Thomas Bernhard - Correction

When he did that, however, he also handed me the means of showing my appreciation, in fact and in full accordance with my character, by selling Altensam, selling it and destroying it and using the proceeds for the purpose I’ve set my mind on. My parents would turn in their graves (this remark is crossed out). It’s like dissolving a dungeon, to dissolve Altensam, so Roithamer. Are my hatred and my aversion, these two weapons still in effect against my parents today, also in effect against my brothers? I ask myself.

Yes, but to a much lesser degree, so much less as to be basically insignificant, so Roithamer. While our eye is on our work and on the riskiness and vulnerability of our work, we spend most of our time barely trying to bridge over the next time span just ahead, and we think that getting through the time just ahead is all we need to think about, not our work, let alone the complicated work that claims our entire existence. To get through the time itself, no matter how, is what we think, what we instinctively feel we need.

Beginning in childhood. How to get on with it, that’s what we keep thinking constantly, and yet most of the time it doesn’t matter a damn how we get on with it, only that we get on with it. Because we have to concentrate all our mental and physical forces on just getting along, without achieving anything beyond that, so Roithamer. Work, to bridge over time, no matter what work, our occupation, whether digging in the garden or pushing on with a concept, it’s all the same. Then we’re obsessed with an idea though we’ve barely enough strength left to go on breathing, torment enough in itself. We’re obligated to (do) nothing, so Roithamer, “nothing” underlined. When we were children, how they talked us into believing that we had a right to live only if we accomplished some sensible work, how they assured us that we had to do our duty. All of it a case of irresponsible parents, irresponsible so-called authorized educators, irresponsibly plaguing us. Stuffed into the same kind of clothes regardless of our different personalities, our different characters, marched to church, made to eat, made to visit people, so Roithamer.

Mother’s fixed idea that we brothers must always be dressed alike and appropriately for Altensam, whatever that was, and her equally fixed idea, always, that all three of us should always think the same, act the same, believe the same things, do or refrain from doing the same things, but I always did something else and I always refused to wear the same clothes as the others, which led to daily anticipations of apocalypse. We weren’t alike, never, so Roithamer, but neither was I, ever, eccentric, it’s not true that I was eccentric, though they never tired of calling me an eccentric, it was their way of slandering me, because I acted in accordance with my nature without concerning myself with the others and their opinions, I was denounced as an eccentric, I, who simply tried to live always in accordance with my own, absolutely not eccentric nature, all I did was simply to be true to my own nature, day after day, but that’s how I was turned into an eccentric from earliest childhood on, and they also always called me a troublemaker, rightly, in this case, because I really always did trouble their peace in Altensam, I troubled their so-called peace all my life, in the end I made it my mission to trouble their peace in Altensam, so the term troublemaker really suited me more than anyone. That we were something special because we came from Altensam, that everything having to do with us and Altensam was something special, is a notion I always fought off, there was every indication that we, my parents, my siblings, me, everyone in Altensam, were ultimately something special, of course in the sense that everything in the world is something special, but nothing is more special than anything else, everything is so equally special that there’s nothing further to be said about it, so Roithamer. The ideas our parents had of us, and the hopes which our parents attached to these ideas of us and which were not fulfilled, ideas are not fulfilled, so Roithamer, not ideas all by themselves, “not all by themselves” underlined. We’d had to learn to play violin, play the piano, play the flute, partly because mother insisted and partly because each showed some talent for one or the other musical instrument, but all four of us hated these music lessons equally, music began to interest me, to fascinate me, only after I no longer had to practice it, once I could choose freely I became for a time, in fact for years, totally absorbed in music, I’d started to think that I must study music on a higher, on the highest, level, I’d even started on such a course of study but then gave it up again, because the formal study of music would have put me off, the formal study of music did not endear music to me, on the contrary, it affected me the same way as the compulsory music lessons at home in Altensam. Disobedience at Altensam had always been punished by inflicting deadly injuries on the psyche. I’d always lived in fear of that sunny-side turret room, but this special torture was reserved only for me, neither of my brothers was ever locked up in the turret room. For them, a slap in the face would be deemed enough, but me they locked in the turret room, the worst punishment of all, or else they said things about me that did me in, did me in emotionally and mentally, the worst possible punishment, of course. We were constantly forced to do things we didn’t want to do. But we’d always been told that our parents meant it for our own good. Every day, very often, we’d get to hear how much they meant it all for our own good, they never tired of repeating that phrase, it was one of their favorite maxims, time and again, we mean it for your own good (speaking to one or the other of us) until I felt more and more intimidated and humiliated, they could easily bully us, our parents, we were so naïve. Such a beautiful house, so artistic, so cultivated, our visitors always said, what could anyone say to the contrary? Such delightful surroundings, every piece of furniture a work of art, all the interiors they ever got to see the most splendid anywhere, all the vistas from Altensam opening on the loveliest, most farflung landscapes.

How, I often asked myself, how is it possible to see oneself going to ruin in so, to quote my mother’s constant phrase, luxurious an atmosphere? To be dying by inches, for no reason any outsider could see. Of course I wasn’t wholly a stranger to such concepts as joy, beauty, even the love-of-life, the beauty-of-nature andsoforth, so Roithamer. My eyes were as open in that direction as in the other. A man like me, who finds his greatest happiness in thought, most of all when engaged in thought out in the open, in the free (philosophical) world of nature, is saved by this fact in itself, by such an observation as this in itself, so Roithamer. Happiness can even be found in the so-called acceptance of pain, so Roithamer. One might, for instance, find supreme joy in writing well about supreme misery, so Roithamer. The ability to perceive, the ability to articulate one’s perception, can be a supreme joy andsoforth, so Roithamer. A statement in itself, no matter what is being stated, can be a supreme joy, as is ultimately the fact of simply existing, no matter how, so Roithamer. But we mustn’t keep thinking such thoughts all the time, keep mulling over everything we’re about, otherwise we may suddenly find ourselves deadened by our own persistent, relentless brooding and end up simply dead. I began by playing violin, against my will, so Roithamer, piano, against my will, because forced into it, later on the (voluntary) effort to study music on a higher and the highest level, the history of music andsoforth, so Roithamer, all came to nothing because under duress in the one case, in the other voluntary but formal, in the end serious involvement with music, getting into music of my own free will and without formal backing (university etcetera), Webern, Schönberg, Berg, Dallapiccola andsoforth. Began by reading against my will, read everything against my will, because my parents forced me to read, they’d thought that I was inclined to read, but because they assumed I had such an inclination, respect/inclination etcetera, I refused to read, never read anything but schoolbooks till my twelfth year, then, from about my twenty-fifth year on, I read incessantly, everything of my own accord, whatever I could lay my hands on. Because they demanded order, I chose disorder, because they demanded that we wear hats on our heads, never a hat on my head for decades, aversion to hats etcetera, so Roithamer. Because they always tried to stop me from going down to the various villages from Altensam, for all sorts of reasons which were bound to seem unreasonable to me, I’d always go down to the villages behind their backs, I made myself independent down there below Altensam, timidly at first but later with great firmness, while they believed me to be in my room, I’d actually gone down to the villages at night. And so more and more often behind their backs down to Altensam, so Roithamer, until one day I left Altensam for good and went down, never to come back to Altensam, never again, “never again” underlined. But in these outbreaks I was also alone. My siblings never and in no way followed me.