Agamben liest Bachmann oder die Sprache als Strafe und Hoffnung

Abstract

In his longest text on Ingeborg Bachmann, The Silence of Words, Giorgio Agamben attempts to trace Bachmann’s journey from philosophy to poetry. While Agamben distinguishes between a speaking language and a silent language, the present essay seeks to demonstrate, by referring to Bachmann’s and Martin Heidegger’s engagement with the saying of Anaximander, that in Bachmann there is no differentiation between good and bad language. Rather, language for Bachmann is always simultaneously a punishment for the past and a message of hope for the future.