Contemporary Music Review

ISSN: 0749-4467 (Print) 1477-2256 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/gcmr20

Music and poetry

Ingeborg Bachmann

To cite this article: Ingeborg Bachmann (1989) Music and poetry, Contemporary Music Review,
5:1, 139-141, DOI: 10.1080/07494468900640591

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/07494468900640591

Published online: 24 Aug 2009.

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 Contemporary Music Review, 9 1989 Harwood Academic Publishers GmbH
1989, Vol. 5, pp. 139-141 Printed in the United Kingdom
Photocopying permitted by license only

Music and poetry

Ingeborg Bachmann

About music, about poetry, about both their natures, one m u s t speak by the way.
presunçoso, arrogante
P r e s u m p t u o u s talk on these subjects should cease, for w h a t does each n e w
utterance reveal, but that some things actually do change and some are unchange-
able? Yet sometimes we speculate that something could alter completely, that
nothing remains as it was. A n d then we have a right to puzzle over these issues,
to air our misgivings, and, if we stand to one side, to permit ourselves once more
a t h o u g h t concerning connections.
We do not k n o w what, since time immemorial and in each individual case, has
m o v e d the one m e d i u m to choose the other, w h y some music wishes to give
certain w o r d s a n o t h e r life, but it has always h a p p e n e d and h a p p e n s , curiously
e n o u g h , e v e n today, w h e n the arts a p p e a r to distance themselves from one
another, cast few glances toward one another, and no longer lie in their old
embraces.
We have s t o p p e d searching for 'poetic content' in music, for 'word music' in
poetry. Both are i n d e e d temporal arts, but h o w differently m e a s u r e m e n t s are
m a d e in the two: with disproportionate rigour in music, disproportionate latitude liberdade de ação

in language; even within the chains of m e t e r the duration of a syllable is vague,

indefinable. Does music - of which it is said that it expresses nothing, wishes to
express nothing, and seeks c o m m u n i o n w i t h o u t making itself c o m m o n -
therefore perhaps fear to lose purity in this association? Further: does music -
which already drives instruments to the limits of playability, treats their particular
traits in n e w ways or attempts to shrug t h e m off, wants to abolish every con-
straint, and, in search of renaissance and a n e w innocence, looks into the infinite
- fear that it must commit itself, with a b a n k r u p t language, to the h u m a n voice?
For the characteristic nature of this voice, which is intrinsically of a specific kind,
will provide no progressive transcendence of the world.
Language, then, appears to be inadequate to the spiritual d e m a n d s of music,
and the voice inadequate to its technical d e m a n d s . It would seem that the two arts
have, for the first time, reason to part company.
The word, banished from music, w o u l d be able to fend for itself. We w h o deal
with language have learned what speechlessness and m u t e n e s s are - our, if y o u
will, most p u r e conditions! - and have r e t u r n e d from N o - M a n ' s - L a n d with
language, which we will continue to use, so long as our lives continue. But must
the arts really part c o m p a n y at a m o m e n t w h e n every failure is a salvation
foregone, and every m i s j u d g e m e n t of spirit in a kindred spirit carries with it a
mortal sorrow? O u r n e e d for song is there. Must song come to an end?
A l t h o u g h we are readily inclined, as n e v e r before, to surrender, to come to
140 lngeborg Bachmann

terms, we retain the suspicion that a trail leads from the one art to the other. There
is a comment of H61derlin's to the effect that the spirit can only express itself
rhythmically. Music and poetry have, in other words, a common spiritual way of
proceeding. They have rhythm, in the primary, the formative sense. That is why
they are capable of recognizing one another. That is why there is a trail.
And is not every change of direction in music accompanied by a new poetry?
Doesn't a new proximity kindle a new light? For some time, words have no longer
sought that accompaniment which music cannot give them: a decorative sur-
rounding made of sound. But rather unification. The new condition, in which
they sacrifice their independence and achieve, through music, a new power to
convince. And music no longer seeks the inconsequential text as an occasion, but
a langage of harder currency, a value with which it will test its own.
For this reason music clings, like a stigma, to those poetic texts to which it is
drawn, those of Brecht, Garcia Lorca and MallarmG Trakl and Pavese, and to
those older ones, always in the mainstream of the present, of Baudelaire,
Whitman and H61derlin. (Oh, how many one could name!) They do indeed
continue to exist for their own sakes, but they have a precious second life in this
association. For the old truths, like the new, can be awakened, affirmed, and
thrust forward; and every language that speaks these truths - the German, the
Italian, the French, every language! - can assure itself again, through music, of its
participation in a universal language.
Music, for its part, achieves with words a profession of faith it cannot otherwise
accomplish. It becomes responsible, it follows in outline the expressed spirit of
Yes and No, it becomes political, sympathetic, participatory, and involves itself in
our fate. It abandons its asceticism, assumes a limitation amongst other limited
entities, becomes vulnerable and open to attack. Yet it need not feel itself the
smaller for doing so. Its weakness constitutes its new worth. Together, and
inspired by one another, music and the word are an irritation, a rebellion, a love,
a confession. They keep the dead awake and disturb the living, they go beyond
the demand for freedom and pursue the impertinent man even in his sleep. They
have the strongest intention of producing an effect.
So one must be able to lift the stone and hold it, in wild hope, until it begins to
blossom, as music lifts a word and makes it luminous with the power of sound.
So one must express oneself, draw the lonely into alliance through another who
is lonely, lend one another meaning in the face of the world. Take a position. And
in consequence commit oneself.
For it is time to gain some insight into the voice of man, this voice of a fettered
creature, that is not wholly capable of saying what it suffers, nor of singing what
heights and depths are to be sounded. There is only this organ without any final
umbral, limiar, limite
precision, without absolute reliability, with its little volumes, the threshold above
and below - very far from being a mechanism, a certain instrument, an achieved
apparatus. Yet something of the freedom of youth is in it, or the fears of age,
essences of warmth and cold, sweetness and hardness, every asset of the living.
And this distinction, of serving a hopeless approximation to perfection!
It is time to give this voice attention once more, to impart to it our words, our
tones, to enable it to reach, with the most exquisite effort, those who are waiting
and those who have turned away. It is time to conceive of it no longer as a means,
but rather as holding a place for that point in time when poetry and music together
reach the moment of truth.
 Musicand poetry 141

On this darkening star where we live, on the verge of becoming mute, in denial
of the growing madness, during the razing of heartlands, faced with the passing
of things from our thoughts, and with the departure of so many emotions, who
would n o t - if it sounds once more, if it sounds for him! - suddenly recognize what
that is: a h u m a n voice.

Translated by Karin yon Abrams

Reproduced by permission of Schott and Co.