«Die Gnade Morphium, aber nicht die Gnade eines Wortes». Ingeborg Bachmann in der phänomenologischen Psychiatrie von Eugenio Borgna

Abstract

In the writings of Eugenio Borgna — one of the main spokespersons of Italian phenomenological psychiatry — the figure of Ingeborg Bachmann surfaces as one of those canonical lyrical voices who managed to convey the liminal experience of illness, dissociation, Todesangst and melancholy. Bachmann’s reflection on anxiety and disease, on the value of the literary word and the meaning of silence, touches at various levels the hermeneutic-phenomenological approach to disease. Referring to the critical debate following the posthumous publication of Bachmann’s poems gathered in the collection Ich weiss keine bessere Welt (2000), this essay examines this particular aspect of Bachmann’s reception in Italy, aiming at a deeper reflection on the relation between illness and writing and at proving the significance of an approach to literary texts that come from the experience of suffering and disease.