Journal of Austrian Studies

Abstract:

Ingeborg Bachmann's Buch Goldmann, which we have only in a fragmentary state, usually plays a subordinate role in the discussion of the author's Todesarten project. The new reading presented here is based on the fundamental thesis of an interweaving of mediality and the topos of illness as a structural textual principle with poetological relevance. The specifi c entanglement is systematically elaborated in the examination of motifs (thematization of mediality, e.g., writing), narrative strategies (e.g., case studies), and materiality of the surviving typescripts (e.g., writing errors). For theoretical reflection, the author draws upon approaches from media theory and psychoanalysis in an attempt to forge a "poetics of transference." The Buch Goldmann thus becomes comprehensible as a "laboratory," which plays a key role in the genesis of the Todesarten project. The topos of illness, so central to Bachmann's work, cannot be explained solely with recourse to the author's biography. The focus is rather on a textual surface on which various literary experimental arrangements unfold. It is not about pathology and deviance, but about processes of creativity