Correction (novel)

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Correction is a 1975 novel by Thomas Bernhard . The focus is on the estate of a man who has committed suicide - his friend wants to "sift through and sort it out".

content

A nameless narrator leaves the hospital, although he is still a little weak, to devote himself to the estate of his friend Roithamer. He committed suicide after he had written a larger work on Altensam, his hated hometown, and constantly corrected it until almost nothing was left. Roithamer's sister, whom he loved dearly and for whom he had built a "living cone" over years of planning and construction, had also died shortly before. The first-person narrator now wants to read through and organize Roithamer's notes and notes. To do this, he stays with a mutual friend, Höller. In his attic, the "Höllerschen attic", where Roithamer had often worked and stayed at the time, he finally goes to work.

The novel is divided into two parts - “The Höllersche Attic” and “Sifting and arranging”. From the perspective of the first-person narrator, the first part describes his arrival in Höller's attic, his memories of Roithamer and the childhood they spent together, time together in Cambridge, and reflections on the peculiarities of the Höller's house (built on a narrow part of the Aurach) the joint dinner with the family and sitting at the table with Höller, and how he spends the night that is falling again alone in the attic, following further considerations. Here he observes Höller, the taxidermist , as he stuffs a “big black bird” in his workshop in many work steps.

In the second part, the first-person narrator describes, usually paraphrasing words and thoughts from Roithamer's notes, his thoughts on his family, his origins from Altensam and his plans and undertakings for the construction of the cone. Its construction was ridiculed by many and considered impossible, yet Roithamer finished the cone and gave it to his sister. However, she passed away in a moment of great happiness while being drawn into the cone. From then on, Roithamer began to make constant corrections and cuts in his work on Altensam until he came to the conclusion that there was only one final and correct correction for him: suicide.

style

The novel consists of two roughly equal parts. Apart from that, there are no paragraphs in the text. The descriptions of the first-person narrator and the thoughts, actions and traits of Roithamer's reproduced therein determine the progression of the narrative. Often sentences stretch over several pages. Despite the size of the novel (original edition 363 pages) there is hardly any external plot.

The novel is preceded by a motto: “ For stable support of a body, it is necessary that it has at least three points of support that are not in a straight line, according to Roithamer. "

interpretation

On the description of Roithamer and his thinking in the novel, Hans Höller writes : “ What is irritating about Bernhard's criticism of reason, which is shown in Roithamer's language, is that in one and the same intellectual person, blindness to the consequences of one's own science in addition to a great empathy with the socially declassified and outcasts - the released prisoners - or the strictest scientific mastery of the object in addition to a mystical contemplative inclination to natural phenomena, to ancient objects of memory [...] The decisive corrective, the novel suggests, would be the self-correction of the mind, would be able to open up to the truth of other people and to nature [...] "

Wieland Schmied points out the peculiarity of the figure of Höller in the work of Thomas Bernhard: “The depiction of Höller - and everything connected with Höller - is the absolute exception in Bernhard's work. Never before and never after did he let a figure appear in such pleasant lighting. "

Emergence

Correction arose in the early 1970s. A first conversation between Bernhard and his publisher Siegfried Unseld in the autumn of 1970 is known. The subject matter of the novel grew over time; initially the place of action should be a paper mill. An Austrian teaching in Cambridge is found early, while the figure of Höller and the Höllerhaus found their way into the novel only later. Towards the end of more than four years of work on the novel, there was a lengthy exchange of letters between Thomas Bernhard and his publisher, in which he repeatedly justified necessary further work, so that the completion was initially delayed. Correction appeared in autumn 1975.

literature

  • Erika Schmied , Hans Höller : Thomas Bernhard and the taxidermist Höller (essay, photos), Provincial Library 2009, ISBN 978-3852522760
  • Martin Huber: Roithamer is not Wittgenstein , but he is Wittgenstein. On the presence of the philosopher with Thomas Bernhard , in: Klaus Kastenberger, Konrad Paul Liessmann (eds.): The poet and thinking. Interplay between literature and philosophy , Zsolany, Vienna 2004, ISBN 978-3552053229 , pp. 139–157.
  • Manfred Mittermayer: The cone, the sister and death. On Thomas Bernhard's novel "Correction" , in: Gerald Chapple (ed.): On the interpretation of the Austrian novel 1971 - 1996, Stauffenburg, Tübingen 1999, ISBN 978-3860572108 , pp. 89–112.
  • Bernhard Judex: »Thousands of detours«. Thomas Bernhard's novel »Correction« in the light of Martin Heidegger's philosophy and the reconstruction of its creation from the estate , in: Sprachkunst 35 (2/2004), pp. 269–285.
  • Alfred Barthofer: Wittgenstein with a mask. Poetry and Truth in Thomas Bernhard's novel Correction. In: Institute for Austrian Studies (ed.): Austria in History and Literature 23 (1979), pp. 186–207.
  • Thomas Fraund: Movement - Correction - Utopia. Studies on the relationship between melancholy and aesthetics in Thomas Bernhard's narrative work. Frankfurt / Main 1986, ISBN 978-3820497885 .
  • Manfred Jurgensen : Thomas Bernhard. The cone in the forest or the geometry of negation . Bern 1981, ISBN 978-3261048059 .
  • Margarete Kohlenbach: The end of perfection. To understand Thomas Bernhard's correction. Tübingen 1986, ISBN 978-3878084877 .
  • Gudrun Mauch: Thomas Bernhard's novel Correction: The tension between the narrator and the experiencing narrator. In: Institute for Austrian Studies (ed.): Austria in History and Literature 23 (1979), pp. 207–219.
  • Madeleine Rietra: On the poetics of Thomas Bernhard's novel correction. In: Kurt Bartsch , Dietmar Goltschnigg and Gerhard Melzer (eds.): In the matter of Thomas Bernhard. Koenigstein / Ts. 1983, ISBN 978-3761082522 , pp. 107-123.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans Höller: Das Höllerhaus , in: ders: Der unbekannte Thomas Bernhard , proofreading Verlag Mattinghofen, 2014, ISBN 978-3950331844 , pp. 140/142, (revised version of the text in Schmied / Höller 2009)
  2. ↑ Wieland Schmied: The Höllerhaus , www.passauer-thomas-bernhard-freunde.de, PDF, p. 8
  3. ↑ a b Wieland Schmied: Das Höllerhaus , www.passauer-thomas-bernhard-freunde.de, PDF, p. 1
  4. ↑ Wieland Schmied: The Höllerhaus , www.passauer-thomas-bernhard-freunde.de, PDF, p. 4