Portrait of Anna Maria
Portrait of Anna Maria is a short story by Ingeborg Bachmann . The fragment was created around 1956.
The narrator first deconstructs the aura of the painter Anna Maria P. and is then forced to regret her insincerity.
content
action
There is talk of sporadic encounters between the anonymous first-person narrator and the 35-year-old painter Anna Maria P. A period of at least two years is spoken of. Maria gave the narrator in various places in Veneto both open-minded and buttoned up. Sometimes the narrator was overlooked by Maria. At least that is how the narrator felt and in retrospect discovered more of Maria's criticism than worthy of praise. First and foremost, the narrator does not remember Maria, but rather the talk about the painter who died much too early. The appearance of the beautiful young suicide fits into the image of the still quite young dead woman. As it were programmatically for the whole text, he condemns the disapproval of absent people: “Why doesn't anyone say what is ...!” Thus, the young man distances himself from the narrator as well as from the rest of the talkative art scene. The narrator hardly misses an opportunity to persuade Maria. It starts with the banal. Maria's poor sense of order is exposed. That continues with the coloring of Maria's supposedly bad character. She seemed strangely attractive to a certain kind of men - including some younger ones. Admittedly, the work of the painter Maria had already been praised in various places in Europe during her lifetime. But the reference to Maria's stubborn silence was usually not missing.
The small text can be read as a discourse on the difference between talk and reality. Since it is about talk about absenteeism, Maria hardly has a say. When Maria speaks only once, she even participates in the invention of fairy tales. A blooming cherry tree next to Maria's parents' house is painted as a white wonder cloud. After Maria's death, the narrator stops by the dead painter's mother. The tree turns out to be a cripple that does not want to bloom.
Wrong has happened, the narrator finally admits and condemns herself and all acquaintances who have spoken badly about Maria. One more thing turns out to be reprehensible: Talking about someone you don't know very well. The narrator receives a photo from the grieving mother, in which Maria is photographed. When examining the picture, the narrator puzzles: Is that really supposed to have been Maria? Ashamed, the narrator had said goodbye to Maria's mother with that photo in her hand. Because the mother had told her that Maria had said so many good things about the narrator during her lifetime.
reception
The text makes it understandable how an artist - in this case the painter Maria - is degraded to a "rumored figure". The word rumored figure comes from Ingeborg Bachmann's " Thirtieth Year ".
The narrator fails in the attempt to approach the deceased Maria by writing because she undresses the prominent painter of her halo - by passing on those rumors. In this way the narrator obstructs the reader's view of the real Mary. Maria only presented one antidote to these rumors during her lifetime - her poetry of the white cherry tree in bloom.
After Beicken, the vita of the painter Maria is not simply told. Rather, the subject matter is how all acquaintances misjudged Maria during her lifetime. Furthermore, the narrator realizes too late that she is related to the protagonist, who has since died.
literature
Text output
- First publication and edition used
- Portrait of Anna Maria. Unfinished . P. 48–58 in: Christine Koschel (Ed.), Inge von Weidenbaum (Ed.), Clemens Münster (Ed.): Ingeborg Bachmann. Works. Volume two: Stories . 609 pages. Piper, Munich 1978 (5th edition 1993), ISBN 3-492-11702-3
Secondary literature
- Peter Beicken : Ingeborg Bachmann. Beck, Munich 1988. ISBN 3-406-32277-8 (Beck'sche series: authors' books, vol. 605)
- 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)