Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
and the old lady’s wrath) is safely consigned to history.
Like the ‘Anschluss’ and the President’s SS uniform, it
is part of Austria’s rich cultural heritage. Perhaps this is
why, in his will, Bernhard refused to allow the publication
or performance of his work within the Austrian
state for the duration of the copyright; he foresaw his
place in the state circus. (The lawyers have since got
around this.)
However, the important thing to remember is that it
wasn’t Bernhard who said Austria was still full of Nazis,
it was a character in his play Heldenplatz. And while
everyone assumes Bernhard meant every word as his
own, those words are part of a whole that, as J.J. Long
explains in his book The Novels Of Thomas Bernhard:
Form And Its Function, demands to be experienced not
in isolation as preferred by the culture-vultures, but in
real time. If this is done, irony leaks into the hyperbole
and all attitudes become unstable, even irony. In effect,
even after death, Bernhard still performs, refusing to
become a museum piece. The man himself remains a
mystery. So what, in fact, did Thomas Bernhard think?
Who was he when alone, no longer dancing before the
appalled Viennese bourgeoisie? These are questions for
a biography.
But don’t get your hopes up. As Honegger’s subtitle
indicates, there is a plea of mitigation. She says
her book is a “cultural biography”; as much about
Austria as about Bernhard. While this is disappoint-
BUY Thomas Bernhard books online from and
ing, it is also understandable. Most correspondence is
unavailable, and friends do not say anything particularly
intimate. In fact, the one clear sexual revelation
doesn’t alter the image of a performer: Bernhard
liked to masturbate in front of a mirror! We’re told
this on page 10, so it’s all over pretty quickly. Instead
of a chronological narrative, we’re given themes in
which Honegger makes frequent (and wearying)
digressions into cultural history and their relevance
to Bernhard, such as the notion of ‘Heimat’, and the
significance of the theatre in Austria.
In connection with the latter, Honegger rightly makes
much of Bernhard’s staging of his experience. In his
compelling memoirs (written in five short volumes but
collected in English as Gathering Evidence), Bernhard
recalls events through the eyes of his younger self while
he (the younger self) is also observing or reflecting. He
observes his younger self observing from a vantage
point separate from the ‘action’. One observation point
leads to another and then another. We might see this as
a prime example of Chinese-box Postmodernism where
all facts are as hollow as the next, but in Bernhard’s
memoir the gnawing question of origin is always there.
The facts are plain: Bernhard’s father abandoned his
mother before Thomas was born, and died during the
war years in mysterious circumstances; he either killed
himself or was murdered. He never met his son. Bernhard
was later punished by his bitter mother who saw
083
More
Spike
email
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z