Rudi Krausmann
Thomas
Bernhard
© 1996 by Rudi Krausmann and gangan books australia
In Memoriam
When I heard of the death of
Thomas Bernhard by chance in the German daily paper Die
Süddeutsche Zeitung the reaction was more then a shock.
My life seemed suddenly meaningless to me. Immediately I stopped
working (ironically I was just translating the news for a German
language program at Radio 2EA) and stared out of the window. What
am I doing here, I thought. Opposite I saw some construction
workers putting up another skyscraper at Bondi Junction. It was
obvious what they were doing, but where would it lead to? Another
shopping centre, another price list. It happens every day and I,
like so many others, got used to it.
When I turned away from the window and looked into the room I saw,
amongst many other silly wall decorations, one from Austria. It
showed the 'Stephanskirche', Vienna's most popular cathedral in
the background, and in the foreground a 'Fiaker', a horse-drawn
coach and its driver sitting on top with a few American tourists
in the back seats. They were all smiling, of course, like an
operetta by Lehàr (Immer nur lächeln ...). This poster
was distributed by the Austrian government.
At this moment I was not even thinking of Thomas Bernhard's works,
his novels, plays or even early poems, some of which I had read in
the course of the last twenty years. As it happened I had had my
own private encounters with Bernhard over a longer period. For one
year I was sitting with him in the same classroom, it was at the
'Humanistische Gymnasium' in Salzburg, later I met him in the
streets of Vienna when he was totally unknown and writing his
first novel Frost. If he did not use the tram (or the
Straßenbahn) at the time, it was not only that he had
hardly any money, but because he did not want to sit in the same
compartment with the Viennese. He preferred to walk back to the
apartment of his aunt, from the centre of Vienna to its
outskirts.
With the literary success of his novel Frost, and the
reception of the 'Bremer Literaturpreis', amounting also to some
prize money, he bought himself a small farm near Gmunden in Upper
Austria, where he also died.
When I met him occasionally in the cafés of Salzburg, like
the 'Tomaselli' or 'Bazar', bourgeois establishments which nobody
from a middle class background could escape, he was always full of
hate and full of irony. His hate was directed against the
Austrians or the state of affairs in Austria, and his irony
against the human condition in general, not sparing himself. And,
if you like, he put his hate into his novels and his irony into
his plays.
After I had emigrated to Australia I had of course lost personal
contact with Thomas Bernhard. Once I sent him a copy of
Aspect (No. 21, June 1981) because I had published a
translated interview with him which had first appeared in Die
Zeit, a German cultural weekly. I had not asked his
permission. Bernhard was already 'famous' at this time for his
rudeness, he hardly replied to anybody and was not even willing (a
friend of his told me in Salzburg during a later visit) to receive
his translators. As he had not installed a telephone in his farm,
even his friends and relatives found it hard to communicate. There
was a rumour that he threw the daily mail in the rubbish bin
before he had looked at it. Whatever the case, Thomas Bernhard's
style of writing and style of living were the same.
When Thomas Bernhard had died, suddenly, many Austrians must have
been relieved. Nobody in Austrian literature, past or present, had
made such direct attacks on his fellow-citizens. Neither the
classic Grillparzer nor the modern Robert Musil. And never, to my
knowledge, had the Head of State, 'der Bundespräsident' made
a comment.
'Thomas Bernhard's writings are an insult to the Austrians', Dr
Waldheim had publicly declared. No wonder that Thomas Bernhard,
who was buried secretly and had managed it that only three people
could come to his funeral, thus depriving the Austrians of a
lovely corpse (eine schöne Leich) made more headlines
post-mortem than when he was still alive. And Gunter Nenning,
provocative journalist from Vienna entitled his article in Die
Zeit 'Der wahre Präsident' (the true President). I quote
(my translation): 'Waldheim lives, Bernhard is dead. Death for an
Austrian who, in his preference for the wrong ones, is as unjust
like its Philistine people. At first they did not want to know
about him. The West-German culturati, nourished by its publishers,
had known Thomas Bernhard much better than his own countrymen ...
The true President of Austria, who was, like its people, justified
in hatred about everything and everyone in this country, was not
loved by his own people ... But the dead Bernhard is a good
Bernhard, the next postmodern public building will be named after
him ...'
I could go on quoting ad infinitum, or if you like, ad absurdum.
Unfortunately in this postmodern polemic the essential Bernhard
could have been lost, or even forgotten. Perhaps foreign writers
like John Updike, expressed a more balanced view. In his comment,
also published in Die Zeit, he wrote: 'Although in
Bernhard's writing the theme disease is prominent, I was deeply
moved when I heard of his early death. My knowledge of his work is
limited, but the few books of his which I have read impressed me
immensely. In my opinion he was one of the authentic voices in
post-war Europe ... His unique form of irony and his particular
honesty had the sign of greatness' (my translation).
I like to remember Thomas Bernhard as I saw him the last time in
Salzburg. He was leaning against the wall of the 'Trakl Haus', now
a museum of this ill-fated Austrian poet who had died of an
overdose of drugs during the First World War, at the age of 26.
Although at this time he was at the height of his fame and
productivity, his smile was very sad, with only a flicker of
irony. I had intended to ask him to go to the 'Tomaselli', but
realised he was not in the mood to go anywhere. Thomas could have
said what he wrote ten years later in a letter to the director of
his plays, Claus Peymann:
'All by-passes lead to death'.