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4.04 AVERAGE
4.04 AVERAGE
Ingeborg Bachmann writes:
In the Psychological Institute in the Liebiggasse we always drank tea or coffee. I knew a man there who always used shorthand to record what everyone said, and sometimes other things besides. I don't know shorthand. Sometimes we'd give each other Rorschach tests, Szondi tests, TAT, and would diagnose each other's character and personality, we would observe our performance and behavior and examine our expressions. Once he asked how many men I had slept with, and I couldn't think of any except this one-legged thief who had been in jail, and a lamp covered with flies in a room in Mariahilf rented by the hour, but I said at random: seven! He laughed surprised and said, then naturally he'd like to marry me, our children would certainly be intelligent, also very pretty, and what did I think of that. We went to the Prater, and I wanted to go on the Ferris wheel, because at that time I was never afraid, just happy the way I felt while gliding and later on while skiing, I could laugh for hours out of sheer happiness. Of course then we didn't ever speak again. Shortly afterward I had to take my oral examinations, and in the morning before the three big exams all the embers spilled out of the oven at the Philosophical Institute, I stomped on some pieces of coal or wood, I ran to get a broom and dustpan, since the janitors hadn't come yet, it was burning and smoking terribly, I didn't want a fire, I trampled the embers with my feet, the stench stayed in the institute for days, my shoes were singed, but nothing burned down. I also opened all the windows. Even so I managed to take my first exam at eight in the morning, I was supposed to be there with another candidate but he didn't come; he had had a stroke during the night, as I found out just before going in to be examined about Leibnitz, Kant and Hume. The Old Privy Councillor, who was also Rector at the the time, was wearing a dirty gown, earlier he had received some honorary order from Greece, I don't know what for, and he began asking questions, very annoyed that a candidate had missed an exam due to demise, but at least I was there and not dead yet. In his anger he had forgotten what subjects had been agreed upon, and during the exam someone phoned - I believe it was his sister - one moment we were discussing the neo-Kantians, the next moment we were with the English deists, but still quite far from Kant himself, and I didn't know very much. After the phone call things improved a little, I proceeded right away to discuss what had been agreed upon, and he didn't notice. I asked him an anxious question relating to the problem of time and space, admittedly a question without meaning for me at the time, but he felt quite flattered that I had asked, and then I was dismissed. I ran back to our institute, it wasn't burning, and I went on to the next two exams. I passed all of them. But later I never did solve the problem relating to time and space. It grew and grew.
challenging
dark
funny
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
N/A
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Malina was an uncomfortable, often unpleasant read. It is dense, melodramatic, painful. A book where so much remains elusive. Who is real? Who is an alter ego of whom? What is real and what is fantasy? Where does one realm begin and the other end? There are various theories and hints throughout, but the text still remains difficult to penetrate. Finishing this book was an overwhelming and dizzying experience. Yet at the same time, there’s something in Bachmann’s writing, stunning sentences and passages of lyrical language, sometimes even moments playful language, that dazzled me, pulled me in, and forced me to turn the page.
It is essential to go into this book without expectation of a real narrative, to realize it will be an experience more than a story. You can grasp at certain themes as you are violently hurled around at the mercy of Bachmann's pen -- internalized suffering, patriarchy, relationships between men and women, fascism, post-war ruins and guilt. However, it is also very much about the inability to grapple with horror, let alone find the language for it, as the narrator’s inner toil is engulfing her and her psyche is disintegrating. This is taken to whole other levels in sections such as the second chapter, my favorite, which feels like being dropped even deeper into her internal inferno as she grapples with the horrors and abuse at the hands of her father:
“The ice breaks, I sink beneath the pole into the center of the Earth. I am in Hell. The wispy yellow flames wreathe about, the fiery curls hang down to my feet, I spit the fires out, swallow the fires down.”
Published two years before her death, Malina was meant to be the first in a trilogy called Todesarten (Ways of Dying). However, we are left with this single novel by Bachmann and we can only imagine what the rest of this tumultuous journey would have taken us.
It is essential to go into this book without expectation of a real narrative, to realize it will be an experience more than a story. You can grasp at certain themes as you are violently hurled around at the mercy of Bachmann's pen -- internalized suffering, patriarchy, relationships between men and women, fascism, post-war ruins and guilt. However, it is also very much about the inability to grapple with horror, let alone find the language for it, as the narrator’s inner toil is engulfing her and her psyche is disintegrating. This is taken to whole other levels in sections such as the second chapter, my favorite, which feels like being dropped even deeper into her internal inferno as she grapples with the horrors and abuse at the hands of her father:
“The ice breaks, I sink beneath the pole into the center of the Earth. I am in Hell. The wispy yellow flames wreathe about, the fiery curls hang down to my feet, I spit the fires out, swallow the fires down.”
Published two years before her death, Malina was meant to be the first in a trilogy called Todesarten (Ways of Dying). However, we are left with this single novel by Bachmann and we can only imagine what the rest of this tumultuous journey would have taken us.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
tense
slow-paced
Strong character development:
N/A
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Astonishing and strange; this must be a masterpiece, because nothing else could have made me read 50 pages of recounted dreams with actual intense interest.
I loved the first part of this book so much. The writing and perceptions are wonderful, one of those rare books that feels entirely original, such a strong voice and character. Two stars to the ending though, I found it a frustrating let-down.
‘Malina’ is a lot. Whichever way you look at it, and whatever you hope to get from it, ‘Malina’ is a lot. It’s not an easy, smooth read and even those who have told me they enjoyed it would also happily describe it as a chore. Impossible to read in large swathes, ‘Malina’ is the type of book that takes months to finish and even after you’re done, you’re still not quite sure what you read or if you enjoyed it.
‘Malina’ is dense and abstract. Nominally it tells the story of a woman and her relationship with two different men, Ivan and the titular Malina. Both men are very different, as is the narrator’s relationship with them. It explores her thoughts and feelings related to the men, and also abstractly her wider views on the patriarchy, Nazism and her own mental health in relation to these relationships. Quite honestly, it’s so easy to get lost in this book it could easily be said to be about none of these things at all.
Abstract novels such as this aren’t always my favourite, and I really don’t believe writing something ‘abstract’ completely removes the responsibility to write the important things a novel needs like character, story and prose. ‘Malina’ definitely does have these good qualities scattered throughout, with enough to keep me reading until almost the end, though even I did have to eventually give up about three quarters of the way through. For a long time, there was enough to grab onto to keep me going but eventually, I felt everything was too abstract to bring together in any meaningful way to me. It’s not that I got nothing from ‘Malina’, but for my standards it just wasn’t enough. For me, the easiest way to describe how I felt about ‘Malina’ was that I respected it, but didn’t enjoy it.
‘Malina’ is dense and abstract. Nominally it tells the story of a woman and her relationship with two different men, Ivan and the titular Malina. Both men are very different, as is the narrator’s relationship with them. It explores her thoughts and feelings related to the men, and also abstractly her wider views on the patriarchy, Nazism and her own mental health in relation to these relationships. Quite honestly, it’s so easy to get lost in this book it could easily be said to be about none of these things at all.
Abstract novels such as this aren’t always my favourite, and I really don’t believe writing something ‘abstract’ completely removes the responsibility to write the important things a novel needs like character, story and prose. ‘Malina’ definitely does have these good qualities scattered throughout, with enough to keep me reading until almost the end, though even I did have to eventually give up about three quarters of the way through. For a long time, there was enough to grab onto to keep me going but eventually, I felt everything was too abstract to bring together in any meaningful way to me. It’s not that I got nothing from ‘Malina’, but for my standards it just wasn’t enough. For me, the easiest way to describe how I felt about ‘Malina’ was that I respected it, but didn’t enjoy it.
After reading a succession of novels in the last year inspired by the brilliant Thomas Bernhard, it is fascinating to read one where the influence runs in the opposite direction.
Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann was a mentor of sorts to Bernhard and the basis for the poet Maria in his final novel Extinction.
Malina, published two years before her death (aged 47 in 1973) was her only novel, although intended to be the first of a trilogy called Todesarten (Ways of Dying)
The translation here is by Philip Boehm, revisited in this new 2019 edition: interestingly one editorial decision in the revised edition was to cut out the footnotes and some glosses, on the grounds that the interest reader now has access to the internet.
Malina is a wonderfully powerful work - intense, experimental, with a narrative that is both fragmentary yet compulsive - one that is difficult to absorb on a single reading, a novel that would repay much study and yet would still have its enigmas. At one point even the narrator admits: Something is dawning on me, I’m beginning to see some logic, but I don’t understand anything in particular.
For example: is the eponymous Malina, with whom she apparently lives (platonically), yet who seems to not even acknowledge the existence of her lover Ivan, a real person or a figment of her imagination, a male alter-ego (“we’re as different as nights and day”) or rather is she his female alter-ego: merely the dispensable product of his rib) and perhaps a figment of his.
There are many excellent reviews on the internet (https://www.thenation.com/article/ingeborg-bachmann-malina-book-review/ and from the ever-excellent Joseph Schreiber https://roughghosts.com/2017/11/26/live-in-wonder-write-in-wonder-malina-by-ingeborg-bachmann/) and Goodreads, so I will content myself with some of my favourite passages:
The narrator on reading:
It has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression. Believe me, expression is insanity, it arises out of our insanity. It also has to do with turning pages, with hunting from one page to the other, with flight, with complicity in an absurd, solidified effusion, with a vile overflow of verse, with insuring life in a single sentence, and, in turn, with the sentences seeking insurance in life.
Reading is a vice which can replace all other vices or temporarily take their place in more intensely helping people live, it is a debauchery, a consuming addiction. No, I don’t take any drugs, I take books.
...
Speed is important, not only concentration, can you please tell me who can keep chewing on a simple or even a complex sentence without feeling disgust, either with the eyes or the mouth, just keep on grinding away, over and over, a sentence which only consists of subject and predicate must be consumed rapidly, a sentence with many appositions must for that very reason be taken at tremendous speed, with the eyeballs performing an imperceptible slalom.
...
I couldn’t list the books which have impressed me the most or explain why they made such an impression, in which places and for how long. What sticks, then, you will ask, but that’s not the point! there are only a few sentences, a few expressions that wake up inside my brain again and again, begging to be heard over the years.
And the narrator's take (I would say Bernhardian take but actually his takes are Bachmannian) on Vienna and its decline post the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire (sentences that one fears may mirror the fate of London and the UK post Brexit):
I get along well with this city and its diminished and disappearing surroundings which have retired from history. (Uneasy alarm of Herr Mühlbauer. Unruffled, I proceed.) You might also say that, as an example to the world, an empire, along with its practices and tactics embellished with ideas, was expelled from history. I am very happy to live here, because from this place on the planet, where nothing more is happening, a confrontation with the world is all the more frightening, here one is neither self-righteous nor self-satisfied, as this is not some protected island, but a haven of decay, wherever you go there is decay, decay everywhere, right before our eyes, and not just the decay of yesterday’s empire, but of today’s as well.
Highly recommended (although far from an easy read). 4.5 stars - my only reason for 4 not 5 is that I don't feel I did the novel justice, rather than vice versa.
Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann was a mentor of sorts to Bernhard and the basis for the poet Maria in his final novel Extinction.
Malina, published two years before her death (aged 47 in 1973) was her only novel, although intended to be the first of a trilogy called Todesarten (Ways of Dying)
The translation here is by Philip Boehm, revisited in this new 2019 edition: interestingly one editorial decision in the revised edition was to cut out the footnotes and some glosses, on the grounds that the interest reader now has access to the internet.
Malina is a wonderfully powerful work - intense, experimental, with a narrative that is both fragmentary yet compulsive - one that is difficult to absorb on a single reading, a novel that would repay much study and yet would still have its enigmas. At one point even the narrator admits: Something is dawning on me, I’m beginning to see some logic, but I don’t understand anything in particular.
For example: is the eponymous Malina, with whom she apparently lives (platonically), yet who seems to not even acknowledge the existence of her lover Ivan, a real person or a figment of her imagination, a male alter-ego (“we’re as different as nights and day”) or rather is she his female alter-ego: merely the dispensable product of his rib) and perhaps a figment of his.
There are many excellent reviews on the internet (https://www.thenation.com/article/ingeborg-bachmann-malina-book-review/ and from the ever-excellent Joseph Schreiber https://roughghosts.com/2017/11/26/live-in-wonder-write-in-wonder-malina-by-ingeborg-bachmann/) and Goodreads, so I will content myself with some of my favourite passages:
The narrator on reading:
It has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression. Believe me, expression is insanity, it arises out of our insanity. It also has to do with turning pages, with hunting from one page to the other, with flight, with complicity in an absurd, solidified effusion, with a vile overflow of verse, with insuring life in a single sentence, and, in turn, with the sentences seeking insurance in life.
Reading is a vice which can replace all other vices or temporarily take their place in more intensely helping people live, it is a debauchery, a consuming addiction. No, I don’t take any drugs, I take books.
...
Speed is important, not only concentration, can you please tell me who can keep chewing on a simple or even a complex sentence without feeling disgust, either with the eyes or the mouth, just keep on grinding away, over and over, a sentence which only consists of subject and predicate must be consumed rapidly, a sentence with many appositions must for that very reason be taken at tremendous speed, with the eyeballs performing an imperceptible slalom.
...
I couldn’t list the books which have impressed me the most or explain why they made such an impression, in which places and for how long. What sticks, then, you will ask, but that’s not the point! there are only a few sentences, a few expressions that wake up inside my brain again and again, begging to be heard over the years.
And the narrator's take (I would say Bernhardian take but actually his takes are Bachmannian) on Vienna and its decline post the end of the Austro-Hungarian empire (sentences that one fears may mirror the fate of London and the UK post Brexit):
I get along well with this city and its diminished and disappearing surroundings which have retired from history. (Uneasy alarm of Herr Mühlbauer. Unruffled, I proceed.) You might also say that, as an example to the world, an empire, along with its practices and tactics embellished with ideas, was expelled from history. I am very happy to live here, because from this place on the planet, where nothing more is happening, a confrontation with the world is all the more frightening, here one is neither self-righteous nor self-satisfied, as this is not some protected island, but a haven of decay, wherever you go there is decay, decay everywhere, right before our eyes, and not just the decay of yesterday’s empire, but of today’s as well.
Highly recommended (although far from an easy read). 4.5 stars - my only reason for 4 not 5 is that I don't feel I did the novel justice, rather than vice versa.