Thomas Bernhard: 3 Days

by Thomas Bernhard, Ferry Radax (Photographs), Laura Lindgren (Editor)

Over the course of three days in 1970, June 5, 6, and 7, simply sitting on a white bench in a Hamburg park, Thomas Bernhard delivered a powerful monologue for Three Days (Drei Tage), filmmaker Ferry Radax’s commanding film portrait of the great Austrian writer. Radax interwove the monologue with a variety of metaphorically resonant visual techniques—blacking out the screen to total darkness, suggestive of the closing of the observing eye; cuts to scenes of cameramen, lighting and recording equipment; extreme camera distance and extreme closeup. Bernhard had not yet written his autobiographical work Gathering Evidence, published originally in five separate volumes between 1975 and 1982, and his childhood remembrances were a revelation. This publication of Bernhard’s monologue and stills from Radax’s artful film allows this unique portrait of Bernhard to be savored in book form.

Genres: Memoir, Film, Literature, Nonfiction, Biography

176 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 2016

About the author

Thomas Bernhard was an Austrian writer who ranks among the most distinguished German-speaking writers of the second half of the 20th century.

Although internationally he’s most acclaimed because of his novels, he was also a prolific playwright. His characters are often at work on a lifetime and never-ending major project while they deal with themes such as suicide, madness and obsession, and, as Bernhard did, a love-hate relationship with Austria. His prose is tumultuous but sober at the same time, philosophic by turns, with a musical cadence and plenty of black humor.

He started publishing in the year 1963 with the novel Frost. His last published work, appearing in the year 1986, was Extinction. Some of his best-known works include The Loser (about a student’s fictionalized relationship with the pianist Glenn Gould), Wittgenstein’s Nephew, and Woodcutters.

Reviews

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I am considered a so-called serious writer, the way Béla Bartók is a serious composer, and this reputation spreads . . .

This is essentially a very bad reputation . . .

I am absolutely discomforted by it.

Then again, of course I am hardly a cheery author, no storyteller; I basically detest stories.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a story destroyer, I am the typical story destroyer.

In my work, at the very first sign of a story taking form, or if I catch sight of even a trace of a story, rising somewhere in the distance behind a mound of prose, I shoot it down.

The same is true of sentences - I almost want to annihilate on advance whole sentences that even possibly could develop.

In 1970 the film director Ferry Radax proposed to make a film based on Thomas Bernhard's novel Gargoyles, and then when Bernhard wasn't keen proposed in turn to make a profile of Bernhard based on Radax's interpretation of his work. But this didn't fit with Bernhard's "story destructor" ethos and instead Ferry simply, but very effectively, filmed Bernhard over three days sitting on a white park bench, giving his largely impromptu thoughts, albeit stimulated by some quotations from Frost which Radax had prepared and left on the bench.

This beautifully produced book comprises a translated transcript together with screenshots from the resulting 50 minute film, plus a short afterword by Bernhard himself and a critical commentary from a lecturer who wrote his thesis on the film and who has recently helped make it available by DVD (http://www.index-dvd.at/en/program/03... - although an un-subtitled version can be found on youtube).

There are some fascinating and largely spontaneous insights into Bernhard's life and artistic philosophy, for example the contrast between the darkness of his vision and the blank page with which every literary work starts:

If you scrutinise a white wall, you realise it isn't white at all, it isn't bare.

If you are a long time alone, if you have accustomed yourself to solitude, are schooled in solitude, you discover more and more everywhere, where for the normal person there is nothing

In the wall you discover cracks, little chinks, bumps, bugs. There is tremendous activity on the walls.

Really, the wall and the book page are perfectly alike.

Why darkness?

Why always the same total darkness on my books?

In short: on my books everything is artificial - which means all figures, events, incidents play out on a stage, and the stage is totally dark ...

In darkness everything becomes clear.

The translation is by Laura Lindgren which gives me the perfect excuse to update my long-list of Bernhard translators.

Laura Lindgren (Thomas Bernhard: 3 days), James Reidel (Goethe Dies), Martin Chalmers (Prose and also Victor Halfwit), Peter Jansen (Three Novellas - Amras), Kenneth Northcott (Voice Imitators & Three Novellas - Playing Watten & Walking), Michael Hoffman (Frost), Richard and Clara Winston (Gargoyle), Sophie Wilkins (Lime Works & Correction), Ewald Osers (Yes & Old Masters, also the hard-to-obtain Cheap Eaters and an earlier translation of Woodcutters), David McLintock (Concrete, Wittgenstein's Nephew, Extinction & Woodcutters), Jack Dawson (Loser), Carol Brown Janeway (My Prizes), Meredith Oakes and Andrea Tierney (Heldenplatz), Russell Stockman (On the Mountain) as well as Douglas Robertson (unauthorised - pieces including The Italian - see below).

And in addition I'm aware of translations by Gita Honneger (author also of a biography of Bernhard), Michael Mitchell, David Horrocks, Peter Eyre & Tom Cairns (various stories, plays and poems).

So why only 3 stars.

A number of reasons:

This is really only for Bernhard completists (like me) - I would recommend the Bernhard beginner starts with say Goethe schtirbt: Erzählungen before moving onto the novels.

In German this book included the fragment story Der Italianer: Bernhard then expanded this into a screenplay, also included in the original book, which Radax made into a film. Is it pretty poor than the English version omits both of these.

Lastly, at the time, the biographical details and thoughts on his motivations that Bernhard gave in this film were regarded as an important source. But this was later superseded by the wonderful Gathering Evidence which again, together with Gita Honneger's biography, would be the best source for those seeking insight into the man.

I wouldn't normally link to an unauthorised translation but here it feels acceptable to do so. The Italian can be found at http://shirtysleeves.blogspot.co.uk/2... and a translation of the entire book, including the script of the resulting film at https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&am...

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Suggests the spirit of Bernhard's books and the author's youth and a few thoughts on his way of writing, rendered in typical Bernhardian exaggeration. It's an art book, for completists mostly if not only.

[Steven R. Kraaijeveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over the course of three days—June 5, 6, and 7—in 1970, Ferry Radax filmed Thomas Bernhard delivering an improvised monologue while sitting on a white bench in a Hamburg park. Radax added startling visual techniques to Bernhard's speech—blacking out the screen to total darkness; cuts to cameramen, lighting, and recording equipment; extreme distance and closeup—to produce the film that would be called Three Days (Drei Tage). This book beautifully combines Bernhard's monologue with stills taken from the film. As Bernhard notes:

"In the summer of 1970, days and days into a search that became personally utterly preposterous to find a suitable locale, I settled once and for all on a white-painted bench in a park in a suburb of Hamburg, in order, as agreed, to say before the director Ferry Radax some sentences about myself, to make statements that occurred to me coincidentally and haphazardly as I said and made them, in fact in a state of extreme irritation, as is more or less inherent to the nature of such an undertaking; they seem to me today as well, having seen the film and heard the statements made by me in the film, more or less coincidental and haphazard. I said much on the bench (and thus in the film) just so and not elsewise, although I could have said it completely another way than as it is published here with the title Three Days." (155)

Here is a link to the film, if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSHmA...

[M. Sarki · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://msarki.tumblr.com/post/155292...

A souvenir. Fragments. A look into. Public, and privately transgressive. Disagreeably cooperative. A walled and veiled transparency. Controlled. Manipulative. Harshly encouraged by the light, and motion. Impossible. Restrictive. Full. Collected. Claimed and planted. Force fed. Unencumbered by thirst. Hindered through impediment. Willfully underwhelming. Black and white and, somewhat, beautiful.

[Justin Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exactly what it says it is: a Thomas Bernhard coffee table book. As other reviewers have mentioned, it seems odd not to have included The Italian in here. I assume there was some good reason, and will pass on this link to a full translation of the original volume, including that screen play and prose fragment:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&am...

[Cleo · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a prick 😍😍😍

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully designed book that captures the experience of this documentary about Bernhard and the rhythm of his monologue about childhood, writing prose, and enveloping darkness.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I am a story destroyer."

Thomas Bernhard sits on a bench and talks about shit. That about sums it up. As the plot blurb states, this book is the condensation of a film shot over a few days in Hamburg that Bernhard begrudgingly agreed to do. He then ended up thoroughly enjoyed it since he got to just sit on a bench, look at a list of randomly-clipped lines from one of his novels, and then comment on them in his characteristic hilarious and bleak way.
If you're a Bernhard fan, you'll love it. The text is sparse and arranged artistically throughout with shots from the film of Bernhard, his bench, trees, and the film crew. If you're not a Bernhard fan, you'll wonder why this crusty bastard is sitting on a bench talking about abysses. Bernhard would stare at you icily over the top of his newspaper, rustle it a little, and then condemn you with his pissy silence.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great souvenir for the hardcore, die-hard Bernhard fan.

[Eric Cartier · Rating 3 out of 5]

I look forward to seeing the film someday.

[Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

trans. Laura Lindgren, 2016.
From day 1: "To make oneself understood is impossible; it cannot be done."

cf. a YouTube translation: "It is impossible to make oneself heard."

Bernhard is my favourite brand of Tortured Artist. I have yet to fully digest FROST. My aim is to read all of Bernhard in 2018. As you can see, with slight changes between translations, there can be drastic variations in meaning. This park-bench monologue expresses Bernhard's will power like the Adidas ad -- nothing is impossible. The inverse is more interesting: impossible is nothing and everything -- alone and together. His logic is the shadow of a high-functioning depressive. We cannot expect a masterpiece. We can only try. And try, we do. And do, we write. We hate writing. We shall write.

Writing as a form of resistance. Resistance, here, is making life endlessly new again, as "if you are paying attention." The result, in words, "emerges anew again" -- ashes to ashes -- writing about the same topic, from different angles. Writing is the material process of burning these new old ashes. It is not entirely frictionless, this giving birth to death masks. Frankly put, "the brain needs resistance" in order to scrutinise the darkness, which happens to be a white wall of existence, the same sentences, waking up and falling asleep. Alas, REM sleep sculpts your waking hours -- then you lapse into the deep sleep, a distinctly artificial death.

If I ever take-up German, it would be driven by the will to read Bernhard. Mainly. One of my course instructors (who completed a PhD in German lit) went off on a tangent in class, referring to a not-so-great conference paper delivered on THE LOSER -- which they brought up because of its loose Canadian connection to Glenn Gould. Also, it is his most well-known novel? Or at least the most available to find in bookstores. Thanks to M., I learned of Thomas Bernhard. Otherwise, who knows where we may have eventually met.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely combo of Bernhard's musings while sitting on a park bench and being filmed. Lots of great photos, well designed book, and Thomas just thinking out loud.

Sign me up. Any day.

[Edit, one day later] You know what, this is 5 stars. It's not as vital or overwhelming as one of Bernhard's proper works (like Correction or Old Masters: A Comedy) but it's a wonderful intro to his style of thinking, plus the book is beautifully bound and designed, with great stills of Thomas. (As previously mentioned.) So, 5 stars, just a different kind of 5 stars than those others.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book consists primarily of the monologue Bernhard gave filmmaker Ferry Radax over the course of, well, three days. Worth adding to your collection of Bernhardia, if you're a fan, and perhaps worth reading as a very brief introduction to Bernhard. Bernhard seems to work a little too hard to be as disagreeable and as disgruntled as his various protagonists.

[Stephen Rowland · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not much going on here. I'd love to see the film but I won't be learning the German language any time soon. Even for a Bernhard completist like me this still seems mostly a waste of $25.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Читала це оповідання українською, воно мені не дуже сподобалось, бо читається доволі важко і виглядає як потік думок.

[William Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s Bernhard, I.e. sardonic, poetic, angry, funny, frustrated, sublime.

[Dionysius the Areopagite]

Enjoyed it over coffee. A well-constructed artifact for Bernhard devotees.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Should have come with the "The Italian." Would have made it worth it. Fortunately, you can find the entire text with The Italian sans pictures here: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&am...

[Brooke Salaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book version of 1970 film with stills and quotes taken from it. Bernhard is one of my favorite authors and here he sits on a park bench in Hamburg and speaks in a monologue over a 3 day period while Radax uses different camera angles and distances to approach his subject and the technical staff on set. Again as in his writing I am in awe of how Bernhard is able to embrace his bleak and pessimistic nature in a way that feels very positive and affirming. He took up writing after being an actor and musician, vocations which came too easily for him, and writing represents a constant struggle. He enjoys the feeling of melancholia which he senses is more easily accessed in the city than the country. Resistance is also a major concept for him. He experiences life as a battle between himself and other worthy opponents where neatly bound stories have no place. He finds few authors worthy of admiration, reveres Musil, Pavese, Ezra Pound and “the Russians”. I read Demons by Dostoevsky based on it being one of his influences. Mentions a lot of madness and suicide in his family. His one very close family member was his maternal grandfather.“I lived with my grandfather (this is around age 17-18) who wrote and had an immense library, and being together with these books all the time, having to pass through this library, every day, was just horrible for me…” Like so much of Bernhard, bracingly, unexpectedly negative and somehow funny and feels completely honest.