The cicadas

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Die Zikaden is a radio play by Ingeborg Bachmann , which was written in Naples at the end of 1954 and broadcast on March 25, 1955 with music by Hans Werner Henze on NWDR Hamburg. In the same year the text was in print ("Hörspielbuch 1955" (Vol. 6), European Publishing House Frankfurt am Main).

The listener is led to a Mediterranean island, the "scene of human defeat". The defeated managed to escape from the mainland.

content

The anonymous narrator has fled to one of the Italian islands. At midday, someone met him on the beach and looked away. If you've made it to the island as a foreigner, you don't want to be seen. But no one on that island can escape the song of the cicadas . These insects are said to have once been people who now have to sing constantly - and particularly piercingly at noon - with an inhuman voice. By “inhuman” Ingeborg Bachmann means “singing beyond people”.

From that narrator, the listener not only learns what the terrifying song of the cicadas is all about. The people appearing are also introduced. Each of these people would be all alone on the island if it weren't for Antonio, a local, submissive spirit who likes to have small services remunerated. But Antonio doesn't ask for payment. The tanned islander is a yes-man who can always say no after the crucial question.

Ingeborg Bachmann confronts every stranger who has traveled to Antonio for himself. The protagonist Robinson and the prisoner are an exception. Robinson used to go to work on the mainland with a briefcase and wallet. By fleeing to the island he wanted to leave a society that had interfered with his life. His wife Anna is still writing to him. He doesn't know the answer. From a neighboring island, a prisoner - swimming for about twelve hours - escaped to Robinson. The person sentenced to life is hidden from the Carabinieri by the escape helper Robinson. The listener does not learn the reason for the life sentence. The prisoner is caught.

Each of the newcomers, isolated and lonely, has a different motive for fleeing. Antonio occasionally drives Mrs. Helen Brown's motorboat. The lady is five times divorced and longs for her child, who was aborted. Mr. Brown, her current husband, dives for his son who is believed to have gone down on a warship .

For a drinker, the mediocre painter Salvatore, Antonio hangs pictures up and around at exhibitions. A certain Prince Ali fled to the island from members of his royal family as well as from assassinations and revolutions. Now the prince lives surrounded by flocks of sheep. But sometimes the family reminds him of his status. Then he guiltily invites God and the world. Lush celebrations, each of which culminates in fireworks, are celebrated on the island. Antonio burns the fireworks according to Prince Ali's detailed instructions.

Antonio really has his hands full, especially in the season. When the farmer, on whose bottom a Jungborn flows, has no leisure, Antonio looks after the bathers. A prominent beautician among them is 40-year-old Jeanette. This chemist is doing everything possible to delay her aging. Antonio helps her with this.

Antonio wants to help the schoolboy Stefano, but can only send him home. Stefano failed his final school exams and is looking for protection from his adult friend Antonio.

Finally there is the only exception. The German Benedict has not given up. The Italians call him Benedetto. After the war, Antonio's father hid him from the strip. Benedikt has been the only employee in the editorial team of the "Inselbote" for years. Antonio delivers the newspaper. The capture of the prisoner mentioned above would be the sensational news in itself, but Benedict refrains from doing so out of consideration for the business with the sun-hungry strangers.

The narrator finally confesses to the listener that the island does not exist. The metamorphosis of people in cicadas fits into this allegorical game.

shape

The extremely communicative narrator is reminiscent of the epic theater . He makes it easy for the listener. His explanation makes it immediately clear what kind of new refugee is being presented again in the middle of the radio play. Since Antonio's clients live in isolation, they do not act - if action means interaction with other refugees. An exception, as indicated above, is Robinson and the prisoner. In addition to Antonio, the narrator barely clings to the event.

There are many facts in the radio play. Most of them appear puzzling to the listener. For example, he would like to know: who took the unborn child from Mrs. Brown and why? Or: What do the prisoner's conversations with Robinson, which escalate into philosophy, mean? According to Golisch, the contradiction “of reality and possibility” is philosophized. Robinson appears Beicken as the misunderstood author.

There is no storyline in the game any more than this Italian island exists. The audio piece lives from its dialogues. In this context, Golisch speaks of the “fine irony” with which Ingeborg Bachmann carefully weighed and distanced the conversations between the yes-no-sayer Antonio and the stumbled refugees and Robinson's dialogues with the prisoner. In the latter conversations, the prisoner dominates mentally. Nevertheless, the attempts at dialogue would continue until the last possible moment - i.e. until the appearance of the Carabinieri.

reception

With the island Ischia is meant. Ingeborg Bachmann took the cicada song - a gift from God - from the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus and turned it into its opposite. The future of those who have fled to the island ends hopelessly in Jammertal. In Bachmann's utopia, the listener is warned against an island existence. Antonio, the authority that says yes-no, always replies no to the basic wishes of asylum seekers. These are precisely those desires that affect life outside the partnership. The only one to whom Antonio doesn't say no is Benedict. Because this political refugee renounced returning to society years ago. The cicada motif of getting sidelined could also be understood as Ingeborg Bachmann's rejection of L'art pour l'art . But it stays that way - escaping from society is dangerous, because escaping to the island ends in isolation.

The island of utopia is subject to the reality of the mainland.

Bareiss and Ohloff name ten reviews from the years 1955 to 1967 and give two observations on Henze's music from 1955 and 1965.

Production details

Broadcast title: Cicadas

Contributors:

Producer: NWDR Hamburg First broadcast: March 25, 1955 Duration: 92 minutes

The sound carrier is still available.

literature

Text output

Used edition
  • Christine Koschel (Ed.), Inge von Weidenbaum (Ed.), Clemens Münster (Ed.): Ingeborg Bachmann. Works. First volume: poems. Radio plays. Libretti. Translations . 683 pages. Piper, Munich 1978 (5th edition 1993), volume 1701 of the Piper series, ISBN 3-492-11701-5 , pp. 217-268

Secondary literature

  • Horst-Günter Funke: Ingeborg Bachmann. Two radio plays. The cicadas. The good god of Manhattan. Interpretation. Oldenbourg, Munich 1969, pp. 9-51
  • Heinz Schwitzke (Hrsg.), Werner Klippert (Hrsg.): Reclams radio play guide . Reclam, Stuttgart 1969 ( RUB 10161-10168), p. 8 and p. 53-55
  • Beatrice Angst-Hürlimann: In the contradiction of the impossible with the possible. On the problem of language with Ingeborg Bachmann. Juris Verlag, Zurich 1971 (Diss. Zurich 1971), pp. 11–34
  • Holger Pausch: Ingeborg Bachmann. Colloquium Verlag, Berlin 1975 (series: Heads of the 20th Century, Vol. 81), pp. 40–56
  • Otto Bareiss, Frauke Ohloff: Ingeborg Bachmann. A bibliography. With a foreword by Heinrich Böll. Piper, Munich 1978. ISBN 3-492-02366-5
  • Peter Beicken : Ingeborg Bachmann. Beck, Munich 1988. ISBN 3-406-32277-8 (Beck'sche series: authors' books, vol. 605)
  • Hans Höller : Ingeborg Bachmann. The work. From the earliest poems to the “types of death” cycle . Hain (Athenäums Programm), Frankfurt am Main 1993. ISBN 3-445-08578-1 , pp. 94-106
  • Kurt Bartsch: Ingeborg Bachmann. Metzler, Stuttgart 1997 (2nd edition, Metzler Collection. Volume 242). ISBN 3-476-12242-5
  • Stefanie Golisch : Ingeborg Bachmann for an introduction . Junius, Hamburg 1997. ISBN 3-88506-941-5 , pp. 76-84
  • Hans Höller: Ingeborg Bachmann . Reinbek, Rowohlt 1999 (2002 edition), ISBN 3-499-50545-2
  • Monika Albrecht (Hrsg.), Dirk Göttsche (Hrsg.): Bachmann-Handbuch. Life - work - effect . Metzler, Stuttgart 2002. ISBN 3-476-01810-5

Remarks

  1. ↑ Prince Ali reminds Beicken (Beicken, p. 110, 22. Zvo) of the events in Egypt in the early 1950s .
  2. ↑ According to Beicken (Beicken, p. 111, 13. Zvu) the song of these insects also points to Goethe's “ Anakreon ”.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sara Lennox in: Albrecht / Göttsche, p. 90 left column, 23. Zvo
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 661, second entry
  3. ↑ Bareiss, Ohloff, p. 21, entry 59
  4. ↑ Golisch, p. 83, 10. Zvo
  5. ↑ Edition used, p. 264, 5th Zvu
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 268, 1. Zvu
  7. ↑ Höller 1999, p. 89, 19. Zvo
  8. ↑ Edition used, p. 232, 18. Zvo
  9. ↑ Beicken, p. 110, 14. Zvo
  10. ↑ Edition used, p. 264, 17. Zvo
  11. ↑ Golisch, p. 80, 7. Zvo
  12. ^ Sara Lennox in: Albrecht / Göttsche, p. 91 left column, 17. Zvo
  13. ^ Sara Lennox in: Albrecht / Göttsche, p. 91 left column, 12. Zvo
  14. ↑ Golisch, p. 79
  15. ↑ Beicken, p. 109 middle
  16. ↑ Golisch, p. 77 middle
  17. ↑ Golisch, p. 78
  18. ↑ Höller 1999, p. 89, line 5; Sara Lennox in: Albrecht / Göttsche, p. 90 left column, center.
  19. ↑ Golisch, p. 83 below to p. 84 above
  20. ↑ Bartsch, p. 85 below - p. 88 above
  21. ↑ Höller 1999, p. 89, 7. Zvo
  22. ↑ Höller 1993, p. 106 above
  23. ↑ Bareiss, Ohloff, p. 194, above and p. 272 ​​above
  24. ↑ Bareiss, Ohloff, pp. 272–273, entries 1929 and 1932