On Thomas Bernhard and extinct dilemmas (and 3)

Congruence

Throughout the novel, Murau reflects and judges on his life and circumstances. Many times, the reader will find itself in an uncomfortable position, unable to grasp the meaning of what Murau is really trying to say. Indeed, one can feel in total disagreement with his views, engaged in a constant roam around nowhere, while expressing his hatred towards life and the unavoidable dilemmas (tests?) that transform our existence into a painful journey. In this respect, Murau seems like a child, complaining about a world that betrays his expectations. 

However, his discourse and judgements are persuasive (as shown in the ‘Photographs’ section) and an antidote against self-pity and indolence. And what is more surprising, most of his actions show congruence with his thoughts, at least from what he narrates in his soliloquy, which leaves no room for another perspective of the events. In other words, the reader is faced with a megalomaniac and perhaps a liar who, nonetheless, “has a point” on how to deal with life and its unbounded uncertainties. Every writer fits to some degree with this description, as they engage in creating worlds and situations following the flow of their imagination, without caring much about being truthful. In fact, the essence of a writer’s art is to exaggerate and develop fictions. This is congruent with Murau’s notion that the essence of all great art is exaggeration. Bernhard then, might be exaggerating but he’s making art, which is like saying “he’s making sense of life”. Surely, he will fail   −‘to think is to fail’, someone said− in understanding the world or himself; nevertheless, the attempt will expand (or at least challenge) the reader’s worldview.  

The dead of Murau’s parents and brother had the consequence of transforming him in the master of his family’s farm emporium, as he was the second in line, after his older brother, in earning the family heritage. Murau found this position totally undesirable, but accepted it with resignation, as the last act of obedience to his father. The “will” invested him with the power of determining Wolfsegg’s destiny. This meant the opportunity to compensate for all the hardships that this place brought upon his life. Moreover, the possibility of reshaping the property according to his desires and own sense of justice. He was given thus the power to redeem himself. However, he will not be blinded by the desire for revenge, as it commonly occurs with those who become powerful. Even though he hates his sisters and what Wolfsegg turned out to be, he will not use his power to punish or destroy. On the contrary, Murau makes an unexpected decision in congruence with his view of life and ethics. And this decision stands as an ironic example of what Thomas Bernhard −who strongly rejected power in all its forms− thought authority should be used for: to impart a sort of ‘poetic justice’ without religious connotations. 

Congruence with his ethic will not be present in all Murau’s decisions though, showing the inevitable contradictions inherent in human behaviour. For instance, Spadolini, the archbishop of Vienna, was the lover of Murau’s mother. At the same time, he was admired by Murau, who considered him a master and a friend, ‘one of the greatest minds in the world’ who saved him from depression at Rome. Murau and the rest of his family knew about the illicit love relationship. Paradoxically and, even, mockingly, Spadolini was received as a special guest during the funeral, spending the night in the dead father’s room, where he bathed and slept on the bed of her former lover’s husband. Murau will accept this with hesitation, at times reapproaching himself for being too passive with the archbishop and, at others, congratulating himself for having such a friend in difficult times. In the end, he will be unable to discern the correct attitude towards his mother’s lover, letting the events unfold without assuming a final position. 

But what is congruence after all? Is it a coherent and logic relationship between our actions and thoughts? What about our emotions, feelings or beliefs? One can also act in congruence with them. If one accepts this, then Murau’s attitude towards Spadolini is congruent with his contradictory emotions. What about the irrationality or radical nature that sometimes fills our thoughts or beliefs? Being congruent with them could lead to criminal acts. National Socialism immediately comes to mind in this respect, as it represents the most heinous case of congruence between an ideology and its practice. It also permeates the context of the novel, determined by the post-war legacy in Austria. In this light, congruence would be undesirable and contradictions preferable, as they allow some space for common sense (or at least inaction) between the gaps left by incoherence. There is another meaning for congruence though, which would be the one adopted by Murau in his final decision: to act without destroying the freedom of other human beings.

Bernhard, a bureaucrat writer?

Apart from the story of the tragedy and memories of his life, Murau engages in comments about literature and authors, implying that this art is his main passion. In this respect, he states that some writers excite even more in the second reading, but they are a minority. These writers are the essential masters. The greatest of them all is Franz Kafka; then, perhaps, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Flaubert or Sartre. He includes three nationalities in these short list, all of them European of course: German (Kafka, who although was Czech wrote in German); Russian and French. He will refer to the Italian Cesare Pavese briefly, highlighting his book the Business of Living, due to its valuable contribution in misunderstanding life.

Speaking about German literature with his pupil Gambetti, he overthrows from his teachings a sacred figure, the most beloved writer of the German literature’s Parthenon and one of the wonders of the world: Goethe. Without any subtleties, Murau considers Goethe a charlatan, capable of causing everyone indigestion (expect, of course, the Germans). He’s just a ‘philosophical truck farmer’, Murau concludes.

For the past century, Europe has been tyrannized by the so called bureaucratic culture, characterised by offices filled with three-ring binders. Murau argues that this tyranny also took hold of literature, transformed into ‘ludicrous desktop’ literature, which is ‘pathetic and helpless’. Thomas Mann and Robert Musil, considered two of the greatest writers of the 20^th century, are judged by Murau as nothing more than bureaucrat writers. Only Kafka is safe from this bureaucratic literature. However, the Austrian intellectual does not bother in explaining further why Kafka is an exception. He only states that even though Kafka was a bureaucrat, he did not write this kind of literature, but ‘great literature’. There is a contradiction that the author could not care less to solve. One could ask then, can Bernhard be considered part of this club of bureaucratic writers? I can picture him writing in an office filled with three-ring binders, dressed in a suit and constantly looking at his watch, kept in his left arm. But this works only as a parody.  

Finally, Murau thinks that writers are the most repulsive people, who have nothing to offer but their mediocrity. People are always eager to meet their favorite writers, unaware of the fact that the likely consequence of meeting them will signify the extinction of the admiration or fervour they once had. Because everything about writers is ‘redolent of common malice and a base philistinism that battens on megalomania. Overall, they are simpleminded individuals, like the books they produce.’ Of course, Murau says that he is not a writer, perhaps implying Bernhard’s view of himself. Or, on the contrary, it can turn out to be a surreptitious acceptance of the repulsive role of the final author of Extinction.  

Pachyderm

- Murau’s canon of German literature, those books that he would definitely abandon in a lost island:

1.      Jean Paul - Siebenkäs

2.    Kafka – The Trial

3.    Bernhard – Amras

4.    Musil – The Portuguese Woman

5.     Broch – Esch or Anarchy

Later on, he considers that the fifth book should better be Schopenhauer Revisited by the same Broch. The existence of Musil’s book is not clear, perhaps Murau refers to a short story contained in Five Women.

- In times of doubt or despair, Murau relies on a sentence that offers relief from the breadth of human knowledge:

There is apparently no certain knowledge so long as one does not know the author of one’s existence – Rene Descartes