...
How sick is that in a relationship?
- But what did he tell her?
Nani...
No one knows.
Just Nani, and...
Maybe he was totally drunk at the time...
and really pissed off at Ingeborg.
You say things you might not really mean...
But fully conscious-Inge isn't there.
And if I tell a friend that
and I'm complaining about someone...
in an emotional state,
then it's unfiltered,
as opposed to
if the person is standing in front of you...
That's why before I write something like that,
I'd ask that person:
"What happened?"
But this whole time dealing with these two,
you never feel...
like anything ever just slipped out.
Not between them.
I absolutely understand her too.
There's nothing here I don't understand,
just...
letting it destroy you
and letting all that...
All that
rain down on you...
And in such an important matter...
I mean it wasn't a quarrel about
who left the butter out in the morning,
and now it's all melted,
there's a lot at stake here.
It's not the easiest subject either...
- Right.
... that can be approached rationally:
"Let's discuss this matter."
No, no, of course not.
She knows, too, that he has...
He knows something.
He has something inside and...
A pain that she can never fathom,
never imagine.
And because of that she is caught in this...
back-and-forth.
From her own pain...
back to understanding again...
In 1952 Paul Celan marries Gisèle de Lestrange.
In 1953 Ingeborg Bachmann moves to Rome,
four years later to Munich.
In 1957, six years after breaking up,
they meet again at a literature conference.
17 October '57
Read this, Ingeborg, read this!
In the slipstream, thousandfold: you.
You and the arm
with which I grew toward you naked, lost one.
Are you asleep now?
Sleep.
Heart-time, the dreamed ones
stand for the midnight numeral.
But are we only the dreamed ones?
The rubble boat
ferries us in the evening,
we are,
like it, in no hurry...
Some things spoke in the silence,
some things were silent.
You cathedrals,
You cathedrals unseen,
You waters unlistened to,
You clocks deep in us...
But are we only the dreamed ones?
I understand, Ingeborg,
that you are not writing to me.
I make it hard for you with myletters and poems,
even harder than before.
You should, you must write to me, Ingeborg.
Both apply:
Touched and Untouched.
Lip knew. Lip knows.
Lip hushes it to an end.
Oh, I have so much to tell you.
Some of the things
even you would barely suspect. Write to me.
Strangely enough, on my way to
the national libraryl suddenly had to...
buy the FrankfurterZeitung.
And I stumbled across the poem you sent
me together with "Mortgaged Time",
written on a strip of paper, by hand.
But are we only the dreamed ones?
A word from you- and I can live.
Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns,
and the thunder of leaves,
once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels.
Oh,
I was so unjust toward you...
all these years.
Munich, 28 October 1957
I am grateful to you
for telling your wife everything,
"sparing" her would mean becoming even guiltier
and also belittling her.
You must not leave her and your child.
You are going to say that it has already
happened, she is abandoned.
But please, do not leave her.
If I have to think of her and the child
- and I will always have to think of them-
I will not be able to embrace you.
That is alll know.
The sea,
tasted,
drunk away, dreamed away.
An hour, soul-darkened.
The next one, an autumn light,
offered to a blind feeling
that came along the way.
Dearest Paul,
If only you could come at the end of November!
I wish for it. May I?
It used to be easier for me despite everything;
I was so glad to speak your name.
Now I almost feel
I must ask you for forgiveness...
if I do not keep your name to myself.
You told me
you were forever reconciled with me,
I will never forget that.
Do I have to worry
about making you unhappy again,
about again bringing destruction to her and you,
you and me?
I cannot comprehend being so damned.
Destruction, Ingeborg?
No, certainly not.
Rather: the truth.
You were,
when I met you,
both to me:
the sensual and the spiritual.
The two can never separate, Ingeborg.
Think of "In Egypt".
Every time I read it,
I see you step into this poem:
You are the reason for living,
not least because...
you are, and will remain,
the justification for my speaking.
But that alone, my speaking,
is not even the point;
I wanted to be silent with you too.
Being there- for each other.
Do you know that now I can speak
and write again?
I have not told you
that for the past 3 years...
I sometimes feared for your poems.
Now my fear is gone.
Yesterdayl had to rummage through
some old documents...
and stumbled on a pocket calendar from 1950.
Under 14 October I had written:
Ingeborg.
It was the day you came to Paris.
On 14 October
we were in Cologne, Ingeborg.
You clocks are deep in us.
Tomorrow you will be moving into
your new apartment:
Could I come soon
and help you find a lamp?
Munich, 14 November 1957
Paul,
I am not in the new apartment yet -
I have to wait until December 1.
Nonetheless, I am glad whenever you come.
I will be staying in Munich
until just before Christmas.
I cannot go away,
for I have too much work.
Sometimes I speak to you in Paris as if
you were alone there, and I often fall silent...
when I acknowledge you with everything there,
acknowledge me with everything here.
But then we will have clarity
and no more confusion-
and go in search of the lamp!
Going on a lamp hunt...
To think that back then we had
to hound our hearts to death...
over such trifles, Ingeborg!
Whom were we obeying, tell me, whom?
I am thinking of you, Paul, you think of me!
I will be coming soon, not for long,
for one day,
for a second one-
if you want and permit.
Let us then go in search of the lamp, Ingeborg.
You and me, us.
When are you coming, dear Paul?
The day after tomorrow, Saturday,
I will be in Munich- with you, Ingeborg.
Can you come to the station?
My train arrives in Munich at 12:07.
If you cannot come,
I will be pacing outside your building on
Franz-Josephstrasse half an hour later.
Two more days, Ingeborg.
Frankfurt, Monday night
Ingeborg, my dear Ingeborg,
I cast another glance out of the train,
you had looked around too,
but I was too far away.
Then it came and choked me, so wildly.
And then, when I went back to my
compartment, something very strange occurred.
I shall describe it to you here
as it happened to me-
but you must already forgive me
for acting in so uncontrolled a fashion.
So, I was back in my compartment
and took your poems out of my briefcase.
I felt I was drowning
in something completely transparent and bright.
When I looked up, I saw the young woman
who had the window seat...
take out a copy of Akzente,
the last issue, and start leafing through it.
She leafed and leafed,
and my eyes followed her leafing...
because they knew that your poems
and your name would come.
Then they came,
and the hand that had been leafing paused.
And I saw that the leafing had given way,
that her eyes were reading, again and again.
Again and again.
I was so grateful.
Then I thought for a moment
that she could be someone...
who had heard you read,
who had seen you and recognized you.
And then I wanted to know.
And asked.
And said that it had been you, earlier.
And invited the lady, a young writer,
to have coffee with me.
Then I heard how much she admired you.
I hardly said anything careless,
Ingeborg,
but I think she had already guessed;
it was an experience for her.
She was a young woman, maybe thirty-five;
I suppose she knows now,
but I do not think she will tell people.
I really do not think so.
Do not be angry, Ingeborg.
Please do not be angry.
It was so strange,
it was so completely out of our world.
I have to see you again, Ingeborg,
for I love you.
Paul, dear,
Every day is now full of echoes.
But you must not neglect
Gisèle because of me.
Whom will we have to thank for everything?
Ingeborg, Ingeborg.
I am so full of you.
And know, finally, what your poems are like.
Paul, your roses were there when I moved in.
Ingeborg, dearest, what can I say?
You are going to Vienna,
my heart will accompany you, do not worry.
When are you going to Berlin,
when to Hamburg, Kiel, etc.?
Please tell me, I have to know.
Vienna-
worse than expected,
yet better than can be expected.
It is- perhaps more than any other place-
a hotbed of half-measures,
one must truly be careful not to lose
one's intellectual footing.
Come, Ingeborg.
Should I come?
You do not know what it means to me
to be asked like that.
I suddenly had to cry,
simply because this exists for me...
and because I have never had it before.
My final worry concerns not us but,
rather, Gisèle and you...
and that you might not find the way
to her beautiful, heavy heart.
A request, Ingeborg:
Send Gisèle your two volumes of poetry-
I told her you would.
Oh, I don't know...
I'll give it to you.
You'll give it to me?
My God.
It only sounded lame
because you repeated it.
Should I come too?
But don't you find scars beautiful?
- I do.
I find them extremely beautiful.
Yes, yes... I like scars too.
I wish I had one here,
like this...
And it continues here.
- A gangster scar.
Tough Viennese small-time gangster.
It was a knife fight.
That would be my favorite
and then I'd get a tattoo...
if I were a real gangster,
a teardrop, you know...
For my lost buddy.
They do that I think...
Or for murder, if you kill someone...
There's one here...
They have different meanings, left or right...
No, no, no...
I wouldn't...
I would get a tattoo, though,
but I don't know what.
That's what's stopping me...
- I got mine all at once.
All three at once?
Look-
how hot-blooded.
Look, at this lack of hot-bloodedness.
This lack of masculinity in my case.
These ones I especially like.
And what's that, a cube?
In alchemy the symbol for
the material universe.
And the third one was
your zodiac sign, right?
Aries.
It's not so nice.
Why?
It's just a curve.
There are nicer ones.
Oh, you don't mean the tattoo, but...
Yes, the symbol, the sign.
17 February 1958, Munich
Paul,
I am scarcely able to write, to answer.
So much work,
so much weariness and exhaustion.
The foehn wind has been blowing for a few days:
great warmth and madness in the air.
I am dejected.
And on top of that- and above all-
I am dejected...
over the political developments in Germany.
Troubled times, Ingeborg.
Troubled, chilling times.
How could it have been otherwise-
it was already there.
Paul, I am in Paris
- no one knows- but are you here too...
or still in Germany?
I have to speak to you.
Please, can you come
on Wednesday at 4 p.m. to Café George V?
I cannot think of anything better offhand,
it is next to the Métro station.
Wednesday is my birthday;
10 years ago it was my 22nd.
As long as you are there,
looking at me for a few hours...
Where are things taking us? I do not know.
So many terrible things are happening.
I am glad Gisèle and the child are around you
and that you are around them -
protection,
insofar as there is any protection here.
Paris, 1 September 1958
Are you still in Naples, Ingeborg?
My August was- except for four poems- empty.
Write me a few lines, Ingeborg!
To grasp the truth of the world,
one must lose one's grip on reality.
In terms of what he experienced...
I think that's great, the...
To grasp the truth of the world,
one must lose one's grip on reality.
One can only understand all this
if one loses one's mind.
Being on the verge of losing your mind,
I think, is most beautiful.
James Brown,
Paris '67
A little louder.
Munich, 5 October 1958
Paul, dear Paul,
Remember that afternoon...
when we left rue de Longchamp,
had a Pernod...
and you made a joke,
asking whether I had fallen in love?
At the time I had not, and some time later it
happened in such a strange way.
A few days ago, after I got back to Munich,
Max Frisch came...
to ask if I could do it,
live with him,
and now it has been decided.
I will stay in Munich for about three months
and then move to Zurich.
Paul, if only you were here,
if I could just speak to you!
I am very happy,
and feel safe in warmth, love, and understanding.
And I am only sad sometimes about myself,
because I cannot rid myself
of a fear and doubt...
that concerns me, not him.
I think I can tell you, for we know-
that it is almost impossible for us
to live with someone else.
Paris, 9 October
Safety, warmth, love and understanding.
I am telling my heart to wish you happiness-
and it gladly does so of its own accord:
it hears you hoping and believing.
Munich, 26 October
I have had some difficult times,
with many doubts, much despairing,
but all one can do is bring these fears
into reallife and solve them there,
not in one's thoughts.
You did not send the poems!
Do not pull your hand away from me, Paul,
please do not.
Dear Ingeborg,
I experience a few slights every day,
plentifully served on every street corner.
Lies and baseness, almost everywhere.
We are alone and helpless.
Give my regards to Max Frisch.
Be well and at ease-
Yours, Paul
Zurich, 10 December 1958
Paul, we know these people exist,
in Germany and elsewhere,
and it would be surprising
if they all suddenly disappeared.
I do not know how to rid the world of evil,
and whether one is simply supposed to endure it.
But you are there and have an effect,
and the poems have an effect of their own
and protect you-
that is the answer
and a counterbalance in this world.
Paris, 2 February '59
Ingeborg, I tell myself the letter
you promised me has only failed to arrive...
because it is hard to write it,
and my flood of words on the telephone
makes it harder...
than it already was.
Uetikon, 2 March
Dear Paul,
It was nice to hear your voice;
I am always glad to hear it come out
of the white box on my desk.
Sils-Baselgia, 20 July
My dear Ingeborg, I am sitting up here-
may Nietzsche forgive me!
Do you remember that he wanted to have
all anti-Semites shot?
Now they probably drive up in their Mercedes.
Before your letter came,
I read in the newspaper...
that you have been "called" to teach in Frankfurt,
at the university.
My warmest congratulations!
But between you and me:
Can one really teach that?
Should one?
I am not well,
I am at my wits' end
with myself and everything again,
What is the use of writing-
and what is the use of someone
who has made writing his life?
Perhaps you were right
to accept the lectureship in Frankfurt.
We have all become deeply entangled
in compromise.
We are going back to Paris in a few days-
please write to me there!
Write often!
I shall withhold the gentian from you...
and am consequently yours
with golden hawksbeard and many rampions.
Yours, Paul
Uetikon, 3 September
I keep thinking again and again,
but always in this language...
in which I no longer have any faith,
in which I no longer want to express myself.
When will I see you again?
This winter, in Frankfurt?
Paris, 7 September
I have a few invitations to readings,
one of them even in Vienna-
a matinée at the Burgtheater;
but I am tired of reading,
all these letters are still unanswered;
also I have accepted an assistant's position
at the Ecole Normale,
not least
for the monthly salary it involves.
I think I have to get through
an extended period of silence.
Zurich, 28 September
I do not know what to say about
your assistant's position;
it pains me that you have to do it,
but maybe it will at least be good
during your expected period of silence:
something to do.
Paris, 17 October
Dear Ingeborg,
The enclosed review came this morning-
please read it and tell me what you think.
Günter Blöcker, DerTagesspiegel, Berlin
11 October '59
Throughout, Celan's wealth of metaphors
neither derives from reality...
nor serves it.
Even where Celan introduces nature,
it is not a lyrical evocation
in the manner of the nature poem.
The carpet of thyme in "Summer Report"
has nothing intoxicating about it,
it is odorless-
a word that can be applied to all of these poems.
The lack of concrete sensuality...
is not exactly compensated for by musicality.
Certainly the author likes to work
with musical terms,
as in the much-praised "Death Fugue"...
But these are more like contrapuntal exercises...
on the manuscript paper or on silent keys.
Celan approaches the German language
with more freedom...
than most of his fellow poets.
That may be due to his background.
That may be due to his background.
Is anti-Semitism the reason?
I am not sure.
Paul, I often worry that you do not see at all...
how much your poems are admired,
how much of an impact they have,
and that it is
only because of your fame-
allow me to use the word just this once,
and do not dismiss it -
that people keep
trying to detract from it...
as if to them the unusual were so unbearable.
Paris, 12 November 1959
I wrote to you on October 17, Ingeborg-
in a time of need.
On October 23,
after I had still not received an answer,
I wrote, equally in need,
to Max Frisch.
Then, as my need continued,
I tried to reach you both by telephone...
several times- in vain.
You had-I read it in the newspapers-
gone to the meeting of Gruppe 47
and received much acclaim for a story.
This morning your letter came,
and this afternoon the letter from Max Frisch.
You know, Ingeborg,
what you wrote to me.
You also know what Max Frisch wrote to me.
You also know
- or, rather, you used to know-
what I was trying to say in "Death Fugue".
You know- no, you used to know,
so now I must remind you-
that to me "Death Fugue" is also this:
an epitaph and a grave.
Whoever writes what this Blöcker character
wrote about "Death Fugue"...
is desecrating the graves.
My mother too has only this grave.
You, Ingeborg,
console me with my "fame".
As hard as it is for me, Ingeborg,
I must now ask you...
not to write to me, not to call me,
not to send me any books,
not in the months ahead-
not for a long time.
I have to think of my mother.
I have to think of Gisèle and the child.
17 November
I am worried about you, Ingeborg.
But you have to understand me:
my cry for help-
you do not hear it, are not within your heart
- where I expect you to be-
you are in literature.
So please write to me
or send me- by telegram-
your telephone number at Kirchgasse.
Zurich, 18 November
Your express letter just came, Paul, thank God.
I can breathe again.
The last few days here, since your letter-
it was horrible,
everything becoming unstable,
close to breaking up,
and now each of us has inflicted
so many wounds on the other.
But I cannot, I must not speak about here.
I must speak about us.
You and I must not fail to find
our way back to each other again-
it would destroy me.
You say I am not within myself but, rather,
in literature.
That is absurd- what strange directions
your thoughts are taking!
I am where I always am, but often despairing,
collapsing under the burdens;
it is difficult to carry even one person...
who is isolated
by self-destruction and illness.
I have to learn to do more, I know,
and I will.
I will listen to you, but help me too
by listening to me.
I am sending the telegram with my number now
and I pray...
that we find the words.
Paris, 19 May
Do you remember what I said to you
when I last saw you,
two years ago, in Paris, in the taxi,
before you left?
I still remember, Ingeborg.
"Do not get into adventures, Ingeborg"-
that is what I said to you.
You did get into adventures-
that you do not realize it, is proof of that.
You believe every word
from those who are happy to slander me;
you do not even ask me.
You do not want to perceive me,
to acknowledge me or ask me.
Ingeborg, where are you?
Some Blöcker comes along,
a grave desecrator,
I write to you in my desperation,
and you cannot spare a word,
not even a syllable for me;
you go off to literary conferences.
Are you not ashamed, Ingeborg?
And please, before replying or
not replying to me, refrain...
from asking others for advice- ask yourself.
Zurich, after 27 September 1961
Dear Paul,
This is, again, perhaps not the right time...
to say a number of things
that are difficult to say,
but there is no right time...
Of all the many injustices and injuries...
I have experienced so far,
the ones you inflicted
have always been the worst -
not least because I cannot respond to them
with contempt or indifference,
because I cannot protect myself against them,
because my feelings for you are
too strong and make me defenseless.
And I ask myself: Who am I to you,
who after so many years?
A phantom, or a reality...
Or a reality that is no longer like a phantom?
For me, a great deal has happened,
and I want to be the person I am, today,
and do you see who I am today?
That is precisely what I do not know,
and that makes me despair.
I truly think that the greater misfortune
lies within you.
The awful things that come from outside
are something you must get through.
You want to be the victim,
but it is up to you not to be.
I do not think the world can change,
but we can, and I wish you could.
Rome, 5 December 1961
Dear, dear Paul,
I truly wanted to write every day,
but our return journey,
and in my case a further trip in between,
did not leave me time for anything;
if I could at least,
like other people,
write a letter in an hour or an evening-
but it has long been like an illness;
I cannot write,
I am already crippled when I write the date...
or put the paper in the typewriter.
Paris, 21 September 1963
Dear Ingeborg,
When I read in the newspaper
that you had been to Russia,
I greatly envied you for that trip,
especially your stay in Petersburg.
But shortly afterward
I heard that you were very unwell...
and had only just returned from the hospital.
I wanted to call you,
but you did not have a telephone yet.
Now I am writing to you,
just a few lines,
to ask you likewise for a few lines.
Please let me know how you are feeling.
I have a few less than pleasant years
behind me-
"behind me", as they say.
30 July'67
Perhaps you could write me a few lines.
If you do, then please at this address:
Paul Celan, Ecole Normale Supérieure,
45 rue d'Ulm, Paris.
All the best!
Yours, Paul
Frankfurt, 30 July'67
On the night of April 19, 1970,
Paul Celan leaves his apartment.
15 days later near Courbevoie north of Paris
his body is found in the Seine.
At the time of his death he was 49 years old.
On September 26, 1973, Ingeborg Bachmann
is severely burned in her apartment in Rome...
in a fire presumably started by a cigarette.
She is taken
to the Ospedale Sant'Eugenio in Rome,
where almost three weeks later,
on October 17, she dies.
She was 47 years old.
Can I speak to you for a moment?
asks a man,
I must deliver a message to you.
I ask:
To whom, to whom are you to bring a message?
He says: The Princess of Kagran herself.
I rebuke him:
Do not utter that name, ever.
Tell me nothing!
But he shows me a dried-up leaf,
and I know
he has spoken the truth.
My life is over, for during transport
he drowned in the river,
he was mylife.
I loved him more than my own life.
Subtitles:
Kimi Lum and DeLuxe-Videotitel, Vienna
a film by Ruth Beckermann
Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan
meet in Vienna in the spring of 1948.
She is studying philosophy.
As a poet she is still unknown.
He has already made a name for himself
as a poet.
He has fled to Vienna from his hometown...
Czernovitz via Bucharest and Budapest...
and is headed for Paris.
His Jewish parents were killed
in a German concentration camp in Ukraine.
Her father was a soldier
and came home from the war alive.
She never spoke of the fact
that he belonged to the Nazi Party.
When they first meet,
she is 21 and he is 27.
In Egypt
For Ingeborg
Thou shalt say to the strange woman's eye:
be the water!
Thou shalt seek in the stranger's eye
those whom thou knowest to be in the water.
Thou shalt call them from the water:
Ruth! Noemi! Miriam!
Thou shalt adorn them
when thou liest with the stranger.
Thou shalt adorn them
with the cloud-hair of the stranger.
Thou shalt say to Ruth, to Miriam and Noemi:
Behold, I sleep next to her!
Thou shalt adorn the stranger next to thee
most beautifully of all.
Thou shalt adorn her with the pain for Ruth,
for Miriam and Noemi.
Thou shalt say to the stranger:
Behold, I slept next to these!
Vienna, 23 May 1948
To the meticulous one,
22 years after her birthday
From the unmeticulous one
Vienna, Christmas 1948
Dear, dear Paul,
Three months ago, someone suddenly gave me
your book of poems as a gift.
I didn't know it had come out.
It was like this,
the ground was
so light and buoyant beneath me,
and my hand trembled a little,
a tiny, tiny bit.
I still do not know what last spring meant.
You know me,
I always want to know everything very precisely.
It was beautiful- and so were the poems,
and the poem we made together.
Today you are dear to me and so present.
I want to tell you that at all costs.
I often neglected to do so at the time.
Much, much love!
Yours, Ingeborg
Vienna, 12 April 1949
Spring is almost here, so strange
and unforgettable it was last year.
Never again
willl walk through the Stadtpark...
without knowing
that it can be the whole world...
and without becoming the small fish
from back then again.
Now I understand
that it was right for you to go to Paris.
What would you say
if I suddenly turned up there this fall?
Paul, dear Paul,
I long for you and our fairy tale.
What shalll do?
My thoughts
are constantly preoccupied with you,
I ponder these things often
and talk to you,
and take your strange,
dark head in my hands...
and want to push the weight
off your chest,
free your hand with the carnations
and hear you sing.
Nothing has happened to make me suddenly
think about you more intensely.
Everything is as usual.
I have work and success,
and there are somehow men around me,
but it means little to me:
Beautiful and gloomy things are spread
over my fleeting days.
Paris, 20 June 1949
Ingeborg,
This year I am "imprecise" and late.
But perhaps it is only...
because I want no one except
you to be there...
when I place poppies,
a great many poppies,
andmemory,
just as much memory,
two great glowing bouquets...
on your birthday table.
I have been looking forward
to this moment for weeks.
Vienna, 24 June 1949
My dear,
Because I hadn't been thinking about it at all,
your card positively flew in today,
straight into my heart.
Yes, it is true, I am very fond of you,
I never said it back then.
I felt the poppies again,
deeply, very deeply;
you performed such wonderful magic,
I will never forget it.
Sometimes all I want is to leave
and go to Paris,
to feel you touch my hands,
touch me completely with flowers,
and then, once again, to not know where
you have come from and where you are going.
To me you are from India
or an even more distant, dark brown country,
to me you are desert and sea
and everything that is secret.
I shall be in Paris in mid-August,
only for a few days.
Take me to the Seine, let us gaze into it...
until we become small fish
and recognize each other again.
Paris, 4 August 1949
Ingeborg, my love,
Just a few quick lines...
to tell you how happyl am that you are coming.
I am full of impatience, mylove.
Yours, Paul
So...
The distance is the same as always.
Maybe a little higher.
That looks good, yes...
Yes...
Can I speak off to the side?
- Off to the side... A little, but...
Like this. Okay.
So you can see the text...
Is that okay?
Fine.
I have to readjust the microphones
because we changed the signal levels...
Take 8, rolling...
Paris, 20 August 1949
Paris, 20 August 1949
So you will not be coming for two months.
Why?
You will not tell me;
will not say for how long...
or whether you will receive
your scholarship.
In the meantime we can- you suggest -
"exchange letters".
Do you know, Ingeborg,
why I so seldom wrote to you this past year?
Not only because Paris
had forced me into a terrible silence...
from which I could not escape;
also because I did not know what you thought
about those brief weeks in Vienna.
You know, one must always make
the big decisions alone.
Maybe I am mistaken,
maybe we are evading each other...
exactly where we would so like to meet,
maybe we are both to blame.
Still, I sometimes tell myself...
that my silence
might be more understandable than yours,
for the darkness that imposes it upon me
is older.
One long year has passed now,
a year in which I am sure you have experienced
a great deal.
But you have not told me how far
our own May and June lie behind this year.
How far away or how close are you, Ingeborg?
Tell me...
so that I know whether
you will close your eyes if I kiss you now.
Vienna, 25 August 1949
Dearest, Do you remember our first
telephone conversations?
How difficult it was;
there was always something choking me.
To me you are you,
to me you are not "to blame" for anything.
You need not say anything,
but the slightest word makes me happy.
I do not know why I want you or what for,
and am glad,
normally, I know it all too well.
Do you remember your desperation...
about my openness in certain matters?
I do not know what you want to know
and what not,
but you can imagine that the time since you...
has not been devoid of relationships
with other men.
But nothing lasting has developed;
I do not stay anywhere for long,
I am more restless than ever
and cannot promise anyone anything.
How long ago are our May and June
compared to all this, you ask.
Not one day, my dear!
To me May and June is tonight or tomorrow noon
and will be for many years.
It is a beautiful love in which I live with you,
and only because
I am afraid to say too much...
do I not say it is the most beautiful.
Dear, dear Paul,
Now it is November.
The letter I wrote in August is still lying here-
everything is so sad.
Maybe you have been waiting for it.
Will you still accept it now?
I have the feeling I do not say enough,
that I cannot help you.
I should come,
look at you, take you out,
kiss you and hold you
so that you will not drift away.
Please believe that I shall come one day
and bring you back.
It frightens me tremendously
to see you floating out into a great sea,
but I mean to build a ship
and bring you back home from your forlornness.
But you must also do your part
and not make it too difficult for me.
Write to me soon, please, and tell me
whether you still want to hear from me,
whether you can still accept
my tenderness and my love,
whether anything else
can help you,
whether you still reach for me sometimes and
darken me with that heavy dream...
in which I want to become light.
I am very much with you.
Yours, Ingeborg.
Let's take a break, please.
Then it ends up like a fat sausage.
You put in too much.
- Too much?
That's not going to work.
Now hold on.
Good things take time.
If it's too tight,
it doesn't taste as good.
Are you done already?
Sure, look at yours...
Look, it's a total cripple.
I always make cripples.
Right. I always...
- And it mustn't be too tight.
Or it doesn't taste good.
It's just a stupid cigarette.
It really...
It's about tobacco pleasure.
- You have to trim this whisker.
Can you play something some time?
What?
- In there.
Play something?
- You.
Oh, yeah.
- On the piano.
I'll accompany you.
On vocals?
- Yes.
Please do.
Maybe it will be a
terrific...
collaboration in the end.
Horrific.
You said that.
Vienna, 6 September 1950
I have been very sick in recent weeks;
a nervous breakdown and all its symptoms
paralyzed me and made me incapable...
of reacting in the right way
or deciding anything.
Forgive me if you can,
and help me get away from here!
Can you try
to send me an invitation?
I could leave here in October,
and by then I should have enough money...
to get through the first while in Paris,
so that I am not too much of a burden to you.
Dear Paul, it is difficult for me
to write more...
because I sense
things will only be resolved...
when I see you face to face,
hold your hand,
and tell you everything, absolutely everything.
Paris, 7 September 1950
My dear Ingeborg,
Here is the letter in which Frau Dr. Rosenberg
invites you to Paris.
I hope it will be sufficient
to acquire the French visa.
Please take the necessary steps immediately,
and let me know
if everything takes its normal course.
You have suffered grief, Ingeborg.
I am sorry to hear that.
But I believe Paris can make you forget
your grief: this grief in particular.
And perhaps I can assist Paris in doing so.
Give me an answer soon.
Dearest,
I long so much for a little security...
that I am almost afraid I shall find it soon.
I look forward to and fear
what lies ahead;
the fear is still greater.
Please try to be good to me
and to hold on to me!
Sometimes I think everything
is a muddled dream...
and neither you nor Paris exist,
and crushing me is...
the terrible hundred-headed hydra
of poverty that refuses to let me go.
I am supposed to pick up myvisa on October 5.
I will let you know about my departure soon.
Dear Ingeborg, It is half past four
and I must go see my student now.
It was our first rendezvous in Paris;
my heart is beating so loudly.
I still have to give two lessons today.
They are far away, and I will not be back
before quarter to nine.
The socket for your iron
is in the lamp,
but make sure to close the door, so that
no one in the hotel notices you are ironing.
And give a little thought to what swept over me
when I spoke to you.
Vienna, March 1951
Now everything is as quiet as
after bombings during the war...
when the smoke cleared
and one discovered...
that one's house was gone,
and one didn't know what to say;
and what is there to say?
I may be going to Paris again this fall.
But even if I have to stay here,
I shall not be sad.
I have had and taken so much,
that it could see me through for a long time;
but even if it doesn't -
one can get by on so little.
When the time comes, we will not be allowed
to take much luggage anyway,
maybe none at all.
Write but don't spare the details,
go ahead and tell me that the curtain
in our window burned up again...
and people are watching us from the street.
Yours with all my heart, Ingeborg.
As if they couldn't take me seriously.
I wasn't thinking about
what exactly I wanted...
or how I envisioned my composition.
"But it's nothing..."
It took ages for us to see eye to eye...
"But it's so simple... It's nothing..."
Always dissing you somehow?
- Yes, always.
It's not really tangible,
but you feel it constantly.
And the organist I played with just now
confirmed it too.
At first he was skeptical about my music...
and all his musician colleagues too.
Now that everyone...
sees what it actually is...
what they have a problem with...
it's so extreme...
and they're stuck in this...
pattern of counting.
They have to be able to count everything...
There's a form for everything.
What?
- For every type of composition...
there is a name
and a form and a template and a...
It's ordered.
There's a system
and you have to follow it.
Yes.
I see.
Or you don't have to follow it, but...
It's all very simple that way, but...
they don't make anything of it... not really...
They don't compose,
none of them.
They wouldn't have the guts.
How does this go?
What they do is somehow so extreme.
But they just do what they're told.
They just sit there and wait.
Look how he sits at the drums.
The civil servants among the artists,
kind of like that.
But that's just it,
this is a huge burden for a lot of people.
I mean they know so much
and are so absolutely full...
of great things,
but are caught up in this
do-as-you're-told mentality.
It must be so awful.
Vienna, 27 June 1951
Dear, dear Paul,
The many letters I have written to you,
the wrong ones and the right ones-
I never had the courage to send them off.
Do you still remember that we were
very happy together in spite of everything,
even in our worst moments,
when we were our worst enemies?
Why do you no longer sense
that I still want to go to you...
with my mad, confused and contradictory heart,
which still works against you from time to time?
I am slowly starting to understand
whyl resisted you so strongly,
whyl may never stop doing so.
I love you and I do not want to love you;
it is too much and too difficult,
but I love you-
today I will tell you, even at the risk...
that you will no longer be able
nor want to hear it.
It is difficult to reply to these
letters, Ingeborg, you know that,
you know it better than I do.
I mean that the outlines
of your own person will appear...
clearer to you than to me, as I-
not least
through your persistent silence-
am faced with problems
whose solution only produces a further problem.
I would be glad if I could tell myself that you
took what happened as what it really was:
as something that cannot be retracted,
but certainly recalled
through faithful remembering.
You have gotten more out of life, Inge,
than most of your contemporaries.
No door has remained closed to you,
and new doors are opening all the time.
You have no reason to be impatient,
Ingeborg,
and if I could make one request, it is this:
Consider how readily
everything is at your disposal.
And now be a little more sparing
with your demands.
I am telling you all this to warn you
of a certain success:
It is only short-lived,
and people with somber dispositions like you...
should know how to steer clear of it.
Dear Inge, I shall close now...
with the request
to write to me more often and regularly.
All my love and best wishes,
Paul
Your response to the most intimate parts
of my letters hits me like a cold wind,
but I understand and respect you too much...
to let any bitterness grow inside me.
What you call my successes,
which you have always...
viewed with skepticism
as I have also begun to do,
strike me as questionable,
so that I wonder what people envy me for.
The fact that I make demands, even excessive
ones does not seem reprehensible to me.
That is true, of all the things you accuse me of.
And also that I am impatient and dissatisfied.
But my restlessness does not push me,
of this I am quite sure,
toward paths on which one loses oneself.
You have often accused me
of having no connection to your poems.
Please, I ask you to abandon this notion.
Sometimes I live and breathe only through them.
Sometimes the poem seems like a mask...
that only exists because from time to time
the others need something...
to hide their sanctified,
grotesque everyday faces.
Can you tell? I act,
I wander past all the houses in the area,
I am running after myself.
If only I really knew what hour has struck!
But was it really in front of my door,
the stone I am trying to roll away?
Oh, the word only comes to me through the air
and comes-
I fear once again-
in my sleep.
Dear Paul,
I know that you no longer love me,
that you no longer think about taking me in-
and yet I cannot help still hoping,
working with the hope of a life
together with you...
and building a foundation that
could give us a degree of financial security...
and- whether here or there-
make it possible for us to begin anew.
I yearn for you in a painful way,
and yet I am sometimes glad...
that I currently have no opportunity
to go to you.
My dear Ingeborg,
This life seems to be a series
of missed opportunities,
and it is perhaps better
not to puzzle over them for too long,
otherwise no words would ever flow.
Let us no longer speak of things
that are irretrievable, Inge.
All they do is reopen the old wound,
they stir up anger and ill will in me,
they rouse what is past.
With a few words,
which time scatters before you
at not so small intervals,
you create confusion that I must treat
with the same harshness...
with which I treated you in the past.
When I read your letter yesterday,
again and again, I felt very miserable.
Would you find it unpleasant to see me again?
Please do not come to Paris on my account!
We would only bring each other pain-
you to me and I to you.
What would be the use of that, hm?
I will not go to Paris on your account.
However, I may go anyway,
sooner or later-
my work could easily require it.
Your disgust and anger are understandable-
what I do not understand,
and I must say this-
is this terrible irreconcilability,
this mentality of
"never forgive and never forget",
the frightful distrust you convey to me.
I no longer have any way to make amends,
and that is the worst thing
that can happen to a person.
My situation is becoming
increasingly eerie.
I risked everything and lost everything.
In the next few days I will be sending
you back the ring you gave me last year.
I was less surprised by your wish
to have the ring back...
than by the memory you associate with it.
I would have understood
that it is important to you...
to keep this family memento,
and for that reason alone I would not
have hesitated for a moment to return it to you.
I would certainly not have misunderstood
nor been offended either.
The suspicion you utter in your heart
toward me...
seems so monstrous to me that even now,
two days after learning of it,
I still have to pull myself together
to be able to think clearly...
and refrain from showing the bitterness
and despair threatening to close in upon me.
Paul,
Is that what you think?
This ring, whose history I knew-
and that this history is sacred to me
is something...
you could not touch
in all your accusations-
do you really think I could have taken this ring
on a whim, simply because I saw it and liked it?
I will not justify myself to you,
nor am I concerned with being right,
for this is not about you and me,
at least not for me.
All that matters here is
whether what I stand for can hold its own...
against what this ring stands for.
And I say to you that my conscience
in respect to the dead...
who wore this ring is clear.
I accepted it as a gift from you,
and wore it or kept it safe,
always mindful of its significance.
Today I understand many things more clearly:
I know that you despise me and that
you harbor profound suspicion toward me,
and I feel sorry for you-
for I have no access to your suspicion.
The fact that I love you anyway
has since then become my business.
In August I shall be moving to Italy,
and I will not return.
It is, of course,
an awful shame that she...
didn't send it off.
Inge.
Particularly in the letters
where somehow...
Where she just really
tells how she feels, and...
I think she was probably just...
It had to do with pride...
With her own?
- Yes.
She simply decided to wordlessly...
To let it go without comment?
So it was a conscious decision, you think?
A conscious process?
- Definitely.
Sure, it's a conscious process
if you don't...
If you leave the letter at home
and don't mail it, but...
The role of the lamenter also probably,
or definitely...
got to be too much for her.
And he seems to be unpredictable a lot.
But you think...
it was to protect herself and not him?
I think so.
- Yes.
That's all the more reason,
from my perspective now,
for me to say...
If I heard Anja said...
Or if a friend said
you talked that way...
or said something about me,
especially then I'd go and ask you:
"What was that?"
Tell me yourself.
What did you say? Is it true?
Or what's the...?
I'd want to hear the accusation
directly from that person...
and if that's how it is,
then tell me to my face,
or write to me directly...
But if this awful thing
takes on such proportions...
Well, I...
I would demand
that the other person...
"If that's how it is, then tell me!"
One could respond to that.
- Not me.
No?
I totally understand
that she wrote that letter.
I can totally imagine
how she felt writing it,
and I also totally understand
that afterward she didn't...
want to mail it.
I can absolutely imagine it.
But I'm talking about a...
process...
That before that somehow...
If a friend tells me...
I already start to question...
That's where the craziness starts.
All that shouldn't...
Apparently it wasn't even directed
at her personally...
How sick is that in a relationship?
- But what did he tell her?
Nani...
No one knows.
Just Nani, and...
Maybe he was totally drunk at the time...
and really pissed off at Ingeborg.
You say things you might not really mean...
But fully conscious-Inge isn't there.
And if I tell a friend that
and I'm complaining about someone...
in an emotional state,
then it's unfiltered,
as opposed to
if the person is standing in front of you...
That's why before I write something like that,
I'd ask that person:
"What happened?"
But this whole time dealing with these two,
you never feel...
like anything ever just slipped out.
Not between them.
I absolutely understand her too.
There's nothing here I don't understand,
just...
letting it destroy you
and letting all that...
All that
rain down on you...
And in such an important matter...
I mean it wasn't a quarrel about
who left the butter out in the morning,
and now it's all melted,
there's a lot at stake here.
It's not the easiest subject either...
- Right.
... that can be approached rationally:
"Let's discuss this matter."
No, no, of course not.
She knows, too, that he has...
He knows something.
He has something inside and...
A pain that she can never fathom,
never imagine.
And because of that she is caught in this...
back-and-forth.
From her own pain...
back to understanding again...
In 1952 Paul Celan marries Gisèle de Lestrange.
In 1953 Ingeborg Bachmann moves to Rome,
four years later to Munich.
In 1957, six years after breaking up,
they meet again at a literature conference.
17 October '57
Read this, Ingeborg, read this!
In the slipstream, thousandfold: you.
You and the arm
with which I grew toward you naked, lost one.
Are you asleep now?
Sleep.
Heart-time, the dreamed ones
stand for the midnight numeral.
But are we only the dreamed ones?
The rubble boat
ferries us in the evening,
we are,
like it, in no hurry...
Some things spoke in the silence,
some things were silent.
You cathedrals,
You cathedrals unseen,
You waters unlistened to,
You clocks deep in us...
But are we only the dreamed ones?
I understand, Ingeborg,
that you are not writing to me.
I make it hard for you with myletters and poems,
even harder than before.
You should, you must write to me, Ingeborg.
Both apply:
Touched and Untouched.
Lip knew. Lip knows.
Lip hushes it to an end.
Oh, I have so much to tell you.
Some of the things
even you would barely suspect. Write to me.
Strangely enough, on my way to
the national libraryl suddenly had to...
buy the FrankfurterZeitung.
And I stumbled across the poem you sent
me together with "Mortgaged Time",
written on a strip of paper, by hand.
But are we only the dreamed ones?
A word from you- and I can live.
Wherever we turn in the storm of roses,
the night is lit up by thorns,
and the thunder of leaves,
once so quiet within the bushes,
rumbling at our heels.
Oh,
I was so unjust toward you...
all these years.
Munich, 28 October 1957
I am grateful to you
for telling your wife everything,
"sparing" her would mean becoming even guiltier
and also belittling her.
You must not leave her and your child.
You are going to say that it has already
happened, she is abandoned.
But please, do not leave her.
If I have to think of her and the child
- and I will always have to think of them-
I will not be able to embrace you.
That is alll know.
The sea,
tasted,
drunk away, dreamed away.
An hour, soul-darkened.
The next one, an autumn light,
offered to a blind feeling
that came along the way.
Dearest Paul,
If only you could come at the end of November!
I wish for it. May I?
It used to be easier for me despite everything;
I was so glad to speak your name.
Now I almost feel
I must ask you for forgiveness...
if I do not keep your name to myself.
You told me
you were forever reconciled with me,
I will never forget that.
Do I have to worry
about making you unhappy again,
about again bringing destruction to her and you,
you and me?
I cannot comprehend being so damned.
Destruction, Ingeborg?
No, certainly not.
Rather: the truth.
You were,
when I met you,
both to me:
the sensual and the spiritual.
The two can never separate, Ingeborg.
Think of "In Egypt".
Every time I read it,
I see you step into this poem:
You are the reason for living,
not least because...
you are, and will remain,
the justification for my speaking.
But that alone, my speaking,
is not even the point;
I wanted to be silent with you too.
Being there- for each other.
Do you know that now I can speak
and write again?
I have not told you
that for the past 3 years...
I sometimes feared for your poems.
Now my fear is gone.
Yesterdayl had to rummage through
some old documents...
and stumbled on a pocket calendar from 1950.
Under 14 October I had written:
Ingeborg.
It was the day you came to Paris.
On 14 October
we were in Cologne, Ingeborg.
You clocks are deep in us.
Tomorrow you will be moving into
your new apartment:
Could I come soon
and help you find a lamp?
Munich, 14 November 1957
Paul,
I am not in the new apartment yet -
I have to wait until December 1.
Nonetheless, I am glad whenever you come.
I will be staying in Munich
until just before Christmas.
I cannot go away,
for I have too much work.
Sometimes I speak to you in Paris as if
you were alone there, and I often fall silent...
when I acknowledge you with everything there,
acknowledge me with everything here.
But then we will have clarity
and no more confusion-
and go in search of the lamp!
Going on a lamp hunt...
To think that back then we had
to hound our hearts to death...
over such trifles, Ingeborg!
Whom were we obeying, tell me, whom?
I am thinking of you, Paul, you think of me!
I will be coming soon, not for long,
for one day,
for a second one-
if you want and permit.
Let us then go in search of the lamp, Ingeborg.
You and me, us.
When are you coming, dear Paul?
The day after tomorrow, Saturday,
I will be in Munich- with you, Ingeborg.
Can you come to the station?
My train arrives in Munich at 12:07.
If you cannot come,
I will be pacing outside your building on
Franz-Josephstrasse half an hour later.
Two more days, Ingeborg.
Frankfurt, Monday night
Ingeborg, my dear Ingeborg,
I cast another glance out of the train,
you had looked around too,
but I was too far away.
Then it came and choked me, so wildly.
And then, when I went back to my
compartment, something very strange occurred.
I shall describe it to you here
as it happened to me-
but you must already forgive me
for acting in so uncontrolled a fashion.
So, I was back in my compartment
and took your poems out of my briefcase.
I felt I was drowning
in something completely transparent and bright.
When I looked up, I saw the young woman
who had the window seat...
take out a copy of Akzente,
the last issue, and start leafing through it.
She leafed and leafed,
and my eyes followed her leafing...
because they knew that your poems
and your name would come.
Then they came,
and the hand that had been leafing paused.
And I saw that the leafing had given way,
that her eyes were reading, again and again.
Again and again.
I was so grateful.
Then I thought for a moment
that she could be someone...
who had heard you read,
who had seen you and recognized you.
And then I wanted to know.
And asked.
And said that it had been you, earlier.
And invited the lady, a young writer,
to have coffee with me.
Then I heard how much she admired you.
I hardly said anything careless,
Ingeborg,
but I think she had already guessed;
it was an experience for her.
She was a young woman, maybe thirty-five;
I suppose she knows now,
but I do not think she will tell people.
I really do not think so.
Do not be angry, Ingeborg.
Please do not be angry.
It was so strange,
it was so completely out of our world.
I have to see you again, Ingeborg,
for I love you.
Paul, dear,
Every day is now full of echoes.
But you must not neglect
Gisèle because of me.
Whom will we have to thank for everything?
Ingeborg, Ingeborg.
I am so full of you.
And know, finally, what your poems are like.
Paul, your roses were there when I moved in.
Ingeborg, dearest, what can I say?
You are going to Vienna,
my heart will accompany you, do not worry.
When are you going to Berlin,
when to Hamburg, Kiel, etc.?
Please tell me, I have to know.
Vienna-
worse than expected,
yet better than can be expected.
It is- perhaps more than any other place-
a hotbed of half-measures,
one must truly be careful not to lose
one's intellectual footing.
Come, Ingeborg.
Should I come?
You do not know what it means to me
to be asked like that.
I suddenly had to cry,
simply because this exists for me...
and because I have never had it before.
My final worry concerns not us but,
rather, Gisèle and you...
and that you might not find the way
to her beautiful, heavy heart.
A request, Ingeborg:
Send Gisèle your two volumes of poetry-
I told her you would.
Oh, I don't know...
I'll give it to you.
You'll give it to me?
My God.
It only sounded lame
because you repeated it.
Should I come too?
But don't you find scars beautiful?
- I do.
I find them extremely beautiful.
Yes, yes... I like scars too.
I wish I had one here,
like this...
And it continues here.
- A gangster scar.
Tough Viennese small-time gangster.
It was a knife fight.
That would be my favorite
and then I'd get a tattoo...
if I were a real gangster,
a teardrop, you know...
For my lost buddy.
They do that I think...
Or for murder, if you kill someone...
There's one here...
They have different meanings, left or right...
No, no, no...
I wouldn't...
I would get a tattoo, though,
but I don't know what.
That's what's stopping me...
- I got mine all at once.
All three at once?
Look-
how hot-blooded.
Look, at this lack of hot-bloodedness.
This lack of masculinity in my case.
These ones I especially like.
And what's that, a cube?
In alchemy the symbol for
the material universe.
And the third one was
your zodiac sign, right?
Aries.
It's not so nice.
Why?
It's just a curve.
There are nicer ones.
Oh, you don't mean the tattoo, but...
Yes, the symbol, the sign.
17 February 1958, Munich
Paul,
I am scarcely able to write, to answer.
So much work,
so much weariness and exhaustion.
The foehn wind has been blowing for a few days:
great warmth and madness in the air.
I am dejected.
And on top of that- and above all-
I am dejected...
over the political developments in Germany.
Troubled times, Ingeborg.
Troubled, chilling times.
How could it have been otherwise-
it was already there.
Paul, I am in Paris
- no one knows- but are you here too...
or still in Germany?
I have to speak to you.
Please, can you come
on Wednesday at 4 p.m. to Café George V?
I cannot think of anything better offhand,
it is next to the Métro station.
Wednesday is my birthday;
10 years ago it was my 22nd.
As long as you are there,
looking at me for a few hours...
Where are things taking us? I do not know.
So many terrible things are happening.
I am glad Gisèle and the child are around you
and that you are around them -
protection,
insofar as there is any protection here.
Paris, 1 September 1958
Are you still in Naples, Ingeborg?
My August was- except for four poems- empty.
Write me a few lines, Ingeborg!
To grasp the truth of the world,
one must lose one's grip on reality.
In terms of what he experienced...
I think that's great, the...
To grasp the truth of the world,
one must lose one's grip on reality.
One can only understand all this
if one loses one's mind.
Being on the verge of losing your mind,
I think, is most beautiful.
James Brown,
Paris '67
A little louder.
Munich, 5 October 1958
Paul, dear Paul,
Remember that afternoon...
when we left rue de Longchamp,
had a Pernod...
and you made a joke,
asking whether I had fallen in love?
At the time I had not, and some time later it
happened in such a strange way.
A few days ago, after I got back to Munich,
Max Frisch came...
to ask if I could do it,
live with him,
and now it has been decided.
I will stay in Munich for about three months
and then move to Zurich.
Paul, if only you were here,
if I could just speak to you!
I am very happy,
and feel safe in warmth, love, and understanding.
And I am only sad sometimes about myself,
because I cannot rid myself
of a fear and doubt...
that concerns me, not him.
I think I can tell you, for we know-
that it is almost impossible for us
to live with someone else.
Paris, 9 October
Safety, warmth, love and understanding.
I am telling my heart to wish you happiness-
and it gladly does so of its own accord:
it hears you hoping and believing.
Munich, 26 October
I have had some difficult times,
with many doubts, much despairing,
but all one can do is bring these fears
into reallife and solve them there,
not in one's thoughts.
You did not send the poems!
Do not pull your hand away from me, Paul,
please do not.
Dear Ingeborg,
I experience a few slights every day,
plentifully served on every street corner.
Lies and baseness, almost everywhere.
We are alone and helpless.
Give my regards to Max Frisch.
Be well and at ease-
Yours, Paul
Zurich, 10 December 1958
Paul, we know these people exist,
in Germany and elsewhere,
and it would be surprising
if they all suddenly disappeared.
I do not know how to rid the world of evil,
and whether one is simply supposed to endure it.
But you are there and have an effect,
and the poems have an effect of their own
and protect you-
that is the answer
and a counterbalance in this world.
Paris, 2 February '59
Ingeborg, I tell myself the letter
you promised me has only failed to arrive...
because it is hard to write it,
and my flood of words on the telephone
makes it harder...
than it already was.
Uetikon, 2 March
Dear Paul,
It was nice to hear your voice;
I am always glad to hear it come out
of the white box on my desk.
Sils-Baselgia, 20 July
My dear Ingeborg, I am sitting up here-
may Nietzsche forgive me!
Do you remember that he wanted to have
all anti-Semites shot?
Now they probably drive up in their Mercedes.
Before your letter came,
I read in the newspaper...
that you have been "called" to teach in Frankfurt,
at the university.
My warmest congratulations!
But between you and me:
Can one really teach that?
Should one?
I am not well,
I am at my wits' end
with myself and everything again,
What is the use of writing-
and what is the use of someone
who has made writing his life?
Perhaps you were right
to accept the lectureship in Frankfurt.
We have all become deeply entangled
in compromise.
We are going back to Paris in a few days-
please write to me there!
Write often!
I shall withhold the gentian from you...
and am consequently yours
with golden hawksbeard and many rampions.
Yours, Paul
Uetikon, 3 September
I keep thinking again and again,
but always in this language...
in which I no longer have any faith,
in which I no longer want to express myself.
When will I see you again?
This winter, in Frankfurt?
Paris, 7 September
I have a few invitations to readings,
one of them even in Vienna-
a matinée at the Burgtheater;
but I am tired of reading,
all these letters are still unanswered;
also I have accepted an assistant's position
at the Ecole Normale,
not least
for the monthly salary it involves.
I think I have to get through
an extended period of silence.
Zurich, 28 September
I do not know what to say about
your assistant's position;
it pains me that you have to do it,
but maybe it will at least be good
during your expected period of silence:
something to do.
Paris, 17 October
Dear Ingeborg,
The enclosed review came this morning-
please read it and tell me what you think.
Günter Blöcker, DerTagesspiegel, Berlin
11 October '59
Throughout, Celan's wealth of metaphors
neither derives from reality...
nor serves it.
Even where Celan introduces nature,
it is not a lyrical evocation
in the manner of the nature poem.
The carpet of thyme in "Summer Report"
has nothing intoxicating about it,
it is odorless-
a word that can be applied to all of these poems.
The lack of concrete sensuality...
is not exactly compensated for by musicality.
Certainly the author likes to work
with musical terms,
as in the much-praised "Death Fugue"...
But these are more like contrapuntal exercises...
on the manuscript paper or on silent keys.
Celan approaches the German language
with more freedom...
than most of his fellow poets.
That may be due to his background.
That may be due to his background.
Is anti-Semitism the reason?
I am not sure.
Paul, I often worry that you do not see at all...
how much your poems are admired,
how much of an impact they have,
and that it is
only because of your fame-
allow me to use the word just this once,
and do not dismiss it -
that people keep
trying to detract from it...
as if to them the unusual were so unbearable.
Paris, 12 November 1959
I wrote to you on October 17, Ingeborg-
in a time of need.
On October 23,
after I had still not received an answer,
I wrote, equally in need,
to Max Frisch.
Then, as my need continued,
I tried to reach you both by telephone...
several times- in vain.
You had-I read it in the newspapers-
gone to the meeting of Gruppe 47
and received much acclaim for a story.
This morning your letter came,
and this afternoon the letter from Max Frisch.
You know, Ingeborg,
what you wrote to me.
You also know what Max Frisch wrote to me.
You also know
- or, rather, you used to know-
what I was trying to say in "Death Fugue".
You know- no, you used to know,
so now I must remind you-
that to me "Death Fugue" is also this:
an epitaph and a grave.
Whoever writes what this Blöcker character
wrote about "Death Fugue"...
is desecrating the graves.
My mother too has only this grave.
You, Ingeborg,
console me with my "fame".
As hard as it is for me, Ingeborg,
I must now ask you...
not to write to me, not to call me,
not to send me any books,
not in the months ahead-
not for a long time.
I have to think of my mother.
I have to think of Gisèle and the child.
17 November
I am worried about you, Ingeborg.
But you have to understand me:
my cry for help-
you do not hear it, are not within your heart
- where I expect you to be-
you are in literature.
So please write to me
or send me- by telegram-
your telephone number at Kirchgasse.
Zurich, 18 November
Your express letter just came, Paul, thank God.
I can breathe again.
The last few days here, since your letter-
it was horrible,
everything becoming unstable,
close to breaking up,
and now each of us has inflicted
so many wounds on the other.
But I cannot, I must not speak about here.
I must speak about us.
You and I must not fail to find
our way back to each other again-
it would destroy me.
You say I am not within myself but, rather,
in literature.
That is absurd- what strange directions
your thoughts are taking!
I am where I always am, but often despairing,
collapsing under the burdens;
it is difficult to carry even one person...
who is isolated
by self-destruction and illness.
I have to learn to do more, I know,
and I will.
I will listen to you, but help me too
by listening to me.
I am sending the telegram with my number now
and I pray...
that we find the words.
Paris, 19 May
Do you remember what I said to you
when I last saw you,
two years ago, in Paris, in the taxi,
before you left?
I still remember, Ingeborg.
"Do not get into adventures, Ingeborg"-
that is what I said to you.
You did get into adventures-
that you do not realize it, is proof of that.
You believe every word
from those who are happy to slander me;
you do not even ask me.
You do not want to perceive me,
to acknowledge me or ask me.
Ingeborg, where are you?
Some Blöcker comes along,
a grave desecrator,
I write to you in my desperation,
and you cannot spare a word,
not even a syllable for me;
you go off to literary conferences.
Are you not ashamed, Ingeborg?
And please, before replying or
not replying to me, refrain...
from asking others for advice- ask yourself.
Zurich, after 27 September 1961
Dear Paul,
This is, again, perhaps not the right time...
to say a number of things
that are difficult to say,
but there is no right time...
Of all the many injustices and injuries...
I have experienced so far,
the ones you inflicted
have always been the worst -
not least because I cannot respond to them
with contempt or indifference,
because I cannot protect myself against them,
because my feelings for you are
too strong and make me defenseless.
And I ask myself: Who am I to you,
who after so many years?
A phantom, or a reality...
Or a reality that is no longer like a phantom?
For me, a great deal has happened,
and I want to be the person I am, today,
and do you see who I am today?
That is precisely what I do not know,
and that makes me despair.
I truly think that the greater misfortune
lies within you.
The awful things that come from outside
are something you must get through.
You want to be the victim,
but it is up to you not to be.
I do not think the world can change,
but we can, and I wish you could.
Rome, 5 December 1961
Dear, dear Paul,
I truly wanted to write every day,
but our return journey,
and in my case a further trip in between,
did not leave me time for anything;
if I could at least,
like other people,
write a letter in an hour or an evening-
but it has long been like an illness;
I cannot write,
I am already crippled when I write the date...
or put the paper in the typewriter.
Paris, 21 September 1963
Dear Ingeborg,
When I read in the newspaper
that you had been to Russia,
I greatly envied you for that trip,
especially your stay in Petersburg.
But shortly afterward
I heard that you were very unwell...
and had only just returned from the hospital.
I wanted to call you,
but you did not have a telephone yet.
Now I am writing to you,
just a few lines,
to ask you likewise for a few lines.
Please let me know how you are feeling.
I have a few less than pleasant years
behind me-
"behind me", as they say.
30 July'67
Perhaps you could write me a few lines.
If you do, then please at this address:
Paul Celan, Ecole Normale Supérieure,
45 rue d'Ulm, Paris.
All the best!
Yours, Paul
Frankfurt, 30 July'67
On the night of April 19, 1970,
Paul Celan leaves his apartment.
15 days later near Courbevoie north of Paris
his body is found in the Seine.
At the time of his death he was 49 years old.
On September 26, 1973, Ingeborg Bachmann
is severely burned in her apartment in Rome...
in a fire presumably started by a cigarette.
She is taken
to the Ospedale Sant'Eugenio in Rome,
where almost three weeks later,
on October 17, she dies.
She was 47 years old.
Can I speak to you for a moment?
asks a man,
I must deliver a message to you.
I ask:
To whom, to whom are you to bring a message?
He says: The Princess of Kagran herself.
I rebuke him:
Do not utter that name, ever.
Tell me nothing!
But he shows me a dried-up leaf,
and I know
he has spoken the truth.
My life is over, for during transport
he drowned in the river,
he was mylife.
I loved him more than my own life.
Subtitles:
Kimi Lum and DeLuxe-Videotitel, Vienna