Ingeborg Bachmann is one of my favourite authors, though I have read just one of her books – the short story collection ‘The Thirtieth Year’. This year, for German Literature Month, I was hoping to read atleast one of her books. So, I started reading her second short story collection, ‘Three Paths to the Lake’. This book has four short stories and a novella, which is the title story. I finished reading the novella yesterday. This post is about that novella. I will post about the other short stories separately.
‘Three Paths to the Lake’ is a novella of around a hundred pages and occupies around half of the book. It is about Elisabeth, a fifty year young woman. Elisabeth is single, she is Austrian, is a journalist and works in Paris. She is seeing a younger man who is twenty two years her junior. Her father lives in a small Austrian town called Klagenfurt. Her brother is recently married and lives with his wife in London. After attending her brother’s wedding in London, Elisabeth comes home to visit her father. She spends a week with him. During that time, she tries to live the country life which she lived during her childhood, goes on treks in trails which lead to the lake, reads the newspaper with her father and occasionally meets old neighbours. During her time there, she also looks back on her life, her relationships with her father and with her brother Robert and with the other men in her life – some of whom were friends, others who were lovers, who left her and broke her heart, and one of whom she married, but who was gay and who was more a friend than a husband. At the end of the week, she goes back home to Paris, and she and her latest boyfriend decide to breakup with each other (she is calm about it while he is upset because she is not upset), and it seems that her life will take a new direction the next day and the story ends with that.
Like any other Ingeborg Bachmann story, ‘Three Paths of the Lake’ is not about the plot. Though it has an interesting plot with events from the current time and the past intricately and masterfully blended together. ‘Three Paths to the Lake’ is more a commentary on life, on the relationships between parents and children, on the relationships between siblings, on the relationships between lovers and partners, on love and how elusive it is, on the complex relationships between men and women, on how our deepest beliefs can come unravelled when we stare truth on its face, on how we forge our identities and how we belong to a place, on how things change every moment and every day and every year, on how it is impossible to travel back to the past as everyone and everything has changed – the story is about this and other things. It is a beautiful meditation on life. Many times I felt that it might have been Ingeborg Bachmann’s own memoir, with the names changed and some of the events probably fictionalized for our benefit. But like in any great piece of literature, the main characters look like us. They could have been any of us. Or someone we knew.
The description of Elisabeth’s father at the beginning of the book reminded me of my own father. It went like this.
…there was nothing, absolutely nothing Herr Matrei needed, and in this respect he made things difficult for his children. It wasn’t just something he said, it was actually the truth : you couldn’t give him Dunhill pipes, gold lighters, expensive cigars, ties, extravagant gifts from extravagant stores, or useful things, either; he refused to accept anything, took good care of all he had, from pruning shears and shovel to the few household appliances an old man needed. He didn’t drink alcohol, he didn’t smoke, he didn’t need any suits, silk scarves, cashmere sweaters, or aftershave lotions and even Elisabeth, who over the years had developed an inimitable imaginativeness in finding the right gift for each and every kind of man, didn’t have a clue when it came to her father. His lack of needs wasn’t a quirk, it was congenital, and he would hold fast to it until his dying day.
When one of Elisabeth’s colleagues dies while trying to report from a war zone and she is having a conversation on it with her lover (her favourite of all her lovers) Trotta, he says this – one of my favourite passages from the book :
“The war you photograph for other people’s breakfasts hasn’t spared you either in the end. I don’t know, but I’m unable to shed a single tear over your friends. If someone jumps into the middle of crossfire to get a few good shots of other people dying, then getting killed is nothing special, considering the sportsmanlike ambition it involves, it’s merely an occupational hazard, nothing more.”
A pretty hard-hitting passage and one which is extremely difficult to disagree with.
My most favourite passage in the book though was this. It is about the relationship between women and men.
There was only one hope she didn’t and wouldn’t allow herself to hold on to : that if, in almost thirty years, she hadn’t found a man, not a single one, who was exclusively significant for her, who had become inevitable to her, someone who was strong and brought her the mystery she had been waiting for, not a single one who was really a man and not an eccentric, a weakling or one of the needy the world was full of – then the man simply didn’t exist, and as long as this New Man did not exist, one could only be friendly and kind to one another, for a while. There was nothing more to make of it, and it would be best if women and men kept their distance and had nothing to do with each other until both had found their way out of the tangle and confusion, the discrepancy inherent in all relationships. Perhaps one day something else might come along but only then, and it would be strong and mysterious and have real greatness, something to which each could once again submit.
Yes, if we are not able to find the person of our dreams, it is better to just be friendly and as Voltaire says in ‘Candide’, live a simple life and tend to our own garden. That is not a bad life – it is simple and beautiful and rewarding.
When I read Ingeborg Bachmann’s other short story collection ‘The Thirtieth Year’, I found it philosophical and intellectually demanding. I was thinking that ‘Three Paths to the Lake’ would be similar. But it wasn’t. It was definitely philosophical. But it was more accessible. (It is either that or I must have become a more sophisticated reader in the short space of a year). Bachmann’s prose flows beautifully and though there are long sentences with multiple clauses, while reading them, one doesn’t notice their length or complexity. Bachmann makes reading a difficult book seem quite easy with her brilliant prose style. I don’t know how she managed to achieve that.
With every story I read, Ingeborg Bachmann keeps getting better and better. I think ‘Three Paths to the Lake’ is my favourite Ingeborg Bachmann story yet. I loved it. I will be definitely reading it again. I am looking forward to reading the other stories in the book. And if I have time left still, I hope to read her novel ‘Malina’.
Ingeborg Bachmann
I can’t finish this post without saying this. One of my perennial regrets will always be that dear Inge left behind only a small body of work – two slim short story collections, one novel, two novel fragments, one collection of poetry, one slim war diary and one collection of letters. I wish she had written more. I wish she had lived longer. But I am grateful that she wrote what she did and left behind these beautiful, slim, literary masterpieces. My life would have been poorer without them.
Have you read ‘Three Paths to the Lake’? What do you think about it?
Hi Vishy. I’m glad you liked this book; I just managed to squeeze it in to last year’s GLM and was impressed. I thought there was a good mix of stories as some of the shorter ones were a bit more fantastical and experimental. I remember thinking that I wished she’d concentrated more on the family relationships in the title story though. I’ll have to read some more by her as well but I probably won’t be able to fit it in to GLM4.
Glad to know that you liked ‘Three Paths to the Lake’ too, Jonathan. I read a couple of the shorter stories today and liked them too. I agree with you on the longer story – maybe the main character’s brother could have had a bigger role or maybe the novella could have been extended into a novel. I would have loved reading the longer version too.
Beautiful review, Vishy. I loved the quotes you shared. I have not read this and I really want to now. I wonder why I haven’t read it. I want to re-read her. I have a dense biography somewhere and your post put me in the mood to read that too.
I liked the description of her father. Mine was very different. There was hardly anything he loved more than presents but he’d be content with something very small. I think what she wrote about men and women is very true too.
Thanks Caroline. I hope you get to read this book and like it. I will look forward to hearing your thoughts on it. (I can’t believe that I have read an Ingeborg Bachmann book which you haven’t – because I am really a Bachmann greenhorn). That biography looks quite interesting. Is it in German? I would love to read her biography sometime.
I have to thank you for helping me discover Ingeborg Bachmann and inspiring me to read her works. I have loved all of her stories that I have read till now. I read two of the short stories in this collection today and liked them too. I can’t wait to read the other stories in the collection.
Nice to know that your father loved presents. It is wonderful when we can surprise our parents with beautiful, small presents. My mother was like that – I could surprise her with presents and make her happy. My father doesn’t like presents though.
Nice to know that you liked the passage about men and women. It is my favourite passage from the story. The relationship between men and women seems to be an underlying theme in most of her stories.
The biography I have is not so much a biography of her life but of her work. It’s not breezy and I would need to re-read most of her work to apprecaite it fully. There are quite a lot of biographies about her life available in German. I’m not sure they have been translated. And collections of letters to her lovers – Pual Celan and Max Frisch. They should be interesting as well.
Nice to know that, Caroline. It must be a wonderful book. Who is the author of the biography? I have that collection of her letters to Paul Celan and Max Frisch 🙂 I hope to read them sometime.
It has been written by Sigrid Weigel and has been called by critics the only “intellectual” biography of Ingeborg Bachmann.
Thanks for telling me about Sigrid Weigel, Caroline. She looks like a wonderful writer, biographer and critic. I just checked in Amazon and discovered that this biography is available only in German. Hope it gets translated into English sometime. I would love to read it. I noticed that one of Weigel’s books on Walter Benjamin has been translated into English.
I saw that Walter Benjamin biography. That could be very interesting. I’m reading his essays and they are amazing. Unfortunately I won’t finish before the end of the month.
Wonderful to know that you are reading Walter Benjamin’s essays and liking them very much. I remember you mentioning that in one of your posts. I hope to read one of his books sometime. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts on his essays. Happy reading!
I loved your quotes and am glad you enjoyed Ingeborg Bachmann. One of my favourites. (I keep saying that about each Austrian writer you mention, but she really is). Just don’t let the Austrians hear you say that Klagenfurt is a small town – it’s the capital of Kärnten, after all, and the 6th largest city in Austria (OK< that's not saying much…). 😉
Thanks Marina. Glad to know that you liked the quotes. Nice to know that Ingeborg Bachmann is one of your favourites too. Thanks for telling me more about Klagenfurt. I didn’t know that it was the capital of a province. I should have checked before I wrote that sentence. The way Klagenfurt is described in the story made me think that it is a small town. I will go and edit that sentence 🙂
I’m just teasing you – it’s not a metropolis! But it probably felt even smaller to the narrator – and it’s certainly not the most happening place.
Ha, ha, ha 🙂 Yes, that is the impression I got also – that the narrator felt that it was a small place. She even made me feel that Vienna was a small place, but I knew that that wasn’t true.
Lovely review, Vishy. One of the things I’m enjoying about German Literature Month is the introduction to new authors and Bachmann is another in the new-to-me category. I really like the quotes you’ve included here and the meditative style appeals too.
Thanks Jacqui. Glad to know that you liked the quotes. I hope you get to read Bachmann’s works sometime. I would love to hear your thoughts on her books. I agree with you on how German Literature Month introduces us to new writers – it is so wonderful.
Wonderful review, Vishy! I have to confess I had to read a Bachmann novel in a class once and have been thoroughly scared off 😉 You do make a convincing argument though so perhaps I’ll give it another shot sometime!
Thanks Bina. Nice to know that you read a Bachmann novel for a class. She does look intimidating as you have said. But I realized the once I was past that initial fear, I loved her stories. I just read the introduction to the book and it made my head whirl with all the multiple layers of interpretation and meaning. If I had read that first, I would have been intimidated to read even the first story. I am glad I did what I did – just read the stories without worrying about the multiple layers of meaning 🙂
I have that novel of Bachmann that you have mentioned (‘Malina’) 🙂 I read the first page yesterday and she meditates on the meaning of the word ‘today’ for the whole page. I loved that. I hope to read it sometime soon.
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