thomas bernhard o l d m a s t e r s · thomas bernhard o l d m a s t e r s finnish translation by...

Thomas Bernhard

O L D M A S T E R S

Finnish translation by Tarja Roinila

Adapted by Minna Leino

English translation by Loviisa Kuzay

(made for subtitling purposes)

Original production:

Finnish National Theatre and HAM Helsinki Art Museum 2017

2

Characters:

REGER

ATZBACHER

IRRSIGLER

3

ATZBACHER WRITES

(Atzbacher observes Reger, who observes Tintoretto’s painting, the White

bearded man. Atzbacher is in turn observed by Irrsigler, the attendant.)

ATZBACHER (to the audience)

My meeting with Reger in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum was not until

half past eleven, but I was already present at half past ten so that I could, as I

had intended for quite some time, for once observe him undisturbed from the

most ideal angle possible. Because he has his regular spot in the so-called

Bordone Room, on the velvet-covered settee facing Tintoretto’s White bearded

man, where yesterday, after explaining the so-called Tempest Sonata he

continued his lecture on the Art of Fugue, beginning before Bach and ending

after Schumann, as he put it, though he was in such a mood that he came to

speak more of Mozart than of Bach, I had to place myself in the so-called

Sebastiano Room; indeed contrary to my own taste, I had to settle for Tizian’s

company, so that I could observe Reger seated in front of Tintoretto’s White

bearded man, standing in fact, which actually did no harm, as especially when

observing people I prefer standing to sitting, in fact observing people has always

worked better for me upright than seated.

(Pause.)

Since Reger was fully absorbed by the portrait of the White bearded man, as you

can see for yourself, and as it seemed to me then too, Thomas Bernhard writes,

that Atzbacher writes, I did not have to fear being caught in my observation.

(Pause.)

To the attendant Irrsigler (first name Jenö!), whom Reger has known for thirty

years and with whom I have always been on good terms myself, I had indicated

by a gesture that I did not wished to be disturbed in my observation, and every

time Irrsigler appeared, punctual as clockwork, he behaved as if I were not there

4

at all, and also as if Reger was not there at all, while he himself, Irrsigler, true to

his duty observed the visitors, of whom there were, despite the free entry on

Saturdays, only a few, he watched them in his own accustomed way, which feels

unpleasant to everyone who is not familiar with Irrsigler. Irrsigler employed that

irritating stare, typical of museum attendants, Atzbacher writes, with the

intention of scaring the visitors, who, as it is known, have all kinds of mischief

in mind; his manner of abruptly stepping into any room, from any corner

without any notice or sound, to inspect the situation, may indeed seem off-

putting to anyone who does not know him.

(Pause.)

For as long as I have known Irrsigler he has always been the same shade of pale,

despite not being unwell, and for decades Reger has characterized him as a state

corpse on duty, who has been in service for Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum

for thirty-five years. Reger, who has been visiting Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches

Museum for thirty-six years, has known Irrsigler from the moment he took up

his post, and they are altogether on very good terms. It did not require more than

ATZBACHER + IRRSIGLER

a very small bribe

ATZBACHER

to secure the settee in the Bordone Room forever, Reger once said years ago.

Reger’s relationship with Irrsigler, which grew out of habit, has lasted for over

thirty years. If Reger wishes, as is occasionally the case, to view Tintoretto’s

White bearded man in private, Irrsigler simply closes the Bordone Room off

from other visitors, he places himself in the doorway and lets no one pass. Reger

only has to give Irrsigler a sign and he blocks the Bordone Room, and indeed

5

does not shy away from pushing visitors already inside the Bordone Room out

of it, if Reger wishes so.

(Talks to the audience like a museum’s tour guide)

Irrsigler pursued an apprenticeship as a carpenter in Bruck an der Leitha, but

gave up carpentry even before qualifying as an assistant carpenter, in order to

become a policeman. The police force however did not accept Irrsigler due to

physical weakness. His uncle, who had been an attendant at Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum since 1924, got him a position at Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum, under paid,


but the most secure post of all,

ATZBACHER

as Irrsigler says. Irrsigler had only wanted to join the police because it solved

the problem of clothing. That you could slip into the exact same uniform for the

rest of your life, and that you didn’t even have to pay for it, because it was

provided by the state, appeared to him ideal, as it did to his uncle, who had

arranged for him to work at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, and in this

respect it made no difference whether he was in the service of the police or

Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. Irrsigler could not imagine a profession

more responsible but at the same time easier than service at Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum.

IRRSIGLER

In the police you endanger your own life every day

6

ATZBACHER

said Irrsigler,

IRRSIGLER

In Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum you don’t.

ATZBACHER

He preferred to shadow museum visitors rather than ordinary people, since

museum visitors were at any rate superior people, who had an eye for art. He

himself had acquired, over time, a so called


artistic eye,

ATZBACHER

he could

IRRSIGLER

at any time conduct a guided tour through Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum,

or certainly through the picture gallery,

7

ATZBACHER

he says, but this he does not have to do. People do not take in what you tell them

at all, he always says.

IRRSIGLER

Museum guides have talked about the same things for decades, and have of

course said a great deal of nonsense, as Herr Reger says,

ATZBACHER

Irrsigler said to me, Atzbacher. Art historians only swamp the visitors in their

drivel, says Irrsigler, who has, over the years adopted many, if not all of Reger’s

sentences word for word. Irrsigler is Reger’s mouthpiece, nearly everything

Irrsigler says, Reger has said, for over thirty years Irrsigler has spoken in

Reger’s words. If I prick up my ears I can hear Reger speak through Irrsigler.

IRRSIGLER

If we prick up our ears when we listen to guides, we always hear the same

annoying drivel of the art historians,

ATZBACHER

says Irrsigler, because Reger says so.

IRRSIGLER

All these paintings are magnificent, but not one is perfect,

8

ATZBACHER

Irrsigler says after Reger.

IRRSIGLER

People only go to museums because they are told that a cultured person ought to

go to museums, not out of interest, art does not interest people, at least not

ninety-nine percent of the people,

ATZBACHER

says Irrsigler, quoting Reger word for word.

(Pause.)

Irrsigler had a difficult childhood, a mother suffering from cancer and dying at

age 46, an unreliable father, drunk throughout his life. And Bruck an der Leitha

is just as ugly as any other place in the region of Burgenland.

IRRSIGLER

In winter the Burgenlanders drown in snow and in summer they get eaten by

mosquitoes. And in spring and autumn they wallow in their own filth. In the

whole of Europe there is no poorer nor filthier area,

ATZBACHER

says Irrsigler.

9

IRRSIGLER

The Viennese always try to persuade the Burgenlanders that Burgenland is


a beautiful province,

ATZBACHER

because the Viennese think Burgenland filth and Burgenland stupidity is


romantic.

IRRSIGLER

The Burgenlanders’ fondest wish is to join the Vienna police forces,

ATZBACHER

he said a few days ago,

IRRSIGLER

I did not succeed in this because I was too weak,

10

ATZBACHER

because of physical weakness.

IRRSIGLER

But at least I am an attendant in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum and thus

also a public servant. After six o’clock in the evening,

ATZBACHER

he said,

IRRSIGLER

it isn’t criminals I lock behind bars but works of art, I lock up Rubens and

Bellotto behind bars.

ATZBACHER

Irrsigler has achieved quite a mastery in appropriating Reger’s sentences, he

even utters them with almost exactly the same intonation as Reger, so I thought

then and still think the same.

(Pause.)

So I stood there, watching Reger, who was still engrossed as they say, in

Tintoretto’s White bearded man, and simultaneously I saw Irrsigler, who was

not at all in the Bordone Room, telling me his life story, in other words I saw

last week’s images of Irrsigler and at the same time Reger, who was now sitting

on the velvet-covered settee and naturally had not yet noticed me. So at the same

11

time that I was eyeing Reger, as I was doing in detail, in a manner I had never

done before, I also saw Irrsigler a week ago standing with me in the Battoni

Room listening to Reger.

There were people who claimed Reger to be mad, since only a madman would

come to the picture gallery of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum for decades,

on every second day, except Monday.

IRRSIGLER

Herr Reger is a clever and educated person,

ATZBACHER

said Irrsigler, who thought very differently about this. Yes, I had then said to

Irrsigler, Herr Reger is not only a clever and educated but also a famous man,

IRRSIGLER

he has studied music in Leipzig and Vienna and written music reviews for The

Times and still writes them today,

ATZBACHER

I then said.

IRRSIGLER

Not an ordinary scribbler,

12

ATZBACHER

I said,

IRRSIGLER

no driveller but a musical scholar in the true sense of the word and referring in

all earnestness to a great persona. One cannot compare Reger to the drivellers of

the music- and culture pages who daily spread their drivel in the magazines.

Reger is a philosopher,

ATZBACHER

I said to Irrsigler, a philosopher


in the most literal meaning of the term.

IRRSIGLER

Reger has written music reviews for The Times over thirty years, little musical-

philosophical essays, which will surely be compiled into a book one day. The

sojourn in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is undoubtedly a prerequisite for

him being able to write for The Times in the specific way that he does write for

The Times,

13

ATZBACHER

I said to Irrsigler, regardless of whether or not he understood me, most possibly

he did not understand me at all, I thought at that time and still do. That Reger

writes reviews for The Times is not known to anyone in Austria, or at most a

few people know about it, I said to Irrsigler. I might also say, that Reger is a


private thinker,

ATZBACHER

I said to Irrsigler, although telling this to Irrsigler was rather stupid. At Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum Reger finds what he won’t find anywhere else, I said

to Irrsigler, that is


everything significant,

ATZBACHER

everything he needs for his thinking and his work. People may call Reger’s

behaviour insane, which it isn’t, I said to Irrsigler, here in Vienna and Austria

Reger is not acknowledged, but in London and England and even in the United

States they know who Reger is, what kind of talent he is, I said. Irrsigler only

nodded. Here people despise a genius like Reger, I said to Irrsigler, regardless of

the fact that Irrsigler had not understood at all what I meant when I said that here

people despise a genius like Reger. Genius and Austria do not go together, I

14

said. In Austria you have to be mediocre to get heard and to be taken seriously,

you need to be an incompetent, provincial fraud, you have to have a thoroughly

parochial outlook. A genius or an exceptional mind perishes here in the most

degrading way, I said to Irrsigler. Only people like Reger, whom one can count

on the fingers of one hand in this dreadful country, survive the degradation and

scorn, the denigration and silencing to death, the cultural animosity and

meanness, which reign everywhere in Austria, only people like Reger, who

possess greatness of character and a truly sharp, incorruptible intellect.

(Pause.)

Although Herr Reger is on reasonably friendly terms with the curator of this

museum and knows her very well, I said to Irrsigler, I don’t believe that the head

of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is aware that Herr Reger has visited this

museum on every second day for the last thirty years, that he has sat on the

settee in the Bordone Room, depriving other visitors of this opportunity, no that

I do not believe.

(Pause. Atzbacher looks questioningly at Irrisegler.)

No, as far as I know the curator is not aware of this fact, because Reger has

never mentioned it to her and because you, Herr Irrsigler, have always kept quiet

about it, because it is Herr Reger’s wish that you keep quiet about the fact that

Herr Reger has for over thirty years visited Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum

on every second day, except Mondays.

(Pause. Atzbacher observes Irrisegler who has fallen silent.)

Discretion, that is your great strength, I said to Irrsigler. I now reflected on that

moment, as I watched Reger, who was observing Tintoretto’s White bearded

man, which indeed was also being eyed by Irrsigler.

That the two of us, Reger and me, should come to the museum on two

consecutive days, was an impossible idea, yet I came to the museum again

15

today, because Reger had expressly wished me to do so, I don’t know for what

reason Reger might be in the museum today, I now thought, but I shall soon find

out. It was completely out of the question for me to come to Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum two days running, just as it had been out of the

question for Reger until now. And now here we are both, Reger and I, back in

Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum today, where we sat only yesterday. If

Reger had not yesterday said come here tomorrow, I should not have come to

Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum today, maybe only in the following week,

because I, unlike Reger, who indeed comes to Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches

Museum every second day and has done so for decades, I do not go to Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum every second day but only when I feel like it. Reger

yesterday expressly told me come here tomorrow, I can still hear in my ears how

he said it. But Irrsigler, of course, had not heard anything and did not know

anything about it and was, naturally, now astonished that Reger and me were

back at the museum today. If Reger had not told me yesterday, come here

tomorrow, I would not have come to meet him in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches

Museum today, I would not have come to Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum

to meet my spiritual father.

(Pause.)

16

ABOUT SOLITUDE

(Reger has noticed that Atzbacher has arrived.)

REGER

I thought you would be punctual and you were punctual, I wouldn’t have

expected anything less from you but punctuality and punctuality I appreciate

above all else, as you know, where there are human beings there must be

punctuality and with punctuality comes reliability. Half past eleven and you

came, I looked at my watch and it said half past eleven and here you were

already standing in front of me.

(Pause.)

You have always stayed true not only to punctuality but also to solitude, you

have always trod your own path, stay true to that as long as you live. My

solution was to escape life by slipping into art, so I could say. I slipped away

into art. Just as some people slip into painting or into acting. I secretly slipped

away into music. You slipped away into philosophy and authorship, but you are

no more a philosopher than an author, it’s what is so interesting and yet at the

same time so unfortunate about you, you are not really a philosopher but neither

are you an author, for a philosopher you lack everything that is characteristic of

a philosopher and for an author similarly, even though you resemble precisely

what I would call a philosophical writer, your philosophy is not real philosophy

and your writing is not real writing. And a writer who doesn’t publish any work

cannot really be called a writer at all. To think you have the energy to work on

one single piece of writing for decades and not publish even the slightest

passage. I could not do it. You must be afraid of publishing, you suffer from

publication phobia, publication trauma must be the reason why you have never

published.

17

ATZBACHER (turns to the audience)

Never before has he worn a hat when sitting in the Bordone Room, and now he

was sitting on the settee with a black hat on. This disquieted me, just like the

fact that he had asked me to come to the museum today, since it was most

unusual, as I now thought, as one might think, just as it was extremely unusual

for him to have left his hat on while sitting on the settee in the Bordone Room,

not to mention certain other unusual aspects of the situation.

REGER

Precisely because you have no kind of theoretical interest in music you are a

most admirable victim for my musical theories. You listen carefully and don’t

object but let me talk in peace, that is what I need, whether what I say is of any

value or not. I have no other person more useful than you,

ATZBACHER

he said.

REGER

my survival is probably only possible thanks to you,

ATZBACHER

he said to me.

18

REGER

I should not have said this,

ATZBACHER

he said,

REGER

it is impertinent to say something like that,

ATZBACHER

he said,

REGER

unparalleled impertinence, but I said it, you are the person that enables the

ongoing of my musical existence, I certainly do not have anyone else. And did

you know that my wife was very fond of you,

ATZBACHER

he said as well.

(Pause.)

19

REGER

No person ever has been as healthy as my wife, she lived the life of a healthy

person whereas I lead the life of a sickly person, a mortally ill person. She was

healthy, she was the future, I was always the invalid, I was the past. I lived all

my life under the misconception that my wife would not die before me, and

because my wife’s death came so abruptly, so completely out of the blue, I was

a couple of days beforehand still firmly convinced that my wife would live

longer than me, it was a given; she was healthy, I was sick, and in this

perception and belief we had always lived. That I could at some point in my life

be left alone, without my wife, never even occurred to me, it was an idea I never

countenanced. I find it excessively depressing that my wife died with all that

enormous knowledge which I had conveyed to her, that she should have taken

that enormous knowledge to her grave, that is the worst enormity, and this

enormity is far more dreadful than the fact that she is dead.

ATZBACHER

Immediately after his wife’s sudden, completely unexpected, death and funeral

Reger had gone to the closest chapel and had lit a candle, not really knowing

why, and the strangest thing was, that he had gone right from the chapel to St.

Stephen’s cathedral and had lit a candle there too, again without really knowing

why. Having lit the candle at St. Stephen’s he had walked a short stretch along

the Wollzeile and thought about killing himself. Because his wife had always

been his everything, he naturally could not imagine carrying on without her. He

did however not have a clear vision of how to kill himself and eventually he was

able to dismiss, at least for the present time, his thoughts of suicide. So now he

had not only to recover from the misconception that his wife would die after

him, but also from the fact that he had not killed himself right after his wife’s

death, and had not, as intended, died straight after her.

20

REGER

I began to read Schopenhauer again, it was Schopenhauer that my wife and I

were working through when she suddenly fell behind my back and fractured the

so-called neck of the femur. I read Schopenhauer again, and that probably saved

me, although I am not really sure if it was right to let myself be saved, probably

it would have been better not to be saved and to kill myself instead. But merely

the fact that I had so much to attend to concerning the funeral, took up all my

time so there was none left in which to kill myself.

(Pause.)

You must be wondering why I told you to come here again today, why I

requested you return here again today. There is a reason for it.

(Atzbacher awaits and looks at Reger.)

But this reason I will tell you later. I simply don’t know how to tell you the

reason. I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it and I do not know. I’ve been

here for many hours and given it much thought and I simply do not know.

21

THE MISTAKE

REGER

You know, my dear Atzbacher, so far I have found, in every painting exhibited

here in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum that carries the name masterpiece,

so in all the so-called masterpieces, a heinous mistake, a failure of its creator, I

have found it and revealed it. For over thirty years this infamous calculation, as

you would probably call it, has always proved correct. None of these

masterpieces, regardless of the artist, is by any means complete and or perfect.

This reassures me,

ATZBACHER

he said yesterday.

REGER

In the end it makes me happy,

ATZBACHER

he said.

REGER

None of these masters has created a hundred percent brilliant painting; if they

did not fail around the chin or the knee, then they failed at the eyelid. Most of

them fail at the hands. In Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum there is not a

22

single painting with an exquisitely or even an exceptionally well painted hand,

always the same somehow tragicomically failed hands. It is only when you

realise time and again that wholeness and perfection do not exist, that you have

the ability to carry on with your life, do you understand?

ATZBACHER

Reger said.

IRRSIGLER

A human cannot endure wholeness or perfection,

ATZBACHER

he said.

REGER

You have to listen to Bach again and again and hear how he fails,

ATZBACHER

he said,

REGER

listen and listen again to Beethoven and hear how he fails,

23

ATZBACHER

he said,

REGER

listen again and again even to Mozart and hear him fail.

IRRSIGLER

You have to travel to Rome to discover that St. Peter’s cathedral is a tawdry

concoction.

REGER

And in the same way you also have to deal with the so-called great philosophers,

even if the spiritual artists in question are the ones dearest to you. We do not

love Pascal because he polished to perfection, but because he is fundamentally

so helpless, just as we also love Montaigne for the helplessness of his life-long

quest and failure to find anything, Voltaire too for his helplessness. In the end

we love philosophy and all the humanities only because they are so absolutely

helpless. In reality we love only those books which are not whole, but chaotic

and helpless.

IRRSIGLER

And the same goes for other things,

24

REGER

we become especially attached to another person only because they are helpless

and incomplete, because they are chaotic and imperfect. And what I said about

the fugue today,

ATZBACHER

he was saying yesterday,

REGER

not one composer, not even one of the greatest, has composed a perfectly

faultless fugue, not even Bach, even though he was pure tranquillity and pure

clarity of composition. There is no such thing as a faultless picture, or a faultless

book and no faultless piece of music, that is the truth, my dear Atzbacher.

(Pause.)

All these paintings here express man’s absolute helplessness, as he tries to come

to terms with himself and everything that surrounds him throughout his life,

ATZBACHER

Reger said.

REGER

That is what all these paintings express,

25

ATZBACHER

he said,

REGER

helplessness which is on one hnad intellectually humiliating and on the other

hand intellectually challenging and harrowing to death. The White bearded man

has stimulated my mind and spirit for over thirty years, for this reason it is to me

the most valuable of what Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum has to offer. As

you know I regard the White bearded man as one of the

REGER + ATZBACHER + IRRSIGLER

most brilliant paintings ever painted.

IRRSIGLER (to Atzbacher)

Herr Reger always says that you have to use your mind to seek, the mind is for

seeking out the mistakes of humanity, for seeking out failure. The human mind

is only really a human mind when it seeks out the mistakes of humanity. The

human mind is not a human mind unless it is used to seek out the mistakes of

humanity, he says. A good mind is a mind that seeks out the mistakes of

humanity, an exceptional mind is a mind which finds the mistakes of humanity

and a genius mind is a mind that takes note of these mistakes after it has found

them and uses all possible means to demonstrate those mistakes.

26

REGER

In this sense and notably in this museum that usually mindless dictum seek and

you shall find is true. In this museum there is not a single work devoid of

mistakes. This may make you smile, it may alarm you, but it makes me happy.

(Pause.)

Have you never considered publishing even one little extract of your work?

Some little fragment? It all sounds so brilliant, all you have revealed about your

work, on the other hand I understand well the great pleasure of not publishing

anything, sharing absolutely nothing, with this world, the state of this world. But

surely someday you will want to know what impact your work would have on

others, and you will publish at least a part of your work, won’t you? Won’t you?

I don’t know any writer who could per se bear to remain unpublished for very

long, who would not be curious to know what the public would say of his work.

On the one hand it must be fantastic to keep one’s so-called life-long work to

oneself and not publish it for one’s whole life, on the other hand I believe it

must be equally fantastic to publish it. Does it not frustrate you that you write

and write and think and think and write down your thoughts and write again and

you do all this without any kind of response?

Would you not at least once like to experience what the public, what the so-

called public experts think of it, even though I would in the same breath add that

so-called public expertise does not exist, there is no such thing as public

expertise, expertise has never existed and never will,

ATZBACHER

Reger said, Atzbacher writes.

27

INFLATED RELATIVES

REGER

My dear Atzbacher, in certain times, when the fashion requires it, some artists

are simply, they are simply

REGER + IRRSIGLER

inflated

REGER

into monstrous globally frenzied proportions; then suddenly some

REGER + IRRSIGLER

incorruptible fellow

IRRSIGLER

sticks his head into this

REGER + IRRSIGLER

globally frenzied

28

IRRSIGLER

monstrosity and the whole

REGER + IRRSIGLER

globally frenzied

IRRSIGLER

monstrosity bursts and just as suddenly there’s nothing.

REGER

You only need to go to the theatre, and all the ridiculousness, awkwardness and

universally harmful kitsch will make you sick. Even when something brutal and

savage takes place in a theatre, it is only fashionably vulgar and tastelessly

sentimental. All that is said and how it is said makes you sick.

IRRSIGLER

When they speak loftily it makes you sick and when they speak ordinarily it

makes you sick.

REGER

And Velázquez, Rembrandt, Giorgione, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Goethe, as well

as Pascal, Voltaire, they are all only massively inflated monstrosities. I don’t

know a single writer in the world who is as amateur and careless and

furthermore as terribly narrow-minded as

29

REGER + IRRSIGLER + ATZBACHER

Stifter

REGER

and at the same time as


world-famous.

ATZBACHER

All in all Stifter is

REGER

simply one of my artistic life’s greatest disappointments.


The Stifter that Reger had always admired so greatly, to a point beyond

admiration, to the point of love, was now, in fact, on second reading just as bad

a writer as Bruckner was, on more intensive listening, a bad

REGER

not to say

30

REGER + ATZBACHER

an appalling composer.

REGER

Bruckner was no genius either. Bruckner is just as sloppy a composer as Stifter

is a sloppy writer, what they share is their Upper Austrian sloppiness. Both

created so-called


sycophantic art

ATZBACHER

which is morally questionable.

REGER

All of these paintings here are admired, but the admirers don’t know why, just as

Stifter is read and admired without his readers knowing why. The greatest

mystery about Stifter is his fame, since his literature is anything but mysterious.

IRRSIGLER

Stifter and Bruckner. One creating smudgy prose, the other smudgy music.

(Pause.)

ATZBACHER

Nature is now enjoying a great boom, Reger said, that is one reason why Stifter

is now enjoying a great boom. Anything that has to do with nature is now in

vogue, thus Stifter is now the greatest, the highest literary vogue.

31

IRRSIGLER

The forest is now greatly in vogue, mountain streams are greatly in vogue,

ATZBACHER

which means Stifter is greatly in vogue. Stifter bores his readers to death yet

sadly he is now greatly in vogue. Worst of all, sentimentalism in general is

greatly in vogue now, just as everything that is kitsch is now greatly in vogue.

As well as that dreadful pre-Nazi and proto-Nazi Dürer, who lifted nature onto

the canvas and killed it, that Nuremberg engraver is now greatly in vogue.

REGER

It is not surprising at all that just now as the word


forest

REGER

and the term


forest felling

32

REGER

have come so much into vogue and altogether the


notion of forest

REGER

is used and misused ruthlessly, Stifter’s novel Tall Forest is more of a best-seller

than ever. People today yearn for nature, more than ever, and because they

believe Stifter describes nature they all run to Stifter. But Stifter did not describe

nature at all, he only kitschified it. Humanity’s great stupidity is revealed as it

now kneels before every single one of his novels as before an altar. It is

precisely this pseudo-enthusiasm that reveals humanity’s most repugnant side.

ATZBACHER

Ergo if there existed such a concept as tasteless, stale, sentimental and frivolous

(literature), then Stifter’s works would be the model example of it.

REGER

Austrian writers altogether have nothing to say,

ATZBACHER

he said,

33

REGER

not one Austrian contemporary writer can actually write, they all draw mock

literature out of their sleeves and shamelessly shovel that dirt, longing for fame,

between the covers of their books. They write plagiarising, completely soulless

and imitative, mock-philosophic and mock-arcadian sanctimonious dirt. All of

their books are copied, every single sentence is stolen, every single word is

robbed. It is literature only created out of the desire to please and only published

out of the desire to please. And for this shabby idiocy they win all kinds of

awards. In their company even Stifter seems like a great figure,

ATZBACHER

Reger said, Atzbacher writes.

(Pause.)

REGER

Stifter brings Heidegger to mind, that ridiculous Nazi philistine burgher in

knickerbockers.

ATZBACHER

If Stifter kitschified high literature in the most shameless way, then Heidegger,

the philosopher of the Black Forest, kitschified philosophy, Heidegger was

34


simply comical.

REGER

I always visualize Heidegger sitting in front of his Back Forest cottage, his wife

beside him, driven by her perverse knitting-mania, ceaselessly knitting him

winter socks in her self-sheared own Heidegger-sheep wool. I cannot see him

otherwise than sitting on his bench at the Black Forest cottage, his wife beside

him, who dominated him until his death and knitted his socks and crocheted his

caps and baked him bread and wove his bed linen and may even have cobbled

his sandals. By the time you grow old, you’ve made it through many a

murderous trend, all of those murderous trends in art and philosophy and

consumer goods.

ATZBACHER

Heidegger is a good example of this, Heidegger was a philosophical market

crier, who only brought stolen goods to market, all of Heidegger is second-hand,

he was and is the epitome of the post-thinker, who lacked everything, really

everything required for independent thought.

REGER

I don’t know,

ATZBACHER

said Reger,

35

REGER

whenever I think of Stifter, I also think of Heidegger and the other way around.

IRRSIGLER

Heidegger had a mundane, not a humanist face,

ATZBACHER

he was everything else but a humanist, not one drop of imagination, not one

drop of refinement,

IRRSIGLER

he was your basic German ruminating philosopher, as Herr Reger says, a cow

continuously in labour, grazing on the pasture of German philosophy for

decades, dropping mounds of snobbish Black Forest dung.

REGER

I once saw an extremely talented photographer’s portraits of Heidegger, in

which he always looked like a retired, bloated staff officer, I’ll show you the

pictures some day; in these pictures Heidegger climbs out of bed, Heidegger

climbs back into bed, Heidegger sleeps, Heidegger wakes up, Heidegger puts on

his pants, pulls on his sock, drinks a sip of apple juice, steps out of his log cabin

and looks at the horizon, carves a stick, puts on his bedcap, takes off his cap,

holds the cap in his hands, stretches his legs, raises his head, lowers his head,

puts his right hand into his wife’s left hand, his wife puts her left hand into his

36

right hand, he saunters in front of the house, he saunters behind the house, he

comes up to the house, he reads, he eats, he spoons his soup, he cuts a piece of


self-baked

REGER

bread, opens


his self-written

REGER

book, closes


his self-written

REGER

book, bows, stretches and so on.

37

ATZBACHER

Nauseating.

REGER

But the most terrible thing is that I am related to both of them, to Stifter

maternally, to Heidegger paternally, it is positively grotesque. Even to Bruckner

I am related, although many times removed, as the saying goes, but related

nonetheless. Amongst my ancestors there were even an archbishop and a double

murderer. Amongst my relations there may even be a modern author. No, I have

always said to myself, I will not investigate my roots in more detail, since with

time I might uncover even more terrifying horrors, of which, I must admit, I am

afraid.

(Pause.)

38

GIVE ME TIME

ATZBACHER

He sat on the settee, in his black hat, without moving, and it was clear that

before my entrance he had not been looking at the White bearded man for some

time, but instead at something far beyond the White bearded man, not

Tintoretto, but something that was far outside the museum, whereas I was

looking at Reger and the White bearded man, but saw beyond them the Reger,

that had only yesterday, with great passion explained to me the Art of Fugue.

REGER

You must be wondering why I told you to come here again today, why I asked

you to return today. There is a reason for it. Irrsigler is my witness, I have sat

here for hours contemplating how to explain to you the reason for asking you to

return Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum again today.

(Atzbacher awaits and looks at Reger.)

Later, later, I will tell you the reason later, give me time.

(Silence.)

39

VIENNA’S LAVATORIES

(Irrsigler breaks the long silence.)

IRRSIGLER

Here in Vienna the lavatories are probably more neglected than in any other

major city in Europe, it is exceedingly rare to find a lavatory that does not turn

your stomach and where you don’t have to hold your nose and close your eyes.

ATZBACHER

Vienna’s lavatories are altogether a scandal, not even in the lower Balkans can

you find a lavatory as unclean.

REGER

Vienna has no lavatory culture, Vienna is a proper lavatory-scandal, even in the

most famous hotels in town the lavatories are scandalous, in Vienna you find the

filthiest WCs, they are more ghastly than in any other city, when you feel the

need to pass water you are met with quite a shock.

ATZBACHER

Superficially Vienna is known for its opera, as we know, but in reality Vienna is

feared and dreaded for its lavatories.

40

REGER

The Viennese and Austrians generally have no such thing as a lavatory culture,

nowhere in the whole world will you find filthier and smellier lavatories than in

Vienna.

IRRSIGLER

When you feel the need to use the toilet in Vienna the result is usually a

catastrophe, you get yourself filthy unless you happen to be an acrobat, and the

stench may cling to your clothes for weeks. I always wonder about what

foreigners think when they have to go to a lavatory in Vienna, what do those

people used to clean lavatories think when they have to use the foulest lavatories

in Europe.

ATZBACHER

Especially in Vienna’s cafés the bathrooms are so dirty you are disgusted.

IRRSIGLER

On the one hand we have this excessive cult of pastries and on the other these

outrageously filthy lavatories. Most of them give the impression they have not

been cleaned for many decades.

ATZBACHER

On the one hand café proprietors protect their pastries from the slightest draught,

which is of course good for the pastries, but on the other hand they fully neglect

the cleanliness of their lavatories.

41

IRRSIGLER

God help you, if you feel the need to visit the bathroom before eating a pastry in

one of those rather famous cafés, you will, after visiting the lavatories, have lost

all appetite for tasting even one crumb of the recommended or possibly already

served pastry.

REGER

Indeed, my dear Irrsigler, Vienna’s lavatories are more disgusting then

anywhere in Europe, but also anywhere in the world. As famous as Vienna is for

its cuisine, which is mostly rather superb, at least judging by the pastries, as

shameful it is for its lavatories.

ATZBACHER

The Viennese are altogether Europe’s dirtiest folk, that is a scientifically proven

fact, dirtier than any inhabitants of any other European city. Thus it is only

logical that their outer filthiness leads us to conclusions about their inner filth,

and indeed the Viennese are just as filthy inside as outside, and possibly, I say

possibly, since I am not fully sure, they are even fithier inside than outside.

IRRSIGLER

Everything points to them being much filthier inside than outside.

ATZBACHER

But I do not wish to think about that, it would of course be the duty of so-called

sociologists to write a study on the subject.

42

REGER

Once I even ventured to mention briefly in a review for The Times, that the

lavatories at the Musikverein, in other words the lavatories of the highest of high

cultural sanctums in Vienna, are in such an unspeakable condition that I for this

reason, for this scandalous WC-reason, always have to combat an inner rebellion

in order to go the Musikverein, and often I think to myself at home, should I go

to the Musikverein at all or just leave it, since at this age and with these kidneys

I have to make at least two trips to the lavatories during one production at the

Musikverein. Yet I have always gone to the Musikverein, for Mozart and

Beethoven, Berg and Schönberg, for Bartók and Weber, overcoming my

lavatory-phobia. What one would not do for art, I say to myself every time I go

to set foot in the lavatories at the Musikverein. Eyes closed and holding my

nose,


it is quite an art form all of its own,

REGER

one I have however mastered with virtuosity. Vienna is the hometown of music,

I once wrote in The Times, but also of the most nauseating lavatories and

sanitation rooms. In London this is known by now, in Vienna naturally not,

because the Viennese do not read The Times, they content themselves with the

most rudimentary and dreadful newspapers to be printed in the world, which

have no other purpose than mental enfeeblement.

(Pause.)

43

HOPE FOR A SWIFT DEATH

REGER

Wherever you look in this country nowadays, you look into a cesspit of

ludicrousness,

ATZBACHER

he said yesterday.

REGER

Did you know that we share with Hungary the highest suicide rate in the whole

of Europe? Sudden heart failure is an enviable death. To suffer sudden heart

failure would be my greatest happiness,

ATZBACHER

said Reger, as he had said already


many times before.

44

REGER

Feeling continuously, pathologically sorry for myself is unbearable, but I cannot

help it. If only there were one reasonable concert at the Musikverein, but the

winter program is dreadful.

(Pause.)

45

HELL

REGER

Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is the only refuge left to me, I have to sit

with the old masters in order to carry on living, precisely with these so-called

old masters, whom I have despised for so long, despised for decades, because

deep down there is nothing I find more abhorrent than the so-called old masters

in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, and old masters in general, all old

masters, no matter their name, no matter what they painted, and yet it is they

who keep me alive. So I walk through this city and think I cannot bear this city

any longer, and on top of not being able to bear this city any longer, I cannot

bear this whole world any longer and therefore cannot bear mankind any longer,

since our whole world and mankind have over time become so horrific, that no

one can bear them any longer, at least not a person like me. I tell you,

Atzbacher, for men of reason as well as men of sensibility like myself the world

and humanity will soon become unbearable. In this world and amongst these

people I cannot find anything of value, everything about this world is dull and

everything in this humanity is just as dull. This world and this humanity have

reached such a degree of dullness that a person like me can no longer cope with

it, in such a world a person like me has no place, amongst such humanity a

person like me has no place. Everything in this world and in this humanity has

been dulled down to the lowest level possible, this world and this humanity have

altogether stooped to such a level of universal harm and brutality that I am

finding it almost impossible to carry on day after day. Dostoyevsky himself, one

of the greatest clairvoyants, described the future as a ludicrous idyll,

Dostoyevsky’s horrific hell is extraordinarily tame compared to the hell that we

find ourselves in today, which sends cold shivers down your spine. Even though

he felt he was describing hell, he was only describing an idyll, a positively

46

idyllic idyll compared to the hell we now live in. The present is full of baseness

and malice, lies and betrayal, humanity has never been as shameless and

perfidious as today. Wherever you look, wherever you go, you only see malice

and infamy and betrayal and lies and hypocrisy, nothing but the most absolute

depravity, no matter where you look, no matter where you go, you are only

confronted with malice and lies and hypocrisy. What else do you see out in the

streets but lies and malice, but hypocrisy and betrayal, but the most corrupt

baseness, that is if you even dare to go out into the street. When you go out into

the street you have constantly to shut your eyes and ears and even hold your

nose pinched in order to survive. Every day you can scarcely believe your eyes

and scarcely believe your ears, and every day you witness this dullard nation’s

decline with increasing horror. This is what torments people like me every day.

(Pause.)

We have the most odious government you can imagine, the most hypocritical,

malicious, cunning and at the same time thick, so we say, but when we look

outside this corrupt, hypocritical and malicious and false and thick country, we

see, that the other countries are equally false and hypocritical and corrupt.

(Pause.)

Even if for my whole life I have been a passionate newspaper reader, the

opening of the daily paper has become almost unbearable for me, because

anyway it is only full of scandal. Even if you search for an entire year, you will

not find one insightful sentence in those crap papers. Today I woke up and

thought of the ministerial scandal and I cannot get that ministerial scandal out of

my mind, that is the tragedy of my mind, I cannot get these scandals and above

all these political scandals out of my head, these scandals are boring deeper into

my brain, that is my tragedy. I tell myself I have to get all these scandals and

atrocities out of my mind but they simply bore ever deeper.

47

A person today is a helpless human being, an vulnerable human being, the

current era has created a completely helpless and vulnerable human being,

merely a decade ago people still felt protected in some way, but now they are

completely exposed. They cannot hide any longer, there are no hiding places

that is what is so terrible, everything has become thoroughly transparent and

thereby exposed; this means there is no longer any chance of escape, except

death of course, that is how it is. This is the sinister world we have to come to

terms with, Atzbacher, whether you like it or not, you are laid bare at the mercy

of this sinister world and whoever tries to persuade you otherwise is feeding you

lies, lies dripping into your ears ceaselessly these days, lies in which politicians

and political spin-doctors are specialised. The world is no longer a den of rest.

The world is one big den of unrest, in which not one single human being can

find shelter, not a single one.

(Pause.)


There I stood and I saw Reger sitting on the settee and behind him the White

bearded man. It was clear that for some time now, he had not been observing the

White bearded man but something completely different beyond the White

bearded man, not Tintoretto, but something that was far outside the museum,

whereas I myself now saw the Reger, who once again yesterday tried, with more

passion than ever, to explain me the Art of Fugue.

REGER

There is music of course. As long as I still have the urge to talk about the

Tempest Sonata or the Art of Fugue, I won’t give up. Music is my saviour time

48

and again, the fact that music still lives within me as on the day I was born. To

be saved by music each and every day over again from all the atrocities and

hideousness, that is what it is all about, each morning to become against the

odds with the help of music a thinking and feeling individual, do you

understand!

49

STRENGH OF SURVIVAL

REGER

Another method is of course,

ATZBACHER

he said then,

REGER

another method is of course to see everything as a caricature,

ATZBACHER

he said,

REGER

as ridicule. For example a great person, a so-called VIP, or parents, superiors, if

you have them, can be turned into caricatures, if necessary the whole world can

be turned into a caricature,

ATZBACHER

he said,

50

REGER

you follow my meaning. Of course in the world, or in nature, if you will, there

are phenomena that we cannot ridicule, but in art you can make anything look

ridiculous, any person can be made ridiculous and turned into a caricature

whenever you like, whenever you need to, whenever you have to. But then most

people are already ridiculous and most art works are ridiculous and in such cases

you save yourself the bother of ridiculing and caricaturing.

IRRSIGLER (to Reger.)

Just like you, Herr Reger, you knew a good man whom you called your friend

and then he suddenly allowed himself to be granted an honorary professorship

and from then on he called himself professor and had professor printed into the

corner of his letters and now his wife suddenly presents herself as Frau

Professor at the butcher’s, in order not to have to queue like those whose

spouses are not professors.

ATZBACHER

How ridiculous.

REGER

Dear Atzbacher, you have the strength to caricature the whole world, that

supreme strength of spirit which is necessary for it, that one and only strength to

survive. We only have power over what we consider ridiculous, we can only go

on when we find the world and life in it ridiculous, laughable, there is no other,

better method.

51

IRRSIGLER

If by contrast we remain in awe of something, we are soon lost.

REGER

I myself have never succumbed to wonderment, because wonders do not exist.

IRRSIGLER

In Herr Reger’s opinion there is nothing more repulsive than observing such

people who wonder and admire, who are infected with some awe-infliction. You

enter a church and the people there are in awe, you go to a museum and people

are in awe. You go to a concert and people are in a state of awe and wonder, it is

distasteful, he says. A real intellect does not wonder and does not admire, it

acknowledges, it respects, it esteems, that’s all. People enter churches and

museums with a backpack filled with awe and that is why they always have that

stoop that is typical of church and museum visitors.

REGER

Never yet have I seen a person walking into a church or museum normally, and

the most distasteful thing is watching people on Knossos or in Agrigento, at the

destination of their awe-inspiring trip, because people cannot go on anything

other than awe-inspiring trips.

IRRSIGLER

Herr Reger says that awe makes people blind, the awe-inspired are dull-witted.

Because respect and esteem are too hard, they wonder and admire, it’s cheaper.

52

Admiration is easier than respect, than esteem, admiration is dim-witted. Only a

dim-wit admires, an intelligent person does not admire, but respects, esteems,

understands, that is how it is. People drag their awe around like heavy burden,

they do not have the courage to deposit the awe in the cloakroom along with

their coat. So they drag themselves through all the rooms of a museum in

complete awe, it’s very off-putting to watch.

(Pause.)

53

ART DEMOLISHERS

REGER

But beware too, of penetrating too deeply into works of art, because then you

will ruin them, even those dearest to you. That has been my misfortune, dear

Atzbacher, do you understand?

(Pause.)

My God, I often think to myself on this settee, as art historians herd the helpless

flocks past me, how I pity all those people now estranged from art for good,

after the art historians estrange them from art once and for all. When you listen

to art historians, you see how the art in question is destroyed, the art historian’s

drivel shrinks the art and destroys is. And when we listen to art historians we

take part in this destruction of art, wherever the art historian appears the true

destruction of art begins, that is the truth.

Listening to Irrsigler by contrast, when he explains some painting to an ignorant

visitor, is pure joy, because he never drivels when explaining the work, he is no

driveller, but a humble enlightener and presenter, who leaves the painting open

to the observer, and does not shut it up with drivel. This I have taught Irrsigler

over the last decades.

My dear Atzbacher, I have sat here for hours now, pondering how to tell you

why I asked you to come to Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum again today.

(Atzbacher prepares to hear what he says.)

54

But later, later, give me time. A person who finds himself guilty of a crime is

not able to talk about it freely, without rigmarole. Give me time to calm down, I

already told Irrsigler, but I cannot tell you yet, it is too shameful.

55

THE FORGERY

REGER

By the way I failed to tell you yesterday, that when I entered the Bordone Room

of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum this settee was occupied. For the first

time in thirty-six years this settee was occupied when I came here. An

Englishman had sat down here and no power in the world could make him get

up, not even Irrsigler’s insistent requests.

IRRSIGLER

He had come especially, all the way from Great Britain, to be precise from

Wales, to Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum to see Tintoretto’s White bearded

man,

ATZBACHER

said the man from Wales, Reger told me, and this Welshman could not

comprehend,

IRRSIGLER

why he should rise from this settee whose sole purpose is that museum visitors,

who are particularly interested in Tintoretto’s White bearded man, should sit on

it?

56

REGER

I thought that rather than engaging on my feet in this already senseless and

fruitless argument about the settee of the Bordone Room, the significance it held

for me I could never explain to him, I would just sit down next to him on the

settee, simply sit down, very politely of course, next to the man from Wales on

the settee, I thought, so I did simply sit down next to him on the settee and asked

him: Are you really interested in the White bearded man?

ATZBACHER

In a so-called delayed answer to the absurd question the Welshman acquiesced

with a short nod.

REGER

I decided to say no more. I have never in my life seen such a thorough Brit

where art was concerned, I thought. Without doubt next to me sat a so-called art

connoisseur, I thought, the Welshman read his leather bound book for at least

half an hour or more and observed Tintoretto’s White bearded man for at least

the same amount of time, thus he sat next to me on the Bordone Room’s settee

for a whole hour.

IRRSIGLER

What are you doing here in the Bordone Room? It is rather unusual for someone

to stay in a room like the Bordone Room, sat on this exceedingly uncomfortable

settee and stare at the White bearded man for a whole hour.

57

ATZBACHER

I was completely taken aback and did not know in that instant what to answer

the Welsh man. So I said, said Reger to me Atzbacher, I do not know myself

what I’m doing here, I said to the man from Wales, Reger said to me,

REGER

I could not think of anything else.

ATZBACHER

The Welshman took a handkerchief from his left trouser pocket and put it in the

right one. A typical sign of awkwardness.

REGER

I was immensely interested if the Welshman had really come to Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum only for the sake of the White bearded man.

IRSIGLER

Yes, I have indeed come to Austria and Vienna solely for the White bearded

man, not for Tintoretto’s sake, but for the White bearded man. I have come to

Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum to study the White bearded man, because at

home in Wales I have just such a White bearded man on my bedroom wall

above the fire place, truly just such a White bearded man. I heard, that in

Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum hung a similar White bearded man as in

my bedroom in Wales, the matter gave me no peace and I travelled to Vienna.

For two years I had no peace in my bedroom in Wales, as I kept thinking that

58

possibly in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum there really is just such a White

bearded man as in my bedroom and that is why I travelled to Vienna yesterday.

Believe it or not, the same White bearded man by Tintoretto that hangs in my

bedroom in Wales also hangs here. I could not believe my eyes, when it was

confirmed that this White bearded man is the same as the one hanging in my

bedroom, I was of course profoundly shocked.

REGER

You concealed your shock very well,

IRRSIGLER

Dear Sir, I am no art connoisseur, I know nothing about art, but I am able to

appreciate this kind of a masterpiece. Good God, you cannot imagine how

valuable this Tintoretto is, it is an heirloom, my maternal great aunt, my so-

called Glasgow aunt left it to me. The painting is in my bedroom, because I

believe it to be most secure there, it hangs above my bed, in the worst lightning

imaginable. I am not only in the possession of Tintoretto’s White bearded man, I

have many dozens of Italians, one Lotto, Crespi, Strozzi, Giordano, one

Bassano, as you know, all of them great masters. I would never have come to

Vienna, if the suspicion that my White bearded man by Tintoretto was hanging

on a wall in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum had not tormented me, I have

never been interested in Vienna, since I am also no music expert, not even a

music lover, nothing could have made me come to Austria but this suspicion.

And here I now sit and see that my Tintoretto does in fact hang here on the wall

of Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum. And it seems it is not merely similar,

but actually identical.

59

ATZBACHER

Reger said he observed the Welshman as he stepped up very close to the White

bearded man and stared at it, naturally I, said Reger, who was watching him

from behind, could not see his face, and when he turned, his face was white as a

sheet, Reger said to me, Atzbacher.

REGER

I have rarely in my life seen a face quite as white as a sheet.

IRRSIGLER

One of them is a forgery, and I of course ask myself if my Tintoretto is a forgery

or if this Tintoretto in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is the forgery. It is of

course possible that Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is in possession of a

forgery and that my Tintoretto is genuine, as far as I am familiar with the

circumstances of my Glasgow-aunt, it is in fact even probable. Very soon after

Tintoretto had completed the White bearded man, the White bearded man was

sold to Great Britain, first to the family of the Duke of Kent, then to my

Glasgow-aunt. The current Duke of Kent is incidentally married to an Austrian,

as you probably know,

ATZBACHER

the Welshman permitted himself this little digression, only to add immediately

after that

60

IRRSIGLER

certainly this White bearded man is the forgery. And an absolutely perfect

forgery, I shall soon find out which White bearded man by Tintoretto is genuine

and which one is a forgery.

REGER

It is also entirely possible that both White bearded men are genuine, I mean both

genuine Tintorettos.

IRRSIGLER

True, only a great artist like Tintoretto could succeed in painting another picture

that is not absolutely similar but absolutely the same. That would indeed be a

sensation.

REGER

Then he took his leave with only a short good bye,

ATZBACHER

with the same good bye he also took leave of Irrsigler, who had witnessed the

incident from the beginning.

(All three turn to the Tintoretto’s White Bearded Man. Pause.)

61

REGER

I do not know how the matter ended, I didn’t care to find out. I do not know and

also do not care to know, whether I have for the last thirty-six years, every

second day except Mondays, observed, here in the Bordone Room, a genuine or

a forged Tintoretto’s White bearded man.

(Pause.)

REGER

So then, I thought earlier this morning, today you will meet Atzbacher in

Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum to make a proposal, and you know very

well that you are making a completely ludicrous proposal and yet you will be

making that proposal all the same. It’s absurd, and yet terrifying.

62

THE GRAVEYARD

REGER

Did you know that my wife’s grave, which has space for me too, is right next to

Mahler’s grave? Mahler, Mahler, Mahler, how irritating. But luckily Mahler

will soon be out of fashion. Well, in a graveyard it doesn’t matter beside whom

one lies, I don’t even mind lying next to Mahler.

You walk behind a coffin and it’s all so depressing. Everything happens so

quickly, it hardly takes three quarters of an hour and it feels like an eternity.

Every second day, so on those days that I don’t come to Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum, I visit my wife’s grave, I stand at her grave for half

an hour and feel nothing. It is strange. I go to my wife’s grave and feel nothing.

Believe it or not, at home I still feel like howling at least once a day, but at my

wife’s grave I don’t feel anything. I stand there and pull at the weeds, I make

those nervous, ridiculous weeding movements, knowing they are only a

pathological attempt to calm the nerves, and I look at the tasteless graves all

around me, each grave more tasteless than the next. In cemeteries humanity’s

tastelessness is most crudely manifested. Our grave is covered only with grass

and there is no headstone, which is what we agreed with my wife. No memorial

phrase, nothing. Stonemasons disfigure graveyards and so-called sculptors carry

kitsch to its highest level. But of course from my wife’s grave there is a

magnificent view of Grinzing and the Kahlenberg lying beyond it. And down to

the Danube. The grave is situated so high up that you can look down over

Vienna from it. It is surely irrelevant where a person is buried, but if one

happens to have bought oneself a grave, as me and my wife did, one should also

submit to being buried in it.

63

OLD MASTERS

(The words in cursive are recited as a chorus…)

ATZBACHER

I have always thought, said Reger, writes Atzbacher, that it is music that means

everything to me, or at times, that it is philosophy, that great, greatest even of all

literary endeavour, or also, he said, that it is simply art, but all that, all art,

whatever art whenever, is nothing compared to the one person you love. What

suffering do we not impose on that one beloved person , said Reger, how many

thousands and hundreds of thousands of wounds have we inflicted on the one

person we love more than anyone else, how much have we tormented them and

yet loved them more than anyone else, Reger said, writes Atzbacher. When the

person we have loved more than anyone else in the world has died, they leave us

with the most terribly guilty conscience, he said, a horrifically guilty conscience,

which in their wake we have to endure, and which one day will choke us, said

Reger. You imagine that you can cling to Shakespeare or Kant, but it is a

fallacy, Shakespeare and Kant and all the others that have we have lifted to the

level of so-called greatness all our lives, let us down at the precise moment

when we would so desperately have needed them, he said, they offer no solution

and no consolation to us, suddenly they seem repulsive and alien, everything

these so-called greats and luminaries have thought and moreover written

suddenly leaves us cold, Reger said. We always believe we will be able to rely

as before on those so-called luminaries and greats at the crucial moment, i.e. the

moment most crucial to our existence, but we are wrong, for precisely at that

most crucial moment of our life, we find that all those luminaries and greats,

those as the saying goes immortal ones, leave people like us alone, at that most

crucial moment of our life, they provide us with nothing more than the fact that

even in their midst we are alone.

64

We gather spiritual giants and old masters and believe that we can, in that

crucial moment of survival, use them for our own purposes, Atzbacher writes,

which proves to be a fatal mistake. We fill our spiritual strong-room with these

spiritual giants and old masters and resort to them at the most crucial moment of

our life; but when we unlock our spritual strong-room, it is empty, that is the

truth, we stand in front of that empty spiritual strong-room and see that we are

alone and in fact totally destitute, Reger said, Atzbacher writes. We despise

people and yet want to be among them, because only with and among people do

we stand any chance of carrying on without going insane. We cannot bear

solitude for too long, said Reger, we believe we can be on our own, we believe

we can cope once abandoned, we persuade ourselves that we can still manage on

our own, said Reger to me Atzbacher, but it is an epic delusion. We believe we

can cope without people, indeed we even believe we can cope without our one

and only, and we even imagine we only stand a chance on our own but it is a

delusion. Without people we don’t have the slightest chance of survival,

Atzbacher writes, no matter how many spiritual giants and how many old

masters we have as companions, they do not replace the human being, said

Reger, and in the end all those so-called spiritual giants and so-called old

masters leave us alone and we realize that on top of it these spiritual giants and

old masters only mock us cruelly, and we find that our relationship with these

spiritual giants and old masters has always been one of derision.

(Pause.)

I no longer await death, said Reger, it will come by itself without me thinking of

it, it does not matter to me when,

Atzbacher writes.

(Pause.)

65

THE BROKEN PITCHER

REGER

By now, my dear Atzbacher, you must surely be wondering, why I still have not

told you the real reason why I wanted to meet you again so soon at Vienna’s

Kunsthistorisches Museum. I have purchased two tickets to the Burgtheater

production of The Broken Pitcher, excellent seats in the stalls. And the real

reason I asked you back to Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum today is that I

want to propose to you that you join me for The Broken Pitcher at the

Burgtheater. You know that it’s been decades since I was last at the Burgtheater

and that I despise nothing more than the Burgtheater, surely nothing more than

dramatic art in general, but yesterday I thought tomorrow I will go to the

Burgtheater and watch The Broken Pitcher. My dear Atzbacher, I have no idea

why I got the notion of going to the Burgtheater today, and in particular with

you, nobody else, to watch The Broken Pitcher. Feel free to think me mad, my

days are numbered anyway, I really thought you and I should to the Burgtheater

today, after all The Broken Pitcher is the best German comedy and the

Burgtheater is a major world stage. The thought of telling you to come to The

Broken Pitcher with me has tormented me for three hours, because I will not go

alone to watch The Broken Pitcher, three agonising hours I’ve been wondering

how I was to tell you that I had bought two tickets to The Broken Pitcher

precisely with you and myself in mind, because for decades you have heard

nothing else from my lips but that the Burgtheater is the world’s most

horrendous stage and now suddenly you are to go with me to see The Broken

Pitcher in the Burgtheater, this is something not even Irrsigler understands. Take

this ticket and come to the Burgtheater with me tonight, my dear Atzbacher.

66

(Reger hands the ticket to Atzbacher. Atzbacher looks at the ticket in Reger’s

hand and doesn’t know how to answer. Reger waits. Then he continues.)

Art, oh dear Lord, even though we curse it and even though it often seems trivial

to us and even though we must conclude it is of no value, as we watch these

works of the so-called old masters that very often and naturally over the years

seem increasingly useless and meaningless, only helpless attempts to gain an

adroit foothold in the world, yet nothing can save people like us apart from this

damned and devilish and often utterly disgusting, doomed art. My dear friend,

share with me the enjoyment of this perverse folly.

ATZBACHER

Gladly. If that is your express wish.

REGER

Yes, it is my express wish.

(Atzbacher receives the ticket Reger has handed over.)

ATZBACHER + REGER (to the audience, rather excited than annoyed.)

The performance was dreadful!

thomas bernhard o l d m a s t e r s · thomas bernhard o l d m a s t e r s finnish translation by...

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