Letter No. 1
Vienna
Obkirchergasse 3
Dear Dr. Unseld,
A few days ago I
sent your firm a prose manuscript. [1] I wished by means of this manuscript to
establish a relationship with Suhrkamp. I
own several books published by your firm, and they are among the best that have
appeared in modern times. This is
another thing that has prompted me to turn my back on certain other
relationships that I have already secured. [2] Perhaps a conversation with you
could be arranged. At the end of November
I shall be passing through Frankfurt . Although I do not know you personally, I do
know a handful of people you know. But I
am venturing to go this alone. [3]
Yours very
respectfully,
Thomas Bernhard
[1] On September 17, 1961, writing from the same Vienna
address, the residence of Hedwig Stavianicek, Bernhard sent to Suhrkamp a
manuscript together with a letter reading as follows: “Dear sirs, I am being so
bold as to send you my manuscript ‘The Forest in the Street’ and to request
that if possible you arrive at a decision about it by the end of November. I further request that you briefly
acknowledge your receipt of the manuscript. […] P.S. You are the first
publisher to whom I am sending this MS.”
The manuscript in question is a revision of the novel Schwarzach St. Veit, which was
extensively reworked over the course of 1961, and which Bernhard began writing
in 1957. It has never been
published. In January 1989, a month
before his death, a section of the work, entitled In der Höhe. Rettungsversuch. Unsinn [On High. A Rescue Attempt. An Absurdity] appeared under the imprint
of the Salzburg publisher Residenz (see. Letter No. 522; for the typescript and
publication history see Bernhard, Werke
11, pp. 336-346).
[2] Between 1957 and 1959 four books by Thomas Bernhard
were published: three volumes of poetry, Auf
der Erde und in der Hölle [On Earth and in Hell] (1957), In hora mortis (1958), and Unter dem Eisen des Mondes [Under the Iron of the Moon] (the first
two by Otto Müller in Salzburg, the third by Kiepenheuer & Witsch in
Cologne), and die rosen der einöde, fünf
sätze für ballett, stimmen und orchester [the roses of the wasteland, five pieces for dancers, singers, and
orchestra] by Samuel Fischer in Frankfurt am Main. (die rosen einöde was reprinted in Bernhard, Werke 15, pp. 7-52.)
Bernhard’s hopes for further publication through Fischer were conclusively
dashed in May 1961, when the firm’s then director, Rudolf Hirsch, mailed him
back all the manuscripts he had submitted to it.
[3] The letter bears a note in Siegfried
Unseld’s handwriting: “Give MS to Mr. Michel.”
On January 24, 1962, Karl Markus Michel wrote to Bernhard at the address
he had provided: “[…] unfortunately we cannot […] quite warm to your novel […]. The subject matter, as embodied in the
characters, setting, and plot, is rather feeble to begin with, and it
subsequently becomes so bogged down in atmospherics, pontifications, and other impedimenta
that a palpable gulf between its matter-of-fact foundation and its ambitious literary
superstructure arises. […] Widely varying stylistic possibilities are
tried out in the absence of any deep necessity or indeed even superficial
motivation for such experimentation, and the novel as a whole consequently
acquires a highly diffuse character.”
Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2014 by Douglas Robertson
Source: Thomas Bernhard. Siegfried
Unseld. Der Briefwechsel, Herausgegeben
von Raimund Fellinger, Martin Huber und Julia Ketterer. [Thomas
Bernhard. Siegfried Unseld. The Correspondence, edited by ….] (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2011), pp. 9-10.