"Death Is Close To Me Now And So Is Winter": 20 Years Without Thomas Bernhard

If you love classical music, or even if you don't but you love great novels, you should read Thomas Bernhard's The Loser: it's, among other things, the story of a piano student who happens to work alongside another student -- Glenn Gould (talk about keeping up one's self-confidence).

It's a major work that has enjoyed very minor exposure in the English-speaking world until now: What the public at large has denied Bernhard -- novelist, poet, playwright and essayist, who died exactly twenty years ago today and whose work is still so relevant -- classical music lovers should try to give back, at least in part.

Bernhard is an old master, a merciless mind and a steadfast critic of his country, Austria, who was promptly accused, in life, of being a "Nestbeschmutzer", someone who likes to soil his own nest. There's so much to remember him by: the astonishing beauty of his language, his honorable commitment to tell uncomfortable truths, his unrelenting bleak view of human nature. But today it's good to quote something that has been written about him and needs to be repeated: that he was morally committed as a writer to always look under the surface, no matter how ugly -- or self-defeating -- that would be.

"In his autobiography,"Gathering Evidence," Bernhard describes how one day, out of the blue, he decided not to take his usual route to school, but to walk in the opposite direction. He ended up in a shabby quarter of Salzburg he hadn't known existed; it was a neighborhood of the downtrodden, the ostracized, and the unemployed on the dole. It opened his eyes to what lurked behind the smug façade. He promptly got a menial job in a grubby convenience store in a basement and never went back to school. Walking in the opposite direction would become a stubborn habit for the rest of his short life."

Thomas Bernhard is Opera Chic's literary samurai.

Comments

[Stefan]

The Art of Extinction
The bleak laughter of Thomas Bernhard

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/12/25/061225crbo_books

Thank you for this post Opera Chic, Bernhard is really one of the Masters.

[sidney orr]

What a shame, that at first glance, much of his work is not available in English, for we chauavnists... thanks for the tip though... sounds like a bit of Grass, Hesse and Mann's
humanity rubbed off...

[Pier Luigi Itsybitsy]

Thank you so much, OC, for remembering the great Thomas Bernhard. I've met him once by chance, and I'll never forget that moment. He seemed to be against everyone and everything, and at the same time he was a true and noble gentleman. Always polite, but you could see the irony and sarcasm in his unforgettable eyes. His clothes showed his sublime and refined sense of style. Reading Thomas Bernhard's novels and plays is one of my greatest pleasures. Because it's so inspiring. He was a great writer, and I was told by someone I trust that he was close to being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Unfortunately he left us too early. But his work remains with us. So we can enjoy his work which to me is like music. Like Monteverdi, or Mozart, or Verdi. Plus Rossini's cool irony.