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En unavngiven videnskabsmand har isoleret sig i en lille østrigsk landsby for at hellige sig sin forskning. Isolationen medfører imidlertid depression, livslede og ensomhed, en ensomhed, der først letter da han begynder at gå ture i skoven med en persisk kvinde.
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
33 people are currently reading
2779 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Bernhard
319 books2,400 followersThomas 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 177 reviews
March 21, 2021
El narrador de este texto es un Woody Allen sin gracia o con esa gracia especialísima que emana de una narración atropellada, caótica, repetitiva, neurótica, circular hasta la náusea. Solo le falta el tartamudeo, pero eso quizás hubiera sido pasarse.
La anécdota del texto (absolutamente brutal) se circunscribe a las diez últimas páginas del libro, todo lo demás es prácticamente un retrato del narrador a través de su monólogo. Una escritura que, al igual que me pasó con El malogrado, hipnotiza a pesar de ser, o posiblemente por ser, exagerada, repulsiva, cansina, pero también por ser conmovedora de tan sincera, primitivamente provocativa, un grito tan furibundo contra todo y todos, pero sobre todo contra sí mismo, que emociona leerle.
Bernhard, como sus personajes, es de ese tipo de seres que, sin poder resignarse, piden a la vida lo que la vida no les puede dar, que reclaman y reclaman sin obtener, claro está, respuesta alguna, un tipo herido, sufriente, que se desespera y que, al igual que el narrador de este libro, escribe “Sí” para no tener que decir “Sí”.
Tras esta segunda lectura, Bernhard entra con muchísima fuerza en mi lista de escritores ultrapreferidos, aunque soy consciente de que cada lectura solo será un capítulo más a añadir a su único libro.
La anécdota del texto (absolutamente brutal) se circunscribe a las diez últimas páginas del libro, todo lo demás es prácticamente un retrato del narrador a través de su monólogo. Una escritura que, al igual que me pasó con El malogrado, hipnotiza a pesar de ser, o posiblemente por ser, exagerada, repulsiva, cansina, pero también por ser conmovedora de tan sincera, primitivamente provocativa, un grito tan furibundo contra todo y todos, pero sobre todo contra sí mismo, que emociona leerle.
Bernhard, como sus personajes, es de ese tipo de seres que, sin poder resignarse, piden a la vida lo que la vida no les puede dar, que reclaman y reclaman sin obtener, claro está, respuesta alguna, un tipo herido, sufriente, que se desespera y que, al igual que el narrador de este libro, escribe “Sí” para no tener que decir “Sí”.
Tras esta segunda lectura, Bernhard entra con muchísima fuerza en mi lista de escritores ultrapreferidos, aunque soy consciente de que cada lectura solo será un capítulo más a añadir a su único libro.
“Por inútil que sea, y por temible y desesperado que sea, hay que probar siempre de nuevo cuando tenemos un tema que nos aflige siempre y siempre con la mayor obstinación y no nos deja en paz. Aun sabiendo que nada es seguro y que nada es completo, debemos, aun en medio de la mayor inseguridad y de las mayores dudas, comenzar y perseguir lo que nos hemos propuesto, si siempre renunciamos antes de haber empezado, caemos en definitiva en la desesperación y en definitiva y finalmente no salimos ya de esa desesperación y estamos perdidos”
February 3, 2019
There is no comparison to Thomas Bernhard's literary genius, which spins a fragile web of thoughts and emotions, never finished, never clear, always difficult, heavy, undefined and vague, despite the eternally running, circling sentences, and in this web his characters are stuck, as much prisoners in the maze of his language as in their own plots, if they even dare to have them, somewhere underneath the anger that the author shares with the world, through his inimitable voice of ineffable truth, hidden behind complicated constructions of repetitive patterns, that mostly lead to destruction, or extinction, but sometimes explode in an expected, yet surprising ... affirmative ... yes ... !
February 28, 2014
Hey, everyone! I finished a book! I realize that this is approximately the equivalent of crying out, 'I got laid!' at a brothel, but there you have it. I've been reduced to this. For the past eighteen months or so I've been a non-reader—a demographic I'm not generally comfortable consorting with—or, at best, a half-assed reader; I'll read forty pages of this and set it down—and then thirty pages of that and set it down. My home is a ruins of literary misadventures. I hate to be the philanderer who blames his serial infidelities on his humdrum spouse for reasons of her humdrumness, but none of the books I've trysted with have given me the (metaphorical) blowjob that rocked my moribund world. So I've looked elsewhere for gratification. Instead of reading, I found myself doing bizarre things, like watching The Call starring Halle Berry in a fright wig as a renegade 911 operator. For a while, I blogged—as we all must, sooner or later—but there are only so many screeds you can write about petty annoyances before you start sounding like Seinfeld's standup routine.
But then... (Speaking of screeds!) I decided to revisit my old buddy Tommy 'The Parade Rainer' Bernhard—he of the obsessive, misanthropic tirade fame. With his despondent novella Yes, Bernhard once again satisfies my narcissism by creating a literary figure I can relate to. (I should actually say 'a literary figure I can relate to to some extent' so that nobody calls the people with the straitjackets.) The Unnamed Narrator (hereafter, UN) of Yes is a thoroughly miserable and fucked-in-the-head scientist who, in my amateur diagnosis, suffers the combined effects of obsessive thinking, social isolation, and chronic negativity, mainly directed outward as a handy excuse for his own dysfunction. On the verge of a total and perhaps irreparable breakdown he visits his acquaintance Moritz, the town real estate agent, in order to spill his guts and thereby to purge his accumulated craziness. (Anyone who—in the midst of some personal trauma or drunken state—has revealed too much about himself, at great length, to another person knows how humiliating such a fit of exhibitionism can be. Desperation makes fools of us.)
UN does find some relief in vomiting up all his masticated neuroses for Moritz, but there is a far greater consequence of his visit: He meets the Swiss couple, or more specifically the Persian Woman. The Swiss couple—actually a Swiss power plant mogul and his Persian companion—has recently purchased an otherwise unsaleable land parcel from Moritz on which to build their new home. The UN becomes fixated on the Persian woman, who says nothing at the meeting and appears sullen. The meat of the novella concerns the unusual and ephemeral 'friendship' (if that's the right word) between the Persian woman and UN. They take walks mainly. Sometimes in silence. They both like Schumann and Schopenhauer. They both hate the backwoods Austrian town that fate has delivered them to.
I think Yes is maybe Bernhard's bleakest work that I've yet encountered. The title itself—that little affirmation—is wonderfully ironic because in the context of the novella, it's anything but affirmative in the absolute sense. As usual, Bernhard gives voice to pessimism—a hopelessness so dire and maddened that it can't help but be humorous. Bernhard's narrators may reject society at large; they may feel persecuted or misunderstood; they may even resort to morbid self-pity at times. But Bernhard, distinct from his narrators, appreciates the absurdity of these kinds of outlooks. The human psyche—repetitious, obsessed, self-perpetuating—reveals its grimly comic aspect when it's literalized into plain language. And that's exactly what Bernhard's novels do: they translate the dysfunctional mind into (yes) screeds that at once sympathize with the human condition and riff on its follies.
But then... (Speaking of screeds!) I decided to revisit my old buddy Tommy 'The Parade Rainer' Bernhard—he of the obsessive, misanthropic tirade fame. With his despondent novella Yes, Bernhard once again satisfies my narcissism by creating a literary figure I can relate to. (I should actually say 'a literary figure I can relate to to some extent' so that nobody calls the people with the straitjackets.) The Unnamed Narrator (hereafter, UN) of Yes is a thoroughly miserable and fucked-in-the-head scientist who, in my amateur diagnosis, suffers the combined effects of obsessive thinking, social isolation, and chronic negativity, mainly directed outward as a handy excuse for his own dysfunction. On the verge of a total and perhaps irreparable breakdown he visits his acquaintance Moritz, the town real estate agent, in order to spill his guts and thereby to purge his accumulated craziness. (Anyone who—in the midst of some personal trauma or drunken state—has revealed too much about himself, at great length, to another person knows how humiliating such a fit of exhibitionism can be. Desperation makes fools of us.)
UN does find some relief in vomiting up all his masticated neuroses for Moritz, but there is a far greater consequence of his visit: He meets the Swiss couple, or more specifically the Persian Woman. The Swiss couple—actually a Swiss power plant mogul and his Persian companion—has recently purchased an otherwise unsaleable land parcel from Moritz on which to build their new home. The UN becomes fixated on the Persian woman, who says nothing at the meeting and appears sullen. The meat of the novella concerns the unusual and ephemeral 'friendship' (if that's the right word) between the Persian woman and UN. They take walks mainly. Sometimes in silence. They both like Schumann and Schopenhauer. They both hate the backwoods Austrian town that fate has delivered them to.
I think Yes is maybe Bernhard's bleakest work that I've yet encountered. The title itself—that little affirmation—is wonderfully ironic because in the context of the novella, it's anything but affirmative in the absolute sense. As usual, Bernhard gives voice to pessimism—a hopelessness so dire and maddened that it can't help but be humorous. Bernhard's narrators may reject society at large; they may feel persecuted or misunderstood; they may even resort to morbid self-pity at times. But Bernhard, distinct from his narrators, appreciates the absurdity of these kinds of outlooks. The human psyche—repetitious, obsessed, self-perpetuating—reveals its grimly comic aspect when it's literalized into plain language. And that's exactly what Bernhard's novels do: they translate the dysfunctional mind into (yes) screeds that at once sympathize with the human condition and riff on its follies.
May 6, 2023
Another non-stop, claustrophobic, headache-inducing rant à la Kafka.
Have you ever had to sit next to an overly drunk relative at a family gathering, listening to them talk nonsense and nodding at intervals so you won’t appear rude?
The whole book is one long-never-shuts-up-nonsense talking-drunk-relative paragraph with hardly a full-stop.
I apologize for the following excerpt:
It needs to be said at this point that over the past few years I had very often got into such a situation of absolute despair and hopelessness, probably always from the same cause, from a discontent ceaselessly and permanently gnawing me from within and paralysing and eventually deadening everything within me, and it had always been incomprehensible to me afterwards how I managed to emerge from that situation again, but the despair and hopelessness into which I had sunk with my whole being as a result of my absolute despair and hopelessness about my work, in which I had for months come to a standstill both mentally and physically, had been the worst, and I actually believe that, had the Swiss couple, and more particularly the woman friend of the Swiss, the Persian woman, not appeared here, that condition, lasting as it did the whole summer and the whole autumn, would have killed me. These states, pathological states, were naturally getting worse, I had had them for decades, initially scarcely perceptible and in an attenuated form so that they were not worth mentioning, but subsequently, with the beginning of my scientific work proper and with the real seriousness of my scientific-philosophical work, they had intensified each time and eventually revealed themselves at first as sporadic symptoms of illness and then finally as an illness and indeed a severe illness. At first I still believed in a cure for that illness, but eventually it had become pointless to hope for a cure and even the arrival of the Swiss couple did not imply a cure but only an attenuation of my state of sickness, naturally not a cure but only a suspension of the process of sickness which I had to assume had persisted for decades, just as this process of sickness persists to this day and will, I am sure, persist for the rest of my life. The Swiss couple had achieved an attenuation of the symptoms of my sickness, but of course even the Swiss couple could not cure the sickness itself, yet the Swiss couple had saved me from my absolute inability to move, and I had gone to see Moritz just as if I had surmised that they would appear at Moritz's, after all there is no such thing as even the least coincidence. Whereas in all previous severe attacks of this sickness it had been enough for me to leave my house and walk through the wood to Moritz's, it probably would not have been enough during this severe, indeed I am bound to say most severe, attack simply to go and see Moritz, and surely, during my desperate efforts that afternoon vis-à-vis Moritz, I had been able to see that my efforts were not leading anywhere and would not lead anywhere even though I had staked everything on that visit and had, as I have said, been determined to analyse my sickness to Moritz; my visit to Moritz, whom, as I have to admit, I have always sought out like a doctor and therefore like a life-saver, like a mind and body saver, and whom I seek out to this day whenever I am at the end of my tether, in this function which he probably does not himself realize at all, merely to go and see Moritz and pour out to him my pent-up mental and emotional garbage would have been no use that afternoon, I would quite certainly have failed in my efforts, even on my way to Moritz I had known that, despite the help of Frau Moritz, his mother, and his son, who had always looked after me in the most selfless way, that with this attack it would prove useless to go and see Moritz in the usual, often practised, manner, and I had not only felt it but known it, and I had, long before entering the Moritz home, reconciled myself to having foundered, finally foundered, and hence to being ruined and annihilated, and no one except a person in such a hopeless situation as myself can gauge what such total self-revelation, as I had enacted in front of Moritz, really means, that I had the courage to reveal and unveil everything concerning myself, without sparing my own person in the least and of course without sparing Moritz's person in the least either, these two, my person and his, had been a matter of complete indifference to me during that attack of mental brutality and emotional brutality and truly without the slightest thought of shielding or sparing him in my mind.
Have you ever had to sit next to an overly drunk relative at a family gathering, listening to them talk nonsense and nodding at intervals so you won’t appear rude?
The whole book is one long-never-shuts-up-nonsense talking-drunk-relative paragraph with hardly a full-stop.
I apologize for the following excerpt:
It needs to be said at this point that over the past few years I had very often got into such a situation of absolute despair and hopelessness, probably always from the same cause, from a discontent ceaselessly and permanently gnawing me from within and paralysing and eventually deadening everything within me, and it had always been incomprehensible to me afterwards how I managed to emerge from that situation again, but the despair and hopelessness into which I had sunk with my whole being as a result of my absolute despair and hopelessness about my work, in which I had for months come to a standstill both mentally and physically, had been the worst, and I actually believe that, had the Swiss couple, and more particularly the woman friend of the Swiss, the Persian woman, not appeared here, that condition, lasting as it did the whole summer and the whole autumn, would have killed me. These states, pathological states, were naturally getting worse, I had had them for decades, initially scarcely perceptible and in an attenuated form so that they were not worth mentioning, but subsequently, with the beginning of my scientific work proper and with the real seriousness of my scientific-philosophical work, they had intensified each time and eventually revealed themselves at first as sporadic symptoms of illness and then finally as an illness and indeed a severe illness. At first I still believed in a cure for that illness, but eventually it had become pointless to hope for a cure and even the arrival of the Swiss couple did not imply a cure but only an attenuation of my state of sickness, naturally not a cure but only a suspension of the process of sickness which I had to assume had persisted for decades, just as this process of sickness persists to this day and will, I am sure, persist for the rest of my life. The Swiss couple had achieved an attenuation of the symptoms of my sickness, but of course even the Swiss couple could not cure the sickness itself, yet the Swiss couple had saved me from my absolute inability to move, and I had gone to see Moritz just as if I had surmised that they would appear at Moritz's, after all there is no such thing as even the least coincidence. Whereas in all previous severe attacks of this sickness it had been enough for me to leave my house and walk through the wood to Moritz's, it probably would not have been enough during this severe, indeed I am bound to say most severe, attack simply to go and see Moritz, and surely, during my desperate efforts that afternoon vis-à-vis Moritz, I had been able to see that my efforts were not leading anywhere and would not lead anywhere even though I had staked everything on that visit and had, as I have said, been determined to analyse my sickness to Moritz; my visit to Moritz, whom, as I have to admit, I have always sought out like a doctor and therefore like a life-saver, like a mind and body saver, and whom I seek out to this day whenever I am at the end of my tether, in this function which he probably does not himself realize at all, merely to go and see Moritz and pour out to him my pent-up mental and emotional garbage would have been no use that afternoon, I would quite certainly have failed in my efforts, even on my way to Moritz I had known that, despite the help of Frau Moritz, his mother, and his son, who had always looked after me in the most selfless way, that with this attack it would prove useless to go and see Moritz in the usual, often practised, manner, and I had not only felt it but known it, and I had, long before entering the Moritz home, reconciled myself to having foundered, finally foundered, and hence to being ruined and annihilated, and no one except a person in such a hopeless situation as myself can gauge what such total self-revelation, as I had enacted in front of Moritz, really means, that I had the courage to reveal and unveil everything concerning myself, without sparing my own person in the least and of course without sparing Moritz's person in the least either, these two, my person and his, had been a matter of complete indifference to me during that attack of mental brutality and emotional brutality and truly without the slightest thought of shielding or sparing him in my mind.
July 30, 2019
Yes, Indeed. He's gone and done it again. Taking the most simple and stripped down of scenarios and turning it into something quite brilliant and devastating, cascading with repetitions and variations that is almost structurally written like a piece of music. In monologue form, we have another despairing of sorts narrator, a scientist this time, who captures the essence of what Bernhard is all about. Mental sickness is again the big theme here, as our narrator is blighted by a dark depression, that is, until a mysterious Persian woman rescues him from the depths of his hopelessness. But it doesn't end well for her. It really benefits reading Bernhard's shorter novels in one go, as it's not easy finding a suitable place to stop. His novels, if you have read a good few of them like me, do get repetitive, but I'm so glad that he never changed his spots. His style is all his own, that's why I love his books, they are simply like nothing else out there.
October 3, 2014
While I do not consider myself a nihilist, I nevertheless have a deeply personal response to Thomas Bernhard’s novels, which leads me to believe, especially while either immersed in one of his novels or while recovering from one, that I am at heart a nihilist, at least of a stripe, and that Bernhard has the ability to reveal my hidden self to me. This would be appropriate as I have long felt that one of the strongest (and only indirectly addressed) themes running through Bernhard’s prose is the theme of possession, of obsessions that cross the line into the realm of flat out unconscious possession, and if there is anything that each of us is unconsciously possessed by it is our hidden (truer, more powerful) selves. We are possessed by ourselves and we spend a large part of our lives trying to unravel and understand the nature of this possession. It is really all the adventure a person needs, and Bernhard’s novels chart the ever-shifting labyrinths of this adventure. So perhaps the reason I have a deeply personal response to his novels is not due to his nihilism, which is really more of a surface phenomenon (relatively) in his works, but rather to this deeper elucidation of the ins and outs of being subject to one’s (invisible) inner self, of being possessed by a force within us that we either wrestle with forever, or submit to, where even submission doesn’t necessarily lessen the struggle. That Bernhard’s prose is able to enter this inner realm of personal experience, of perpetual struggle and mystery (wrestling with angels), where life not only feeds on itself but also where it is sourced (which is why even with his nihilism reading him can be such a life-affirming experience), is testament enough of his power and greatness.
March 20, 2021
La prosa de Bernhard produce un extraño efecto en el lector. Más que repetitiva, yo diría que es cíclica. Como si de una pieza de música se tratara, Bernhard nos va contando una historia para volver sobre sus pasos e ir profundizando sobre lo ya contado; y lo que parecían simples detalles pasan a convertirse en parte fundamental de la novela. De esta manera quedas atrapado en esta particular tela de araña que tan bien ha urdido Bernhard. A ello contribuye también los escasos puntos y aparte, que provocan que sigas leyendo y leyendo hasta que el texto indique más o menos dónde interrumpir la historia para continuar en otro momento. Es magnífico dejarse llevar de esta manera.
Con Bernhard, la historia se convierte en un factor secundario, y sólo le exigimos que sea medianamente interesante, como es el caso de la novela que nos ocupa. En 'Sí', el protagonista, del que no sabemos el nombre, nos narra en primera persona su caída en una profunda desesperación, producto, como no deja de insistir, de una enfermedad intelectual y sentimental. Él es un solitario que vive en una ciudad austríaca dedicándose al estudio de los anticuerpos, y cuando se encuentra en este estado, que suele ser a menudo, se desahoga visitando a Moritz, el agente inmobiliario que le encontró la casa en la que ahora vive. Durante una de estas visitas aparece una pareja de Suizos, un hombre y una mujer, que vienen a hablar con Moritz sobre la reciente adquisición de su nueva casa. Esta visita, y sobre todo la mujer, a la que llama la Persa, provocarán una serie de revelaciones que el protagonista nos irá desvelando.
Es encomiable el saber hacer de Bernhard para mantener la atención del lector con tan poco material.
Con Bernhard, la historia se convierte en un factor secundario, y sólo le exigimos que sea medianamente interesante, como es el caso de la novela que nos ocupa. En 'Sí', el protagonista, del que no sabemos el nombre, nos narra en primera persona su caída en una profunda desesperación, producto, como no deja de insistir, de una enfermedad intelectual y sentimental. Él es un solitario que vive en una ciudad austríaca dedicándose al estudio de los anticuerpos, y cuando se encuentra en este estado, que suele ser a menudo, se desahoga visitando a Moritz, el agente inmobiliario que le encontró la casa en la que ahora vive. Durante una de estas visitas aparece una pareja de Suizos, un hombre y una mujer, que vienen a hablar con Moritz sobre la reciente adquisición de su nueva casa. Esta visita, y sobre todo la mujer, a la que llama la Persa, provocarán una serie de revelaciones que el protagonista nos irá desvelando.
Es encomiable el saber hacer de Bernhard para mantener la atención del lector con tan poco material.
February 10, 2024
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2024...
“Un año tras otro no he hecho otra cosa que construir, construir y siempre construir y, con ello me he debilitado de la forma más irresponsable.
[…]
Hay que saber además que esta comarca es, en todo el país, una de las más ásperas y que aquí existen precisamente las gentes que corresponden a ese paisaje áspero y en el fondo anti-humano, los hombres son aquí como el paisaje.”
La verdad es que le he cogido cariño a Thomas Bernhard y no sé si es porque vengo de leer su Autobiografía en la que le pillé ese punto de alguien que tiene un conflicto entre querer conectar con la gente pero al mismo tiempo ansía el aislamiento porque esa gente le acaba saturando hasta el aburrimiento, así que ahora leyendo “Sí”, me ha producido mucha ternura comprobar que lleva este conflicto hasta su máxima consecuencia en un texto en el que se ríe de sí mismo, quejándose continuamente de un caos que puede que no exista y que esté creando él mismo, y al mismo tiempo me he reído mucho con este narrador sin nombre que convierte todo en un problema caótico e hiperexagerado. Bernhard (y su narrador) es un dramas en toda regla y a veces es como un niño pequeño que necesitara exagerar sus males para llamar la atención y así poder regalarle un poco de atención, pero lo es sobre todo porque al mismo tiempo sufre, aunque claro, tiene la capacidad de plasmar este sufrimiento en unas hojas que seguramente le liberaban. Y ya digo que me lo he pasado en grande con esta novela e igual debo estar un poco loca, porque entre el paisaje inescrutable, lo áspero de los personajes y la temática, es para hacérselo mirar, pero aquí lo dejo. Y hay otro detalle más que me ha llamado poderosamente la atención de esta novela y es que es la primera vez que me encuentro en una novela suya un personaje femenino muy potente, yo diría que a la misma altura que la del narrador.
"Yo mismo tenía la sensación de estar perdido, y hoy no sé ya cómo llegué a casa de Moritz a través del bosque. Muy a menudo he traspasado en mi vida las fronteras de la locura y también de la demencia pero esa tarde creí que no regresaría."
“Sí”, cuenta con un narrador en primera persona, un científico que vive en una zona rural totalmente aislado solo dedicado a sus estudios científicos. Tiene a un único amigo, Moritz, un corredor de fincas, al que recurre cuando se encuentra saturado por su angustia existencial, encontrando cobijo en su casa junto a su familia, se ubica en un rincón y parece que es su único remanso de paz. Justo cuando comienza la novela, el narrador rememora uno de esos periodos de angustia mortal que le hace cruzar el bosque desesperado, llegando a casa de Moritz en busca de algún consuelo, y allí conoce a los Suizos, una pareja que ha recurrido a su amigo Moritz para comprar un terreno y construirse una casa. Enseguida cree establecer una especie de conexión con la mujer de ascendencia iraní a la que llamará la Persa. Es tan simple como salir a pasear con ella mientras su marido viaja, no solo por trabajo, sino para encargar los materiales de construcción de la casa que piensa construir.
"...y hoy no sé ya cuántos paseos di con ella, pero fui a pasear con ella diaria y también, a menudo, varias veces diariamente y, en cualquier caso, en ese tiempo paseé con ella más a menudo y más tiempo que con cualquier otra persona, y con ninguna otra he hablado nunca sobre todo lo imaginable con mayor intensidad y nadie me ha dejado nunca mirar dentro de sí más profundamente..."
El narrador sin nombre se obsesiona con establecer esta conexión con la Persa y creerá ver en ella a una especie de alma gemela, o es más bien la creencia que él tiene de ella, porque realmente no la conoce lo suficientemente y en un principio el silencio es lo que prima entre ellos: “Cuando dos personas que no se conocen y solo se han visto antes una vez dan juntas un paseo, se callan al principio muchísimo tiempo, y mas aun si se trata de un hombre y de una mujer. Quien habla primero es algo por decidir.” Claro que como ya es habitual en Bernhard, ha creado un narrador gruñón, hipersensible, obsesionado por sus angustias vitales y egoísta que elige vivir aisladamente, y sin embargo y a pesar de eso, tal como decía al principio, parece sentirse también atraído y algo obsesionado con la idea de conectar con alguien, (en esta caso con una mujer, lo que le sorprende), por eso el uso y abuso que hace de Moritz, y a partir de encontrarse con los Suizos, revierte esta obsesión en la Persa, una mujer a la que ve como su espejo “Cuando tenemos una persona en nuestra proximidad con la que, en fin de cuentas, podemos hablar de todo, aguantamos, si no, no.”. No comprende como ella y su marido, aparentemente una pareja de éxito, acabaran en ese pueblo perdido, húmedo y aislado, comprando un terreno sin rechistar a su amigo Moritz, un terreno que era una especie de pantanal que había tardado diez años en venderse, un desastre de compra. Para este narrador anónimo es una suerte o un alivio haberse encontrado con una mujer con la que conversar y que además conozca y comparta su admiración por Schumann y Schopenhauer, las dos obsesiones del narrador. A partir de aquí, nos iremos haciendo un retrato de esta mujer, la Persa, que no deja de ser un misterio, y pronto reconoceremos que realmente solo la estemos viendo a través de la imagen que se ha inventado él en su cabeza; “Le dije a Moritz que la Persa me interesaba como ninguna otra persona en los últimos tiempos, no dije desde hacia años, dije solo, intencionadamente, en los últimos tiempos, su sensibilidad, su cultura indudablemente elevada.”. Este misterio y esos silencios por parte de ella, denotan que tiene una vida interior a la que él realmente no se ha preocupado en llegar, obsesionado como está por él mismo y sus achaques.
“y realmente creo que si los Suizos, pero sobre todo la compañera del Suizo, la Persa, no hubiesen aparecido, ese estado de meses, si hubiese durado todo el verano y todo el invierno, me habría matado. Esos estados, ataques de enfermedad, empeoran lógicamente, los tenía ya desde hacia decenios, al principio de una forma menos apreciable y aun débil”
[…]
Pero si los Suizos no hubieran entrado en escena y precisamente en ese momento decisivo, me hubiera vuelto probablemente loco o demente, y con seguridad no hubiera podido sobrevivir.”
La verdad es que me encontré riéndome en pasajes en los que el narrador anónimo nos cuenta en una especie de bucle infinito lo desesperado y angustiado que está y justo cuando quería matarse o volverse loco, aparecía un elemento en su vida, que le hacía desdecirse, ya digo que como un niño pequeño continuamente llamando la atención o en espera de que algo surja en su vida, que le distraiga un poco; “que el camino que había tomado y había seguido ya durante años no era el verdadero camino, que solo podía ser un camino hacia el aislamiento total, aislamiento no solo de mi mente y de mi pensamiento, sino en realidad aislamiento de todo mi ser, de toda mi existencia.” pero esta forma de angustia vital que siente el narrador en “Sí” no me agobia, todo lo contrario, Bernhard la refleja con una cierta inocencia porque a pesar de cómo nos describe este ansia de soledad y aislamiento, al mismo tiempo está demostrando un gran conocimiento de las relaciones humanas porque al fin y al cabo el ser humano es un ser social: Bernhard/el narrador está profundamente desencantado/saturado de la gente, y así y todo, hay un cierto grado de esperanza en esta inocente búsqueda por conectar, así que crea a un personaje profundamente contradictorio un poco arrogante y egoísta que se autoimpone aislarse pero al mismo tiempo se muere por encontrar compañía, un poco gruñón y cínico pero que también se muere por cotillear y saber lo que se cuece a su alrededor, y que en su egoísmo no se piensa dos veces en intercambiar a Moritz por la Persa como su paño de lágrimas.
“Con cuánta frecuencia me he arrepentido de haberme ido a vivir al campo, si me hubiera quedado a vivir en la ciudad, porque no soy hombre de campo, aunque mis padres fueron gentes de campo, no soy hombre de campo, tampoco aunque conozca muy bien el campo, porque conozco la ciudad tan bien como el campo y me gusta más la ciudad que el campo, que casi siempre odio solo porque casi siempre solo me he atormentado y humillado hasta donde puedo acordarme…”
Aunque Bernhard envuelva esta novela corta de su habitual atmósfera seria y sombría, por el paisaje áspero y con sus típicos personajes de los que abjura continuamente, ya digo que el tono resulta conmovedor, con esa ternura entre líneas por las angustias algo egoístas e infantiles de su narrador. Me ha recordado un poco a Corrección en lo que se refiere a construir un edificio desde la nada “En verdad, mi casa cuando la compré, no era más que un techo agujereado, casi podrido ya en su totalidad, sobre unas paredes que aunque enormes, se desmoronaban.“, una casa como habitáculo de aislamiento, un tema obsesivo para el mismo Bernhard en su vida personal pero quizás lo que más me ha sorprendido es la construcción psicológica de ese personaje femenino que envuelta en un abrigo de piel de cordero pasea por el bosque de alerces con un narrador que no la entiende, pero igual la va a ayudar a liberarse.
“Sin embargo, realmente no había necesidad de ninguna conversación audible entre ella y yo, porque conversábamos ya desde hacía muchísimo tiempo, aunque no con palabras expresas. Conversábamos en silencio y nuestra conversación era una de las más interesantes que puede imaginarse; palabras pronunciadas y ordenadas para ser oídas no hubieran podido tener el efecto de ese silencio.”
♫♫♫ Warum? (op. 12 n. 3) - Robert Schumann ♫♫♫
January 11, 2025
Ja!
Verzeiht meinem Egozentrismus, aber ich musste es einmal irgendwo schreiben: Ich bin im gleichen Jahr, Monat und Tag, an dem Thomas Bernhard gestorben ist, geboren. Ob auch in der gleichen Stunde, Minute und Sekunde, wäre unmöglich zu beweisen, ist allerdings nebensächlich, wie die Frage, ob dies ein Zufall oder (absurde Anmaßung) Wiedergeburt wäre. Sowieso bin ich gewissermaßen Thomas Bernhard, wie auch die anderen seiner Fans, wann immer wir ihn lesen. Er hat diese Kraft, uns in eine Stimme zu saugen und unerbittlich tief in ein vereinigtes, aber geschlossenes Bewusstsein zu versetzen. In Bernhards Werken gibt es fast nur eine Stimme. Sie ist unverkennbar, unaufhaltsam, total, aussichtslos. Es gibt sehr wenige Personen dort, fast keine Handlung oder Beschreibungen. Diese narrativen Nebengebäude und Umwege erscheinen bei Bernhard und dank ihm als klangliche Prosa-Krücke. Das ist die Ursache, warum es für uns so langweilig ist, andere Autoren nach ihm zu lesen. Die meisten bauen zu viel an Charakteren und Handlung, um letztendlich zu wenig Stoff zwischen ihnen zu erzeugen. Deshalb wenden wir uns immer und immer wieder an diese Stimme, wie an eine Quelle, die nur Stoff ist, unser Stoff, und wir können und wollen diese Sucht nicht aufgeben.
„Ja“ ist zusammen mit „Beton“ und „Die Mütze“ – einer kurzen Erzählung, die in der Literatur mit nichts anderem vergleichbar ist – eine der stärksten Bernhard-Dosen. Ein sehr konzentriertes, essentielles Werk. Wenn es das erste ist, das du lesen wirst, ist garantiert, dass du von ihm entweder gleich abhängig oder für immer von Bernhard abgestoßen wirst. Als Einstieg wäre es zu abrupt und radikal, und es gibt möglicherweise keinen Ausstieg. Ein leiserer Eintritt wären „Holzfällen“ oder „Alte Meister“, wo Bernhard sich selbst parodiert und ein bisschen (auf seine wahnsinnige Weise) sentimental wird.
Verzeiht meinem Egozentrismus, aber ich musste es einmal irgendwo schreiben: Ich bin im gleichen Jahr, Monat und Tag, an dem Thomas Bernhard gestorben ist, geboren. Ob auch in der gleichen Stunde, Minute und Sekunde, wäre unmöglich zu beweisen, ist allerdings nebensächlich, wie die Frage, ob dies ein Zufall oder (absurde Anmaßung) Wiedergeburt wäre. Sowieso bin ich gewissermaßen Thomas Bernhard, wie auch die anderen seiner Fans, wann immer wir ihn lesen. Er hat diese Kraft, uns in eine Stimme zu saugen und unerbittlich tief in ein vereinigtes, aber geschlossenes Bewusstsein zu versetzen. In Bernhards Werken gibt es fast nur eine Stimme. Sie ist unverkennbar, unaufhaltsam, total, aussichtslos. Es gibt sehr wenige Personen dort, fast keine Handlung oder Beschreibungen. Diese narrativen Nebengebäude und Umwege erscheinen bei Bernhard und dank ihm als klangliche Prosa-Krücke. Das ist die Ursache, warum es für uns so langweilig ist, andere Autoren nach ihm zu lesen. Die meisten bauen zu viel an Charakteren und Handlung, um letztendlich zu wenig Stoff zwischen ihnen zu erzeugen. Deshalb wenden wir uns immer und immer wieder an diese Stimme, wie an eine Quelle, die nur Stoff ist, unser Stoff, und wir können und wollen diese Sucht nicht aufgeben.
„Ja“ ist zusammen mit „Beton“ und „Die Mütze“ – einer kurzen Erzählung, die in der Literatur mit nichts anderem vergleichbar ist – eine der stärksten Bernhard-Dosen. Ein sehr konzentriertes, essentielles Werk. Wenn es das erste ist, das du lesen wirst, ist garantiert, dass du von ihm entweder gleich abhängig oder für immer von Bernhard abgestoßen wirst. Als Einstieg wäre es zu abrupt und radikal, und es gibt möglicherweise keinen Ausstieg. Ein leiserer Eintritt wären „Holzfällen“ oder „Alte Meister“, wo Bernhard sich selbst parodiert und ein bisschen (auf seine wahnsinnige Weise) sentimental wird.
October 7, 2023
Que livrasso, pqp, um falso Bernhard light.
January 6, 2014
Holy Jesus Fuck, Yes is excellent. Now, I'm not sure if you'll like it because you've got to get accustomed to Bernhard's style. He'll extend a sentence, via dependent clause, for pages on end. No chapter breaks, either. Hell, no paragraph breaks. But once you get in a groove with Mr. Bernhard, whoa, he's through the roof good.
Yes is told entirely from the perspective of a mostly-socially isolated scientist who encounters a Persian woman while unloading his psychological ills on to a friend. The woman and the narrator walk through the woods and talk. Uh, not much more happens than that, but please don't lump this book into a pile of experimental horseshit or whatever. The narrator tells the story, along with internal, insightful and often self-critical monologue, in a 135 page sitting. Yes is about solitude, creating meaning, and remaining honest with yourself, even if that honesty is fucking depressing. It's not a cheery book; it's an honest book. The depressed and neurotic will recognize themselves in Yes. Sometimes I feel like novels of this nature are categorized as depressing and European which, I suppose, they are, but they're so much more than that. I picture the narrator in a therapist's office; this novel elucidates the painful and difficult to articulate in order to acknowledge its presence because, if you don't, you're fooling yourself. So I guess, and I don't mean to sound all special or anything, that I found Yes more refreshing than depressing. I don't believe the novel's meant to inspire or deject the reader as much as to pull a sheet off the window and expose the room to the light. I reject the term nihilism with Bernhard. Yes is more like an exploration of difficult, stimulating truth.
I get the feeling Yes is not one of the author's major works, but I could be wrong. Just before the new year I stumbled upon the novel in a used book store. Before that I'd never heard of it. This is my third Bernhard, I think, and so far my favorite, although I suppose that reaction might connect to this afternoon's finishing of the book. I loved it, though, except, maybe, for a page or two at the very end. I imagine you've already decided whether or not you're the Bernhard type; if you are, put Yes on priority.
Yes is told entirely from the perspective of a mostly-socially isolated scientist who encounters a Persian woman while unloading his psychological ills on to a friend. The woman and the narrator walk through the woods and talk. Uh, not much more happens than that, but please don't lump this book into a pile of experimental horseshit or whatever. The narrator tells the story, along with internal, insightful and often self-critical monologue, in a 135 page sitting. Yes is about solitude, creating meaning, and remaining honest with yourself, even if that honesty is fucking depressing. It's not a cheery book; it's an honest book. The depressed and neurotic will recognize themselves in Yes. Sometimes I feel like novels of this nature are categorized as depressing and European which, I suppose, they are, but they're so much more than that. I picture the narrator in a therapist's office; this novel elucidates the painful and difficult to articulate in order to acknowledge its presence because, if you don't, you're fooling yourself. So I guess, and I don't mean to sound all special or anything, that I found Yes more refreshing than depressing. I don't believe the novel's meant to inspire or deject the reader as much as to pull a sheet off the window and expose the room to the light. I reject the term nihilism with Bernhard. Yes is more like an exploration of difficult, stimulating truth.
I get the feeling Yes is not one of the author's major works, but I could be wrong. Just before the new year I stumbled upon the novel in a used book store. Before that I'd never heard of it. This is my third Bernhard, I think, and so far my favorite, although I suppose that reaction might connect to this afternoon's finishing of the book. I loved it, though, except, maybe, for a page or two at the very end. I imagine you've already decided whether or not you're the Bernhard type; if you are, put Yes on priority.
July 26, 2018
Incondizionatamente
“D'altra parte, come nel corso della mia vita so ormai senza ombra di dubbio, proprio i pensieri assurdi sono i pensieri più chiari e i più assurdi sono anche i più importanti”.
Uno studioso di scienze naturali è infermo sul piano psicoaffettivo e non riesce più a dedicarsi al proprio lavoro mentale e intellettuale; con l'intenzione di salvarsi, va dall'amico Moritz, agente immobiliare, per rovesciare vergognosamente su di lui la vita interiore e nel momento della confessione si imbatte in una coppia di clienti, un ingegnere di centrali elettriche geniale e la sua compagna persiana, che ha sacrificato la propria vita per far crescere il talento del compagno. Così, il protagonista si illumina e ritrova sé stesso, si allontana dall'idea di lasciare la vita, e ritrova la forza di dedicarsi ai suoi studi sugli anticorpi e alle amate musica e filosofia, con Schopenauer e Schumann. Inizia a frequentare la straniera di Shiraz quotidianamente e a passeggiare tra boschi di larici conversando di estremi e vividi sogni e di innamoramenti culturali e artistici. Ma la donna, abbandonata dal marito, inizia a sentirsi sempre peggio, a trascurarsi, a lasciarsi andare all'idea della distruzione di sé, in un vortice di crudeltà; lascia l'albergo e va a vivere in una casa funesta disperandosi tra sonniferi e degrado. La profonda solitudine intersoggettiva aggredisce il sottile guscio emotivo di ogni individuo e porta con sé istinti di morte, al quale l'essere nella sua debolezza cede con un fatale sintomo affermativo, un sì che è resa al dolore in una regione che è nemica dello spirito e assassina del sentimento. Bernhard scrive i suoi temi, la noia esistenziale e l'impotenza vitale; l'isolamento e la rivelazione, l'estenuante e terribile autoanalisi, la volontà di fallire, la brutalità dell'angoscia. A dare senso alla vita è la faccia interiore di un'esistenza offesa, l'inquietante e anarchica lotta contro di sé e contro gli altri, all'ultimo e ingiurioso e silenzioso sangue.
“D'altra parte, come nel corso della mia vita so ormai senza ombra di dubbio, proprio i pensieri assurdi sono i pensieri più chiari e i più assurdi sono anche i più importanti”.
Uno studioso di scienze naturali è infermo sul piano psicoaffettivo e non riesce più a dedicarsi al proprio lavoro mentale e intellettuale; con l'intenzione di salvarsi, va dall'amico Moritz, agente immobiliare, per rovesciare vergognosamente su di lui la vita interiore e nel momento della confessione si imbatte in una coppia di clienti, un ingegnere di centrali elettriche geniale e la sua compagna persiana, che ha sacrificato la propria vita per far crescere il talento del compagno. Così, il protagonista si illumina e ritrova sé stesso, si allontana dall'idea di lasciare la vita, e ritrova la forza di dedicarsi ai suoi studi sugli anticorpi e alle amate musica e filosofia, con Schopenauer e Schumann. Inizia a frequentare la straniera di Shiraz quotidianamente e a passeggiare tra boschi di larici conversando di estremi e vividi sogni e di innamoramenti culturali e artistici. Ma la donna, abbandonata dal marito, inizia a sentirsi sempre peggio, a trascurarsi, a lasciarsi andare all'idea della distruzione di sé, in un vortice di crudeltà; lascia l'albergo e va a vivere in una casa funesta disperandosi tra sonniferi e degrado. La profonda solitudine intersoggettiva aggredisce il sottile guscio emotivo di ogni individuo e porta con sé istinti di morte, al quale l'essere nella sua debolezza cede con un fatale sintomo affermativo, un sì che è resa al dolore in una regione che è nemica dello spirito e assassina del sentimento. Bernhard scrive i suoi temi, la noia esistenziale e l'impotenza vitale; l'isolamento e la rivelazione, l'estenuante e terribile autoanalisi, la volontà di fallire, la brutalità dell'angoscia. A dare senso alla vita è la faccia interiore di un'esistenza offesa, l'inquietante e anarchica lotta contro di sé e contro gli altri, all'ultimo e ingiurioso e silenzioso sangue.
February 26, 2014
http://msarki.tumblr.com/post/7790189...
Not enough praise has been accorded regarding the story-telling talents of Thomas Bernhard. There have been more than enough remarks referring to his long tirades and vitriol as well as his use of the long-sentenced paragraph and repetitive phrase. In this novel Yes not only does the reader come to a clear understanding of story, there is also a distinct and memorable feeling for this extreme setting and its inhabitants. By book's end it is obvious this novel has a quite wonderful and clever plot.
The narrator of Yes remains nameless. He is a depressive sort, a scientist who for almost every reason has found it impossible to work and has thus locked himself up inside his musty old home for the better part of the last three months. It is only upon meeting this Persian woman, the female half of a Swiss couple planning to build a drab concrete structure on an equally dismal plot of low-lying land far enough out of town in which they would certainly have to stock up on survival provisions when the wet season begins. Meanwhile the Swiss couple are holed up in the only inn the village can boast of. It so happens the same inn is also in need of repair and vigorous cleaning. So despair, unsurprisingly it seems, is the norm in this part of the Austrian countryside.
The narrator, as scientist, claims his main conflict has been caused by his lung disease. Previously he lived and worked in the city and seemed to have no trouble thinking and getting on with his study. But his doctor insisted the narrator move to the country where he could breathe clean air and his lung disease could perhaps be held in check enough so he could live. But his living without pursuing the activities so detrimental to his mind makes him question why he would want to stay alive anyway. He says he struggles mentally over ending it all through suicide, but for reasons I am sure the narrator will eventually explain he could not bring himself to do it.
Typically, to ward off his yearly complaint of depression, which in general begins each October of every year, the narrator indulges himself with either the works of philosopher Schopenhauer or composer Schuman, or both, in order to save himself. But this particular year neither genius helps him to keep his darkness at bay and he finds himself engaged in the most unreceptive and unresponsive state of "not-being-able-to-bear-it-any-longer". With this terrible discovery he rushes out of his dismal prison and runs through the wood to Moritz's to "pounce on him" with his insanity and "wounding him" in the most "shameless manner." This regrettable scene is almost immediately interrupted by the arrival of the afore-mentioned Swiss couple knocking at the door of the realtor Moritz. In this scene it is almost as if the narrator no longer exists as the conversation centers around the new home the Swiss couple is planning to build on the pitiful lot Moritz has sold them.
There is no comprehension at all for the narrator over how this intelligent, successful, and well-traveled Swiss couple who after spending four decades together could actually decide to settle into retirement to this small village on a piece of ground that Moritz has had listed for sale for as many years as the couple spent together roaming the world as the Swiss engineer built power stations. It was also remarkable to the narrator how his best friend Moritz had never once mentioned the Swiss couple even after working with them over the last several months. But the narrator is immediately taken by the seemingly intelligent Persian woman who remains silent and indifferent throughout the entire meeting as the Swiss does all the talking and deciding over the design and construction to take place on this water-logged property.
Suffice to say, the narrator pursues a friendly non-sexual relationship with the Persian woman who is staying at the local inn while the Swiss finishes the last power station he is constructing in Venezuela and as he also travels to Switzerland to procure for their new home the desired quality of building materials that are impossible for him to find in Austria. The Persian woman is available for the narrator to visit with over a cup of tea at the inn or a pleasant walk in the forest glade. It is of great relief for the narrator to have found this woman in his life and to have someone who is intelligent to talk to and who is also familiar with the work of his most-loved composer and philosopher, Schuman and Schopenhauer.
It has been stated more than once in critical reviews by others that Bernhard fails to develop his characters. I find this not to be true. Of all the characters in this novel brought to our attention by the halfway mark I am most impressed with the innkeeper's wife who the narrator masterfully illustrates for us her incessant need to spy and eavesdrop, spread gossip and judgments throughout her awful little town.
What has occurred during the past few weeks is suddenly becoming clear, and it becomes bearable because I am trying, by putting these notes on paper, to make it bearable, and these notes have no other purpose than to record in writing my encounter with the Swiss couple and more particularly with the Persian woman and thereby to find relief and thereby possibly to open up once more an approach to my studies.
Upon my recent discovery and further involvement in the works of another great writer, Hungarian-born Ágota Kristof, I not only learned but also came to believe in her talent as a writer. She was as well an interesting, hard-working person of note. Kristof spent most of her life living in French-speaking Switzerland and it was there she herself discovered the work of the great Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Yes just so happened to be her very first and favorite title of all his entire body of work. She mentioned in her short memoir The Illiterate how while reading Yes the first time she had never laughed so much or so hard in her life, so much so that she lent this book to several friends who upon returning it admitted their failing at reading it all the way to the end. They all claimed the book was too 'demoralizing' and 'unbearable'. All of them to a fault failed to see any of the 'comic' side to Thomas Bernhard that Ágota Kristof was so taken with. For me, this was my second time around with Thomas Bernhard's Yes. I loved it even more this visit and it passed the test of my further review and more intense gaze. There is nobody like Bernhard no matter how hard others try, and sometimes succeed, in crafting a suitable read that might even be possibly compared to his work at times. Yes, the ending is quite unforgiving but the journey getting there is worth the ultimately lessened, or lessoned, discomfort and pain.
This novel begins as a mystery, but plenty of clues are left scattered along the way and the trail remains certainly well-marked throughout relieving the little fear one might have for getting lost. Yes is also definitely a story about relationships. How significant it is to have and maintain at least one friend in which to talk to. The novel is more importantly, I think, a history of one's usefulness and what can happen when you find you are no longer needed and sadly begin to feel used-up.
Not enough praise has been accorded regarding the story-telling talents of Thomas Bernhard. There have been more than enough remarks referring to his long tirades and vitriol as well as his use of the long-sentenced paragraph and repetitive phrase. In this novel Yes not only does the reader come to a clear understanding of story, there is also a distinct and memorable feeling for this extreme setting and its inhabitants. By book's end it is obvious this novel has a quite wonderful and clever plot.
The narrator of Yes remains nameless. He is a depressive sort, a scientist who for almost every reason has found it impossible to work and has thus locked himself up inside his musty old home for the better part of the last three months. It is only upon meeting this Persian woman, the female half of a Swiss couple planning to build a drab concrete structure on an equally dismal plot of low-lying land far enough out of town in which they would certainly have to stock up on survival provisions when the wet season begins. Meanwhile the Swiss couple are holed up in the only inn the village can boast of. It so happens the same inn is also in need of repair and vigorous cleaning. So despair, unsurprisingly it seems, is the norm in this part of the Austrian countryside.
The narrator, as scientist, claims his main conflict has been caused by his lung disease. Previously he lived and worked in the city and seemed to have no trouble thinking and getting on with his study. But his doctor insisted the narrator move to the country where he could breathe clean air and his lung disease could perhaps be held in check enough so he could live. But his living without pursuing the activities so detrimental to his mind makes him question why he would want to stay alive anyway. He says he struggles mentally over ending it all through suicide, but for reasons I am sure the narrator will eventually explain he could not bring himself to do it.
Typically, to ward off his yearly complaint of depression, which in general begins each October of every year, the narrator indulges himself with either the works of philosopher Schopenhauer or composer Schuman, or both, in order to save himself. But this particular year neither genius helps him to keep his darkness at bay and he finds himself engaged in the most unreceptive and unresponsive state of "not-being-able-to-bear-it-any-longer". With this terrible discovery he rushes out of his dismal prison and runs through the wood to Moritz's to "pounce on him" with his insanity and "wounding him" in the most "shameless manner." This regrettable scene is almost immediately interrupted by the arrival of the afore-mentioned Swiss couple knocking at the door of the realtor Moritz. In this scene it is almost as if the narrator no longer exists as the conversation centers around the new home the Swiss couple is planning to build on the pitiful lot Moritz has sold them.
There is no comprehension at all for the narrator over how this intelligent, successful, and well-traveled Swiss couple who after spending four decades together could actually decide to settle into retirement to this small village on a piece of ground that Moritz has had listed for sale for as many years as the couple spent together roaming the world as the Swiss engineer built power stations. It was also remarkable to the narrator how his best friend Moritz had never once mentioned the Swiss couple even after working with them over the last several months. But the narrator is immediately taken by the seemingly intelligent Persian woman who remains silent and indifferent throughout the entire meeting as the Swiss does all the talking and deciding over the design and construction to take place on this water-logged property.
Suffice to say, the narrator pursues a friendly non-sexual relationship with the Persian woman who is staying at the local inn while the Swiss finishes the last power station he is constructing in Venezuela and as he also travels to Switzerland to procure for their new home the desired quality of building materials that are impossible for him to find in Austria. The Persian woman is available for the narrator to visit with over a cup of tea at the inn or a pleasant walk in the forest glade. It is of great relief for the narrator to have found this woman in his life and to have someone who is intelligent to talk to and who is also familiar with the work of his most-loved composer and philosopher, Schuman and Schopenhauer.
It has been stated more than once in critical reviews by others that Bernhard fails to develop his characters. I find this not to be true. Of all the characters in this novel brought to our attention by the halfway mark I am most impressed with the innkeeper's wife who the narrator masterfully illustrates for us her incessant need to spy and eavesdrop, spread gossip and judgments throughout her awful little town.
What has occurred during the past few weeks is suddenly becoming clear, and it becomes bearable because I am trying, by putting these notes on paper, to make it bearable, and these notes have no other purpose than to record in writing my encounter with the Swiss couple and more particularly with the Persian woman and thereby to find relief and thereby possibly to open up once more an approach to my studies.
Upon my recent discovery and further involvement in the works of another great writer, Hungarian-born Ágota Kristof, I not only learned but also came to believe in her talent as a writer. She was as well an interesting, hard-working person of note. Kristof spent most of her life living in French-speaking Switzerland and it was there she herself discovered the work of the great Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. Yes just so happened to be her very first and favorite title of all his entire body of work. She mentioned in her short memoir The Illiterate how while reading Yes the first time she had never laughed so much or so hard in her life, so much so that she lent this book to several friends who upon returning it admitted their failing at reading it all the way to the end. They all claimed the book was too 'demoralizing' and 'unbearable'. All of them to a fault failed to see any of the 'comic' side to Thomas Bernhard that Ágota Kristof was so taken with. For me, this was my second time around with Thomas Bernhard's Yes. I loved it even more this visit and it passed the test of my further review and more intense gaze. There is nobody like Bernhard no matter how hard others try, and sometimes succeed, in crafting a suitable read that might even be possibly compared to his work at times. Yes, the ending is quite unforgiving but the journey getting there is worth the ultimately lessened, or lessoned, discomfort and pain.
This novel begins as a mystery, but plenty of clues are left scattered along the way and the trail remains certainly well-marked throughout relieving the little fear one might have for getting lost. Yes is also definitely a story about relationships. How significant it is to have and maintain at least one friend in which to talk to. The novel is more importantly, I think, a history of one's usefulness and what can happen when you find you are no longer needed and sadly begin to feel used-up.
January 21, 2012
After all, there is nothing but failure.
Yes, as another GR reviewer posited, is generally held to be one of Bernhard's minor works, but it is a perfectly-executed short piece markedly positioning itself within the transition from the earlier TB of Correction and The Lime Works to the mature period of Old Masters and The Loser. The narrative style, mental torment, personality debilitation, circular reasoning, and objective loathing/subjective despair are all in place from the previous (and much longer) books—but Yes tempers it all with a more measured and more, dare I say, hopeful element to balance against the bilious raging and torrential word-wounding that abounds within the monologic structure of fiction from Austria's finest razor-edged writer.
For one thing, the inevitable life's work that the narrator has been fixedly laboring at—in this case, a scientific study of antibodies in nature—whilst announced right out of the starting gate (together with the requisite plaint of suffering a persistent illness, though the meddling kinsman fails to make an appearance) quickly takes a back seat; indeed, other than the applicability between this study and the thematic progression of the novel, the unnamed narrator's prime obsession proves a secondary element of what the bi-paragraphical story is: a leanly brilliant, compactly sprung and, as always, harrowingly relatable working out of the terrible burdens inflicted upon an intelligent-but-splintered mind brought into being by an implacably hostile natural world during a period of prevailing nihilistic emptiness and immersed within the inescapable-because-omnipresent isolation that comprises the ultimate reality of that which we comprehend as our bounded existence.
As Bernhard sees it, we must be careful about what we wish for; must understand, as he does, that nothing comes up or about without a price; that what excites us, what we love is but a mirror image of that which appalls us, that which we loathe; that our busy and frenzied existence, ever-seeking and -obtaining new interests and passions and goals cannot effectively mask the understanding, innate to human existence, that all such desires represent but bright, gaudy colours painted upon an enervating and bleaching whiteness. Whatever we achieve or feel will, in time, become pale, wan, etiolated, listless, be recognized for the absurdity it is, the hollowness it is built around, the nothingness it points towards, the futility it represents. We must understand this and position within such knowledge the apparent solution of suicide. We must perceive this siren song of release and that we can stop-up our ears to it with human interaction, anchor ourselves against its pull with select individuals who ameliorate our condition—and that this buttressing potentiality can be reversed, sending us hurling towards self-abnegation at an unstoppable, irrecoverable speed. Everything is both necessary and superfluous, inviting and repulsive, healing and dangerous, helpful and murderous. Paradoxes abound. There truly is no way out of this conundrum of a reality that bruises after it caresses and reveals every rainbow as leading to a copper pot of rancid shit. Ceiling, floor, all four walls are spiked and slowly moving in—how shall we find the means to occupy our minds enough that this fact will withdraw into the background sufficient to allow us to set out to achieve something, anything.
That all sounds a bit florid, true, but—as any fan of Tommy B. knows well—it's a lithe and limber prose that the maestro trots out, delineating it all in a controlled sluicing of words that turns on a dime to head in a differing, but related, direction. Aside from the Austrian countryside and the antagonistic, antipathetic bucolic denizens who inhabit it and make it such a miserable place to domicile for intellectuals and/or foreigners—though, of course, the city is just as bad in its own inherent constitution—the cast of Yes is but a handful: the nameless narrator; his real-estate agent friend and existential rock Moritz; and a couple comprising a power-plant designing Swiss and his Persian lady friend who, as the book opens, have purchased a waterlogged parcel of land, parked between towering mountain and dim forest, on which to construct an unfriendly, concrete slab in which to pass the remainder of their years now that the Swiss' final project is nearing completion. The appearance of this oddly-balanced pairing at the very moment when the narrator has reached the nadir of his mental illness, wallowing in a paralyzing despair, locked away from all contact with the outside world for several months, serves as an invigorating tonic for him—vanquishes (temporarily) the miasmatic winds that have smothered his ambition and quenched his energy, and propels him into a renewed appreciation for and desire to once more read his beloved Schopenhauer, listen to his cherished Schumann, and pick up where he left off with his scientific study. What is it about the couple that produces such an effect? It is the presence of the Persian woman, whose taciturn and idiosyncratic personality portends of a beneficial potentiality as a walking partner for future excursions, an intelligent and commiserative being upon which to unload oneself, disburden oneself of the bleak psychic accumulations of a sustained depression.
Where will this ambulatory relationship proceed to? What secrets will it unveil, what dark avenues of the lugubrious Austrian woodland will the pair trod whilst using each other as sounding boards? Read it and see. The Persian woman presents a nice addition to the Bernhardian fictional method, as does the placid Moritz and his brief-but-pertinent placement in relation to the narrator. The latter himself is one of the more compelling of the author's textual conscious creations, providing a typically bleak assessment of life's many-sided failures, fatuousness and futility while yet managing to overcome the inevitability of following such morbid thoughts to their logical conclusion. Indeed, this faceless voice demonstrates a wisdom to limn his despair, a nuance to his condemnations that adds an extra poignancy to the flow. Schopenhauer's Will to Existence and concept of an aesthetically-attuned Genius are the first-class passengers here within its textual vessel, struggling to prevail against the rising tide of lung-filling pessimistic despair and its attendant brush strokes that coat all a Cimmerian slate.
I always find Bernhard hitting me right where it hurts, digging at that scab and describing the wound in nauseatingly accurate detail. He doesn't get everything right, of course, but there's much that rings all too true. Is it the fact that it is carried to such extremes that makes it easier to bear? The humor within the bile that allows it to more readily sink in? That the puzzle's pieces are variegated sufficiently that makes the final assembled image so captivating to behold? I think yes.
Yes, as another GR reviewer posited, is generally held to be one of Bernhard's minor works, but it is a perfectly-executed short piece markedly positioning itself within the transition from the earlier TB of Correction and The Lime Works to the mature period of Old Masters and The Loser. The narrative style, mental torment, personality debilitation, circular reasoning, and objective loathing/subjective despair are all in place from the previous (and much longer) books—but Yes tempers it all with a more measured and more, dare I say, hopeful element to balance against the bilious raging and torrential word-wounding that abounds within the monologic structure of fiction from Austria's finest razor-edged writer.
For one thing, the inevitable life's work that the narrator has been fixedly laboring at—in this case, a scientific study of antibodies in nature—whilst announced right out of the starting gate (together with the requisite plaint of suffering a persistent illness, though the meddling kinsman fails to make an appearance) quickly takes a back seat; indeed, other than the applicability between this study and the thematic progression of the novel, the unnamed narrator's prime obsession proves a secondary element of what the bi-paragraphical story is: a leanly brilliant, compactly sprung and, as always, harrowingly relatable working out of the terrible burdens inflicted upon an intelligent-but-splintered mind brought into being by an implacably hostile natural world during a period of prevailing nihilistic emptiness and immersed within the inescapable-because-omnipresent isolation that comprises the ultimate reality of that which we comprehend as our bounded existence.
As Bernhard sees it, we must be careful about what we wish for; must understand, as he does, that nothing comes up or about without a price; that what excites us, what we love is but a mirror image of that which appalls us, that which we loathe; that our busy and frenzied existence, ever-seeking and -obtaining new interests and passions and goals cannot effectively mask the understanding, innate to human existence, that all such desires represent but bright, gaudy colours painted upon an enervating and bleaching whiteness. Whatever we achieve or feel will, in time, become pale, wan, etiolated, listless, be recognized for the absurdity it is, the hollowness it is built around, the nothingness it points towards, the futility it represents. We must understand this and position within such knowledge the apparent solution of suicide. We must perceive this siren song of release and that we can stop-up our ears to it with human interaction, anchor ourselves against its pull with select individuals who ameliorate our condition—and that this buttressing potentiality can be reversed, sending us hurling towards self-abnegation at an unstoppable, irrecoverable speed. Everything is both necessary and superfluous, inviting and repulsive, healing and dangerous, helpful and murderous. Paradoxes abound. There truly is no way out of this conundrum of a reality that bruises after it caresses and reveals every rainbow as leading to a copper pot of rancid shit. Ceiling, floor, all four walls are spiked and slowly moving in—how shall we find the means to occupy our minds enough that this fact will withdraw into the background sufficient to allow us to set out to achieve something, anything.
That all sounds a bit florid, true, but—as any fan of Tommy B. knows well—it's a lithe and limber prose that the maestro trots out, delineating it all in a controlled sluicing of words that turns on a dime to head in a differing, but related, direction. Aside from the Austrian countryside and the antagonistic, antipathetic bucolic denizens who inhabit it and make it such a miserable place to domicile for intellectuals and/or foreigners—though, of course, the city is just as bad in its own inherent constitution—the cast of Yes is but a handful: the nameless narrator; his real-estate agent friend and existential rock Moritz; and a couple comprising a power-plant designing Swiss and his Persian lady friend who, as the book opens, have purchased a waterlogged parcel of land, parked between towering mountain and dim forest, on which to construct an unfriendly, concrete slab in which to pass the remainder of their years now that the Swiss' final project is nearing completion. The appearance of this oddly-balanced pairing at the very moment when the narrator has reached the nadir of his mental illness, wallowing in a paralyzing despair, locked away from all contact with the outside world for several months, serves as an invigorating tonic for him—vanquishes (temporarily) the miasmatic winds that have smothered his ambition and quenched his energy, and propels him into a renewed appreciation for and desire to once more read his beloved Schopenhauer, listen to his cherished Schumann, and pick up where he left off with his scientific study. What is it about the couple that produces such an effect? It is the presence of the Persian woman, whose taciturn and idiosyncratic personality portends of a beneficial potentiality as a walking partner for future excursions, an intelligent and commiserative being upon which to unload oneself, disburden oneself of the bleak psychic accumulations of a sustained depression.
Where will this ambulatory relationship proceed to? What secrets will it unveil, what dark avenues of the lugubrious Austrian woodland will the pair trod whilst using each other as sounding boards? Read it and see. The Persian woman presents a nice addition to the Bernhardian fictional method, as does the placid Moritz and his brief-but-pertinent placement in relation to the narrator. The latter himself is one of the more compelling of the author's textual conscious creations, providing a typically bleak assessment of life's many-sided failures, fatuousness and futility while yet managing to overcome the inevitability of following such morbid thoughts to their logical conclusion. Indeed, this faceless voice demonstrates a wisdom to limn his despair, a nuance to his condemnations that adds an extra poignancy to the flow. Schopenhauer's Will to Existence and concept of an aesthetically-attuned Genius are the first-class passengers here within its textual vessel, struggling to prevail against the rising tide of lung-filling pessimistic despair and its attendant brush strokes that coat all a Cimmerian slate.
I always find Bernhard hitting me right where it hurts, digging at that scab and describing the wound in nauseatingly accurate detail. He doesn't get everything right, of course, but there's much that rings all too true. Is it the fact that it is carried to such extremes that makes it easier to bear? The humor within the bile that allows it to more readily sink in? That the puzzle's pieces are variegated sufficiently that makes the final assembled image so captivating to behold? I think yes.
March 30, 2018
Soltanto un burlone come Bernhard poteva intitolare Sì un'opera così radicalmente pervasa da nichilismo.
Questo è uno dei libri di Bernhard (l'altro è Cemento) cui apporrei una fascetta con stampato a lettere ben visibili: "Tenere lontano dalla portata di chi ha familiarità con l'ala oscura della depressione".
Noi cerchiamo senza sosta di scoprire dei retroscena e non facciamo un solo passo avanti, soltanto complichiamo e ingarbugliamo ancor più ciò che è già complicato e ingarbugliato. Cerchiamo un colpevole del nostro destino, che quasi sempre, se siamo onesti, possiamo definire unicamente come sventura. Ci rompiamo la testa su cosa avremmo potuto fare diversamente o meglio e su cosa possibilmente non avremmo dovuto fare, perché ci siamo condannati, ma non porta a niente. La catastrofe era inevitabile, diciamo poi, e ci concediamo un periodo, anche se breve, di quiete. Poi ricominciamo da capo a porci domande e ci rodiamo e rodiamo fino a che siamo diventati di nuovo mezzi pazzi."
Questo è uno dei libri di Bernhard (l'altro è Cemento) cui apporrei una fascetta con stampato a lettere ben visibili: "Tenere lontano dalla portata di chi ha familiarità con l'ala oscura della depressione".
Noi cerchiamo senza sosta di scoprire dei retroscena e non facciamo un solo passo avanti, soltanto complichiamo e ingarbugliamo ancor più ciò che è già complicato e ingarbugliato. Cerchiamo un colpevole del nostro destino, che quasi sempre, se siamo onesti, possiamo definire unicamente come sventura. Ci rompiamo la testa su cosa avremmo potuto fare diversamente o meglio e su cosa possibilmente non avremmo dovuto fare, perché ci siamo condannati, ma non porta a niente. La catastrofe era inevitabile, diciamo poi, e ci concediamo un periodo, anche se breve, di quiete. Poi ricominciamo da capo a porci domande e ci rodiamo e rodiamo fino a che siamo diventati di nuovo mezzi pazzi."
March 29, 2024
Another Bernhard creation with all the unique characteristics of his intense renditions.
A Thomas Bernard novel is, for me, a reading experience, in which the "how" is just as important as the "what". Reading him for the first time, I was captivated to the point of seeking out everything he has ever written. I find that the key to reading him is to be a non-resistant reader, flowing with the stream of his narrators' thoughts, and letting them take you where they will. This novel is no exception.
As his narrator suggests, anything written cannot be done in a perfect manner, it can only be done in a fragmentary and incomplete way. Such is Bernhard's writing. It captures the manner in which the mind thinks, recollects and reflects, and it is never ordered, systematic or linear. The narrator shares his enthrallment with the interaction of thought and speech, and identifies them as "a philosophical-mathematical-musical process". It seems to me that this is a very apt description of Bernhard's writing. It is circular, melodious, and repetitive, as are themes in a musical creation. It is also completely stream of consciousness, and one has to surrender oneself to its rhythm or abandon ship.
This short novel is written with no breaks or paragraphs, except for one paragraph break that appears nearly half way through the novel and seems completely random. The reader is continuously present in the narrator's mind, with no break whatsoever, and his is the only prism we have of reality.
Knowing Bernard's biography, he seems to be addressing his own personal bouts of depression, isolation and despair that will finally bring him to commit suicide. His narrator speaks of there being no return from the isolation into which he has pushed himself, of his mental sickness, and of his "contactlessness". For him, despite the temporary respite achieved through his encounter with the "Persian woman", life remains nothing but a progress towards death, and he recognizes the indicators that are pushing him towards a choice to end it all.
"Yes" is the last word in this novel, and despite the affirmation inherent in the word, it holds no hope or comfort for the narrator. This episode in his life is just a short respite for him. The "Yes" at the end is but a validation of the Persian woman's reflection of the narrator's state of mind and of the illusory and brief stay from their respective conditions.
A Thomas Bernard novel is, for me, a reading experience, in which the "how" is just as important as the "what". Reading him for the first time, I was captivated to the point of seeking out everything he has ever written. I find that the key to reading him is to be a non-resistant reader, flowing with the stream of his narrators' thoughts, and letting them take you where they will. This novel is no exception.
As his narrator suggests, anything written cannot be done in a perfect manner, it can only be done in a fragmentary and incomplete way. Such is Bernhard's writing. It captures the manner in which the mind thinks, recollects and reflects, and it is never ordered, systematic or linear. The narrator shares his enthrallment with the interaction of thought and speech, and identifies them as "a philosophical-mathematical-musical process". It seems to me that this is a very apt description of Bernhard's writing. It is circular, melodious, and repetitive, as are themes in a musical creation. It is also completely stream of consciousness, and one has to surrender oneself to its rhythm or abandon ship.
This short novel is written with no breaks or paragraphs, except for one paragraph break that appears nearly half way through the novel and seems completely random. The reader is continuously present in the narrator's mind, with no break whatsoever, and his is the only prism we have of reality.
Knowing Bernard's biography, he seems to be addressing his own personal bouts of depression, isolation and despair that will finally bring him to commit suicide. His narrator speaks of there being no return from the isolation into which he has pushed himself, of his mental sickness, and of his "contactlessness". For him, despite the temporary respite achieved through his encounter with the "Persian woman", life remains nothing but a progress towards death, and he recognizes the indicators that are pushing him towards a choice to end it all.
"Yes" is the last word in this novel, and despite the affirmation inherent in the word, it holds no hope or comfort for the narrator. This episode in his life is just a short respite for him. The "Yes" at the end is but a validation of the Persian woman's reflection of the narrator's state of mind and of the illusory and brief stay from their respective conditions.
June 17, 2019
"Everything about everybody is nothing but diversion from death."
I always say this by way of caveat: I can't recommend Bernhard to you. But, let me qualify that statement: if you like, say, sitting somewhere, unobtrusively listening to an insane person going on relentlessly about what had earned them their pathetic station in life while drinking coffee/liquor/gasoline, then you will like Thomas Bernhard.
"Yes" is another book-length single paragraph with sentences in excess of 400 words, so they come across as untiring rants, hence my comparison above, that are best read in rapid-fire sittings, two or three at the most. Bernhard is very much a present voice and the relentlessness and persistence of his novels will give you high blood pressure and the need for a quick drink/huff after you get through 20 or 30 pages.
What is this novel about? Well, death, for one. Isolation and alienation, too, make their appearances. Another quote will suffice:
"...I have quite simply, in the most ridiculous and shameless, and also in the most depressing, manner, once more clung to my life and to my existence."
I always say this by way of caveat: I can't recommend Bernhard to you. But, let me qualify that statement: if you like, say, sitting somewhere, unobtrusively listening to an insane person going on relentlessly about what had earned them their pathetic station in life while drinking coffee/liquor/gasoline, then you will like Thomas Bernhard.
"Yes" is another book-length single paragraph with sentences in excess of 400 words, so they come across as untiring rants, hence my comparison above, that are best read in rapid-fire sittings, two or three at the most. Bernhard is very much a present voice and the relentlessness and persistence of his novels will give you high blood pressure and the need for a quick drink/huff after you get through 20 or 30 pages.
What is this novel about? Well, death, for one. Isolation and alienation, too, make their appearances. Another quote will suffice:
"...I have quite simply, in the most ridiculous and shameless, and also in the most depressing, manner, once more clung to my life and to my existence."
Read
July 11, 2018When Endings Ruin Books
By this I don't mean bad endings, I mean endings of any kind. What makes Bernhard so compulsively readable are his uncontrolled compulsions--hatred, misanthropy, disappointment, a perennially renewable feeling of outrage at the primitive, evil, selfish, filthy, animal-like characteristics of his fellow Austrians. The endlessness of his outrage is parallel to other authors' endlessnesses, for example Beckett's existential horror, or Swift's revulsion about bodies. And whatever is endless and can also be narrated needs not to have an ending.
Bernhard's "Gargoyles" is his best in this regard because it is almost bewilderlingly poorly structured: it is built around an unexpected monologue that ends, not because the speaker falls silent, but because the book has a last page.
"Yes" is a typical--by which I mean hypnotically self-involved and rigorously negative--Bernhard novel until page 121 in the English translation, because that is when we learn why a certain Swiss person bought a property for himself and his partner in the worst possible place (a sodden cold meadow that gets no sun and is only accessible through a cemetery): he wanted revenge on his partner of forty years. Then, a couple of pages later, we learn how the partner, a Persian woman, comes to understand the narrator's desperate state (he is a "failed" person, and suicidal), and she rejects him. And then she goes to live in the unfinished house the Swiss man had started to build for them. And then she stops eating. And then she kills herself.
Should I have done the usual thing and put "spoiler alert" at the top of these notes? (I know that on Goodreads people can do that even without the author of the review agreeing to it.) I don't think so. Bernhard novels are structured in such a way that they do not have "plots" with "suspense" or "endings." Their entire point, in that regard, is the hopelessness of the desire for endings or solutions, for finality, for what's now called closure. They are driven by a narrator--an implied author--who knows that endings cannot be anything more than fictions, and who struggles, in each book and between books, to understand what writing might be when it does not end. This is ostensively the case in much of Bernhard's fiction, and it is said by the narrator early on in "Yes": it's necessary, he says, to keep trying to accomplish something even though you know you cannot finish and if you do finish what you have accomplished will be a failure:
"In the knowledge that nothing at all is certain and that nothing is perfect, we should, even with the greatest uncertainty and with the greatest doubts, begin and continue to do what we have determined to do.... Just as we wake every day and have to begin and continue what we have determined to do, that is to continue existing, so we must begin and continue such an enterprise..." [p. 35]
The best of Bernhard's work enacts this cannibalistic despair in spectacular fashion. This book fails to enact it, which means, in Bernhard's own logic, that it actually ends: it has a plot, which has a resolution (in fact, multiple resolutions, as if it protests too much about its own closure). And therefore, in a way that is entirely inverted from the normal understanding, it has events that can be called spoilers. And yet: if your reading is at all spoiled by what I wrote in the third paragraph, you are entirely misreading Bernhard: you're hoping that at his best he is one of the Austrian bourgeois that he hated so poisonously--and in this book, right at the end, he nearly is.
As a postscript I might add that the reason this book is driven toward such neat resolutions is its author's resolution to write directly about his thoughts of suicide: a subject that is always among the most difficult to put into fiction.
By this I don't mean bad endings, I mean endings of any kind. What makes Bernhard so compulsively readable are his uncontrolled compulsions--hatred, misanthropy, disappointment, a perennially renewable feeling of outrage at the primitive, evil, selfish, filthy, animal-like characteristics of his fellow Austrians. The endlessness of his outrage is parallel to other authors' endlessnesses, for example Beckett's existential horror, or Swift's revulsion about bodies. And whatever is endless and can also be narrated needs not to have an ending.
Bernhard's "Gargoyles" is his best in this regard because it is almost bewilderlingly poorly structured: it is built around an unexpected monologue that ends, not because the speaker falls silent, but because the book has a last page.
"Yes" is a typical--by which I mean hypnotically self-involved and rigorously negative--Bernhard novel until page 121 in the English translation, because that is when we learn why a certain Swiss person bought a property for himself and his partner in the worst possible place (a sodden cold meadow that gets no sun and is only accessible through a cemetery): he wanted revenge on his partner of forty years. Then, a couple of pages later, we learn how the partner, a Persian woman, comes to understand the narrator's desperate state (he is a "failed" person, and suicidal), and she rejects him. And then she goes to live in the unfinished house the Swiss man had started to build for them. And then she stops eating. And then she kills herself.
Should I have done the usual thing and put "spoiler alert" at the top of these notes? (I know that on Goodreads people can do that even without the author of the review agreeing to it.) I don't think so. Bernhard novels are structured in such a way that they do not have "plots" with "suspense" or "endings." Their entire point, in that regard, is the hopelessness of the desire for endings or solutions, for finality, for what's now called closure. They are driven by a narrator--an implied author--who knows that endings cannot be anything more than fictions, and who struggles, in each book and between books, to understand what writing might be when it does not end. This is ostensively the case in much of Bernhard's fiction, and it is said by the narrator early on in "Yes": it's necessary, he says, to keep trying to accomplish something even though you know you cannot finish and if you do finish what you have accomplished will be a failure:
"In the knowledge that nothing at all is certain and that nothing is perfect, we should, even with the greatest uncertainty and with the greatest doubts, begin and continue to do what we have determined to do.... Just as we wake every day and have to begin and continue what we have determined to do, that is to continue existing, so we must begin and continue such an enterprise..." [p. 35]
The best of Bernhard's work enacts this cannibalistic despair in spectacular fashion. This book fails to enact it, which means, in Bernhard's own logic, that it actually ends: it has a plot, which has a resolution (in fact, multiple resolutions, as if it protests too much about its own closure). And therefore, in a way that is entirely inverted from the normal understanding, it has events that can be called spoilers. And yet: if your reading is at all spoiled by what I wrote in the third paragraph, you are entirely misreading Bernhard: you're hoping that at his best he is one of the Austrian bourgeois that he hated so poisonously--and in this book, right at the end, he nearly is.
As a postscript I might add that the reason this book is driven toward such neat resolutions is its author's resolution to write directly about his thoughts of suicide: a subject that is always among the most difficult to put into fiction.
November 5, 2022
Wederom een diepe buiging herr Bernhard!
August 5, 2019
I am a big fan of the Spanish writer Javier Marias. I have noticed that the Austrian Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) is mentioned as a source of inspiration for the Proustian writing style of Marias. Until now, from Bernhard I only read Wittgenstein's Nephew, and then I did not really see the link. But with this "Yes" it has become clear to me: Bernhard starts this monologue with an impossibly long sentence of no less than 6 pages. And such stunts regularly return, very clever and regularly brilliantly formulated. But I soon noticed that occasionally something faltered in the construction of the sentences: Bernhard sometimes makes unnatural jumps and combines parts of phrases that substantially demand a point between them. You will not find that with Marias. So it seems to me that Marias has absolutely perfected Bernhard's style process and made it more natural.
And then there is the content. In essence, this story can be summarized briefly, without giving away too much of the intrigue: the unnamed narrator has reached a dead end in his life, and openly has suicidal thoughts, but then he discovers someone - an Iranian (Bernhard still uses the word 'Persian') woman who has been married to a busy Swiss engineer for 40 years - who is clearly even worse off and also acts upon that desperate state in a consistent way. Where our narrator initially seems to arouse some sympathy for his own "Geisteskrankheit", he appears to be but a very pathetic person compared to the Iranian woman.
Anyone who knows anything about Bernhard knows that one should not expect an uplifting story, not even in a booklet titled "Yes." For a moment I thought that this "yes" was an echo of Penelope Bloom's phenomenal final chord in James Joyce's Ulysses. But in retrospect, this turned out to be just the opposite, and that's typical for Bernhard.
Also in this booklet, as before in "Wittgenstein's nephew", Bernhard occasionally could not resist outing his outrage against the suffocating world around him, especially the 'biederer' Austrians of course, and giving air to the futility of existence. I think he had every right to do that, but already after the 2nd time his message started to look a bit repetitive and trite. Also, the monologue of our socially isolated narrator is full of repetitions, which is rather enervating. But all in all, if you accept the Bernhardian nihilistic undertone and the somewhat inconsistent style, this is a book worth reading. Nothing more, nothing less. Clearly, I still prefer Marias.
And then there is the content. In essence, this story can be summarized briefly, without giving away too much of the intrigue: the unnamed narrator has reached a dead end in his life, and openly has suicidal thoughts, but then he discovers someone - an Iranian (Bernhard still uses the word 'Persian') woman who has been married to a busy Swiss engineer for 40 years - who is clearly even worse off and also acts upon that desperate state in a consistent way. Where our narrator initially seems to arouse some sympathy for his own "Geisteskrankheit", he appears to be but a very pathetic person compared to the Iranian woman.
Anyone who knows anything about Bernhard knows that one should not expect an uplifting story, not even in a booklet titled "Yes." For a moment I thought that this "yes" was an echo of Penelope Bloom's phenomenal final chord in James Joyce's Ulysses. But in retrospect, this turned out to be just the opposite, and that's typical for Bernhard.
Also in this booklet, as before in "Wittgenstein's nephew", Bernhard occasionally could not resist outing his outrage against the suffocating world around him, especially the 'biederer' Austrians of course, and giving air to the futility of existence. I think he had every right to do that, but already after the 2nd time his message started to look a bit repetitive and trite. Also, the monologue of our socially isolated narrator is full of repetitions, which is rather enervating. But all in all, if you accept the Bernhardian nihilistic undertone and the somewhat inconsistent style, this is a book worth reading. Nothing more, nothing less. Clearly, I still prefer Marias.
September 16, 2010
Surprisingly enjoyable (and sort of weirdly funny) considering what a grim disgorging of despair and nihilism this is, and how little actually happens. An isolated scientist, too depressed for months to continue his research (on antibodies), arbitrarily breaks his self-destructive cycle upon meeting a new couple who has just bought land in the area. But you know his unjustified enthusiasm cannot possibly last. Told entirely inside the protagonist's head, in just two paragraphs in 135 pages, as he obsessively turns events over and over and over. Very Beckett-like at times, depressive but vaguely absurd, though without Beckett's overt moments of artifice.
As usual, lately, I've set aside a couple other quotes here.
I read this as a sort of rapid appetizer to the copy of The Lime Works that I've just picked up, and am very much looking forward to.
We have reconciled ourselves to the fact that we have to exist, even though most of the time against our will, because we have no other choice, and only because we have again and again reconciled ourselves to this fact, every day and every moment anew, can we progress at all. And where we are progressing to, we have, if we are honest, known all our lives, to death, except most of the time we are careful not to admit it. And because we have the certainty of doing nothing except progressing towards death, and because we realize what that means, we try to employ all kinds of aids to divert us from that realization, and thus, if we look closely, we see in this world nothing except people continually and all their lives engaged in such a diversion. (p.70-71)
As usual, lately, I've set aside a couple other quotes here.
I read this as a sort of rapid appetizer to the copy of The Lime Works that I've just picked up, and am very much looking forward to.
June 24, 2019
A lesser Bernhard novel, lacking the sort of terrifying lucid cohesion of Woodcutters or Correction, stinting not on weapons-grade Weltschmerz.
September 25, 2022
Ufffffffffffff, está buenísimo, buenísimo y loquísimo
este autor me mata
este autor me mata
May 22, 2019
"But anything to be written has to be, time and again, begun from the start, and time and again attempted anew, until one day it succeeds at least approximately, if never quite satisfactorily. No matter how unpromising it is and no matter how terrible and hopeless, if we have a subject which time and again, and yet time and again, grips us with the utmost persistence and no longer leaves us alone, it should time and again be attempted. In the knowledge that nothing at all is certain and that nothing at all is perfect, we should, even with the greatest uncertainty and with the greatest doubts, begin and continue whatever we have determined to do. If we give up each time before we have started, we eventually find ourselves in desperation, and finally and ultimately we no longer get out of that desperation and are lost. […] After all, there is nothing but failure. If at least we have the will to fail we make progress, and in everything, in each and everything, we must at least have the will to fail unless we wish to perish at a very early stage, which of course cannot be the intention behind our existence." (35)There were many great, memorable, and haunting passages in Yes, but this one best describes—sums up—Bernhard for me.
April 2, 2015
This is what a love story looks like once it's been thoroughly Bernhardised: much better, in other words, than your average love story, but perhaps not as good as your average Bernhard novel. It's great fun to watch the standard "I was feeling hopeless and depressed but then I met a fascinating woman and we both felt great and I performed great works and she did too" narrative given a more realistic conclusion, and waiting for it to reach that conclusion was enjoyable. But there's not much else going on other than a grim and glorious riposte to the famously affirmative conclusion of Joyce's Ulysses: while Molly Bloom (spoiler alert!), orgasmically affirms life and love, Bernhard's version of Molly affirms suicide. And it's just as affirmative.
Also, it's way more fun to refer to this book as Ja, said with a toothy Austrian accent.
Also, it's way more fun to refer to this book as Ja, said with a toothy Austrian accent.
December 28, 2021
Până la Bernhard, vă garantez că n-ați mai citit așa ceva! Însă asta - iarăși ! - nu-i o proză pe care s-o parcurgi fragmentat, cu mintea zburând în altă parte.
December 5, 2022
Maybe a new favourite Bernhard. I’ll have to gather my thoughts on this one.
My full review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2022/12/04/ev...
My full review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2022/12/04/ev...
March 12, 2020
Mijn bespreking staat op rekto:verso: https://www.rektoverso.be/artikel/de-...
September 15, 2025
Immer wieder gerne
December 5, 2022
the masses, clinging to bellies and possessions, were on the march against the heads and against the minds. anyone thinking must be mistrusted and must be persecuted, that is the old slogan according to which they are once more acting in the most terrible manner. the newspapers speak a distasteful language, the distasteful language they have always spoken but which, during the past few decades, they had spoken only with lowered voices, which suddenly they no longer had any reason to do, almost without exception they were posturing like the people in order to please the people, those mind murderers. dreams of a world of the mind had been betrayed during these weeks and thrown on the popular refuse heap. the voices of the intellect had fallen silent.bernhard's fifth novel, originally published in 1978, yes (ja) is a dark, doom-laden descent into dreariness and depression. the austrian writer's uninterrupted single-paragraph narrative takes on ever more existential weight before reaching its inevitable conclusion. within his fevered sentences and the richly exposed interiors of his troubled characters, bernhard captures an unrelenting turmoil of the mind and irrepressible tumult of the soul.
*translated from the german by ewald osers
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