“Mild und leise...”

'Mild und leise…': does that not come from 'Tristan'? Ingeborg Bachmann’s drafts of poems dating from her year of crisis in 1963 are in fact teeming with quotations from Wagner operas which form a radical contrast to the somewhat clinical-expressionist language and content of her poetry and also display great inner conflict in the expression of their subject of disaster and misfortune. In their musical transformation, the Wagner quotations appear in original form and are therefore disconnected – and simultaneously encapsulated – from the otherwise serial progressions, enabling the creation of a musical dimension which corresponds with their language. Dieter Schnebel