‘Ich kann nur gut allein sein’: Love and Friendship in the Correspondence of Ingeborg Bachmann and Hans Werner Henze

The article investigates the correspondence between Ingeborg Bachmann and the composer Hans Werner Henze. The letters explore the tension between friendship and love by simultaneously developing but also rejecting the project of an artistic-romantic partnership between Bachmann and Henze. In Bachmann’s case, these plans put into question the core of her own identity as a writer and as a woman. In this confrontation with the foundation of her own self, the letters and their language become key documents for our understanding of the relationship between life and literature.