BOOK PRESENTATION | READING & TALK | INGEBORG BACHMANN & PAUL CELAN | “HERZZEIT”

Authors and scholars Vivian Liska and Bernd Witte will discuss and read from “Herzzeit”, a collection of correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and Paul Celan.

“Herzzeit” is the collection of the long-time correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) and Paul Celan (1920–1970) and contains almost 200 documents (letters, dedications, telegrams, postscripts). The book was first published in German in 2008, and has now been translated into English. The documents, dating back to the period before fame found the two poets, and kept under wraps until August 2008, open the door into a shadowy and complicated relationship between two complex individuals.

Ingeborg Bachmann, daughter of one of the first members of the Nazi-Party, and Jewish Holocaust survivor Paul Celan met for the first time in Vienna in 1948. For the next fifteen years, they were bound together by affinity, intellect, poetic calling and erotic attraction. “Herzzeit” is the documentation of euphoria and soulfulness but most of all of the inner conflicts, inner disunity, high expectations and disillusionment both poets had to face during the years of separation and self-inflicted loneliness.

“Don’t ask me why, but be there for me, for one evening, or two or three. Take me to the Seine, we want to look down into it for a long time until we’ve become small fish and recognize each other again.“  – Ingeborg Bachmann to Paul Celan, spring 1949.

The book will be available in stores August 15th. It is already available online at www.seagullindia.com

Vivian Liska is a Professor of German Literature and Director of the Institute of Jewish Studies at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
She is the author of “The Night of the Hymns: Paul Celan’s Poems, 1938–1944 (in German)”.

Bernd Witte studied German philology and philosophy in Münster and Paris and currently teaches Literature at the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. He focuses on Jewish authors of the 19th and 20th centuries. Witte is the author of “Ingeborg Bachmann. Undine geht. In: Interpretationen. Erzählungen des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bd. 2. Stuttgart 1996. pg. 93-116.”

Picture by Hans Müller, Hamburg – © Piper Verlag, München

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