Wohnen “in Goyas letztem Raum”: Eine intermediale Poetik des Entsetzens. Die Zitierung von Goyas Pinturas Negras in Ingeborg Bachmanns Roman Malina. [Living in “Goya’s Last Room”. An Intermedial Poetics of Dread. Ingeborg Bachmann’s use of Goya’s Pinturas Negras in her novel Malina]

Abstract

Ingeborg Bachmann’s recurrent references to the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya have frequently been noted, but have so far never been investigated. After outlining, in chapter one, Bachmann’s references to Goya in her thesis on Wittgenstein as well as in the Franza-Fragment and in her only novel Malina, this thesis sets out to highlight the text-image relation between Bachmann’s novel Malina and Goya’s series of murals which are known as the so called „Black Paintings“. Chapter two focuses on the importance of intertextuality and intermediality in Bachmann’s novel and the importance of quotation for the female narrator, who relies on intertextual and intermedial references to express her traumatic experiences. After an introduction into the aesthetics of Goya, in chapter three, chapters four and five examine the text-image relation between Goya’s painting El Perro Semihundido and the first chapter in Bachmann’s novel. The double perspective contained in El Perro, of the subjective expression of the dog’s longing for rescue and the objective futility of this hope as expressed by the dog’s positioning against the abstract background setting, is transferred onto the female narrator and her longing to be rescued through love. Chapter five especially focuses on the (problematic) semantic shifts which occur in the course of this transformation from an abstract representation in the painting to the depiction of concrete and personalized experiences in the text. Chapter six investigates the correlations between Bachmann’s dream chapter and the aesthetics of Goya’s murals, and asks to what extent Bachmann succeeds in transferring the main motifs in Goya’s images into literary form. Chapter seven explores the similarities and media-specific differences in the strategies deployed for depicting madness, violence and destruction in Bachmann’s text and in Goya’s murals and his series of prints on the Desasters of War. Bachmann’s novel Malina shows an extraordinary richness in intertextual and intermedial references. Analysing the explicit as well as implicit references to Goya’s late works in the novel this thesis addresses one area on Ingeborg Bachmann which has not been researched in detail so far.