Starting from the protean and problematic dimension of the “lyric self” in the poetic production of Sylvia Plath and Ingeborg Bachmann, this essay retraces the critical attempts of juxtaposition between the two poets, generally inspired by a biographical reading linked to the tragic destiny of the authors or to their sensitivity to the Holocaust, and then attempts to bring to the surface a deeper spiritual affinity based on a common conception of Art. The essay focuses in particular on the intense intertextual dialogue between two poetic compositions by the authors, which are also chronologically close, the lyric “Lorelei” by Sylvia Plath and the poetic prose “Undine geht” by Ingeborg Bachmann. With a detailed philological reconstruction of the constant reference of the reciprocal rewritings of the Wasserfrau mythology and a careful reconnaissance of the points of contact between the two works analysed, the work attempts to bring out the poets’ belief in the palingenetic value of the poetic word, thus also contributing to subverting a stereotypical approach to Plath’s lyric poetry that is believed to find in death and suicide as its obsessive pivotal point.
