I also lived in Arcadia

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Giovanni Francesco Barbieri : Et in Arcadia ego (around 1628)

I also lived in Arcadia is a short story by Ingeborg Bachmann , which the author published under the name Inge Bachmann in "Morgen", the monthly journal of independent academics, in April 1952 in Vienna.

content

action

The penniless narrator participates in the construction of a wide road that leads through a cosmopolitan city to the sea. In that big city the narrator makes his fortune after building the road. Whatever he tackles - it works. However, he did not fulfill his most secret wish to go to the sea. Because the narrator has to confirm himself anew every working day in the big city.

interpretation

The narrator, who descended from his mountainous Arcadia , animated by herds of sheep, into everyday life, remains an Arcadian for life despite his hasty journey from success to success in that cosmopolitan city. A trip to the sea is not necessary for permanent belonging to this country. The narrator only occasionally drives on his wide road towards the sea to the outskirts to see the evening sun. More precisely, it's about the last two rays of the sun. These are silvery tracks to the sun ball. This is a huge, sinking train station that "brings all hikers home to heaven".

Weigel shocks the reader with the outrageous. The train station with tracks is associated with Auschwitz .

reception

Ingeborg Bachmann's picture of the two silvery tracks in the Sonne train station is what Bartsch calls "lyrical-utopian" when he discusses the Arcadians' strange clinging to this "capitalist competitive society ". Returning to Arcadia from the big city is almost impossible.

In later years the author no longer revolted against modernity .

With the title, the author ties in with the classics. Geesen names Goethe's “ Italian Journey ” and Schiller's “ Resignation ” as role models. Geesen thinks of Babylon when referring to the metropolis mentioned, in which an Arcadian can only lose identity . Weigel gives a startling interpretation of the title that Erwin Panofsky ("Sense and Interpretation in the Fine Art" (DuMont, Cologne 1978)) found: Death is everywhere; even in the middle of Arcadia.

literature

Text output

Used edition
  • Christine Koschel (Ed.), Inge von Weidenbaum (Ed.), Clemens Münster (Ed.): Ingeborg Bachmann. Works. Volume two: Stories. Piper, Munich 1978 (5th edition 1993), volume 1702 of the Piper series, ISBN 3-492-11702-3 , pp. 38-40

Secondary literature

  • Otto Bareiss, Frauke Ohloff: Ingeborg Bachmann. A bibliography. With a foreword by Heinrich Böll. Piper, Munich 1978. ISBN 3-492-02366-5
  • Kurt Bartsch: Ingeborg Bachmann. Metzler, Stuttgart 1997 (2nd edition, Metzler Collection. Volume 242). ISBN 3-476-12242-5
  • Mechthild Geesen: The destruction of the individual in the context of the loss of experience and language in the modern age. Figure conception and narrative perspective Ingeborg Bachmanns. Schäuble, Rheinfelden 1998. ISBN 3-87718-836-2 (Diss. Munich 1998)
  • Monika Albrecht (Hrsg.), Dirk Göttsche (Hrsg.): Bachmann-Handbuch. Life - work - effect . Metzler, Stuttgart 2002. ISBN 3-476-01810-5
  • Sigrid Weigel : Ingeborg Bachmann. Legacies in compliance with the confidentiality of letters . dtv , Munich 2003 (Zsolnay, Vienna 1999). ISBN 3-423-34035-5 , pp. 252-259

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bareiss, Ohloff, p. 18, entry 44
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 603 last entry
  3. ↑ Edition used, p. 40, 1. Zvu
  4. ↑ Weigel, p. 258, 11. Zvu
  5. ↑ Bartsch, p. 48, 19th Zvu
  6. ↑ Bartsch, p. 48, 5. Zvo
  7. ↑ Bartsch, p. 163, middle
  8. ↑ Jost Schneider in: Albrecht and Göttsche, p. 110, right column, 16. Zvu
  9. ↑ Geesen, pp. 82-89
  10. ↑ Weigel, p. 256