Correction: A Novel (33 page)

underlined. When I said to my sister,
the Cone is yours, it belongs to you, I
built it for you, and specifically in the center of the Kobernausser forest,
I saw that the effect of the Cone on my sister was devastating. What followed was sheer horror, so Roithamer, nothing else, slow death, immersion in her sickness unto death, nothing else, from that moment onward everything led to her certain death (May 3). All of them secluded in their rooms waiting for their supper, which has always been an occasion for every kind of mutual recrimination, as though supper were the time to release twenty-two hours of accumulated hatred, aversion, mutual hatred, mutual aversion, so Roithamer. Silence at first (but a different kind of silence from that in Hoeller’s house) then recriminations, politeness followed by insinuations, then open hatred in every direction, so Roithamer. The Eferding woman always had more than one complaint to air, insinuations against myself and my sister primarily and against my father who ended up always taking his food in a state of apathy, fixedly staring at the tabletop, he simply withdrew from all that mealtime verbal filth, so Roithamer. The rest all went at it, attacking each other brutally every way they could think of, vulgarly, viciously. With the entrée came the overture, as it were, of accusations, the main course was the outbreak of the verbal storm, so Roithamer. Wounding the heart and the mind, so Roithamer. Crippling souls, wrecking brains, so Roithamer. It was all far beyond anything an outsider could imagine, day after day, the terrifying regularity of it, so Roithamer. When we had guests, we might exercise some self-control for an hour, no longer, then it broke down, we were no longer embarrassed even by the presence of the guests, soon guests became a rarity at Altensam, so Roithamer. Even in earliest childhood I’d preferred being alone, I lived a shut-in solitary life, my childhood was always lived alongside, but not with, the others. Alongside my parents and siblings, I was always alone, alongside my schoolmates, I was alone, alongside the others I pursued my studies, my science, realization, fulfillment, destruction, annihilation. In every case and in every cause this was the sequence, so Roithamer. I could be among (and with) people for only the briefest periods of time, my tendency was to start withdrawing, retreating from them, even at the moment of approaching them, even while drawing closer to them, so Roithamer. Experience teaches you to keep your distance to the end of your life, because people only come close and close in on you to disturb and destroy you, always, so my uncle, so Roithamer. A man approaches another only to destroy him, so Roithamer. We go out to meet people because we think it’s to our advantage to do so, always keeping the true (only) reason for meeting them, society, to ourselves, our so-called selflessness is a false front, so Roithamer. Whenever we see someone getting along well we soon take a hand, we go to him to disturb him, to destroy, to annihilate him, if we can. However we can manage it, so Roithamer. Parents seen as the first destroyers of their children, annihilators of their children, and vice versa. Being on our guard against everything, we end up being for the longest time alone with ourselves, totally, painfully out of touch, so Roithamer. If we make contact, we must break it off at once, if we’re men of character,
still have
character, so Roithamer. More and more only the briefest social experiences, so Roithamer. While building the Cone I met all sorts of people, never before so many, and I worked with all of these people and was happy with all these people, but I was never so alone as with and among all these people, so Roithamer. Completely alone with my idea, so Roithamer. We are different from the person who is being judged when it is our own person, our own character, that is being judged, so Roithamer. Like the landscape, like the natural scene in (around) us, like whatever we have created, so Roithamer. We see a landscape and we see a man in that landscape and the landscape and the man are always different, each moment, although we assume that everything always remains the same, and thanks to this false assumption we dare to go on with our existence, so Roithamer. So we’re never exactly the person we are, but always already something different, though still just barely ourselves if we’re lucky, so Roithamer. We’ve developed by surrendering something of ourselves, little by little, and so we’ve remained the same, though changed, so Roithamer.

But the schools we’ve attended have been wholly devastating in their influence on us, they
depressed
me, every school I ever attended, had to attend, has
humiliated
me. At first I listened in every direction and entered into all these directions, then I stopped listening, stopped entering into things, so Roithamer. Soon I’d latched onto one system, then to another system, now I’d be convinced by the one, then again by another, so Roithamer. In the schools it’s always the same old stale stuff that’s spread before us, it destroys the mind and the spirit of the learner, the student, stage by stage, in the schools we are turned into despairing men, who can never again escape from their despair, so Roithamer, we enter a school only to be destroyed by that school, annihilated by history, so Roithamer, mathematics annihilates us, the unnaturalness of school annihilates us, so Roithamer. We never recover from school once we’ve left school, any school, we’re branded by the school, i.e., we’re destroyed, so Roithamer. We always enter a school only to be annihilated, the schools are gigantic institutions for the annihilation of the young, those who come to them for help are annihilated, but the state has its own good reasons for financing the schools, so Roithamer, once we leave school, our slow death has simply reached a more advanced stage, nothing else. Like madmen those who need spiritual help enter a school and leave it as dead men, and no one rebels against this, so Roithamer. The young people, healthy individuals, enter the schools looking for help, they come out destroyed, crippled, debilitated for life, so Roithamer. The destruction of the very young starts in grade school, so Roithamer, imagine then what goes on in the secondary schools and the institutions of higher and highest learning. Institutions for the deformation of human beings, so Roithamer. “About Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone” I had first to bring to its conclusion before I could realize that everything is different, “everything”

underlined. Correction of the correction of the correction of the correction, so Roithamer. Signs of madness, insomnia, feeling sick of life. More and more of this soliloquizing, because I haven’t got a soul left, apart from Hoeller not a soul, left alone with myself in Hoeller’s garret, I haven’t a chance of ever leaving Hoeller’s garret (May 7). A prison, a prison to soliloquize in (May 9), so Roithamer. We read a book, we’re reading ourselves, so we loathe reading, so Roithamer, we never open another book, we don’t permit ourselves to read anymore. To hear and see (May 11), so Roithamer. We can’t always exist at the highest pitch of intensity, so we start to slow down in our thinking and doing (feeling), so that after a while we can go back to thinking, doing, feeling with even greater intensity, and in this way we can eventually reach ever greater degrees of intensity; as long as we haven’t crossed the border, the extreme limits, we’re not crazy, so Roithamer. In contemplation of the yellow paper rose, nothing else (June 3). We always go too far, so as not to fall short, we always bring our plans to realization, relentlessly against all opposition and especially against ourselves, we go to the extreme, but without breaking through the final barrier, so Roithamer.

We always go on to the absolute limit, we don’t shy away from that, just as we don’t shy away from death. One day, in a single instant, we’ll break through the final barrier, but the moment hasn’t come yet. We know how, but we don’t know when. It makes no difference whether I go back to England from Austria or back to Austria from England, so Roithamer. We still have a reason not to cross the final barrier. We’re tempted to do it, we don’t do it, so Roithamer, we keep thinking: do it, don’t do it, consistency,
in
consistency, until we cross the final barrier. Science for one thing, my plan, the Cone, for another, supreme happiness/supreme unhappiness, in creating and fulfilling something extraordinary we’ve arrived at nothing more than what everyone else also arrives at, nothing but solitude, so Roithamer. When a body is acted upon by external forces besides its weight it tips over on one side of the base if the (so-called) weight (vector) acts along a line through the so-called center-of-mass that intersects the supporting surface outside the base of the body; in the case of a stable equilibrium, the weight vector points inside the base, in the case of an unstable equilibrium it points exactly toward the tilting edge of the base, “tilting edge of the base” underlined. We always went too far, so Roithamer, so we were always pushing toward the extreme limit. But we never thrust ourselves beyond it. Once I have thrust myself beyond it, it’s all over, so Roithamer, “all” underlined. We’re always set toward that predetermined moment, “predetermined moment”

underlined. When that moment has come, we don’t know that it has come, but it is the right moment. We can exist at the highest degree of intensity as long as we live, so Roithamer (June 7). The end is no process. Clearing.

A Note About the Author

Thomas Bernhard, born in 1931, lives in Ohlsdorf, Upper Austria. One of the most important and internationally acclaimed writers in the German language today, he is the author of
Gargoyles
(1970),
The Lime Works
(1973), and of numerous plays. His three forthcoming volumes of autobiography are currently being translated.

A Note About the Translator

Sophie Wilkins, who lives in New York City, has translated, amongst other distinguished works,
The Lime Works
by Thomas Bernhard, Botho Strauss’s
Devotion,
and the revised edition of C. W. Ceram’s
Gods, Graves, and
Scholars.