The voice imitator

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The voice simulator is a short prose collection by Thomas Bernhard from 1978.

Content and form

The voice imitator reports in 104 short prose pieces from very different groups of people and professions, from speleologists, philosophers, writers, actors, trainers, bank employees, mayors, professors, directors and presidents. In the mostly one-page long stories, the focus is on haunting events that strive for an inevitable end that is almost always fatal . Often it happens through suicide, but sometimes not by one's own hand. The main thematic focus is on violence, murder and manslaughter, ordinary and unusual horrors of contemporary life. This is impressively shown in the story Charity , in which an old lady takes in a poor Turk out of charity. She lets him tend the garden and rewards him with food and new clothes. Finally the Turk appears at the police station with the news that the old lady has been killed and strangled; when asked about the reason, he replies: “out of charity”.
The choice of characters and locations is by no means arbitrary, although this impression can arise at the beginning. The set of stories actually obeys definable structural laws. The first texts strive for the greatest possible variety, such as The Voice Imitator (p. 9f.), Pisa and Venice (p. 17) and Speleologists (p. 23f.). From the middle there are more and more closed series that are located in well-known Bernhard scenes in the Upper Austrian Alpine Foreland or in Salzburg, such as Paper Workers (p. 98), Grenzstein (p. 99) and Zwei Zettel (p. 110). The last third of the collection relates two to three texts to each other: Some stories are the characters of the theater writer (pp. 115f., 117f., 119f.), The painters (pp. 150–152, 153f.) And the state president (Pp. 155f., 157, 158f.).
The assignment to the genre of the anecdote can be justified with the intention of the author to establish a counter-authenticity to the officially said and asserted in order to reveal everything that is publicly embellished.

style

The language in The Voice Imitator resembles that of newspaper reports, official announcements and police protocols. At first glance, the style looks very atypical for the author. The scarcity of language and the style of telegrams initially appear strange. A closer look quickly reveals Bernhard's typical linguistic features, long and nested relative clauses with hyperbolics and superlatives. Every text has at least once a natural , which is particularly relevant for the author.

Audio book

"The voice imitator", read by Marianne Hoppe (MC), Der Hörverlag 2007.

literature

  • Thomas Bernhard: The voice imitator . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978. ISBN 978-3-518-37973-8
  • Franz M. Eybl: Thomas Bernhard's "voice imitator" as resonance of one's own speech and that of others . In: Continent Bernhard. To the Thomas Bernhard Reception in Europe . Ed. V. Wolfram Bayer. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1995. pp. 31-43.
  • Manfred Mittermayer: Thomas Bernhard . Stuttgart: Verlag JB Metzler, 1995.
  • Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler: Veiled authenticity. To Thomas Bernhard's The Voice Imitator . In: In the matter of Thomas Bernhard . Ed. V. Kurt Bartsch, Dietmar Goltschnigg, Gerhard Melzer. Königstein / Ts .: Athenäum Verlag , 1983. pp. 124–147.
  • Discussion at literaturzeitschrift.de
  • Discussion at literatur-blog.at

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Bernhard: The voice imitator . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978.
  2. ↑ [1]  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.literaturzeitschrift.blog.de  
  3. ↑ http://www.literatur-blog.at/2010/09/thomas-bernhard-der-stimmenimitator/
  4. ^ Manfred Mittermayer: Thomas Bernhard . Stuttgart: Verlag JB Metzler, 1995. S. 98f.
  5. ↑ Thomas Bernhard: The voice imitator . Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978. p. 31.
  6. ↑ Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler: Veiled authenticity. To Thomas Bernhard's The Voice Imitator . In: In the matter of Thomas Bernhard . Ed. V. Kurt Bartsch, Dietmar Goltschnigg, Gerhard Melzer. Königstein / Ts .: Athenäum Verlag, 1983. p. 129.
  7. ↑ a b c Franz M. Eybl: Thomas Bernhard's "The Voice Imitator" as a response to one's own speech and that of others . In: Continent Bernhard. To the Thomas Bernhard Reception in Europe . Ed. V. Wolfram Bayer. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1995. p. 33.
  8. ^ Manfred Mittermayer: Thomas Bernhard . Stuttgart: Verlag JB Metzler, 1995. p. 99.
  9. ↑ Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler: Veiled authenticity. To Thomas Bernhard's The Voice Imitator . In: In the matter of Thomas Bernhard . Ed. V. Kurt Bartsch, Dietmar Goltschnigg, Gerhard Melzer. Königstein / Ts .: Athenäum Verlag, 1983. P. 127.
  10. ↑ Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler: Veiled authenticity. To Thomas Bernhard's The Voice Imitator . In: In the matter of Thomas Bernhard . Ed. V. Kurt Bartsch, Dietmar Goltschnigg, Gerhard Melzer. Königstein / Ts .: Athenäum Verlag, 1983. p. 125.