Thomas Bernhard - Correction

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.