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Autobiography #1-5
Relatos autobiográficos
Con motivo del vigésimo aniversario del fallecimiento de Thomas Bernhard, se reúnen aquí los cinco volúmenes de los escritos autobiográficos cuya publicación se inició con El origen en 1983, seguido de El sótano, El aliento, El frío y Un niño.
Desde una furiosa invectiva contra el sistema educativo y, en particular, contra el nacionalismo y el catolicismo, hasta la descripción de una época de horror marcada por el nazismo y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el lector de estos Relatos autobiográficos descubrirá cómo Bernhard logró concebir y construir una obra que es una «exaltación de la supervivencia».
Claro, objetivo, irónico, iconoclasta, sublevándose contra el hecho mismo de estar en el mundo, el autor nos sitúa aquí ante una pentalogía que muy bien podría calificarse de «novela autobiográfica»: lo que leemos es la descripción de una vida como invención de una vida. Así, Bernhard nos revela en estos relatos cómo llegó a ser el escritor que fue.
Desde una furiosa invectiva contra el sistema educativo y, en particular, contra el nacionalismo y el catolicismo, hasta la descripción de una época de horror marcada por el nazismo y la Segunda Guerra Mundial, el lector de estos Relatos autobiográficos descubrirá cómo Bernhard logró concebir y construir una obra que es una «exaltación de la supervivencia».
Claro, objetivo, irónico, iconoclasta, sublevándose contra el hecho mismo de estar en el mundo, el autor nos sitúa aquí ante una pentalogía que muy bien podría calificarse de «novela autobiográfica»: lo que leemos es la descripción de una vida como invención de una vida. Así, Bernhard nos revela en estos relatos cómo llegó a ser el escritor que fue.
489 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1986
100 people are currently reading
2294 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Bernhard
288 books2,429 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 119 reviews
July 27, 2020
Absent father. Beloved grandfather. Country walks. Edelweiss stirring in the alpine breeze. "He had frayed trousers, as is shown in photographs taken at the time." A deceived woman. "My mother was destined to be a Prima Ballerina." Lies. "The most terrible child in the world." Schubert. "Getting back to my warm bed was sheer delight." National Socialism. Incompetence. "'Man's most precious possession', grandfather said, 'was his freedom to take leave of this world by suicide.'" Singing lessons. The study of musicology. Chamberlain's umbrella. Schopenhauer. Anschluss. Strudel. Air raid. "’There's an arm,’ I said, and on the arm was a watch." Five-hundred pounders. Incendiaries. All clear all clear. Americans. The Marshall Plan. Scherzhauserfeld Project. The dipsomaniacal lost, dispossessed, walking wounded. A criminal element that goes straight to prison. Death. Loss. Requiem. Burial. Grief. The Wildspitze. The Großgrogen. "But all he [the grandfather] got from his relatives, and from the citizens of Salzburg in general, was calumny and contempt." Haydn. Grafenhof. Sputum, x-rays. Surgery. Pneumothorax. No anesthesia. Crushing the nerve. Near-death-experience. Incompetence. "He spoke in the matter-of-fact tone that head physician’s employ when speaking of the horrific and the unspeakable.” “I had to make sure of getting out of this place--and quickly." Dostoyevsky's Demons. "We studied the great oratorios of Bach and Handel."
January 14, 2024
Tras leer todos sus relatos autobiográficos, tras saber de todas las desgracias que le tocó padecer en sus primeros 20 años de vida, que son los aquí relatados, tras conocer los inicios de su su desprecio por la vida, no mayor que su autodesprecio, uno no puede sino preguntarse por qué no acabó matándose, estando la idea del suicidio sobrevolando continuamente por toda la narración. Y aunque siempre podemos sospechar que buena parte de lo aquí narrado pueda ser ficción, lo que no quiere decir que no sea verdad, la respuesta parece que nos la da el propio autor en “El frío”, donde confiesa su autodesprecio por seguir viviendo, por aferrarse a la vida, por aceptar toda clase de compromisos repugnantes, por refugiarse en la falta de carácter “como en una piel nauseabunda pero cálida”. Y sin llegar a dudar de que esto sea tal como nos lo cuenta, personalmente creo que la elección de seguir viviendo responde más a la estrategia que dirigió toda su existencia: tomar siempre la dirección opuesta, completamente la opuesta.
Otro aspecto que llama poderosamente la atención es que en estas 600 páginas de recuerdos solo hay una línea, exactamente una línea, en lo referente a su sexualidad. Da qué pensar.
Aquí podéis leer lo que opiné de cada uno de ellos:
El origen
El sótano
El aliento
El frío
Un niño
February 9, 2023
This autobiographical, five - part novel ( An Indication of the Cause, The Cellar, A breath, Cold, The child) is a meticulous reconstruction of the years of adolescence. This is uncompromising attack on the destructive forces: school, family, church, society. It is accusing assessment of blind in its conformism nation, its disgraceful deeds, its reluctant memory, the infinite human inertia. This is undisguised manifestation of contempt and hatred. It is planned and with surgical precision performed an operation on the whole Austrian society and himself as well. This is a tribute to the solitude, to acting despite all trends, going in the opposite direction, always leaning against the wind.
Everybody got scolding here. Salzburg, city catholic to the core and Nazi at the same time, inhabited by self-satisfied petit bourgeois, philistines and hypocrytes. Boarding school with fascist-nationalist educational plan, ruled by perverse, national-socialist director; an oppressive place breaking character and poisoning mind and soul, the prison with constant thought about suicide, especially during playing the violin what created in narrator’s head mechanism, whenever he heard a violin later he thought about suicide until finally smashed the instrument. Bastard’s childhood full of humiliation and harassment, rehabilitation centre for difficult children in Thuringia and much more debasement, hospital where he landed with lung disease and where watched round-the-clock ritual of illness and death, sanatorium for tuberculosis like a diabolical parody of Magic Mountain. Ghastly parade of anguish and death. Dispassionately doctors, contemptuous teachers, hypocritical clergy. No single human solidarity and pity. It reads like a report of the man perfectly familiar with all arcana of illness and dying, because in fact the narrator himself was a graduate of the university of disease and death for lifetime attending to its classes.
Bernhard's style is recognisable. Prose is dense, condensed; whole pages with no gaps, spaces, paragraphs; long, complex sentences, full of still repetitive phrases give the novel a specific melody and cadence, which in some hallucinatory manner attracts you to read. You will go out from the reading wounded and broken, with bruised soul, feeling a lump in your throat. You'll be thinking about human condition, you will know that the man, in fact, this is not a beautiful creature.
January 16, 2013
I'm an irritable person. More and more in my daily life I find myself at the mercy of blinding fits of spleen. Whether it's people who drive too slow or order iced tea in restaurants or sniff deodorant in the store or watch NBC's The Voice, there's always some irritant ready-at-hand to set me at odds with the world. You see, I'm the kind of perpetually grousing curmudgeon that you pity or avoid—because if you're optimistic or excited about something, I'll inevitably try to take a piss all over it. Now don't imagine that my piss-taking is an intentional offense against you personally—because it's not. It's true that there's something about dunderheaded optimists that makes you (meaning me) want to cut their brake line, but it's only because they are incarnations of the delusions and ignorance which shape the fate of humankind.
I feel safe in claiming to you that I've found a kindred spirit in Thomas Bernhard. I've read most of his novels and a few of his plays, and generally speaking his oeuvre is a private celebration of gripe and gloom—hidden away from the pitying tsks of the Pollyannas of the world. Society—particularly American society—teaches us to be ashamed of our negativity. It is a defect, an error, a direful mutation of the prudence which should guide our thoughts and actions.
For as long as it takes to read a Thomas Bernhard book, I can be as spiteful and pessimistic as I want to be. I can savor the comfort of like-minded company without fear of being censured by the amused smiles of those persons who resist reality and then call this resistance reality itself.
Gathering Evidence is not a novel; it's a five-volume autobiographical work. Despite its genre, it hews close to Bernhard's tried and true formula of choleric ramblings. The substance of most of his works has the appearance of digression, almost anarchism, but there's a rhythmic wholeness to them that couldn't feel more precise.
One of Bernhard's particular targets in Gathering Evidence is the city of Salzburg. To say that he hates Salzburg is a lot like saying that I hate planets without oxygen. There is something fundamentally untenable about the city of Salzburg to Bernhard, at least in retrospect. It isn't even a case of simple preference; it's a totalized rebellion against an environment that is unliveable. It verges on a matter of survival.
I suspect that Bernhard's antipathies are caricatured, to whatever extent, but that's only because there's no proper language to articulate his alienation to his audience. Instead he wears them down—beats them over the head. If you ever feel the ecstasy of that kind of pain, then this is the autobiography for you. If not, you're probably one of them...
(My review of My Prizes, also included in this edition, can be found here.)
I feel safe in claiming to you that I've found a kindred spirit in Thomas Bernhard. I've read most of his novels and a few of his plays, and generally speaking his oeuvre is a private celebration of gripe and gloom—hidden away from the pitying tsks of the Pollyannas of the world. Society—particularly American society—teaches us to be ashamed of our negativity. It is a defect, an error, a direful mutation of the prudence which should guide our thoughts and actions.
For as long as it takes to read a Thomas Bernhard book, I can be as spiteful and pessimistic as I want to be. I can savor the comfort of like-minded company without fear of being censured by the amused smiles of those persons who resist reality and then call this resistance reality itself.
Gathering Evidence is not a novel; it's a five-volume autobiographical work. Despite its genre, it hews close to Bernhard's tried and true formula of choleric ramblings. The substance of most of his works has the appearance of digression, almost anarchism, but there's a rhythmic wholeness to them that couldn't feel more precise.
One of Bernhard's particular targets in Gathering Evidence is the city of Salzburg. To say that he hates Salzburg is a lot like saying that I hate planets without oxygen. There is something fundamentally untenable about the city of Salzburg to Bernhard, at least in retrospect. It isn't even a case of simple preference; it's a totalized rebellion against an environment that is unliveable. It verges on a matter of survival.
I suspect that Bernhard's antipathies are caricatured, to whatever extent, but that's only because there's no proper language to articulate his alienation to his audience. Instead he wears them down—beats them over the head. If you ever feel the ecstasy of that kind of pain, then this is the autobiography for you. If not, you're probably one of them...
(My review of My Prizes, also included in this edition, can be found here.)
November 17, 2009
Released a long exhalation and said "Jesus" when I finished this. Not for the faint o' heart. It's sort of like that movie Precious except this is the Austrian, high-literary, grammar-school-under-Nazism/Allied-air-raids/tuberculosis sanatorium (after all, the author's initials are "T.B.") version of surviving a worst-case scenario/hell. The language isn't as exagerratedly composed re: repetitions and theme/variations on every page as in his fiction, but the same special Bernhardian unrelenting bleakness appears throughout. So bleak it's infectious -- definitely a bleaker outlook for me this last week. Essential for understanding the relation between his life and his fiction (attaining this understanding should interest exactly seven people who use this site). Amazing to see a favorably portrayed character (his grandfather, a not-so-ebullient writer). Re the rating: the first two sections about grammar school, his grandfather, and WWII merit at least six stars, whereas the post-WWII respiratory hospital half of the book felt more like four. Was gonna read Extinction next but I think -- considering the onset of my annual bout of seasonal affective disorder -- to do so would either annihilate or obliterate me . . . or both.
December 30, 2023
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2023...
“Anoto aquí lo que pasaba por la cabeza del adolescente que yo era entonces nada mas. Es posible que más tarde las cosas aparecieran bajo otro aspecto; entonces no. Entonces yo tenía esos sentimientos, no los de hoy, entonces tenía esos pensamientos, no los de hoy, entonces tenía esa existencia, no la de hoy.”
#1 El Orígen
#2 E Sótano
#3 El Aliento
#4 El Frío
#5 Un Niño
“Mi viaje a Grafenhof a través del oscuro valle del Salzach fue el más opresivo de mi vida. En el equipaje llevaba también un fajo de papeles con mis últimos poemas. Muy pronto, salvo ese fajo de poemas, no tendré nada en el mundo, nada que signifique algo para mí, a lo que pueda aferrarme, había pensado."
November 3, 2021
Ich habe zeitlebens immer die Wahrheit sagen wollen, auch wenn ich jetzt weiß, es war gelogen. Letzten Endes kommt es nur auf den Wahrheitsgehalt der Lüge an. Die Vernunft hat es mir schon lange verboten, die Wahrheit zu sagen und zu schreiben, weil damit doch nur eine Lüge gesagt und geschrieben ist, aber das Schreiben ist mir die Lebensnotwendigkeit, darum, aus diesem Grunde schreibe ich, auch wenn alles, was ich schreibe, doch nichts als Lüge ist, die sich als Wahrheit durch mich transportiert. (Thomas Bernhard – Der Keller)
July 8, 2025
Adoro le biografie e se a scriverle è, come in questo caso, un autore controverso che ha deciso di scrivere la propria, allora il piacere aumenta.
È comunque un'autobiografia parziale, ricopre i primi vent'anni dell'esistenza dell'autore, anche se, davvero densa di avvenimenti come è e superando le cinquecento pagine, non lascia delusi, anzi incuriosisce sul mancato racconto degli anni successivi.
Tutto però è magistralmente contenuto proprio in quella prima porzione di vita narrata retrospettivamente e senza rispettare il criterio cronologico, fatto che non determina difficoltà di comprensione, perché la prosa prepotentemente reiterata su pochi concetti di base agisce da filo conduttore e mai ci si sente smarriti.
Semmai il disorientamento si origina dalla drammaticità che è insita nei fatti narrati, compendiati mirabilmente nei suoi primi vent'anni: nascita, contesto familiare, assenza della figura paterna sostituita da un nonno colto e letterato quanto anarchico e nichilista. La famiglia, la genialità, la scuola, il. nazionalsocialismo, l' Anschluss, la guerra, l'abbandono della scuola e il lavoro fino alle pagine bellissime sulla malattia. A momenti ci si ritrova quasi negli scenari della montagna incantata di Mann. Le pagine sono intrise di affermazioni sulla vita, sulla morte, sulla conoscenza. Può risultare disturbante la prospettiva nichilista, come nei suoi romanzi, ma alla luce di questa lettura si riesce a capire la matrice di tale orientamento e a vedere nella sua arte un'estrema forma di resilienza alla vita che è stata nei suoi confronti dura oltremisura.
È comunque un'autobiografia parziale, ricopre i primi vent'anni dell'esistenza dell'autore, anche se, davvero densa di avvenimenti come è e superando le cinquecento pagine, non lascia delusi, anzi incuriosisce sul mancato racconto degli anni successivi.
Tutto però è magistralmente contenuto proprio in quella prima porzione di vita narrata retrospettivamente e senza rispettare il criterio cronologico, fatto che non determina difficoltà di comprensione, perché la prosa prepotentemente reiterata su pochi concetti di base agisce da filo conduttore e mai ci si sente smarriti.
Semmai il disorientamento si origina dalla drammaticità che è insita nei fatti narrati, compendiati mirabilmente nei suoi primi vent'anni: nascita, contesto familiare, assenza della figura paterna sostituita da un nonno colto e letterato quanto anarchico e nichilista. La famiglia, la genialità, la scuola, il. nazionalsocialismo, l' Anschluss, la guerra, l'abbandono della scuola e il lavoro fino alle pagine bellissime sulla malattia. A momenti ci si ritrova quasi negli scenari della montagna incantata di Mann. Le pagine sono intrise di affermazioni sulla vita, sulla morte, sulla conoscenza. Può risultare disturbante la prospettiva nichilista, come nei suoi romanzi, ma alla luce di questa lettura si riesce a capire la matrice di tale orientamento e a vedere nella sua arte un'estrema forma di resilienza alla vita che è stata nei suoi confronti dura oltremisura.
April 4, 2011
Gathering Evidence is a collection of five short books that Thomas Bernhard wrote chronicling the first twenty or so years of his life. I don't know if there is a tradition in German speaking countries that memoirs need to be written in an egomaniacal manner, but this one falls into the same company of such greats as Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog. Just compare the opening scene of a young Thomas Bernhard jumping onto a bicycle and, viola, knowing instinctively how to ride it without ever having attempted to ride one before and then set out to visit an aunt who lives over twenty miles away to the tone Herzog takes when he sets out on a walk to see a dying friend filled with the belief that his friend could not possibly die while he was on his way to visit so walking for days is a good choice. Bernhard and Herzog set out with similar grandiose and deluded ideas and both have similar experiences on their way with 'common folk' in taverns.
I think that my four star rating is a little too generous. I actually didn't like the book that much, but I love reading this style of memoir. I love the massive and borderline psychotic ego that accompanies the stories, even if at times I'm skeptical about how true the stories are. Each of the five books collected here are all but one written in one long paragraph each. The last book for some reason decides about three quarters of the way through to start a second paragraph in a spot where one would normally be warranted but after almost three hundred pages of sprawling and meandering tales written in sixty page long paragraphs I wasn't sure why he decided to finally insert a second into a book. I'm sure Bernhard had an amazing reason why though and he would think I'm an idiot of even commenting on this.
The book is sort of tedious to read. Bernhard repeats himself quite a bit and returns over and over again to the same points and themes. The basic gist of his childhood is that he never fit in, he did horribly at school, he was always the most elegant of the boys in his school, he got hit by a lot of people as punishment, he was a fast runner who excelled in Hitler Youth athletic events, he loved his anarchist / anti-social grandfather who doted on him, his mother thought he ruined her life and never tired of telling him it, he quit school to work in the 'projects', he got sick with consumption and spent years in hospitals / sanatoriums. Oh and pretty much everyone in the world that wasn't him or his grandfather was a dullard inept crypto-fascist who had to be overcome in some manner or other. In short his childhood and young adulthood was sort of like most of his novels, one man who has to live in a world surrounded by degenerates.
I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys Thomas Bernhard's novels. It isn't nearly as good as them (this seriously needed an editor, someone to pull the writing together, which is strange because I think Bernhard is usually very controlled in his prose, but I think he took a few too many liberties in what I imagine he thought of as an inferior style of writing (he was supposedly against autobiographical writing, which is kind of funny because he puts himself and his real life friend Paul Wittgenstein in as characters in one novel) but it has enough of the same style to be of interest. I'd also recommend this to anyone like me who finds German (yeah, yeah he's Austrian, but he hates Austria and most of this book takes place in Germany, where he lived for most of the Second World War) megalomania to be amusing.
I think that my four star rating is a little too generous. I actually didn't like the book that much, but I love reading this style of memoir. I love the massive and borderline psychotic ego that accompanies the stories, even if at times I'm skeptical about how true the stories are. Each of the five books collected here are all but one written in one long paragraph each. The last book for some reason decides about three quarters of the way through to start a second paragraph in a spot where one would normally be warranted but after almost three hundred pages of sprawling and meandering tales written in sixty page long paragraphs I wasn't sure why he decided to finally insert a second into a book. I'm sure Bernhard had an amazing reason why though and he would think I'm an idiot of even commenting on this.
The book is sort of tedious to read. Bernhard repeats himself quite a bit and returns over and over again to the same points and themes. The basic gist of his childhood is that he never fit in, he did horribly at school, he was always the most elegant of the boys in his school, he got hit by a lot of people as punishment, he was a fast runner who excelled in Hitler Youth athletic events, he loved his anarchist / anti-social grandfather who doted on him, his mother thought he ruined her life and never tired of telling him it, he quit school to work in the 'projects', he got sick with consumption and spent years in hospitals / sanatoriums. Oh and pretty much everyone in the world that wasn't him or his grandfather was a dullard inept crypto-fascist who had to be overcome in some manner or other. In short his childhood and young adulthood was sort of like most of his novels, one man who has to live in a world surrounded by degenerates.
I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys Thomas Bernhard's novels. It isn't nearly as good as them (this seriously needed an editor, someone to pull the writing together, which is strange because I think Bernhard is usually very controlled in his prose, but I think he took a few too many liberties in what I imagine he thought of as an inferior style of writing (he was supposedly against autobiographical writing, which is kind of funny because he puts himself and his real life friend Paul Wittgenstein in as characters in one novel) but it has enough of the same style to be of interest. I'd also recommend this to anyone like me who finds German (yeah, yeah he's Austrian, but he hates Austria and most of this book takes place in Germany, where he lived for most of the Second World War) megalomania to be amusing.
October 26, 2016
Este libro me hizo sufrir mucho.
Bueno, esa no es la manera de empezar a hablar de el.
Pero tengo que mencionarlo antes de comentar lo maravilloso que me parece.
No es fácil, el mundo que hay en estos relatos.
En El Origen, habla sobre la educación, el internado al que le toca ir. El Tío Franz, que en realidad era el director del internado nazi en el que estaba, que después de la guerra es convertido a un internado ultra católico.
Habla sobre su abuelo, sobre su madre, su familia, habla sobre Austria, sobre la guerra, sobre la enfermedad, la suya, la de su abuelo y su madre, su relación con la música. Lo que me encanta es su lucidez, pero si es súper triste todo lo que le tocó ver.
Creo que mi favorito es el Sótano, porque es donde es más positivo, aunque habla también de su rechazo por tantas cosas, pero en el sótano sale otro lado suyo.
Me encanta porque se construye hablando de los demás, la
Relación con su abuelo es fundamental para el, y es lindo ver todo a través de sus ojos, aunque esa visión sea pesimista y le hayan tocado vivir tantas cosas terribles. Si! Definitivamente muy recomendado.
Bueno, esa no es la manera de empezar a hablar de el.
Pero tengo que mencionarlo antes de comentar lo maravilloso que me parece.
No es fácil, el mundo que hay en estos relatos.
En El Origen, habla sobre la educación, el internado al que le toca ir. El Tío Franz, que en realidad era el director del internado nazi en el que estaba, que después de la guerra es convertido a un internado ultra católico.
Habla sobre su abuelo, sobre su madre, su familia, habla sobre Austria, sobre la guerra, sobre la enfermedad, la suya, la de su abuelo y su madre, su relación con la música. Lo que me encanta es su lucidez, pero si es súper triste todo lo que le tocó ver.
Creo que mi favorito es el Sótano, porque es donde es más positivo, aunque habla también de su rechazo por tantas cosas, pero en el sótano sale otro lado suyo.
Me encanta porque se construye hablando de los demás, la
Relación con su abuelo es fundamental para el, y es lindo ver todo a través de sus ojos, aunque esa visión sea pesimista y le hayan tocado vivir tantas cosas terribles. Si! Definitivamente muy recomendado.
August 4, 2020
It’s only fitting that Thomas Bernhard’s life read like a Thomas Bernhard novel…Man was this fucking book a doozey. And in my mind it might actually be the best thing Bernhard ever wrote, eclipsing even the inferno-ed and fabled Extinction (though time will tell). It’s a memoir (of sorts) and surprisingly it shows Bernhard flaunting his most extreme tendencies and fixations. It’s at turns one of the saddest, angriest, philosophical, and sentimental works he ever produced, though notably it’s also the least humorous.
Gathering Evidence gives us Bernhard in the midst of fashioning his own piecemealed mythology, from early adolescence till the age of nineteen. Taking us from his prewar childhood, to his war time experience as an adolescent trapped in Nazi boarding schools, to his post-war teenage years where he became plagued by a series of health problems. The book becomes a kind of maniacal dissection of all the relationships and ALL the traumas Bernhard experienced in his formative years—From his early interactions with his anarchist and freethinking grandfather, who he rightfully adored and cherished among any and all other familial influences. A man who Bernhard credits with nourishing his entire artistic sensibility from the earliest age, and a man whose profession (as a writer) Bernhard would follow into literary oblivion. To his father, who abandoned the family before he was born and thus became a non-entity, where even the mere mention of his name was enough to prompt a heap of abuse from his wrongfully forsaken mother, who herself, was a rather emotionally cold and abusive figure. To his schooling which was mired by the tyrannical hand of Catholicism, followed by Nazism, followed again by Catholicism, with little in the way disciplinary distinction beyond the surface level symbolism.
Bernhard thus became a perennial outcast in almost every facet of his life. The only period in which he attained anything resembling happiness was a brief three year jaunt from 1946-49 where he sucked up enough courage to quit his prestigious and stifling grammar school to become a grocer’s apprentice in a Salzburg slum. A move he credits with saving his entire existence. It was also during this period where he started to seriously study music. Though all of this would come crashing down after he developed a bout of pneumonia which lead him to the brink of death, and confined him to a series of abysmal sanitariums and hospitals for over four years. It was also during this period that both his beloved grandfather and mother died from their own health complications. The only thing that kept Bernhard from the abyss itself was the kindling of his interest in literature, and the astute observations of immense suffering and death he encountered on a daily basis….This is not even mentioning the abject horror he witnessed before all of this, during the war itself, where Salzburg became the site of numerous allied bombing raids that left the city littered with the mangled bodies of the dead.
If you ever wondered why Bernhard’s artistic vision is among the bleakest in the cannon of twentieth century literature (a century which itself spawned other miserablists like Celine or Beckett), then Gathering Evidence will present you with just that…It becomes a kind of a key to all of Bernhard’s fiction. Though for me the most-startling thing about the book is amount of vulnerability we witness from Bernhard, and thus it becomes something of an anomaly among his entire oeuvre. A brief glimpse into the tortured humanity of a man, who usually is encased behind three foot thick armor plating of black humor and quasi-philosophical asides. Also the opening part of this the book in the English translation (which was actually written last) presents us with a narrator, almost enraptured by his own sense of nostalgia and yearning for his own past, in short we get a glimpse into a more humanistic Bernhard, something that strikes closer to the bone etc-etc.
Stylistically this is the same as all of Thomas' classic works. Endless monologues with no paragraph breaks, a prose infected by a musical cadence, prone to lapsing in on itself, to narrative repetition etc-etc. Bernhard’s prose is kinda like what John Peel said of The Fall, always different, always the same. Endless mutations within a degree of limits as we descend into the depths of the human psyche…Refer to other Bernhard reviews I’ve done if you want more detail on this point…
A masterpiece. I recommend this to everyone, especially in these truly fucked times, Bernhard gives a reprieve to those of us who feel helpless. It might all be pointless and we might all be fucked, but at least with Bernhard we’re not alone.
5/5.
Gathering Evidence gives us Bernhard in the midst of fashioning his own piecemealed mythology, from early adolescence till the age of nineteen. Taking us from his prewar childhood, to his war time experience as an adolescent trapped in Nazi boarding schools, to his post-war teenage years where he became plagued by a series of health problems. The book becomes a kind of maniacal dissection of all the relationships and ALL the traumas Bernhard experienced in his formative years—From his early interactions with his anarchist and freethinking grandfather, who he rightfully adored and cherished among any and all other familial influences. A man who Bernhard credits with nourishing his entire artistic sensibility from the earliest age, and a man whose profession (as a writer) Bernhard would follow into literary oblivion. To his father, who abandoned the family before he was born and thus became a non-entity, where even the mere mention of his name was enough to prompt a heap of abuse from his wrongfully forsaken mother, who herself, was a rather emotionally cold and abusive figure. To his schooling which was mired by the tyrannical hand of Catholicism, followed by Nazism, followed again by Catholicism, with little in the way disciplinary distinction beyond the surface level symbolism.
Bernhard thus became a perennial outcast in almost every facet of his life. The only period in which he attained anything resembling happiness was a brief three year jaunt from 1946-49 where he sucked up enough courage to quit his prestigious and stifling grammar school to become a grocer’s apprentice in a Salzburg slum. A move he credits with saving his entire existence. It was also during this period where he started to seriously study music. Though all of this would come crashing down after he developed a bout of pneumonia which lead him to the brink of death, and confined him to a series of abysmal sanitariums and hospitals for over four years. It was also during this period that both his beloved grandfather and mother died from their own health complications. The only thing that kept Bernhard from the abyss itself was the kindling of his interest in literature, and the astute observations of immense suffering and death he encountered on a daily basis….This is not even mentioning the abject horror he witnessed before all of this, during the war itself, where Salzburg became the site of numerous allied bombing raids that left the city littered with the mangled bodies of the dead.
If you ever wondered why Bernhard’s artistic vision is among the bleakest in the cannon of twentieth century literature (a century which itself spawned other miserablists like Celine or Beckett), then Gathering Evidence will present you with just that…It becomes a kind of a key to all of Bernhard’s fiction. Though for me the most-startling thing about the book is amount of vulnerability we witness from Bernhard, and thus it becomes something of an anomaly among his entire oeuvre. A brief glimpse into the tortured humanity of a man, who usually is encased behind three foot thick armor plating of black humor and quasi-philosophical asides. Also the opening part of this the book in the English translation (which was actually written last) presents us with a narrator, almost enraptured by his own sense of nostalgia and yearning for his own past, in short we get a glimpse into a more humanistic Bernhard, something that strikes closer to the bone etc-etc.
Stylistically this is the same as all of Thomas' classic works. Endless monologues with no paragraph breaks, a prose infected by a musical cadence, prone to lapsing in on itself, to narrative repetition etc-etc. Bernhard’s prose is kinda like what John Peel said of The Fall, always different, always the same. Endless mutations within a degree of limits as we descend into the depths of the human psyche…Refer to other Bernhard reviews I’ve done if you want more detail on this point…
A masterpiece. I recommend this to everyone, especially in these truly fucked times, Bernhard gives a reprieve to those of us who feel helpless. It might all be pointless and we might all be fucked, but at least with Bernhard we’re not alone.
5/5.
Read
March 3, 2020How Do You Know When To Stop Reading an Author?
(This note was written some time ago, when I thought I had finished with Bernhard. As I write this paragraph, in early spring 2020, I have just finished reading all Bernhard's major texts and many of the minor ones. The idea was to see if I could work through him, if I could get to the point where I would not only no longer take pleasure in the vitriol--I imagined, correctly, that after a point it isn't especially entertaining to be told how many things in the world are appalling--but also somehow perceive his choices as limitations. At the end of this note I'll add a thought about how that went.)
This is my fifth and just possibly my last book by Bernhard. He is stupendous, but the problem he raises for me is: When is it time to stop reading him? I haven't got a clear idea about that, but I think it might hinge on whether or not you laugh when you read him. When he piles impossible disaster on implausible condemnation, when each sentence pronounces a verdict more tar-black, more hopeless, more sweeping, more disconsolately angry than the last, do you laugh? I do. I do not think he intends me to. I laugh because after all, how could a twentieth-century writer go on as if he were Jeremiah? Or as if he were Zola, railing against the suffering of the working classes? Or even as if he were Beckett, but burdened with memories Beckett never had, and crippled with an incurable disease, and with an imagination sharpened by an even more shriveled sense of anything outside of complete disaster?
So I laugh when the next sentence outdoes the one before. I keep reading, and I am swept along, but still some little damage is done by each laugh. Because if you laugh enough, even tidal waves of half-drowned despair and bile become ridiculous. And after an entire book, or several books, the cascading unstoppable sulphuric vitriol starts sounding a little silly. It doesn't sound wrong or misguided (and in particular it does not sound insane) but it sounds, simply, a bit silly.
That has something to do with why I feel like I'm finished reading him. But he is stupendous. There has to be a good reason to stop reading such a person.
(And now, having read twenty or more of his books, letters, interviews, texts newly translated online, and prize essays, I appreciate him quite differently. I no longer take much pleasure in his judgments about people and places, even when they risk absurdity in order to be more exquisitely dark, rude, and uncomromising than anyone else's opinions ever have been. I experience the books as unspoolings. The characters and situations are indefinitely permutable, and so are the lodestars of his imagination, Goethe, Wittgenstein, Wright, Mendelssohn, Gould. In that specific sense he did not compose books: he unwound them. As I read, I became aware of that act itself as a limitation: he was confined, as it were, by that thread. Even as I read the last few of his books, I was often amused to follow the thread into someone's demented brain, into their damaged lung, down a tunnel of helpless copulsions, into a wrecked benighted ruined house in a disastrous Austrian village, but I was always following, and the thread seldom broke, and in the end there were more things to do than follow threads. But I would be interested to hear from other readers: what are your own reasons for not reading Bernhard continuously, repeatedly, compulsively?)
(This note was written some time ago, when I thought I had finished with Bernhard. As I write this paragraph, in early spring 2020, I have just finished reading all Bernhard's major texts and many of the minor ones. The idea was to see if I could work through him, if I could get to the point where I would not only no longer take pleasure in the vitriol--I imagined, correctly, that after a point it isn't especially entertaining to be told how many things in the world are appalling--but also somehow perceive his choices as limitations. At the end of this note I'll add a thought about how that went.)
This is my fifth and just possibly my last book by Bernhard. He is stupendous, but the problem he raises for me is: When is it time to stop reading him? I haven't got a clear idea about that, but I think it might hinge on whether or not you laugh when you read him. When he piles impossible disaster on implausible condemnation, when each sentence pronounces a verdict more tar-black, more hopeless, more sweeping, more disconsolately angry than the last, do you laugh? I do. I do not think he intends me to. I laugh because after all, how could a twentieth-century writer go on as if he were Jeremiah? Or as if he were Zola, railing against the suffering of the working classes? Or even as if he were Beckett, but burdened with memories Beckett never had, and crippled with an incurable disease, and with an imagination sharpened by an even more shriveled sense of anything outside of complete disaster?
So I laugh when the next sentence outdoes the one before. I keep reading, and I am swept along, but still some little damage is done by each laugh. Because if you laugh enough, even tidal waves of half-drowned despair and bile become ridiculous. And after an entire book, or several books, the cascading unstoppable sulphuric vitriol starts sounding a little silly. It doesn't sound wrong or misguided (and in particular it does not sound insane) but it sounds, simply, a bit silly.
That has something to do with why I feel like I'm finished reading him. But he is stupendous. There has to be a good reason to stop reading such a person.
(And now, having read twenty or more of his books, letters, interviews, texts newly translated online, and prize essays, I appreciate him quite differently. I no longer take much pleasure in his judgments about people and places, even when they risk absurdity in order to be more exquisitely dark, rude, and uncomromising than anyone else's opinions ever have been. I experience the books as unspoolings. The characters and situations are indefinitely permutable, and so are the lodestars of his imagination, Goethe, Wittgenstein, Wright, Mendelssohn, Gould. In that specific sense he did not compose books: he unwound them. As I read, I became aware of that act itself as a limitation: he was confined, as it were, by that thread. Even as I read the last few of his books, I was often amused to follow the thread into someone's demented brain, into their damaged lung, down a tunnel of helpless copulsions, into a wrecked benighted ruined house in a disastrous Austrian village, but I was always following, and the thread seldom broke, and in the end there were more things to do than follow threads. But I would be interested to hear from other readers: what are your own reasons for not reading Bernhard continuously, repeatedly, compulsively?)
January 30, 2020
"The truth which we know is, from the point of view of logic, a lie, and this lie, since we cannot circumvent it, is the truth."
"The air is thin, but I am used to it."
Of course incredible, Bernhard here moves out of his wonderful fiction and lays bare his teenage years as part of a project, abandoned soon after this, of trying to reason out his existence by reconstructing his formative years.
That his formative years were horrific is banal: the height of the Allied bombing of Salzburg, Bernhard suffering at the hands of Nazi and then Catholic schoolmasters, bastards all, and then his respiratory illnesses, all by the age of 19...these telling pieces of awfulness were what informed Bernhard, he isn't afraid to admit. Baring himself, he presents the evidence that drove him almost weekly to thoughts of suicide, the horrors of war, and the loss of his first mentor, his grandfather.
Frequenters of Bernhard's works will recognize a lot here, for his own life was often fuel to the fire of his fictions. Bernhard fans will also be surprised at the degree of tenderness and wonder and worry that shines through here, often eclipsed by the bitterness of his novels.
As an added bonus, Bernhard's hilarious essays on the literature prizes he won over the years are included as a kind of appendix, revealing a more humorous, even somehow more caustic side of him.
"The air is thin, but I am used to it."
Of course incredible, Bernhard here moves out of his wonderful fiction and lays bare his teenage years as part of a project, abandoned soon after this, of trying to reason out his existence by reconstructing his formative years.
That his formative years were horrific is banal: the height of the Allied bombing of Salzburg, Bernhard suffering at the hands of Nazi and then Catholic schoolmasters, bastards all, and then his respiratory illnesses, all by the age of 19...these telling pieces of awfulness were what informed Bernhard, he isn't afraid to admit. Baring himself, he presents the evidence that drove him almost weekly to thoughts of suicide, the horrors of war, and the loss of his first mentor, his grandfather.
Frequenters of Bernhard's works will recognize a lot here, for his own life was often fuel to the fire of his fictions. Bernhard fans will also be surprised at the degree of tenderness and wonder and worry that shines through here, often eclipsed by the bitterness of his novels.
As an added bonus, Bernhard's hilarious essays on the literature prizes he won over the years are included as a kind of appendix, revealing a more humorous, even somehow more caustic side of him.
October 25, 2024
Evidence must be relevant – that is, it must be directed at proving or disproving a claim. Relevant evidence may be excluded if it is unfairly prejudicial, confusing, or the relevance or irrelevance of evidence cannot be determined by logical analysis. Assessment of relevance or irrelevance involves or requires judgements about probabilities or uncertainties. Some judgements can and must rest partly on unarticulated and unarticulable hunches and intuitions.
Exhibit A: Singer sewing maching (66K treadle, one)
Exhibit B: School atlas (German, one)
Exhibit C: Platform ticket (not eligble for boarding, one)
Exhibit D: Violin (second hand, one)
Exhibit E: Manual for German fighter pilot training (one)
Exhibit F: U-turns permitted sign (red and white, one)
Exhibit G: Sack of Potatoes (50kg, one)
Exhibit H: Portable crucifix set (collapsible, for use in administration of last rites, one)
Exhibit I: Set of zinc coffins (various sizes, one set)
Exhibit J: Pulmonary X-ray (shadowed, one)
Exhibit K: Picture of Hotel Votterl (color, one)
Exhibit L: Streptomycin (vial, for injection, one)
Exhibit M: Sputum bottle (blue, one)
Exhibit N: Copy of musical score “The Magic Flute” (Mozart, one)
Exhibit O: Abdominal puncture needles (triangular point, set of seven)
Exhibit P: Copy of “The Demons” (Dostoyevsky, one)
Evidence of a confession may be excluded because it was obtained by oppression or because the confession was made in consequence of anything said or done that would be likely to make the confession unreliable. Other admissible evidence may be excluded, having regard to all the circumstances including how the evidence was obtained or if admission of the evidence would have an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings..
Exhibit A: Singer sewing maching (66K treadle, one)
Exhibit B: School atlas (German, one)
Exhibit C: Platform ticket (not eligble for boarding, one)
Exhibit D: Violin (second hand, one)
Exhibit E: Manual for German fighter pilot training (one)
Exhibit F: U-turns permitted sign (red and white, one)
Exhibit G: Sack of Potatoes (50kg, one)
Exhibit H: Portable crucifix set (collapsible, for use in administration of last rites, one)
Exhibit I: Set of zinc coffins (various sizes, one set)
Exhibit J: Pulmonary X-ray (shadowed, one)
Exhibit K: Picture of Hotel Votterl (color, one)
Exhibit L: Streptomycin (vial, for injection, one)
Exhibit M: Sputum bottle (blue, one)
Exhibit N: Copy of musical score “The Magic Flute” (Mozart, one)
Exhibit O: Abdominal puncture needles (triangular point, set of seven)
Exhibit P: Copy of “The Demons” (Dostoyevsky, one)
Evidence of a confession may be excluded because it was obtained by oppression or because the confession was made in consequence of anything said or done that would be likely to make the confession unreliable. Other admissible evidence may be excluded, having regard to all the circumstances including how the evidence was obtained or if admission of the evidence would have an adverse effect on the fairness of the proceedings..
October 26, 2024
Visceral, trascendental, musical, denso, musical, aterrador, trascendental, ininterrumpidamente musical. De Thomas Bernhard jamás se sale indemne. Estas autobiografías son una obra maestra, esenciales para comprender en profundidad su prolífica obra.
July 18, 2016
Grandioso e imprescindible. Una lección de vida sustanciosa. Durante la lectura me he visto inspirado irremediablemente por la sabiduría de este moderno Montaigne.
October 12, 2013
My long-postponed encounter with Bernhard got off to a great start with The Loser. Then somehow I got the idea that I'd get more out of Bernhard's novels if I knew more about his biography and, hey, where better to start than this kind of memoir? So in I dove.
And, as with most of these tremendously stylish, vaguely existentialist writers, the further Bernhard gets from fiction, the more insufferable his narrators become. There's no doubt that Thomas had a rough start to life; he's more than entitled to whinge and complain about it at great length, and, frankly, I'd be interested in reading any such rants of his, just because they'll be funny, snarky and well written.
But this becomes more of a problem when the narrator makes the by now very predictable move from "My life was shitty in the following ways" to "Therefore, human life is shitty." The feeling that life is shitty is certainly one worth investigating; dedicating one's life to "gathering evidence" of that shittiness so you can throw it all back in the faces of those Catholic-Nazi Austrians who had the temerity to try to teach you something or provide for your health, on the other hand, is more than a bit boring.
So this is half a great riposte to people who think Bernhard's writing is about madness (as he very reasonably points out, he's not mad, just 'realistic'); a fairly unconvincing indictment of the medical profession (I get the distinct impression that Bernhard the narrator and Bernhard the author could have stayed healthy if he hadn't been so pig-headed); and a perfect manual for late twentieth century quasi-philosophy.
i) I, the philosopher, am completely individual and original. Pay no mind to the fact that I'm just repeating what Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and their various epigones have said. I am immune to the "diseases of the mind" to which others are prone. (123) I am "accountable to no one." (136) "I have listened to everything and conformed with nothing," (206).
ii) Truth is an impossibility, as is communication. "Whatever is communicated can only be falsehood and falsification," (160). And attempts to 'teach' people the truth are just "cramming the pupil full of putrid, useless knowledge and so turning his whole nature into the antithesis of all that is natural." (134) "What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell and write the truth, even though ti never can be the truth and never is the truth," (161). [Presumably, given (iii), we can never know if we want to tell the truth, anyway]. "Language is inadequate when it comes to communicating the truth... language can only falsify and distort whatever is authentic," 314. "words merely infect and ignore, blur and aggravate, shame and falsify and cloud and darken everything," (405).
iii) If something looks good or beautiful, it must be hiding shit, and it's our duty to find that shit no matter how hard we have to work to find it. Because it's always there, and the shit is the real. Everything else is, ipso facto, a facade. "The facts are always frightening, and in all of us fear of the facts is constantly at work, constantly being fuelled... we know that all history is falsified and always transmitted in falsified form." (84) "Society cannot exist without one or more... victims... Morality is a lie," (138). "Human beings do not like freedom--to say otherwise is to lie," (179). "Getting a clear view of existence... is the only possible way to cope with it," (205). "we only have a right to what's not right and what's unjust," (406).
iv) Progress is not only a lie, it's impossible. "Human beings are as they are and cannot be changed," 212. "Absurdity is the only way forward," (306). "It is impossible to progress beyond nonsense," (206).
v) Philosophy is, at base, a waste of time. "Only theories can cripple us... all the philosophies and systems of thought which block the way to clarity with their unusable insights. We have seen through almost everything, and what is still to come will bring no surprises," (212). "Life [is] a state of hopelessness in every philosophy and which will end in universal madness," (403).
vi) Nature is good, because it doesn't lie: life sucks. "Life is nothing but a penal sentence I told myself... the world is a penitentiary where there is little freedom of movement... these precepts... have lost none of their validity... they embody an essential truth," 293.
vii) 'Science' proves all these ideas. "Life is only science now... we are suddenly taken up with nature... we have put reality to the test... everything will be clear, a clarity that increases and deepens unendingly, and everything will be cold, a coldness that intensifies ever more horribly," (402).
At times Bernhard tempers this impoverished liturgy with his own irony; "what a good thing it is that we have always adopted an ironic view of everything, however seriously we have taken it," (208). He occasionally protests that he's writing about the view he took as a child/teenager, and not the view he holds now, but his writings on the occasion of literary awards at the end of this volume suggest that there's no clear separation between the periods of his life.
The problem with this volume is that it encourages us to read what amounts to four novels worth of Bernhard consecutively. It's just too much. Yes, fanatics will say, you can't handle so much truth consecutively, you baffled sod! You need to look away from the abyss, need to lie to yourself, you inauthentic humanist!
But that's not the problem. The problem is that when you read the above ideas over and over, you realize that they're just a way for people with massive egos to believe that they have access to the real, whereas the rest of us - who happily go on acting as if things can be, and should be, better than they are - are deluded children.
But real immaturity, as a friend recently suggested to me, is stopping your intellectual development when you've learned enough to be cynical, but not enough to be human. Bernhard may have moved beyond that stage, but the narrator of these novels did not.
And, as with most of these tremendously stylish, vaguely existentialist writers, the further Bernhard gets from fiction, the more insufferable his narrators become. There's no doubt that Thomas had a rough start to life; he's more than entitled to whinge and complain about it at great length, and, frankly, I'd be interested in reading any such rants of his, just because they'll be funny, snarky and well written.
But this becomes more of a problem when the narrator makes the by now very predictable move from "My life was shitty in the following ways" to "Therefore, human life is shitty." The feeling that life is shitty is certainly one worth investigating; dedicating one's life to "gathering evidence" of that shittiness so you can throw it all back in the faces of those Catholic-Nazi Austrians who had the temerity to try to teach you something or provide for your health, on the other hand, is more than a bit boring.
So this is half a great riposte to people who think Bernhard's writing is about madness (as he very reasonably points out, he's not mad, just 'realistic'); a fairly unconvincing indictment of the medical profession (I get the distinct impression that Bernhard the narrator and Bernhard the author could have stayed healthy if he hadn't been so pig-headed); and a perfect manual for late twentieth century quasi-philosophy.
i) I, the philosopher, am completely individual and original. Pay no mind to the fact that I'm just repeating what Pascal, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and their various epigones have said. I am immune to the "diseases of the mind" to which others are prone. (123) I am "accountable to no one." (136) "I have listened to everything and conformed with nothing," (206).
ii) Truth is an impossibility, as is communication. "Whatever is communicated can only be falsehood and falsification," (160). And attempts to 'teach' people the truth are just "cramming the pupil full of putrid, useless knowledge and so turning his whole nature into the antithesis of all that is natural." (134) "What matters is whether we want to lie or to tell and write the truth, even though ti never can be the truth and never is the truth," (161). [Presumably, given (iii), we can never know if we want to tell the truth, anyway]. "Language is inadequate when it comes to communicating the truth... language can only falsify and distort whatever is authentic," 314. "words merely infect and ignore, blur and aggravate, shame and falsify and cloud and darken everything," (405).
iii) If something looks good or beautiful, it must be hiding shit, and it's our duty to find that shit no matter how hard we have to work to find it. Because it's always there, and the shit is the real. Everything else is, ipso facto, a facade. "The facts are always frightening, and in all of us fear of the facts is constantly at work, constantly being fuelled... we know that all history is falsified and always transmitted in falsified form." (84) "Society cannot exist without one or more... victims... Morality is a lie," (138). "Human beings do not like freedom--to say otherwise is to lie," (179). "Getting a clear view of existence... is the only possible way to cope with it," (205). "we only have a right to what's not right and what's unjust," (406).
iv) Progress is not only a lie, it's impossible. "Human beings are as they are and cannot be changed," 212. "Absurdity is the only way forward," (306). "It is impossible to progress beyond nonsense," (206).
v) Philosophy is, at base, a waste of time. "Only theories can cripple us... all the philosophies and systems of thought which block the way to clarity with their unusable insights. We have seen through almost everything, and what is still to come will bring no surprises," (212). "Life [is] a state of hopelessness in every philosophy and which will end in universal madness," (403).
vi) Nature is good, because it doesn't lie: life sucks. "Life is nothing but a penal sentence I told myself... the world is a penitentiary where there is little freedom of movement... these precepts... have lost none of their validity... they embody an essential truth," 293.
vii) 'Science' proves all these ideas. "Life is only science now... we are suddenly taken up with nature... we have put reality to the test... everything will be clear, a clarity that increases and deepens unendingly, and everything will be cold, a coldness that intensifies ever more horribly," (402).
At times Bernhard tempers this impoverished liturgy with his own irony; "what a good thing it is that we have always adopted an ironic view of everything, however seriously we have taken it," (208). He occasionally protests that he's writing about the view he took as a child/teenager, and not the view he holds now, but his writings on the occasion of literary awards at the end of this volume suggest that there's no clear separation between the periods of his life.
The problem with this volume is that it encourages us to read what amounts to four novels worth of Bernhard consecutively. It's just too much. Yes, fanatics will say, you can't handle so much truth consecutively, you baffled sod! You need to look away from the abyss, need to lie to yourself, you inauthentic humanist!
But that's not the problem. The problem is that when you read the above ideas over and over, you realize that they're just a way for people with massive egos to believe that they have access to the real, whereas the rest of us - who happily go on acting as if things can be, and should be, better than they are - are deluded children.
But real immaturity, as a friend recently suggested to me, is stopping your intellectual development when you've learned enough to be cynical, but not enough to be human. Bernhard may have moved beyond that stage, but the narrator of these novels did not.
February 17, 2025
«… y en aquel tiempo solo había tenido un pensamiento, a saber, el pensamiento del suicidio; pero para suicidarme era demasiado cobarde y sentía también demasiada curiosidad por todo, toda mi vida he sido de una curiosidad desvergonzada, eso ha impedido una y otra vez mi suicidio, me hubiera matado mil veces si mi desvergonzada curiosidad no me hubiera mantenido en la superficie terrestre.»
Me lo paso muy bien con Thomas Bernhard. Y no solo porque me producen una enorme hilaridad cosas como el inicio de El frío: recién internado en un sanatorio para tuberculosos, le dan una botella para expectorar en la que él, novato, apenas puede echar, y con gran esfuerzo, un vergonzoso escupitajillo; entretanto ve cómo los veteranos llenan hasta el borde tres o cuatro botellas de esputos, todos unos virtuosos de la expectoración.
Con estos Relatos autobiográficos me da la impresión de haber descubierto en él un sentido del humor (mayor aun) y una ternura que antes me habían pasado desapercibidos. Puede que parezca raro mencionar la ternura al hablar de un autor cuyos temas principales suelen ser el suicidio, la locura y la enfermedad, pero de veras pienso que es eso lo que le hace tan inimitable, eso y no solo su denso estilo de escritura: la exageración más escandalosa junto a la delicadeza con la que habla sobre su abuelo, su madre o la música clásica. Me hace muchísima gracia lo que Miguel Sáenz explica en el prólogo: durante un cierto tiempo estos libros se tuvieron como guía para comprender a un escritor de cuya vida apenas se sabía nada, hasta que alguien se tomó la molestia de investigar un poco y reveló que los relatos autobiográficos de Bernhard eran, en fin, mas fantasiosos que reales.
Me parece que al final todo lo que cuenta, sea real o no tanto, se puede resumir en el fragmento que he incluido al comienzo. La vida es atroz, asesina y vulgar, pero tiene cosas tan interesantes que no quieres perdértelas. Y si ese no es el sentido último de estas obras de Thomas Bernhard, pienso como ese personaje de Los Simpsons que ante la pregunta de si hay algo más esponjoso que una nube, contestaba «Si lo hay, yo no quiero saberlo».
May 30, 2023
OBRA MAESTRA
August 21, 2023
"A maior parte dos educandos fora instruída pelos pais, como no período nacional-socialista no nacional-socialismo, agora no catolicismo, no que me diz respeito não fui nem num noutro, pois os meus avós, com os quais fui criado, nunca foram acometidos por nenhuma dessas duas doenças, no fundo sempre malignas. Constantemente advertido pelo meu avô de que não me devia deixar impressionar nem por uma estupidez (a nacional-socialista) nem pela outra (a católica), nunca cheguei sequer a correr o risco de cair numa tal fraqueza de carácter e debilidade mental, conquanto isso fosse o mais difícil num ambiente tão corrompido e envenenado pelas duas como Salzburgo e especialmente num internato como o da Schrannengasse. O corpo de Cristo, engolido agora todos os dias e, portanto, aproximadamente trezentas vezes por ano, também não era senão a chamada continência feita diariamente a Adolf Hitler, pelo menos eu tinha essa impressão, abstraindo do facto de se tratar neste caso de duas grandezas completamente diferentes, de que, na intenção e no efeito, o cerimonial era o mesmo."
***
"Descrevemos um objecto e julgamos que o descrevemos de acordo com a verdade e de um modo fiel à verdade, mas somos forçados a reconhecer que não é a verdade. Apresentamos a evidência de um facto, mas nunca é e nunca será o facto que quisemos tornar evidente, é sempre um outro. Temos de dizer que nunca transmitimos nada que fosse a verdade, mas a vida inteira não desistimos da tentativa de transmitir a verdade."
***
"Como os porcos no comedouro, os doentes empurravam-se para chegar às torneiras nos lavabos e os mais fortes repeliam simplesmente os mais fracos, as torneiras estavam todas as manhãs sempre na posse das mesmas pessoas, pontapés, pancadas na barriga abriam num instante caminho a esses fanáticos do lavabo, os doentes pulmonares arranjam em caso de necessidade forças físicas espantosas. O medo da morte torna-os fortes, institui como princípio a brutalidade, o excluído, o candidato à morte não tem nada a perder."
***
"Adiamos as perguntas decisivas, fazendo ininterruptamente perguntas ridículas, inúteis e infames e, quando fazemos as perguntas decisivas, é tarde de mais. Toda a vida vamos adiando as grandes perguntas, até que elas se tornam uma cordilheira de perguntas e nos obscurecem. Mas nessa altura é tarde de mais. Devíamos ter a coragem (face àqueles a quem temos de perguntar, como face a nós próprios) de os atormentar com perguntas, sem consideração nenhuma, implacavelmente, não os poupar, não os burlar com a complacência. Ficamos arrependidos de não termos perguntado nada, quando aquele a quem tínhamos de perguntar já não pode ouvir essas perguntas, já está morto. Mas mesmo que tivéssemos feito todas as perguntas, teríamos obtido nem que fosse uma única resposta?"
***
"Efectivamente ela tinha-me sempre dado a impressão de que toda a vida eu fora para ela um estorvo, que impedira a sua felicidade completa. Quando me via, via o meu pai, o seu amante, que a tinha abandonado. Ela via em mim com toda a nitidez aquele que a arruinara, o mesmo rosto, como eu bem sei, pois ainda vi uma vez uma fotografia do meu pai. A semelhança era assombrosa. O meu rosto não era só parecido com o rosto do meu pai, era o mesmo rosto. A maior desilusão da sua vida, a maior derrota, quando eu entrava ali estava ela. E deparava-se-lhe em cada dia que vivíamos um com o outro."
***
"O meu lugar preferido em Seekirchen foi desde o princípio o cemitério, com os seus jazigos pomposos, as enormes lápides tumulares de granito das pessoas abastadas, as pequenas cruzes de ferro enferrujadas dos pobres e as minúsculas cruzes de madeira brancas das sepulturas das crianças. Os mortos já eram então os meus confidentes preferidos, eu aproximava-me deles sem constrangimento. Ficava horas inteiras na cercadura de uma campa a meditar no ser e no seu contrário."
***
"Descrevemos um objecto e julgamos que o descrevemos de acordo com a verdade e de um modo fiel à verdade, mas somos forçados a reconhecer que não é a verdade. Apresentamos a evidência de um facto, mas nunca é e nunca será o facto que quisemos tornar evidente, é sempre um outro. Temos de dizer que nunca transmitimos nada que fosse a verdade, mas a vida inteira não desistimos da tentativa de transmitir a verdade."
***
"Como os porcos no comedouro, os doentes empurravam-se para chegar às torneiras nos lavabos e os mais fortes repeliam simplesmente os mais fracos, as torneiras estavam todas as manhãs sempre na posse das mesmas pessoas, pontapés, pancadas na barriga abriam num instante caminho a esses fanáticos do lavabo, os doentes pulmonares arranjam em caso de necessidade forças físicas espantosas. O medo da morte torna-os fortes, institui como princípio a brutalidade, o excluído, o candidato à morte não tem nada a perder."
***
"Adiamos as perguntas decisivas, fazendo ininterruptamente perguntas ridículas, inúteis e infames e, quando fazemos as perguntas decisivas, é tarde de mais. Toda a vida vamos adiando as grandes perguntas, até que elas se tornam uma cordilheira de perguntas e nos obscurecem. Mas nessa altura é tarde de mais. Devíamos ter a coragem (face àqueles a quem temos de perguntar, como face a nós próprios) de os atormentar com perguntas, sem consideração nenhuma, implacavelmente, não os poupar, não os burlar com a complacência. Ficamos arrependidos de não termos perguntado nada, quando aquele a quem tínhamos de perguntar já não pode ouvir essas perguntas, já está morto. Mas mesmo que tivéssemos feito todas as perguntas, teríamos obtido nem que fosse uma única resposta?"
***
"Efectivamente ela tinha-me sempre dado a impressão de que toda a vida eu fora para ela um estorvo, que impedira a sua felicidade completa. Quando me via, via o meu pai, o seu amante, que a tinha abandonado. Ela via em mim com toda a nitidez aquele que a arruinara, o mesmo rosto, como eu bem sei, pois ainda vi uma vez uma fotografia do meu pai. A semelhança era assombrosa. O meu rosto não era só parecido com o rosto do meu pai, era o mesmo rosto. A maior desilusão da sua vida, a maior derrota, quando eu entrava ali estava ela. E deparava-se-lhe em cada dia que vivíamos um com o outro."
***
"O meu lugar preferido em Seekirchen foi desde o princípio o cemitério, com os seus jazigos pomposos, as enormes lápides tumulares de granito das pessoas abastadas, as pequenas cruzes de ferro enferrujadas dos pobres e as minúsculas cruzes de madeira brancas das sepulturas das crianças. Os mortos já eram então os meus confidentes preferidos, eu aproximava-me deles sem constrangimento. Ficava horas inteiras na cercadura de uma campa a meditar no ser e no seu contrário."
May 5, 2022
'Throughout my life I have been consumed with a shameless curiosity which has repeatedly put a stop to thoughts of suicide. I should have killed myself on innumerable occasions had I not been held back on the surface of the earth by my shameless curiosity. All my life I have had the upmost admiration for suicides. I have always considered them superior to me in every way. I am a good-for-nothing who clings to life, no matter how dreadful and valueless it is, no matter how drab and disgusting, no matter how cheap and contemptible. Instead of killing myself I go in for all kinds of unworthy compromises, debasing myself before all and sundry and surviving ignominiously, taking refuge in my own feebleness of character as in a foul-smelling fur that can still keep me warm. Sitting on this tree-stump, I couid see the utter absurdity of my existence.'
January 5, 2023
Page 305:
(4.5 stars). A curious form of autobiography; five half-related novella-length sections (published separately in the original German, over the course of eight years), which furthermore only cover the first 20 years of the author's life, albeit with some present-day reflections, vague references to later adulthood etc.
But this scope makes sense, as Bernhard describes his life up until the point that he began creating art (he also said in an interview that he wrote "until I reached a point where I began to get bored," so, fair enough lol). The extent to which he mines the first 20 years of his life as material for his fiction is truly startling; almost as if he hermetically sealed his youth and now studies it safely under glass. (Extinction = Bernhard going back to the village of Henndorf for his mother's funeral at age 19; Wittgenstein's Brother = his experience in a sanitorium at age 18; and so on.) The fiction is prismated out of his autobiography; he is quite literally the protagonist of most of the novels, i.e., it turns out that this isn't a metafictional feint.
Gathering Evidence is essential reading for anyone with even the slightest interest in Bernhard, and is probably the best autobiography/memoir written in the twentieth century, but I'm curious how the content would come across to someone new to his work. In a sense it's a good introduction to the man -- you'll be able to approach the novels with an understanding of why he hates Salzburg and Catholicism so much, etc. -- but it may work more effectively as a skeleton key that unlocks his fiction (after the fact). Bernhard, it turns out, was a WW2 author; his harrowing and incredibly depressing experiences as an adolescent living in Nazi Austria and the post-war years clearly shaped his personality and sensibility for the worse ("the smell of burnt flesh, the desperate voices of the relatives . . . decisively affected my whole life . . . I learned through direct experience how terrible life and existence are in general and how little value they have in wartime").
Easily the most interesting revelation, and in some sense the key to Bernhard's life and art, is his relationship with his saintly communist/artist grandfather -- this is the only case (anywhere! in any context!) where he speaks with unqualified love and admiration of another human being, and it's clear that everyone else he ever met failed in comparison. Virtually every aspect of Bernhard's artistic taste, vocation as a writer, etc., can be traced back to his grandfather, who served as a mentor, quasi-parent, teacher, artistic model, etc. His grandfather (as written) was so impossibly perfect that I began to wonder, by the end of Book 1, if Bernhard wasn't pulling some sort of postmodern trick, where this was a Tyler Durden character that young Bernhard had to project onto the world to escape his unhappy life; we never see the grandfather interact with anyone else, he lives with Thomas and his (long-suffering) mother in a separate room where only Thomas sees him; the grandfather enters a hospital on the same day as Thomas, and dies on the exact day that Thomas came very close to dying (of pleurisy). It seems almost too perfect, especially for Bernhard, and I half-expected him to admit on the last page that he had never met his grandfather, or that his grandfather was actually an SS officer, etc.
But he is indeed real; clearly there's some bias and nostalgia involved, where the older Thomas is viewing his grandfather nostalgically through the eyes of a child, but the young Thomas's tenderness and devotion to his grandfather create a heartbreaking contrast with everything that went wrong in later years. Quite literally ALL of the happy moments of his childhood can be traced back to this relationship, and when Thomas became catatonically miserable starting at age 13, the distance from the (rare) happy moments of his childhood becomes an infinite chasm.
One huge advantage of reading twentieth-century authors is that you can head over to YouTube and watch videos of them speaking, which makes their personalities much clearer (you can only gather so much from text). I still remember how shocked I was the first time that I watched video interviews of Heidegger, after having written on him for many years (YouTube wasn't a thing until I was in grad school). Anyway the main thing I learned about Bernhard is that he is a cool customer, surprisingly calm, unflappable, somehow vaguely elegant (my favorite part starts at 32:23); you don't really get a sense of any of the bleakness and darkness in his work, which makes me wonder how much it's something that he gets out of his system through writing? Has he exorcised the first 20 years of his life and now only accesses it through art, to the point where he can calmly live his life, behind a partition? Maybe he's just a really good actor?
* * *
Just to warn any potential readers in advance, the quality dips a bit as the book goes on (I remember writing in the margins of Book 4, "this is repetitive", "blah", etc.):
Book 1: 5 stars
Book 2: 4.5 stars
Book 3: 4.5 stars
Book 4: 4 stars
Book 5: 4 stars
'And so I began a strenuous search for the evidence, tracking it down in every direction, in every corner of the city of my youth and its surroundings. My grandfather had been right in his judgment of the world; it was indeed a cesspit, but one which engendered the most intricate and beautiful forms if one looked at it long enough, if one's eye was prepared for such strenuous and microscopic observation. . . . My grandfather had described nature as cruel -- and it was. He had described human beings as desperate and vicious -- and they were. I was always on the lookout for counter-evidence, thinking to prove him wrong in this or that particular, but I failed: all the evidence I assembled in my head confirmed his views.'
(4.5 stars). A curious form of autobiography; five half-related novella-length sections (published separately in the original German, over the course of eight years), which furthermore only cover the first 20 years of the author's life, albeit with some present-day reflections, vague references to later adulthood etc.
But this scope makes sense, as Bernhard describes his life up until the point that he began creating art (he also said in an interview that he wrote "until I reached a point where I began to get bored," so, fair enough lol). The extent to which he mines the first 20 years of his life as material for his fiction is truly startling; almost as if he hermetically sealed his youth and now studies it safely under glass. (Extinction = Bernhard going back to the village of Henndorf for his mother's funeral at age 19; Wittgenstein's Brother = his experience in a sanitorium at age 18; and so on.) The fiction is prismated out of his autobiography; he is quite literally the protagonist of most of the novels, i.e., it turns out that this isn't a metafictional feint.
Gathering Evidence is essential reading for anyone with even the slightest interest in Bernhard, and is probably the best autobiography/memoir written in the twentieth century, but I'm curious how the content would come across to someone new to his work. In a sense it's a good introduction to the man -- you'll be able to approach the novels with an understanding of why he hates Salzburg and Catholicism so much, etc. -- but it may work more effectively as a skeleton key that unlocks his fiction (after the fact). Bernhard, it turns out, was a WW2 author; his harrowing and incredibly depressing experiences as an adolescent living in Nazi Austria and the post-war years clearly shaped his personality and sensibility for the worse ("the smell of burnt flesh, the desperate voices of the relatives . . . decisively affected my whole life . . . I learned through direct experience how terrible life and existence are in general and how little value they have in wartime").
Easily the most interesting revelation, and in some sense the key to Bernhard's life and art, is his relationship with his saintly communist/artist grandfather -- this is the only case (anywhere! in any context!) where he speaks with unqualified love and admiration of another human being, and it's clear that everyone else he ever met failed in comparison. Virtually every aspect of Bernhard's artistic taste, vocation as a writer, etc., can be traced back to his grandfather, who served as a mentor, quasi-parent, teacher, artistic model, etc. His grandfather (as written) was so impossibly perfect that I began to wonder, by the end of Book 1, if Bernhard wasn't pulling some sort of postmodern trick, where this was a Tyler Durden character that young Bernhard had to project onto the world to escape his unhappy life; we never see the grandfather interact with anyone else, he lives with Thomas and his (long-suffering) mother in a separate room where only Thomas sees him; the grandfather enters a hospital on the same day as Thomas, and dies on the exact day that Thomas came very close to dying (of pleurisy). It seems almost too perfect, especially for Bernhard, and I half-expected him to admit on the last page that he had never met his grandfather, or that his grandfather was actually an SS officer, etc.
But he is indeed real; clearly there's some bias and nostalgia involved, where the older Thomas is viewing his grandfather nostalgically through the eyes of a child, but the young Thomas's tenderness and devotion to his grandfather create a heartbreaking contrast with everything that went wrong in later years. Quite literally ALL of the happy moments of his childhood can be traced back to this relationship, and when Thomas became catatonically miserable starting at age 13, the distance from the (rare) happy moments of his childhood becomes an infinite chasm.
One huge advantage of reading twentieth-century authors is that you can head over to YouTube and watch videos of them speaking, which makes their personalities much clearer (you can only gather so much from text). I still remember how shocked I was the first time that I watched video interviews of Heidegger, after having written on him for many years (YouTube wasn't a thing until I was in grad school). Anyway the main thing I learned about Bernhard is that he is a cool customer, surprisingly calm, unflappable, somehow vaguely elegant (my favorite part starts at 32:23); you don't really get a sense of any of the bleakness and darkness in his work, which makes me wonder how much it's something that he gets out of his system through writing? Has he exorcised the first 20 years of his life and now only accesses it through art, to the point where he can calmly live his life, behind a partition? Maybe he's just a really good actor?
* * *
Just to warn any potential readers in advance, the quality dips a bit as the book goes on (I remember writing in the margins of Book 4, "this is repetitive", "blah", etc.):
Book 1: 5 stars
Book 2: 4.5 stars
Book 3: 4.5 stars
Book 4: 4 stars
Book 5: 4 stars
July 13, 2025
Bernhard è il mio scrittore del cuore.
Qui, raccolti in un unico volume, i quattro libri che raccontano la sua infanzia e adolescenza. E' il Bernhard che conosciamo: ripetitivo, sferzante, lucido, maniacale. Ma come ammorbidito. La ferocia è sostituita da uno sguardo dolente sulla sua malconcia famiglia, sulle ferite che la Storia le ha inferto e sulla coorte di dolori attraverso i quali ha dovuto costruire il suo essere, sempre appoggiato a fondamenta malferme, sempre minacciato, in difetto, debole.
Nulla parla, in maniera diretta, del suo finale arrivo alla scrittura che è lasciato come un'isola buia, uno spazio vuoto, attorno al quale, comunque, sappiamo che tutto inevitabilmente gravita. Ci racconta, Bernhard, in che modo è diventato scrittore senza raccontarcelo mai, gettando lo sguardo altrove, sulla malattia, sulla paura, sul rapporto con l'autorità.
Si intuisce solo la forza prepotente che l'approdo alla letteratura deve, infine, aver avuto per lui.
Qui, raccolti in un unico volume, i quattro libri che raccontano la sua infanzia e adolescenza. E' il Bernhard che conosciamo: ripetitivo, sferzante, lucido, maniacale. Ma come ammorbidito. La ferocia è sostituita da uno sguardo dolente sulla sua malconcia famiglia, sulle ferite che la Storia le ha inferto e sulla coorte di dolori attraverso i quali ha dovuto costruire il suo essere, sempre appoggiato a fondamenta malferme, sempre minacciato, in difetto, debole.
Nulla parla, in maniera diretta, del suo finale arrivo alla scrittura che è lasciato come un'isola buia, uno spazio vuoto, attorno al quale, comunque, sappiamo che tutto inevitabilmente gravita. Ci racconta, Bernhard, in che modo è diventato scrittore senza raccontarcelo mai, gettando lo sguardo altrove, sulla malattia, sulla paura, sul rapporto con l'autorità.
Si intuisce solo la forza prepotente che l'approdo alla letteratura deve, infine, aver avuto per lui.
December 22, 2024
Il mio anno si conclude con una delle esperienze letterarie più interessanti che ho vissuto recentemente. 574 pagine in cui il livello è sempre altissimo e che mi hanno fatto compagnia per diverse settimane. Quando ho scoperto Bernhard, mi sono chiesto da dove potesse provenire il suo stile, per me totalmente inedito: la sua prosa e i suoi temi, il suo modo iper-reale, brutale e geniale di analizzare, raccontare, svelare e inquietare; la sua indole che lo portava a scrivere, scrivere per davvero. Da tempo desideravo, dunque, mettere le mani sulla sua autobiografia (e, amando tanto i suoi romanzi, è stata una gioia scoprire che ne avesse scritta una) per ritrovare le tracce che lo hanno portato a diventare il grande scrittore che è stato.
Composta da cinque libri, ognuno basato su periodi specifici dei suoi primi vent’anni, l’autobiografia di Bernhard si legge come una grande villain origin story, con lo stesso godimento con cui si potrebbe guardare Joker con Joaquin Phoenix. E mi piace questa idea di considerare Bernhard come un grande villain della letteratura contemporanea, anche se lui si rivolterebbe sicuramente nella tomba a leggere tale paragone. Qui si trovano le tracce, la mitologia di vita che non solo lo hanno formato, ma che ritornano poi in maniera ciclica nei suoi romanzi.
Composta da cinque libri, ognuno basato su periodi specifici dei suoi primi vent’anni, l’autobiografia di Bernhard si legge come una grande villain origin story, con lo stesso godimento con cui si potrebbe guardare Joker con Joaquin Phoenix. E mi piace questa idea di considerare Bernhard come un grande villain della letteratura contemporanea, anche se lui si rivolterebbe sicuramente nella tomba a leggere tale paragone. Qui si trovano le tracce, la mitologia di vita che non solo lo hanno formato, ma che ritornano poi in maniera ciclica nei suoi romanzi.
June 2, 2013
A magnificent book by a really original, great writer. So many writers get undeservedly high reputations for originality or genius, but Bernhard is the real thing. His books are eccentric in construction: long sentences, no paragraphs, the same words repeated, but he can ignore the rules because he is a great writer.
He is also unflinchingly honest. He looks with x ray vision at the world around him and he reports the truth and does so fearlessly.I love the title of this autobiography because I think that's what Bernhard spent his life doing: gathering evidence. He did it fearlessly and always on the side of the underdog. This book gives a flavour of his own early poverty. He was not from the rich side of town but he never bowed to authority, always insisted on the uniqueness, at least potentially, of every human. He always pointed out, ferociously sometimes, the lies of authority.
This is maybe my favourite Bernhard book but I've read many of them and they were all wonderful. You have to get used to the style of his novels, but it's not hard and it repays the effort many times over.
He is also unflinchingly honest. He looks with x ray vision at the world around him and he reports the truth and does so fearlessly.I love the title of this autobiography because I think that's what Bernhard spent his life doing: gathering evidence. He did it fearlessly and always on the side of the underdog. This book gives a flavour of his own early poverty. He was not from the rich side of town but he never bowed to authority, always insisted on the uniqueness, at least potentially, of every human. He always pointed out, ferociously sometimes, the lies of authority.
This is maybe my favourite Bernhard book but I've read many of them and they were all wonderful. You have to get used to the style of his novels, but it's not hard and it repays the effort many times over.
Read
July 20, 2018Who is Thomas Bernhard, when compared to any of the irritable cranks who populate his novels? I guess I'd always assumed they bore more in common... sure, the Thomas Bernhard of Gathering Evidence is an irritable crank, but he's a different sort, the sort you feel legitimately bad for, the put-upon kid who never quite fit in, who would eventually go on to do great things once he shed the misery of his hometown and his dysfunctional family behind. If you can stand Bernhard's writing style (which I adore, but is an acquired taste on the level of raw oysters, Fernet Branca, or Finnish salted licorice), this is highly recommended.
December 1, 2019
"Human beings do not like freedom - to say otherwise is to lie. They do not know what to do with their freedom. No sooner are they free than they occupy themselves with opening chests of drawers full of clothes and underclothes, sorting out old papers and looking for photographs, documents, and letters, or else they start digging their gardens, or set off quite pointlessly and aimlessly in some direction or other, whatever the weather, and call it going for a walk. And wherever there are children around, they are brought into the well-known activity known as killing time, to be provoked, beaten, and boxed round the ears in order to restore the chaos that brings release."
"Truth, it seems to me, is known only to the person who is affected by it; and if he chooses to communicate it to others, he automatically becomes a liar. (...) truth is quite impossible to communicate. We describe an object and believe that we have described it truthfully and faithfully, only to discover that it is not the truth."
"Truth, it seems to me, is known only to the person who is affected by it; and if he chooses to communicate it to others, he automatically becomes a liar. (...) truth is quite impossible to communicate. We describe an object and believe that we have described it truthfully and faithfully, only to discover that it is not the truth."
June 19, 2024
obok "Mrozu" najcięższa książka Bernharda, warto jednak przeczytać, aby lepiej zrozumieć jego fabularną prozę, poza tym koncepcja "śmierci bez umierania" - sztos!
May 1, 2022
Thomas Bernhard é um do autor que me acompanha, grosso modo, nos últimos 30 anos. Desde da leitura adolescente de “Perturbação” que o autor de Salzburgo é um fantasma do meu “eu” de leitor.
Quando a Ana Dahlberg - @anatomia_do_livro me propôs a leitura conjunta e o debate sobre “Autobiografia” volume editado pela Sistema Solar, onde se juntam 5 novelas autobiográficas escritas nos anos 70, quando ela me instiga para essa leitura aceitei esta imersão de um modo cego.
Foi tão duro ler estas páginas de Bernhard, foi tão enriquecedor viajar nestas histórias de infância e de crescimento.
E foi tão boa a conversa com a Ana que está de acesso livre no seu podcast (aqui: https://anchor.fm/anatomiadolivro) onde viajamos pelas paginas deste volume, mas onde falamos sobre a paixão de ler e o modo como crescemos com a leitura.
Não deixem de escutar. E de refletir, de pensar sobre o que lemos, sobre o que vivemos.
Quando a Ana Dahlberg - @anatomia_do_livro me propôs a leitura conjunta e o debate sobre “Autobiografia” volume editado pela Sistema Solar, onde se juntam 5 novelas autobiográficas escritas nos anos 70, quando ela me instiga para essa leitura aceitei esta imersão de um modo cego.
Foi tão duro ler estas páginas de Bernhard, foi tão enriquecedor viajar nestas histórias de infância e de crescimento.
E foi tão boa a conversa com a Ana que está de acesso livre no seu podcast (aqui: https://anchor.fm/anatomiadolivro) onde viajamos pelas paginas deste volume, mas onde falamos sobre a paixão de ler e o modo como crescemos com a leitura.
Não deixem de escutar. E de refletir, de pensar sobre o que lemos, sobre o que vivemos.
April 26, 2018
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Review 1.
5*
UMA OBRA DE ARTE!
_______________________
Review 2.
5*
Um dos livros mais difíceis que já li. Não pela estrutura, ou estilo, que são simples, mas pela dor que senti com o sofrimento de Thomas Bernhard e porque provocou danos na minha camada de crença na humanidade.
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Review 3.
5*
Admiro incondicionalmente Thomas Bernhard! Um homem com uma inteligência superior, sincero, corajoso, com uma visão da sociedade e da humanidade muito pessimista, mas incontestável.
_______________________
Review 4.
5*
Autobiografia reúne os cincos volumes publicados entre 1975 e 1982, nos quais Bernhard recorda a sua vida desde a infância até aos vinte anos.
Segue um resumo dos momentos de cada livro (que pode ser lido na Wikipedia), no entanto, em Autobiografia o Acontecimento é apenas um caminho para revelar o Pensamento de um homem admirável.
1. A CAUSA
trata do seu tempo de estudante interno num colégio em Salzburgo, no final da Segunda Guerra.
"O período dos estudos é um período dominado principalmente pela ideia do suicídio, se alguém o negar é porque esqueceu tudo."
"A matéria dos estudos era impelida para segundo plano pelo medo do nacional-socialismo, por um lado, e pelo medo da guerra sob a forma de centenas e milhares de aviões que todos os dias, ribombantes e ameaçadores, obscureciam e anuviavam o céu claro."
2. A CAVE
Bernhard abandona o tormento que é para ele o estudo e vai trabalhar para uma mercearia onde, por causa de uma gripe mal curada, contrai uma doença pulmonar.
3. A RESPIRAÇÃO
narra a sua estada num hospital, na enfermaria dos moribundos onde, pela sua força de vontade, se cura da pleurisia e acaba contagiado com tuberculose, o flagelo da época.
4. O FRIO
passado durante o internamento num sanatório para tuberculosos, onde revela todo o seu atroz sofrimento físico e mental.
5. UMA CRIANÇA
alguns momentos da sua infância, onde fala sobre a sua família, principalmente do avô, a figura que mais o marcou.
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Review 5.
5*
"Lidamos toda a vida com pessoas que sobre nós não sabem absolutamente nada, mas afirmam continuamente que sobre nós sabem tudo, os nossos amigos e parentes mais chegados não sabem nada, porque nós próprios de nós pouco sabemos."
(Página 223)
"Nós proviemos do teatro, no verdadeiro sentido da palavra. A natureza é o teatro em si. E as pessoas são, nesta natureza como teatro em si, os actores, dos quais já não há muito a esperar."
(Página 228)
"Sonhámos com a sinceridade e a clareza, mas não passámos do sonho. Muitas vezes desistimos e recomeçámos e voltaremos ainda muitas vezes a desistir e a recomeçar. Mas é tudo indiferente."
(Página 232)
"Por vezes levantamos todos a cabeça e julgamos que temos de dizer a verdade ou a aparência da verdade e baixamos de novo a cabeça. E é tudo."
(Página 233)
"...a literatura pode trazer a solução matemática da vida e a qualquer momento também da própria existência..."
"Com a literatura venci eu também os abismos que aí se abriam a todo o momento e pude salvar-me dos estados de espírito que só visavam a destruição."
(Página 327)
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Review 1.
5*
UMA OBRA DE ARTE!
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Review 2.
5*
Um dos livros mais difíceis que já li. Não pela estrutura, ou estilo, que são simples, mas pela dor que senti com o sofrimento de Thomas Bernhard e porque provocou danos na minha camada de crença na humanidade.
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Review 3.
5*
Admiro incondicionalmente Thomas Bernhard! Um homem com uma inteligência superior, sincero, corajoso, com uma visão da sociedade e da humanidade muito pessimista, mas incontestável.
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Review 4.
5*
Autobiografia reúne os cincos volumes publicados entre 1975 e 1982, nos quais Bernhard recorda a sua vida desde a infância até aos vinte anos.
Segue um resumo dos momentos de cada livro (que pode ser lido na Wikipedia), no entanto, em Autobiografia o Acontecimento é apenas um caminho para revelar o Pensamento de um homem admirável.
1. A CAUSA
trata do seu tempo de estudante interno num colégio em Salzburgo, no final da Segunda Guerra.
"O período dos estudos é um período dominado principalmente pela ideia do suicídio, se alguém o negar é porque esqueceu tudo."
"A matéria dos estudos era impelida para segundo plano pelo medo do nacional-socialismo, por um lado, e pelo medo da guerra sob a forma de centenas e milhares de aviões que todos os dias, ribombantes e ameaçadores, obscureciam e anuviavam o céu claro."
2. A CAVE
Bernhard abandona o tormento que é para ele o estudo e vai trabalhar para uma mercearia onde, por causa de uma gripe mal curada, contrai uma doença pulmonar.
3. A RESPIRAÇÃO
narra a sua estada num hospital, na enfermaria dos moribundos onde, pela sua força de vontade, se cura da pleurisia e acaba contagiado com tuberculose, o flagelo da época.
4. O FRIO
passado durante o internamento num sanatório para tuberculosos, onde revela todo o seu atroz sofrimento físico e mental.
5. UMA CRIANÇA
alguns momentos da sua infância, onde fala sobre a sua família, principalmente do avô, a figura que mais o marcou.
_______________________
Review 5.
5*
"Lidamos toda a vida com pessoas que sobre nós não sabem absolutamente nada, mas afirmam continuamente que sobre nós sabem tudo, os nossos amigos e parentes mais chegados não sabem nada, porque nós próprios de nós pouco sabemos."
(Página 223)
"Nós proviemos do teatro, no verdadeiro sentido da palavra. A natureza é o teatro em si. E as pessoas são, nesta natureza como teatro em si, os actores, dos quais já não há muito a esperar."
(Página 228)
"Sonhámos com a sinceridade e a clareza, mas não passámos do sonho. Muitas vezes desistimos e recomeçámos e voltaremos ainda muitas vezes a desistir e a recomeçar. Mas é tudo indiferente."
(Página 232)
"Por vezes levantamos todos a cabeça e julgamos que temos de dizer a verdade ou a aparência da verdade e baixamos de novo a cabeça. E é tudo."
(Página 233)
"...a literatura pode trazer a solução matemática da vida e a qualquer momento também da própria existência..."
"Com a literatura venci eu também os abismos que aí se abriam a todo o momento e pude salvar-me dos estados de espírito que só visavam a destruição."
(Página 327)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews