Viktor half-fool
Viktor half-fool. A children 's story by Thomas Bernhard , published in 1966, is a winter tale not just for children . Bernhard wrote the text at the invitation of the publisher Gertraud Middelhauve for the anthology “Poets tell children” .
content
The narrator, a doctor, is on a cold winter night on his way from Traich through a high forest to Föding to take care of a patient. On the way he stumbles over a half-frozen man lying in the snow. The man with the eloquent name Viktor Halbnarr - Viktor - the winner, half a fool - says that he made a bet with the mill owner that despite his wooden legs he could walk through the snow from Traich to Föding to the church in an hour. But since he ran too fast, his wooden legs are broken and he is afraid of freezing to death. Viktor doesn't mind having lost the bet, he's happy about the doctor's rescue. He shoulders him together with the broken wooden legs, which are frozen in place and cannot be loosened, and runs as fast as he can through the high forest towards Föding. Shortly before the location, Viktor realizes that he can still achieve his goal - on the doctor's shoulders - by the agreed time. The doctor takes Viktor to the agreed meeting point, where the miller is already waiting. He is astonished to see the legless man, whom he believed dead. He gives Viktor the promised eight hundred schilling note, which he will use to make a pair of Russian boots. The doctor takes Viktor Halbnarr to his patient and then places him in an inn. On the way home through the high forest, the doctor thinks about the legless man, who won 800 schillings for Russian boots for the broken wooden legs, but new wooden legs cost 2500 schillings.
Bernhard elements
This story for children also contains many of the elements and stylistic devices typical of Bernhard's prose: long, nested sentences that sometimes fill a whole page or long new words such as "Durchdenschneewartekünste" (p. 6), increases and crescendo-like word cascades to dramatize a situation and to exaggerate, like "[...] he did not moan, he did not cry, he did not howl, he did not scream, he did not complain at all" (p. 20) or "[...] not only doubled, but what the weight , […] Concerns, tripled, quintupled, tenfold […] ” (p. 22). Text passages in italics , which can also be found frequently in Bernhard's dramas, novels and stories, are intended to emphasize statements or opinions of the author or reproduce particularly concise trains of thought.
illustration
Alfons Schweiggert's drawings are drastic but humorous, comical and bizarre, fitting Bernhard's grotesque story, and they illustrate the most important scenes of the story. The pictures underline the grotesque content and loosen up the strange text passages so that one can laugh at an actually hopeless end.
literature
- Thomas Bernhard: Viktor Halbnarr-A winter fairy tale not just for children . Verlag Sankt Michaelsbund, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-920-82181-5
- Poets tell children . Edited by Gertraud Middelhauve, Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1971. ISBN 3-423-00574-2