Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann
Ingeborg Bachmann author Peter Filkins translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Zephyr Press
Published:20th Jun '24
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Darkness Spoken is the most complete volume of Ingeborg Bachmann’s poetry in English and German. Considered one of the premiere poets of her generation, Bachmann’s various awards include the Georg Büchner Prize, the Berlin Critics Prize, the Bremen Award, and the Austrian State Prize for literature. Darkness Spoken collects her two celebrated books of poetry, as well as the early and late poems not collected in book form. First published by Zephyr Press in 2006, the volume also contains 129 poems released from Bachmann’s archives that had never been translated before. Twenty-five of them also appeared in German for the first time.
Continued research by Peter Fikins on Bachmann’s writing since 2006 as well as his current work on Bachmann’s biography (forthcoming in 2026 from Yale University Press), has drawn him even closer to Bachmann’s poems and deepened his understanding of their context and meaning. For this second revised edition, roughly a quarter of the poems have benefitted from revisions in word choice for the purposes of greater clarity, better syntax or rhythm, or in a few instances, corrections in punctuation and of interpretive errors. Eight poems from Bachmann's youth have also been added that did not appear in the first edition. A few lacunae in the German have also been corrected, allowing this volume to remain the most complete edition of Bachmann’s poetry.
“…we must be immensely grateful that Peter Filkins has now given us the fullest and the best translations we have in English of this magnificent poet.”
— Charles Simic
“Ingeborg Bachmann is regarded as one of the half-dozen most important German-language writers of the second half of the twentieth century. And in the acclaim for her passionate and varied body of work, a supreme place is usually granted to her poetry. English-language readers still don’t have enough Bachmann to read, but this volume of eloquent translations (and an excellent essay and notes by the translator) is the best of all possible beginnings.”
— Susan Sontag
ISBN: 9781938890338
Dimensions: 139mm x 209mm x 36mm
Weight: unknown
688 pages
2nd Revised edition