Wittgenstein's Nephew
by Thomas Bernhard
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It is 1967, in a Viennese hospital. In separate wards: the narrator named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering fom one of his periodic bouts of madness. Bernhard traces the growth of an intense friendship between two eccentric, obsessive men who share a passion for music, a strange sense of humor, brutal honesty, and a disgust for bourgeois Vienna. "[Wittgenstein's Nephew is] a meditative fugue for mad, brilliant show more voices on the themes of death, death-in-life and the artist's and thinker's role in society . . . oddly moving and funny at the same time."—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune "Mr. Bernhard's memoir about Paul Wittgenstein is a 'confession and a guilty homage to their friendship; it takes the place of the graveside speech he never delivered. In its obsessive, elegant rhythms and narrative eloquence, it resembles a tragic aria by Richard Strauss. . . . This is a memento mori that approaches genius.'"—Richard Locke, Wall Street Journal show lessTags
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The novella is based in part on a true story: author Bernhard's friendship with philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's nephew (actually grandnephew), Paul. Prepare yourself for a blast of intellectually dense but very compelling--and funny--writing. The book is at bottom a great howl of rage against death. Bernhard in his day (1931-1989) was perhaps Austria's most controversial novelist/playwright. The narrator, based on Bernhard, and his familiar, Paul Wittgenstein, share a rare friendship. They're the sort of people who laugh at others in public places out of a false sense of superiority. They are compassion-free. Neither ever transcends his own boyish rage. Bernhard, in fact, made his name on his rage. Paul Wittgenstein's rage, by show more contrast, turned to madness. We start with the Bernhard character lying in the lung ward of a Vienna hospital, the Wilhelminenberg. Here he begins his tale of his friendship with Paul. Bernhard is in the lung ward, and Paul is in the mental health ward. They have astonishingly similar tastes. The both love philosophy and music. Paul, like his famous uncle, is from a family of mercantilists (munitions, I think). And Bernhard does his best to paint them as philistines, notoriously hostile to art and culture. Paul, like uncle Ludwig, must reject his family if he is to survive. For the first half of his life, he is fabulously rich and travels widely. Then he exhausts his pile and must live like a pauper for the rest of his days. He's in and out of the Wilhelminenberg mental facility every six months. There he receives shock treatments and is locked into a cage that surrounds his bed. Bernhard describes Paul's treatments as a kind of breaking of his spirit. Once his spirit is broken and his weight dramatically down he is released. Then the cycle starts over again. But wait--it occurs to me now that I was wrong in saying that the two friends are compassion-free. Certainly, based on this brief text, it can be said that the two main characters' friendship, no doubt intellectually rich, was floated upon a certain cynical rage and hatred of others. WITTGENSTEIN'S NEPHEW by contrast is an exercise--albeit a tardy one--in compassion. Bernhard has written this tribute to his friend in which he excoriates himself for abandoning Paul during his final sad days. But he could not, being an invalid himself, meet death face on. He was too afraid. He admits his cowardice. So WITTGENSTEIN'S NEPHEW is Bernhard's apology. He wants us to know who his friend was and how he failed him. He is nothing if not painfully honest. A wrenching but enthralling novella. show less
Wittgensteins Neffe was written directly after Bernhard's five short volumes of memoirs about his childhood and youth, and is in a similar format, somewhere between fiction and autobiography in tone (160 pages without any chapter or paragraph breaks). It deals with his friendship with the Viennese eccentric and music-lover, Paul Wittgenstein (1907-1979 — technically, a second cousin of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, not a nephew), whom he met through a mutual friend in 1967. Not long afterwards, as he describes in the opening pages of the book, Bernhard and Wittgenstein coincidentally both found themselves in the same hospital complex on the outskirts of Vienna, Bernhard in a ward for patients with lung disease, and show more Wittgenstein, who suffered from bouts of mental illness throughout his life, in the psychiatric section. Naturally, it takes Bernhard 20 or 30 pages to discuss his feelings about the possibility of meeting his friend in the hospital, and about half a page to describe what happens when they actually do meet, but in the process we learn a lot about friendship, mortality, the incompetence of the medical profession, etc. A running theme is the interchangeability of the two men's illnesses and the way Bernhard sees his own mortality reflected in Wittgenstein's obvious decline in his later years, which leads him to spend less time with his friend than he feels he ought to have.
It might not sound like a very cheerful book, but there is always an (intentional) element of caustic humour in Bernhard's writing, especially when he is at his blackest. We have to laugh at his excess, at ourselves for finding it funny, and of course at the targets of his rage, all the doctors, nurses, actors, cultural bureaucrats, government ministers and other exponents of Stumpfsinnigkeit (dullwittedness) who happen to walk into the line of fire. We also get plenty of Wittgenstein anecdotes, which were obviously prime fodder for Vienna gossip at the time (Bernhard apologises for retailing these, but does it anyway). And a couple of accounts of Bernhard behaving badly at awards ceremonies, which is always fun.
Of course, the real reason to read this book is Bernhard's inimitable style, which works more like music than any other prose you're likely to have come across (although Beckett does something a little bit similar). Words and phrases are combined in sentences, then repeated over and over again with transpositions, inversions, variations that create meaning not by a series of logical steps, but by gradual accretion of similar but subtly different assertions coming at you from different directions. You have to give the text as much attention as you would give a Bach keyboard piece, but over the stretch of 100 pages or so you can do that, and it's very rewarding. show less
It might not sound like a very cheerful book, but there is always an (intentional) element of caustic humour in Bernhard's writing, especially when he is at his blackest. We have to laugh at his excess, at ourselves for finding it funny, and of course at the targets of his rage, all the doctors, nurses, actors, cultural bureaucrats, government ministers and other exponents of Stumpfsinnigkeit (dullwittedness) who happen to walk into the line of fire. We also get plenty of Wittgenstein anecdotes, which were obviously prime fodder for Vienna gossip at the time (Bernhard apologises for retailing these, but does it anyway). And a couple of accounts of Bernhard behaving badly at awards ceremonies, which is always fun.
Of course, the real reason to read this book is Bernhard's inimitable style, which works more like music than any other prose you're likely to have come across (although Beckett does something a little bit similar). Words and phrases are combined in sentences, then repeated over and over again with transpositions, inversions, variations that create meaning not by a series of logical steps, but by gradual accretion of similar but subtly different assertions coming at you from different directions. You have to give the text as much attention as you would give a Bach keyboard piece, but over the stretch of 100 pages or so you can do that, and it's very rewarding. show less
Madness and philosophy are a lot alike. Or at least they are for Thomas Bernhard. He consistently mistakes madmen for philosophers and philosophers for madmen. And whenever he, himself, is at his most philosophical, he is most certain that he is mad; but just when he is most mad, he is convinced that he is a brilliant philosopher. It’s understandable, in a way. Bernhard is friends with Paul Wittgenstein, who is none other than the nephew of the estimable philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein. Paul is a bon vivant, a lover of opera, a fashionable dresser, a wit. He is also mad. At least sometimes. Enough to be periodically institutionalized. Why exactly Bernhard conflates Paul’s vivid mental life with the mental rigour of his famous uncle show more is not clear. But he does. And he draws his inference in the other direction as well, assuring us that Ludwig was also a madman. And, oh yes, this is a sort of memoir of Paul, or belated eulogy. Though really, as ever, it’s entirely about Bernhard himself: madman, philosopher(?), enfant terrible of Austrian letters, and sometime friend of Paul Wittgenstein.
This is a short book but a very long paragraph. Indeed it is one long paragraph that extends for 100 pages. Within the confines of that paragraph, Bernhard is able to roam freely across such subjects as the nature of friendship, madness, illness, health, nature and its discontents, coffee houses, classical music, literary prizes, and more. He does this breathlessly. So much so that the reader almost feels compelled to race through to the end of the paragraph (book!) in one reading breath. This is aided by the rhythmic technique Bernhard deploys regularly conferring a positive description of something only to immediately state the opposite, like lapping waves on a shore. It’s mesmerizing. And even his flights of fancy and exuberant denunciations of friends, literary prize givers, conductors and thespians come across as just more typical Bernhard excess. As though everything he were about to say had already been discounted.
I’m not entirely certain what to make of this book, though it certainly has its moments, some of which of are very funny (usually at the expense of Bernhard himself). You’ll find it an easy read, if you can put up with Bernhard’s antics, and sometimes slyly insightful. Just not about philosophy.
Gently recommended. show less
This is a short book but a very long paragraph. Indeed it is one long paragraph that extends for 100 pages. Within the confines of that paragraph, Bernhard is able to roam freely across such subjects as the nature of friendship, madness, illness, health, nature and its discontents, coffee houses, classical music, literary prizes, and more. He does this breathlessly. So much so that the reader almost feels compelled to race through to the end of the paragraph (book!) in one reading breath. This is aided by the rhythmic technique Bernhard deploys regularly conferring a positive description of something only to immediately state the opposite, like lapping waves on a shore. It’s mesmerizing. And even his flights of fancy and exuberant denunciations of friends, literary prize givers, conductors and thespians come across as just more typical Bernhard excess. As though everything he were about to say had already been discounted.
I’m not entirely certain what to make of this book, though it certainly has its moments, some of which of are very funny (usually at the expense of Bernhard himself). You’ll find it an easy read, if you can put up with Bernhard’s antics, and sometimes slyly insightful. Just not about philosophy.
Gently recommended. show less
Okay, I'm giving this five stars because I'm already nostalgic for the times when I had new Bernhard to read--I've only got a couple more novels to go before I move on to the stories. This is an odd part of his work, since it's actually kind of in praise of something. It's in praise of a mentally disturbed wastrel, yes, but still, it's in praise of something. Bernhard records his friendship with Paul Wittgenstein, their mutual sicknesses, then moves on to more usual Bernhard territory (I HATE VIENNESE COFFEE HOUSES BUT ALSO I LOVE THEM!), which is very amusing.
Aside from the fact that it's a genuinely moving elegy, I found this novella interesting for one short passage toward the end:
"I reflected that in my whole life I had possibly show more never had a better friend than the one who was compelled to lie in bed, probably in a pitiful condition, int eh apartment above me, and whom I no longer visited because I was afraid of a direct confrontation with death... I had met Paul, as I now see, precisely at the time when he was obviously beginning to die, and, as these notes testify, I had traced his dying over a period of more than twelve years. And I had used Paul's dying for my own advantage, exploiting it for all I was worth." (98-9)
The narrators of Bernhard's fiction never admit to their own guilt, in large part because they can't find anything worth being guilty before. In this book, Bernhard does find such a thing, Paul Wittgenstein, a fascinating, loving, difficult friend, to whom he did not and cannot do justice, whom he cannot repay. He is doubly guilty, first because, like everyone else, Bernhard fails to aid the dying, and second because he uses the fact of his friend's dying to create fiction. This recognition makes this stand out among Bernhard's works. Well, that and the rant about the literary coffee houses of Vienna. show less
Aside from the fact that it's a genuinely moving elegy, I found this novella interesting for one short passage toward the end:
"I reflected that in my whole life I had possibly show more never had a better friend than the one who was compelled to lie in bed, probably in a pitiful condition, int eh apartment above me, and whom I no longer visited because I was afraid of a direct confrontation with death... I had met Paul, as I now see, precisely at the time when he was obviously beginning to die, and, as these notes testify, I had traced his dying over a period of more than twelve years. And I had used Paul's dying for my own advantage, exploiting it for all I was worth." (98-9)
The narrators of Bernhard's fiction never admit to their own guilt, in large part because they can't find anything worth being guilty before. In this book, Bernhard does find such a thing, Paul Wittgenstein, a fascinating, loving, difficult friend, to whom he did not and cannot do justice, whom he cannot repay. He is doubly guilty, first because, like everyone else, Bernhard fails to aid the dying, and second because he uses the fact of his friend's dying to create fiction. This recognition makes this stand out among Bernhard's works. Well, that and the rant about the literary coffee houses of Vienna. show less
Curious that this year I’ve already read books Notes from Underground, Cioran’s Anathemas and Admirations, and now this, all curmudgeonly reflections on the unfair and grotesque nature of life. Just now realizing how much Berhard’s book has in common with Cioran’s, alternating between excoriating and adulation, though Berhard’s is *a bit* warmer and less philosophical, as it does seem like him and Paul has a relationship that went beyond intellectual respect.
I wonder how this book was written? It’s one big chunk with no chapter breaks and hardly an indentation. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote this in a couple of sittings and edited minimally if not at all. I guess it’s a testament to the authors ability to be able to show more ramble and even blatantly repeat himself within the span of a few pages and this thing can still be worthwhile.
The relationship between Paul and the narrator reminds me a lot of those I have with some of my friends. We can quickly swing between intimate and indifferent, pass a whole night talking then not speak for a year. While I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with this, i think this book serves as a warning to make sure you are there for friends when you are needed. Paul’s death in abject poverty, his body and mind broken, was totally horrible, and if I was the narrator, I would feel deeply ashamed at abandoning him. But have I not also abandoned friends? Either or purpose or simply through neglect of the relationship? show less
I wonder how this book was written? It’s one big chunk with no chapter breaks and hardly an indentation. I wouldn’t be surprised if he wrote this in a couple of sittings and edited minimally if not at all. I guess it’s a testament to the authors ability to be able to show more ramble and even blatantly repeat himself within the span of a few pages and this thing can still be worthwhile.
The relationship between Paul and the narrator reminds me a lot of those I have with some of my friends. We can quickly swing between intimate and indifferent, pass a whole night talking then not speak for a year. While I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with this, i think this book serves as a warning to make sure you are there for friends when you are needed. Paul’s death in abject poverty, his body and mind broken, was totally horrible, and if I was the narrator, I would feel deeply ashamed at abandoning him. But have I not also abandoned friends? Either or purpose or simply through neglect of the relationship? show less
Thomas Bernhard is an intellectual snob and a curmudgeon but he is also delightfully funny in a wry, dry way. I really enjoyed when he went off on the Austrian literati, or country living, or even the average brains of most of his fellow citizens. His misanthropy, or at least disinterest in most of his fellowmen, did not extend to Paul Wittegenstein, nephew to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (of the equally entertaining book, Wittgenstein Poker). Paul was a soul mate, sharing Berhhard's love and fascination with music. While Bernhard had chronic lung problems that led to ongoing hospital stays in a sanitorium, Wittgenstein suffered from frequent mental breakdowns. Their brains and intellects were far and away superior to most, and show more they could follow and lead each other's thoughts in a way that few others could. This led to a true and enduring friendship for 12 years which finally ended when Paul died. It is really a fascinating memoir and commentary that is both extremely intimate but also touches upon larger and more universal truths that we can all relate to. show less
Esta es la historia de una amistad, la de Thomas Bernhard y Paul Wittgenstein. Thomas conoció a Paul a través de Irina, una amiga mutua, y pronto se vio que compartían opinión sobre muchos temas, como por ejemplo su amor por la música, de la que Paul es gran experto, sobre todo en óperas. Un momento importante en esta relación fue cuando ambos supieron que estaban ingresados en el mismo hospital, pero en distintos pabellones. Thomas estaba en el pabellón Hermann, dedicado a los enfermos de pulmón, ya que está afectado por un tumor en el tórax, y Paul estaba en el pabellón Ludwig, la zona del manicomio, en el que debía ingresar cada poco tiempo para volver a restablecerse.
Bernhard, en una especie de relato autobiográfico, show more ahonda en lo que significó para él su amigo Paul, despreciado por su familia, al igual que su tío Ludwig, el gran filósofo. Bernhard también nos cuenta su odio por la sociedad cultural austríaca, y por los premios literarios que le dieron, o al menos que intentaron darle. Y todo ello narrado de esa manera tan especial y característica, inconfundible, donde la prosa posee su propia música, repetitiva e hipnótica. show less
Bernhard, en una especie de relato autobiográfico, show more ahonda en lo que significó para él su amigo Paul, despreciado por su familia, al igual que su tío Ludwig, el gran filósofo. Bernhard también nos cuenta su odio por la sociedad cultural austríaca, y por los premios literarios que le dieron, o al menos que intentaron darle. Y todo ello narrado de esa manera tan especial y característica, inconfundible, donde la prosa posee su propia música, repetitiva e hipnótica. show less
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Author Information
281+ Works 16,429 Members
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 more harsh than lyrical. The isolation of the show more 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
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Bibliothek Suhrkamp (788)
Gallimard, Folio (2323)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Wittgenstein's Nephew
- Original title
- Wittgensteins Neffe
- Original publication date
- 1982
- People/Characters
- Paul Wittgenstein; Professor Salzer; Irina
- Important places
- Wien, Österreich
- Epigraph*
- Zweihundert Freunde werden bei meinem Begräbnis sein und du mußt an meinem Grab eine Rede halten.
- First words
- In 1967, one of the indefatigable nursing sisters in the Hermann Pavilion on the Baumgartnerhöhe placed on my bed a copy of my newly published book Gargoyles, which I had written a year earlier at 60 rue de la Croix in Bruss... (show all)els, but I had not the strength to pick it up, having just come round from a general anesthesia lasting several hours, during which the doctors had cut open my neck and removed a fist-sized tumor from my thorax.
- Quotations
- pag.88
Solo perché pensavo costantemente al denaro che mi avrebbero portato, sono riuscito a tollerare le premiazioni, solo per questo motivo sono entrato in tanti antichi palazzi municipali e in tutte quelle sale di rice... (show all)vimento di pessimo gusto. Fino a quarant'anni. Fino ad allora mi sono in effetti sottoposto all'umiliazione di ricevere dei premi. Fino a quarant'anni. Mi sono lasciato cagare in testa nei municipi e nelle sale di ricevimento, perché il conferimento di un premio è solamente cacca, cacca che ti arriva in testa. Accettare il conferimento di un premio altro non significa che lasciarsi cagare in testa perchè in cambio si è ottenuta una certa somma di denaro. Io ho sempre vissuto le premiazioni come l'umiliazione più grande che si possa immaginare, non certo come qualcosa di esaltante. Perché un premio viene conferito sempre e soltanto da persone incompetenti che hanno una gran voglia di cagare in testa a qualcuno e che in effetti cagano abbondantemente in testa a colui che accetta un premio dalle loro mani. Ed essi hanno tutti i diritti di cagare in testa a questa persona che è stata così abietta e spregevole da accettare quel premio dalle loro mani.
pag.93
(...) il cosiddetto conferimento del Premio Nazionale di Letteratura da me ricevuto e (...) finito con uno scandalo. Il ministro che nella sala delle conferenze del Ministero ha tenuto su di me una cosiddetta laudat... (show all)io, siccome si è limitato a leggere ciò che uno dei suoi funzionari addetti alla letteratura aveva scritto sopra un foglio di carta, non ha detto altro, in questa laudatio, che un cumulo di scempiaggini sul mio conto, per esempio che avrei scritto un romanzo sui mari del Sud, ciò che come è ovvio non ho mai fatto. Sebbene io sia austriaco da sempre, il ministro ha sostenuto che sono olandese.
pag.94
In ogni caso, tutte le scempiaggini che il ministro ha letto dal foglio di carta che aveva davanti a sé non mi hanno fatto né caldo né freddo perché sapevo benissimo che non era colpa sua, che quel povero idiota... (show all) originario della Stiria prima di diventare ministro era stato segretario della camera dell'agricoltura di Graz, addetto in particolare all'allevamento del bestiame. L'idiozia era scritta in effetti sulla faccia del ministro come, senza eccezioni, sulla faccia di tutti i ministri, il che era certo ripugnante ma non particolarmente sconvolgente, e io mi sono dunque sorbito senza troppo scompormi la sua laudatio. Ma dopo aver pronunciato, per così dire a mo' di ringraziamento, un paio di frasi che mi ero scritto su un foglio in tutta fretta e assai malvolentieri poco prima della premiazione, una piccola digressione filosofica, se così si può chiamarla, nella quale dicevo soltanto che l'uomo è un essere abietto e che la morte gli è assicurata, il mio discorso era durato in tutto non più di tre minuti, il ministro, che non aveva capito niente di ciò che io avevo detto, indignato si è alzato in piedi e avventandosi contro di me ha mostrato i pugni.
p.118
E Paul aveva un'abitudine che spesso ha portato anche me sull'orlo della pazzia, l'abitudine di non camminare a casaccio, come altri fanno, su una strada lastricata, ma seguendo un sistema preordinato con estrema pre... (show all)cisione, per esempio saltare a piè pari due pietre del selciato e poi posare il piede sulla terza pietra, e, anche qui, non mettendolo a casaccio e più o meno senza pensarci al centro della pietra, ma esattamente a filo del bordo, che a seconda dei casi poteva essere il bordo superiore o quello inferiore. Per individui come noi niente poteva essere lasciato al caso o alla disattenzione, ogni cosa doveva essere ponderata in tutti i particolari con geometrica, simmetrica e matematica ingegnosità.
Their intellectual fortune builds up at a faster and fiercer rate than they can discard it, then one day the mind explodes and they are dead. (p. 23) - Last words*
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Sein Grab habe ich bis heute nicht aufgesucht.
- Original language
- German
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 833.914 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures German fiction 1900- 1900-1990 1945-1990
- LCC
- PT2662 .E7 .W5813 — Language and Literature German, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures German literature Individual authors or works 1961-2000
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