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Thomas Bernhard

 
German Literature Companion: Thomas Bernhard
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Bernhard, Thomas (Harleen, Holland, 1931-89, Gmunden), was brought up from infancy by his mother's parents who lived in Vienna, then in Seekirchen at the Wallersee, and in 1937 moved to Ettendorf/Upper Bavaria. His father, whom he never saw, is presumed to have died in 1943, but his grand-father, Johannes Freumbichler, a minor writer, exercised a strong influence; disciplined and hard-working, he became a model for Bernhard's conception of an intellectual, a ‘Geistesmensch’, the central figure of his work. From 1943 he attended a boarding school in Salzburg (after 1945 renamed Johanneum) which he abandoned three years later when he decided to become an apprentice in a grocer's shop in the city's poorest suburbs. However, in 1947 he developed pleurisy, then pulmonary tuberculosis, and the next years were largely spent in sanatoriums, until 1951 in Grafenhof in the mountains. Here he read in newspapers of the death of his grandfather (1949) and mother (1950) whom he had loved although he felt rejected by her. By 1952 he had sufficiently recovered to resume the study of music, begun in earlier years and now continued at the Mozarteum in Salzburg where he also worked as a legal reporter and critic for the socialist Demokratisches Volksblatt (from 1975 Salzburger Tagblatt). He successfully completed his studies in 1957, the year in which he began to publish his poetry in the collections Auf der Erde und in der Hölle (1957), Unter dem Eisen des Mondes (1958), and In hora mortis (1958); Ave Vergil, written in 1957, appeared in 1981, Die Irren. Die Häftlinge in 1988. Influenced by G. Trakl, they are mainly despairing expressions of his loss of faith in the Christian God; more radical than Pascal, Bernhard viewed reality per se as hell, an attitude that later drew him to Schopenhauer. He also wrote his first prose pieces (Ereignisse, 1969); they depict, apart from atrocities of war, his uncompromisingly rigid perception of a cold world of darkness, brutality, disease, and decay that dominates his work. In 1965 he settled in an isolated farmhouse in Ohlsdorf (Upper Austria); his solipsism is reflected in his work in his figures, artists and scientists and their observer (s). In this disguise he created resourceful variations on the inseparability of art and death, of the inevitably solitary existence of artists to whom obsessive striving is a last refuge from life and a defence against death. However, the remarkably early success Bernhard achieved derives above all from his style of writing. In the story Der Kulterer, written in 1962, the narrator says of Franz Kulterer who while in prison has turned to writing: ‘Und er entdeckte auf den Stützpfeilern der Mathematik die Poesie, die Musik, die alles zusammenhält’. Bernhard's mathematical and musical gifts may well underlie his sense of affinity to Wittgenstein, whose views on language are generally recognized to have had some influence on his own. The first substantial work in which he uses language as an instrument of negation is the novel Frost (1963) in which a medical student joins the painter Strauch for four weeks in a remote snow-covered mountain village. His brief is to report on the artist's mental condition, described as paranoia, but he soon becomes involved in Strauch's exposure of his tormented soul: ‘Ich habe nie sterben wollen und doch nichts grausamer zu erzwingen versucht’. All his statements and long, inconclusive monologues focus on the to him agonizing paradox of existence and every detail of his environment appears in negative descriptions and metaphors, the top of the mountain as a catafalque. After the student's departure he walks towards it and disappears. Other notable works include Amras (1964), a story, and the novels Verstörung (1967), Das Kalkwerk (1967), on the scientist Konrad who becomes insane before completing his study of the human auditory mechanism, murders his crippled wife, and is arrested, and Korrektur (1975), on the ingenious Roithamer who builds a house of concrete resembling a pyramid (‘Kegel’), but his sister, for whom he has designed it, dies and with her his will to live. His suicide is the title's ultimate implication. This complex novel incorporates aspects of the personality and work of Wittgenstein. By now at the height of his fame, Bernhard began to publish his five autobiographical works which cover aspects of his life up to 1949; Die Ursache. Eine Andeutung (1975), Der Keller. Eine Entziehung (1976), Der Atem. Eine Entscheidung (1978), Die Kälte. Eine Isolation (1981), and Ein Kind (1982); In der Höhe. Rettungsversuch. Unsinn (1989) is a revised autobiographical text written in the 1950s. Wittgensteins Neffe. Eine Freundschaft and Beton (both 1982) are autobiographical novels followed in quick succession by Der Untergeher (1983), Holzfällen. Eine Erregung (1984), which was temporarily confiscated for being libellous, Alte Meister (1985), and Auslöschung. Ein Zerfall (1986). This last and longest novel represents the culmination of Bernhard's narrative art.

Bernhard wrote 18 plays, most of which were performed or even premièred at the Vienna Burgtheater or the Salzburger Festspiele, though the success of few of them was more than temporary in the quickly changing world of the theatre. There are close links between his fiction and the plays, except that all of them treat serious subjects as comedies, ranging between the grotesque and ridicule. They in effect tend to be plays within a play with costumes, masks, and stage accessories, all dominated by the protagonist and a single setting, beginning with Ein Fest für Boris (1970), a grotesque piece featuring handicapped, one-legged figures in wheelchairs, which also exemplifies his consistently negative portrayal of women. Vor dem Ruhestand (1979) is his most effective politically relevant play, Theatermacher (1984), a backstage comedy which combines symbolic substance with theatricality, arguably his best. The last play, Heldenplatz (1988), occasioned by the 50th anniversary of the Anschluß, contains intemperate and indiscriminate indictments of the Austrians, the last of its author's provocations.

Bernhard received a number of awards, the Österreichischer Staatspreis of 1968 and the Büchner Prize of 1970 being among the earliest. His compulsive urge to write was matched only by his strong nihilistic trait, the ultimate contradiction of his career. With all his amazing talents he was the most controversial writer Austria had produced for a long time. The volume Die Erzählungen appeared in 1979, an edition of Stücke (4 vols.) in 1988, and Gesammelte Gedichte, ed. V. Bohn, in 1991. The publication of a comprehensive critical edition of his works and posthumous papers appears to be obstructed by the conditions of his will.

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Wikipedia: Thomas Bernhard
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Thomas Bernhard

Born 9 February 1931(1931-02-09)
Heerlen, Netherlands
Died 12 February 1989 (aged 58)
Ohlsdorf, Upper Austria
Occupation Novelist and Playwright
Nationality Austrian
Writing period 1957 - 1989
Signature
Official website

Thomas Bernhard (born Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard, February 9, 1931 – February 12, 1989) was an Austrian playwright and novelist. He is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.

Contents

Life

Thomas Bernhard was born in 1931 in Heerlen, Netherlands as an illegitimate child to Herta Fabjan (1904-1950) and the carpenter Alois Zuckerstätter (1905-1940).

Bernhard spent much of his early childhood with his maternal grandparents in Vienna and Seekirchen, near Salzburg. His mother's subsequent marriage in 1936 occasioned a move to Traunstein, Bavaria.

Bernhard's grandfather, the author Johannes Freumbichler (de), pushed for an artistic education for the boy, including musical instruction. Bernhard went to elementary school in Seekirchen and later attended various schools in Salzburg including the Johanneum which he left in 1947 to start an apprenticeship with a grocer.

Bernhard's Lebensmensch (companion for life), whom he cared for alone in her dying days, was Hedwig Stavianicek (1894 - 1984), a woman more than thirty-seven years his senior, whom he met in 1950, the year of his mother's death and one year after the death of his beloved grandfather. She was the major support in his life and greatly furthered his literary career. Thomas Bernhard's public persona was asexual.[1]

Thomas Bernhard's House, Video by Christiaan Tonnis, 2006

Suffering throughout his youth from an intractable lung disease (tuberculosis), Bernhard spent the years 1949 to 1951 at the sanatorium in Grafenhof. He trained as an actor at the Mozarteum in Salzburg (1955-1957) and was always profoundly interested in music: his lung condition, however, made a career as a singer impossible. After that he began work briefly as a journalist, then as a full-time writer.

Bernhard died in 1989 in Gmunden, Upper Austria. His attractive house in Ohlsdorf-Obernathal 2 where he had moved in 1965 is now a museum and centre for the study and performance of Bernhard's work. In his will, which aroused great controversy on publication, Bernhard prohibited any new stagings of his plays and publication of his unpublished work in Austria. His death was announced only after his funeral.

Work

Often criticized in Austria as a Nestbeschmutzer (one who dirties his own nest) for his critical views, Bernhard was highly acclaimed abroad.

His work is most influenced by the feeling of being abandoned (in his childhood and youth) and by his incurable illness, which caused him to see death as the ultimate essence of existence. His work typically features loners' monologues explaining, to a rather silent listener, his views on the state of the world, often with reference to a concrete situation. This is true for his plays as well as for his prose, where the monologues are then reported second hand by the listener.

His main protagonists, often scholars or, as he calls them, Geistesmenschen, denounce everything that matters to the Austrian in tirades against the "stupid populace" that are full of contumely. He also attacks the state (often called "Catholic-National-Socialist"), generally respected institutions such as Vienna's Burgtheater, and much-loved artists. His work also continually deals with the isolation and self-destruction of people striving for an unreachable perfection, since this same perfection would mean stagnancy and therefore death. Anti-Catholic rhetoric is not uncommon.

"Es ist alles lächerlich, wenn man an den Tod denkt" (Everything is ridiculous, when one thinks of Death) was his comment when he received a minor Austrian national award in 1968, which resulted in one of the many public scandals he caused over the years and which became part of his fame. His novel Holzfällen (1984), for instance, could not be published for years due to a defamation claim by a former friend. Many of his plays—above all Heldenplatz (1988)—were met with criticism from many Austrians, who claimed they sullied Austria's reputation. One of the more controversial lines called Austria "a brutal and stupid nation … a mindless, cultureless sewer which spreads its penetrating stench all over Europe." Heldenplatz, as well as the other plays Bernhard wrote in these years, were staged at Vienna's famous Burgtheater by the controversial director Claus Peymann.

Even in death Bernhard caused disturbance by his, as he supposedly called it, posthumous literary emigration, by disallowing all publication and stagings of his work within Austria's borders. The International Thomas Bernhard Foundation, established by his executor and half-brother Dr. Peter Fabjan, has subsequently made exceptions, although the German firm of Suhrkamp remains his principal publisher.

The correspondence between Bernhard and his publisher Siegfried Unseld from 1961 to 1989 – about 500 letters – has been published in December 2009 at Suhrkamp Verlag, Germany.[2]

Works (in translation)

Novels

  • Gargoyles (1970): Originally published as Verstörung (1967), translated by Richard Winston and Clara Winston.
  • The Lime Works (1973): Originally published as Das Kalkwerk (1970), translated by Sophie Wilkins.
  • Correction (1979): Originally published as Korrektur (1975), translated by Sophie Wilkins.
  • Concrete (1984): Originally published as Beton (1982), translated by David McLintock.
  • Cutting Timber: An Irritation (1985, novel): Originally published as Holzfällen: Eine Erregung (1984), translated by Ewald Osers. Also translated as Woodcutters, by David McLintock, in 1988.
  • Wittgenstein's Nephew (1988): Originally published as Wittgensteins Neffe (1982), translated by David McLintock.
  • Old Masters: A Comedy (1989): Originally published as Alte Meister. Komödie (1985), translated by Ewald Osers.
  • The Cheap-Eaters (1990): Originally published as Der Billigesser (1980), translated by Ewald Osers.
  • The Loser (1991): Originally published as Der Untergeher (1983), translated by Jack Dawson.
  • On The Mountain (1991): Originally published as In Der Höhe (written 1959, published 1989), translated by Russell Stockman.
  • Yes (1991): Originally published as Ja (1978), translated by Ewald Osers.
  • Extinction (1995): Originally published as Auslöschung (1986), translated by David McLintock.
  • Three Novellas (2003): Collects Amras (1964), Playing Watten (Watten, 1964) and Walking (Gehen, 1971). Translated by Peter Jansen and Kenneth J. Northcott.
  • Frost (2006): Originally published in 1963, translated by Michael Hofmann.

Plays

  • The President and Eve of Retirement (1982): Originally published as Der Präsident (1975) and Vor dem Ruhestand. Eine Komödie von deutscher Seele (1979), translated by Gitta Honegger.
  • Histrionics: Three Plays (1990): Collects A Party for Boris (Ein Fest für Boris, 1968), Ritter, Dene, Voss (1984) and Histrionics (Der Theatermacher, 1984), translated by Peter Jansen and Kenneth Northcott.
  • Heldenplatz (1988)
  • Over All the Mountain Tops (2004): Originally published as Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh (1981), translated by Michael Mitchell.

Miscellaneous

  • Gathering Evidence (1985, memoir): Collects Die Ursache (1975), Der Keller (1976), Der Atem (1978), Die Kälte (1981) and Ein Kind (1982), translated by David McLintock.
  • The Voice Imitator (1997, stories): Originally published as Der Stimmenimitator (1978), translated by Kenneth J. Northcott.[1]
  • In Hora Mortis / Under the Iron of the Moon (2006, poetry): Collects In Hora Mortis (1958) and Unter dem Eisen des Mondes (1958), translated by James Reidel.

Further reading

  • Gitta Honegger, Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian, Yale University Press, 2002, ISBN 0300089996
  • JJ Long, The Novels of Thomas Bernhard: Form and its Function, Camden House Inc.,U.S., 2001, ISBN 1571132244
  • Ruth Franklin, "The Art of Extinction," The New Yorker, December 25, 2006 and Jan 1, 2007

Reviews

See also

References

  1. ^ Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian, Gitta Honegger, pp 61-63
  2. ^ Der Briefwechsel Thomas Bernhard/Siegfried Unseld, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2009-12-07

External links

See also: Zuckerstätter

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