Listening Session: Enigma

08.04.2026 / 19:00 – 21:00
With Ingeborg Bachmann, Nhã Thuyên

In October 2023, the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program brought together a group of writers for a multilingual reading performance with music, commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ingeborg Bachmann’s death. The event gathered writers and artists in response to Bachmann’s poem Enigma, composed during her time in Berlin in the early 1960s.

Enigma will now be released as an audio play as part of the series Bad Words. The release will be celebrated with a special listening session, featuring live performances by Tanasgol Sabbagh and Fabian Saul, alongside the recorded piece.

The audio play features readings by Quinn Latimer, Snejanka Mihaylova, Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, Tanasgol Sabbagh, Nhã Thuyên, and Eugene Yiu Nam Cheung, with additional contributions from Jamieson Webster and Marcus Coelen, and music by Fabian Saul.

Curated by Mayra A. Rodríguez Castro, Fabian Saul, and Mathias Zeiske

About Enigma

Ingeborg Bachmann arrived in West Berlin in the Spring of 1963 as one of the first fellows of the then newly founded Artist-in-Residency Program. For over a decade, the city had been isolated by the grip of the Cold War. Her stay lasted until the end of 1965. This period saw the evolution of forthcoming pieces by the author, carried merely in sheets and early drafts at the time. Surrounding her visit to Berlin, Bachmann renounced poetry and devoted herself to short stories, essays, radio dramas, and the eminent trilogy Todesarten Projekt. Despite her attention to prose, she continued to compose the poem Enigma (1964), which reappeared persistently in later collections.

Ingeborg Bachmann perfected Enigma throughout the years. The opening line of the poem predicted an utter catastrophe: Nothing more will come. Yet, her revisions proved a desire for continuance. The poet confronted various faces of optimism and defeat as versions proliferated. Perhaps her attempts mirrored waves of historical violence, to say that our catastrophes do not occur once. They are recurrent, present, and refracted. In her stanzas, Bachman bends the reader until they listen for hope, which is to be found only in music. 

Event in English and German
Free admission

daadgalerie
Oranienstraße 161
Berlin-Kreuzberg