The purpose of my examination of Das Buch Franza was to counter critical trends based on an acceptance of Franza's perspective as privileged and authorized by the narrator, and by extension therefore, in some critics' view, by Bachmann. My study has emphasized crucial gestures of irony, judgement and analysis offered by the narrator in response to her protagonist. These act to negate the interpretative cogency of any textual readings which fail to consider the significance of the narrator's critical viewpoint. Indeed, I argue that the ethical thrust of the text lies not in the attempt to ascribe to Franza's suffering an innocence and redemptive function so evidently lacking, but in the narrator's ability to combine her critical voice with sympathy. In this chapter I focus on two further fragmentary texts by Bachmann and continue to draw attention to the narrators' critical and questioning roles. For, through her narrative perspective, Bachmann not only ensures that ambiguity is recognized as fundamental to the formation and understanding of identities, but also reveals its potentially disturbing presence beneath any moral assertion to be a necessarily positive safeguard.

REQUIEM FÜR FANNY GOLDMANN

Bachmann first referred to the Goldmann story in a letter in 1966, although Albrecht and Göttsche indicate that she may already have been working at it earlier than this, in parallel with Das Buch Franza.