The Demonic Comedy of Thomas Bernhard

Relating the works of Austrian author Thomas Bernhard to Søren Kierkegaard's concept of despair as presented in The Sickness Unto Death, this article claims that Bernhard's body of work is to be understood as a demonic comedy. For Kierkegaard, demonic despair emerges when a person in despair clings to his or her own despair. The despairer loves to stay close to things he hates and would rather be right than be redeemed. Th is is the paradoxical and comical logic of demonic despair and also the essence of the literature of Th omas Bernhard. Th e article att empts to discuss the issue of comedy as it relates to demonic despair, in the Kierkegaardian sense just indicated—the central argument being that the structure of that form of despair is precisely a comic structure. In this way I hope to correct the prevalent conception, also among Bernhard scholars, of Bernhard as merely a misanthropic singer of darkness and death.