El carpintero y otros relatos

by Thomas Bernhard, Miguel Sáenz (Translator)

Escritos a partir de 1965 y correspondientes, por tanto, a la época de plena madurez del autor, los relatos de Thomas Bernhard reunidos en el presente volumen han sido descritos por Reich-Ranicki como «estudios psicológicos abismales de sufrimiento humano, diagnósticos literarios de estados y casos patológicos, que enseguida, y como espontáneamente, hacen saltar los límites de lo aislado para convertirse en ejemplares..., en parábolas poéticas».

Si El carpintero —el que abre y da título al volumen— puede considerarse un verdadero alegato social en el que Bernhard presenta al delincuente como producto inevitable de un entorno rural embrutecedor, Jauregg presenta una existencia humana, igualmente atormentada, en el mundo cerrado de unas canteras.

Dos preceptores consiste en un diálogo, o, mejor dicho, la transcripción del monólogo de un preceptor a punto de enloquecer de insomnio, mientras que La gorra —impregnado de un humor inquietante que contribuye a catalogar esta historia entre los textos más característicos del autor— describe un proceso claramente psiquiátrico desde el miedo del protagonista a la locura.

Probablemente el relato más citado de Bernhard, ¿Es una comedia? ¿Es una tragedia? entra de lleno en el terreno de lo grotesco rozando lo esperpéntico. La concepción del mundo como representación teatral que en el se refleja enlaza el autor directamente con los clásicos, aunque la vida no aparezca aquí como tragicomedia y como comedia a la vez.

Midland en Stilfs, que sigue el breve relato titulado Agregado en la Emabajada de Francia, remite a las novelas y relatos bernhardianos —una familia en decadencia, un asfixiante pueblo de alta montaña, una mansión en ruinas en la cual los muebles se pudren y la biblioteca ha sido clausurada, la aparición de un extraño que sirve el catalizador de la catástrofe— al tiempo que en El abrigo de loden un tosco abrigo de paño, al parecer capaz de provocar suicidios en cadena cobra dimensiones simbólicas.

Finalmente, En el Ortler describe una ascensión de montaña hacia la utopía que tiene que desembocar forzosamente en la nada.

177 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

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

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

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

Reviews

[César · Rating 5 out of 5]

El mejor libro de relatos de Bernhard que he leído hasta ahora.

[Axel Ainglish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among Bernhard's best are his weird but very real short stories. Of isolation and sickness. Of death, suicide and ruin. But don't worry, there's no drama. It all goes in a very cold way. It's so cold that at the end of each obsessive tale you may think the author himself has gone nut, for having had to tell you about that. Bernhard speaks about what nobody wants to know. Apparently these are common people characters. But you will soon realise they are not common at all. And he tells you about them in a frozen way, as if he was watching odd insects behaviour. He does not try to solve their problems or help them, he is just observing and then telling you. At the end you have what happens and what he thinks about. But you can see from the beginning that he is going to change nothing. Is he cruel? Or is it just some icy clinical point of view? There is a sort of unavoidable fate in all of his stories. There is an inner solitude, also, in all his characters. They live in despair, in an almost silent one. Lost as they are, in the wild, abrupt and cold nature of the high Austrian mountains. Found The Casket (if that's its English title) was a good one, but there are several good ones. What saves Bernhard of being a depressing author is a certain sense of humour hidden in the exaggeration he displays. You can't avoid thinking "come on, it can't be so awful", or something alike. It's the fact of being a bit too much, the fact of being somehow stories out of bounds. It's the exaggeration itself, that can make the reader perhaps laugh, now and then. After two or three of Bernhard tales you will probably think that the world can't be so sick or so mad. And no doubt you will be right. That saves the whole, and possibly adds another outlook into his world. These stories, probably were already in his mind when teaching over there, or working in the crime section of that region newspapers. They are his thoughts about what he observes. In form of speeches, as his usual novel monologues, about the same matters. By the way, it's an obsessive writer and he shows it all the time. His style is a very peculiar one. For he sinks you in a kind of circular obsession where details go adding to one another and so the obsessive matter just grows on and on, till the end. There's a lot of lucidity in depicting the world under so dark colours, after all. And for those who can see that, it's to whom this author is telling. For inspite of the exaggeration, what's behind are still some very real pictures, not everybody would like to see. So, maybe not for everyone. But doubtless for Bernhard lovers. Do not miss them. Doubtless as weird as him, but good, almost easy readings. Allow yourself to enter in his obsessions : you may find yourself laughing about what's not laughable, but... That's Bernhard.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Leer a Bernhard ha sido una revelación para mi. Empieza en un lugar y termina en otro que, al parecer, muchas veces no tiene nada que ver con donde empezó. A través de sus desvaríos constantes, Bernhard logra plasmar unas ideas muy oscuras sobre la raza humana de una manera incomparable. Uno de los temas principales de estos relatos es la forma brutal en la que la vida rural limita la inteligencia y las metas de los que viven fuera de la ciudad, lo que los lleva a una desesperación peculiar y casi siempre inevitable. Tema curioso para un escritor que escogió vivir solo en la alta sierra de Austria...