Thomas Bernhard - Correction

Thinking it over, one’s life is both the longest possible and the shortest possible, simultaneously, because it can be rethought and reexperienced in a moment, always in that moment in which such a (bold) thought occurs to one. Always wanting the impossible and left with the possible in his minimal existence, the individual always finds himself in the lowest depths of dissatisfaction. Nevertheless he always manages to create another life situation for himself, probably because he really loves life, just as it is. We always crave something other than we can have, than we have, other than what is suitable for us, and so we’re unhappy. When we’re happy we immediately analyze this happiness to death, if we’re like Roithamer andsoforth, and are right back in misery. As I’d heard something that was different from what I’d been hearing till then, I’d gotten up and gone to post myself at the window, to look outside. The darkness was kept at bay by the workshop lights, Hoeller was busy stuffing a huge bird, I couldn’t tell what kind of bird. It was a huge black bird which Hoeller held on his knees, cramming polyurethane into it with a stick. It was eleven o’clock, and inasmuch as Hoeller always got up at four in the morning, all his life, even as a child, he’d always gotten up at four in the morning, because his father also had always been up by four in the morning, everybody in the Aurach valley got up between four and five o’clock in the morning, and so because Hoeller is always up at four in the morning, keeping such late hours, such very long late hours as these in these circumstances, will undermine his health, I thought. From my window up in the garret I kept watching Hoeller down there in his workshop stuffing that huge black bird, how he kept cramming it with more and more stuffing, I thought I’ll watch him from this. excellent vantage point until he’s finished stuffing that bird, and so I stood there motionless for a good half hour until I saw that Hoeller had finished stuffing the bird. Suddenly Hoeller had thrown the stuffed bird down to the floor, he’d jumped up and run off into the back room where I couldn’t see him anymore, but I waited, looking into the workshop, until I could see Hoeller again, he came back and sat down on his chair again and went back to stuffing the bird, now I noticed a huge heap of polyurethane on the floor beside Hoeller’s chair and I thought this huge heap of polyurethane is now going to be crammed into this bird which I’d supposed had already been crammed full long since. By stuffing this bird he is making the night bearable for himself, I thought. At twelve he was still busy stuffing that bird. Off and on I kept wondering what kind of a bird this was, I’d never seen so large and so black a bird before, probably a species never seen in our country at all, and I toyed with the idea of going down to the workshop to ask Hoeller what species of bird this was. It’s certainly possible that this bird is of a so-called exotic species, that one of the hunters living out there on the plain, living in affluence in that fertile country out there, men who take frequent hunting trips to foreign countries and overseas, brought the bird back from South America or Africa, with what incredible energy Hoeller was now stuffing that bird with polyurethane, I couldn’t imagine that so much polyurethane could be crammed inside that bird, yet Hoeller kept stuffing some more of the polyurethane into the bird, suddenly I felt repelled by the process of stuffing polyurethane into the huge black bird, I turned around, looked at the door, but found it impossible to look at the door for more than a second or so because even looking at the door I kept seeing the huge bird Hoeller was stuffing with polyurethane, so I turned back again and looked out the window and into Hoeller’s workshop, if I must see Hoeller stuffing this huge, black, really horrible bird, then I might as well see it in reality and not in my imagination, clearly I could not possibly expect to get any sleep now, full as I was of my impression of Hoeller stuffing that huge black bird with polyurethane, constantly accelerating the speed with which he was doing this job, it was nauseating, still I had to keep looking out the window and into the workshop as if hypnotized. I could no longer turn away, compelled to surrender myself entirely to watching this procedure of Hoeller’s cramming that bird with polyurethane, I was about to vomit when Hoeller suddenly stopped his horrible activity and set the bird down, with its huge claws and long heavy legs, on his worktable. Now he’s going to sew the stuffed bird together, I thought, and sure enough Hoeller had gotten up and disappeared into the back room of the workshop to bring in whatever he needed for sewing the bird up. Or else he’s stopping work now and is leaving the workshop to go to his room and lie down, I thought, but Hoeller was already back with various balls of thread and needles and had sat down at his worktable to continue his work. Why am I watching Hoeller at his work, I thought, why don’t I do something myself, start something that I can keep on doing all night if I like, I thought, no matter what I do, as long as it gets me through the night. But what could I do? There was no manual work of any kind I could have done in Hoeller’s garret, it wasn’t set up for anything like that, and my head was no longer clear enough for any kind of mental work. On the other hand I didn’t permit myself to go down to Hoeller’s workshop, in case I could be of some help there. I certainly could have found something to do in Hoeller’s workshop, even if it was only to sweep up. It took all of my willpower to get myself away from the window and I turned around and took a few steps toward the door, thinking as I did so that my situation was really desperate, that I was possibly already quite seriously insane. Had I gone crazy as a result of moving precipitately into Hoeller’s garret? I wondered, but then I immediately thought, what an idea, that’s what’s crazy, such an idea as that, and I walked over to the desk and took the yellow paper rose out of the top drawer. Something happened to Roithamer at that music festival, I thought, as I held the yellow paper rose up to the light, a change had come upon him during that music festival, even if I don’t know, or can’t know what kind of a change it was. But don’t we always immediately see and seek a meaning in everything we see and think?

How could a man who never fired a shot in his life, suddenly, at a music festival, pick off twenty-four paper roses with twenty-four shots? And then hand twenty-three of these paper roses over, in passing, to an unknown girl, or an unknown young woman, keeping only one yellow rose for himself. And then keep this one yellow paper rose for so many years, taking it along wherever he goes, apparently unable to live without it ever again. By taking the paper rose out of the drawer I’d calmed myself down. I sat down with the paper rose in my hand on the old chair and held the paper rose up to the light. We mustn’t let ourselves go so far as to suspect something remarkable, something mysterious, or significant, in everything and behind everything, this is a yellow paper rose, the yellow paper rose, to be precise, which Roithamer shot down at the music festival in Stocket that one time, together with twenty-three others in different colors, that’s all. Everything is what it is, that’s all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought. We may see only what we do see which is nothing else but that which we see. Again I watched Hoeller from my window in Hoeller’s garret, as he sewed together the huge black bird which he had stuffed to bursting. Suddenly I saw, perhaps my eyes had become adjusted to the lighting down there in Hoeller’s workshop, or else the lighting had suddenly changed, anyway I saw several such huge birds, the back of Hoeller’s workshop was filled with such birds, not all of these great, indeed huge birds were equally large, not all of them were black, but these were absolutely no local birds , probably, I thought, these are birds from the collection of some bird fancier, one of those rich bird freaks who can afford to travel to America, to South America or to India, in order to shoot such huge birds and add them to his collection. A huge bird collection, I kept thinking, a huge bird collection, and I slapped my forehead as I thought again and again, a huge bird collection, a huge bird collection! Roithamer had always spoken at length about Hoeller’s work, his procedures in preserving, stuffing andsoforth all kinds of animals, every possible kind of fowl, Roithamer had always profited, so he himself said, from watching Hoeller at work, seeing how those dead creatures were dissected and stuffed and sewed up. For Roithamer, I now thought, these products of nature, stuffed and turned into artifacts, always provided an occasion for various reflections on nature and art and art and nature, to him they were almost the most mysterious products of art because they were only just barely works of art andsoforth, mysterious by virtue of the fact that they had been made into artifacts here in the midst of a natural world still abounding with hundreds and thousands of creatures still purely natural andsoforth, that they had been turned into artifacts by Hoeller, products of nature turned by Hoeller’s hands into products of art here in nature’s own bosom andsoforth. Hoeller turns nature’s products into art products and these artificial creatures seem always more mysterious than the purely natural creatures they once were.