The Elapsed Time (poem)
The deferred time is a poem by the Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann , which was published for the first time in 1953 and gave the title to the poet's first volume of poetry, published in the same year. It addresses the situation of an involuntary departure triggered by the realization that human life is finite. The poem not only shows the end of a love affair, but also has a political dimension.
Speaking situation
The lyrical I does not appear explicitly in the poem, but becomes noticeable in the address of the du - for the first time in verse 4. The nature and position of the lyric self are not specified.
In the second stanza a lyric he is added (verse 13), which refers to the sand (verse 12). He becomes the subject and silences the beloved by burying her. The anaphor er (verses 13 to 16) emphasizes this and personifies the sand . From the formulation the beloved sinks you… (verse 12) it can be deduced that it is the beloved of the lyric you.
As in other texts by Ingeborg Bachmann, the male perspective is also used here. The chasing back of the dogs (verse 21) establishes a connection between the lyric you and Odysseus . However, while he was greeted by the dogs on his return home, the lyrical you must chase the dogs back and leave. Verse 19 relates to Orpheus .
The frame verses of the second stanza (over there your lover sinks into the sand and is willing to say goodbye / after every hug ) show the woman who has been silenced. Hans Höller describes the poems in the volume of poetry, with reference to Bachmann's Todesarten project, as “types of death texts, lyrical-allegorical scenes of the death of women in writing (…).” War". "The female voice or the desire for love (...) is remembered as something that is set and lost." It is the "harder time conditions that force the male attitude and the murder of the female alter ego ." Hans Höller sees the sand, under which the beloved is buried in this poem, in line with the wall into which the self disappears at the end of the novel Malina .
construction
The 24 verses are kept in free rhythms .
The poem consists of four rhyming stanzas. The length of the stanzas decreases, the last stanza consists of only one verse. With the stylistic device of repetition, the entire poem is framed ( There are harder days. Verses 1 and 24). On the other hand, the verses The time deferred for revocation / becomes visible on the horizon (verses 2/3 and 10/11) represent a bracket for the rest of the first stanza. Both repetitions urgently announce the impending change.
The eleven verses of the first stanza indicate an involuntary approach. This is triggered because the passing of time becomes conscious. The verses show the change in a situation ( the bowels of the fish have grown cold , verse 7). The lyrical ego looks for a way with its eyes (verse 9), but it cannot yet be seen ( fog , verse 9). The seven verses of the second stanza revolve around the annihilation of the lovers of the lyric you. All five verses of the third stanza begin with an imperative in the second person singular and are addressed to the thou of the preceding stanzas as urgent calls to start. The situation announced in the first verse has occurred ( soon you will have to lace your shoe , verse 4, lace your shoe. , Verse 20).
Linguistic means
In addition to repetitions and imperatives, Ingeborg Bachmann also uses metaphors that underline the need for new beginnings.
Metaphors
The metaphor of deferred time (verses 2 and 10) is taken from the financial sphere. A deferral only includes postponement for a limited time, not the cancellation of the obligation to repay a debt. The lyrical you cannot permanently escape its finitude. The metaphor of the sand (verse 12), in which the beloved sinks, creates a connection to the motif of finitude through the symbol of the hourglass .
Sigrid Weigel referred to the "special spatial metaphors" that dominate Ingeborg Bachmann's early poems "and also the first volume of poetry Die stundete Zeit ." About the nouns Marschhöfe (verse 5), fish (verses 6 and 22), sand (verse 12) and sea (verse 22) the poem is situated on the beach, in the border area between land and sea. Such “threshold places” are found repeatedly in the poet's early works and can be read as “existence metaphors” for “fear of the world”. The verb forms sink (beloved) (verse 12) and rise (sand) (verse 13) make clear a life-destroying vertical movement, hunt (verse 21) and throw (verse 22) stand for violent horizontal shifts. The topic of departure, of leaving the familiar behind, is presented in spatial images. Don't look around (Verse 19) forbids looking backwards, already in the first stanza the gaze is directed forward (verse 9). The images of departure are “images of flight”. "The absence of a specific geography (...) and all-valid time indications (...) can be associated with 'placelessness or indefiniteness of location as a collective fate of time'."
Language level
Ingeborg Bachmann uses the stylistic devices "magical - distinctive" in this poem; they "cause, although the elementary taken a basic distance to everyday language and everyday perception" So connecting Although the causal conjunction because (verse 6) the couplets 4-5 and 6-7, but the two couplets "in its imagery have almost nothing, nothing to do with each other in their statement (...). ”An analysis based purely on logic would not do justice to the“ unhoused God of oracles ”who spoke from the poem. But the entrails of the fish / have become cold in the wind (verse 6/7), a deduction of the divine will from the entrails, as in ancient prophecy, is not possible.
Christian Schärf saw the poem as a “drama of beautiful language , the drama of its use in the poem. The verses decompose the high note with which they go by keeping it strictly. ”The connection to the lyrical tradition is destroyed. Harder days are coming . In verse 1 and verse 24, I have “a different value”, the sentence has “learned from my own linguistic body that it is empty and can no longer be kept.” The language is “not a utopia of a better life, but a tool to work through this life and its illusions (...). "
Subject
nature
In Die Stundete Zeit “fog, darkness and cold express a repellent landscape” In the barren marshland , only the colorful flowers of the lupins remain as elements of light and color. The Alliteration L maybe the L upinen (v 8) in verse 9 ( thy B l ick spurt in Nebe l taken up again). But in the penultimate verse the lyric you receives the command to extinguish the lupins; In contrast to the previous prompts, this is ended with a exclamation mark and is thus particularly highlighted by its position. The lyrical you leaves darkness behind. Nature "appears as historical terrain on which an alert, presence of mind falls." The solidification of nature corresponds to the end of a love story.
Finiteness
The title of the poem evokes on the one hand the motifs vanitas and apocalypse and on the other hand points to an everyday experience: "Time is only given to us temporarily, the loss of time is postponed for a certain, differently measured period for the individual." Time can be ended by simple revocation (verse 10). There is no discernible “rebellion against the silting up of such a short period of time”, the lupins are even extinguished themselves (verse 23). The farewell is linked to the prohibition of looking around (verse 19), with which Lot was also imposed when leaving Sodom . Lot's wife paid for the offense by solidifying into a pillar of salt. In this poem, however, the continuation of life appears possible through the departure to a new goal, the shoe is laced (verse 20).
The Orpheus myth is also quoted in this picture: the singer was not allowed to look for his wife Eurydice when he rose from the underworld . Hans Höller sees verse 19 as a new version of the Orpheus myth "under the conditions of the coldness of contemporary modernity and in the awareness of the drama of the sexes."
Relation to contemporary history
The title motif of the volume of poetry Die Gestundete Zeit is a connecting element between the poems, through which a “consistent attitude of resistance against the restorative tendencies of the time” is drawn: The motif refers to “the unused, already dwindling chance of a new beginning after 1945 . ”For Hans Höller,“ the political dimension of Bachmann's first volume of poems, which was so obvious, was not noticed by newspaper criticism or literary research for a long time ”. The “threat of contemporary history” can be seen in the “interweaving of images of time and death [...], the images of departure, simultaneous darkness and impending demise”.
Reference to the biography of Ingeborg Bachmann
In the estate of Paul Celan in the German Literature Archive in Marbach there is a copy of Ingeborg Bachmann's volume of poetry Die gestundete Zeit with the dedication on the flyleaf : "For Paul - / exchanged to be comforted / Ingeborg / in December 1953." The text of the dedication is a verse from Paul Celan's poem From Hearts and Brains.
Position of the poem in the work
Release history
The poem was first published in Die Neue Zeitung on March 12, 1953 . The American newspaper in Germany. released. Ingeborg Bachmann's first volume of poetry, Die gestundete Zeit, gave the poem its title. The collection appeared in the autumn of 1953 in the Studio Frankfurt book series published by Alfred Andersch at the Frankfurter Verlagsanstalt . In 1957 the collection of poems was reissued with some changes by Piper Verlag .
Intertextual Components
In the Bachmann estate there is a handwritten sheet of paper with a sketch of the sequence of the poems in the poetry volume: There the poem titles are noted one below the other, followed by the intended place number; underneath is the name Paul , framed by lines - "an indication of Paul Celan's presence in the conception of the poetry volume."
In the instructions to the lyrical Du, Hans Höller sees the advice that Bertolt Brecht gives in Verwisch the traces in From the reading book for city dwellers . The time appearing on the horizon is reminiscent of the twists and turns from Martin Heidegger's Being and Time , verse 19 ( don't look around ).
reception
Hilde Spiel called the poem “an existential parable ” and considered it “no less profoundly moving than anything you later read from Beckett and Thomas Bernhard .” Hans Höller emphasized the relationship to the novel Malina and saw both as “texts that give us provide guidance to decipher the culture of violence and repression in the images and tropes of literature. "
Web links
Notes and individual references
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Hans Höller: Die stundete Zeit. Text history and composition of the volume of poetry. In: Monika Albrecht, Dirk Göttsche (ed.): Bachmann manual. Life-work-effect. Stuttgart, Weimar Verlag JB Metzer, 2002, ISBN 978-3-476-01810-6 , pp. 57-67.
- ↑ a b c d Sigrid Weigel: Ingeborg Bachmann. Legacies in compliance with the confidentiality of letters. Paul Zsolnay Verlag Vienna, 1999, ISBN 3-552-04927-4 .
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Christian Schärf: On the use of 'beautiful language'. Ingeborg Bachmann: 'The deferred time'. In: Mathias Mayer: Interpretations. Works by Ingeborg Bachmann. Reclam-Verlag Stuttgart, 2002, ISBN 3-15-017517-8 , pp. 28-42.
- ↑ a b c Harald Weinrich: Scarce time. Art and economics of limited life, Munich CH Beck Verlag, 3rd edition, 2005, ISBN 3-406-51660-2 , p. 76.
- ↑ a b Endres: Ingeborg Bachmann - Faust culture. In: faustkultur.de. October 17, 1973. Retrieved March 12, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Bertrand Badiou, Hans Höller, Andrea Stoll, Barbara Wiedemann: Herzzeit. Ingeborg Bachmann. Paul Celan. The correspondence. With the correspondence between Paul Celan and Max Frisch and between Ingeborg Bachmann and Gisèle Celan-Lestrange. Frankfurt Suhrkamp, 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-46115-0 , p. 56.
- ↑ Christine Koschel, Inge von Weidenbaum, Clemens Münster: Ingeborg Bachmann. Works. First volume: poems, radio plays, libretti, translations. Piper Verlag Munich, 1978, ISBN 3-492-02774-1 , p. 644.
- ↑ Hilde Spiel: The new threatens, the old no longer protects. In: Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Hrsg.): Frankfurt anthology, poems and interpretations. Volume 1. Frankfurt Insel Verlag, 1976, ISBN 978-3-458-05000-1 , p. 217.