A Translation of "Ein destruktiver, schrecklicher Kerl" by Thomas Bernhard

“A destructive, horrible guy”

Now that I have returned from Portugal, where at the invitation of the Goethe Institute I delivered some lectures on my own work at the Universities of Lisbon and Coimbra and had some discussions with some students, it is beyond my personal power and more precisely the power of my brain, a brain that is ever mindful of the accountability of Austrians living abroad, to withhold from our chancellor and the broader [Austrian] public that portion of my traveling experiences involving the Austrian embassy and in particular the Austrian ambassador to Lisbon, Weinberger, and I am quite simply duty-bound to share with you the following facts and circumstances:

At the end of my first lecture, the director of the German Goethe Institute in Lisbon, the distinguished and quite justifiably world-famous translator of Latin-American and hence Portuguese and Spanish literature Curt Meyer-Clason, was invited along with me to a supper-party at the house of an Austrian family living in Lisbon, a supper-party that the Austrian ambassador was also supposed to attend.  Shortly before my lecture Mayr-Clason suddenly shared with me the news that Weinberger the Austrian ambassador would not fulfill his function as a guest at this party if I, and in this matter the ambassador had quite clearly been heard to say, “if this destructive, horrible guy,” was going to be present, and it was very politely suggested to me, probably for fear that the ambassador might [resort to more] coercive [methods], that because the hosts were an Austrian family living in Lisbon I would do better not to appear at this supper-party, and so as a matter of course I did not appear at that supper-party.

At this moment it dawned on me within the precincts of the university that the German Goethe Institute’s and the German embassy in Lisbon’s solicitude to inform the Austrian embassy of my residence in Lisbon and of my lectures in Lisbon through a number very polite printed and unprinted invitations and leaflets had been exploited quite definitely by the Austria embassy and unmistakably by the Austrian ambassador towards the end of ridding themselves of my personal presence by brusquely rebuffing me, by bringing me in contempt within the Austrian colony in Lisbon and throughout Portugal and snubbing me; meanwhile, the Austrian ambassador had publicly let it be known that I was “a destructive, horrible guy,” even though I have never met the Austrian ambassador to Lisbon and even though I am certain this ambassador has to this day not read a single line written by me.  Weinberger the ambassador has also spoken of me in terms akin to “this destructive, horrible guy” in communications to the representatives of the German Goethe Institute and of the German embassy, and hence to my hosts, who had been under the impression that the Austrian embassy in Lisbon was in some fashion interested in Thomas Bernhard, communications that at the very least must be described as indiscretions.

The day after my exclusion from the aforementioned supper-party and after the Austrian ambassador had made full and abundant use of the opportunity to bring me in contempt among the Austrians and Germans in Lisbon, I was invited by the German ambassador Caspari to a panel discussion at his private residence outside Lisbon with Cunhal, Soares, and the former king [of Italy] Umberto; hence [I received this invitation] at the very moment at which, by the most remarkable coincidence imaginable, suddenly and not unwittily in the eyes of Meyer-Clason who had been apprised of it, the Austrian ambassador in the course of bringing my personal presence into contempt had for his own purposes consistently and unremittingly replaced my actual name Bernhard with the admittedly not unattractive name Bernfeld.

Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2013 by Douglas Robertson

Source: Der Wahrheit auf der Spur.  Reden, Leserbriefe, Interviews, Feuilletons.  Herausgegeben von  Wolfram Bayer, Raimund Fellingerund und Martin Huber [Stalking the Truth.  Speeches, Open Letters, Interviews, Newspaper Articles.  Edited by Wolfram Bayer et al.](Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2011). 

A Translation of "Schriftstellerberuf heute" (A letter about Elias Canetti by Thomas Bernhard)

The Literary Vocation Today

The Comedy of Vanity [1]

The new honorary doctor Canetti, our age’s greatest huckster of aphorisms—hence a born recipient of an honorary doctorate—who some forty years ago gave a promising display of talent in the form of a fantastic Auto-da-fé, has, in the form of a so-to-speak Comedy of Vanity, in an attack of acute and yet galloping senility, proclaimed himself to be a poet (our only poet) to boot!  Senility is touching; the arrogance of an old man—of an autumnal father and ludicrous last-minute philosopher, who, as I said before, gave a promising display of talent forty years ago and has in the meantime, in the capacity of a kind of poor-man’s Kant and mini-Schopenhauer, as a consequence of an inconsequential inconsistency, forfeited his eminence, and at the University of Munich has even shamelessly pruned his brain down to nothing in [a series of] clinically moronic propositions—is embarrassing.  Or even merely grotesque.  For years on end in every corner of the German-speaking world he has—in the capacity of an itinerant prophet-for-hire on the literary circuit, on as it were academic soil—been diligently letting off the steam of his guilty conscience.

Thomas Bernhard, Ohlsdorf  

[1] Editors' note: First published in Die Zeit, Hamburg, February 26, 1976.

On February 6, 1976, under the title “The Vocation of the Poet [Dichter],” Die Zeit had published Elias Canetti’s speech on the occasion of his acceptance of an honorary doctorate from the University of Munich.  In this speech Canetti took direct aim at Bernhard with the appellation “somebody who writes,” which Bernhard had employed in characterizing himself in the film Three Days.  Canetti stated “[…] but there were also others […] who composed bitter and very promising books, rose very quickly to fame as ‘somebody who writes,’ and then did what earlier writers [Dichter] had been wont to do: instead of falling silent, writing the same book over and over again.  However unimprovable and capitally criminal humanity seemed to them, it retained one function: applauding them.”    

Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2013 by Douglas Robertson

Source: Der Wahrheit auf der Spur.  Reden, Leserbriefe, Interviews, Feuilletons.  Herausgegeben von  Wolfram Bayer, Raimund Fellingerund und Martin Huber [Stalking the Truth.  Speeches, Open Letters, Interviews, Newspaper Articles.  Edited by Wolfram Bayer et al.](Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2011).