"The Greatest Uncertainty": The Perils of Performance in Thomas Bernhard's Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige

"The Greatest Uncertainty": The Perils of Performance in Thomas Bernhard's DerIgnorant undder Wahnsinnige ROBERT F. GROSS, JR. Thomas Bernhard's recognition of the omnipresence of death has provided the background for all of his dramatic works to appear thus far. For Bernhard, death is not a single, unique event that occurs at the conclusion of each life, but a current of negation that runs throughout the whole of human existence, manifesting itself in sickness, exhaustion and decay. The Writer in Die Jagdgesellschaft presents the Bernhardian vision of death in its most unadorned form: Wir sind allein oder nicht allein wir horeD Musik oder wir horeD nieht Musik Jeder Gegenstand gniidige Frau ist der Todl (We are alone or not alone we hear music or we do not hear music Every circumstance dear lady is death). This is not simply another occurrence of the memento mori trope; death is not personified as a character who hovers around unsuspecting mortals, waiting to carry them off at any moment. For Bernhard, all persons carry their mortality within them every moment of their lives. This belief in the imminence ofdeath within the living places Bernhard closer to Martin Heidegger and his analysis of death in Sein und Zeit than to the conventional view of death in the Western tradition.2 In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger explains that death does not stand in opposition to Dasein, but exists as a fundamental ontological moment of it.3 Dasein exists ROBERT F. GROSS, JR. in incompleteness; so long as human beings exist, they are constantly changing and are subject to further becoming. Only death can complete Being-in-theworld ; Dasein, by virtue of its finitude, is oriented toward death as the utmost possibility of its being. The fundamental orientation of Dasein leads to the experience of anxiety. For both Bernhard and Heidegger, the experience of anxiety is a special locus in which Dasein's Being-unto-death is revealed. But Bernhard's characters never learn to confront the fact oftheir mortality with the "geriistete Freude'" ("fortified joy") that Heidegger finds in the authentic orientation toward death. Instead, they exist in a perpetual flight from death that verges on the hysterical. Bernhard's dramatic presentation of the flight from death is first emphasized in his second play, Der Ignorant undder Wahnsinnige (The Ignoramus and the Madman) . The death of the title character in his first play, Ein FestfUr Boris (A Party for Boris), virtually fails to make any impression on its audience whatsoever , since it has been so numbed and desensitized by a series of far more ingenious grotesqueries in the course of the play. In retrospect, it is clear that the cruel rituals of Ein Fest fUr Boris are a response to the omnipresence of death in its manifestation as physical mutilation, but the theme is not presented with the precision and subtlety that distinguishes Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige . The play's title describes the two forms the flight from death can take: willed ignorance or madness. The Father, an alcoholic approaching total blindness, has chosen ignorance. Although his blindness is not yet total, he has given up the use of his sight, relies on sound for all of his information, and walks with a blind man's cane. His chosen blindness becomes associated with the ignorance and vulgarity of the operatic world: Wenn wit den Schwachsinn der in dieser Kunstgattung herrscht geehrter·Herr mit der Gemeinheit der Zuschauer verrechnen kommen wir in den Wahnsinn' (If we consider the feeble-mindedness that reigns in this art fonn dear sir along with the vulgarity of the audience we go insane). The Father, who is the most faithful and attentive auditor of his daughter, a world-renowned coloratura soprano, is an image of the theatrical spectator, sitting safely in the dark while the performers attempt dangerous acts under the intense lighting of the stage: Bernhard's Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige In solcher Intensitiit existieren nieht vieJe D.s Licht ist ein Ungliick .. . Wie auf offener Bohne geehrter Herr wodurch alles die grosste Unsicherheit ist (p. 98) (Not many exist in such intensity The light is a misfortune ... As on the open stage dear sir where the...