Todesarten
Todesarten, the title of a projected cycle of novels by Ingeborg Bachmann, of which only Malina (1971) was completed. Der Fall Franza is unfinished, and Requiem für Fanny Goldmann consists of fragments. Other drafts suggest that the cycle or ‘Reigen’ (an allusion to Reigen, Schnitzler's portrayal of the Viennese society contained in Malina) was to take in further projects. Set around the early 1960s, its central location is Vienna, whose society according to the introduction to Der Fall Franza is in a state of war; for although the murders perpetrated in the concentration camps and by war criminals belong to the past, bloodless murder is still the order of the day. Described as manifestations of ‘fascism in the private sphere’, these ‘murders’ are directed against women, the victims of a patriarchal society. This idea is similarly expressed in Malina: ‘Die Gesellschaft ist der allergrößte Mordschauplatz’.
Malina, a loosely structured novel using a variety of stylistic devices, including dialogue, is concerned with the social and cultural intercourse between the protagonist and narrator, introduced as ICH, Malina, her male partner and (rational) alter ego, and Ivan, her Hungarian lover, who lives nearby in the Ungarstraße. The novel is divided into three chapters, each centring on one of three men. The third of these, who is central in the second chapter, is the narrator's father, a figure representing absolute power. All three men contribute to the destruction of the narrator's feminine nature. The title of the first chapter, ‘Glücklich mit Ivan’, points to an ideal of fulfilment which Ivan, an ordinary man with no ideals, does not share. But her longing for love inspires her legend Die Geheimnisse der Prinzessin von Kagran: set before the beginning of time, it projects the mythical worlds that lie either side of the Danube, that of persecution and anguish, and that of the dead and of love, whose secrets the princess learns from a mysterious stranger in black (the figure alludes to Paul Celan) who appears to her in the valley by the river. The second chapter, ‘Der dritte Mann’, is dominated by her dream experience with her father, for whose love she longs, but who silently leads her into a gas chamber. The third chapter, ‘Von letzten Dingen’, describes the last stage of Malina's manipulation of her identity which gradually disintegrates, a process which she watches through her mirror image; in the end an old crack in the wall of her room opens to receive her. Malina cannot hear her agony, but he knows that she has disappeared. The novel closes with the words: ‘Es war Mord’, though the short epilogue does not reveal who speaks. The novel's literary and musical allusiveness, and its ending, prompt various interpretations. A conspicuous factor is its use of language, the interplay of words, innuendoes, and silence, obstructing communication. Elfriede Jelinek wrote a film script, Malina. Ein Filmbuch (1991), based on the novel; this and the novel were adapted by Werner Schroeter for his controversial film Malina (1991).
In contrast to the representation of the ‘Todesarten’ project in Werke, the critical edition, ‘Todesarten’-Projekt (5 vols.), by R. Pichl, M. Albrecht, and D. Göttsche, published in 1995, appreciably extends the range of texts and fragments ascribed to the cycle as well as the dates of its inception.
