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THOMAS BERNHARD An Introduction Gitta Honegger The most unbelievable deeds reported here took place in real life. The most incredible conversations recorded here were spoken word for word. These contents are the contents of the years preserved only in bloody dreams WHEN OPERETTA HEROES ACTED OUT THE TRAGEDY OF MANKIND The above quote is from the prologue of one of the major German language theatre events of the seventies: Hans Hollmann's stage version of Karl Kraus's The Last Days of Mankind, orignially performed in Basel and restaged this summer in Vienna, Kraus's native city. The original work, published in 1926, is one of the most monumental, prophetic and influential pieces of Austrian literature, a two-volume drama, never intended for production , dealing with events-chiefly of ordinary people and their peculiar mentality-which led to World War I and prepared the way for Hitler and World War II. 96 Austria's famous tourist image as the land of operetta, kitsch, schmaltz and schlag becomes for those living in it, and whether intentionally or not, living in It at least occasionally, a double-edged legacy, as infuriating and confusing as it is inescapable and, at times, deadly. Operetta heroes and heroines or characters fashioning themselves after those models, acting out the tragedies of mankind, not necessarily on the highest political level, but in their personal lives, haunt the plays of Schnitzler; they provide the deceptively sweet facade for Odon von Horvath's devastating humor. And if today, after two world wars, the collapse of the Empire together with its aristocracy and high style, and the most unspeakable atrocities committed by operetta beaus and beauties, this mentality still persists, it seems a macabre reconstruction of old prop-and-costume pieces from the stock room of history, which in the case of Austria has always been a very theatrical and a very pompous one. This is Thomas Bernhard's Austria. It helps understand his peculiar brand of theatricality, intentionally frozen, mechanical, a "reconstructed" one. Freely borrowing from other sources, his dramaturgy is deeply rooted in a tradition which has been drained of its original life and serves now only as a crutch, an artificial device, ultimately as "entertainment" in the sense of diversion from the overpowering obsession with decay and death. Yet therein lies also the paradox-another much loved, much hated trademark of the Austrian mentality, of Austrian art: this obsession with death is in itself the greatest diversion, the great duality of Baroque art, so perfected In the architecture of Salzburg, where Bernhard spent much of his youth during World War II. Bernhard's love-hate relationship to theatre is used as a recurring motif throughout his novels and plays: Theatre as entertainment and diversion, a sign of human weakness when it comes to facing the ultimate truth, or what is perhaps even more disgusting and cause for much anger and (self?) hatred, a source of the masochistic pleasure people derive from making art out of their misery. I don't go to the theatre on principle it is something quite disgusting the theatre whenever I am in the theatre I am constantly reminded how disgusting it is even though I can't explain it to myself what makes it so disgusting but it is disgusting But maybe you deal so much with theatre because you are so disgusted with it. says the General in The Hunting Party to the Writer, who turns everything he sees into what he calls a "comedy," although the General does not agree with this definition. Theatre, on the other hand, is the ultimate artifice (and it always must emphasize its artificiality) people develop, next to other constructs, such as 97 science and philosophy, as a bulwark against nature, which to Bernhard is always a brutal, decaying, dark and deadly one. Most of Bernhard's central characters are obsessed with such a construct. In The Force of Habit the circus director Caribaldi forces his troupe to practice Schubert's "Trout Quintet" for twenty-two years, even though they never manage to get through the whole piece; in Minetti, the actor Minetti practices passages from King Lear every day for thirty years in front...

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