Aspect, Inc.

Ingeborg Bachmann was one of the leading writers in the second half of the 20th Century.

When we first published Darkness Spoken in 2006, it was the most complete edition of her poetry in both English and German. This spring, we will publish a revised edition… and we need your help. Translator Peter Filkins, who is writing a biography of this major voice of German language literature, has revised many of his original translations, and added several poems from Bachmann’s youth that have never been published before. With your support, this collection will bring Bachmann’s work to a new generation.

Over half a century after Bachmann’s death, her work has never been more relevant. She was the daughter of an Austrian Nazi party member; her childhood was haunted by Nazism. An extremely prolific writer, she rapidly rose to fame as part of the literary group Gruppe 47 in the 1950s with her early works of poetry, exploring the grief of being related to the perpetrators of so much suffering, and how the German language was weaponised for such an end. As Filkins noted, she was also a “highly social, sexually liberated woman unwilling to give up utopian love for quotidian marriage”, celebrating the power of her beauty, and using her voice to seek female emancipation from the fascist oppression that continued domestically and systemically beyond the fall of the Nazi regime.

Darkness Spoken cannot and should not go out of print. The current rise of fascism and neo-Nazism all over the world makes her work more important than ever. As Filkins uncovers more about Bachmann’s private life, we can understand this woman better and how her poetry can be both localised to her experience and universal for modern readers. Here is a writer who challenged herself philosophically and morally, refusing to compartmentalise her personal life and the tragedies occurring around her in the public sphere.

A generous donor has offered to match everything we raise up to $5,000. We have three weeks to reach our target. Your gift will be doubled with this matching grant, so please donate to our campaign today! Donors of $150 or more will receive a complimentary copy of the new edition.

Introduce a new audience, with similar anxieties about contemporary life, to the most complete anthology of Ingeborg Bachmann’s poetry to date.