Conversations Issue 5 — November 2024
Time for the Heart: Letters of Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan
By Wieland Hoban
The Holocaust and loss of his parents in the second world war ravaged the poet Paul Celan (1920-1970) before he became a towering figure in German-language literature. The torments seemed to have continued even after the war had ended and the rise of communist powers in post-war Romania ultimately forced him to leave for Vienna. The former capital of Austro-Hungarian Empire was past its cultural zenith by then, and much like him, was struggling to recover from the toils of the war. But his otherwise unremarkable days in Vienna had one dazzling exception.
Another luminary of the German-language literary world of the twentieth century, Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973) was influential in delineating the cataclysmic effect of fascism on the women’s movement and pioneering the works of other German writers like Anna Seghers (1900-1983) and Christa Wolf (1929-2011). As a fresh graduate in post-war Vienna, Bachmann was working as a scriptwriter and editor at a local radio station. She first encountered Celan in literary circles and immediately connected. Despite their growing intimacy however, Celan was soon disenchanted with Vienna, and like Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) before him, moved to Paris in 1948.
It was during this time when Ingeborg Bachmann started writing to him following his departure from Vienna. Many of her passionate letters gathered dust as drafts and remained unsent while he would, at times, defend his timid responses. These letters bring forth the candid intersection of two fallible yet tender individuals, the after-smell of which hangs in the air like a slow-burning incense—a longing that emanates through one’s senses but does not overpower the heart, making the mind go numb.
These letters, published by Suhrkamp, have been compiled with annotations by Bertrand Badiou, Hans Holler, Andrea Stoll and Barbara Wiedemann, Herzzeit: Der Briefwechse (2008). Wieland Hoban has translated these letters to English for Seagull Books, Correspondence: Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan (2010). They have also been adapted into an audiobook by Seagull Books, narrated by Francesca Ottley and Mark Young. They are the basis of a film directed by Ruth Beckermann, The Dreamed Ones (Die Geträumten, 2016).
1
Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann, poem and dedication in a book of Matisse paintings,
Vienna, 24 (?) June 1948
‘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 over Ruth, over 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
NOTES
This copy of the poem was made only a few days after Ingeborg Bachmann’s first encounter with Paul Celan. She wrote the following messages to her parents (separately) in Vienna: ‘The surrealist poet Paul Celan, whom I had just met two nights earlier with Weigel, and who is very fascinating, has, splendidly enough, fallen in love with me, which adds a little spice to my dreary work. Unfortunately he has to go to Paris in a month. My room is a poppy field at the moment, as he inundates me with this flower’ (17 and 20 May 1948).
2
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, Christmas 1948, not sent
Christmas 1948.
Dear, dear Paul!
Yesterday and today I thought a great deal about you—or about us, if you will. I am not writing to you because I want you to write again, but because it gives me pleasure and because I want to. I had also planned to meet you somewhere in Paris very soon, but then my stupid vain sense of duty kept me here and I did not leave. What does that mean anyway—‘somewhere in Paris’? I don’t know anything, but I do think it would have been lovely somehow!
Three months ago, someone suddenly gave me your book of poems as a gift. I didn’t know it had come out. That was so…the ground was so light and buoyant beneath me, and my hand was trembling a little, just a very little bit. Then there was nothing for a long time again. A few weeks ago, people were saying in Vienna that the Jenés had gone to Paris. So I went along with them again.
I still do not know what last spring meant.—You know me, I always want to know everything very precisely.—It was lovely—and so were the poems, and the poem we made together.
Today you are dear to me and so present. That is what I want to tell you at all costs—I often neglected to do so during that time.
I can come for a few days as soon as I have time. And would you want to see me?—One hour, or two.
Much, much love!
Yours
Ingeborg
NOTES
Jenés: Paul Celan encountered the painter Edgar Jené and his wife Erica Lillegg in the context of Viennese post-war surrealism. Paul Celan’s essay ‘Edgar Jené. Der Traum vom Traume’ [The Dream of a Dream] was published in August 1948 in a volume with reproductions of paintings by Jené.
3
Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann, Paris, 26 January 1949
31, rue des Ecoles
Paris, 26.1.1949.
Ingeborg,
try for a moment to forget that I was silent for so long and so insistently—I had a great deal of sorrow, more than my brother could take from me, my good brother, whose house I am sure you have not forgotten. Write to me as if you were writing to him, to him who always thinks of you and who locked in your medallion the leaf that you have now lost.
Do not keep me, do not keep him waiting!
I embrace you
Paul
NOTES
rue des Ecoles: Since the summer of 1948, Paul Celan had been staying in a room, rented monthly, at Hôtel d’Orléans (Hôtel Sully Saint-Germain) in the Latin Quarter.
4
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, 12 April 1949
Vienna, 12 April 1949
My dear, you,
I am so glad that this letter came—and now I have kept you waiting for so long too, quite unintentionally and without a single unkind thought. You know well enough that this happens sometimes. One does not know why. Two or three times I wrote you a letter, and then left it unsent after all. But what does that really mean, when we are thinking of each other and will, perhaps, do so for a very long time yet?
I am not speaking only to your brother; today I am speaking almost entirely to you, for through your brother I am fond of you, and you must not think that I have passed over you.—Spring will be here again soon, the spring that was so peculiar and so unforgettable last year. I will certainly never walk through the city park again without knowing that it can be the whole world, or without becoming
the little fish from back then.
I could sense the whole time that you were full of sorrow—let me know if receiving more letters might help!
In the autumn, some friends gave me your poems. That was a sad moment, because they came from friends and without any word from you. But every single line made up for it.
You may be glad to know that people sometimes ask after you; a while ago, I even had to give your address to some total strangers from Graz to satisfy them. And little Nani and Klaus Demus still have a look of rapture in their eyes whenever they speak about you.
Now I understand very well that it was right for you to go to Paris. What would you say if I suddenly turned up there too in the autumn? I am to receive a scholarship to America or Paris after my doctorate. I still cannot believe it. It would be too lovely.
There is not much to report about me. I have a great deal of work, my studies are approaching their end, and on the side I am writing for newspapers, the radio, etc., more than in the past. I am trying not to think of myself, to close my eyes and cross over to what is really meant. We are surely all under the greatest suspense, cannot break free and take many indirect paths. But it sometimes makes me so ill that I fear it might one day be impossible to go on.
Let me end by telling you—the leaf that you placed in my medallion is not lost, even if it has long ceased to be inside it; I think of you, and I am still listening to you.
Ingeborg.
NOTES
Nani and Klaus Demus: Paul Celan met Nani Maier, Ingeborg Bachmann’s friend from the last year of school, and her later husband, at the end of his stay in Vienna. The poet and art historian Klaus Demus studied in Paris during 1949/50, while Maier, a Germanist, did so during 1950/51. They were among Paul Celan’s closest friends.
scholarship to America or Paris: Ingeborg Bachmann did not receive any of these scholarships; for her trip to Paris in the autumn of 1950, she was given a one-off payment of 300 Austrian shillings by the Municipality of Vienna.
5
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, late May/early June 1949 (?), aborted draft
Paul, dear Paul,
I long for you and for our fairy tale. What shall I do? You are so far away from me, and the cards you send, which satisfied me until recently, are no longer enough for me.
Yesterday I received poems of yours through Klaus Demus, poems that were new to me, including three recent ones. I can hardly bear it that they reached me by such a detour. There has to be something there for me too.
I can read them better than the others, for in them I encounter the you I have known since the end of the Beatrixgasse. You are always my concern, I ponder a great deal on it and speak to you and take your strange, dark head between my hands and want to push the stones off your chest, free your hand with the carnations and hear you sing. Nothing has happened to me to make me suddenly think more intensely of you. Everything is as usual; I have work and success, and there are somehow men around me, but it means little to me: you, beautiful things and gloomy things are spread over my fleeting days
NOTES
Beatrixgasse: In June 1949, Ingeborg Bachmann moved from her sublet room to Beatrixgasse 26, where she was living when she met Paul Celan, in a sublet room in the apartment of her friend in Gottfried-Keller-Gasse 13, likewise in the 3rd district.
6
Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann, Paris, 20 June 1949
Paris, 20 June 49.
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, and memory, just as much memory, two great glowing bouquets on your birthday table. I have been looking forward to this moment for weeks.
Paul
NOTES
birthday table: Ingeborg Bachmann’s 23rd birthday was on 25 June 1949.
7
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, 24 June 1949
Vienna, 24 June 1949.
My dear,
because I was not thinking about it at all, your card truly came flying here today, on the day before—just like last year—straight into my heart; yes, it is true, I am so fond of you, I never said it back then. I felt the poppies again, deep, very deep; you performed such wonderful magic, I could never forget it.
Sometimes all I want is to go away and come to Paris, to feel you touch my hands, touch me completely with flowers, and then, once again, not know where you have come from and where you are going. To me, you are from India or some ever more remote, dark brown country; for me, you are the desert and the sea and everything that is secret. I still know nothing about you and often fear for you because of it; I cannot imagine you doing any of the things that the rest of us here do, I should have a castle for us and have you come to me, so that you can be my enchanted master in it, we will have a great many carpets inside and music, and we will invent love.
I have often reflected that ‘Corona’ is your most beautiful poem; it is the complete anticipation of a moment in which everything turns to marble, and remains thus forever. For me here, however, it is not becoming ‘time’. I hunger for something I shall not receive, and everything is flat and stale, tired and worn out before it is even used.
I shall be in Paris in mid-August, just a few days. Do not ask me why or what for, but be there for me for one evening or two, three…Take me to the Seine, let us gaze into it until we become little fishes and recognize each other again.
Ingeborg.
8
Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann, Paris, 4 (?) August 1949
Ingeborg, dear,
just a few words in haste, to tell you how happy I am that you are coming.
I hope this letter arrives in time, and that you write once you are here can I expect you? Or can I not, just as I cannot ask why or what for you are coming?
I am full of impatience and love.
Yours, Paul
Here is my telephone number:
DAN 78-41
Correspondence
NOTES
you are coming: Ingeborg Bachmann only came to Paris in the autumn of 1950.
9
Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann, Paris, 20 August 1949
31, rue des Ecoles
Paris, 20 August 49
My dear Ingeborg,
so you are only coming in two months—why? You have not told me, nor have you told me for how long, nor told me whether you will receive your scholarship. In the meantime we can ‘exchange letters’, you suggest. Do you know, Ingeborg, why I have written to you so little during this last 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. What could I have concluded from those first hasty lines of yours, Ingeborg?
Perhaps I am mistaken, perhaps we are evading each other in the very place where we would so like to meet, maybe we are both to blame. Except that I sometimes tell myself that my silence is perhaps more understandable than yours, for the darkness that imposes it upon me is older.
You know: one must always make the big decisions alone. When I received that letter in which you asked me whether you should choose Paris or the United States, I would have liked to tell you how happy I would have been for you to come. Can you understand, Ingeborg, why I did not? I told myself that if it really meant something to you (that is to say, more than something) to live in the city where I also live, you would not have asked for my advice to begin with—on the contrary.
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 long ago our own May and June were before this year…
How far away or how close are you, Ingeborg? Tell me, so that I know whether your eyes will be closed if I kiss you now.
Paul
10
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, 24 November 1949
Vienna, 24 Nov. 1949.
Dear, dear Paul,
now it is November. My letter, which I wrote in August, is still lying here—everything is so sad. Maybe you have been waiting for it. Would you still accept it now?
I feel that I say too little, 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 a great deal 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 contribute something to that, and not make it too difficult for me. Time and many other things are against us, but we must not let it destroy what we want to salvage from it.
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 could help you, whether you still reach for me sometimes and darken me with that heavy dream in which I want to become light.
Try it, write to me, ask me, write everything off your chest that is burdening you!
I am very much with you
yours, Ingeborg
10.1
Supplement
Vienna, 25 August 1949.
Dearest,
this will not be an easy letter; a year has passed without questions or answers, and with few, but very tender greetings, very small attempts to speak, that have so far yielded few results. Do you remember our first telephone conversations? How difficult that was for me; there was always something choking me, a feeling not unlike that which had carried our letters before that. I do not know whether you agree, but I shall take the liberty of presuming so.
Your silence was certainly different from mine. To me, it is self-evident that we should not be speaking about you and your motives now. They are important and always will be; but if anything is to be put in the balance, it is nothing that relates to you. For me, you are you; for me, you are not ‘to blame’ for anything. You do not have to say anything, but the slightest word makes me happy. Things are different in my case. I am probably the simpler one of us, yet there is a greater need for me to explain myself because it is harder for you to understand.
What my silence means, first and foremost, is that I wanted to keep those weeks as they were, that all I wanted was to receive a card from you now and again to confirm that I had not been dreaming, but that everything really was the way it was. I was still fond of you, no less than before, on a level that was ‘beyond the chestnuts’.
Then this last spring came, and everything became stronger, more full of yearning, and emerged from the glass cover I had placed over it. Many plans were formed; I wanted to go to Paris, to see you again, but I cannot tell you to what purpose. I do not know why I want you or what for. I am very glad about that. Normally, I know it all too well.
A great many things happened this year. I got a little further, I had a great deal of work, and I set down a first few things—with very many doubts, inhibitions and hopes.
Do you remember how you always despaired a little at my openness in some matters? I do not know which things you want to know and which not, but you can imagine that the time since you has not been devoid of relationships with other men. I fulfilled a wish you voiced back then; I have not yet told you that either.
But nothing more lasting has developed; I do not stay anywhere for long, I am more restless than ever and cannot promise anyone anything. You ask how long ago our May and our June are compared to all this?—not one day, my dear! May and June are tonight or tomorrow afternoon for me, and will still be for many years.
You write so bitterly about how strangely I acted when I had the choice between Paris and America. I understand you so well, and it still hurts me very much that it came across that way. Whatever I say in response will be wrong. Perhaps I only wanted to see if I still matter to you—not deliberately, more unconsciously. And I was not meaning to choose between you and America but, rather, something outside of us. In addition to all this, I can barely convey to you how often plans dissipate from one day to the next and take on another complexion. One day there are scholarships that are already out of the question the next, because one would have to apply by a particular deadline that one cannot meet, and then there are missing confirmations that cannot be offered. Today I have reached the point where I have two recommendations, one for a scholarship to London and the other for one to Paris, but I cannot say for sure what will become of them, and I am pursuing these matters without any specific idea, simply in the hope that one of them will work out at some point. Also, there is someone who wants to take me on a private trip to Paris, I am fairly sure it will happen eventually, as it almost did on one occasion. At the moment I myself am the obstacle, for my final examinations for the doctorate are taking longer than I would ever have thought possible.
You will conclude from all this that I am very distant from you. I can only tell you one thing, as unlikely as it seems even to me: I am very close to you.
It is a beautiful love in which I live with you, and it is only because I am afraid to say too much that I do not say it is the most beautiful.
Paul, I want to take your poor, lovely head and shake it, and make it understand that I am saying a great deal, much too much for me; for you must still know how hard it is for me to find any words. I wish you could read everything that lies between these lines of mine.
NOTES
doctorate: Ingeborg Bachmann submitted her dissertation ‘Die kritische Aufnahme der Existential- philosophie Martin Heideggers’ [The Critical Reception of Martin Heidegger’s
Existentialist Philosophy] on 19 December 1949.
11
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, 10 June 1950
Vienna, 10 June 50
Dear,
in a few days Nani Maier will be traveling to Paris, and I shall ask her to discuss with you some things that are difficult for me to say in a letter.
So I simply wish to send many, many thoughts on ahead, and hope that we shall soon be looking at a body of water that borders on India, and on the dreams we once dreamt.
But if you cannot, or have already dived into the next sea, take me with the hand one keeps free for others!
I am very grateful to you,
Ingeborg.
12
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, 6 September 1950
Vienna, 6 Sept. 1950.
Dearest,
now that our friends, Nani and Klaus, have returned and I have been able to spend an evening speaking to them, I can see for the first time how many misunderstandings have come between us. Believe me, I did not at least, not deliberately make the mistakes that have so distanced and estranged you from me. I have been very sick in recent weeks; a nervous breakdown, with all the accompanying symptoms, crippled me and made me incapable of reacting in the right way or deciding anything. In addition, I thought—just one of our misunderstandings—that I should not write to you myself.
Forgive me if you can, yet help me to get away from here nonetheless! Perhaps you could try to send me an invitation? I could come in October, by which time I should probably 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 feel that everything can only be resolved once I have the chance to see you face to face, hold your hand and tell you everything, absolutely everything.
Do not keep me waiting for your reply, however it turns out!
I embrace you and am with you in my thoughts, many thoughts!
Ingeborg.
NOTES
nervous breakdown: This occurred in the first half of July, a complete ‘breakdown’ with ‘paralytic symptoms’. Ingeborg Bachmann was treated by the Viennese psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, a friend of Weigel.
13
Paul Celan to Ingeborg Bachmann, Paris, 7 September 1950
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. Do not delay, Ingeborg: if you truly want to come to Paris, it would be best to come right away. You do not need to worry about being here, not in any respect. I am glad that you are coming, and perhaps you would be here already if you had answered Nani’s letter in time. Hopefully the consulate will not put off the matter of the visa—you will probably have to exert a little pressure yourself, at any rate. Klaus, who knows how things are in France, may be able to give you one or two hints.
As far as I can tell from speaking to Nani, and now also from her written accounts, you have had some grief, Ingeborg. I am sorry to hear that. But I believe that Paris can take away this grief: this grief in particular. And perhaps I can assist Paris in doing so. You see, I had to struggle for a long time before Paris accepted me properly and counted me among its own. You will not be as alone, as lonely and rejected as I was. For the first right one earns here is this: to protect one’s friends from the things one had for so long to face defenceless, indeed clueless oneself.
Klaus and Nani will have told you how beautiful Paris is: I will be glad to be present when you realize it.
Give me an answer soon. I embrace you
Paul
Give my best to Klaus and Nani.
NOTES
Frau Dr Rosenberg: Gertrud Rosenberg, wife of Charles Rosenberg. The entry visa necessary for Austrians in France had to be supported by a letter of invitation As Paul Celan was not yet a French citizen, he could not issue the invitation.
14
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, after 7 September 1950
Dearest,
thank you so very much for your dear letter, the invitation, and all you are doing for me. I set everything into motion immediately—I went to the consulate, and am now waiting with longing for the visa. At the moment I do not know when I shall be able to travel, but I hope that I can leave in the first week of October.
Naturally, there is much to do before so great and decisive a trip; I am worrying a great deal about how—and how much—to fold up my tents here. In addition, I am still waiting to hear what has been decided at S. Fischer concerning my book; but I shall leave as soon as I am able, whether or not I receive word from Dr Bermann. So that I do not fall into your arms completely exhausted upon my arrival, I plan to stay with acquaintances in Innsbruck and Basel, one day or night in each—and to reach Paris well rested. It is difficult for me to write more now; let us save it all for the many days together that lie ahead..
As soon as I know more, in particular the time of departure or arrival, I shall write again.
Please extend my warmest thanks to Frau Dr de Rosenberg, even if I do not know her!
Soon completely
yours
Ingeborg.
15
Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, Vienna, 27 September 1950
Dearest,
I long so much for a little security that I am almost afraid I shall soon find it. You will have to be very patient with me—or have a very easy time with me. I am lost, desperate and bitter, and know that I cannot expect Paris alone to resolve all these internal difficulties, that a great deal will rather depend on me, and a great deal on our relationship.
I alternate between looking forward to what lies ahead and fearing it; the fear is still greater. Please try to be good to me and hold on to me! Sometimes, I think everything is a muddled dream and neither you nor Paris exist, only the terrible hundred-headed hydra that is poverty, which crushes me and will not let me go.
I am supposed to collect my visa on 5 October; I hope it will actually be ready by then. If the necessary money were also to arrive, I would have reason to be happy again, something I have not felt in a long time.
I embrace you, dear, and will soon let you know of my departure!
Yours
Ingeborg.
27 September 1950.
Excerpted from Correspondence: Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan (2010), translated by Wieland Hoban with permission from the publisher Seagull Books.
