AFTERWORD
One might just be happy a few times a year in this city, walking across the Kohlmarkt or the Graben, strolling down the Singerstrasse in the spring air
During his lifetime Thomas Bernhard’s texts provoked more than the ordinary share of scandals. But perhaps the most enduring scandal will turn out to be his very last text, his wilclass="underline" “Whatever I have written, whether published by me during my lifetime or as part of my literary papers still existing after my death, shall not be performed, printed or even recited for the duration of legal copyright within the borders of Austria, however this state identifies itself.” Bernhard had taken care not to reveal the contents of this will before he died; in fact, he even stipulated that news of his death not be announced until he was buried. This parting slap in the face of his native country thus came not only as a surprise; it came from the hand of a dead man, whose laughter rang out from the grave.
To be sure, it was absurd laughter that had something of a bad and willfully unpatriotic joke. But then so did most of Bernhard’s literary works. In his last play, Heldenplatz, one of the members of a Jewish family that has recently returned to Vienna characterizes the country as a pigsty with only “black” (i.e., fascist) and “red” (socialist) pigs living there:
In this most horrendous of states
you have only a choice
between black pigs and red pigs
an unbearable stench from the Royal Palace
and Ballhaus Square and Parliament
spreads over this completely disgusting and
decrepit country
(shouts)
This tiny state is a gigantic dunghill
“The whole thing was an absurd idea/to come back to Vienna,” the same character concludes in the very last lines of the play. “But of course the world consists only of absurd ideas.”