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Thomas Bernhard (1931–1989)

Autor(a) de The Loser

229+ Works 14,059 Membros 319 Críticas 129 Favorited

About the Author

Thomas Bernhard was born to Austrian parents in Holland and reared by his mother in the vicinity of Salzburg. His temperament and erratic health created difficulties for him as he grew up in a society governed by National Socialists. Bernhard found the alpine landscapes of his native Austria far mostrar mais more harsh than lyrical. The isolation of the characters in his novels is only slightly mitigated by friendship, generally only between men, and never by love. Yet many readers feel this lack of sentimentality gives Bernhard's work an epic power. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Séries

Obras por Thomas Bernhard

The Loser (1983) 1,581 exemplares
Wittgenstein's Nephew (1982) 1,022 exemplares
Woodcutters (1984) 962 exemplares
Correction (1975) 900 exemplares
Extinction (1986) 854 exemplares
Old Masters: A Comedy (1985) 789 exemplares
Concrete (1982) 787 exemplares
Gargoyles (1970) 605 exemplares
Frost (1963) 515 exemplares
The Lime Works (1970) 478 exemplares
The Voice Imitator (1978) 448 exemplares
Yes (1978) 416 exemplares
Die Ursache: Eine Andeutung (1975) 304 exemplares
Gathering Evidence: A Memoir (1986) 291 exemplares
My Prizes (2009) 266 exemplares
Ein Kind (1982) 238 exemplares
Der Keller. Eine Entziehung (1976) 227 exemplares
Heldenplatz (1988) 216 exemplares
Der Atem: Eine Entscheidung (1978) 204 exemplares
Die Kälte: Eine Isolation (1981) 168 exemplares
Gehen (1971) 167 exemplares
On the Mountain (1959) 158 exemplares
The Cheap-Eaters (1980) 152 exemplares
Goethe Dies (2010) 134 exemplares
Amras (1964) 105 exemplares
Three Novellas (2003) 105 exemplares
Prose (1967) 77 exemplares
Vertellingen (1979) 57 exemplares
Ungenach (1968) 57 exemplares
Histrionics: Three Plays (1990) 54 exemplares
Gesammelte Gedichte (1988) 48 exemplares
Watten (1969) 46 exemplares
Ereignisse (1988) 44 exemplares
An der Baumgrenze (1969) — Autor — 44 exemplares
Alte Meister: Graphic Novel (2011) 38 exemplares
Der Italiener (1977) 35 exemplares
Muizen, ratten en dagloners (1988) 29 exemplares
Ritter, Dene, Voss (1984) 28 exemplares
Der Theatermacher (1984) 26 exemplares
On Earth and in Hell: Early Poems (2012) 26 exemplares
Die Romane (Quarto) (2008) 25 exemplares
Minetti (1988) 24 exemplares
Thomas Bernhard: 3 Days (2016) 23 exemplares
Der Kulterer (2000) 23 exemplares
Die Macht der Gewohnheit (1974) 21 exemplares
Immanuel Kant (1978) 20 exemplares
Ein Fest für Boris (1970) 20 exemplares
Midland in Stilfs (1973) 19 exemplares
Les apparences sont trompeuses (1983) 18 exemplares
Der Wetterfleck (1971) — Autor — 18 exemplares
Relatos (1993) 18 exemplares
Ave Virgilio (1981) 17 exemplares
Am Ziel (1981) 17 exemplares
Récits, 1971-1982 (2007) 16 exemplares
Het jachtgezelschap (1974) 15 exemplares
Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige (1972) 15 exemplares
Teatro (1990) 13 exemplares
Der Präsident (1975) 12 exemplares
Amras et autres récits (1987) 10 exemplares
Werke 12. Erzählungen 2 (2006) 10 exemplares
Tinieblas (1986) 9 exemplares
Elisabeth II. (1987) 9 exemplares
Spectaculum 25, in 3 Bdn. (1976) 8 exemplares
Simplement compliqué (1997) 8 exemplares
Uitwissing : een verval (2022) 8 exemplares
Teatro 1. (2003) 8 exemplares
Werke (2003) 8 exemplares
Thomas Bernhard. Ein Lesebuch (1993) 8 exemplares
AUTOBIOGRAFIA (2014) 7 exemplares
Werke 19. Dramen 5 (2011) 7 exemplares
Die Salzburger Stücke (1975) 6 exemplares
Hormigón ; Extinción (2012) 6 exemplares
Briefwechsel (2009) 6 exemplares
In een tapijt van water (1997) 5 exemplares
Teatro 5. (2004) 5 exemplares
Duzelti (2011) 4 exemplares
Sotto il ferro della luna (2015) 4 exemplares
Die Berühmten (1976) 4 exemplares
Ucuzayiyenler (2000) 4 exemplares
Yes; The Cheap Eaters (1980) 4 exemplares
Yurumek - Evet (2009) 3 exemplares
Werke 21. Gedichte (2003) 3 exemplares
Kolme pienoisromaania (2016) 3 exemplares
Suhrkamp BasisBibliothek : Thomas Bernhard : Amras (2006) — Text — 3 exemplares
Isabel II y tres dramolette (2006) 3 exemplares
Über Thomas Bernhard (1970) 3 exemplares
L'origine 3 exemplares
LA FORNACE (2022) 3 exemplares
Amras / Watten (2013) 3 exemplares
Mróz (2020) 2 exemplares
Röstimitatören (2022) 2 exemplares
Der Italiener, 1 DVD (1973) — Screenwriter — 2 exemplares
Thomas Bernhards Salzburg (2022) 2 exemplares
Chodzenie ; Amras (2018) 2 exemplares
Hukkasaaja (2021) 2 exemplares
Immanuel Kant y Comida alemana (2005) 2 exemplares
Kirec Ocagi (2015) 2 exemplares
Spectaculum 24 (1976) 2 exemplares
Bitterhetens ild (1994) 2 exemplares
La Mort d'August (2000) 2 exemplares
Dramuscules (1997) 2 exemplares
Tres dramolette (2007) 2 exemplares
Die Irren Die Häftlinge (1988) 2 exemplares
Vidimost obmanchiva (1999) 2 exemplares
PAJ #13 1 exemplar
Betão - eBook 1 exemplar
Kulterer 1 exemplar
Undergeren 1 exemplar
Poremećaj 1 exemplar
Amras Watten - Bir Miras (2021) 1 exemplar
Relatos 1 exemplar
POSESIONES, LAS (2014) 1 exemplar
L'italiano 1 exemplar
Dramen 1 exemplar
Spectaculum 32 (1980) 1 exemplar
Trevas 1 exemplar
Dramaty 1 exemplar
Kahramanlar Alani (2015) 1 exemplar
Rozhorčenie ; Rúbanie lesa (1990) 1 exemplar
Mráz (2007) 1 exemplar
Dramaty, tom I 1 exemplar
Las posesiones 1 exemplar
Dramaty. Tom 2 1 exemplar
Nefes - Bir Karar 1 exemplar
Don (2015) 1 exemplar
Prosa 1 exemplar
Metsaraiumine : erutus (2022) 1 exemplar
Beautiful View 1 exemplar

Associated Works

Deutschland erzählt. Von Rainer Maria Rilke bis Peter Handke (1975) — Contribuidor — 29 exemplares
Deutsche Lyrik : Gedichte seit 1945 (1961) — Contribuidor — 9 exemplares
Bibliothek Suhrkamp. Ein Lesebuch, Klassiker der Moderne (1989) — Contribuidor — 7 exemplares
Goed verteld : een verrassende bundel internationale verhalen (1994) — Contribuidor — 5 exemplares
Theater, Volume 30, Number 1 — Contribuidor — 1 exemplar
Fiction, Volume 6, Number 1 — Contribuidor — 1 exemplar
Performing Arts Journal: 13 (Volume V / Number 1) — Contribuidor — 1 exemplar
Fiction, Volume 1, Number 1 — Contribuidor — 1 exemplar
Fiction, Volume 2, Number 3 — Contribuidor — 1 exemplar
Form 8 — Contribuidor — 1 exemplar
Theater, Volume 15, Number 1 — Contribuidor — 1 exemplar

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Membros

Críticas

For those that like or love Bernhard this is a step into his world with a stronger autobiographical slant. Great writing, that provides insight into the forces of his past that shaped the writing itself.
 
Assinalado
yates9 | 5 outras críticas | Feb 28, 2024 |
A few days ago the book [b:The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity|49348225|The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity|Carlo M. Cipolla|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1595814345l/49348225._SX50_.jpg|358622] came across my desk. Living as I do in the vaccine-refusing epicenter of the US Delta variant surge of infection and of hospitals that are once again becoming overwhelmed, I couldn’t help feeling a note of sympathy with the book. Opening it up I read the first law: “Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.” Here’s an author who probably read Thomas Bernhard.

I take it that all of Bernhard’s work is essentially variants of a theme, of which stupidity plays a large role. Stupidity is the spike protein of Bernhard’s worldview, always present as the details of the larger work change a bit. I have no idea if that claim works, by the way, but I’m leaving it. How does Bernhard put it across in Gargoyles?

I say to Huber: The republican death-throes are probably the most repulsive, the ugliest of all. Aren’t they, Doctor? I say: The common people are stupid, they stink, and that has always been so.

I have been reflecting, Doctor, on the stupidity of all phrases, on stupidity, on the stupidity in which man lives and thinks, thinks and lives, on the stupidity…

… has never come into conflict with the law and never will because the world is too stupid.

The prince said he was forever compelled to make a stupid society realize it was stupid, and that he was always doing everything in his power to prove to this stupid society how stupid it was.

The shattering thing,” he said, “is not the ugliness of people but their lack of judgment.”

Naturally this makes for an unhappy outlook. “As I go about, there is hardly a man I see who isn’t repulsive.” “He was used to sacrificing himself to a sick populace given to violence as well as insanity.” “It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.”

Sometimes this is funny. Nothing is above the novel’s complaints: “If I send it now, at noon, I thought, it won’t reach Kobernausserwald until tomorrow morning. The postal system, the hopeless, ruined Austrian postal system.” Now there’s some pettiness. And here it reads like a parody of Grumpy Old Man: “We paid and left. In the restaurant a band of schoolchildren were being fed. They were given hot soup and admonishments not to make noise. What gruesome people these innocent creatures will inevitably become, I thought as we left the restaurant.”

Bernhard’s apparent horror of sex appears: “I once saw him naked by the river, together with his equally naked wife; I remember that infantile penis. There they were, indulging their pitiable Sunday connubiality behind the bushes, away from the clear water, where they thought they were alone and could indulge themselves in their revolting intimacies, succumbing to their stupor in the sunset.” That’s some pretty good and funny anti-eroticism, I have to admit.

If Bernhard’s debut novel [b:Frost|12203|Frost|Thomas Bernhard|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1537115859l/12203._SY75_.jpg|1244054] had one solitary note of optimism and grace, embodied by nuns caring for the ill, Gargoyles has its one note of optimism and grace located in nature:

I would climb the northern hills and let myself dream while contemplating the outward aspects of nature. Whenever I looked at it, I said, and from any perspective, the surface of the earth struck me as new and I was refreshed by it.


I liked this novel more than I did Frost, perhaps because it has more variety and hints of an actual plot to its largely one note hammering away. Bernhard’s third novel, I read, marks the start of his major work, so having served somewhat of a gruesome apprenticeship I look forward to the gruesome main event. After all, “We always want to hear something even worse than what we have inside of us,” as the prince said. Perceptive.
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
lelandleslie | 16 outras críticas | Feb 24, 2024 |
He thought, "Thomas Bernhard is mentioned as the most important post-war writer in German, is credited with ownership of a particular style, and is frequently referred to." He thought, "I shall read Bernhard's novels, starting with his first." He thought, "Bloody hell."

The cover blurb proclaims Frost to be "A blast of raw feeling." It's a blast of something, all right. 350 pages mostly consisting of a steady rant of complaints and invective, described by its admirers here - its admirers, mind - with words like "impenetrable" and "increasingly incomprehensible", which leaves me wondering, "do you people want something totally different than I do out of literature?"

There's not a plot so much as a vague gesture in that direction. A medical internist is sent by his superior to observe the doctor's brother for a month. The text does not have exchanges of dialogue but rather a few lines of this brother's directly spoken rants alternating with the internist's summary of the next few lines of the man's rants, and, repeat. A better recipe for boredom if this is not done well is hard to imagine.

Sometimes you can sort of chuckle at the rants. Of his fellow villagers: "The children had lice, the grown-ups had gonorrhea, or the syphilis that finally overwhelmed their nervous systems... Almost all of them have cankered lung lobes, pneumothorax and pneumoperitoneum are endemic. They have tuberculosis of the lungs, the head, the arms and legs." On rural folk: "That whole simple, pitiless world of thought, where simplicity and low-mindedness get hitched and ruin everything! Nothing comes from country people! Villages, morons in short sleeves! The country is no source anymore, only a trove of brutality and idiocy, of squalor and megalomania, of perjury and battery, of systematic extinction!" On the nature of humankind: "Where there is putrescence, I find I cannot breathe deeply enough. I always want to breathe in the odor of humanity, you understand."

For me, the human imagination is an aspect of "God created man in his own image," the imagination and creative impulse acts that bring us closer to God. But it's seen rather differently here: "The imagination is an expression of disorder, it has to be. In an ordered world, there would be no such thing as imagination, order wouldn't tolerate such a thing, imagination is completely alien to it. All the way here, I was asking myself what imagination is. I'm sure imagination is an illness. An illness that you don't catch, merely because you've always had it. An illness that is responsible for everything, and particularly everything ridiculous and malignant."

But then amazingly, about exactly halfway through the book, I found a few lines that counter the entire novel's essence. It's about a hospital attached to a chapel, nuns working as nurses. The internist reflects: "The sisters perform astonishing feats. Never get to bed before eleven, and are back from church already by five, having been heard singing there at half past four. Everywhere, the great white tulips of their bonnets, which manage to flower where everything is dark with despair, where everything else is bleak and bare and inimical."

Well, how un-Bernhardian seeming! A lone bright ray, surrounded by darkness.

So you see why I can't give it just 1 star, despite the fact that I skimmed near the end, and I hate skimming, it's the antithesis of my entire being, and I can't imagine recommending this book. Now, I wonder how I'll like his second novel...
… (mais)
 
Assinalado
lelandleslie | 17 outras críticas | Feb 24, 2024 |
This is my first Thomas Bernhard novel despite buying a fair few of his titles due to the high opinions the literary circles have of him. A Bernhard connoisseur would perhaps know better than I, but I get the impression Wittgenstein’s nephew was perhaps not the best of his oeuvre to start with; it felt like it was rather one for an accustomed fan. (If anyone is able to enlighten me on this hypothesis please do!) That is not to say it’s not a decent book, just that I’d maybe have appreciated it a bit more with a bit more Bernhard under my belt, since this is in part a loose autobiographical account of his life. First and foremost it is a rambling catalogue of friendship - that of Bernhard and Paul Wittgenstein who happen to be patients at the same hospital suffering a lung ailment and periodic bouts of madness respectively! The story gently unfolds both the history and journey of their friendship and is decorated by that which drew them together and makes Wittgenstein so valued in the author’s life. He speaks rather candidly that ‘it seems to me that we can count on the fingers of one hand all the people that have really meant anything to us in the course of our lives, and very often this one hand protests at our perversity in believing that we need a whole hand to count them, for to be honest we could probably make do without a single finger.’ This sounds negative and bleak but in fact Bernhard’s writing is brave and honest: he explores and tries to interpret the essence of life, the human condition and himself even if this leads to dark, unpopular places. I’m actually improving my opinion of the book in writing this review! #wittgensteinsnephew is also very much about death and illness and the relationships between opposites - the rich and poor, healthy and ill, the living and the dead. I’m definitely interested to read another, more resolutely fictional work by Bernhard and despite the lowly 2/5 rating I shall give this, I appreciate it to be well written and interesting. Perhaps through reading more of his books I will appreciate it even further.… (mais)
 
Assinalado
Dzaowan | 27 outras críticas | Feb 15, 2024 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
229
Also by
13
Membros
14,059
Popularidade
#1,635
Avaliação
4.0
Críticas
319
ISBN
945
Línguas
32
Marcado como favorito
129

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