to laugh or not to laugh: humor in the works of thomas bernhard

laugh or not to laugh:humor in the works of Thomas Bernhard

NICHOLAS J. MEYERHOFER

Abstract

Thomas Bernhard, one of German literature's most prolific, talented, andcontroversial authors, has been writingfor nearly 30 years. While he began äsa lyricpoet, he soon moved toprose äs his genre ofexpression, and in the last15 years he has also written some 16 full-length plays. Bernhardts earlyreputatioin was that of, in the opinion of many critics, an obsessiveUntergangshofer or nihilist. His overtly negative themes (insanity, decay,suicide, and the inherent destructiveness ofnature and all human relation-ships) were, in almostfugalfashion, varied and replayed in work öfter work.In recent years, however, a surprising sense of humor has manifested itselfinhis novels and plays. "Humor" in a Bernhardian context, however, callsforcareful definition and frequently elicits an ambiguous response. The natureand literary function of humor in the recent prose and dramatic piecesof Bernhard can best be appreciated by düng and analyzing textualillustrations.

If considered in its entirety, and even if basedsolely on its most important events, the life of

any individual is actually a tragedy; viewed fromthe perspective of individual details, however, it

bears the stamp of a comedy.

A. Schopenhauer: The World äs Will and Idea

Readers familiär with contemporary German literature are probablyalready aware of the fact that Thomas Bernhard is one of the mostprodigious writers of the 20th Century. Since 1957, when he published hisfirst book, a slender volume of poems entitled On Earth and in Hell (Aufder Erde und in der Hölle), he has maintained his literary Output at a truly

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270 N. J. Meyerhofer

prolific pace. Two more collections of lyric poetry appeared in 1957 and1958, but it was not until Bernhard turned to prose that the German-speaking public began to take a serious interest in him. With thepublication of Frost (Bernhard 1976 [1963]) and his short prose in themid-1960's, critics recognized in Bernhard an original voice and anextraordinary, if uncompromisingly bleak, literary vision. This criticalfascination with Bernhard's prose works continued for nearly a decade,with reviewers äs notable äs George Steiner and Marcel Reich-Ranickipraising the young Austrian author äs "the most original, concentratednovelist writing in German" (Steiner), and äs a contemporary relative ofNovalis, Kleist, Kafka, and Musil (Reich-Ranicki).

By the mid-1970s, however, critics had begun to fault Bernhard's prosefor a lack of new insight. The writer had, it was feit, become totallypredictable in his obsessive repetition of formulaic themes, themes givenexpression in the same stock manner. This prose typically consisted ofmonomaniacal soliloquies which were, in efFect, archeological digs in themental landscape of some obsessive central figure who was being drivento madness and/or suicide. Lacerating relationships, paralysis of creativewill, physical deformity, and even nature itself propel these protagonistsinto self-destructive Isolation, where they knowingly and defiantly blurthe dividing line between inner and outer realities, and where theygradually succumb. Bernhard's prose, with its distended but controlledclause repetitions, mimed in an almost musical manner the psychiccircularity and hypertrophy which was thematized, the processes of amind no longer in control of its own momentum. This pattern applied tohis novels of these years — Gargoyles (Verstörung) (1967); The Limeworks(Das Kalkwerk) (1970); Correction (Korrektur) (1975) — äs well äs to hisshorter fiction, and it is perhaps in some measure due to accusations ofpoverty of Inspiration in his fiction that Bernhard so often turned todrama in the 1970's. Beyond this, however, drama certainly offeredBernhard greater creative possibilities than prose, since performance andstaging go beyond conceptual structures in wedding visuals, sound, andgesture to language. A Party for Boris (Ein Fest für Boris) was Bernhard'sfirst play, and it premiered in 1970, the same year in which he wasawarded the Georg-Büchner Prize. Those German critics who had alreadylabeled Bernhard äs an inveterate "literary Jeremiah" and äs a "resolutecandidate for suicide" were not long impressed with the transition,however, since it was immediately clear that the writer was not about togive up his characteristic negativity. A Party for Boris featured a cast-of

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Humor in Thomas Bernhard's works 271

14 legless and mentally debilitated cripples, all abused by a tyrannical andsadistic woman known simply and cynically äs "the Good One" ('dieGute"). The 14 full-length dramas which Bernhard has written since thisinitial three-act play have in general followed suit; they are dominated byegomaniacal monologists whose logorrhea typically gives expression tolitanies of hate. Favorite targets in these diatribes are Austria, women,and .artistic dilettantes. So familiär and predictable are the Bernhardiancatalogues of hate in his plays that they no longer elicit surprise or angerbecause of their brutality; rather, they frequently evoke the oppositeresponse. When Bernhard's play The Theater Maker (Der Theatermacher)was premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 1985, the audience broke intogleeful laughter äs the protagonist went into the anticipated tirade aboutthe present-day Nazification of Austria.

This Situation quite naturally forces one to ask questions about the roleof humor in Bernhard's works. In what sense can or must an apparentnihilist such äs Bernhard also be seen äs a humorist? Why is humorpresent in his writings, and in what ways does it find expression? DoesBernhard perhaps belong to an Austrian tradition of humor?

To address the latter question first: it is most difficult to frameBernhard within any sort of literary tradition. One could point toAustrian predecessors such äs Raimund with his bitter magical plays,Nestroy with his cynical farces, and Karl Kraus with his satires, butBernhard himself has never acknowledged these individuals äs influences,and certain differences between Bernhard and these forebears cannot beoverlooked. Kark Kraus, even with all his aggressiveness and venom, wasdevoted to what he conceived to be the highest spiritual values. Nestroy'sfolk-plays (Volksstücke), despite their caustic wit and scalding values,betray an attitude that is essentially humane and positive, not nihilisti-cally cynical, and he was certainly perceived in this milder light by hispublic. His funeral in Vienna was the occasion of a great public tribute ofaffection and esteem. Finally, Raimund's farces owe much of their humorto dialect and local Viennese allusions and, äs such, are much morelimited than the plays of a Bernhard.

In what, then, is Bernhard's humor grounded, if not in an Austriantradition of humor? In his brief but scandalous acceptance speech for theAustrian State Prize for literature in 1967, Bernhard gave an answer tothis question. This prestigious award is traditionally the occasion of aserious and frequently obsequious acceptance speech, but Bernhardshocked his audience by beginning with the words, "In life there is




nothing to praise, nothing to condemn, nothing to attack — but there ismuch that is risible, everything in life is laughable in the light of death"(Bernhard 1968).1 Everything in life — all human efforts and perhapsmost especially the seriousness accorded literary awards ceremonies — isridiculous in the face of death's ineluctability. The response to life'sinherent absurdity and to death's inevitability is, in short, to simply laughat it all. Bernhard is often seen äs an overwhelmingly serious author, yetin a 1981 television interview (Bernhard 1981), Bernhard spoke of hisphilosophy of life and personal attitude toward writing in a manner whichindicates that writing for him is actually more oriented toward laughterthan toward seriousness:

I don't know. It's simply always been a source of laughter for me, even today:whenever Fm bored or am going through some tragedy or other, I simply open upone of my own books, and that is certain to make me laugh. Or don't youunderstand that? I don't mean that to indicate that I don't write serious prose, äswell; you could say that the serious sentences are the cement that binds myhumorous sentences together, that welds my program of laughter, so to speak.This has been my approach over 20 years now, ever since I started writing(1981: 3f).

But what kind of laughter, what type of humor is Bernhard alluding tohere, and has it really always been present in his works, äs he affirms inthis interview? Allowing for a certain broadness of definition, one couldindeed argue that Bernhard has always given room to humor in his proseworks and plays. In Bernhard's first novel, Frost, the protagonist Strauchmaintains that "Even the terrible gives rise to laughter" (1976 [1963]:278), and laughter is for him the last bastion against entirely caving in tothe absurdity of life.

Similar quotations issue from the mouths of nearly every Bernhardianprose hero, yet in fairness one would also have to mention the propensityof these characters for suicide, thus suggesting, perhaps, the ultimateemptiness of laughter äs a response to existential despair. It comes ässmall wonder, therefore, that "humorous" passages or quotations dis-cussing laughter in Bernhard's earlier prose works in no way suggesthumor äs a means of reconciliation between individual and outside worldor life Situation; rather, humor is a defense mechanism, and an often futileone. This same caveat applies to the gallow's humor so typical of thenameless narrators of the early novels. In Frost, for example, the narratoris a medical Student completing his clinical internship, and in describinghis experience he asserts that it



Humor in Thomas Bernhardts works 273

. . . doesn't just consist of observing complicated intestinal operations or thecutting open of stomachs, sawing off of feet, or repositioning of rib cages; it is notjust a matter of ciosing the eyes of the recently deceased or pulling out babies. Aninternship isn't merely a matter of throwing newly cut-off parts of legs or entirelegs over one's shoulder into an enamel bücket (1976 [1963]: 7).

With tongue firmly planted in check, Bernhard is here highlighting thecrass and often heartless side to medical discourse, discourse which soeasily overlooks what it should most concentrate on, namely the humandimension of the practice of medicine. At times this kind of gallow'shumor finds more direct expression in Bernhard's prose. One of manysuch examples from bis shorter narrative pieces is his contribution to acollection of short stories written for children, a fairy tale entitled "ViktorHalbnarr. A winter fairy tale" (1966). In this story the narrator, a doctor,receives an emergency call one night, and his walk to the home of thepatient takes him through a snow-covered forest. In the middle of thewoods he literally stumbles upon a half-frozen, legless amputee by thename of Viktor Halbnarr. Halbnarr (which means "half-fool" inGerman) informs the doctor that he had bet with the cynical owner of themill in Traich that he could cover the distance between Traich and Föding— snow and wooden legs notwithstanding — in less than an hour. Whileattempting this, his artificial legs both snapped in two. The good doctorcarries Halbnarr into town before the hour elapses, however, and thusViktor wins the 800-Schilling wager and is able to purchase what he hasalways coveted: a pair of leather boots.

In Bernhard's most recent prose works, black humor has given way tohurnorous irony, and this tendency is clearest in the novels Concrete(Beton) (1982) and Old Masters (Alte Meister) (1985). Concrete reallyamounts to little more than 150 pages of Bernhard poking fun at what hedoes best, namely the literary depiction of a state of animated paralysis.Rudolf, the narrator of the novel, has for ten years been planning a majorwork of impeccable scholarship on the composer Mendelssohn. He is, atleast in his own opinion, gravely ill, but he has resolved to begin writing atlast. Yet Rudolph cannot bring himself to commit the opening sentence topaper, and he goes in mental circles with thoughts that constantlySabotage his attempts to write that initial line: his large country house isso quiet it's like a morgue; the postman or a neighbor is certain toInterrupt äs soon äs he begins to write; he doesn't really possess thestrength to sit äs his desk and write — or does he?; perhaps he hasoverresearched the Mendelssohn project, or perhaps he has been too




superficial; the published work will certainly be a huge success, but itcould also be a total flop; etc. The "vicious circularity" of all of this isrelieved by the Interpolation of humorous diatribes, attacks on topics äsdiverse äs Austria, the state welfare service, and dogs. The canineindictment, for instance, is occasioned by the fact that Rudolfs sisteradvises him to keep a dog for Company. But he has always hated dogsbecause of their influence over politicians and dictators, and how manypeople realize that the largest and most expensive tombstone in the worldwas erected to the memory not of a person, but of a dog, . . . etc. As forAustria, it has, äs mentioned earlier, always been a favorite Bernhardiantarget, be it the landscape, the political System, the people, or evenAustria's most insignificant features, such äs its typical kitchen Windows:"Austrian kitchen Windows are all utterly filthy, to the point that onecannot even look through them any more, I thought to myself; but ofcourse that's a decided advantage, since otherwise we would be lookingdirectly at the catastrophe itself, namely the infamous Austrian kitchenchaos" (1983: 74). In Bernhard's 1985 novel entitled Woodcutters (Holz-fällen), he pillories various aspects of life in Austria äs well; yet here againthe author's portrait of a society in dissolution is filtered throughobsessive repetition and humor, with the effect that Bernhard ultimatelyappears to be highlighting bis personal neuroses äs much äs anythingeise.

In similar fashion to his prose, Bernhard's recent plays also evidence aturn toward humor. If the earlier dramatic works were ominous andfrequently dominated by the grotesque and negative, Bernhard's stagepieces of the last few years have become progressively more autobiogra-phical, more self-referential in nature. As a result they do not totally shedtheir negativity, but their bleakness is mollified by ironic self-reflectionsand by a humor that is integral to the works. Often the protagonist inthese plays is an actor or a playwright, a Situation which obviously lendsitself to Bernhard's making thinly veiled autobiographical allusions,allusions which serve äs both self-parody and äs "in-jokes" for those veryfamiliär with the author. Near the beginning of the 1984 play The TheaterMäher, for instance (the title itself is a self-parodying pun), the protago-nist Bruscon uses the phrase which Stands äs a motto to the drama tocharacterize himself: "Already äs a child /1 showed a certain talent for thetheater / a theater person from birth you might say / theater maker / trap-setter / at an early age" (1984: 28). In volume two of his five-volumeautobiography, a work entitled The Cellar (Der Keller), Bernhard teils us




that at the age of four or five he became infatuated with idea of theater forlife (1976: 121). Bruscon himself is an art-obsessed petty tyrant who bearsthe psychohistory of Thomas Bernhard: "Fleeing the home Situation /boxed ears and beatings / abuse from my father / in a certain sense infamy/ self-infamy / worked my way up from the very bottom" (1984: 28).Bruscon is also an itinerant "state actor" who, with bis wife and twochildren äs the hopelessly weak supporting cast, is currently "on tour" inprovincial Austrian villages. What the rural public is treated to is a play ofBruscon's own creation entitled "The Wheel of History" ("Das Rad derGeschichte"). The piece is seen by Bruscon to be "a comedy of creation, ahuman comedy, a once-in-a-century breakthrough," not merely becausehe has been at work on it for nine years, but also because he is convincedof its universality and greatness. One soon gets the distinct impression,however, that "The Wheel of History" is in fact an impossible historicalsmorgasbord. Nero, Hitler, Metternich, Napoleon, and Madame Curie(ainong many others) appear in the course of the play's events, butBruscon is resolute in his conviction that the work is incontrovertibly amasterpiece, just äs he is certain that he himself is "the greatest of allactors who have ever lived." He makes constant references both to hisown greatness ("Shakespeare, Voltaire, and I") and to the fact that he isan unrecognized genius who is doomed to be unsucceessful — through nofault of his own — in terms of both staging (he sees his family members äs"antitalents" inimical to dramatic success) and appreciation. Bruscon isforced to cast his dramatic pearls before the swine in the village ofUtzbach, and this in the most literal sense of the phrase. While attemptingto rehearse with wife and children in the dilapidated hall of the village inn,"The Black Stag" ("I wouldn't normally consider coming into this kind ofinn to even take a piss"), the troupe is constantly interrupted by theenergetic grunting of the pigs next door. Pigs seem to be, in fact, a ratherfrequent problem for the Bruscon players:

In Mattighofen the pigs were fedapparently because of someone's deathat 8:30 in the eveningand they all at once began to grünttheir damn grunting ruined the entire play

At first we were just going to give it upbut then we decided to give it a try anywayand at the very climax everything wasdestroyed by the grunting of pigs (1984: 47)




In the end, both man and nature conspire to prevent Bruscon fromrealizing his Utzbach production of "The Wheel of History." Hisdaughter Sarah, who is to play Madame Curie, is an intractable nose-picker who is incapable of even minimal understanding, still less perfor-mance. His son Ferrucio is to play all significant historical figures whohad a "crippled" right arm (Hitler, Nero, Caesar, Churchill), since hehimself has a broken right hand. He possesses, however, no appreciationfor historical greatness, and Bruscon constantly refers to him äs a "dullidiot," adding at onepoint, "now the idiot / has become a cripple, too."Bruscon's wife has the smallest of roles, since he sees women and theateräs incompatible ("and äs far äs women are concerned / They have to betrained for decades / in order to understand even the simplest matters /and it's particularly difficult / if one is dealing with one's own wife (...) toproduce theater with women / is a catastrophe"), and she appears onlysporadically to accept meekly an insult from her husband. Of her and herincessant coughing, Bruscon punningly states, "The only thing infectiousabout you / is your cold." The Theatre Maker concludes with theoutbreak of a lightning-and-thunder storm so violent that it panics thevillagers who had assembled in the inn. Bruscon looks on helplessly äs hiswould-be audience flees in terror and äs the rain drips down on him fromthe leaky roof above.

If this seems to be merely light-heärted self-parody, it is perhaps wise torecall the words of Bernhard's protagonist in Concrete:

(...)! am my observer, I have been observing myself now for years, (. . .) and Inow exist, äs it were, in self-observation and self-analysis and of courseconsequently in self-damning and self-despising and self-parody, which is therefuge I simply have to seek in order to save myself (. . .) (1982: 142).

So it is with Bernhard and theater, which provides the dramatist with aperspective on himself äs writer. Theater is, for Bernhard, comedy, but itis also tragedy, äs he once intimated in a seminal short story about thetheater called, "Is it a comedy? Is it a tragedy?" (1967). It is appropriate,therefore, that most of Bernhard's recent plays represent a kind ofcomedic waffling. On the one hand, for example, Bruscon is a tragi-heroicallegory of the eternally misunderstood, lonely artist who is vainly inquest of perfection, and on the other hand he is a humorous parody ofprecisely such an artist. On the one hand, The Theater Maker is a comedywith obvious light moments, and on the other hand it is a tragedy whichsymbolically revolves around the creation of "absolute darkness" äs a




prerequisite for verisimilitude: % . .) in my comedy / which in reality is atragedy / ( . . . ) it has to be utterly dark / at the end" (1984: 15).

One can debate whether Bernhard's recent plays are predominantlycomic or tragic, but what they most certainly do represent are examples ofthe dramatist äs performer and spectator of himself. Odd äs it may seem,Bernhard sees in this self-dramaturgy and self-preoccupation a kind ofbond to all humankind, since a clearer conception of seif is for him thekey to a better understanding of human existence in general and since, inthe words of Bruscon, "Regardless of what we do / we are all victims / ofour passions." No doubt it will continue to be humor that offers Bernhardsafe haven from the storms of his own passions.

St. Mary's College

Note

1. Emphasis in original. This and all following translations are the author's.

References

Bernhard, Thomas1966 Viktor Halbnarr. Ein Wintermärchen. In Dichter erzähalen Kindern, Ger-

traud Middelhauve (ed.), 250-256. Cologne: Middelhauve.1967 Prosa. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1967 Verstörung. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1968 Der Wahrheit und dem Tod Auf der Spur. Zwei Reden. Neues Forum 15

(173), 348.1970 Das Kalkwerk. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1975 Korrektur. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1976 (1963) Frost. Roman, 2nd ed. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1976 Der Keller. Frandfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1981 Monologe auf Mallorca. Thomas Bernhard — eine Herausforderung. ORF

Nachlese (April).1982 Beton. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1983 Der Untergeher. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1984 Der Theatermacher. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.1985 Alte Meister. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp.



to laugh or not to laugh: humor in the works of thomas bernhard

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