Week VIII
Readings
Post-War Interpretations of The Mermaid
From the generation who endured growing up in Germany during World War II comes the short story, Undine Goes, by Ineborg Bachmann. This piece serves to reflect the thoughts and feelings of the aforementioned generation in a familiar context.
In week 8 of our class, we discussed Ingrid Bachmann's text "Undine Goes". This text is a tale of Undine's self-discovery. She leaves the water world ( a feminine, wild domain), and arrives in the civilized (masculine) world, and she leaves as an arrival once again. The cycle continues as Undine is bound to this cyclical and paradoxical journey. We can connect the domestic world in Bachmann's text to Fouqué's "Undine" and Andersen's "The Little Mermaid". Bachmann's text undoes the domestic world created by Fouqué and Andersen by celebrating the non-understanding that leaves room for creativity and wildness. Undine prefers the "nowhere world" of the water, where no one "builds a nest," and she criticizes the unrealized potential and clichés in the civilized world. She has an in-depth understanding of the civilized world as an outsider. Rather than assimilating (as occurs in Fouqué's and Andersen's stories), Undine remains alienated, separate, and lonely; it is language alone that connects the two spheres. Bachmann's application of voice is antagonistic toward Franz Kafka's "Silence of the Sirens". Undine's monologist voice has power, unlike the sirens in Kafka's text whose power lies in their silence. Bachmann brings the unconscious to the conscious level through language—this is the paradox of Bachmann's text.
Ineborg Bachmann, "Undine Goes"
