Yes (Thomas Bernhard)

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Yes a narrative of is Thomas Bernhard in 1978 (written in 1977), in which a nameless narrator makes the acquaintance of a Persian, the suicide commits.

content

The first-person narrator, a withdrawn natural scientist, wants to capture his memories and "improve his condition" by "writing down this sketch": He begins his notes by being in the house of the realtor Moritz at the moment he "feels." - and intend to entrust mental illness », meets the« Swiss »and the« Persian ». The couple want to build a concrete house on a shady piece of land behind the cemetery they bought from Moritz in order to settle there. The first-person narrator agrees to meet the woman for a walk through the larch forest the next day. At night he can sleep again for the first time "after so many weeks of insomnia" (p. 37).

After the walk, the protagonist feels better: "My existence seemed to be possible again." He visits Moritz again to get details about the purchase of land by the Swiss engineer and the Persian. As a result, he often goes for walks with the Persian. In the second, the Persian woman experiences a “total emotional and mental outburst” in which she reveals to the narrator, similar to what he wanted to do to Moritz at the beginning, that she is finished. In the following walks, the two exchange ideas about Schumann's music and Schopenhauer's philosophy, but then lose interest in each other.

In the last encounter in the half-finished new building overgrown by weeds, the Persian accuses the narrator of being "a lost and ultimately destroyed person like her", from whom "salvation could not come." She mentions Schumann and Schopenhauer before asking the narrator to leave her alone. After a long time he found out from the newspaper that the Persian had thrown herself in front of a truck, “possibly with suicidal intent”, and remembers “that I asked her, the Persian, quite suddenly and in my ruthless manner, if she would kill herself one day. Then she just laughed and said yes . "

Topics and interpretations

The narrative (or novella ) cannot be reduced to the plot . The train of thought of the narrator, which is also reflected in the stylistic flow, is decisive for the effect of the text.

style

Bernhard uses extremely long sentences (the first, for example, extends over two and a half pages) in which thoughts are developed in spiral turns (which represent variations, but not repetitions of one another), as the following quote shows:

“Just as we wake up every day and have to start and continue what we set out to do, namely to want to continue to exist because we simply have to continue to exist, so we also have to start such a project as holding on to the memory of the Swiss man's partner and continue ... "

The way this style works is to emphasize the artificiality and indirectness of the narrative. This also includes repeatedly questioning terms by shifting and reinterpreting them and making their boundaries permeable (especially, for example, the term "spirit", which appears repeatedly in a number of compound words in the text.)

Reference to Schopenhauer's Die Welt as Will and Idea

The first-person narrator refers to his “counter studies”, his preoccupation with philosophy and music, which stand in opposition to his “life studies”, the investigation of antibodies. The philosophical part is the preoccupation with Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea ("to deal with the world as will and idea for a lifetime "). This argument manifests itself primarily in thoughts about the “will to fail”:

“There is only something that has failed. By at least having the will to fail, we move forward and we must at least have the will to fail in every thing and in everything and everyone, if we don't want to perish very early, which in fact cannot be the intention, with which one we are there. "

This failure manifests itself on the one hand in the failed relationship between the Persian and the Swiss, but also in the failed relationship between the Persian and the first-person narrator. The Persian woman's suicide can be seen as the ultimate manifestation of the will to fail, although the opposite interpretation is also permissible, namely that the first-person narrator failed with his confession that he wanted to make Moritz and could therefore continue to exist.

The concept of imagination also plays a role in the narrative, especially with regard to the narrator's idea of ​​the relationship between the Swiss and the Persian. At first he thinks that the Swiss are the “product” of the Persian woman, but as it turns out through their conversations and the Persian's confession, she has completely subordinated herself to him.

Autobiographical references

The model for the figure of the real estate broker ( broker ) Moritz was Karl Ignaz Hennetmair , who had traded in land and from whom Bernhard had bought the square yard (or its ruins) in the municipality of Ohlsdorf near Gmunden . This also brings the figure of the first-person narrator closer to Thomas Bernhard, who often used playing with autobiographical material as a literary technique. The Swiss and his partner also have role models in reality, although the descent of the Persian from Shiraz is probably due to a trip by Bernhard with Siegfried Unseld .

The title

The text was originally supposed to be called The Persian . The choice of yes can be described as successful insofar as the punch line that "yes" normally confirms a positive answer, but in the story represents an announcement of suicide, is already built up in the title.

Bernhard wanted “a white book, with black lettering” and was looking forward to “the stripe under the Yes” (meaning the stripe from Edition Suhrkamp ). The book should be presented like an obituary notice (which is actually the title in the story).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 122f.
  2. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 9.
  3. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 80.
  4. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 129.
  5. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 127.
  6. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 138.
  7. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 140.
  8. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 141 (end of the text)
  9. ↑ "With the difference to the typical novella that two" unheard-of incidents "are reported here." Fellinger, Raimund: All of a sudden. Comments on yes . In: Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​2006, p. 150
  10. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 43f.
  11. ↑ Fellinger, Raimund: Ur-suddenly. Comments on yes . In: Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​2006, p. 153.
  12. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 122.
  13. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 121.
  14. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 44.
  15. ↑ Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​1978, p. 94.
  16. ↑ Fellinger, Raimund: Ur-suddenly. Comments on yes . In: Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​2006, p. 145
  17. ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from April 4, 2009 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.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.thomasbernhard-hennetmair.at
  18. ↑ Thomas Combrink: The dark haze of failure. Cover culture magazine , November 22, 2004, accessed on July 9, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Fellinger, Raimund: Ur-suddenly. Comments on yes . In: Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​2006, p. 152.
  20. ↑ Fellinger, Raimund: Ur-suddenly. Comments on yes . In: Bernhard, Thomas: Yes. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​2006, p. 148.
  21. ^ Letter to Siegfried Unseld dated November 22, 1977, printed in: Bernhard, Thomas: Ja. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, ​​2006, p. 149.

literature

  • Thomas Bernhard: Yes . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-41765-7 .
  • Jens Dittmar (ed.): Thomas Bernhard work history . 2nd edition, updated new edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1990, ISBN 3-518-38502-X .
  • Hans Höller: Thomas Bernhard . Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-499-50504-5 .