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The Head of Vitus Bering: A Portrait in Prose
"...A literary bequest that hardly finds anything comparable in german literature of the past two decades."
— Helmut Heissenbuttel
Translations of the works of the Viennese writer Konrad Bayer have until now been confined to small pieces in specialist magazines and anthologies such as the Penguin German Writing Today. This publication of Walter Billeter's translation of The Head of Vitus Bering marks the first publication of a full length work of Bayer's in English, a work generally considered his major contribution.
In The Head of Vitus Bering, Bayer is not concerned with writing an "experimental" historical novel but with using information on Bering and his time to extract the incommensurable qualities of a consciousness.
"Bayer is a dense Philip José Farmer. The Head of Vitus Bering is much more than peopled by (what Farmer's Riverworld affords) historical characters — it enacts contiguity, it verbalises the states of being which are the cribs of any characters who make history ... a remarkable prose work, remarkably rendered."
— Kris Hemensley, Meanjin.
"No one with literary ambition can in future look past Bayer's catechism of contemporary literary avant-garde."
— Peter O. Chotjewitz
— Helmut Heissenbuttel
Translations of the works of the Viennese writer Konrad Bayer have until now been confined to small pieces in specialist magazines and anthologies such as the Penguin German Writing Today. This publication of Walter Billeter's translation of The Head of Vitus Bering marks the first publication of a full length work of Bayer's in English, a work generally considered his major contribution.
In The Head of Vitus Bering, Bayer is not concerned with writing an "experimental" historical novel but with using information on Bering and his time to extract the incommensurable qualities of a consciousness.
"Bayer is a dense Philip José Farmer. The Head of Vitus Bering is much more than peopled by (what Farmer's Riverworld affords) historical characters — it enacts contiguity, it verbalises the states of being which are the cribs of any characters who make history ... a remarkable prose work, remarkably rendered."
— Kris Hemensley, Meanjin.
"No one with literary ambition can in future look past Bayer's catechism of contemporary literary avant-garde."
— Peter O. Chotjewitz
63 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1965
7 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
Konrad Bayer
12 books10 followersKonrad Bayer (17 December 1932 – October 1964) was an Austrian writer and poet. A member of the Wiener Gruppe, he combined apparently irreconcilable elements—violence, hermeticism, pessimism, ecstasy, banality—and influences (dadaism, surrealism, pataphysics, Wittgenstein, Stirner, Sade et al.)—into a bizarre[citation needed] linguistic solipsism which has held increasing fascination for German writers of the last few decades. His most important works are the novels Der Kopf des Vitus Bering (The Head of Vitus Bering) and Der sechste Sinn (The Sixth Sense), published posthumously in 1965 and 1966, respectively. Bayer committed suicide in October 1964 at the age of 32.
(Source: Wikipedia)
(Source: Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 8, 2014
I used to hate my head. Not because it is big and (mostly) bald. Back when I hated it it actually sported a ponytail, briefly. No, I hated it simply because it encased my brain. Imprisoned it. It was so bad at times that I was tempted to puncture my skull to free it. To trepan myself. To add ventilation and to add freedom of movement. At the time I actually read up on trepanning and discovered the existence of a small cult of self-trepanners. This was a crazy impulse and I never followed through, though this feeling of brain imprisonment was a serious problem and I intellectually flirted with outright suicide. I hit a giant wall and then I slowly changed direction.
Now I like my head and have only rarely felt that sense of imprisonment these last 20 years. Either my brain has settled into its own self-limiting series of grooves, or I have adopted certain practices that have taught it to transcend its bounds without the use of a cranial drill. I sometimes miss that feeling of profound cerebral imprisonment, which was perhaps evidence of greater mental activity, however chaotic, and higher mental aspirations; but overall I’m glad my brain and I are on better terms.
Konrad Bayer obviously felt this brain imprisonment to a much greater extent than I ever did. He referred to this book as “perhaps a trepanation.” He did not accept the inherent limitations of the brain and of the body. According to his friend Gerhard Ruhm, “His desires were limitless, he wanted to fly, to make himself invisible, he wanted to be able to do everything.” Perhaps there is encoded within the texts that survived him evidence of accomplishments of these unreasonable aspirations, but failing to achieve them in his actual embodied life he shot himself at the age of 32.
This is a very slender book (& very sweetly designed by Atlas), but is dense with evidence of Bayer’s unreasonably aspiring brain. To write this book he utilized the scant evidence of the life of Vitus Bering (for whom the Bering Strait is named) as an armature to express his own transcendent shamanic strivings. The narrative, so to speak, moves from Bering in a tavern in St. Petersburg to his death by hypothermia in the (future) Bering Strait. Bayer considered Bering an unknowing shaman and attempted to represent his progression and his descent into death as an opening out into shamanic transcendence. But instead of focusing on this narrative arc the book focuses on the text itself, and how the text can represent the conquering of time and of the natural limitations of the body and the brain.
To represent this he employs many fracturing techniques – fracturing of narrative, fracturing of time sense, fracturing of syntax. He also includes numerous representations of cannibalism and dismemberment and odd dislocations of the mind from the world. The world in these pages is represented as a vast machine with alienated bodies roaming through it, with a kind of card/chess game as the ruling power(s), and the effect is quite chilling. Scattered throughout, tempering this eerie yet exhilarating chill, is a black humor (Bayer was a surrealist and a ‘pataphysician); a very black humor.
This is a book to be read and reread (I read it 3 times in 3 days) until one is so familiar with it as a textual object that it is contained in one’s brain as a whole. I think this is what was intended. And also probably intended was for it to then penetrate through the reader’s cranium from within.
Now I like my head and have only rarely felt that sense of imprisonment these last 20 years. Either my brain has settled into its own self-limiting series of grooves, or I have adopted certain practices that have taught it to transcend its bounds without the use of a cranial drill. I sometimes miss that feeling of profound cerebral imprisonment, which was perhaps evidence of greater mental activity, however chaotic, and higher mental aspirations; but overall I’m glad my brain and I are on better terms.
Konrad Bayer obviously felt this brain imprisonment to a much greater extent than I ever did. He referred to this book as “perhaps a trepanation.” He did not accept the inherent limitations of the brain and of the body. According to his friend Gerhard Ruhm, “His desires were limitless, he wanted to fly, to make himself invisible, he wanted to be able to do everything.” Perhaps there is encoded within the texts that survived him evidence of accomplishments of these unreasonable aspirations, but failing to achieve them in his actual embodied life he shot himself at the age of 32.
This is a very slender book (& very sweetly designed by Atlas), but is dense with evidence of Bayer’s unreasonably aspiring brain. To write this book he utilized the scant evidence of the life of Vitus Bering (for whom the Bering Strait is named) as an armature to express his own transcendent shamanic strivings. The narrative, so to speak, moves from Bering in a tavern in St. Petersburg to his death by hypothermia in the (future) Bering Strait. Bayer considered Bering an unknowing shaman and attempted to represent his progression and his descent into death as an opening out into shamanic transcendence. But instead of focusing on this narrative arc the book focuses on the text itself, and how the text can represent the conquering of time and of the natural limitations of the body and the brain.
To represent this he employs many fracturing techniques – fracturing of narrative, fracturing of time sense, fracturing of syntax. He also includes numerous representations of cannibalism and dismemberment and odd dislocations of the mind from the world. The world in these pages is represented as a vast machine with alienated bodies roaming through it, with a kind of card/chess game as the ruling power(s), and the effect is quite chilling. Scattered throughout, tempering this eerie yet exhilarating chill, is a black humor (Bayer was a surrealist and a ‘pataphysician); a very black humor.
This is a book to be read and reread (I read it 3 times in 3 days) until one is so familiar with it as a textual object that it is contained in one’s brain as a whole. I think this is what was intended. And also probably intended was for it to then penetrate through the reader’s cranium from within.
September 27, 2025
There is no good place to begin a review of such a book. Because it "begins" all at once and "ends" all at once. Konrad Bayer's The Head of Vitus Bering is a phantasmagoric staccato nightmare of cannibalism and torture swirling in a tornado of anachronism and confused stories, none of which make an impact individually, but when combined into a stew of mixed syntax, somehow makes sense.
I would like to have a key or to have the patience to unlock any of the apparent formulae that Bayer used to write this work. There is a certain sing-song rhythm that betrays a pattern underneath, but like any work of complexity, the pattern can only be traced for a short while before one loses the path. This might be as much a function of intellectual laziness as inscrutability. How am I to know? Despite my shortcomings, however, there is evidence of rhyme and reason somewhere behind what would otherwise appear to be a random mess of words and broken phrases. I don't know whether to feel like Bayer is just messing around with his readers or if there was, indeed, a real plan, again, a formula, behind his experimentation.
Regardless of the real existence of possible patterns beneath the words, the evocative nature of the words themselves are sufficient to immerse any reader in the overpowering now that pulses out from the background of randomly-ordered events. By overwhelming the reader with chronological jumps to and fro, Bayer strips the reader of their sense of causation. In the whirlwind of suffering, all that matters is what is happening now. The sterilized academic tone of much of the book adds to this genericizing of time. Life, it seems, is just a machine through which one, including Vitus Bering himself, must pass, being ground down by the gears of experience. The universe is uncaring, the text seems to say, so why should the narrator of the work care? He is simply an observer, a canvas to be painted on, a manuscript to be typed with the impressions he receives.
What is the reader of this work other than a receiver of these impressions? Dare you try to interpret that which cannot be understood? Or will you just absorb the many lies and scant truths of The Head of Vitus Bering? If so, what are you, other than a palimpsest? In which case, time, chronology, causation really have no reward for you.
Now I find myself stuck in Bayer's most cunning trap: fatalism.
Still, it's sometimes intriguing to look up from the bottom of the pit and try to figure out the mechanism operating the trapdoor from far below, in the darkness. At other times, I'd rather just close my eyes and dream. But I can't stay down here forever, so, I climb.
I would like to have a key or to have the patience to unlock any of the apparent formulae that Bayer used to write this work. There is a certain sing-song rhythm that betrays a pattern underneath, but like any work of complexity, the pattern can only be traced for a short while before one loses the path. This might be as much a function of intellectual laziness as inscrutability. How am I to know? Despite my shortcomings, however, there is evidence of rhyme and reason somewhere behind what would otherwise appear to be a random mess of words and broken phrases. I don't know whether to feel like Bayer is just messing around with his readers or if there was, indeed, a real plan, again, a formula, behind his experimentation.
Regardless of the real existence of possible patterns beneath the words, the evocative nature of the words themselves are sufficient to immerse any reader in the overpowering now that pulses out from the background of randomly-ordered events. By overwhelming the reader with chronological jumps to and fro, Bayer strips the reader of their sense of causation. In the whirlwind of suffering, all that matters is what is happening now. The sterilized academic tone of much of the book adds to this genericizing of time. Life, it seems, is just a machine through which one, including Vitus Bering himself, must pass, being ground down by the gears of experience. The universe is uncaring, the text seems to say, so why should the narrator of the work care? He is simply an observer, a canvas to be painted on, a manuscript to be typed with the impressions he receives.
What is the reader of this work other than a receiver of these impressions? Dare you try to interpret that which cannot be understood? Or will you just absorb the many lies and scant truths of The Head of Vitus Bering? If so, what are you, other than a palimpsest? In which case, time, chronology, causation really have no reward for you.
Now I find myself stuck in Bayer's most cunning trap: fatalism.
Still, it's sometimes intriguing to look up from the bottom of the pit and try to figure out the mechanism operating the trapdoor from far below, in the darkness. At other times, I'd rather just close my eyes and dream. But I can't stay down here forever, so, I climb.
February 4, 2014
A history of the world, of navigation, of shamanistic practices, of heads of state, of one man's interior experience, of games, of death and transcendence, of self and language obliterated. I immediately needed (and still need) to re-read in order to start unraveling the tangle of these threads, though. It seems like that's the essential approach, absorbing slowly through repeated encounters, though two who advocate this may also have the advantage of a closer experience to that of this short and concentrated novel (Eddie and Matthieu both of whose excellent parallel analyses bring me that much closer to the text.)
As for my own understanding, the concepts swirl through my fingers like snow, and melt before I can fix them perfectly. But it's a text adept at revealing impressions of itself, even if fleetingly. To me, it seems to be an account of a singularity, the simultaneity of world and personal history occurring in the ellipsis of a seizure, in a moment the exteriority of which we are only privy to in the final scene. A final scene in a sequence which at first seemed to me to be a kind of disintegration compared to the concentrated montaging of the first pages. But now I think it's wrong to compare "beginning" and "ending" as in a linear text. These are words without arc or chronology, instantaneous and momentary, existing all at once in a flash of understanding that is immediately lost, possibly unremembered, as in the contact with eternity that may or may not occur behind the flickering eyelids of dream, or the unseeing eyes of the epileptic, shaman or not.
As for my own understanding, the concepts swirl through my fingers like snow, and melt before I can fix them perfectly. But it's a text adept at revealing impressions of itself, even if fleetingly. To me, it seems to be an account of a singularity, the simultaneity of world and personal history occurring in the ellipsis of a seizure, in a moment the exteriority of which we are only privy to in the final scene. A final scene in a sequence which at first seemed to me to be a kind of disintegration compared to the concentrated montaging of the first pages. But now I think it's wrong to compare "beginning" and "ending" as in a linear text. These are words without arc or chronology, instantaneous and momentary, existing all at once in a flash of understanding that is immediately lost, possibly unremembered, as in the contact with eternity that may or may not occur behind the flickering eyelids of dream, or the unseeing eyes of the epileptic, shaman or not.
May 7, 2016
Preamble
Language as a means of imprisonment. The head as a means of imprisonment. The removal of the tongue. Abreaction.
Intensification of the ideal sense
Worked into a manic state (a work mania). You are eighteen years old. Faced with a problem, a thought, you'd be compelled to chip away at it until you've finished it, until you've realized its completion. Sit at your desk for up to sixteen hours at a time. You wouldn't eat or drink; you'd concentrate. Everything outside of your focus (what you are concentrating on) would no longer exist. You'd sleep with the windows open, even in winter. Making a small opening in the skull allows for better ventilation. The brain could lie unconfined. In January you thought about placing your head on the table of a drill press. You don't follow through with this plan. A stitch awl is placed against your left temple. You press, you press harder. Something crunches, and a line of blood runs down your cheek. That's it, that's as far as you'll go. Konrad Bayer made a hole in his head. He shot himself.
If one can't go on, one simply stops
Thoughtless February. Convalescing period. You found that it was impossible to exist (physically) in this state. Even the strongest ones (mentally) break down in the end. Konrad Bayer did not write a novel. Konrad Bayer did not write novels. He spoke of this book only once, and confided to a friend that it was not even a book. It was (perhaps) a trepanation.
A refreshment
"The guillotine," so said Dr. Guillotin many years later, "does not hurt the delinquent. It only gives him the feeling of a light refreshment at the neck." Konrad Bayer was looking for a similar refreshment. His desires were limitless, he wanted to fly, to make himself invisible, he wanted to be able to do everything, so said Gerhard Rühm several years after Bayer's transcendence. He hid himself in his texts. He lived through them. Reading them was to read him. It was all a game.
Vitus Bering, or, a Master of Change
Bayer built upon Bering's myth. The fact that this figure is historically authenticated raises this account from the level of fables, folktales and fabrication. [I have chosen Bering and the scanty reports of him] because they leave enough open, because they are unclear and contradictory, because they can be faked (or rectified) without losing the historical backdrop, which still has sufficient weight to prevent the whole from disappearing...
Bayer: perhaps science has more fears than literature.
Intensification of the sentimental capacity (protocol)
The text, structured around the game of chess and Mircea Eliade's Shamanism, was further structured by the use of the Golden Mean (arranged in thematic groups). Stitched together by apo koinou. What he an emperor sank poet into knew deep nothing sadness better than to order the alphabet into the national anthem.
Dionysian red: the red on the awl's shaft, the red that flows down your cheek. The red about the left temple.
Morbus sacer
Morbus sacer (epilepsy), the holy sickness.
The intensification in general (gradation)
The king answered: "My dear prefect, you understand nothing of this!" and to his confidant of many years standing he replied shortly: "I see you're getting old, marshal!" The only competition could have come from Timur Tamerlan, a Mongolian, who on his campaigns ordered the construction of castles and pyramids from ten thousand skulls of slaughtered people, and giant monuments built of corpses and captives. Vitus Bering moves his castle so that he can take the king with his next move. Yet the corpse was thrown from the platform to the base of the temple. Vitus Bering cannot take the castle. Here they cut the head off the corpse. He who had originally caught the sacrifice, took the head home, cleaned it of all flesh and returned it furnished with a round hole at each of its temples to one of God's representatives. Each must win two tricks and the hand must not be declared. Now the black castle stands opposite the white castle. In the year 1723 his majesty, the tsar of Russia, uttered: "my dear Bering." Finally the skulls were put on the tzompantli, a system of fences, were put on its slats, and the whole gave an impression of black and white spheres on the wires of an immense calculating machine.
Consideration of a general nature
The epileptic is a shaman. It was not uncommon for primitive peoples to eat their god. Vitus Bering's death was not an end. Nothing was completed. His final fit, followed by his death (hypothermia) was his initiation. For Bayer, death is not an end, but an opening out, an expansion.
ἀπόκοινός (Apokoinos)
Apo + koinos (in common). A blending of two sentences through a common word which has two syntactic functions, one for each of the sentences. The word common to both sentences is often a predicate object in the first and a subject in the second.
It was her told me about it. There was an awl led to the red temple.
Melancholic considerations of a general nature (absence)
You sometimes walked ten or more miles in a day (especially during the winter). You were always underdressed. There was a world moving around you, moving past you. There were many worlds around you, though you didn't belong to any of them. You were there to watch. Sometimes you'd run with your eyes closed.
Taking a direct position
Apollonian blue: Vitus Bering's gums turned blue, blue water, blue sky (Jean Genet), the face turned blue.
Vitus Bering is his own master
Death: His head was bent backwards, the teeth tightly clenched together. His body was twisted and arms and legs stretched out. The fingers were placed over the folded thumb. He didn't breathe and slowly his face turned
blue.
Critical repartee
The eyes come out of the sockets. He stretches the tongue far out of his mouth, his arms and legs are in continuous movement, while his head beats in a steady rhythm on the deck.
Summation
There is no one way to read this book. In fact, even the idea of reading this book (i.e., approaching the book as a conventional narrative) would seem impossible here. This is a book that is meant to be felt more than anything. I read it straight through, and was utterly baffled by it; I had no idea how to approach it. Then I read it again, and it started to coalesce. Then I read it a third time, and it all came together. The index—a seemingly superfluous addition to the text—turns out to be the most important part; it ties the whole thing together. It allows us (the reader) to fix our position in the estranged historical context, allows us to fix our position on (relatively) stable ground as several realities swirl around us. All distinctions are washed away. It is through this internal locus of control that Bayer is able to play with the 'real' meaning of certain words, "as in his descriptions of chess and card games where the termini are suddenly juxtaposed with their normal meanings and contexts a line later; with word orders, as if syntax itself were just a chess game; and isolates factual historical incidents and scientific truisms from a normally readable context." On the other hand, repetitive images of killing, cannibalism, and shamanic experiences (visions of death and physical transformations) become commonplace, part of everyday reality in the heart of a crazed mechanical universe. The various levels of the text are suspended, however, and the 'ultimate truth' is never assigned to anything or any one (level) in particular. The gaps between the blocks of text allow new (suggestive) relationships, new times, connections and causalities to appear inside and outside the present levels. In the index, a quote from a text on Siberian initiation is vital here: the spirits cut off his head, which they set aside (for the candidate must watch his dismemberment with his own eyes), and cut him into small pieces. We are placed inside Bering's head, which in turn is watching itself from the outside.
Prior to the index (the last sections of the main text), we are confronted with what must be Bering's death (his face turning blue, how he no longer breathes), followed by him beating his head on the deck of the ship, his eyes bulging from their sockets. An acquaintance of Bayer's posits that the certainty of Bering's death here is actually a misreading of the text, for if we are to take into account Eliade's Shamanism, it may be shown that Bering's physical state is not one of death, but of the (new) shaman upon entering the transcendental realm. This goes along with Bayer's pronouncement in the forward that Bering is undergoing what are more or less the birth pangs of initiation, and the fact that Bering's last action is to ferociously beat his head against the ship's deck not only indicates someone in the midst of an extreme mental state, but also that he has [finally] found the exit through which he will escape. The head has to be dismembered, broken, destroyed in order to overcome the boundaries separating inner and outer reality, to free oneself from thought(s) and opinion(s), so as to become identical with a self that is contingent on [external] reality.
Whenever one stops, one may also go on
There's a small scar on your left temple. The skin is a little darker there. The scar is in the shape of a circle. Few know about it, for your hair hides it. Sometimes, absentmindedly, you smooth it over with your finger.
Language as a means of imprisonment. The head as a means of imprisonment. The removal of the tongue. Abreaction.
Intensification of the ideal sense
Worked into a manic state (a work mania). You are eighteen years old. Faced with a problem, a thought, you'd be compelled to chip away at it until you've finished it, until you've realized its completion. Sit at your desk for up to sixteen hours at a time. You wouldn't eat or drink; you'd concentrate. Everything outside of your focus (what you are concentrating on) would no longer exist. You'd sleep with the windows open, even in winter. Making a small opening in the skull allows for better ventilation. The brain could lie unconfined. In January you thought about placing your head on the table of a drill press. You don't follow through with this plan. A stitch awl is placed against your left temple. You press, you press harder. Something crunches, and a line of blood runs down your cheek. That's it, that's as far as you'll go. Konrad Bayer made a hole in his head. He shot himself.
If one can't go on, one simply stops
Thoughtless February. Convalescing period. You found that it was impossible to exist (physically) in this state. Even the strongest ones (mentally) break down in the end. Konrad Bayer did not write a novel. Konrad Bayer did not write novels. He spoke of this book only once, and confided to a friend that it was not even a book. It was (perhaps) a trepanation.
A refreshment
"The guillotine," so said Dr. Guillotin many years later, "does not hurt the delinquent. It only gives him the feeling of a light refreshment at the neck." Konrad Bayer was looking for a similar refreshment. His desires were limitless, he wanted to fly, to make himself invisible, he wanted to be able to do everything, so said Gerhard Rühm several years after Bayer's transcendence. He hid himself in his texts. He lived through them. Reading them was to read him. It was all a game.
Vitus Bering, or, a Master of Change
Bayer built upon Bering's myth. The fact that this figure is historically authenticated raises this account from the level of fables, folktales and fabrication. [I have chosen Bering and the scanty reports of him] because they leave enough open, because they are unclear and contradictory, because they can be faked (or rectified) without losing the historical backdrop, which still has sufficient weight to prevent the whole from disappearing...
Bayer: perhaps science has more fears than literature.
Intensification of the sentimental capacity (protocol)
The text, structured around the game of chess and Mircea Eliade's Shamanism, was further structured by the use of the Golden Mean (arranged in thematic groups). Stitched together by apo koinou. What he an emperor sank poet into knew deep nothing sadness better than to order the alphabet into the national anthem.
Dionysian red: the red on the awl's shaft, the red that flows down your cheek. The red about the left temple.
Morbus sacer
Morbus sacer (epilepsy), the holy sickness.
The intensification in general (gradation)
The king answered: "My dear prefect, you understand nothing of this!" and to his confidant of many years standing he replied shortly: "I see you're getting old, marshal!" The only competition could have come from Timur Tamerlan, a Mongolian, who on his campaigns ordered the construction of castles and pyramids from ten thousand skulls of slaughtered people, and giant monuments built of corpses and captives. Vitus Bering moves his castle so that he can take the king with his next move. Yet the corpse was thrown from the platform to the base of the temple. Vitus Bering cannot take the castle. Here they cut the head off the corpse. He who had originally caught the sacrifice, took the head home, cleaned it of all flesh and returned it furnished with a round hole at each of its temples to one of God's representatives. Each must win two tricks and the hand must not be declared. Now the black castle stands opposite the white castle. In the year 1723 his majesty, the tsar of Russia, uttered: "my dear Bering." Finally the skulls were put on the tzompantli, a system of fences, were put on its slats, and the whole gave an impression of black and white spheres on the wires of an immense calculating machine.
Consideration of a general nature
The epileptic is a shaman. It was not uncommon for primitive peoples to eat their god. Vitus Bering's death was not an end. Nothing was completed. His final fit, followed by his death (hypothermia) was his initiation. For Bayer, death is not an end, but an opening out, an expansion.
ἀπόκοινός (Apokoinos)
Apo + koinos (in common). A blending of two sentences through a common word which has two syntactic functions, one for each of the sentences. The word common to both sentences is often a predicate object in the first and a subject in the second.
It was her told me about it. There was an awl led to the red temple.
Melancholic considerations of a general nature (absence)
You sometimes walked ten or more miles in a day (especially during the winter). You were always underdressed. There was a world moving around you, moving past you. There were many worlds around you, though you didn't belong to any of them. You were there to watch. Sometimes you'd run with your eyes closed.
Taking a direct position
Apollonian blue: Vitus Bering's gums turned blue, blue water, blue sky (Jean Genet), the face turned blue.
Vitus Bering is his own master
Death: His head was bent backwards, the teeth tightly clenched together. His body was twisted and arms and legs stretched out. The fingers were placed over the folded thumb. He didn't breathe and slowly his face turned
blue.
Critical repartee
The eyes come out of the sockets. He stretches the tongue far out of his mouth, his arms and legs are in continuous movement, while his head beats in a steady rhythm on the deck.
Summation
There is no one way to read this book. In fact, even the idea of reading this book (i.e., approaching the book as a conventional narrative) would seem impossible here. This is a book that is meant to be felt more than anything. I read it straight through, and was utterly baffled by it; I had no idea how to approach it. Then I read it again, and it started to coalesce. Then I read it a third time, and it all came together. The index—a seemingly superfluous addition to the text—turns out to be the most important part; it ties the whole thing together. It allows us (the reader) to fix our position in the estranged historical context, allows us to fix our position on (relatively) stable ground as several realities swirl around us. All distinctions are washed away. It is through this internal locus of control that Bayer is able to play with the 'real' meaning of certain words, "as in his descriptions of chess and card games where the termini are suddenly juxtaposed with their normal meanings and contexts a line later; with word orders, as if syntax itself were just a chess game; and isolates factual historical incidents and scientific truisms from a normally readable context." On the other hand, repetitive images of killing, cannibalism, and shamanic experiences (visions of death and physical transformations) become commonplace, part of everyday reality in the heart of a crazed mechanical universe. The various levels of the text are suspended, however, and the 'ultimate truth' is never assigned to anything or any one (level) in particular. The gaps between the blocks of text allow new (suggestive) relationships, new times, connections and causalities to appear inside and outside the present levels. In the index, a quote from a text on Siberian initiation is vital here: the spirits cut off his head, which they set aside (for the candidate must watch his dismemberment with his own eyes), and cut him into small pieces. We are placed inside Bering's head, which in turn is watching itself from the outside.
Prior to the index (the last sections of the main text), we are confronted with what must be Bering's death (his face turning blue, how he no longer breathes), followed by him beating his head on the deck of the ship, his eyes bulging from their sockets. An acquaintance of Bayer's posits that the certainty of Bering's death here is actually a misreading of the text, for if we are to take into account Eliade's Shamanism, it may be shown that Bering's physical state is not one of death, but of the (new) shaman upon entering the transcendental realm. This goes along with Bayer's pronouncement in the forward that Bering is undergoing what are more or less the birth pangs of initiation, and the fact that Bering's last action is to ferociously beat his head against the ship's deck not only indicates someone in the midst of an extreme mental state, but also that he has [finally] found the exit through which he will escape. The head has to be dismembered, broken, destroyed in order to overcome the boundaries separating inner and outer reality, to free oneself from thought(s) and opinion(s), so as to become identical with a self that is contingent on [external] reality.
Whenever one stops, one may also go on
There's a small scar on your left temple. The skin is a little darker there. The scar is in the shape of a circle. Few know about it, for your hair hides it. Sometimes, absentmindedly, you smooth it over with your finger.
December 31, 2015
Fascinating montage text framed out on the life and death (or perhaps transition to shaman?) of explorer Vitus Bering, with an index detailing the source material. Also features detailed instructions from various cultures on how to prepare a corpse for consumption! Sometimes it's even laugh-out-loud funny. One wonders to what heights Bayer's genius would have climbed had he not taken his own life just before this was published.
since it wasn't, yet bering could remember that it had been, he concluded that some time must have passed, although he did not like it and would rather have thought that events had already occurred.P.S. When asked about the 'book' by a friend, Bayer responded: 'It is difficult for me to say when you ask me what it is: perhaps a trepanation'.
December 29, 2021
An unexpected masterwork in the experimental mode. Bayer's approach is as radical as anything, appearing narratively scattershot from the first, but resolving by way of a kind of eddying, branchlining repetition into a seafaring adventure as dizzyingly and brinily gripping as the best of a genre that, admittedly, has pretty much forever effortlessly harbored the strangenesses one imagines can not help but to arise from aqua incognita. I'm reminded, for example, of the opening pages of Charles Olson's Call Me Ishmael. And, not really a side note, but the "Index" to this work of literary portraiture is arguably as compelling as the text proper -- if not more so. It is certainly just as long, in any case -- if not longer! And although I'm compelled to immediately re-read this, Berthold Laufer's monograph on the pre-history of aviation (referenced in said Index) is exerting the greater gravitational pull right now.
July 9, 2017
Fenomenale, zinnenprikkelende vertelling over de grote zeevaarder Vitus Bering en zijn band met natuurvorser Wilhelm Steller, vermomd als een autobiografie van beroepsontregelaar Konrad Bayer. Inspireerde W.G. Sebald tot het schrijven van zijn debuut 'Naar de natuur' (1988), waarin Steller de hoofdfiguur is in een van de drie delen van het poëtisch drieluik.
March 7, 2023
This little thing left me skulled . . . like sucking a bruised lemon to cure my non-existent scurvy. I'm fairly sure Bayer redacted 99% of a Vitus Bering biography then turned the leftover text into an oddity. Creative erasure. When the grey sea & the grey sky merge you're in oblivion's nest.
February 24, 2016
Konrad Bayer was one of the principal members of the Wiener Gruppe (Vienna Group):
All of this occurs in the first five pages of the book (following the preface).
And then, truthfully, things get weird. Falsified descriptions of Fridtjof Nansen’s North Pole expedition – at least, I hope they’re falsified, I suppose it’s possible that Nansen did in fact drink blood from a bullet wound, only to find that the blood was no longer “pure” because the bullet had perforated an intestine – begins to intermingle with instructions on how to train and clothe a dancing bear which is further complicated by the descriptions of imagined executions and assassinations. Facts and details are presented, then altered and re-presented, then negated and presented again. The book swims in a sea of unrealibility.
But, for those who like surrealist Dadaistic text experiments, there is a lot to explore and treasure here. It’s a short work – and it’s strength throughout is likely based on its brevity – but it is well worth tracking down and savoring.
This group showed interest in the Baroque literature, as well as in Expressionism, Dadaism and Surrealism. Important impulses also came from upholders of linguistic scepticism, linguistic criticism and linguistic philosophy, such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Fritz Mauthner or Ludwig Wittgenstein.Unsurprisingly, this book experiments a great deal with form, narrative flow, chronology, truth and history.
The linguistic awareness of the Wiener Gruppe was also displayed in the members notion of language as optic and acoustic material. Already in the early 1950s concrete poetry became an exciting new element of at least the works of Rühm, Achleitner and Wiener. Readings and recordings became important parts of the activity. With the charm of novelty, several members also made use of the richness of sounds and vocabulary of their own Bavarian and Vienna dialect. Furthermore, the group was trying out text montage.
As H. C. Artmann in 1958 took his own [life], the suicide of Konrad Bayer in 1964 definitely put an end to Wiener Gruppe.
(from wikipedia)
history is employed here in the way i understand it: a mosaic of facts which fit together to form an opinion, a couple of anecdotes which hope to appear as irrefutable certaintiesThis books starts out strong, completely relentless in its intensity, and then just doesn’t let up. The narrative is a tangle of the actions of Vitus Bering, the rules of a (possibly invented) game (or possibly the rules of many games at once), semi-historic facts, and an invented mythology of cannibalism and shipbuilding/launching/sailing.
people were eaten at every occasionThe narrative, in great part, does away with pesky things like the simple order of chronological events, and instead presents the story all at once, crushed into itself where a simple drawn line crosses future and present and past in no discernable – or particularly important – order.
[…]
at boat launchings people were used as rollers. then they were given to the shipwrights for food.
[…]
the decks of new boats were washed with human blood.
he concluded that some time must have passed, although he did not like it and would rather have thought that the events had already occurred.As the rules of the game (or games) continue to be introduced, the rules – and maneuvers – of the game begins to meld with the historic facts on parade, and the metaphor of war as a game, and slaughter as movement on a board begins to develop. Atrocities begin to pile up and intensify. Through the abattoir music is introduced, Beethoven appears, struggles with light and darkness, produces nine symphonies that are then absorbed into the struggle of nations, and music itself is washed in the blood of masses.
All of this occurs in the first five pages of the book (following the preface).
And then, truthfully, things get weird. Falsified descriptions of Fridtjof Nansen’s North Pole expedition – at least, I hope they’re falsified, I suppose it’s possible that Nansen did in fact drink blood from a bullet wound, only to find that the blood was no longer “pure” because the bullet had perforated an intestine – begins to intermingle with instructions on how to train and clothe a dancing bear which is further complicated by the descriptions of imagined executions and assassinations. Facts and details are presented, then altered and re-presented, then negated and presented again. The book swims in a sea of unrealibility.
(this interpretation is given for the sake of completeness. it is untrue.)If you’re not big on graphic descriptions of cannibalism, flesh flaying (and wearing), or dismemberment, you might want to look elsewhere. If you’re not a big fan of experimentation or non-structured narratives than you definitely should.
But, for those who like surrealist Dadaistic text experiments, there is a lot to explore and treasure here. It’s a short work – and it’s strength throughout is likely based on its brevity – but it is well worth tracking down and savoring.
May 12, 2016
This is an uncommonly beautiful little book. It tickled me in just the right places.
November 13, 2020
Jeezo...... how can such a small book be both DENSE and SPARSE at the same time. And how come it leaves you feeling a little bit 'Emperor's New Clothes' whilst at the same time leaving you feeling that this work is REALLY important. These abstracted bits tied and sewed together like a giant mosaic that has been shattered even further and re-rendered into a patchwork of resonances for which Vitus Bering is just the figurehead. It's poetry, fact, fiction, myth and shamanism all thrown in, stirred around, poured out, torn up, mixed up again and finally smeared with a broad palette knife across the canvas of text. An utterly brilliant beyond-real (and I wouldn't say SURreal), Hyper real delineation of fiction that should be high high high up the list of all creative writing courses.
This is truly a remarkable piece of work. William Gaddis could have learnt an aweful lot from Conrad Bayer. Its a tragedy that he committed suicide rather than pursuing this on an on and on.
This is truly a remarkable piece of work. William Gaddis could have learnt an aweful lot from Conrad Bayer. Its a tragedy that he committed suicide rather than pursuing this on an on and on.
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what he an emperor sank poet into knew deep nothing sadness better than to order the alphabet into the national anthem"
"all captured men are taken from the board. in china the ear was a sought-after trophy. then beethoven appeared."
what he an emperor sank poet into knew deep nothing sadness better than to order the alphabet into the national anthem"
"all captured men are taken from the board. in china the ear was a sought-after trophy. then beethoven appeared."
January 30, 2022
Loved it.
September 25, 2012
German avant-garde. Story without a beginning or end. A must read
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews