Ingeborg Bachmann's novel Malina is an underappreciated gem of feminist literature. Bachmann's writing is authentic and original and leaves a strong impression. Her writing incorporates elements of stream of consciousness writing, although it's somewhat different from other writers in the genre. A couple of stylistic peculiarities are her method of recounting telephone conversations, sometimes writing only one half of the conversation and sometimes both sides, and her use of musical notation in portions of the text.
Bachmann herself was a remarkable person. She studied philosophy, philology, psychology, and law at three universities, earned a doctorate, and wrote a dissertation on Martin Heidegger. She worked in broadcasting before becoming an accomplished and celebrated poet. She was nominated for and won numerous awards for her poetry, as well as for her libretti written in collaboration with Hans Werner Henze.
Despite Bachmann's intellectual and artistic achievements, her love life was torrid and frequently unhappy. Her first relationship, with Jack Hamesh, went unrealized after Hamesh settled in Palestine after fleeing Nazi persecution. A later relationship with the author Paul Celan was off-again, on-again, and Bachman and Celan remained friends and stayed in touch until Celan's suicide in Paris. In the 60s, Bachmann began a relationship with the Swiss author Max Frisch that proved disastrous. These lines from a Paris Review article about Bachmann sum it up succinctly:
Frisch, who was divorced and fifteen years Bachmann’s senior, was unwilling to be monogamous, but he didn’t want Bachmann to enjoy the same freedoms. They split soon after Frisch took up with the much younger woman who became his next wife.
If Bachmann's own life and her work could be summed up in a sentence, a leading contender could be: men ain't shit. Bachmann herself said nearly as much in a pithy line from Malina:
It is a myth that some men are good lovers. Most men are hopeless and some are less hopeless.
While it proved to be her only novel, Malina was originally intended to be the first in a triptych called Death Styles. The novel is in many ways a reflection of Bachmann's own life, although it is not intended entirely literally. About her novel, Bachmann said, “I would only call it an autobiography, if one views it as the first person’s spiritual process.” Bachmann didn't intend the novel to be received as simply a roman a clef, but seemingly as a disquisition on the relationships between men and women, told with her own experiences as a medium.
The unnamed female protagonist shares many of Bachmann's characteristics. She is a writer living in Vienna, who has studied various subjects at various universities. She speaks several languages, including French, Italian and a smattering of English. She is artistically and musically versed and frequently comments on art or popular cultural topics. She is connected to Vienna's social scene, referring to several supposedly affluent families including the Wantschuras, the Mandls and the Altenwyls, who are always hosting dinners with elaborate serving and seating rules and meticulously planned menus, going boating, supporting local arts, or gossiping about the business of other members of this rarefied social stratum.
The primary topic of the novel is the protagonist's relationships with two different men, Ivan and Malina. The two different relationships take different tones and contours. Malina is reserved, quiet and habitual. He works at the Armory as a curator or manager of some kind, managing the business of the museum. He is well-read and has a very large collection of books, prompting the protagonist to occasionally suggest moving into a larger apartment with more room for Malina's books. The protagonist loves Malina, though not in a passionate way. He is always there, ever-present and ready to support her if she should need it. That said, he is hardly anyone's idea of a great lover. He never breaks routine, always collecting his things in the morning to leave without forgetting anything, suggesting the same restaurants and amusements. He is occasionally cross, demanding to know why there isn't coffee ready or why the protagonist isn't dressed. And despite putting up with the protagonist's occasional breakdowns or bouts of neurasthenia, he is sometimes dismissive or annoyed by her behavior.
Ivan is quite different from Malina, and subsequently, his and the protagonist's relationship is quite different. He has two children from a previous relationship, although he and the children's mother seem to be mostly separated. Ivan and the protagonist meet between once and several times per week and have dinner, sleep together and play chess. Ivan seems to be the typical man. He is interested in the protagonist when they aren't together, but he only wants to spend a few hours together. He probably doesn't care to have her around much once they've had sex. When they play chess together, he frequently critiques her playing and attempts to instruct her. The protagonist loves Ivan passionately and wants to meet with him as frequently as possible, although she simultaneously wants to limit her time with him because the more frequently they meet the more disinterested Ivan seems. It's quite tragic. The protagonist wants to spend all her time with Ivan, to be lost and drowned in him, but quite clearly he is mostly interested in her for sex and for the opportunity to critique and correct her. Therefore she restricts her time with him so what time they do spend together is as good as possible so that Ivan doesn't get annoyed and grow disinterested. It's possibly the most accurate and most heartbreaking description of men and their romantic tendencies that I've ever read.
The novel is divided into 4 sections: The Cast, One: Happy with Ivan, Two: The Third Man, and Three: Last Things. The Cast essentially serves as the introduction, listing the characters and detailing the protagonist's relationships with Ivan and Malina. Happy with Ivan describes the intensification of her relationship with Ivan, in which she meets Ivan's children and forms something of an attachment to them. The Third Man features several nightmare sequences involving the protagonist's father, a domineering figure who at various intervals murders, imprisons or beats the protagonist. He also marries a young friend of hers. He is described as a large man, who is always in a position of authority, either as the director of a huge art installation, the director of a movie, the host of a great party, or some other such role. Eventually, the protagonist breaks free of his control and threatens to kill him if he persists in his domination of her. Last Things is the climax of the novel, in which the protagonist suffers an emotional breakdown. Ivan visits one last time and attempts to end things, but doesn't say as much. He keeps saying he has to talk to the protagonist, and strains to find the right way to end things. Ultimately though, the protagonist turns off the light and Ivan leaves without saying their relationship is finished, although that's the result.
The end of the novel is unclear. The protagonist breaks down over the end of her relationship with Ivan. She becomes hysterical and talks about death and suicide, prompting Malina to strike her across the face in an attempt to bring her to her senses. They have dinner and Malina demands some coffee and refuses to speak to the protagonist. She says:
I stare unwaveringly at Malina, but he doesn't look up. I stand up, thinking that if he doesn't say something immediately, if he doesn't stop me, it will be murder, and I step away since I can no longer say it. It's not so frightening anymore, just that our falling apart is more frightening than any falling out. I have lived in Ivan and I die in Malina.
Ivan calls and requests to speak with the protagonist. Malina answers the phone and says that there's no one here by that name. The protagonist leaves the room and the last lines of the novel say this:
Steps, Malina's incessant steps, quieter steps, the most quiet steps. A standing still. No alarm, no sirens. No one comes to help. Not the ambulance and not the police. It's a very old wall, a very strong wall, from which no one can fall, which no one can break open, from which nothing can ever be heard again. It was murder.
It's a haunting ending. Bachmann captures the feminine mystique better than anyone I've read, up there with such greats as Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, with whom she is sometimes compared. Despite the quality of her work, I was previously unaware of her. I chanced upon a copy of her book at the library and was struck by its attractive cover design. It's incongruous to me that a book of such great quality and such originality should be so criminally underappreciated. Hopefully, Bachmann and her work eventually receive the attention they merit.