At the tree line
At the tree line is a story by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard . It appeared for the first time in 1967 in the magazine Jahresring and two years later, in 1969, in the anthology of the same name on the tree line together with the stories Der Kulterer and Der Italiener .
The story deals with a sibling incest .
At the tree line is one of the author's most frequently reprinted stories.
content
The reader is guided through the plot through the eyes of a young police officer . The first-person narrator, pursuing a job in Mühlbach, reports on going to an inn one evening in a winter month, where he observes "a girl and a young man". The observation becomes more and more intense until he uses the actual request to write his fiancée a letter only as a pretense in order to investigate the alleged "violation of the law" undisturbed. In doing so, he tries to collect evidence of his intuition . He reproduces various snippets of words from the conversation between the two, including "applied brutality " and " premature birth ". In the meantime, the narrator escapes the landlady's advances and cannot tear himself away from his suspected case the next morning either. He gains access to their room and discovers the girl with severe drug poisoning. While those involved wait for the doctor , she finally dies. The young man, revealed to be her brother at the end of the story, is also found dead “below the tree line above Mühlbach”.
Intertextual references
There are many references to other writers and works. The initial situation, an inn late in the winter , is reminiscent of Franz Kafka's “Das Schloss” from 1922 . In this prose piece , too , the protagonist visits a remote village in the evening "to look for a room in the inn". Even Robert Musil's "The suburban inn" of 1924 represents a similar setting.
The fact that the inspector's wife comes from “Cilli” and the two people observed by the first-person narrator are subject to an ungracious environment is strongly reminiscent of Heinrich von Kleist's “The Earthquake in Chili” (1810).
The final sequence may also refer to other literature . Von Hoff sees, for example, a proximity of the final scene to Lord Byron's “Manfred Fragment” ( 1817 ) or to Franz Kafka's “The Hunter Gracchus” ( 1917 ).
interpretation
It is evident that the narrative touches on many topics that also play a role in Thomas Bernhard's later works. On the one hand, this includes the diffuse interpersonal relationship, in the case between brother and sister , which is also interpreted as incest. The brother acts dominantly , the siblings are related to each other, but in an unstable sense. "The relationship is impossible and ends [...] in both suicide." The sexual echoes only become more concrete in the text than the landlady wants to make advances to the narrator.
Violence is also represented in the most varied of degrees. These include natural phenomena such as the rigorous winter, Mühlbach itself as a “locus terribilis”, but also human acts. Finally, two suicides are reported and the first-person narrator shows a terrifying cynicism when he acknowledges the death of the girl, which he might even have been able to prevent, with the words that this would now simplify everything.
Incidentally, the forest and wood symbolism should be emphasized. The forest suggests tradition and conventional beliefs. It stands for orderly, cultivated structures; at the same time one may read in it the uncanny, natural and instinctual. In this respect, it is hardly surprising that the story is located below the tree line, which equates to a certain legal and norm lability.
Guest houses and inns are also located at the tree line. In the story it is even reported that Mühlbach has three inns. This could indicate that strokes of fate like that of the siblings will also take place in the next pub or are at least conceivable.
literature
- Thomas Bernhard: At the tree line. In: Thomas Bernhard. Works. Edited by Huber, Martin; Schmidt-Dengler, Wendelin. Vol. 14. Frankfurt / Main: Suhrkamp Verlag 2003, pp. 99-107.
- Dagmar von Hoff: Darkening. Thomas Bernhard's text strategy of darkening meaning in the story At the tree line. In: Thomas Bernhard. The preparation of man. Edited by Honold, Alexander, Joch, Markus. Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann 1999, pp. 59–65.
- Volker Finnern: The myth of being alone. The texts of Thomas Bernhard. (European university publications. Series 1. German language and literature. Bd. 998) Frankfurt / Main [u. a.]: Verlag Peter Lang 1987.
- Oliver Jahraus: The 'monomaniac' work. A structural analysis of the oeuvre of Thomas Bernhard. (Munich studies on literary culture in Germany. Ed. Von Heydebrand, Renate; Jäger, Georg; Scharfschwerdt, Jürgen. Vol. 16) Frankfurt / Main [u. a.]: Verlag Peter Lang 1992.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jahresring 67/68, Stuttgart, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1967 - information from 'Nachbemerkung' (by an author only marked with DB) in: Thomas Bernhard: At the tree line; Stories , Reclam-Verlag, 1986, p. 51
- ↑ Library Suhrkamp ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 310 kB) Information on the volume of stories
- ↑ Information from 'Nachbemerkung' (by an author only marked with DB) in: Thomas Bernhard: At the tree line; Stories , Reclam-Verlag, 1986, p. 52
- ↑ See Er, p. 99
- ↑ See Er, p. 103
- ↑ See von Hoff, p. 61
- ↑ See Jahraus, p. 130
- ↑ See Finnern, p. 26
- ↑ See von Hoff, p. 63f
- ↑ See Finnern, p. 58
