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O presidente
O que uma peça escrita nos anos 1970 numa distante Áustria pode dizer sobre o país de cá e de agora? A princípio, nada, é o que podemos pensar. Será?
Nesta peça até hoje inédita no Brasil, o escritor austríaco Thomas Bernhard nos proporciona uma visão privilegiada dos bastidores da vida oficial de um presidente e sua amante, uma primeira-dama de nariz empinado e seu capelão conselheiro.
Desafiando os limites entre trágico e cômico, as fronteiras se apagam. Para além do teatro, as divisões entre passado e presente e até mesmo entre Brasil e Áustria se confundem.
Nesta peça até hoje inédita no Brasil, o escritor austríaco Thomas Bernhard nos proporciona uma visão privilegiada dos bastidores da vida oficial de um presidente e sua amante, uma primeira-dama de nariz empinado e seu capelão conselheiro.
Desafiando os limites entre trágico e cômico, as fronteiras se apagam. Para além do teatro, as divisões entre passado e presente e até mesmo entre Brasil e Áustria se confundem.
195 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1975
2 people are currently reading
9 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Bernhard
290 books2,495 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 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 11, 2026
Interessant, però sense la mala bava que m'agrada trobar-li.
September 14, 2024
Der Präsident [The President]
According to Thomas Bernhard bibliographer, Jens Dittmar, the debut of Der Präsident (1975) was met with a chorus of booing. Bernhard, scholar, biographer and translator Gita Honegger, seconds that appraisal, pointing out that the audience sped for the exits during Acts I and II. Nevertheless, Ms. Honegger chose to translate this play along the Vor Dem Ruhestand, [The Eve of Retirement], one of Bernhard’s most famous and most-often-performed works. For the Performing Arts Journal Publications (1979). Tellingly, The Eve of Retirement was produced in the USA, but The President has not been, at least according to Dittmar, whose bibliography was last updated in the early aughts.
As critics have pointed out, Bernhard is not much of a political thinker. In fact, there really isn’t much politics in Bernhard’s plays and prose, excepting Der Präsident. Typically in Bernhard’s work, there is outrage at the absurdity of life, and outrage at Austria, or outrage at “Die Staat,” but not a critical position concerning a government policy, other than a critique of the ingrown obeisance to National Socialism in 1970’s and 80’s Austria. Of course, Bernhard’s most famous works criticize Austrians as unrepentant Nazi’s, a position which earned him scorn in the last decade of his life, but which was consistent with Bernhard’s moral ethos and disgust with his native land. While Bernhard’s position took great moral courage, it was hardly a viewpoint, retrospectively, which could be considered subtle. Presenting aging Nazis as Grotesk stereotypes was more of a (successful) attempt at macabre humor than bold commentary: Behold these aging Nazis in all their oblivious depravity!
This may explain the audience’s perplexity and disgust at the debut of Der President in 1975, famously performed the same day as the Stammheim trial of the Baader-Meinhof Group began. How cryptic is Bernhard in releasing a play about anarchists and anarchist unrest when the anarchists are never presented and utter not a word in the play? Instead, the audience is privy to the absurd monologues and the privileged lives of a president and his wife in an unnamed—presumably--Germanic, country. The pair recently survived an assassination attempt. An attempt which unfortunately killed the president’s wife’s dog (it had a hear attack). The first two scenes present the President and his wife in all their cluelessness and whiny privilege as the President receives a massage and the wife is fawned over by an attendant. The monologues are repetitive, a hallmark of Bernhard, and rather dull, not a hallmark of Bernhard. The President’s wife repeats her favorite mantra throughout the play:
President’s Wife: A country
Full of hate Frau Gay*
Envy
Hate
Nothing else.
*“Frau Frölich” translates, clunkily as Frau Happiness. Although her name is repeated ad nauseum throughout the play, there is no happiness.
Perhaps having the wife soliloquizing to the dead dog’s empty basket did not have the intended effect on dog lovers in the audience? Sure, mourning a dead dog could be considered absurd in the face of political unrest and murder, but mocking the wife could simply disgust many members of the audience with dogs. Hence the stampede for the exits. The President’s wife was unwittingly humanized rather than trivialized by the playwright.
Unfortunately, the departed audience members ended up missing the best part of the play; acts III and IV, which take place in the resort town, Estoril, on the Coast north of Lisbon, and completely redeem Der Präsident. There is some devasting political commentary embedded in the President’s extended monologues in these acts, interrupted only by terse, laconic obsequiousness. The monologues in acts III and IV contain Bernhard’s best and political commentary; tacit commentary on a Paradisiacal society that does not enable terrorists (like those dealing with the wave of anarchist terrorism in the mid-70’s).
Officer: In Portugal there are no assassins.
Another Officer: Anarchists and assassins
There are none here. (pg. 145. Translation mine)
And here we have—at least in my opinion—the crux of this play. An aging jaded President heads off to Estoril, Portugal to forget about and escape the political unrest in his own land. He tosses money at his actress mistress and gives a stunning monologue of disenchantment, all while Portuguese attendants wax poetic (albeit with minimal lines) about how safe and secure Portugal is, a country only slowly awakening from a fascist dictatorship, Salazar’s, that enabled Portugal to remain neutral in WWII. The resort town of Estoril, was the playground for the rich and famous. The casino in the center of town is the famed Casino Royal (Estoril) of James Bond fame. The adjacent hotel, The English Hotel, where acts III and IV take place, is where a flux of refugees, spies, and shift double-agents, and others congregated to wait out World War II or awaited safe passage to a country outside of Europe.
Estoril, Portugal presents a safe haven (in 1975) for a clueless president who only cares about his own security. It is a safe so long as the President has wads of cash to toss to his mistress and the Portuguese. Like much of Bernhard’s work, a duality or either/or proposition is represented without any other options. Either a tolerant country is overrun with anarchist activity, or a lingering dictatorship presents itself as a safe haven to political unrest because there are plenty of prisons for agitators to disappear into. This point is a bit subtler than critics give Bernhard credit for. And perhaps the audience members who abandoned after Act II of the premier, would have enjoyed the final three acts, two of which occur in Estoril. Bernhard is at his trenchant misanthropic best during the President’s monologues. While acts I and II present trivialized oblivious leaders, acts III and IV show the self-serving world of political exiles (who exploited those under them) and their enablers in all their moral ambiguity with their comedic pessimistic view of human nature.
According to Thomas Bernhard bibliographer, Jens Dittmar, the debut of Der Präsident (1975) was met with a chorus of booing. Bernhard, scholar, biographer and translator Gita Honegger, seconds that appraisal, pointing out that the audience sped for the exits during Acts I and II. Nevertheless, Ms. Honegger chose to translate this play along the Vor Dem Ruhestand, [The Eve of Retirement], one of Bernhard’s most famous and most-often-performed works. For the Performing Arts Journal Publications (1979). Tellingly, The Eve of Retirement was produced in the USA, but The President has not been, at least according to Dittmar, whose bibliography was last updated in the early aughts.
As critics have pointed out, Bernhard is not much of a political thinker. In fact, there really isn’t much politics in Bernhard’s plays and prose, excepting Der Präsident. Typically in Bernhard’s work, there is outrage at the absurdity of life, and outrage at Austria, or outrage at “Die Staat,” but not a critical position concerning a government policy, other than a critique of the ingrown obeisance to National Socialism in 1970’s and 80’s Austria. Of course, Bernhard’s most famous works criticize Austrians as unrepentant Nazi’s, a position which earned him scorn in the last decade of his life, but which was consistent with Bernhard’s moral ethos and disgust with his native land. While Bernhard’s position took great moral courage, it was hardly a viewpoint, retrospectively, which could be considered subtle. Presenting aging Nazis as Grotesk stereotypes was more of a (successful) attempt at macabre humor than bold commentary: Behold these aging Nazis in all their oblivious depravity!
This may explain the audience’s perplexity and disgust at the debut of Der President in 1975, famously performed the same day as the Stammheim trial of the Baader-Meinhof Group began. How cryptic is Bernhard in releasing a play about anarchists and anarchist unrest when the anarchists are never presented and utter not a word in the play? Instead, the audience is privy to the absurd monologues and the privileged lives of a president and his wife in an unnamed—presumably--Germanic, country. The pair recently survived an assassination attempt. An attempt which unfortunately killed the president’s wife’s dog (it had a hear attack). The first two scenes present the President and his wife in all their cluelessness and whiny privilege as the President receives a massage and the wife is fawned over by an attendant. The monologues are repetitive, a hallmark of Bernhard, and rather dull, not a hallmark of Bernhard. The President’s wife repeats her favorite mantra throughout the play:
President’s Wife: A country
Full of hate Frau Gay*
Envy
Hate
Nothing else.
*“Frau Frölich” translates, clunkily as Frau Happiness. Although her name is repeated ad nauseum throughout the play, there is no happiness.
Perhaps having the wife soliloquizing to the dead dog’s empty basket did not have the intended effect on dog lovers in the audience? Sure, mourning a dead dog could be considered absurd in the face of political unrest and murder, but mocking the wife could simply disgust many members of the audience with dogs. Hence the stampede for the exits. The President’s wife was unwittingly humanized rather than trivialized by the playwright.
Unfortunately, the departed audience members ended up missing the best part of the play; acts III and IV, which take place in the resort town, Estoril, on the Coast north of Lisbon, and completely redeem Der Präsident. There is some devasting political commentary embedded in the President’s extended monologues in these acts, interrupted only by terse, laconic obsequiousness. The monologues in acts III and IV contain Bernhard’s best and political commentary; tacit commentary on a Paradisiacal society that does not enable terrorists (like those dealing with the wave of anarchist terrorism in the mid-70’s).
Officer: In Portugal there are no assassins.
Another Officer: Anarchists and assassins
There are none here. (pg. 145. Translation mine)
And here we have—at least in my opinion—the crux of this play. An aging jaded President heads off to Estoril, Portugal to forget about and escape the political unrest in his own land. He tosses money at his actress mistress and gives a stunning monologue of disenchantment, all while Portuguese attendants wax poetic (albeit with minimal lines) about how safe and secure Portugal is, a country only slowly awakening from a fascist dictatorship, Salazar’s, that enabled Portugal to remain neutral in WWII. The resort town of Estoril, was the playground for the rich and famous. The casino in the center of town is the famed Casino Royal (Estoril) of James Bond fame. The adjacent hotel, The English Hotel, where acts III and IV take place, is where a flux of refugees, spies, and shift double-agents, and others congregated to wait out World War II or awaited safe passage to a country outside of Europe.
Estoril, Portugal presents a safe haven (in 1975) for a clueless president who only cares about his own security. It is a safe so long as the President has wads of cash to toss to his mistress and the Portuguese. Like much of Bernhard’s work, a duality or either/or proposition is represented without any other options. Either a tolerant country is overrun with anarchist activity, or a lingering dictatorship presents itself as a safe haven to political unrest because there are plenty of prisons for agitators to disappear into. This point is a bit subtler than critics give Bernhard credit for. And perhaps the audience members who abandoned after Act II of the premier, would have enjoyed the final three acts, two of which occur in Estoril. Bernhard is at his trenchant misanthropic best during the President’s monologues. While acts I and II present trivialized oblivious leaders, acts III and IV show the self-serving world of political exiles (who exploited those under them) and their enablers in all their moral ambiguity with their comedic pessimistic view of human nature.
March 29, 2025
Niemand entgeht dem Hass und Ehrgeiz.
Frau Fröhlich so helfen Sie doch!
Frau Fröhlich so helfen Sie doch!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews