In these spellbinding lectures, Ingeborg Bachmann opens our eyes to the endless possibilities of literature

Ingeborg Bachmann, one of the greatest German-language writers of the last century, delivered these astonishing lectures on the questions of poetics at Frankfurt University in 1959 and 1960.

In these lucid and dazzling lectures, Bachmann leads us to the essence of literature, which was, at least for her, the essence of everything. Almost like a curious astronomer, Bachmann guides us through different constellations of writers (Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Celan, Benn, Pound), their forms, orbits, and interactions, as well as through the disruptive force of poetics, the naming of things, and the nebulous and immersive language of utopia.