A Final
Observation
In 1963 Thomas
Bernhard published his first book of prose.
In this novel, Frost, he drafted the blueprint of a system (of a
self-contained world) that remained in place in his succeeding books. With a minimum of exponentials—a spoken
discourse [Rede] and an ear (witness) that assimilates it—a maximum field of play
(field of tension) is opened up for an unlimitedly monotonous, magnificent, ludicrous,
terrifying, fascinating drama, a drama that is always the same and that is of
such a universal nature that not merely a single situation, a single place, but
even a single sentence (every sentence) a single word (every word) should be
capable of expressing it. Every premiere
performance of this drama is a repeat performance; every repeat performance a
premiere performance. This drama is
always, perhaps even in its very history of repeat performances, a trial of
destruction. A trial whose origin is
conceivably nature. Nature or the
incestuous coupling of antitheses.
Literary criticism, that court of first instance in the reception of
contemporary literature, has been confronted with the output of this author for
seven years. Very early on it was torn
between two mutually contradictory positions, attraction and irritation. Approval and disapproval were not without
pathos. Criticism was working with
literary criteria and existential categories.
It applied the usual catchphrases touching on thematic concerns and
characterizing the author’s temperament. It recognized and accepted that his
development consisted in repetition. The
critics all agreed, in various shades of approval, that whether this person was
truly modern or not, he certainly could write.
The parallels
that were allusively drawn between Bernhard and other writers of the past or present
afforded some degree of illumination. The
sole attempt I know of to place his books under a conceptual umbrella—that of
the anti-Great Austrian Novel—has misfired.
At a relatively late point, considering that literary criticism has had
sociological, psychoanalytical, and linguistic methods and perspectives at its
disposal for quite some time, people began to ask whether these books could be
come to terms with at all by means of purely literary criteria.
Thomas Bernhard
does not make public pronouncements about his books. He does not engage in any literary debates. If the soundless interchange between the
author writing his books and the critics writing about his books counts as a
dialogue, the dialogue in this case has pursued a course not unlike that
pursued by the conversation about the flood and the theatrical performance in Gargoyles.
Doubtlessly literary criticism has a
share in this complex process—an enigmatic one even on the level of clear-cut
facts—that is termed an author’s “effect.”
Thomas Bernhard was a well-known author before he had a sizable
readership and before the attraction or irritation emanating from his books
could be substantiated.
It is evident
that the younger generation has recently begun to take a more attentive interest
in this author, to auscultate his books.
At any rate, thanks partly to the university seminar room, the past year
has seen the almost simultaneous and mutually independent emergence of a series
of critical works that have provided new starting points and outcomes. Books like those of Thomas Bernhard, books
whose austere architecture is hidden under a semblance of anarchy, are highly
susceptible to being misunderstood. With
the utmost lucidity, the individual investigations highlight the systematic character
and almost vertiginous consistency of a mode of thought that proceeds
integratively rather than discursively [diskursiv].
When read out of context, words like “theater,” “forest,” “dispersal”
suddenly become relevant to the whole.
In Bernhard the detail may in fact afford the shortest path to the
center.
Thomas
Bernhard’s body of work is not yet complete; equally incomplete is the
controversy in which he is involved. The
texts collected in this volume delineate a study of this incomplete
corpus. The trial is not yet over.
THE END
Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2015 by Douglas Robertson
Source: Über Thomas Bernhard. Herausgegeben von Anneliese Botond [On Thomas Bernhard. Edited by Anneliese Botond] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1970), pp. 139-141.
No comments:
Post a Comment