The Past Is Unexplored
VIKTOR SUCHY: I am
delighted to have the opportunity of welcoming you here, and I thank you, Mr.
Bernhard, for making yourself available for a conversation for our
clearinghouse. First and foremost we
would like to clear up some of the mystery surrounding your birth in the Dutch
town of Heerlen
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, I am
nothing, nothing but an Austrian.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Are your
roots in Salzburg
THOMAS BERNHARD: In the
Flachgau, and of course the Kobernaußer Forest Upper
Austria , or the general
Wallersee area, all my ancestors are from there.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Let’s begin
with some routine questions. You
obviously have only just turned 36, but have you ever, since you are a very
keen observer of yourself, thought about making notes for an autobiography or
keeping a diary or about publishing such things, or are you no longer the type
of person who keeps a diary or makes notes for an autobiography?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Naturally
I jot down notes more or less every day, or I don’t, depending on what happens
to occur to [me]. Mainly for your own
purposes you do of course want to take a look at what was going on back in the
old days, and of course you do forget entire periods, and so there are whole
months of nothing but white space, like at the North Pole. The past is unexplored there.
VIKTOR SUCHY: How accurate
are the smattering of entries on you in the literary dictionaries?
THOMAS BERNHARD: They are
indeed just a smattering, and many of them are completely wrong. Either through their own fault or through
somebody else’s.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Maybe we
could compile a little entry of our own together. So at least your date of birth has got to be
the right one: 10 February 1931 .
THOMAS BERNHARD: It’s not
entirely clear whether it was the ninth or the tenth; even I don’t know
which. Until the age of 25 I always
thought it was the tenth, and then one day I wrote to Heerlen requesting a
birth certificate, and they wrote back straightaway that it was the ninth, they
urged, as they say, they insisted it was the ninth. And so everything including my passport and
these stories should be invalidated, but I’m sticking to the tenth.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And so by
chance you were born in Holland Heerlen
THOMAS BERNHARD: It was
purely by chance, yes.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Where did
you subsequently spend your childhood?
THOMAS BERNHARD: For the
first two, three years I was in Vienna
VIKTOR SUCHY: Zuckmayer was
in Henndorf…
THOMAS BERNHARD: Zuckmayer
was there, and so was Richard Mayr, Csokor was there, and so was Horváth…
VIKTOR SUCHY: So you grew
up in a literary environment.
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, but
I was there, as I said earlier, at the ages of three, four, five. Stelzhamer died there.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And then you
moved to Salzburg
THOMAS BERNHARD: No, then
I was in Seekirchen, that’s where I started elementary school. Then, after Seekirchin, in ’38, I moved to
Traunstein, which is on the Chiemsee, and I grew up in the countryside there
and went to school there, in Bavaria Salzburg National Socialist Preparatory School
VIKTOR SUCHY: Let’s spend
a bit more time on your experiences as a boarding-school student. Do you feel that during this part of your
youth that coincided with the period of National Socialism you were under its
spell, in other words, did it have a strong influence on you, or did it
basically just wash over you without having any sort of effect?
THOMAS BERNHARD: No,
naturally I was very impressionable in those days, in that period of course
that was just what you were, and in a home like that, it was strictly
inculcated, with reveilles and “Heil Hitlers,” but of course everybody went
through that at that age; I got a decent number of cuffs to my ears from the
housemaster, who couldn’t stand me…These were of course very strong
impressions…the air raids and the stampedes into the tunnels in Salzburg. Then the Schranne market, which is across the
Schrannengasse from the school, was destroyed, a blockbuster [crashed] into
[it]. Then I went back to Traunstein and
took the train to school every day, for month after month. But you generally were there only until nine o’clock , and by that time the warning sirens were already
sounding, so of course for month after month school pretty much never
happened. But it was romantic and really
very… you pretty much learned nothing, [that was the only hitch].
VIKTOR SUCHY: So did you go
to university after graduating?
THOMAS BERNHARD: I’ve
always heard this or that…
VIKTOR SUCHY: You
initially had a very strong interest in musicology; that much I know.
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, I
studied music at the Mozarteum, its theoretical aspects, the aesthetics of
music. There were some really good
professors there in those days, people who had fled the cities that had been
bombed into ruins, Professor Werner, who was an eminent scholar in Salzburg
VIKTOR SUCHY: Then came
your stint as a journalist; you were at one time a crime reporter. That must have given you quite a keen eye for
the unsavory depths and weaknesses of human beings.
THOMAS BERNHARD: I think
it’s quite a good school, crime reporting.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Didn’t you
find it horrifying?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Well, you
know, when you’re very young you really don’t find it particularly
horrifying. In the main you find it
interesting.
VIKTOR SUCHY: I’m asking
specifically because I had a peculiar experience: I originally studied law, and
I ran [like hell] from jurisprudence for a very definite reason. I was a working student, like everybody [else]
at the time, and I worked at a notary’s office.
And what I experienced there, [in seeing] how the heirs immediately
started to squabble over [every last] chair leg, when the body wasn’t even cold
yet, made me take to my heels.
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes,
well, I’ve had peculiar experiences of my own.
VIKTOR SUCHY: The literary
dictionaries list a hefty number of works under your name. I’d really like to review their dates with
you to see if they’re correct. I believe
the first work on the list [is said to date] from the year 1955; this was the
radio play “The Three Holy Kings of St. Vitus.”
Is that correct?
THOMAS BERNHARD: That was never
even published.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Never published? Then how did the literary dictionaries come
to learn of it?
THOMAS BERNHARD: It was
supposed to be published, in the Stifter Library, which was a serial
publication in Salzburg
VIKTOR SUCHY: Is the
manuscript in your possession?
THOMAS BERNHARD: At one
point it was sent by the Stifter Library to a certain count, to Count
Dombrowski, and that was the last I heard of it.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Then
somebody’s got to contact Count Dombrowski [and ask him] if he’s still got the
manuscript.
THOMAS BERNHARD: No, no,
of course the thing is absolutely atrocious…
VIKTOR SUCHY: It’s
interesting, though, [as] your first actual work. Next the literary dictionaries mention the
year 1957, specifically [in connection with] the short story “The
Swineherd.” Is that correct?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, that
was first in Contemporary Voices and then reprinted separately.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And
immediately thereafter Thomas Bernhard the lyric poet makes his first
appearance in print, and specifically in 1957 with the collection of poems
called On Earth and in Hell, which was followed in 1958 by another
collection, In Hora Mortis. Is
that also correct?
THOMAS BERNHARD: That’s
correct.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Then in 1959
come the dialogues…
THOMAS BERNHARD: in 1958,
there was one more collection, published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch, which was
called Under the Iron of the Moon; that was the third collection of
poems, the third and last one.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And then the
dialogues in ’59.
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes,
those are actually the libretto to a twelve-tone opera.
VIKTOR SUCHY: This was the
Roses of the Desert?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, it’s
always inaccurately described as a poem.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And it was
actually the libretto of a twelve-tone opera.
And who was supposed to compose it?
THOMAS BERNHARD:
Lampersberg composed it.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Was it ever
performed?
THOMAS BERNHARD: A portion
of it was at the Wiener Festwochen, last year, and this May it’ll be performed
at the Deutschen Oper Berlin.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And then
four years later comes your first novel, Frost, in 1963, then the
novella Amras was published. And
even as we speak a new book is in the immediate offing…
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, it’s
just come out. It’s a done deal…
VIKTOR SUCHY: Gargoyles,
again published by Insel. Once again, a
question: do you still have in your possession actual manuscripts of your texts
and books, in other words, are you still generally in the habit of writing by
hand, or are these typescripts that you subsequently correct by hand?
THOMAS BERNHARD: It all
depends. Most of them I do actually
write by hand, but then again…
VIKTOR SUCHY: Please do
hold on to the handwritten manuscripts, as literary history will someday have
need of them.
THOMAS BERNHARD: For the
most part I hold on to nothing.
VIKTOR SUCHY: That’s
really too bad, because a person could use them to study the works precisely in
their developmental stages, and in the case of an author like you that would
often be very important. Did you make
any attempts at writing before 1955, in other words, during your youth?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes,
right after the war actually.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And when you
started writing did you still have specific models, mentors, works, that you
initially emulated, as every young person does?
Did you perhaps have one foot in the past, or were you an author of the
present day from the very beginning?
THOMAS BERNHARD: In my
childhood I actually always loathed books like the plague, because there were
an awful lot of books around me then. Of
course my grandfather was a writer, and when as a child you get the feeling
that you have to, ought to do a certain thing, obviously you don’t do it, and
you resist doing it. I started reading
seriously at a very late age.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Can you
still remember the names of any specific writers you emulated?
THOMAS BERNHARD: That’s
all really hazy now. Charles Péguy and
people like that, whom I was greatly interested in very early on[;] other
Christian French revolutionaries.
VIKTOR SUCHY: So Péguy,
Bernanos, perhaps a dash of Claudel…
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, and
Michaux, those were wonderful people.
VIKTOR SUCHY: You are of
course still relatively young, Mr. Bernhard, but when you think back on this
eventful period in which you were forced to grow up, do you think of any of
your contemporaries whom you knew personally as people who are already
significant figures, people you would be sorry to have never met? Or do you think it’s still too early to ask
that question here and now?
THOMAS BERNHARD: It’s hard
to say…sure, there [must have been] somebody or other…
VIKTOR SUCHY: But you
surely must be able or willing to name somebody specific…
THOMAS BERNHARD: At the
moment I’m afraid I can’t think of a single specific person…
VIKTOR SUCHY: Mr.
Bernhard, you obviously figure among the avant-garde of Austrian prose
literature…
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, but
only very warily…
VIKTOR SUCHY: “Avant-garde”
is a dangerous word, I know.
THOMAS BERNHARD: There’s
really no such thing as an avant-garde here; the stuff that a lot of people get
up to here [under that heading] isn’t avant-garde, it’s childish. People horse around, which you can get away
with until you’re 25, but then you really ought to start putting your mind to
serious use. But if you’ve run out of
steam by then, then you just keep horsing around, when you’re 30, 40, and then
it naturally just keeps getting more and more ridiculous.
VIKTOR SUCHY: So does
anything like a literary-theoretical schema underlie your own works? Or are they solely an outgrowth of
practice? You do of course take a very
keen interest in philosophy.
THOMAS BERNHARD: I have no
interest whatsoever in mere superficial narrative or description.
VIKTOR SUCHY: This brings
us to the theory of modern prose literature.
I believe that in a certain case you must have been very powerfully
influenced by Wittgenstein.
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, he
is after all a fascinating phenomenon.
VIKTOR SUCHY: On the other
hand the will-screening representation, the world as representation, has a very
definite and interesting presence in your writing. Schopenhauer hasn’t been especially well
received in Austria
THOMAS BERNHARD: That’s
probably unconscious, because on the whole I don’t care for those sorts of
novels, which are of course pure examples of descriptive literature and are therefore
a complete pole apart from me.
VIKTOR SUCHY: The most
distinctive thing about you is that you focus on humanity’s borderline
situations; this is almost existentially conceived. In your two most recent books, in Amras
and in Frost, the borderline situation is that of either a terminal
[physical] illness or a mental illness.
Are you fascinated by illness as a borderline situation, in that you are
trying to dissolve the positive side of things while depicting the negative
side with exaggeratedly sharp lines?
THOMAS BERNHARD: [It’s]
probably just the psychic tightrope walk.
Stretching the rope ever tighter is naturally an immense pleasure.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Naturally
from these books one might erroneously conclude—as many critics have done—that
you were an utter pessimist. Speaking as
someone who knows you personally, I don’t believe you are anything of the kind.
THOMAS BERNHARD: No, no,
in person I am actually completely different from the way I am in my works; yes
and no, that may be the most interesting thing,
actually, but I don’t
bother to look too closely into it.
VIKTOR SUCHY: But surely
above all what’s important is the borderline situation, which you depict with
exaggeratedly sharp lines: the borderline situations of fear, of death, of severe
illness, of mental disorders, from which you literally endlessly elicit new
material. What is this novel Gargoyles
all about anyway?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Well, the
book begins, how shall I put it…it’s like a
range of mountains, it
begins in the plains with a physical death blow, and it ends with a psychic
one. These blows are the medical
investigations of a doctor over the course of a single day.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Do you want
your depictions of illnesses to be read at the same time as a symptomatology of
our age? Are your books thus
admonitions?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes,
perhaps.
VIKTOR SUCHY: That’s how I
read Jean-Paul Sartre’s plays—as dramatic admonitions: look—this is what you
are; if you don’t change, then everything’s going to get even more
horrible. Do you think that there are
subcutaneous cross-links between your literary works and music or sculpture or
painting? Is there an element of music involved
in literary production, in your own method of composition?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, it
plays a very important role. [Insofar as
I know anything about music.]
VIKTOR SUCHY: And what
working techniques do you favor when you’re writing a book?
THOMAS BERNHARD: That’s rather
difficult to say, because I wander about for a year [at a time] and just mull
things over and jot down notes and do absolutely nothing else and can’t write
at all unless I get the feeling that now’s the time and then it just starts
happening, and that [phase] lasts probably another two years. It doesn’t happen very quickly.
VIKTOR SUCHY: As your background
is in the aesthetics of music, and as you are accordingly familiar with
aesthetic problems, is the problem of form a serious one for you?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, the
rhythm, you know, the rhythm of the syllables, has got to sound right to me, otherwise
it all falls apart from my point of hearing.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Have any of
your books been translated into other languages?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, this
summer Frost and Amras are being published by Gallimard, and then
in the autumn they’ll also be published by Garzanti in Italy
VIKTOR SUCHY: But have you
yet managed to have any experiences with the translations of your works?
THOMAS BERNHARD: Frost has
been translated a second time; the first time was virtually a complete failure;
they were attempting to repackage me for the French mind, and the result was
really pretty horrible. And the second
time they did a very nice job. It’s
coming out in America
VIKTOR SUCHY: Have you
also collected the reviews of your works?
THOMAS BERNHARD: I have to
some extent, although if one of them especially irritates me, I throw it in the
trash so I won’t have to look at it anymore.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Now for two
questions of a very different sort, questions about Bernhard not as a creative
individual but as a receptive one. Which
theatrical performance, including performances of musical theater, has made the
strongest impression on Thomas Bernhard?
THOMAS BERNHARD: That
absolutely has got to be The Magic Flute—and Don Giovanni—so
those two—probably everything by Mozart.
VIKTOR SUCHY: The
brand-name of “The City of Mozart,” which is such a powerful force here…
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, I
was involved in all that from childhood onwards, and did a lot of work as an
assistant-director, Shakespeare plays in Munich
VIKTOR SUCHY: And as for
the other arts, was there in any of these a particular work that made an
especially deep impression on you? In the
visual arts, [for instance]?
THOMAS BERNHARD: I fiddle
around in a lot of them—in fact [I’m doing a bit of that] now thanks to Wieland
Schmied—as my mind or fancy takes to them, on a child’s level of critical
discernment–nothing beyond that.
VIKTOR SUCHY: We spoke
just now about the avant-garde and about your own works. How do you envision the possibilities
overall; in which direction do you think modern prose literature is headed? In which direction would you yourself like [to
be headed]?
THOMAS BERNHARD: I’d like
to keep getting more and more intelligent and more and more clear-headed, and
because I live in the historical moment, I think that’ll probably be more than
good enough for the historical moment I live in. Experimentation [is a byproduct of]
helplessness and in my opinion leads absolutely nowhere or to
fragmentation.
VIKTOR SUCHY: So as for
the use of montage as a technique and other such things…
THOMAS BERNHARD: It’s an
amusing game of sorts, [one that] can even be exciting. I think it was [exciting], 40, 50 years ago,
right[?]
VIKTOR SUCHY: Nowadays it
almost seems as though a person can produce a much more exciting effect by
trying to be a bit more conservative, even in matters of form, than by
experimenting.
THOMAS BERNHARD: A lot of
people are incapable of thinking; otherwise they’d get absolutely no enjoyment
out of playing games; if you can think, you obviously have no use for any of
that. I mean, I can do it too, those
sorts of things: in fact, I have done them with Roses of the Desert. I wrote some extremely short plays when I was
20, 21, and they were exciting and awful; some of them were even staged by
Wochinz, with very good actors.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Yesterday I jotted
down a few notes on some parallels I happened to notice. It seems [to me] that you’ve been intensely
studying Kant for some time.
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes; sure;
without a doubt.
VIKTOR SUCHY: What then is
your position on—and this is of course one of the central problems of the
modern novel, of modern prose literature—on the problem of actuality, on the
problem of reality? As a Kantian you
would [have to] say that you pretty much have no purchase on reality because in
your view there is nothing one can take for granted other than
appearances. Doderer was of course of
the diametrically opposite view: he said that what one takes for granted is
what actually exists. I think of you
here rather as occupying a position somewhere between Kant and Wittgenstein.
THOMAS BERNHARD: I don’t
think it can be defined.
VIKTOR SUCHY: I was struck
by your attitude to childhood in a sentence from the concluding chapter, when
you say: “Childhood is in no sense a home-base, therefore it is lethal.” That is the exact opposite of the position
taken by Rilke and George, who transfigure, deify childhood, who say that
childhood must in the first place be , according to Rilke. How did you arrive at this opinion?
THOMAS BERNHARD: The
childhood we have now is the diametrical opposite of those people’s childhood;
it’s obviously no longer possible to compare one’s own childhood to
theirs. I at any rate always felt as a
child that I was acting on a stage that was tangible and actually there.
VIKTOR SUCHY: It may well
be the [signature] experience of your generation that you were robbed of your
childhood.
THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, it’s
[pretty] safe to say that.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And is it
this stolen childhood that you’re thinking of when you call childhood lethal?
THOMAS BERNHARD: That
ought to be seen in context now.
VIKTOR SUCHY: And talking
again of the concept of reality in literature, do you hail instead from the
school of Broch or Musil, in that you believe that we need to isolate reality
using the methods of science and then dissolve it into the art form [known as]
the novel, hence into the synthesis of the essayistic mode with the mode of
pure storytelling? Broch says pure
storytelling is no longer possible today.
THOMAS BERNHARD: Indeed,
that’s quite clear, because it isn’t true, because the concept of truth is very
problematic. The life, or the moments,
that we live, simply do amount to the elements of a story, they’re just a bunch
of plug-in modules. But [from] the way
Musil wrote to what we’re going through now it’s still actually a bit of a hike…
VIKTOR SUCHY: Dr.
Kaufmann, the music critic of the “Neuen Zeit” in Graz has developed a
remarkable theory about the Austrian aspect of the formal aspect of music: [that] in contrast to the great classical
masters, Schubert and Bruckner, for example, synthesize elements of addition
and summation[;] they [employ] not the closed but rather the open forms, in
which hence the plug-in modules are summarized and varied in infinite and
minute ways. Does this seem possible in
prose as well today? Are you striving
for something similar?
THOMAS BERNHARD: I’m not
striving for anything; rather, I discover it absolutely naturally, not [through]
an act of violence, but just naturally.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Do you still
get worked up about the hoary old dialectic of content and form? Do you think that there is such a thing as
internal form that exerts a constraining force on external form, or do you
reject that?
THOMAS BERNHARD: I don’t
reject it, just because something like it is probably always in play. Everything’s always the same and everything
is constantly in flux; of course you can say that about anything. There’s no such thing as anything new, and
yet everything old is [always] fading away.
VIKTOR SUCHY: Indeed; let
me offer you my sincerest congratulations on your new novel, and I wish the
book every possible success. I thank you
for talking with me today, and I hope we can continue our conversation when
some new books by Thomas Bernhard are next in the offing.
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).
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