Fragments of a Deluge: The Theater of Thomas Bernhard's Prose

Summary

Ein Buch hat er veröffentlichen wollen, aber dazu ist es nicht gekommen, weil er sein Manuskript immer wieder geändert hat, so oft und solange geändert, bis von dem Manuskript nichts mehr dagewesen ist, die Veränderung seines Manuskripts war nichts anderes, als das völlige Zusammenstreichen des Manuskripts, von dem schließlich nichts als der Titel Der Untergeher übriggeblieben ist. (Der Untergeher, 78–79)

During his lifetime Thomas Bernhard's texts provoked more than the usual share of scandals. But perhaps the most enduring scandal will turn out to be his very last text, his will, which ordered that everything he had written, whether published during his lifetime or as part of his Nachlaß (literary estate), could not be performed, printed or even recited for the duration of legal copyright within the borders of Austria, “wie immer dieser Staat sich kennzeichnet.” Bernhard had taken care not to reveal the contents of this will before he died; in fact, he even stipulated that news of his death not be announced until he was buried. This parting slap in the face of his native country thus came not only as a surprise, it came from the hand of a dead man, whose laughter rang out from the grave.

To be sure, it was absurd laughter that had elements of a bad and willfully unpatriotic joke. But then so did most of Bernhard's literary works. In his last play Heldenplatz, one of the members of a Jewish family that was driven into exile in 1938 and has returned to Vienna fifty years later characterizes the country as a pigsty with only “black” (fascist) and “red” (socialist) pigs living there:

In diesem fürchterlichsten aller Staaten

haben Sie ja nur die Wahl

zwischen schwarzen und roten Schweinen

ein unerträglicher Gestank breitet sich aus

von der Hofburg und vom Ballhausplatz

und vom Parlament

über dieses ganze verluderte und verkommene Land

ruft aus

Dieser kleine Staat ist ein großer Misthaufen.

Contemplating his decision to return to Austria, one of the characters, Schuster, concludes that it had been an absurd idea after all: “Das Ganze war ja eine absurde Idee.”