Thomas Bernhard (1931–1989)
Author of The Loser
About the Author
Thomas Bernhard was born to Austrian parents in Holland and reared by his mother in the vicinity of Salzburg. His temperament and erratic health created difficulties for him as he grew up in a society governed by National Socialists. Bernhard found the alpine landscapes of his native Austria far show more more harsh than lyrical. The isolation of the characters in his novels is only slightly mitigated by friendship, generally only between men, and never by love. Yet many readers feel this lack of sentimentality gives Bernhard's work an epic power. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Thomas Bernhard, 1976
Series
Works by Thomas Bernhard
Stücke 1 (Ein Fest für Boris / Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige / Die Jagdgesellschaft / Die Macht der Gewohnheit) (1988) 37 copies
Claus Peymann kauft sich eine Hose und geht mit mir essen. Drei Dramolette. (1990) 36 copies, 1 review
Stücke 3 (Vor dem Ruhestand / Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh / Der Weltverbesserer / Am Ziel / Der Schein trügt) (1998) 27 copies
The World-fixer (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought Translation Series) (1979) 24 copies
Over All The Mountain Tops (Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture, and Thought Translation Series) (1991) 16 copies
L'origine 5 copies
»Ich bin ein Geschichtenzerstörer«: Acht unerhörte Begebenheiten (suhrkamp taschenbuch) (2008) 4 copies
Monologe auf Mallorca Die Ursache bin ich selbst : die großen Interviews mit Thomas Bernhard (2008) 4 copies
Anforderungen an ein inklusives bildungssystem nach der UN-Behindertenrechtskonvention : eine untersuchung der rechtslage im Freistaat Bayern (2016) 3 copies
L'italiano 2 copies
Teatro I: Una festa per Boris. La forza dell'abitudine. Il riformatore del mondo (Il Teatro di Thomas Bernhard Vol. 1) (2015) 1 copy
Teatro II: La brigata dei cacciatori. Minetti. Alla meta (Il Teatro di Thomas Bernhard Vol. 2) 1 copy
Untergeher, Der 1 copy
NIPI I WITTGENSTEINIT 1 copy
38 opowiadań 1 copy
KORRIGJIMI 1 copy
Yürümek • Evet 1 copy
Stücke I. (German Edition) 1 copy
Extinció: Un enfonsament 1 copy
Partyjka 1 copy
Mis premios 2009 1 copy
Vaten 1 copy
Geada 1 copy
Gete na samrti 1 copy
Seča šume 1 copy
Hodanje 1 copy
Korektura 1 copy
Krečana 1 copy
Dramen 1 copy
Træfældning 1 copy
Underængeren 1 copy
Beautiful View 1 copy
Der Theatermacher, Bilder und Texte: Die Inzenierung der Salzburger Festspiele. Burgtheater 1986/87 (1986) 1 copy
PAJ #13 1 copy
Spectaculum 74: Moderne Theaterstücke: Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh / Kupsch / Schieß doch, Kaufhaus! / Antilopen / Gertrud (2003) 1 copy
Undergeren 1 copy
Trevas 1 copy
Relatos 1 copy
Dramaty. Tom 2 1 copy
Poremećaj 1 copy
Incontro (in Goethe muore) 1 copy
Le Faiseur de Theatre 1 copy
Betão - eBook 1 copy
Kulterer 1 copy
Imitador de veus , L' 1 copy
Dramaty 1 copy
Prosa 1 copy
Nefes - Bir Karar 1 copy
Kælderen. En unddragelse 1 copy
Åndedrættet : en afgørelse 1 copy
Las posesiones 1 copy
Associated Works
Theater, Volume 30, Number 1 — Contributor — 1 copy
Performing Arts Journal: 16 (Volume VI / Number 1) — Contributor — 1 copy
Fiction, Volume 6, Number 1 — Contributor — 1 copy
Performing Arts Journal: 13 (Volume V / Number 1) — Contributor — 1 copy
Fiction, Volume 1, Number 1 — Contributor — 1 copy
Fiction, Volume 2, Number 3 — Contributor — 1 copy
Form 8 — Contributor — 1 copy
Theater, Volume 15, Number 1 — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Bernhard, Thomas
- Legal name
- Bernhard, Nicolaas Thomas
- Birthdate
- 1931-02-19
- Date of death
- 1989-02-12
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Universität Mozarteum Salzburg
Johanneum, Salzburg, Austria - Occupations
- novelist
playwright
poet - Organizations
- Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung
- Awards and honors
- Georg-Büchner-Preis (1970)
- Relationships
- Stavianicek, Hedwig (lebensmensch)
Fabjan, Peter (half-brother) - Cause of death
- heart attack
- Nationality
- Austria
Netherlands (birth) - Birthplace
- Heerlen, Limburg, Netherlands
- Places of residence
- Traunstein, Bavaria, Germany
Sankt Veit im Pongau, Salzburg, Austria - Place of death
- Gmunden, Upper Austria, Austria
- Burial location
- Grinzinger Friedhof, Vienna, Austria
- Associated Place (for map)
- Austria
Members
Reviews
La prosa de Bernhard produce un extraño efecto en el lector. Más que repetitiva, yo diría que es cíclica. Como si de una pieza de música se tratara, Bernhard nos va contando una historia para volver sobre sus pasos e ir profundizando sobre lo ya contado; y lo que parecían simples detalles pasan a convertirse en parte fundamental de la novela. De esta manera quedas atrapado en esta particular tela de araña que tan bien ha urdido Bernhard. A ello contribuye también los escasos puntos y show more aparte, que provocan que sigas leyendo y leyendo hasta que el texto indique más o menos dónde interrumpir la historia para continuar en otro momento. Es magnífico dejarse llevar de esta manera.
Con Bernhard, la historia se convierte en un factor secundario, y sólo le exigimos que sea medianamente interesante, como es el caso de la novela que nos ocupa. En 'Sí', el protagonista, del que no sabemos el nombre, nos narra en primera persona su caída en una profunda desesperación, producto, como no deja de insistir, de una enfermedad intelectual y sentimental. Él es un solitario que vive en una ciudad austríaca dedicándose al estudio de los anticuerpos, y cuando se encuentra en este estado, que suele ser a menudo, se desahoga visitando a Moritz, el agente inmobiliario que le encontró la casa en la que ahora vive. Durante una de estas visitas aparece una pareja de Suizos, un hombre y una mujer, que vienen a hablar con Moritz sobre la reciente adquisición de su nueva casa. Esta visita, y sobre todo la mujer, a la que llama la Persa, provocarán una serie de revelaciones que el protagonista nos irá desvelando.
Es encomiable el saber hacer de Bernhard para mantener la atención del lector con tan poco material. show less
Con Bernhard, la historia se convierte en un factor secundario, y sólo le exigimos que sea medianamente interesante, como es el caso de la novela que nos ocupa. En 'Sí', el protagonista, del que no sabemos el nombre, nos narra en primera persona su caída en una profunda desesperación, producto, como no deja de insistir, de una enfermedad intelectual y sentimental. Él es un solitario que vive en una ciudad austríaca dedicándose al estudio de los anticuerpos, y cuando se encuentra en este estado, que suele ser a menudo, se desahoga visitando a Moritz, el agente inmobiliario que le encontró la casa en la que ahora vive. Durante una de estas visitas aparece una pareja de Suizos, un hombre y una mujer, que vienen a hablar con Moritz sobre la reciente adquisición de su nueva casa. Esta visita, y sobre todo la mujer, a la que llama la Persa, provocarán una serie de revelaciones que el protagonista nos irá desvelando.
Es encomiable el saber hacer de Bernhard para mantener la atención del lector con tan poco material. show less
Why Fiction and Music May Not Mix
I'd like to pose this review as a question. Why is there so little talk about music in "The Loser"?
This is a book about Glenn Gould (named, and with mainly true things said about him), Horowitz (same), a character named Wertheimer (who has echoes of Paul Wittgenstein, the pianist and friend of Bernhard's), and the narrator, also a pianist. The entire novel is consumed with music, and yet there is very little here that's specific about music: a couple of show more individual pieces are named, and there are stray mentions of Schoenberg, Webern, Handel, and some others. There is exactly one passage on an individual piece of music, when Wertheimer overhears Gould playing the second half of the Aria in the Goldberg Variations.
It's known that Bernhard knew a great deal about music (one of his favrites was Josef Matthias Hauer: you can judge your own knowledge of modernist music by whether or not you know him), and so it's clear that he made a decision to omit any detailed talk about music from the book.
In the book, music and pianism are entirely matters of "genius." The narrator talks incessantly about who was the "best" "piano artist," and who was second best. Gould was of course "better" than Horowitz, and so forth.
What strikes me here is that this is not how any professional I know, in any field of the arts, thinks. Once you learn about an art (classical piano, abstract painting, whatever) you come to care about individual artists and artworks, and even about parts of artworks. I admire Gould for his performance of some of the variations in Beethoven's Op. 109, but not others; some preludes and fugues in the WTC, but not others. I am convinced by his performance of individual passages and even single notes in Bach, and not others -- for example in the Aria, where some notes sound overdone and intrusively ornamental, and others crisp and "modern." I don't think this is unusual, and it's attested by the intense scrutiny listeners give to performances by their favorite pianists. (Those comparative videos on Youtube are a contemporary manifestation.) Once you get to know an art, a medium, or an instrument, it no longer makes sense to say things like "Gould was the best pianist in the world."
(This is related to the reason why I put off reading "The Loser" until I'd read almost all Bernhard's work: I have my own ideas about Gould and Horowitz, and I imagined Bernhard's thoughts would get in the way of a sympathetic reading of his novel. As it turns out, there are no specific ideas about Gould or Horowitz at all -- you could never tell, from "The Loser," how they played.)
So this is my question: why did Bernhard deliberately avoid writing anything specific about Gould's technique, or Horowitz's, or about their interpretaions of any pieces of music?
Here are a couple of possibilities.
1. "The Loser" has a satiric purpose, and it's about obsession, self-destruction, and people driven by claims of precedence, fame, and genius. This question could perhaps be asked without reference to music. There is little of Wright's architecture in "The Corrections," little of the Wittgensteins in "Wittgenstein's Nephew," little of Goethe in "Goethe Dies," and so forth. But "The Loser" seems different to me, because it names enough actual music to signal the reader it is not only about personalities, that the music matters.
2. Bernhard thought that literature itself -- fiction -- could not accommodate detailed discussions of music, because references to individual works would not be known to readers. I don't like this as an answer, because Bernhard was absolutely the last person to care about his readers' level of education.
3. He was averse to music criticism, description, or analysis of any sort. This is possible; I don't know his position here.
4. He thought discussion of music is incompatible with the narrative forms and voices of literature. This is the explanation that intrigues me. Bernhard was aware of precedents for including descriptions of individual passages and performances, especially Proust.
This question is a live one for me, because I am working on a novel that includes not only precise descriptions of music, but actual sheet music. If there's something to the fourth answer, I'd like to understand it better. show less
I'd like to pose this review as a question. Why is there so little talk about music in "The Loser"?
This is a book about Glenn Gould (named, and with mainly true things said about him), Horowitz (same), a character named Wertheimer (who has echoes of Paul Wittgenstein, the pianist and friend of Bernhard's), and the narrator, also a pianist. The entire novel is consumed with music, and yet there is very little here that's specific about music: a couple of show more individual pieces are named, and there are stray mentions of Schoenberg, Webern, Handel, and some others. There is exactly one passage on an individual piece of music, when Wertheimer overhears Gould playing the second half of the Aria in the Goldberg Variations.
It's known that Bernhard knew a great deal about music (one of his favrites was Josef Matthias Hauer: you can judge your own knowledge of modernist music by whether or not you know him), and so it's clear that he made a decision to omit any detailed talk about music from the book.
In the book, music and pianism are entirely matters of "genius." The narrator talks incessantly about who was the "best" "piano artist," and who was second best. Gould was of course "better" than Horowitz, and so forth.
What strikes me here is that this is not how any professional I know, in any field of the arts, thinks. Once you learn about an art (classical piano, abstract painting, whatever) you come to care about individual artists and artworks, and even about parts of artworks. I admire Gould for his performance of some of the variations in Beethoven's Op. 109, but not others; some preludes and fugues in the WTC, but not others. I am convinced by his performance of individual passages and even single notes in Bach, and not others -- for example in the Aria, where some notes sound overdone and intrusively ornamental, and others crisp and "modern." I don't think this is unusual, and it's attested by the intense scrutiny listeners give to performances by their favorite pianists. (Those comparative videos on Youtube are a contemporary manifestation.) Once you get to know an art, a medium, or an instrument, it no longer makes sense to say things like "Gould was the best pianist in the world."
(This is related to the reason why I put off reading "The Loser" until I'd read almost all Bernhard's work: I have my own ideas about Gould and Horowitz, and I imagined Bernhard's thoughts would get in the way of a sympathetic reading of his novel. As it turns out, there are no specific ideas about Gould or Horowitz at all -- you could never tell, from "The Loser," how they played.)
So this is my question: why did Bernhard deliberately avoid writing anything specific about Gould's technique, or Horowitz's, or about their interpretaions of any pieces of music?
Here are a couple of possibilities.
1. "The Loser" has a satiric purpose, and it's about obsession, self-destruction, and people driven by claims of precedence, fame, and genius. This question could perhaps be asked without reference to music. There is little of Wright's architecture in "The Corrections," little of the Wittgensteins in "Wittgenstein's Nephew," little of Goethe in "Goethe Dies," and so forth. But "The Loser" seems different to me, because it names enough actual music to signal the reader it is not only about personalities, that the music matters.
2. Bernhard thought that literature itself -- fiction -- could not accommodate detailed discussions of music, because references to individual works would not be known to readers. I don't like this as an answer, because Bernhard was absolutely the last person to care about his readers' level of education.
3. He was averse to music criticism, description, or analysis of any sort. This is possible; I don't know his position here.
4. He thought discussion of music is incompatible with the narrative forms and voices of literature. This is the explanation that intrigues me. Bernhard was aware of precedents for including descriptions of individual passages and performances, especially Proust.
This question is a live one for me, because I am working on a novel that includes not only precise descriptions of music, but actual sheet music. If there's something to the fourth answer, I'd like to understand it better. show less
The first part of Bernhard's memoirs (autobiographical novels, really) in chronological order and the last to be published. This book describes his early childhood up to the age of thirteen (1931-44). At the heart of the story is his difficult relationship with his mother. Thomas's father had abandoned her as soon as she became pregnant, and at moments of stress she can't help blaming the child for ruining her life ("Du hast mir noch gefehlt! Du bist mein ganzes Unglück..."). In contrast is show more his idyllic friendship with his grandfather, a novelist of anarchist leanings who warns him against the evils of bourgeois institutions like primary schools, with regrettable results...
From the context, and from everything I've heard about Bernhard, this account of an unhappy, deprived childhood in wartime Austria and Bavaria should be thoroughly depressing, but the quality of the writing and the sheer originality of Bernhard's technique don't leave you with any time to feel sorry for him, or to whinge about trivialities like the absence of paragraph and chapter-breaks. show less
From the context, and from everything I've heard about Bernhard, this account of an unhappy, deprived childhood in wartime Austria and Bavaria should be thoroughly depressing, but the quality of the writing and the sheer originality of Bernhard's technique don't leave you with any time to feel sorry for him, or to whinge about trivialities like the absence of paragraph and chapter-breaks. show less
A few days ago the book [b:The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity|49348225|The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity|Carlo M. Cipolla|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1595814345l/49348225._SX50_.jpg|358622] came across my desk. Living as I do in the vaccine-refusing epicenter of the US Delta variant surge of infection and of hospitals that are once again becoming overwhelmed, I couldn’t help feeling a note of sympathy with the book. Opening it up I read the first show more law: “Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.” Here’s an author who probably read Thomas Bernhard.
I take it that all of Bernhard’s work is essentially variants of a theme, of which stupidity plays a large role. Stupidity is the spike protein of Bernhard’s worldview, always present as the details of the larger work change a bit. I have no idea if that claim works, by the way, but I’m leaving it. How does Bernhard put it across in Gargoyles?
Naturally this makes for an unhappy outlook. “As I go about, there is hardly a man I see who isn’t repulsive.” “He was used to sacrificing himself to a sick populace given to violence as well as insanity.” “It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.”
Sometimes this is funny. Nothing is above the novel’s complaints: “If I send it now, at noon, I thought, it won’t reach Kobernausserwald until tomorrow morning. The postal system, the hopeless, ruined Austrian postal system.” Now there’s some pettiness. And here it reads like a parody of Grumpy Old Man: “We paid and left. In the restaurant a band of schoolchildren were being fed. They were given hot soup and admonishments not to make noise. What gruesome people these innocent creatures will inevitably become, I thought as we left the restaurant.”
Bernhard’s apparent horror of sex appears: “I once saw him naked by the river, together with his equally naked wife; I remember that infantile penis. There they were, indulging their pitiable Sunday connubiality behind the bushes, away from the clear water, where they thought they were alone and could indulge themselves in their revolting intimacies, succumbing to their stupor in the sunset.” That’s some pretty good and funny anti-eroticism, I have to admit.
If Bernhard’s debut novel [b:Frost|12203|Frost|Thomas Bernhard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1537115859l/12203._SY75_.jpg|1244054] had one solitary note of optimism and grace, embodied by nuns caring for the ill, Gargoyles has its one note of optimism and grace located in nature:
I liked this novel more than I did Frost, perhaps because it has more variety and hints of an actual plot to its largely one note hammering away. Bernhard’s third novel, I read, marks the start of his major work, so having served somewhat of a gruesome apprenticeship I look forward to the gruesome main event. After all, “We always want to hear something even worse than what we have inside of us,” as the prince said. Perceptive. show less
I take it that all of Bernhard’s work is essentially variants of a theme, of which stupidity plays a large role. Stupidity is the spike protein of Bernhard’s worldview, always present as the details of the larger work change a bit. I have no idea if that claim works, by the way, but I’m leaving it. How does Bernhard put it across in Gargoyles?
I say to Huber: The republican death-throes are probably the most repulsive, the ugliest of all. Aren’t they, Doctor? I say: The common people are stupid, they stink, and that has always been so.
I have been reflecting, Doctor, on the stupidity of all phrases, on stupidity, on the stupidity in which man lives and thinks, thinks and lives, on the stupidity…
… has never come into conflict with the law and never will because the world is too stupid.
The prince said he was forever compelled to make a stupid society realize it was stupid, and that he was always doing everything in his power to prove to this stupid society how stupid it was.
The shattering thing,” he said, “is not the ugliness of people but their lack of judgment.”
Naturally this makes for an unhappy outlook. “As I go about, there is hardly a man I see who isn’t repulsive.” “He was used to sacrificing himself to a sick populace given to violence as well as insanity.” “It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.”
Sometimes this is funny. Nothing is above the novel’s complaints: “If I send it now, at noon, I thought, it won’t reach Kobernausserwald until tomorrow morning. The postal system, the hopeless, ruined Austrian postal system.” Now there’s some pettiness. And here it reads like a parody of Grumpy Old Man: “We paid and left. In the restaurant a band of schoolchildren were being fed. They were given hot soup and admonishments not to make noise. What gruesome people these innocent creatures will inevitably become, I thought as we left the restaurant.”
Bernhard’s apparent horror of sex appears: “I once saw him naked by the river, together with his equally naked wife; I remember that infantile penis. There they were, indulging their pitiable Sunday connubiality behind the bushes, away from the clear water, where they thought they were alone and could indulge themselves in their revolting intimacies, succumbing to their stupor in the sunset.” That’s some pretty good and funny anti-eroticism, I have to admit.
If Bernhard’s debut novel [b:Frost|12203|Frost|Thomas Bernhard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1537115859l/12203._SY75_.jpg|1244054] had one solitary note of optimism and grace, embodied by nuns caring for the ill, Gargoyles has its one note of optimism and grace located in nature:
I would climb the northern hills and let myself dream while contemplating the outward aspects of nature. Whenever I looked at it, I said, and from any perspective, the surface of the earth struck me as new and I was refreshed by it.
I liked this novel more than I did Frost, perhaps because it has more variety and hints of an actual plot to its largely one note hammering away. Bernhard’s third novel, I read, marks the start of his major work, so having served somewhat of a gruesome apprenticeship I look forward to the gruesome main event. After all, “We always want to hear something even worse than what we have inside of us,” as the prince said. Perceptive. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 282
- Also by
- 14
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- 16,380
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- #1,385
- Rating
- 4.0
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- 359
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