"[I Step Outside Myself]"
by Ingeborg Bachmann
translated from the German
by Peter Filkins
The Massachusetts Review
Spring 2006

Ingeborg Bachmann:

Ingeborg Bachmann, the Austrian poet, dramatist, and novelist, was born in 1926. She studied philosophy and law at the universities of Innsbruck, Graz, and Vienna, where she completed her doctoral dissertation in 1950. Her first collection of poetry, Die gestundete Zeit (1953), was awarded the Group 47 Prize. She moved to Italy in 1953 and also spent some time at Harvard University as a visiting scholar. At the age of 33, Bachmann became the first holder of the chair for poetics at the University of Frankfurt. In 1964, she received the prestigious Georg Büchner Prize, and four year later was awarded the Austrian National Medal. Bachmann died in Rome on October 17,1973.

Peter Filkins:

Peter Filkins is the author of two books of poems and the translator of Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann (Zephyr Press, 2006), which includes "[I Step Outside Myself]." He teaches at Simon's Rock College of Bard in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

About The Massachusetts Review:

An independent quarterly of literature, the arts, and public affairs, The Massachusetts Review has deep local roots but a broad appeal, with subscribers spread across the U.S. and abroad. In addition to poems and stories of the highest literary quality by writers both nationally-known and emerging, our pages also regularly include literature in translation, personal witness pieces, lively and incisive social and historical commentary. Ours is a generalist reader who cares deeply for both literature and the wider world.

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