Letters to Felician

Ingeborg Bachmann was born in the Austrian town of Klagenfurt, in 1926. As a young women she moved to Vienna to study philosophy. After World War II, she moved to West Berlin, where her first volume of poetry, Die gestundete Zeit (On Borrowed Time, 1953), received the prestigious Group 47 prize. Bachmann also published fiction, radio plays, and songs.

Like most writers who lived under Nazism, Bachmann often distrusts her society and its institutions. Her rebellion, however, has not taken the form of political activism but of a romantic longing for the absolute. Her verse, notable for its strong rhythms, usually employs traditional forms. She excels in describing landscapes. <P< Bachmann died in 1973.

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