Letter No. 263

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 19, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I thank you for your letter of September 13, which arrived here somewhat belatedly.

In the meantime I have spoken with Kaut by telephone, at great length.  I shall skip the details, which of course we keep having to come back to, and brief you on the main point: I succeeded in getting Peymann decisively into Kaut’s frame of consideration.  At first Kaut seemed appalled; he regarded the solution as unacceptable on account of “loftier” sentiments about the festival, on account of the local press, above all on account of the employees of the regional theater, who would refuse to work with Peymann.1  But after a lengthy exchange of arguments he was prepared to make it a priority to look into these questions.  But he simply needs time to do this because he must round up reinforcements.  We have reached a stage where he is giving top priority to deciding these questions and is going to give me his decision.  But this cannot happen in the next fortnight, because I shall be out of town from 9.27 through 10.4; a follow-up telephone conversation has been scheduled for Friday, 10.5.

I was also able to get Kaut to warm to our ideas about the tour.  Admittedly twofold difficulties present themselves here.  The first: he can definitively engage an actor only once the actor has read the text, or at least a portion of the text.  And then we will have to confine our search to actors who are able to perform both in Salzburg and on the tour.  As we can’t get a text from you right now, these questions obviously cannot be cleared up any earlier than the second half of October, or can they?  The answer to this question depends upon you, upon when you can give us the whole thing or an excerpt for the sake of answering it.

Regarding the tour itself, we are positively euphoric about it.  This may end up being  a very interesting event, with respect to your play, with respect to revenues from honoraria, with respect to Salzburg, and with respect to Suhrkamp Publications.

So the most important thing, my dear Thomas Bernhard, is and will remain your being left in peace so that you can work on this play.  For a start you should just let all telegrams and queries slide off your back.  If I were you I would not bother replying to anything else, not bother reacting to anything else, and from now on think of nothing but that play and getting it finished.

Right now Peymann is here in Frankfurt, where he is rehearsing Edward Bond’s The Sea.  I have been in touch with him; he is inordinately delighted about the prospect of being able to direct The Hunting Party.  And naturally he now also has high hopes for Salzburg.  As do I.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]       

    See n. 1 to Letter No. 200.

Letter No. 264

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 26, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I would have preferred to share this news with you viva voce rather than in a letter, but my Salzburg trip won’t be able to take place any earlier than circa mid-October.  But for the sake of keeping you informed, I think it would be better to go ahead and write to you today and not save the news for my visit.

Rudolf Rach will not be going to Düsseldorf!  He realized that this step would perhaps not be the most fitting one for him to take, and I am glad that I managed to persuade him to stay here and to take on a new job here.  Within the confines of Suhrkamp Publications, we intend to establish a new sub-firm, to be called SUHRKAMP MEDIA PUBLICATIONS, which will comprise three divisions: the theatrical publications division--under the leadership of Jürgen Becker--a theatrical productions organization and also a film division (the last of these will at first merely consolidate the firm’s film adaptation rights, so that we will be better able to exercise them and monitor them).

The decisive point is that Rudolf Rach is prepared to set up and assume the leadership of Suhrkamp Theater Tours.  And a decisive element in the establishment of this division was the practicability of taking your new play The Force of Habit on tour.  In the course of our deliberations on how to effectuate such a tour Rach and I came up with the idea of establishing such an organization, in which Suhrkamp Publications and Dr. Rach will each have a share.  There is no question but that in order to effectuate a tour we need a very precise organizational structure that we lack here but that Rach will set up for us.

In spite of these deliberations, on November 1 Jürgen Becker will begin working for the firm as the head of the theatrical publications division.  I sincerely hope that you will be willing to resume your work with Rudolf Rach in this domain.  You must not forget that when he arrived here Dr. Rach did not have a great deal of practical experience.  I am certain that he has undergone a learning process here and that thanks to the experiences he has had here he has become a different person and that he has gathered an especially high proportion of these new experiences from dealing with your plays and working with you.  Accordingly, I very seriously believe that you would do well to place your trust in him.1      

In spite of this question, I shall carry forward the negotiations with Rach personally and keep you up to date about everything.

I am about to disappear for eight days in order to see the surf at Setubal and maybe even swim in it.  I shall be coming back on Thursday, October 4.  In the meantime we shall get a clearer view of how things stand in relation to the board of directors in Salzburg.

Yours

sincerely,

Siegfried Unseld 

  

    In a September 27, 1973 letter to Bernhard, Rudolf Rach wrote, “Circumstances are now conspiring to bring Suhrkamp Theatrical Productions fully to life via one of your plays.  This means that we ought to speak in coordination with the steps that Mr. Unseld has already taken and plans to take regarding the entire project.  I don’t wish to pressure you, but it would be nice if you could propose a date for a conversation.” 

Letter No. 265

Ohlsdorf

10.8.73

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I presume you have spoken by telephone with Kaut, who has written to me that Dorn will be directing the play in Salzburg.1  This decision is actually fine by me, because I can no longer exist in a state of speculation and need my strength for my work.  This means that now everything now has to be concentrated on Dorn and his people.  Dorn will probably be coming to Ohlsdorf on All Saints’ Day; Rach ought to be here then; I wrote to him today.2

Dorn is in any case a good solution, as long as I keep the reins out of his hands from now on and familiarize him with my brain, because as of now he is not familiar with it--as the performance at the Schlossparktheater has proved.3  But he is a young, intelligent human being.

For the launch of the tour in Berlin the fact that Dorn is directing is an enormous advantage.

Unfortunately the two geniuses, by which I mean Peymann and Ganz, are all too little to be relied on.  They really are my favorites, but in this case they quite simply aren’t.

They really must put on an ingenious Hunting Party in Hamburg; then I shall actually be able to be happy.  And so will they.4

It would be a great advantage if Rach was also here, between the beginning and middle of November, if you were to pay a visit.  We must have twofold sagacity if we want to win the battle.

The day before yesterday I received a letter from Mr. Schaffler that contains a remark that will undoubtedly give you, like me, much joy and also prove useful to you; Mr. Schafller writes inter alia (and I quote): “incidentally, I just received a letter from Carl Zuckmayer, in which he writes, ‘Incidentally, Marianne Hoppe, who was visiting us here, gave me a new play by Thomas Bernhard that is going to be performed in Hamburg.  It is a grandiose play.  Since Strindberg’s chamber dramas I have not read anything as concentrated and spellbinding.  And it is of unparalleled significance for the theater.  In this play even a man who stokes the fireplace becomes a role that actors should beat one another up to get.  The play is called The Hunting Party.’5 (End of quote.)  (The underlining is in the original.)  On Saturday, the day before yesterday, I was quite elated by this letter; I was happy for a couple of hours and thanks to this happiness I worked without interruption.  I should have kept this remark to myself, but this is beyond my power.  So weak a thing is the human mind.  I shall have the comedy ready for Salzburg in about two weeks and then the foundation for all further scheduling will be complete.  I very eagerly await some news from you.

Sincerely,

Thomas B.

P.S. (Importance dissembles)!  Is it possible to send twenty thousand marks to my Freilassing account?  I very keenly hope that it is possible. 

    Kaut’s letter to Bernhard dates from October 1: “The director Dieter Dorn has essentially agreed to direct the production of your work The Force of Habit at the Salzburg Festival” (Thomas Bernhard and Salzburg, p. 235).

    Bernhard wrote as follows to Rudolf Rach:

“Dear Rudolf Rach,

I have written to Dieter Dorn, who will probably be producing my play in Salzburg; on the first and second of November he is supposed to be in Ohlsdorf so that all the important issues can be discussed.  Please send me a telegram letting me know if you can perhaps be here as early as October 31, which will be of enormous advantage, for we have some quite important things to discuss and wish to leave as little as possible to the mercies of dimwitted contingency. [...] I am very busy with the Salzburg comedy and if you like I can give you the text (as I did that of The Ignoramus at the same time two years ago) at the inn on up on the mountainside where we performed a scene of true grotesquery and also persevered.”  On October 10 Rudolf Rach sent Bernhard a telegram notifying him of his agreement to be in Ohlsdorf on October 31.

    Dieter Dorn directed the first run of German performances of The Ignoramus and the Madman at the Schloßparktheater beginning on September 16, 1972.

    Bernhard appended a handwritten addition: “both of them.”

     The letter has not survived.

Letter No. 266

[Address: (Ohlsdorf)]

Frankfurt am Main

October 11, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

You shall have the DM 20,000.00.  For various reasons I would advise you to set up a new account for this sum; I shall then send you the money from Switzerland.  If that is too much trouble for you, I will also have the money from Switzerland sent to the Freilassing account.  But do mull the matter over.  You know what is behind it; we can talk about it later.

Yours

with warm regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]   

Letter No. 267

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

October 11, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Warm thanks for your letter of October 8.  I understand why you were slow to reply to my letter, namely, because you must devote all your time to the new play.  We are of one mind all around.  In the meantime Rach will already have written to you; he will be happy to come to see you on the date you requested; I am in contact with Kaut by telephone.  You said you wanted to see me at the beginning of November.  The date I am proposing first to you and then to Mr. Kaut is November 8.  On the 9th I must be back in Frankfurt.  Is that good for you?

Yours

with warm regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

P. S. In the meantime I have spoken with Mr. Kaut.  My travel plans look like this:

Thursday,  November 8, 11:55 a.m., arrival at Salzburg.  Could you pick me up at the airport?  I would then ride with you to Ohlsdorf.

Friday, November 9, 10:00 a.m., Salzburg Festival, Mr. Kaut.  In the afternoon I shall fly back to Frankfurt.

Letter No. 268

Ohlsdorf

10.23.73

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I shall pick you up at the Salzburg airport at 11:15 a.m. on November 8.  At midday you are supposed to meet Mr Schaffler and have lunch with him.  But this all remains to be seen.

In the afternoon we shall drive to Ohlsdorf and at nine a.m. back to Salzburg, where you have an appointment with Kaut at ten.

Or we can stay in Salzburg overnight.

I am expecting Rach here in Ohlsdorf on the 31st.

The play is finished.

Sincerely,

Thomas B.

Letter No. 269

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

October 29, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Warm thanks for your letter of 10.23.  The appointment times mentioned by you are fine.  I shall arrive at the Salzburg airport on November 8 at 11:50 a.m. (not 11:15), and I am very glad that you will be picking me up.  In the matter of appointments and meeting times I am entirely in your hands.

I am delighted that you managed to wrap up the play.

I am very anxiously looking forward to reading it.

Yours

sincerely,

Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 270 

[Telegram]

Gmunden

10.30.73

salzburg negotiations as agreed upon exclusively between you kaut and me and on no account with rach1

bernhard

    Possibly this telegram is a reaction to an October 26 letter to Bernhard from Rudolf Rach in which Rach writes, “Are you in touch with Kaut?  I would like to meet with him after our conversation in order to discuss the ensuing questions related to the touring guest productions.”

Letter No. 271

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

November 12, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

We will of course keep each other abreast of further developments in the Salzburg affair.  Here I would like for tidiness’s sake to register the more serious points of our conversation once again.1

You have decided that the novel Correction will be not be coming out this spring but in the middle of August at the earliest.  I bluntly told you that I thought this was a bad decision, and I am still of this opinion; but I couldn’t change your mind and so I must accept this August publication date.  I am requesting that you submit the manuscript no later than March 15, 1974; any postponement beyond this date will not be possible because it will throw our financial calculations into disorder; i.e., the large debt balance that we were planning to cover through 12.31.1974 will no longer be coverable.

We discussed the following publication schedule:

The Hunting Party, Bibliothek Suhrkamp, April 1974;

Force of Habit, Bibliothek Suhrkamp, July 1974;

Correction, clothbound edition, mid-August;

Remembering, Bibliothek Suhrkamp, April 1975;

Bernhard Reader, April 1975.

For 1975 or 1976 we are projecting a volume called Salzburg Plays to be included in the taschenbücher series; after that the individual titles in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp would be allowed to go out of print.

I would like to have some time to think over the idea of a new edition of Amras; it is also slightly connected to my conception of the Reader.

Regarding the book version of Kulterer, Mr. Schaffler from Residenz Publication lays claim to the rights; he explicitly told me you had promised him a “little booklet.”  This promise troubles me because you never told me anything about it, and on the other hand it has always been understood that our payments to you, and especially our continuation of the monthly remittances, is contingent on our exercising a general option on everything you write.  But I don’t mind your giving Mr. Schaffler permission to put out an edition of Kulterer; in some way that obviously would make sense as a companion piece to The Italian;2 you indicated that you were planning to write a ballet libretto; I think it might be a good idea to reserve this for the Reader; but I also wouldn’t mind your ceding it as a separate title to Mr. Schaffler by way of keeping your promise to him.

On the assumption that this publication schedule will hold and using the performance rights for your plays and for The Hunting Party as a foundation, we have agreed to the following material arrangement:

On 12.31.1973 our debt balance will amount to DM 94,500.00.  DM 20,000.00 will remain as continuous options payments, leaving a sum of DM 74,500.00.  This sum of DM 74,500.00 must be paid off by 12.31.1974; if honoraria payments from your works and the resulting royalties fall short of this sum, you will be in default effective 12.31.1974; if honoraria revenues exceeding this sum accrue, they will be credited to you.

We then agreed to an augmentation of the monthly remittance rate by DM 1,000.00 to DM 1,250.00 effective 1 January ’74.  Please bear in mind that these twelve payments for 1974 on their own will amount to a sum of DM 15,000.00.

I hope I have represented things as we discussed them.  Your wishes for the sentences and colors and dedications of both plays have been noted.

There is much else besides that is firmly enshrined in my mind.  My encounter with you was again unusual, memorable, with undertones of friendship, of trust and mistrust.  On the whole I think we understood each other.  If this letter has not been entirely in a major key, it is only because I can’t get over your bad decision regarding the publication date ofCorrection.

Yours

with warm regards,

Siegfried Unseld

  

P.S. Had a very good conversation with Schaffler; we shall get to know each other better at some point this winter during a ski trip.

    For his Chronicle Unseld wrote a Thomas Bernhard Travel Journal, November 8-9, 1974 [he misnumbered the year], Salzburg:

“Rudolf Rach accompanied me to the airport, he briefed me on the latest state of the situation: Bernhard’s play The Force of Habit will receive its premiere run in Salzburg and then under the auspices of the new Suhrkamp theatrical productions organization it will be sent on tour in a series of guest productions.  Suhrkamp, Inc., Zurich is purchasing the rights directly from Bernhard and ceding them to Frankfurt; on Monday, November 8 Suhrkamp, Inc., Zurich issued its first payment: DM 20,000 from Zurich to Thomas Bernhard.

Rach told me that Dorn, the director, had made clear to him that he would certainly be able to direct the premiere run but would never be able to find any actors in a position to travel afterwards for six weeks, let alone for two or three months.

Equipped with this intelligence, I boarded the plane.  My reading material during the flight was The Force of Habit, the new Thomas Bernhard play.  The text was pure Bernhard.  The theme: the sensicality and nonsensicality of the concept of art in a world approaching its end, a world that is of course ruled solely by invalids and cripples.  Bernhard’s handling of his theme is lucid and austere; and yet he has managed to give it a light, almost genial turn and implement it in a comedy.  There is obviously no ‘plot’; five characters; a sixty-year-old circus director, who is attempting to rehearse for a performance of the ‘Trout’ Quintet  with a group of fellow-chamber players consisting of his devoted 20-year-old granddaughter, a juggler, an animal tamer, and a jester.  They never manage to get through a rehearsal; something or other always gets in the way; the juggler receives a generous offer from the ‘Sarasini’ Circus (‘even genius / turns megalomaniacal every time / money is at stake’); the animal tamer has a piece of flesh torn out of him by Max the lion, but he must keep playing Schubert on the piano, eventually the piano is smashed; the juggler is the intellectual adversary, a kind of Super-Thomas Bernhard; the jester tries to execute intricate pranks.  At the end the jester destroys the piano; once again the rehearsal of the ‘Trout’ Quartet comes to nothing; everything collapses; the circus director leans back in his chair in exhaustion; in an attempt to relax he turns on the radio, and it blares out some measures of a perfect performance of the ‘Trout’ Quartet.   

The dialogue is completely staccato; no full-length sentences; nothing but exclamations; very trenchant.  The jester ‘hasn’t got to laugh.  He hasn’t got anything to laugh about.’

A play that Bernhard--certainly basing his work in some fashion on Stravinsky’s Histoire du soldat--has written for the circus of the Salzburg Festival, and he wants to send it through the German states as a wandering circus; this play is not intended for performance at a theater; I can imagine this artistically well-made play perhaps turning out to be the most successful of all of Bernhard’s plays.

He picked me up in Salzburg; he was in a jovial mood; we booked rooms for the night at the ‘Österreichischen Hof,’ ate well at midday, drank copious amounts of wine and were then in each other’s company until 5 p.m.  He was charming, loveable, treated me as his guest; then at 3 p.m. we went to my room and had a go at tackling the ‘awkward issues’: his debt-level of DM 94,500.00 (not counting the payment of DM 20,000.00 from Zurich); then he asked for an augmentation of his monthly remittances; he was pleased that I was able to inform him that the balance on Account I [see Letter No. 215], the one for all his works up to the Ignoramus, had been paid off!  It had taken years.  If the thing had not been paid off by then we would have had to cancel it.  I reached the very same kind of agreement with him regarding the DM 74,500.00; the DM 20,000.00 will remain in place as an option; either the DM 74,500.00 will be paid off by 12.31.1974 (surplus honorarium money is being remitted to him) or it will be written off at our expense.  I can imagine our recouping these DM 74,000.00 via publications but mostly via the performance rights and associated television rights for The Hunting Party.  Then he wanted to see the monthly remittance rate raised

to DM 1,500, I turned down this request; I said that beginning on 1.1.1974 I was prepared to issue a monthly sum of DM 1,250.00.  He initially assented to this.  The ensuing altercations over the publication date of the novelCorrection got pretty rough.  The novel is finished, but he doesn’t want to issue it now.  For one thing he would prefer not to have a ‘concentration’ of two plays and the novel, for another I get the impression that now (after he writes a short ballet libretto) he would like to write a fairly long novel, and he will need the next few months for this.  Only once the new novel is finished will he hand over Correction to us.

Finally the subject of The Force of Habit: the amount of the honorarium for Salzburg and the tour.  He wanted me to negotiate an agreement for a sum of

DM 50,000.00 with the festival president, Kaut.  I declined to do this.  I said that for four performances this sum was simply unreasonable.  I told him I planned to ask for DM 40,00.00 and obtained his consent to specify these DM 40,000.00 as our final condition.   Bernhard wanted to have the tour unconditionally.  [...]  We then took a long walk through Salzburg, repeatedly debating our problems; we had dinner; afterwards he wanted to retire for the evening, but the red wine from Meran seduced him into telling some anecdotes.  I spend two wonderful hours with him; he told me about his background, about his childhood and youth, about his utterly impossible family, in which everything was muddled and nothing made sense; inbreeding and criminality were the norm.  He began writing as a theater critic and court reporter; eventually, out of veneration of Thomas Wolfe and Faulkner, he began writing.  In 1960 he submitted a manuscript, The Forest in the Street, to Suhrkamp Publications.  He received it back in the mail along with a multifarious card [see n. 3 to Letter No. 1].  Today he is glad that Suhrkamp rejected the manuscript; there is also a second manuscript, Schwarzach St. Veit, which neither of the firms ever accepted.  He is glad about this too.  He still has both manuscripts.  He may show them to me for the Reader.  On the whole he was glad that I was going to edit the Reader for him.  Once I was working on it he would also point me to a manuscript that he thought was very interesting: The Lunatics and the Prisoners had been printed in a Klagenfurt newspaper.  [The Lunatics.  The Prisoners was first published in 1962 in a private edition issued by the Klagenfurt-based firm of Ferdinand Kleinmayr.]

Then we agreed to meet up the next morning at 9:00.  When I came into the room where we were to have breakfast, Bernhard had already been up for two hours; he had slept badly, he had regrets about everything we had discussed; he demanded 1,500.00 a month, which I refused to grant him; he rejected the handful of corrections to the manuscript of The Force of Habit that I either had already made or had proposed to him; what he saw yesterday as errors introduced during transcription he now regarded as fine and accurate; he had no wish to change a single full stop, a single comma, a single word, a single line.   Renewed outbursts against Rach; they were so loud that the other breakfasters looked up in surprise.  I could barely calm him down.  He was extremely nervous; he must have had an awful night.

He then accompanied me to the Festspielhaus; then he took his leave and drove to Vienna.

My conversation with Mr. Kaut was amicable.  I told him that Bernhard was expecting DM 50,000.00 for the run of performances, but he said that for him that would mean dropping the whole thing right away, and in fact even now the decision may still be made that quickly.  I told him what I had in mind: DM 40,000.00; he flatly rejected it.  But he was not obliged to reject the condition linking the premiere run to the tour.  He averred to me yet again that Dorn had not told him that the tour was infeasible.  He might be willing to put up the DM 40,000.00, but if he does he will require the theatrical productions organization to contribute more to the production and the set design.  DM 40,000.00 in exchange for DM 40,000.00; then we could save ourselves the bank charges for transferring the money.

We parted intending to give it one more try; everything would have to be decided before November 23, because on that date he is sending his season program to the press.”

2. Kulturer.  A Film Scenario was published by Residenz Publications in 1974 (see n. 1 to Letter No. 332).

        

Letter No. 272

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

November 28, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Enclosed is the publishing contract for The Hunting Party.  Please pay particular attention to §3: “The firm will commission performances of The Hunting Party only with the author’s consent.”  I believe that this sentence is unambiguous.  Please send back both forms with your signature affixed to them. You will then receive a copy with my signature.

This is merely an interim communication.  You will be separately informed about the other things.

Yours

with warm regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure

Letter No. 273

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

December 3, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I have forsaken the scenery of Frankfurt for eight days to go on a short ski holiday in Arosa with my wife.  Once again I can only send you an interim notice; our performance contract containing the stipulation of DM 40,000.00  has been sent to President Kaut; an accompanying letter maintains the offers through December 4.  If by this date the contract has not been signed or no reaction has been received, we will remind him one more time.  In other news, the executive committee of the Festival is diligently working on the contracts for the director and the actor; this business will smoothly fall into place.

But there has been a change in the casting of the principal role; Bernhard Minetti will be taking on this role instead of Martin Benrath; he is keen on the role, indeed, he is fascinated by it and is delighted to be playing it.  As soon as we have received Kaut’s signature or definitive reaction, we will conclude the contracts with the actors for the tour.  It is looking now as though the tour can take place in January, February, and March.  So things are in good shape.

As I said, this is only an interim notice.  I will get in touch again when there is something new to report after my return.

Yours

with sincere regards,

signed [Dr. Siegfried Unseld]

(Typed from dictation by Burgel Zeeh, secretary, during his absence)

  

Letter No. 274

Frankfurt am Main

December 10, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Today I received the contract with Salzburg dealing with the premiere run of The Force of Habit; Mr. Kaut wanted to insert a clause requiring reimbursement from the firm if the performances do not materialize “through the fault or at the request of the author.”  I refused to admit this clause, but I declared to Mr. Kaut that Suhrkamp Publications is a party to this contract and that we--i.e., the firm--can prohibit performances if need be.  I hope you had something along these lines in mind.

Can you drop me a line letting me know where you are going to be “during the year”?  I am going to be out of town for a few more days and so I cannot sign this letter.1  Beginning this weekend I shall be in Frankfurt throughout the admittedly short remainder of the year.

So we are getting very close indeed to 1974, the Year of Thomas Bernhard.

Yours

sincerely,

signed Dr. Siegfried Unseld

(Typed from dictation by Burgel Zeeh, secretary, during his absence)

    Between December 10 and 13 Unseld was in Zurich, Winterthur, and Venice.

Letter No. 275

Frankfurt am Main

December 17, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

You wanted to see our contract with the Festspielhaus.  Here it is.  It certainly doesn’t contain any secrets.  As of now we are still corresponding over a certain clause, but it is not one of a contractual character.  Kaut wanted to be sure that the firm would not demand any withdrawals or undertake to prevent any performances.  That can certainly be done; but we naturally must see that the quality of the performance is being attended to.1

Yours

with warm regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    §14 of the performance contract for The Force of Habit contains the following “special agreements”:

“The publishing firm guarantees the Salzburg Festival the first run of performances of the above-mentioned plays through August 10, 1974.

The Salzburg Festival will remit a one-time originator’s fee of DM 40,000.00 (forty thousand).  This fee is to be issued independently of the performance run and the number of performances.  The first DM 20,000.00 of the fee will be issued upon the conclusion of the contract, through which the contract will first take legal effect; and the remaining DM 20,000.00 will be issued on July 1, 1974.

Should performance of the play not be achieved in the context of the Salzburg Festival, moneys already remitted are not to be refunded, and all moneys still owed must be remitted.

The Salzburg Festival will engage Mr. Dieter Dorn as director of the first run of performances.  Should this not be possible, the engagement of another director will require the assent of the publishing firm.  Moreover, the casting must receive the publishing firm’s express approval.

The rehearsal period must amount to at least six weeks.”

Letter No. 276

[Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

December 18, 1973

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

A pressing request: before this year is over I need the signed contract for The Force of Habit; otherwise my agreement with Salzburg will be invalid.

I deliberately kept the wording of the contract with Suhrkamp, Inc. Zurich1 somewhat vague; we can fill in the details later; in any case they concern things agreed upon by the two of us; the main points are firmly in place.

Please have both copies sent back to me without delay.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

2 Enclosures

    The contracts securing the establishment of Suhrkamp Publications, Inc. Zurich, a subsidiary of Suhrkamp Publications Frankfurt am Main, were signed on December 27, 1973.

Letter No. 277

[Telegram]

Gmunden

12.21.73

its not pressing for me no further action before new discussion1

very sincerely bernhard

    On the same day Bernhard wrote in a letter to Rudolf Rach, “From Unseld came a ‘vaguely worded’ contract regarding The Force of Habit, but I don’t sign ‘vague’ contracts.  I am not going to sign anything until I have spoken with Unseld again and everything has been clarified to the greatest possible extent.”  In the same letter he reacted to an inquiry by the ORF about a live broadcast of The Force of Habit: “a live broadcast from the Regional Theater is something so fascinating that I will not under any circumstances forgo it. [...] Therefore the firm shall or must assent to the live broadcast of my comedy.  The financial terms are inalterable; it is a rock-bottom price.” 

Letter No. 278

Ohlsdorf

12.27.73

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

As I listen to some good music at six in the morning I reflect that we are inseparable and are doing something that other people cannot do.

We should not forget that we are dealing with a godsend and there are difficulties, an ever-recurring exigency of such an astonishing history of a body of art, difficulties with which, thanks to a conversation that has had to be regularly repeated at not excessively lengthy intervals, one’s mind is forever brimming over.  The year is coming to an end; that is reason enough to write this single letter.  A couple of lines whose gist is this: with the greatest attentiveness, by all possible means, I would love to walk with you.

Yours

Thomas Bernhard

P.S. I am waiting for the rough collated copy of The Hunting Party.

1974

Letter No. 279

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram]

Frankfurt am Main

January 3, 1974

thanks for your final letter of december stop we urgently must meet stop proposal

jan. 11.12 in zurich or at latest jan. 20 in munich or anytime in frankfurt

regards siegfried unseld

Letter No. 280

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

January 7, 1974

urgently requesting phone call1

Regards Siegfried Unseld

    A telephone conversation between Unseld and Bernhard materialized at some point on January 7.  Unseld wrote about the conversation in two notes dated January 10, 1974.  The first makes reference to Unseld’s survey on capitalization and non-capitalization [see Letter No. 260]:

“He asserted to me that he was decisively opposed to non-capitalization and that he basically thought the whole thing was a load of hogwash.”

The second reads:

“He told me on the telephone that he had no further corrections to make to The Hunting Party, that we could go ahead and typeset it, as the corrections recorded in his copy were the only ones.  He is anxiously awaiting the rough collated copy; I would prefer to take it with me to Salzburg on January 16.” 

Letter No. 281

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

January 17, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I am writing only briefly to inform you of my happy return to Frankfurt.  Both Salzburg hours were matter-of-fact-cum-intensive and pleasant, harmonious.  I am setting everything in motion.

Klingenberg was no longer reachable today; I shall ring him up tomorrow morning.  Mainz is holding its peace for now.

Regarding the January transfer: we effected it back on December 27, 1973.  Attached you will find a copy of our payment order; this will enable you to remonstrate at the bank if need be.  The money must have been there!  What is more, this transfer was made through a standing order payment.

I am overjoyed about everything we discussed: about the drama-related things and especially about the prospect of being able to read Correction soon; so, there are only eight weeks left now.         

Yours

sincerely

|and with presidential wishes|,1

Siegfried Unseld

Attachment2

    See n. 1 to Letter No. 283
    The attachment--the copy of the payment order--has not survived.

Letter No. 282

Ohlsdorf

1.18.74

good encounter mondays payment and rough collated copy “hunting party” arrived

very sincerely bernhard

Letter No. 283

Frankfurt am Main

January 24, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Warm thanks for your telegram.  You of course will know by now that I also found our encounter quite pleasant.1

Enclosed is the contract with the old date.  I now do pressingly need the signature.  We have spoken about the details, and your assent is certified my by note of January 17, 1974, which is available for your inspection--dr. u./ze.--2

Keep the enclosed letter for your records.  You know why it was written.

I have spoken with Klingenberg by telephone; I sent a contractual letter to him at his home address.  He has firmly promised me to keep mum.

So much just for today--

yours

sincerely,

Siegfried

2 Enclosures3

[Enclosure; letter from Unseld to Bernhard; address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

January 24, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I am back from our conversation in Salzburg.  In the course of it we agreed that we were going to use the Salzburg revenues to pay off your previously accrued debt.  Once this has been done your debt balance from previous years will stand at zero.  I trust you find this quite satisfactory.

Yours

with friendly regards,

Siegfried Unseld     

    Unseld wrote about the encounter in his Chronicle:

“Salzburg, January 17, 1974

I urgently needed to speak with Thomas Bernhard.  The subject was his comedy The Force of Habit and problems with the contract and also with his demands in connection with the tour and the planned videotaping for television.  Both of us had cold feet before this discussion.  It was clear to me that he would make some demands (not for nothing did he write ‘Even genius / turns megalomaniacal every time / money is at stake’ [see Bernhard, Works, v. 16, p. 47]), and it could not but be clear to me at what point or what sum I had to say my ‘no.’

The discussion proceeded in quite a different fashion than we had both feared.  Bernhard made a very remarkable impression on me; he was fairly calm, quiet, friendly, and heard out my arguments, as is not his wont during tough negotiations.  His hair was closely cropped; he made an ascetic impression on me, but his eyes sparkled radiantly and flickered erratically; I almost thought that he had taken drugs of some kind.

We had only two hours to meet at the Salzburg airport and so immediately started out in medias res.  We discussed his investment in the Suhrkamp Theatrical Productions-Organization tour.  I explained to him that profit-sharing could only be disadvantageous to him because this first tour cannot be expected to finish up even slightly in the black.  Its initial costs are too high for that. I also made clear to him our wish to try to get the tour into some large theaters; but these large theaters do not pay guarantees up front, rather, one gets a share of their evening revenues.  In the end he was satisfied with our paying him a guarantee of DM 20,000.00; this sum will cover 40 performances; beginning with the 41st performance he will receive DM 500.00 per performance.  The firm’s share is 10%; i.e., it is guaranteed to receive DM 18,000.00. 

He stuck to his view that this play had been written for Salzburg and ought not to be performed outside of Salzburg and the tour.   To this extent there were no further resolutions to adopt here.  [...]  Regarding the conditions of a television contract, Bernhard desired a live broadcast at least in Austria; but the most important thing is for ZDF as well as ORF to pay DM 35,000.00.  I have stipulated this condition for The Hunting Party, and it is meant to be applicable to The Force of Habit as well.  He is well aware that this is a crapshoot and may not lead to a broadcast; in any event, I am going to take it upon myself to have a personal conference with Mr. Holzammer.

We then determined the publication dates: on March 15 he will hand over to me the manuscript of Correction.  For the first time he told me something about this book.  He said he conceived of the main character as a Wittgenstein-like figure.  A man who while living in a kind of exile--in any case in a place other than his own country--has written a book that has already been typeset and who is now returning home with the galley proofs of the book in hand, and the text of the book has changed in his eyes and he is rewriting the galley proofs and rewriting reality.  The book is then scheduled to be issued at the end of August.

In January or February of 1975 the book Remembering will be published in the BS.  The other prospective publication dates remain in place: Hunting Party--April; The Force of Habit--June.

Gradually Bernhard came out with a surprising revelation from the nature of which I realized that it was this that was keeping him in such a cheerful mood.  He has agreed with the artistic director of the Burg, Klingenberg, to try and write a play for the May festival of 1975.  Klingenberg, he said, had blindly reserved a place in the schedule.  The manuscript would be ready in November.  I am supposed to draw up a contract, preferably right away.  And again ask for

DM 40,000.00.  I asked him about the subject of the play.  He didn’t wish to tell me anything about it.  Then I asked him what the title was, and he replied, The President--and I suddenly got a hunch; I turned to the left, pointed at Salzburg, in the direction of the Festspielhaus--and Bernhard laughed and said, “Yes, your hunch is right.”  It is a satire on the theater business.  But Bernhard plans to write it in such a way that it doesn’t put anybody’s and everybody’s nose out of joint; so Bernhard has got yet another play.  He is working on it like a man possessed, and all of this is putting him into a mood that is certainly beneficial to his work.  In the light of the rapid succession of plays in the BS and the publication of the play The President in May of 1975, we intend to postpone the prospective Bernhard Reader to the second half of 1975.  But by May of 1975 we will be able to let the other plays in the BS go out of print, and then we can put out an st volume called Salzburg Plays that will comprise the dramatic works apart from The President. 

The existence of the new play must be kept top secret, because if it came to light, the impact of the other two plays would certainly be diminished.

In the light of this productivity and the prospects of revenues raised by it, his request for a sum of DM 30,000.00 was not very surprising, and perhaps he was not any more surprised that I immediately granted it.

After that our discussion became not merely pleasant but almost euphoric by comparison with earlier ones; we proved that only through concerted collaboration, concerted cooperation, would we achieve productivity, not to mention revenues.  Perhaps it’s all wrong, he said, still skeptical as we exchanged goodbyes, but when I got back to Frankfurt there was already a telegram [see Letter No. 282] waiting for me; it affirmed that the ‘encounter’ had been ‘good.’”

2. The Travel Journal, Salzburg, January 17, 1974 records:

“Conversation with Thomas Bernhard in Salzburg.

Thomas Bernhard gave the rights to his new comedy The Force of Habit to Suhrkamp Publications Zurich last year.  He gave this firm the right to print, which is to confer certain as-yet-to-be-evaluated rights for the FRG to Suhrkamp Publications Frankfurt, in case the latter is prepared to accept the offers of other firms.

Hence throughout all the negotiations that we will be conducting here in connection with this play, we must keep this legal transaction very precisely in view.  For the television rights Bernhard is demanding DM 35,000.00.

For the publications the following timetable is in place:

April 1974--Hunting Party, BS   

June 1974--The Force of Habit, BS

We will receive the manuscript of Correction on March 15; publication date: August 1974.

In the summer we will receive the manuscript of Remembering; publication date: January / February 1975. 

A new Bernhard volume is to be planned for the BS for May of 1975.

For the suhrkamp taschenbücher:

For the schedule for May-October 1975, preferably no later than May, a volume called Salzburg Plays can be planned.  It will contain all of Thomas Bernhard’s existing dramatic works.

The Bernhard Reader planned for the first half of 1975 will be postponed to the second half of 1975.” 

3. Enclosure 1 has not survived; presumably it had something to do with the contract for The Force of Habit.

  

Letter No. 284

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

January 25, 1974

Politely requesting prompt return of corrected rough collated copy of “Hunting Party.”    We must print next week.

Yours S.U.

with friendly regards 

Letter No. 285

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

February 8, 1974

Firstly--sincere congratulations1

Secondly--best wishes for success of plans

Thirdly--urgently requesting return of contracts

Sincerely--Yours Siegfried Unseld

    Bernhard celebrated his 43rd birthday on February 9, 1974.

Letter No. 286

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

March 18, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

March 15 has come and gone; I am anxiously awaiting the manuscript of Correction.  Have you already sent it off?  Please, by all means send me a reassuring telegram.

In case you have reservations about committing it to the mail, there is a possibility of having it conveyed by Mr. Schaffler; on March 29 he is flying from Salzburg to Frankfurt,1 and I shall be meeting up with him here.  But please let me know which way you plan to use.

Yours

with warm regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    During a sojourn in St. Moritz, Wolfgang Schaffler, Gudrun Schaffler, and Unseld resolved to negotiate a cooperative agreement between Residenz and Suhrkamp (including the establishment of a Suhrkamp-Residenz publishing firm in Austria) on March 29 in Frankfurt.

 Letter No. 287

Ohlsdorf

3.25.74

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The Hunting Party has been made into a book; I am glad about this and thank you for it today1 and if everything at the Burgtheater develops along the hazardous lines of a fever with all its spasms, shivers, and painful symptoms, with all the ghastly mimetic antics that are especially necessary at such a large theater, we shall perhaps--because within the colossal O of the Burg we have a young, vigorous, reckless, and in many respects and contingencies brilliant doctor from Bremen--still end up with a good performance.  It should of course be a comedy of death.  We shall see.2

Now to the point that for you is probably the most important one: as I have already told Rach during his visit to Attnang-Puchheim (hence at the famous railway station),3 I have been working for months on the fourth dimension of Correction.  And as I now see it, I shan’t be finished with it before the end of April.  This is completely clear.  Hence there can be no talk of your receiving the manuscript now.  Not even by means of so perverse an act as Wolfgang’s Schaffler’s conveyance of the MS to Frankfurt, a scheme suggested to you by your wildly overactive publisher’s imagination.  To put it quite level-headedly: for some months Correction has been undergoing a repeated act of correction.  What must be brought into being  is an organizational momentum that conforms as closely as possible to the nature of the organism.  An irrevocable experience has compelled me to subject what I had believed to be the perfect body of a manuscript to a second dissection.  I am fortunate to have the time to do this, and I am asking you to realize that you, too, have a stake in this good fortune.  It is an eight-cornered piece of good fortune stretched across a hundred mountains, to the most distant distance.  You understand.

The fact of the matter is that I am not going to be finished with the MS until the end of April, and I envisage myself handing you the book at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna, to which you will of course, I hope, have come for the performance ofThe Hunting Party.  I remark this in the very teeth of the fact that the handing over of a manuscript constitutes an act of superlative ridiculousness.  But we shall manage to endure it with a clear head and during a fine meal (perhaps sour boiled rump of beef!?).  At this juncture it occurs to me that we should see each other soon, and for such a meeting Vienna offers the best opportunity this side of the Austro-German border.

An Easter walk could do you some good in affording you a break from your incessant trips to cemeteries.  It’s too bad about your ears, that they have to be constantly listening to funeral eulogies.  But as get older you will see an increase in the number of funeral eulogies--along with your apathy at the side of open graves.4

One more thing: Correction is a mathematical problem, and when and only when it has been perfectly solved will it become high literature.  On the other hand none of this has anything to do with astrology.

So: end of April (the 30th) Hotel Sacher, Correction.

In Vienna everything can be addressed.

Sincerely,

Thomas B.

    The Hunting Party was published as Volume 376 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp on April 8, 1974.

    The director of the premiere of The Hunting Party at the Burgtheater, Claus Peymann, was born in Bremen.

    Rudolf Rach visited Bernhard in Upper Austria on February 25, 1974.

    The Suhrkamp authors Marieluise Fleißer and Erhart Kästner died on

February 1 and 3, 1974.

Letter No. 288

Frankfurt am Main

March 27, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

In all kindness, your letter of March 25 has left me at a loss.  I fully understood that now that you have embarked on a new course of correction, you cannot part with the manuscript, but my preparations for the book cannot but be just as important to me as yours of its final draft are for you.  Your end-of-April submission date certainly will give us enough time to print and bind the book, but not to prepare the edition in the house.  On April 23 the sales representatives will be in the house, and I must have something to tell them about the book.  After that they will of course be hitting the road and will be expected to sell the book.  At the same time our announcement of the schedule for the second half of 1974 will be going to the typesetter and the printer.  The failure to announce your book would be a lapse with repercussions.  So if you insist on a submission date of April 30, I must insist on your imposing on yourself the tedious chore of writing a couple of sentences about Correction.  I must have them.  It would spell a genuine loss for all of us if we failed to release this book this year.  It will be appearing at an extraordinarily auspicious moment, because virtually nothing comparable will be around to eclipse it.

So please, impose on yourself this chore that I know you will find torturous; write something in a superficial vein about things, names, circumstances; perhaps such a passage is already close enough to being ready that you can hand it in as it is, so that I can read at least a short excerpt to the salespeople.  Please: this has to be.  Don’t leave me in the lurch!1

I firmly intend to come to Vienna on April 30.  In the meantime I shall keep cherishing the hope of getting acquainted with the text or a goodly excerpt from it before then.

Yours

with warm regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    On March 31 Rudolf Rach went to Berlin at the request of Bernhard, who was there to attend the German premiere of The Hunting Party at the Schiller Theater.  Rach described the conversation in a note for Unseld: “In Berlin Bernhard talked to me a little bit about Correction.  I took notes, and he and I agreed that I would write anannouncement text, which I would once again submit to him for his inspection.  What he tells me sounds exciting.  It’s ca. 200 pages long, about as long as The Lime Works or Verstörung.  Naturally he wants his book to be given special emphasis in our publicity, but if the contents of the text live up to its concept, I think that would be worth considering.” 

In an April 8 letter to Rach, Bernhard wrote, “Dear Dr. Rach, I have reworked the so-called announcement text and tried to be as precise as possible without saying too much.  The whole thing strikes me as as genuinely criminal.  On the other hand everything must be clear.  I am sending my text with this post.”  Suhrkamp Publications’ file  copy of this text bears the handwritten comment “Bernhard’s own text.”  The synopsis supplied by Bernhard diverges from the published version of the novel mainly in the matters of narrative perspective and setting.  In the synopsis one reads, “Now in the London-Paris sleeping car en route to the funeral of his sister, thinking about whether it had been wrong to build the cone for her, and, as he himself says, while still in Britain ‘amid the gigantic din of Dover Harbor,’ Roithamer sets about correcting the galley proofs of his book, which he has been writing for the past six months, since his return to Cambridge and under the influence of his sister’s horrifying reaction upon first seeing the cone, a book about Altensam and about everything connected with Altensam [...].”  The narrative of the book is anchored in the perspective of a friend of Roithamer’s who is examining and putting in order Roithamer’s posthumous papers in the setting of “Höller’s attic” in the bottleneck of the Aurach river in Upper Austria. 

Letter No. 289     

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

April 18, 1974

Dear Mr. Bernhard,

You will already have learned of the postponement of the date; my wife and I will be coming on to Vienna on the afternoon of Saturday, May 6.  Could we meet Sunday morning, maybe beginning at about 10:00?  We will be staying in the Hotel Sacher, so that is an obvious choice for a meeting-site, but I shall gladly accept any alternative you propose.  I am envisaging an extensive tête-á-tête conversation followed by lunch with my wife.

Please do drop me a line soon.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]   

Letter No. 290

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

April 25, 1974

I congratulate you on the Prix Séguier.  They would like you to come to Paris for the award ceremony on April 28.  In the event that you plan to make the trip, please call Mr. Christoph Schwerin in Paris (Telephone: Paris 222-9388); he will be happy to give you further information.1

Yours very sincerely -- Siegfried Unseld     

    Helene Ritzerfeld informed Unseld of the award in an April 25 memorandum marked “urgent”:

“Phone call from Christof Schwerin in Paris.

Thomas Bernhard has received the Prix Séguier, which will be awarded for the first time on April 28.  They would like Thomas Bernhard to come to the ceremony.  Schwerin requested Mr. Bernhard’s telephone number and address, but I did not give them to him.  Schwerin requests your coordination with him on the matter.  His telephone number in Paris is 2229388.   

(Incidentally, had Erval already notified you about the likelihood of this award?  The decision was made by five literary critics and five writers and indeed in favor of a non-French body of work that still has not received anyreal attention.)     

Letter No. 291

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram]

Frankfurt am Main

May 8, 1974

are the proofread galleys of “force of habit”  we sent you ready to print?  urgently awaiting reply.  it was good to meet with you.1

regards siegfried unseld 

    In his Travel Journal, May 4-7, 1974, Unseld wrote of this meeting:

“Premiere Thomas Bernhard, The Hunting Party at the Burg, directed by Claus Peymann [May 4; set design: Karl Ernst-Hermann; the writer: Joachim Bißmeier, the general’s wife: Judith Holzmeister; the general: Werner Hinz] a full house, 1400 people, it was quite an event; Thomas Bernhard, regarded by many as the most significant but also the most controversial author in Austria, now witnessing the premiere of a play at this tradition-laden site.  He himself was quite visibly excited.  He said that the dress rehearsal had gone outstandingly well, but in his opinion the performance itself fell flat.  He left the theater after the second act, and as he was collecting his coat, the cloakroom attendant said to him, ‘So you didn’t like the play either?’

I found the direction impeccable; it conformed to the text with choreographic strictness.  It was too bad that owing to obvious acoustic difficulties the second act palpably fell flat; it  hung fire, and the nagging monotony sometimes became downright boring.  The audience grew restless, the first heckler was heard, but then came the climax in the third act and the genuinely magnificent conclusion.  Opinion was starkly divided over this play; half the audience left as soon as the curtain fell; the other half broke into a swelling round of applause.

Afterwards, conversations with Klingenberg, Peymann, Hilde Spiel; later that night a little party at the residence of the wife of the president of the Austrian parliament Maleta, who is indeed the original of the general’s wife (and her husband, who was briefly the interim chief of the Austrian state, has certainly lent a few traits to the general).  Sunday was to be devoted to conversation with Thomas Bernhard and with Austrian publishers. 

Thomas Bernhard: he was the same as he always is.  Naturally the reaction to the performance assuaged and relieved him, but at bottom he was already treating the premiere as if he had forgotten all about it, and he was once again his familiar self--completely and obsessively focused on the present and the future, on work and money.  Money was broached as a subject within the first minute; he said that he again wanted a larger sum for himself, and he seemed extremely relieved when I managed to assent to it.  Thanks to this assent he refrained from indulging in any of the jibes he had forewarned me of the night before (when I had admittedly made the mistake of beating him 2 to 1 in a one-minute game of twenty-one, a card game that of course played a role in The Hunting Party).  He said that a book wholesaler’s catalog that he admittedly could no longer remember the name of had gotten his name and some of the titles of his books wrong.  How long, he asked, had it had been since the theatrical publications division had remitted him his honorarium for Spectaculum?  The Wiesbaden concession, he said, had been made for the sake of our colleague Jürgen Becker and obviously was not to be regarded as a general release.  [In an April 21 letter to Becker, Bernhard assented to a performance of The Hunting Party at the Staatstheater Wiesbaden.  The performance took place on September 8, 1974.]  At this point I vehemently gainsaid him.  After Wiesbaden, performances at other theaters were hardly to be expected.  Then he changed the subject to Dr. Rach’s shilly-shallying letter about the Paris performances: if nothing was good, he said, then nothing should be authorized.  As matters stand, I think we should take Voisin’s advice, because he obviously has plenty of experience on French territory.  [In an April 25 letter to Bernhard, Rudolf Rach pondered the possibilities for a French performance of The Ignoramus and the Madman: “A third possibility would naturally be not to authorize any performance at all, because both Voisin and I are of the opinion that neither possibility can be regarded as ideal.  On the other hand the plans [...] cannot in any event be implemented before the ’75-’76 season.”]

Bernhard will finish the manuscript of Correction by the end of May at the latest; we can certainly count on that.  He also mentioned that Amras had been out of sight for a long time, but I hinted to him that we had plans with theSLZ (plans that seemed to make a good deal of sense to him). [The first issue of the mainly school-orientedSuhrkamp-Literatur-Zeitung appeared in January 1975.  Its April 1976 issue featured publicity for Verstörung, but not for Amras.]

                                  

Letter No. 292

Ohlsdorf

5.8.74

Dear Dr. Unseld,

Until I have completely reviewed the galley proofs of The Force of Habit, the book cannot be produced; I shall send the corrected sheaf to Frankfurt tomorrow.

On my return I see that I unconditionally must have the sum I quoted deposited in my Freilassing account within fourteen days if I don’t wish to be charged a horrendous and unnecessary interest fee by my bank.  I believe you understand that I need this money very urgently and must ask that you [comply with]1 my wish to have the entirety of this sum remitted to my account in Freilassing as speedily as possible.

Vienna blew over well; now we have got to concentrate all our energies on Salzburg.

Correction is being typed and will be on its way to you when I am finished.  Perhaps I could stop over with the manuscript with the airplane at Frankfurt Station, and we could briefly have some genuinely frank talk there.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

    “Comply with” is my rendition of the editors’ two suggestions (zu entsprechen and nachzukommen) for an alternative to Bernhard’s inadvertent repetition of bitten muss (“must ask”), a repetition that I have omitted for the sake of syntactical plausibility.  [DR]



Letter No. 293

Ohlsdorf

5.20.74

Dear Dr. Unseld,

Earlier today I sent the signed contract to Mr. Zbinden in Zurich; there was no reason not to.1

Our telephone conversation was more or less the most disagreeable one I have ever had, but probably such telephone conversations have to be.

We thoroughly misunderstand each other.

I have so far made no decision regarding Correction.  It is proper that I have so to speak decreed that the book will be published, but right now I do not feel that it will be proper for it to be published.

For now I will wait for the remittance of the money from Switzerland and then another fourteen days for the conversion of the foreign into domestic currency and in the meantime what is going on will become clear.

I am at home in the new play and a long way from the old one, but whenever I next talk to you by phone, please make me head back to that long-forsaken place.

My independence is unsurpassed, which explains my indifference to everyday provisions.

I could definitely go my own way completely on my own.2

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

    This was the performance contract between Bernhard and Suhrkamp Publications Zurich, Inc. for The Force of Habit.

    In the upper-right corner of the letter there is a comment in Unseld’s handwriting: “done via tel[elegram].”  See Letter No. 295.

Letter No. 294

Frankfurt am Main

May 31, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I would like to write to you again about the submission date for Correction.  To be sure, the two premieres of the new plays came in rapid succession and spell a backlog, but what will we gain by a postponement to ’75?  In May of that year we will have another new premiere at the Burg and so the publication dates would again coincide.  And please do also consider your plan to have Remembering published in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, which we ought to implement by 1975 at the latest.

But let me once again address the situation of the Bernhard Year, 1974.  Please put your trust in my experience.  The reception of a novel takes place under the auspices of an entirely different set of perspectives than those that attend the reception of a play.  The critics are different, and the book dealers react to a novel differently, more amply, with greater interest, than they do to editions of plays, even when the latter are published in the best possible setting, namely the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.  These are really two entirely different affairs.

And I have yet another and entirely different argument: malevolent souls could accuse you of confining your principal theme to the stage.  The novel Correction points up your great epic counterplan.  I can easily imagine that if you end this year, 1974, with the two plays and Correction, you will be regarded as the foremost significant writer in the German-speaking world.  So that is the one argument.

And here’s the other one: we now enjoy the possibility of a making a commercial success out of this book and of selling a great many copies.  And so we must take advantage of this.  This is obviously less in your interest than in mine, but our interests are of course not completely divergent on this point.

I am sending you as an enclosure the catalogue of new books for the second half of ’74.  I am sending it to you with reluctance and hesitation because I am well aware that you react allergically to many of the firm’s publications.  But my dear Thomas Bernhard, you are the center and focus of attention here.  If the book is not published in the second half of this year, it will be a genuine setback for you as an author (people will think you have run out of the steam needed to finish it) and for us as a publishing firm, who will have showcased a book--and showcased it in a prominent setting as our most significant book--only to fail to issue it.1

I would also like yet again to remind you of our financial agreements. These agreements stipulate that in the final reckoning the firm must have the revenues from Correction at its disposal.  If Correction is not published in 1974, our entire financial agreement will be in limbo.  And we will come short of that finish line we have very much jointly resolved to reach. 

My dear Thomas Bernhard, all commercial and tactical considerations aside, please put your trust in my judgment in this matter.  It will be absolutely fitting for Correction to be published in the second half of the year and to be in print this fall.  I am urgently requesting you to take this into consideration once again.

Yours

with sincere regards

--as always--

Siegfried Unseld     

    The publication of Correction is announced on p. 2 of Suhrkamp’s preview of its schedule for the second half of 1974.



Letter No. 295

[Handwritten telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

June 5, 1974

Payment transfer underway stop urgently requesting “Correction” manuscript once again.  I am supposed to come to Salzburg on June 16 for a meeting at the airport.

Sincerely SU 

Letter No. 296

Ohlsdorf

June 7, 1974

am content with fall publication date will bring ms personally via frankfurt last week of june

sincerely thomas bernhard

Letter No. 297

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

June 10, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I thank you very sincerely for the telegram, which comes as a great relief to me and was the only right decision for our shared endeavor.  So I shall be very glad to see you here in the last week of June.  I would propose Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, meaning the 26th, 27th, and 28th of June.  On the evening of the 26th I am admittedly already scheduled to attend the opera.  Anja Silja will be singing Schoenberg’s Erwartung [Expectation].  The title clinches my situation to a turn.  Won’t you go the opera with me?

Yours

sincerely,

Siegfried Unseld   

Letter No. 298

[Ohlsdorf]

7.2.74

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The following lines are an adumbration of my present mode of life.

Three weeks ago in an access of extremely high spirits I scalded myself with kettle water so badly (third-degree burns, my lady doctor commented) that any continuation of my work became unthinkable; I exploited the opportunity and rode and flew into the countryside.  On my way back home I popped into the Schiller Theater with my spectral open hand for a look at the goings-on there.  I saw nothing terrible.1  The air there is most conducive to the healing of wounds, and I am now so much better that I can resume typing up Correction.  This whole scalding incident with all its ramifications, ramifications that were hardly injurious and indeed indispensable to me--the cool clime of the North, the new people, the turbulence, my being left absolutely alone in good hotels--has done my mind so much good that I can even call it a stroke of good fortune.  When I tell you that on the day, indeed within the very hour, of my scalding myself I received a telegram from Vienna asking me to make a so-called statement on Ingeborg Bachmann, you will well believe that we are dealing here with the tentative plot-sketch of a comedy.  The world has been fitted out as a curiosity and populated by utterly baneful objects.2

Having mentioned these objects I shall change the subject.  Because the upshot now is that I can continue working on the text, and it will be finished when it is finished; more than this I cannot say, but the general timeline is easy to forecast.  I don’t feel anything weighing on my back.

3 further points: after the attacks that Klingenberg has had to parry in Vienna and the not exactly flattering reviews of the darling Viennese,3 I proposed to Klingenberg that we should liquidate the contract for the next play; thus I effectively opened the door for him and told him he was under no obligation to put on any further performances and could escape from me (and us) unscathed.  He is in fact doing nothing of the kind; to the contrary, he has written to me a not-insignificant letter in which he assures me that there can be no ifs, ands, or buts about it; that the premiere will be given at the Burgtheater at the beginning of next year.  So he will be receiving my next play (for safekeeping).  He assured me that I could communicate all my desiderata and that all these desiderata would be met by him (i.e., by the Burgtheater).  The majority of the people at the Burgtheater are against me and against everything I produce; this is a simple, important, and very basic fact.  My thinking to let Klingenberg go (although he is not letting us go) via a sentence (i.e., “The firm will comply with my decision!”) taken from our secret contract was a good move--indeed, a move that can’t be bettered; one hardly need be a genius to relish it.

2nd point: yesterday in Salzburg I saw the actors in costume for the first time and in the caravan for the first time.4  My impression, to the extent that one could have one before the play had actually begun, was that these instruments were capable of generating something quite splendid.  We will of course see if they are at the end of July, which I am very much looking forward to; and as you can well imagine, I am also looking forward to seeing my publisher again.

Point 3 concerns a letter from Peter Hall that arrived the day before yesterday and in which Hall (imploringly) asks to be allowed personally to put on a production of The Force of Habit next year at the newly opened National Theatre; the firm has not granted him the rights to the play, as he writes, as it was quite correct of him to do.  Hall wants to have the play performed in the National Theatre’s new third house, which seats four hundred, and this idea is really quite an excellent one because Hall could produce a real English pièce de résistance.  An English performance such as this will be no skin off the nose of our touring ensemble and will probably be a stroke of good fortune for us.  I didn’t plan on making any decision independently of you.  But I am asking that we give Hall the rights to the play and that you wire Hall (personally) informing him that I have no objections.5

There are still several more points, but it is better for me to write that summer more than any other season affords opportunities to set aside one’s work for many, many hours and to go swimming (your favorite preoccupation!) and to walk or lie in the shadows without giving a thought to art etcetera, to the mutilation of nature by human refuse.  As things lie they must remain lying.  And please don’t write me any kind of serious letter, lest I rain down curses on all the Germans!

P.S. It’s too bad I wasn’t able to go with you to hear Anja Silja, but I have already heard Erwartung once, in Darmstadt.  Eighteen or nineteen years ago, who knows!6  

    Bernhard probably attended a performance of The Hunting Party, whose German premiere took place on May 15, 1974, at the Schiller Theater in Berlin.  The performance was directed by Dieter Dorn; set designs were by Wilfried Minks; The general’s wife was played by Marianne Hoppe, the writer by Rolf Boysen, and the General by Bernhard Minetti.

    Ingeborg Bachmann died a year earlier as a consequence of injuries sustained in a fire.

    The Viennese Wochenpresse of May 29, 1974 reported, “The shocked ushers described ‘those’ people who walked out during the intermission as by no means isolated individuals and estimated that there were ‘a few hundred’ of them, meaning that they amounted to ‘a full third’ of the audience. [...]  The bark beetles [...] certainly took a big bite out of the Burgtheater’s regular crowd; by no means, however, will even the Burg’s chief Gerhard Klingenberg’s bitterest adversaries in his own house deny that the new Bernhard is a play that ought to be brought up for discussion by the Burgtheater.” (D[uglore]. P[izzini]): “Bitten by Bark Beetles.  Exodus of Audience during The Force of Habit by Thomas Bernhard”)

    The Force of Habit takes place in a caravan.

    Rudolf Rach wrote to Bernhard about this in a letter of July 4, 1974: “In the meantime you will have received Peter Hall’s letter, in which he declares his interest in The Force of Habit.  His proposed procedure of selecting a director at the outset is naturally the only appropriate one in the event that you plan to consent to any sort of performance.  Naturally I am always also thinking about the possibility of a guest performance, but the two need not preclude each other as I hear from London that a production of The Force of Habit is being planned for the spring of 1976.”

    Below the postscript is a comment in Bernhard’s handwriting, “everything with the right hand!,” followed by a repetition of “right” in capital letters.

In the upper-right corner of the first page of the letter Unseld has written, “disc[uss] during my visit.” 

  

Letter No. 299

Frankfurt am Main

July 17, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Each day I await the arrival of a messenger on horseback!  But I assume you still plan to deliver the manuscript to me personally.  With this in mind, I would like to tender you the following proposal: my wife and I will be coming to Salzburg on Thursday, July 25 and staying in the Hotel Seehof.  Should we not meet there at eight that evening? 

Dr. Rach will also propose a date to you that dovetails with the one I mentioned.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    Rudolf Rach wrote to Bernhard about the proposed Salzburg visit in a letter of July 17, 1974:

“[...] will now arrive first on the morning of July 24.  I shall be accompanied by the photographer Digne Meller Marcowicz, who will be taking photographs of the final rehearsals, as we would like to give especial prominence to photographs in the layout of the program [for the tour of The Force of Habit].  In addition to the photographs for the program, though, we would like to take some pictures of you, as Johannes Schütz [the production’s set designer], Minks’s assistant, who is supposed to design the poster, would like to work with a photo of you.  As I see it, there are two possibilities for this photoshoot.  Either Ms. Meller Marcowicz and I could come to Ohlsdorf on the afternoon of July 25, or you could come to Salzburg for the rehearsal so that we could take the pictures in Salzburg itself.  Please let me know which arrangement is agreeable to you.”  Opposite the title page of the twelve-page program there are seven black-and-white photographs taken by Digne Meller Marcowicz.     

Unseld met Bernhard during the premiere of The Force of Habit at the Salzburg Festival on July 27, 1974.  The director was Dieter Dorn; the set designs were by Wilfried Minks; Caribaldi was played by Bernhard Minetti, the granddaughter by Anna Lochner, the juggler by Fritz Lichtenhahn, the animal tamer by Hanz Peter Hallwachs, and the jester by Bruno Dalansky.  In his Travel Journal; Salzburg-Ohlsdorf-Großgmain; July 25-29, 1974, Unseld wrote: “Otherwise, despite Karajan and Strehler’s abortive Magic Flute, on these days everything revolved aroundThomas Bernhard.  The premiere of his new play The Force of Habit was again fraught with difficulties, and it was certainly just like one critic wrote: ‘This evening everything was staked on a single card, and the card turned out to be a trump.’  An outstanding ensemble, well directed by Dorn; a play with some long, difficult passages, even longueurs.  But it hit home, albeit in the form of a tightrope walk; indeed, it was a success.  Bernhard was present at the dress rehearsal but not at the performance itself.  The applause was loud, but there were also a few catcalls that mistook the director Dorn for Bernhard.  [...]

Bernhard and I had two extensive conferences.  A big disappointment!  He doesn’t intend to cough up his manuscript at the present time.  It is finished but not perfect; it still lacks the final degree of precision that he is looking for.  He said it would be ready ‘in perhaps three weeks,’ and on top of this there is a slight chance that he will unconditionally choose to devote the months of September and October to the transcription of his new play.  It will come down to whether he succeeds in imparting to it the last degree of perfection or whether the work will remain incomplete even longer.  There is virtually nothing that can be done to change his attitude; he is strong and obdurate, does what he wants to do--only money, only by means of money can he budged, but of course this time there was no need to talk about it. 

He has made additions to his house in Ohlsdorf and more recently he has purchased another piece of property with a house on an out-of-the-way pocket of land near Gmunden; this house can only be reached on foot or by tractor.

He was naturally relieved at the effect and success of the play.  Mistrustful as he is of everyone and everything, he declared himself satisfied with the performance and was also exceedingly keen on our plan for a tour.  He will not authorize another production!  And I understand this completely; if the actors can only deliver a poorer class of performance, the play is not worth staging.

In any case, this premiere was the most important one for us in a long time.  It is a signal and a starting point for the actuation of our productions organization.  It will not always be able to to count on such unusual plays and productions, but perhaps what is normal for the normal theatergoer can be presented in an unusual way.”

In an addendum to this travel journal, drafted as a note for his Chronicle, Unseld wrote:

“Something I did not mention in the travel journal: naturally he is the same old self, Mr. Mistrustful.  We met along with Rach at my hotel, the Seehof, in Gmunden.  We went to dinner; everything was good, harmonious, but we steered clear of the sensitive points.  Then came the performance, which of course was not unsuccessful.  The next day I visited him in Gmunden; we discussed the situation for three hours, then we drove to Maleta's for dinner; then he took us to his new property, the so-called ‘Grasberg’ near Gmunden, a 50,000 square-meter piece of property bordered by a stream on its left and right sides; one stream bears the name of ‘Frauengraben’ [‘Women’s Ditch’], the other has no name; the property  is a large arch in the terrain at whose peak stands a house of substantial dimensions that Bernhard must now have rebuilt, a house that can really only be reached via a footpath or by means of the tractor that Bernhard has acquired and that is parked at Ohlsdorf.  I had two very detailed conversations with him regarding Correction.  He said the text was finished.  But that it wasn’t perfect, that it fell shy of the last degree of perfection.  Sure, he said, the imperfections were trifles, but trifles were what made all the difference.  He said he might send me the manuscript in three weeks, three months, or three years.  Bernhard is uncannily intransigent; he does what he wants and is impervious to persuasion, except by money.  This is something we are going to have to get used to.  His play The Force of Habit does after all contain the lines ‘Even genius / turns megalomaniacal every time / money is at stake’ [see (again! [DR]) Bernhard, Works, v. 16, p. 47]).  Bernhard really must be dealt with on two levels; on the one hand one must overlook his powerful drive for perfection--in other words, understand it.  On the other hand we can expect to receive dates and assurances from him only when we coordinate them with inflows of money.  He is tough; he is also autarchic in his work; he is self-sufficient.  He has acquired this new estate which is enormously complicated and which I personally would never wish to own, because it is a challenge for him and something to work on.  And he needs something to work on, something that is productive and positive.  ‘You can’t write all the time, after all; that would obviously drive you crazy.’ In this new estate Bernhard the lone wolf has procured himself a genuine task that demands his attention and that also happens to be tailor-made for him.  The piece of property is completely unusual because it is out of the way, isolated.  As we were leaving three solitary hikers descended into the property.  Bernhard flew into an incredible rage; if he had had a gun with him he would have shot them.  We had to fend off the mosquitos, which gave us some nasty bites.  But it is well known that mosquitos are to be found only in places where nature is pristine.”     

Letter No. 300

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

August 1, 1974

Will phone you 9 a.m. Saturday at Ohlsdorf post office.  If this is impossible, phone me here in Frankfurt at: 53 28 67.1

Good news.

Regards Siegfried Unseld

    According to his Chronicle, Unseld asked Bernhard if he would agree to a performance of The Force of Habit with Curd Jürgens as Caribaldi at the Cardin Theater in Paris.  Bernhard said yes.

Letter No. 301

[Telegram]

Lisbon

8.12.74

arriving at the firm at around three friday1

sincerely bernhard

    On Bernhard’s visit Unseld’s Chronicle entry for August 16, 1974 reports:

“A remarkable encounter with Thomas Bernhard.  He had informed me in a telegram that he had a layover in Frankfurt during his flight from Lisbon to Linz.  I took a peek into the package he had brought with him, but it contained nothing but sweets for my wife and Ms. Zeeh.  No Correction manuscript.  That put a damper on my mood, and so the hours he spent at the firm were rather crampy.  We spoke on the subject of finances: I had given him the bottom-line figures in my own handwriting on two sheets of paper.  That made an impression on him.  ‘When the publisher writes it out himself, it’s got to be right.’  The figures were indeed imposing.  [On the first sheet, Unseld noted revenues for performances of The Force of Habit amounting to DM 76,000.00, which exceeded the payments remitted to Bernhard, as well as the advance payment; see Letter No. 283 for The President; on the second sheet, honorarium credits for Bernhard amounting to ca. DM 100,000.] [...]

Then we went to the Klettenbergstraße, drank tea; he talked about Lisbon, then asked for some wine; we drank one, then two bottles, and the mood became palpably more relaxed.  He briefed me on his new play, The President, which he said would trigger a scandal at the Burg and throughout Austria.  The subject has shifted a bit: it is no longer about the president of the Salzburg Festival but the president of the Austrian Republic, and Bernhard gave me some concrete details that he had heard about Dr. Maleta when the latter, the second vice president of the Austrian parliament, was standing in as chief of state for the invalided President Jonas.  This play is expected to have four acts.  Act I: The maturation of the presidential couple in a shabby, petit-bourgeois environment.  A courier barges into this atmosphere; the president signs a petition for a pardon in his underwear.  Act II is to show the president in a vacuous governmental position and attending to his representational duties.  Act III: The president has traveled to Lisbon incognito with a floozy, and at the Casino Estoril indulges in such violent frolics that he dies of them.  Act IV: Pompous lying in state: the common people file past, clutch at the coffin; the procession is headed up by his wife, his children, the cabinet ministers, etc.  If Bernhard successfully finishes this play, it will be the first play in which he breaks out of his monological structure.

One cannot help feeling genuinely anxious.

He plans to come on September 28 and then, perhaps, he will bring the manuscript with him.”

On September 28, 1974, Unseld celebrated his fiftieth birthday in Kronberg near Frankfurt am Main.  Bernhard attended the celebration.

Letter No. 302

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

August 13, ’74

Dear Mr. Bernhard,

I am enclosing for you my correspondence with the mayor of Augsburg.  Do you want to take a trip to Augsburg?  After all, lynch law obviously isn’t in effect any longer there.  One more question in case the journalists’ interest in this increases: have you ever been to Augsburg?  What attracts you to Augsburg as a name-metaphor--perchance its favorite son?

Yours

with warm regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

Enclosure1

[Enclosure; letter from Unseld to Hans Breuer]

Frankfurt am Main

August 9, 1974

Dear Mayor Breuer,

Many thanks for your letter of August 7, 1974.  I wholeheartedly respect your championing of the reputation, interests, and concerns of your citizenry, but none of these is by any means being called into question by the author Thomas Bernhard and his play The Force of Habit.  This play is a comedy, which means that anything in it that is said about Augsburg or any other city is the utterance of some theatrical character or other.  Thomas Bernhard has not in either an interview or an article made public his opinion of the city of Augsburg; rather, a character in his play, the circus director Caribaldi, has at certain dramatic moments of great excitement and irritation remarked on a city that by pure chance happens to be the next stop on his tour.  It could just as easily be some other city; the name Augsburg in this setting actually has nothing to do with the reality of your city.

Please do not allow yourself fall prey to this misunderstanding from which dramatic literature has so often had to suffer--a misunderstanding that always arises when one tries to call an author to account for the utterances of his characters.  A play for the theater consists of conflicts and controversies, contradictions and dialogues, and in the production of these nexuses the author is compelled to grant his characters enough self-sufficiency and individuality to allow them to bear full responsibility for their actions and lapses even onstage.  In this manner arise those events and utterances that do not necessarily correspond to any intention in the author’s mind, but merely bear witness to the autonomy of his characters.  Or do  you really believe that Bertolt Brecht, whom you referenced, approved of the machinations of his Mack the Knife and should therefore be held responsible for them?

And please do also consider the examples presented to us by literary history; examples of a much more vehement and nasty sort, of authors going to war against their hometowns.  When one contemplates these from an historical perspective, one sees that such utterances have never done the slightest amount of real damage to the cities in question.  Did Göttingen ever suffer because Heine described it as a city that looked loveliest when viewed with one’s backside?  Do you believe James Joyce’s song of hatred  directed at Dublin has ever tarnished that city’s amiable image?  In the final analysis is Lübeck not ennobled by the polemical strictures of Thomas Mann?  Or consider a case in your neighborhood: all her life Marieluise Fleißer suffered among the people of Ingolstadt.  Now she is honored by them, and with good reason: she led the city out of its provinciality.

Mayor Breuer, I take your misgivings exceedingly seriously, but I also hope that I have managed to convince you.  I shall happily forward your generous invitation to Thomas Bernhard; at present he is abroad.  I for my part can send you a copy of the printed edition of the play so that you will have the opportunity to get to know these utterances in the setting of the whole thing.  I believe you will then get quite a different impression than you did from the decontextualized quotations published by the press.  The final performance of The Force of Habit will take place in Salzburg on August 21.  I would be glad to reserve two tickets for you so that you can convince yourself of the cogency of my arguments.

After your letter I am especially sorry that the Augsburg Theater did not accept the offer of a guest production of Bernhard’s play.  I can readily imagine the citizens of this city appreciating Bernhard’s play as a comedy; I believe they see the Lech for what it is and that they do not feel themselves defamed.

I am yours

with friendly regards,

Dr. Siegfried Unseld

    In The Force of Habit, the circus director Caribaldi, who is suffering from rheumatism, asks (see Bernhard’sWorks, v. 16, p. 102): “Isn’t there a doctor / anywhere in Augsburg / a specialist in rheumatism / anywhere in this musty, pestiferous nest /this cloaca of the Lech[?]”  Hans Breuer, the mayor of Augsburg, reacted to this passage among others in an August 7, 1974 letter to Unseld:

‘Dear Mr. Unseld!  How abstract or concrete is this municipal commonwealth?  Does a city as a living community of its citizens possess its own form of honor that can be impugned?  Are the reputation and commercial livelihood of a city damaged when it is defamed and slandered in the spotlight of public exposure?  These are certainly very interesting questions for journalists and lawyers and currently also for our municipal legal department.  But first and foremost I would like to protect the interests of the city of Augsburg and the concerns of its citizens by addressing myself to you.

This is the reason for my letter: your publishing firm, Mr. Unseld, has issued Thomas Bernhard’s play The Force of Habit, which very recently had its premiere in Salzburg.  In this play--if the newspaper articles and radio broadcasts reporting on the premiere quoted accurately--the city of Augsburg is defamed as a musty, pestiferous nest and the citizens of Augsburg are reviled as the worst and most repellently smelly of all circus spectators.  These strike me personally as quite excessively vituperative words for a comedy, and words that Mr. Bernhard would scarcely be able to justify in terms of any liberty granted to an author.

Not once did the poet Bert Brecht ever maintain that Augsburg was a cloaca of the Lech, and Brecht was censorious and familiar with Augsburg at first hand.  He was born on the embankment of a canal feeding into the Lech and grew up near the city moat.  I must assume that Mr. Bernhard is utterly unfamiliar with our Augsburg.

On this account I would like to invite Mr. Bernhard to come to Augsburg sometime very soon and to spend three days here as our guest.  The city of Augsburg will cover the costs of his stay, and we will gladly show him everything he wishes to see and even take him to the Lech and introduce him to people from every demographic stratum of our citizenry.  And then Mr. Bernhard will surely see and feel and smell not only that Augsburg has been richly shaped by a 200-year history, but also that it is a well-swept, blithesome major city with spring-pure drinking water and squeaky-clean citizens.  And that this place does not really smell all that bad.

By the way: we do have specialists in rheumatism.

So I am taking the liberty, Mr. Unseld, of most cordially asking you to forward my invitation to Mr. Bernhard.  I look forward to your and his reply with eager expectancy.” 

Probably in reaction to newspaper reports (for example, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of August 10, 1974) stating that Hans Breuer had instructed the Augsburg legal department to look into the possibility of initiating court proceedings, Bernhard wrote by telegram from Lisbon: “From here in Lisbon Augsburg strikes me as even more fundamentally execrable than in my new play.  My compassion for the Augsburgers and for all the people in Europe who consider themselves Augsburgers is colossally boundless and absolute” (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 12, 1974).

  

Letter No. 303

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

August 19, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Your Frankfurt visit was very pleasant indeed.  You see: even in Frankfurt people can spend time together amicably and pleasantly.

I am enclosing for you the photos that you have of course already seen and that my wife has had duplicated for you once more.

I am very hopeful!

Yours

with warm regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure1

    The enclosure cannot be identified.

Letter No. 304

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 2, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Mr. Rischbieter has tried to pull a fast one on me, but it has rebounded against him:

I told you during your Frankfurt visit that I had sent Rischbieter a telegram.  It concerned his fatuous review in theFrankfurter Rundschau in which he criticized the play very aggressively indeed and also described it as extremely reactionary.1  My telegram reads verbatim: “Why are you reprinting such a reactionary play in Theater heute?”  Now Rischbieter has wrought his revenge and at the same time treated himself to a piece of journalistic infamy.  He has in other words reprinted my telegram without any indication of its context--without a word of commentary, without a hint.  He has also published a second review in which the word “reactionary” is nowhere to be found.  In short, he tried to pull a fast one on me, but he won’t bring it off.  Any halfway rational person will realize that something fishy is going on, because of course in the end I did give him permission to reprint the play.  On the other hand I naturally am not going to let the matter rest.  In the next issue he will have to print a rebuttal, and I have already urged the relevant newspapers to publish an exposé.2  It may cause something of a fuss, but nothing that I expect to last very long.  I watched the television version of the play once again.  I thought it was done exquisitely well.3  Minetti was really quite inimitable in the close-ups.  To be sure, he fluffed a few lines, but on the whole the thing was very good.  The ensuing panel discussion did not make half as ghastly an impression as I had been forewarned of.  The gentlemen did their best, and of course Hilde Spiel is always good. 

In the past few days there has been a bit more brouhaha with Augsburg.  The mayor (SPD) had gone on vacation.  A CSU MP took advantage of his absence to represent himself as more protective of the Ausburgers’ interests than the SPD man.  He put forward a motion in the Bavarian legislative assembly, and Minister-President Goppel tried to block the broadcast.  But of course his attempt didn’t succeed--and so everything went as planned with “tomorrow in Augsburg.”

In Salzburg I was perhaps a bit too involved and hence too nervous to be able to take in every nuance.  But now I was very much in awe of your powers of language and your mastery of the dramatic in the truest sense of the word.  From now on “make precision a habit” will be one of my guiding principles.4

Yours

sincerely,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Henning Rischbieter: “Bankrott auf hohem Niveau” [“Bankrupt on a High Level”] in the Frankfurter Rundschau of August 1, 1974.  In this article Rischbieter wrote, “Thomas Bernhard is a reactionary writer; this play,The Force of Habit, could just as easily be called--and why isn’t it?--The Habit of Power.”

    In the September 9, 1974 issue of Theater heute, Henning Rischbieter again busied himself about The Force of Habit in article entitled “Salzburg/Strehler/Bernhard” (pp. 31-36).  On p. 34 there is a facsimile of Unseld’s telegram, on which there is a handwritten remark: “Counterquestion: why do you publish both Beckett and Brecht?  With warm regards, Henning Rischbieter.”  The reprint of the play follows on pp. 37-52.  Page 2 of the Theater heute of October 10, 1974 includes a rebuttal by Unseld:

“In our September issue Mr. Rischbieter published the verbatim entirety of my telegram to him.  The wording of this telegram was intelligible to its recipient, but it will not be intelligible to the reader of this periodical.

Here are the facts:

    On June 24, 1974 the editorial office of Theater heute requested permission to print The Force of Habit inTheater heute.  Suhrkamp Publications wavered for a time, because the play had been published in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, but in the end it acquiesced in the editorial office’s request.

    On July 31, 1974 Mr. Rischbieter reviewed Thomas Bernhard’s play in the Frankfurter Rundschau.  In this review he wrote of the play’s ‘reactionary aporia,’ of its ‘retrogressive mental landscape’ and wrote of the author, ‘Thomas Bernhard is a reactionary writer.’

    I thereupon sent a telegram that read as follows: ‘why are you reprinting such a reactionary play in “theater heute”? regards siegfried unseld.’

    Mr. Rischbieter’s reaction was then published in the September issue of Theater heute, the issue in which the play was reprinted.  But my telegram was published without any commentary informing the reader that its description of the play as ‘reactionary’ was a quotation.  In this same issue Mr. Rischbieter published another review of the play, a review from which the label ‘reactionary’ was entirely absent.

The commentary-less publication of the telegram could not but have given the reader the impression that Thomas Bernhard’s publisher and friend agreed with Mr. Rischbieter’s verdict.  Siegfried Unseld.” 

3. The ZDF broadcast a recording of the premiere of The Force of Habit at 8:30 p.m. on August 30, 1974.  Afterwards the play was discussed by Hilde Spiel, Ernst Haeussermann, Curd Jürgens, and Oscar Fritz Schuh.

4. “Make precision a habit” is the motto of the animal tamer in The Force of Habit (see Bernhard, Works, v. 16, p. 52).  

Letter No. 305

[Telegram]

Augsburg

September 6, 1974

en route to strasbourg today in augsburg more in two days1

sincerely bernhard

    Bernhard visited Augsburg on September 6, 1974.  According to the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung of September 7, 1974, “suddenly he was here; the bad-mouther of Augsburg, Thomas Bernhard, materialized in Augsburg without warning yesterday.  He paid an unannounced lightning visit to the editorial office of the AZ.  He marveled  incredulously and smilingly at the upswell of affronted civic pride against his play The Force of Habit.  On our asking him why Augsburg played such an important role in his play, he explained, ‘I could also have said Nuremburg, but Augsburg just sounds better.  But you know how it is when you’re writing.  The rhythm, the cadence--it’s got to be just right.’ 

"Yesterday in Augsburg: Bernhard Visits AZ," announced the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung on September 7, 1974.  The caption under the photograph of Bernhard reads: "IT REALLY WAS JUST A JOKE: Thomas Bernhard in the AZ's compositor's room."; the one under Bernhard's handwritten note, "TODAY IN AUGSBURG: Here the author personally corroborates this."  

Letter No. 306

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

December 20, 1974

Dear Thomas Bernhard--will call you on Monday morning, December 23, 9 a.m. Ohlsdorf post office.  New play outstanding.1

Yours sincerely, Siegfried Unseld

    Unseld is referring to The President, the manuscript of which Bernhard gave to Rudolf Rach in Hanover on December 8.  In that city and on that date, Bernhard, Botho Strauß, Franz Xavier Kroetz were awarded the Hannoverschen Dramatikerpreis [Hanoverian Dramatists’ Prize], which had been instituted by the Hannoverschen Kunstverein and the periodical Theater heute and was associated with a sum of DM 20,000; Bernhard’s award was for The Force of Habit.  “All German-language plays that had not yet received a premiere as of the entry deadline (January 1, 1975) were eligible to compete for the prize” (Theater heute, Vol. I, January 1975, p. 1).  The jury was comprised by Rudolf Lange, Bernhard Minetti, Günther Ries, Henning Rischbieter, and Ernst Wendt.  On his way back from Hanover, in Stuttgart, Bernhard met with Unseld, who was returning from a lecture in Ulm.  In hisChronicle, Unseld wrote of this meeting thus:

“We discussed the possibility of a meeting bridging the old and new years.  But the principal topic of our conversation was something entirely different: he told me in confidence that he had been invited to take over the Burgtheater as its director.  He had already said something to this effect over the phone and laughed it off.  Now he asked me in all seriousness what I thought of the offer.  I spontaneously replied that I could not advise him to accept it.  I said that he was an author and that in his writings he was devoted to unconditionality.  But running a theater means compromises--compromises with art, with artistic quality, with public taste, with commerce, with the authorities, etc.  But he had already made up his mind.  He found the prospect of taking up this position quite attractive; if he was going to run a theater anywhere in Europe it would have to be the Burgtheater.  He would take over in two years and then serve in the position for four years, from 1977 to 1981; by that point he would be 50 and then move on to pastures new.  I couldn’t do anything but accede to him in  this decision.

After our meeting he went to see Peymann to discuss the performance of The President with him.  He also made Peymann privy to this Burgtheater offer.     

The meeting “bridging the old and new years” took place in Ohlsdorf on December 29 , 1974.  Unseld wrote about the meeting in his Travel Journal, Salzburg-Ohlsdorf--Oberweis, December 28-30, 1974:

“Ohlsdorf.

A day with Thomas Bernhard.  I was punctual to the minute in my arrival at the farmhouse-cum-courtyard in Obernathal in Ohlsdorf in Gmunden am Traunsee.  Bernhard was unusually cheerful and gave me an ancient Chinese vase or jug that blends in well with our blue Chinese carpet.  It is quite a valuable present and certainly the first of such magnitude that Bernhard has ever given me.  Then we were on the move the entire day.  He led me to his ‘estates’; we took a walk along the Traunsee, then we headed southeast and hiked on the hills of the Salzkammergut; there we also visited Professor Wieland Schmied. [...]  In the evening we were together atMaletas in Oberweis, where I also spent the night.

Bernhard intends to finish writing Atzbach for the edition suhrkamp.  We will receive the text at the end of February.  [See n. 1 to Letter No. 194.]  He will also contribute to the First Reading Experiences book and to the selection of Brecht poems.  [Volume 250 of the suhrkamp taschenbücher was published in 1975 and was edited by Unseld.  Bernhard’s contribution, entitled In frühester und in rücksichtsloser Beobachtung… [In earliest and in most ruthless observation...], appeared on p. 96.  Volume 256 of the suhrkamp taschenbücher is Bertolt Brecht.Poems, selected by authors.  Bernhard did not contribute to this volume.]  His selection will center on the late, short Buckow poems.  He will not surrender the manuscript of Correction; the grounds for this refusal are either irrational or materialistic.  Additionally, he is working on a new play that will be finished in September 0f 1975 and that he expects to be premiered in June of 1976 at the Salzburg Festival.

A conversation about the edition suhrkamp.  Bernhard suggested we might want to go back to printing originals, meaning first editions of literary texts.  He thought that would give the edition suhrkamp a new lease on life.

Next day, Bernhard was ill: bronchitis.  Two days later he checked into the hospital, because he was worried about strain on his lungs.  I came down with the same chest cold exactly four days later.”

In his Chronicle Unseld added:

“Thomas Bernhard, December 29, 1974

The whole time I was in a sceptical frame of mind towards whatever schemes Bernhard might have dreamt up lately.  So for example the manuscript of Correction is certainly finished, but probably he isn’t handing it over because Correction is covered by our current financial arrangement.  But he would probably like to ‘fetch’ an even bigger fee for it.  This is pure speculation.

Then there is yet another scheme the sly fox has dreamt up: Bernhard now has three houses attached to some fairly large lots and sections of woodland.  He has just bought yet another residence in Gmunden [11 Lerchenfeldgasse] that he wants to fit out as his ‘archive’ for tax purposes.  He thinks it will be possible to deduct the entire cost of this house, DM 140,000.00, from his 1974 tax debt.  I voiced my very grave doubts about this, but he said he would be able to manage it.  He has now taken out a loan of DM 100,000.00 from the Oberbank Gmunden, and he would be very pleased if we could take on this loan.  I was pretty much speechless, and I certainly didn’t make him any promises; I was familiar with his tax situation thanks to a conversation with Mr. Schaffler.  We must carefully think over what we are going to do in this matter.” 

1975

Letter No. 307

St. Veit in Pongau, Salzburg Region

1.26.75

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Exactly ten years ago today I came to Frankfurt from Bremen and buttonholed a rather cold-ridden publisher in his lodgings and haggled with him over the sum of forty-thousand marks, which he eventually handed over to me.  Do you remember that?  Then I continued on to Giessen and delivered a lecture and with the money, with the forty thousand and the ten thousand from Bremen, I founded Nathal, and it has brought me much good fortune.1

Today I am writing to remind you of our two-party “conversation about the hundred thousand,” which we carried on while scurrying up the mountain in the vicinity of the bemused art historian and his wife in the middle of a Föhn storm, the very same storm that probably triggered our shared infection, and now I am asking you to hand over to me the exigent hundred thousand as soon as possible.  I am having nightmares about interest fees, and it’s all quite unnecessary.  Neither of us will be putting himself at risk if you stick the hundred thousand into my coat pocket in, for example, Salzburg, by way of covering my bank debt (sixteen percent interest).  Think back to the forty thousand after Bremen; that was an audacious move on the part of the publisher!  At the time.  Today money and the flu are again the main topics.  Please personally bring the money to me in Salzburg and remember that we are going to have another premiere in that town in ’76.2  Etcetera.  This is at the same time an invitation to you to resume our conversation, which was so brutally cut short by the virus.  It’s a good thing that you are well again!  I have written Rach an important letter that is no less harsh than candid, and by now he surely will have briefed you on it.3

I myself am now in finest fettle after an inflammation of my lungs that was very trying but that has been quashed thanks to the administration of millions of units of penicillin at the hospital in Wels under the supervision of my brother, who is a member of the staff there, and to three weeks spent in the clean air of the mountains where Frost was written.  I am working on the comedy for Salzburg, then I’ll finish up with Atzbach and in March I shall be in Portugal.  I very much hope we meet up before the middle of February in Salzburg, because at this time we are both absolutely immune.

Where did the virus come from?  Sincerely

Thomas B.

    See n. 3 to Letter No. 5.

    Bernhard inadvertently wrote “’66.”  The premiere of the play Die Berühmten [The Celebrities] was scheduled for July 1976 at the Salzburg Festival.

    Bernhard’s letter to Rodolf Rach is dated January 20, 1975 and reads as follows:

“Your (own or the theatrical publications division’s) indiscretion vis-á-vis the director of the Burgtheater has occasioned me enormous embarrassment here and also in the press and has perhaps even brought to ruin my plans with the Burgtheater.  This when we had after all agreed to keep absolutely silent.  But this is not the point of my letter.

You write (and the newspapers also write) that the The President will probably not be receiving a May premiere in Vienna.  I must make it clear that by no means, and I repeat: by no means, will I tolerate a postponement in Vienna, because by all means, and again I repeat: by all means, the first performance in Stuttgart must take place before the summer holidays.

Precisely and uncountermandably, and I am drawing the firm’s attention to my uttermost consistency at this early date by way of forestalling any instance of non-compliance with my demand, although I naturally assume that the firm is acting in complete and total conformity with my intentions.

Regardless of the circumstances, if the Burgtheater fails to make the premiere happen in May (I couldn’t care less about this premiere as a specifically Viennese one: I only agreed to it because Klingenberg wouldn’t release me from the contract), a delay of the premiere to a post-May date is out of the question.  Stuttgart must take place.  And it most certainly must even if we lose all the money that was to come from Vienna, which is a possibility.  That makes no difference to me.

From now on please act in conformity with my intentions in compliance with this genuine ultimatum, and keep me promptly briefed.

After a fortnight’s stay in hospital (a severe inflammation of the lungs arising from a case of the flu) I have arrived in a single bound back in Ohlsdorf, and on account of the fog I shall be reachable through next Tuesday at the Sonnhof Hotel in St. Veit in Pongau, Salzburg Region A 5621.”

Both performances ensued as planned: the world premiere, directed by Ernst Wendt at the Academy Theater in Vienna, on March 17, 1975, and the German premiere, directed by Claus Peymann, at the Württemberg Regional Theater in Stuttgart on May 21, 1975. 

Letter No. 308 

[Handwritten on the stationery of the Hotel Belvédère, St. Moritz]

St. Moritz 

2.12.75

Dear S. U.,

It was for me a completely & utterly splendid sojourn & I thank you for idea & invitation--the day has had an excellent effect on my mind.  I am convinced that our future is good, it is so clear & consequently the best sort of one for the purposes of our motives!1

I wish you a luck- & [joy-filled] SKI-WEEK.

Th. B.

    In his Travel Journal, Zurich-St. Moritz-Poschiavo, September 9-16, 1975, Unseld noted:

“On Monday evening in Chur I met with Thomas Bernhard, who traveled with me to St. Moritz and stayed there for two days.  On the whole it was a very productive conversation.  Vis-à-vis further financial undertakings, we were granted the possibility of doing as we see fit with The President, and he promised to deliver the manuscript ofCorrection at the end of April; this is definite.”

In his Chronicle entry for February 7, 1975, Unseld gives an account of how this shared vacation came about: “Telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard.  He bristled at the idea of my going on vacation at the very moment when decisions regarding The President were being made in Vienna.  He asked me to come to Salzburg; I declined to do this.  Minutes later he rang to tell me that he would visit me in St. Moritz instead.”

Letter No. 309

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

February 19, 1975

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I still have to thank you for the lines you left behind for me in St. Moritz.  I too am under the impression--a lasting one--that we get the best results when we work together.

The negotiations with the bank have commenced.

I am once again recalling your promise to give us the manuscript of Correction by the end of April.  You gave me your word, and I am building on it.

Right now, though, I have a request that we did not discuss in St. Moritz.  It has to do with the collection First Reading Experiences that I am editing.  Would it not still be possible for you to write a short text for this.  This really should be possible, and it would be a shame if you were not included in this collection.  So leap over the shadow, go to your typewriter and write down your memory down.  I would be most delighted.

Yours

sincerely,

[Siegfried Unseld]

Letter No. 310

Ohlsdorf

2.24.75

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Today came your letter, in which you put me in mind of my first two books.

You cannot expect anything from me beyond this brief declaration.1

Kaut wrote today that he had firmly reserved my place for ’76 and I now have a title for the work: The Celebrities.

I myself am going to be at the Frankfurt airport at eight-o-five on Saturday morning and will have an hour of time; the machine takes off for Lisbon at nine-twenty-five; I am writing this only thus precisely because I would be very happy to chat with you during this free hour.2

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard 

    Bernhard evidently attached to this letter his contribution to Volume 250 of the suhrkamp taschenbücher, the collection Erste Lese-Erlebnisse [First Reading Experiences], edited by Unseld.  In this text Bernhard described Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Representation and Christian Wagner’s poems as his first “intellectually decisive” books.

    In the upper-right margin of the letter is a handwritten comment by Unseld: “done v[iva] v[oce].”  Therefore, Unseld agreed to the proposed meeting.  He wrote about the encounter in a note for his Chronicle:

“The month began rather inauspiciously.  I was scheduled to meet Thomas

Bernhard at 8:05 a.m. at the airport; admittedly he did not specify where.  So I

sacrificed 200 meters of swimming to him, sidled through the customs check, and met him at the gate, although his flight was ten minutes early.

He was accompanied by his brother, who is very likable.  Bernhard was in a remarkably unjocular mood; his brother trailed us at a distance of ten meters.  Then he stayed in the waiting room.  Bernhard and I went into the Senator Lounge.  No sooner did we sit down than he launched into his cannonade of abuse: Dr. Marré’s letter had received a false echo, both from the bank and from Thomas Bernhard.   I had of course promised him in St. Moritz that we would try gradually to take on his debt to the bank; but Marré tendered a surety (to say nothing of the absorption of interest and further obligations on our part).  The bank, perhaps at the inspiration of Bernhard, reacted huffily to this: Bernhard, it said, was a good customer, so why did we tender a surety?  The bank, as I said, got huffy; Bernhard himself was outraged.  Marré, he said, was like Rach: impossible, incompetent, and basically fit for nothing but to be fired.  After this latest catastrophe he again demanded to be given the DM 100,000.00 on the spot and without any endorsements.  I refused to comply and stuck to the terms of the proposal I had made in St. Moritz.  After 20 very rough minutes Bernhard was at least prepared to ‘permit” our tendering another offer to the bank.  He is of course always the same: he is ruthless, extortionate, and he has even raised this to the level of a personal artistic ideology.  And this is only going to keep getting worse.

He was content with Wendt as a director for the Vienna production and also with Dorn’s idea of casting a man (Holtzmann) as the first lady.  He wasn’t interested in anything but the DM 100,000.00.

He plans to come and see the matter settled on March 15.”             

Letter No. 311

[handwritten; picture postcard: “Lisboa--Praça de Touros do Campo Pequeno”--Lisbon, Campo Pequeno bullring]

[Lisbon]

3.7.75

--for your own ARENA! I shall get in touch on the 15th, at around 3:00; yours & your wife’s sincerely,

Thomas B.

Letter No. 312

Ohlsdorf

3.18.75

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

My memories of my visit in Klettenbergstrasse are very fond ones.1

I have, however, given up hope on seeing the program of the tour2, and my desire for new books, especially books from the BS, is no longer being acknowledged.  Perhaps good things happen in ones.

Today Peymann is going to be here; everything looks as though it will turn out well.

Please talk to Rach about the videotaping for television and then work out a deal with the television network; what really matters for me is that the Stuttgart performance, and none of the other ones, should be broadcast.  For me this is all about keeping Vienna from coming to us with anything.

I believe The President is off to a good start.

At the moment all is good.

Thomas B.

    In a note on this Conversation on Saturday, March 15, 1975, in Frankfurt for his Chronicle, Unseld wrote:

“Thomas Bernhard arrived two hours late.  In Lisbon the passengers for his flight were understandably searched and required to show their papers several times.  This screening procedure lasted two hours, and even on board the plane some very young on-duty soldiers stood with machine guns in firing position.

Bernhard witnessed the new ‘revolution.’  Inwardly a drama, outwardly an operetta.  He said that Portugal is now a communist country ruled by a communist military regime; their goal is a socialist state patterned not on the the Soviet Union or China but rather on Cuba and the GDR.  Everything, he said, would develop in this direction; they were probably clever enough not to break with the other western-European countries, but the course had definitely been set, and now that Spinola had left another backlash against this development would probably no longer be possible.

Moreover, he was glad, and indeed, elated, to have escaped from this troublesome situation.  He listened almost cheerfully to my reflections on his

DM 100,00.00 demand.  He signed the loan contract and an additional agreement immediately; he was nonchalant in his acceptance of DM 25,000.00.

After that, everything went smoothly; he approved the performance of The Ignoramus in Brunswick, the performances of The Force of Habit in Rotterdam and Ljubljana, and took in my news about the planned production of The President with interest.  On May 20 in Vienna, with Ernst Wendt directing and Beck and Krottendorf as the two protagonists.  In Stuttgart Beckmann and Heedegen are slated to play the principal roles, and at the beginning or in the middle of June Dorn will put on The President and His Wife with two men (Held and Holtzmann).  He was pleased.  He especially found Wendt a very good choice.

He has definitively promised Correction for the end of April; this probably means he will give it to me in Vienna in the middle of May.

He had a very guilty conscience about his demeanor at the Senator Lounge a fortnight earlier.  I told him once again that he could make whatever moves he liked along with me, but not against me, and I told him that on that very day at the Senator Lounge I had come very close to walking out on him, that only my respect for his work had deterred me.

He is and remains a remarkable man.  Undoubtedly a genius but also saddled with all the perils of a genius.  Self-indulgence, an unrealistic outlook, and always ready to strong-arm his partner in material matters.  On the other hand he was amiable, chivalrous towards my wife, and he felt unbelievably comfortable in the setting of Klettenbergstraße, where the two Chinese vases he had given my wife were standing on the mantelpiece.”

2.     The Force of Habit toured the German-speaking countries in 1975; for more on the program see n. 1 to Letter No. 299.

Letter No. 313

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

March 24, 1975

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Sincere thanks for your letter of March 18.  I also found our most recent encounter quite agreeable.  The vino tinto, by the way, was excellent, and even the candied greengages were and are exquisite.

In Vienna everything seems to be going normally; Wendt is rehearsing.

We will reserve the television rights for Peymann.1

The tour continues to get rave reviews.  Minetti is visibly improving.

I am sending you the tour program by the same post, and I shall also try to send you a few volumes from the BS and from the new series.2

I would be really pleased if you could give just a few readings in the second half of September.  Shouldn’t we have a genuine go at this?  We are organizing a Suhrkamp book week for that period, and I would be pleased to see you there reading, chatting away.  I would be glad to be among those present then.

Yours

with warm regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    The production of The President that was ultimately recorded and broadcast by both the ZDF (July 11, 1978) and ORF was not Peymann’s but Wendt’s at the Bayrischen Staatsschauspiel (first performance: July 1976).  In this production the sets were designed by Michael Degen, the president was played by Kurt Meisel, and the first lady by Maria Becker.

    The enclosure cannot be identified.

Letter No. 314

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

April 25, 1975

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Our deadline is approaching; we had of course agreed that I would receive the manuscript of Correction by the end of April.  I attach the greatest imaginable degree of importance to this.  Please send me a telegram whenever you mail it or have found some other way of dispatching it to Germany.

Where will you be on May 15 and 16?  On those two days I am going to be in Vienna; on the evening of the 15th I am giving a lecture at the Österreichische Gesellschaft für Literatur [Austrian Society for Literature]; on the morning of the 16th I shall be at the university, and in the afternoon and also in the evening of that day I shall be meeting with book-dealers.  In the event that you are in Vienna on Friday the 16th and wish to take part in a dinner with some book-dealers, that would be very nice.  I really would be delighted.

On May 17 I shall fly back to Frankfurt so that I can be in Vienna again on the 20th for the performance and stop over at Stuttgart Station on my way back.

I hope very much that we see each other.  Please drop me a line.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

Letter No. 315

[Telegram]


Ottnang

4.30.75

my flight with ms wednesday daytime or thursday next week which suits you better sincerely

bernhard

Letter No. 316

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

April 30, 1975

Meeting possible May 8.  Requesting you phone Ms. Zeeh.

Meeting likewise possible, 15, 16, or 20 in Vienna.

Letter on its way.1

v. sincerely, S.U.

1. The meeting took place in Vienna.  Unseld wrote of it in his Travel Journal Vienna, May 15-18, 1975:

“This was certainly an extremely tiring but also extremely successful and then again extremely enjoyable trip.  In Vienna the infrastructure for our activities really just keeps improving.  An important decision was made: the Vienna book-dealers fairly begged to be allowed to participate in the Suhrkamp book week, and I allowed myself to be persuaded to have the book week take place in Austria, and perhaps specifically right after the German book week, meaning that it would then begin on September 29; Thomas Bernhard is even prepared to read; we will also consider adding other readings and activities. […]

The […] most important thing: Thomas Bernhard gave me the manuscript of his Correction; I read 60 pages straight away, it is an utterly superlative thing, and there is absolutely no doubt about it: a pillar and centerpiece of our schedule for the second half of the year.

Thursday, May 15, 1975, 6 p.m.:

Thomas Bernhard visited me at the hotel; we had a very pleasant conversation; he handed over the manuscript to me, and I handed the banknotes over to him.  We hurried at the double to the Palais Palffy, where I was to give my lecture “The Vocation of a Literary Publisher Today.”  I arrived exhausted and bathed in sweat and was obliged to deliver the lecture under the auspices of this sweatiness.  But this lecture went down well.  I have seldom received so many compliments, let alone from so many competent people.  Dr. Kraus, Dr. Berger, some book-dealers, then Hilde Spiel, who had listened “with fascination,” Friederike Mayröcker, and the following day Thomas Bernhard told me that he had been “delighted” with his publisher.  So on the whole it seems to have been quite effective.

Sunday, May 17, 1975:

Lunch, a lengthy one, with Thomas Bernhard, his aunt, Ms. Hilde Spiel, and the book-dealer Christl Wagner.  A very congenial group; here we debated the establishment of an Austrian library at Suhrkamp Publications [see the attachment to Letter No. 87], the cultivation of new authors, towards which Bernhard naturally has a very skeptical attitude.  (He views ‘the remote resemblance’ of E.Y. Meyr to him as ‘a very close resemblance’; we ought, he thinks, to take note of this ‘instance of plagiarism’ and forbid Mr. Meyer to write in this manner, and under no circumstances should we print anything he writes in it!)  In the course of this conversation it once again became clear what a strong position is occupied by Bernhard and Handke; at the moment these two sum up Austrian literature, at least as far as the younger generation is concerned. […]

Bernhard and Hilde Spiel proposed the inclusion of Alexander Lernet-Holenia in the BS, and specifically with a volume called Mars in Aries.   

Thomas Bernhard quite rightly pointed out that the collection of texts about him, On Thomas Bernhard [see Letter No. 87, n. 114], was now hopelessly out-of-date; I promised him a new collection; Reinhard Urbach is under consideration as a possible editor.  At first Bernhard was against the idea, but then he assented to it; perhaps we should put out two books: one on Bernhard the prose-writer and the other on the dramatist.  Urbach and Ernst Wendt could be suitable as editors.

Bernhard was very confident on account of the forthcoming performance of  The President that evening; admittedly he was not planning to attend it; he was going to go to the cinema instead.  But Wendt, he said, had done an excellent, indeed, a perfect job.  His optimism seemed suspicious to me.   

My suspicion was destined to be borne out.  The performance scraped by, was greeted with approbation, obviously, that was to be expected; a few people walked out on the performance under protest, but somehow the overall effect was unsatisfying.  The first two acts were too long; the woman playing the president, Ida Krottendorf, was not up to the task, especially not vocally.  [President: Kurt Beck]  The fifth scene with the lying in state struck me as unsuccessful in every respect.  A small coffin that looked like a lunar rocket; embarrassing funereal pomp.  Peymann certainly would have directed the thing differently, with more severity.  But the set design, with the exception of the fifth scene, was perfect [Set designs: Rolf Glittenberg].  On the whole this performance gave one the impression that in virtue of his excessive fidelity to the text the director has done more harm than good.  But of course we are all making a mistake: we accept and adopt Bernhard’s work too precisely.  A half a year ago, after my first reading of the manuscript, I told him that the first two acts were too long.  Bernhard remembered this when we spoke about the performance after it.  I am anxious about the reviews.”

In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of May 20, 1975 Georg Hensel wrote under the headline “A First-Class Burial”: “Thomas Bernhard has an astonishing capacity to capitalize on his incapacity to write a dialogue.  Perhaps this time he has overrated this talent a little.”  Herbert Gamper’s review in the Weltwoche (“Geisteswitterung des Zeitalters” [“Intellectual Weather of the Age”], May 28, 1975) begins with the following sentences: “The latest play by the Austrian gloom-writer Thomas Bernhard was advertised as ‘an anarchists’ play.’  But it is much more of a play about anarchy and an anarchic play.  At its premiere in Vienna it was mislaid. [...]”

In a special note in his Chronicle headed Vienna, May 15-18, 1975, Conversations with Thomas Bernhard, Unseld remarked:

“Bernhard informed me that he was not only writing the play for the Salzburg Festival in July of 1976 [The Celebrities], but also another one for Vienna and in November 1976.  I was inwardly terrified because I am getting the jitters about the subject-matter on which Bernhard is basing these plays.  The Salzburg play is of course once again supposed to be devoted to the portrayal of successful and “celebrated” people, then the Vienna play will deal with “critics,” but there ought to be something else going into these plays.  “Ambition, hate, and fear and the like” [This is an approximate quotation of a recurring phrase from The President (DR).]--that is no longer enough.  After the premiere Bernhard had no interest in going to the actors’ premiere party; we met in the 13th district in a garden-café.  Present there were the Spiels, his aunt, and the architect Hufnagl with his wife; Hufnagl is one of Bernhard’s closest friends and advisers; Wolfgang Schaffler had repeatedly spoken to me about him, Bernhard’s evil spirit.  Hufnagl is an active, vital fellow, not without intelligence, and also not without respect for Suhrkamp, but he must be reckoned with.  Mrs. Maleta had a peculiar lot tonight: of course for a time her husband [as president of the national council] had been been acting president of Austria, and from her Bernhard had gleaned the details of princely splendor for the act set in the bedroom; her husband did not attend the premiere (allegedly he was with a lady friend in Venice, just as the president in the play was with a lady friend in Portugual).  Mrs. Maleta was with a male friend, a dentist (not, as in the play, with the chaplain or butcher), at the premiere.  The most remarkable thing: Ida Krottendorf as the first lady had a hairdo that resembled Mrs. Maleta’s, but these are obviously nuances for the cognoscenti alone.

Only a few days later Bernhard and Unseld met again; the record of this meeting in the publisher’s Travel Journal, Stuttgart, May 21-22, 1975 reads thus:

“That evening saw the German premiere of Thomas Bernhard’s play The President.  The exact antithesis of Vienna: the first two acts were outstanding, and it was easy to see how much depends on the performers.  Edith Heerdegen [as the first lady] and Doris Schade [as Mrs. Frölich] were outstanding; the hour-and-a-half slipped by effortlessly.  The part after the intermission, though, was the antithesis; the president--Horst Christian Beckmann--couldn’t cope with the role, and so there were some embarrassing longueurs.  If the play had been performed in two hours, it would have been a success.   The actress was played by Libgart Schwarz, Peter Handke’s wife.  She did a good job.  At the end the director was booed, perchance in lieu of the author?

A long premiere night.  But at least Thomas Bernhard had turned up.  It was impossible to tell whether he was in the house or not; Peter Handke had come; originally he did not plan to see the play.  But the evening with the two authors and with Peymann afterwards was quite pleasurable.  The most surprising thing: Thomas Bernhard and Peter Handke, who have of course been increasingly polarized by the Austrian environment, took a shine to each other.  I took advantage of this to propose the idea of having a joint reading by the two authors hosted by the Viennese book-dealers on September 29 in Vienna.  Neither of them objected.  Then Bernhard gave me his consent the next morning; I shall write to Handke and then obtain his confirmation.  This is an important piece of news I am bringing home with me. Next morning another very amiable conversation with Thomas Bernhard.  It centred on the future of his next two works.”

Letter No. 317

Ohlsdorf

6.10.751

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I have written for Minetti a dramatic text that he must perform, execute like an exercise, while he still exists, before he is irretrievably defunct; and yet it is an art/work, and I would like to know if we can put out a book entitled Minetti in the BS.  Minetti is supposed to make his entrance on New Year’s Eve at the Stuttgart Theater.

It is a text exclusively for Minetti and exclusively for that evening.  Why do I hear nothing from Frankfurt, the holy city?  For me, all other German cities, Hamburg, excepted, are utterly and absolutely unbearable; Frankfurt stands alone as a permanent majestic hideous gorgeous creation!  The others are lifeless, unbearable brainless, shameless, tawdry museum pieces.

Veritable lumber rooms of human deadwood in which feats of art come to term only while being veritably kicked up the backside.

The President was of course not intended for the assholes who slept through it.

Please see that a deal with the Poles (enclosed letter) is worked out and concluded.2.

I am in especially good form.

When will you be coming to this neck of the woods?3

Sincerely,

Thomas B.

    The letter bears a receipt-stamp date of June 23, 1975.

    In the enclosed May 28, 1975 letter from the Polish publishing firm of Wydawnitcwo Poznanskie, the editor Adela Skrentna asks if she may purchase the rights to a Polish translation of Frost from Bernhard or from Insel Publications and makes a concrete bid for a contract for the purchase.

    At the end of the letter there are an “x” and an arrow referring to a handwritten postscript on the back of the page; the postscript reads, “What is going on with the Salzburgers & Viennese?”



Letter No. 318

Ohlsdorf

6.[between 10 and 30].75

requesting complete galley proofs “correction”

bernhard

Letter No. 319

Frankfurt am Main

July 1, 1975

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I am still going to write you a letter in reply to your latest one.

But today the following:

Today Suhrkamp Publications turns 25.  We are not celebrating but rather putting out good books, for example theSalzburg Plays in the setting of the suhrkamp taschenbücher.  By the same post we are sending you a copy express; two more are on their way from us.1

We printed a run of 10,000 copies; retail price DM 6.00; the deduction of the honorarium will follow as usual.   Please let us know how many copies you would like to have.

Yours

very sincerely,

Siegfried Unseld

    The Salzburg Plays [Die Salzburger Stücke], Volume 257 of the suhrkamp taschenbücher, contains The Ignoramus and the Madman and The Force of Habit.

Letter No. 320

Ohlsdorf

7.6.75

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I will attempt once again to put in writing everything, apart from certain very basic things that I can now no longer formulate, that was disclosed in the letter I sent you about five weeks ago and that you say you have not received.

I am writing a theatrical text which is entitled Minetti, and which will be performed on New Year’s Eve in Stuttgart, and only there and then and never again!!!, with Minetti in the principal role and which is a text intended exclusively for Minetti, for I must exploit this magnificent actor for my theatrical purposes while he is at his peak, and that can’t last much longer.  My question was whether we could put out a BS volume in December.

In my letter there was enclosed another letter (now unfortunately lost) from a Polish publisher in Lodz, whose name I can’t recall, who complains that he wrote three or four letters to Suhrkamp entreating (!) you to grant him the rights toFrost, and that he received no reply and now thinks he can obtain the rights to publication in Polish from me, but I don’t have those rights.  Please try to find out which publisher in Lodz this is; there can hardly be hundreds of them.

An important point in the “lost” letter is devoted to my asking you whether it would be possible to extend the July deadline for the balance (the remaining half) of the loan to August 2.

I then wrote urging you to finalize the contracts with Salzburg and Vienna, which is now no longer possible, because the people are already on vacation, or, in the case of Salzburg, have something else on the brain; I have negotiated and finalized everything barring the issuing of the contract, because it is now firmly settled that I will be bringing out The Celebrities next summer in Salzburg and in Vienna in October/November a play at the Burg in honor of Klingenberg’s departure.  But I have already told you several times to draw up contracts with these two, Kaut and Klingenberg; in the end these plays are important things that have no precedent in these times and it would be essential to get behind them.

Unfortunately my oft-expressed wish for a couple of individual volumes of the BS to be sent to me has fallen on deaf ears; so far I have not received a single book; the wish was distinctly articulated in St. Moritz.  So I guess whatever I am interested in I will just have to buy.

Much else was divulged in this letter; none of it is coming to mind at the moment, but to move on: from Michel Demet, the translator of my plays into French, for Gallimard, who works at the Sorbonne, I hear that several good theaters wish to perform my plays, if Gallimard will publish them; Gallimard will publish them if the theaters will perform them and so I am asking you to communicate personally and explicitly with Erval from Gallimard about this business so that something will happen.  The fact is that there are so many possibilities that never get exploited because I myself do not have the time to do so, because I naturally must work without interruption on my intellectual work, which of course seems to me to be of the utmost importance; on the other hand the firm--and this is a genuine accusation--lets everything follow its own course and nothing follows its own course on its own!!!--and to whom am I reciting this sad old tale if not the firm?!   And what is going on with England and so on!  There have been so many times here in which I have been driven to the brink of despair  over the fact that quite simply nothing will get done unless I do it myself; the firm reacts only when it is given a good shove towards something, and even then only rarely and for the most part ineptly.

Yesterday I received the so-called Salzburg Plays, but my very first glance at it had to bump into an irresponsible misprint: the performance dates of the Ignoramus are immediately followed by Mr. Vince and one Ms. Gstrein, but the sets were by the magnificent Hermann and the costumes by Moidele Biekel!  This is quite simply irresponsible brainless feeble-mindedness on the part of the people who have been made responsible for such a book and it occasions me only anger and nausea, nothing else.  There is much to discuss and clarify, but I cannot content myself with your meeting with Schaffler on August 2 and perhaps also meeting with me afterwards; I find such an idea unbearable and thefundamental issues I once again have to discuss with you have nothing to do with the usual estival vacation-mania.  It is essential for you to set aside some time for me as soon as possible and to come here.  We cannot keep working together in this desultory fashion.

Regarding Correction: probably nobody will comprehend what it is; people never make the slightest effort to comprehend anything; this is not an age of effort, but this is something I really have no business even starting to care about; but still, I have never before received the galley proofs in such maddening, nerve-racking installments.  What a fine pass the firm has come to when it no longer sends me the whole package at once, as it always did until now.  Wherever one looks one is only ever dealing with incompetence, and slovenliness is the foundation from which this incompetence draws its by no means negligible wages.

My dear Siegfried Unseld, please treat these lines as a challenge, as in a challenge to a duel, and inform me by letter or telegram where and when we can meet as soon as possible either here at my house or at some place in the immediate vicinity; I cannot travel any farther.  We must speak with each other.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

Regarding Correction: as this has been a four year-long undertaking, it deserves to be literally bowed down to, but I fear that this book is going to be allowed to slip away like all those other books that have been printed so far but that now collectively amount to nothing but one big mindless rubbish heap!  It’s all stupidity, shamelessness, charlatanry!  I refuse to put up with it and I will have nothing to do with this now-blatant case of terminal degenerative dementia!

Letter No. 321

[Address: Ohlsdorf; handwritten telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

July 11, 1975

Proposal for meeting Thursday evening July 31 Munich or August 3 from 3-5 p.m. in Ohlsdorf.  Letter follows.

Sincerely SU

Letter No. 322

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

July 15, 1975

Re Galley Sheet 143: when you send back Correction please insert the missing part.  Regards Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 323

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

July 15, 1975

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

A publisher, too, is only human.  So he also needs to be stroked.  If he is only beaten like a dog, then he obviously can only turn canine...I sent you a telegram with two dates for a meeting.  I hope one of them suits you.  I would then bring the third quarter of the loan to this meeting.

Regarding the contracts, I had decided from the outset not to start anything before the holidays.  Both Kaut and Klingenberg would have let things stall over the holidays; the contracts would then have been left sitting for weeks, and that is not good.  If a contract exists, it should be signed.  I shall send Kaut his contract at the end of July, and Klingenberg his in mid-August.

I cannot judge whether Minetti is makeable into a volume in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp; in order to do that I would actually have to be familiar with the text or have received some detailed information about it from you.  What is more, it is worth considering that we are probably going to try to include The Celebrities and also the following play in the BS, and an excessively large accumulation of titles by you in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp is not good for either party.

I don’t understand why you get so riled up about typographical errors; these things can be rectified in a partial second printing, and then the case is closed.  In a large company, one cannot do everything oneself, and typos are unfortunately bound to crop up.  Nobody is perfect--except for Thomas Bernhard, when he is ranting.

Ms. Borcher gave the galley proofs for Correction to our mailing department in two batches, and I was assured she was doing so for technical reasons relating to customs.  After all, you don’t wish to have to deal with customs duties when you collect the packages. 

That is also the reason why we haven’t sent you any books so far.  If we send you books, you have to pay customs duties and you rant; if we don’t send you any, you also rant.

Apart from that, I quite like, not to mention cherish, Correction.  I am gearing myself up for it, and we are going make the book our absolute focus.  And so during a function at the Suhrkamp book week in Frankfurt on Friday, September 19, in front of about 150 invited guests, from A ([Hermann Josef] Abs) to Z (Professor Zeller, Marbach), the most important people from the intellectual and economic sphere will be in attendance.  The centerpiece of this function is a 20-minute reading by you from Correction.

We negotiated a deal with the Poles quite some time ago!  The publishing firm made us an offer for Frost: 7% for 10,000 copies, payable on publication, half in forex, half in zloty.  We accepted this offer; since then we have been waiting for the signed contract.  We presumably still could arrange for everything to be paid in zloty; in that case, the honorarium would be non-transferrable.  Is this what you would like?

During Erval’s Frankfurt visit four weeks ago I spoke with him about an edition of the Plays.  He was planning to look into it.  Nothing follows its own course on its own!  We are doing our bit.

And not a word in acknowledgment of what we have accomplished with the productions of the plays!  Here a really solid foundation has been laid for you.

I hope we see each other soon.

Yours

sincerely,

[Siegfried Unseld]

Letter No. 324

Ohlsdorf

7.7.75

on no account issue amras as suhrkamptaschenbuch

thomas bernhard

Letter No. 325

Ohlsdorf

7.22.75

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The main shortcoming of your letter of the 15th is that you quite simply wrote it and sent it off much too late, but it does contain the remark that you “cherish” Correction, a remark that you do not dare to utter directly, only indirectly; all the same, it makes me happy, because it has been a great many years since anybody said that he cherished anything I had done.  That makes up for the whole multi-year-old morass produced by all the critics.

The galley proofs have been corrected and will be sent back to Frankfurt along with this letter, and I would like you to send me two rough paginated copies.

One must possess a great many sterling qualities to go two months without comments!  But it’s all well and good that you have such robust faith in me.

Today I shan’t expatiate on all the more or less important points of your letter; we can discuss those here on August 3.  But I will touch on just one of them: please don’t send a contract of any sort either to Salzburg or to Vienna; we will do that in October or November!!1

That you are only human is clear, and what a human you are!  And what a human indeed! and what a publishing firm!

Regarding the galley proofs of Correction: I have never before seen such exquisite typesetting and I would like you to communicate to the typesetter  my admiration of this quite outstanding, and indeed well-nigh incredible, superhuman achievement!; because of course I am well-acquainted with the manuscript; it is a masterly performance.  And I would like you to have the compositor of Correction sent a bottle of champagne at my expense (hence via the debiting of my account!).  And please don’t forget this request of mine!!2

I naturally thought you would come when I asked you to, on the 3rd with the third and fourth installment.  But as always, come to Ohlsdorf in a good mood.

In excellent form, with sincere regards,

Thomas B.

    A letter from Bernhard to Josef Kaut, also dated July 22, sheds light on the background of the Salzburg Festival’s reticence vis-à-vis The Celebrities.  In this letter Bernhard asked Kaut why The Celebrities did not figure in the published program for the following year’s festival.  After some shilly-shallying on Kaut’s part, Bernhard wrote him another letter on August 20; in it he withdrew the play from consideration for performance in Salzburg and stated, “Theater history long ago decided who was more important to whom, Bernhard to the Festival or the Festival to Bernhard.” 

    On August 8, 1975, Burgel Zeeh sent Bernhard a letter informing him that a bottle of Veuve Cliqot Brut champagne had been sent to Rolf Kopf at the typesetting and bookbinding firm of Göbel.

Letter No. 326 

Frankfurt am Main

August 5, 1975

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Apropos of our Salzburg conversation1 I would like to cite the following sentence penned by the 61-year-old Goethe: “Illness only preserves the healthy.”  The fact that this sentence hails from a controversial, erotic poem of Goethe’s, a poem that a few people have described as pornographic, does not diminish its truth in the slightest.2

I shall do my best to prevent the simultaneous publication of Correction and The Cause from working to your and our detriment.  So far we only have to deal with the possibility that the Fundamental Cause [Ur-Sache] is simply essential to a precise understanding of Correction.

But I am taking note of your pledge not to submit any further manuscripts to Residenz.  Should you ever contemplate licensing a work to a third party or even to Residenz again, I would like to be consulted about it before a decision is made.  This strikes me as the least we owe to our collaborative relationship. 

I am granting you your wish: Amras will be coming out in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, and even at the very top of the new schedule--in other words, in May of 1976.  On September 19 you will receive the fourth installment of the loan.

On September 29 we were also planning to speak with Klingenberg in Vienna.

As far as the procedure for the new play goes, Mr. Kaut is supposed to receive the manuscript at the end of October.  Zurich will have the contract ready in time for it to reach Mr. Kaut on the same day.

I hope very much that by the time you receive this letter you will have sent off the corrections to Correction.  We are anxiously awaiting them.  Hopefully you have crossed out, modified, or at least put a question mark at the end of “public menace of a whoremongering State.”  For your sake.  For our sake.  Not for my sake.3

With this in mind,

Yours

sincerely,

Siegfried Unseld

P.S. Enclosed you will find the contract for Correction in duplicate.       

    Unseld wrote of this conversation in his Travel Journal, Salzburg--Munich--Salzburg, July 31-August 4, 1975:

“In Salzburg there were essentially three points to settle:

1. The placement of Thomas Bernhard’s new play The Celebrities at the 1976 Salzburg Festival.  The director of the festival, Mr. Kaut, had already hinted to me of difficulties.  His dramatic advisor, Professor Haeusserman, is adamantly opposed to Bernhard.  It must be said that the flock of Bernhardians has thinned quite a bit in the past six months (and even in the inner circle).  Bernhard knows that when push comes to shove he can’t count on anybody but the Austrian minister of culture and Mr. Kaut.  The governor of the state of Salzburg has wanted to “offload” him for a long time.  This makes it all the more astonishing that Bernhard is pressing to have a memoir of his early years in Salzburg published.  That is guaranteed to trigger yet another scandal.  It was now agreed that Mr. Kaut would receive the manuscript and the contract (one with the same conditions as pertained to The Force of Habit) together at the end of October.  Apart from this, the festival was very much in Suhrkamp’s bad books; the props and sets [from the tour of The Force of Habit] returned to Salzburg in catastrophic shape.

2. Conversation with Mr. Wolfgang Schaffler of Residenz Publications, Salzburg.

This was devoted exclusively to the timing of the release of Thomas Bernhard’s book Die Ursache [{An Indication of } The Cause]; as I said, it is a description of Bernhard’s early years in Salzburg, a highly critical settling of scores with the secondary school Bernhard attended, with the Church, and with Salzburg’s local institutions.  I knew that Bernhard had promised Schaffler a manuscript, but I had not been informed that this book was to be published at the same time as Correction.   I gave the two of them—Bernhard and Schaffler—a severe dressing-down and asked Shaffler to postpone the publication date, but that doesn’t suit him; ostensibly he has already sent off 50 galley sheets, the book is already half printed, and he has scheduled only a single shipment in mid-September.  I didn’t want to play my last card, and so we have agreed on a more or less simultaneous release.  Our argument will be this: the tendering of this book to Schaffler springs from an old promise; moreover, this text is a piece of the autobiography of the young Bernhard; by no means may this Cause be regarded as the cause of other texts, and therefore this author desires to have the two texts issued simultaneously.

In the light of this not very pleasant discussion, there will be no further pursuit of joint undertakings.

3. Conversation with Thomas Bernhard.

I spoke with him several times; naturally the publication of The Cause stood at the center of our conversations.  Bernhard really just expects the simultaneous publication to make the debate a bit livelier (whereas Mr. Schaffler is of the opinion that the flagging Bernhard debate is in urgent need of such a jab).

Bernhard will send us the corrections to Correction in three days.  He said that the cover that I showed him was “perfect.”  But the blurb has to be revised; I shall do this myself (Residenz Publications’ cover of The Cause strikes me as absolutely awful and totally inappropriate for Bernhard.)

A long discussion about Amras in the suhrkamp taschenbücher series.  He won’t have it.  Amras, he said, was one of his most important titles and had always been his favorite text, and it had to be in the BS.  I acquiesced.  So we will be introducing this title not via the st but rather in the context of the next schedule of the BS.

In the SLZ [see n. 1 to Letter No. 291] we have carte blanche with Verstörung or Amras.

He gave his word to give the reading in Frankfurt on Friday, September 20 (duration: 20 minutes), and a reading in Vienna (duration: 30-40 minutes).  On the other hand he has no interest in traveling to Linz.  We will negotiate a deal for the Viennese play with Mr. Klingenberg in Vienna on September 29.

On September 19 Bernhard would also like to receive the fourth installment of the loan.”

In a letter dated February 20, 1975, Bernhard consented to Wolfgang Schaffler’s publication of an autobiographical volume under the imprint of Residenz Publications.  The book originally had been given the working titleRemembering (see Letters Nos. 244, 256, 271, and 283); later it was supposed to be called The Boarding School, and by June, when Bernhard sent Schaffler the manuscript, it bore its definitive title, The Cause.  For more on the genesis of The Cause see Volume 10, pp. 516ff. of Bernhard’s Works.

2. Johann Wolfgang Goethe, The Diary (1810). 

3. In the published novel, there is certainly longer any mention of a “public menace of a whoremongering State,” although two phrases that do occur in it--“completely dilapidated State” and “this perversity and prostitution in place of a State” (Bernhard, Works, Vol. 4, p. 26)-- are perhaps equally harsh.  Correction was delivered to the bookstores on September 10, 1975, with a retail price of

DM 28.00.

Letter No. 327

Frankfurt am Main

September 4, 1975

Dear Mr. Bernhard,

By the same post we are sending you two large-format printed items; one of them is a poster, and the other is a prospectus that is being printed in a run of 2 million copies.1  You are there in the middle of the first row, and somehow that really denotes to a turn your position here in the house.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    Neither the poster nor the prospectus survive in Bernhard’s posthumous papers.  The DIN-A4-sized (8.27” × 11.69”) poster bears the slogan “Man lives off his mind” and displays photographs of 25 of the firm’s authors.  Bernhard is third from the left in the first row.

Letter No. 328

[Address: (Ohlsdorf); telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

September 4, 1975

Would you like to read in a church in Schaffhausen on the 21st/22nd?

Sincerely Unseld

Letter No. 329

[Telegram]       

Gmunden

9.17.75

arriving airport friday 8.25 a.m. requesting good hotel room1

sincerely thomas bernhard

    Bernhard came to Frankfurt for the opening function of the Suhrkamp book week (September 18-28 in Germany with over 100 functions) held in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the foundation of Suhrkamp on July 1, 1975.  Unseld wrote about the first day of the book week in his journal under the date of September 19, 1975:

“On my arrival in Klettenbergstraße from Bonn [The Suhrkamp book week opened on September 18 in the auditorium of the University of Bonn; Max Frisch read from his Montauk, which had been delivered to the bookstores on September 10, 1975], I encountered a very cheerful Thomas Bernhard.  We still had an hour to spare for a conversation; then the Suhrkamp reception began in Siesmayerstraße.

Approximately 250 invited guests; these were basically the firm’s friends in Frankfurt.  I delivered the Frankfurt-oriented version of my speech for the opening of the book week.  Then Bernhard read the final pages of the first part of Correction; he read magnificently, elatedly, alacritously, bringing to the forefront the musical structure of the book.  Afterwards conversations lasting till midnight.  It was a starting-point beautifully grounded in sympathy, and we were nurtured by many warm wishes.”

Under the headline “Neue Narrenburg,”[“New City of Fools”] the Frankfurter Neuen Presse of September 22, 1975 reported on the function as follows:

“Unseld celebrated the 25th anniversary of the foundation of Suhrkamp with radiant optimism and wished his red wine and Sekt-feted guests a ‘long night’ in the best of spirits.  He, the Man of Will, had managed to coax the despairingly lugubrious writer out of his Austrian sequestration and present him to the public.  A special attraction [...]

Bernhard writes and speaks in a controlled automatism; he enunciated his long sentences briskly and clearly.  Whether one is hearing him or reading him, one is somehow or other drawn into the undertow of his idiom.

The book seems to me to be consciously trying to follow in the footsteps of Stifter’s Narrenburg; here as there a fantastic architecture and biography, a biographical compulsion, is generated by the mutually interpenetrating and conterminous themes.”

Bernhard read one more time in connection with the Suhrkamp book week, at 8:00 p.m. on September 29 at the opening of the week’s Austrian segment (September 29-October 3, 1975) at the Haus der Begegnungen [House of Encounters] in the Kagram district of Vienna.  In the Travel Journal Vienna--Graz--Innsbruck, September 29-October 3, 1975, Unseld wrote:

“At 7:00 p.m. I met Thomas Bernhard at the Hotel Intercontinental.  He was furious and made the grave accusation that his appearance, our appearance, had been deliberately booked at an inappropriate venue.  He said that the House of Encounter (sic [DR]) was in a very remote spot, that it was almost impossible to get to and would never attract the sorts of people who were interested in such an evening.  Dr. Berger met up with us, and Bernhard immediately laid into him with this reproach.  Berger defended himself with the argument that this House of Encounter was sited in an up-and-coming neighborhood, in an outer suburb that would mobilize some quite advanced Bernhard readers.  But Bernhard didn’t really care to hear any of this.  What was more, he didn’t have a copy of Correction with him, and nobody knew if there would be one at the House of Encounter.  So I asked Dr. Berger to go back to his office to fetch it.  We took a taxi, 25 minutes, to the House of Encounters.  The hall itself wasn’t bad and acoustically quite pleasant, but it is totally unreasonable to expect a listener to make such a lengthy trip.

Bernhard was in a terrible funk.  I tried to make the best of the situation and address those people who had arrived so far.  Then Bernhard read; he took a while to warm up, and after ten minutes he was all there, and I am of the opinion that the evening went off quite well.  Afterwards a short pub-crawl.  Thomas Bernhard was satisfied.  Dr. Berger was less satisfied.  He felt misunderstood.  Nobody could talk him out of his trendy idea of having Bernhard read in the outer suburbs.

[...] Another conversation with Thomas Bernhard.  He filled me in on his conversation with Professor Klingenberg, the particulars of which are to be kept confidential.  The Celebrities is going to be staged at the Burgtheater or the Academietheater in a performance directed by Claus Peymann.  The rehearsals will begin in mid-May of 1976, with the performance taking place in the last days of the season.  The book version of  The Celebrities in the BS should be out by then as well.  In September of 1976 he will finish up Atzbach for the edition suhrkamp.”

In Die Presse (October 1, 1975) Rudolf U. Klaus wrote of the evening: “The hall, a space of rarified hideousness--its poisonous electric orange styrofoam-and-plastic construction literally stung one’s eyes (and one wondered what architect’s mad fling had been responsible for it! )--was about a third full when Siegfried Unseld, the head of Suhrkamp Publications, stepped up to the lectern. [...] Bernhard himself then read an approximately half-hour-long excerpt from this book [Correction], and what he read was truly the ‘monological torture’ as which it had been advertised beforehand: a monologue intérieur of endless, complicatedly turned sentences and phrases, only occasionally caesura’d by asides like ‘I thought’ or ‘he told me’; it was reflective, agonizing, full of manic-depressive humor --prayer-wheel prose.  But it was ‘authentic,’ unmistakable Bernhard.”

Letter No. 330

[Address: (Ohlsdorf)]



Frankfurt am Main

November 4, 1975

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I am going to be in Vienna from the 10th through the 13th of November.  Have I got a chance of seeing you?1

Yours

sincerely

[Siegfried Unseld]

    At Rilke All Over the World, an event at the Palais Palffy organized by the Austrian Society for Literature in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the poet’s birth, Unseld gave a talk entitled “Rilke and His Publisher” and met with Friederike Mayröcker among others.

Letter No. 331

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

November 26, 1975

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

You sounded pretty angry on the telephone the other day.  I am sorry that we couldn’t see each other, but my Vienna schedule was so tightly booked that I couldn’t make a side trip to Ohlsdorf, and of course unfortunately the AUA from Vienna to Frankfurt doesn’t stop at Salzburg Station.

Here everything is going quite well so far, with the usual vicissitudes.

On the Bernhardian front, though, things are going very well indeed.  I am certain we are going to finish what we have set out to do.

The Dutch performance of The Force of Habit is in January 1976 at the Stadtoneel in Amsterdam.  Will you be going to it? 

I was in Paris.  People there are now more receptive to German-language plays than they used to be.  I also noticed there was some interest in The Force of Habit.  Incidentally, at our insistence Gallimard has accepted Correction.

The Dutch version of The Lime Works will be coming out in the fall of 1976.  The publisher has asked to be allowed to postpone making a decision about Correction.  Sweden has turned us down “with a bleeding heart”; they said that only 200 copies of The Lime Works had been sold, but they think they might be able to put out Correction at some point.

In the schedule of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp Amras figures in the first half of the year in April and then The Celebrities at the time of the performance.  It is now the end of November.  I assume you will be sending the manuscript to Klingenberg as agreed and hopefully to me as well.

By the way, I ran into Klingenberg in Vienna at the (to my mind) disastrous Strehler premiere.  Klingenberg and I are in accord about the procedure.1.

I am writing you these lines by way of keeping open a connection with you in case we don’t see each other again this year.  Will you be spending the last days or weeks of the year in Ohlsdorf, or are you traveling?  Perchance you will even be in some latitude where someone might see you “at the bridge between the two years”?

Yours

with sincere regards as ever,

Siegfried Unseld

P.S. It really is quite remarkable: no sooner did I mention Klingenberg than he got in touch with me. |by telephone from Vienna:| Peymann will not be free until the end of June, which would be too late for the festival.  But recently Dorn got in touch with him to let him know that by a fluke he would be free in the spring and to ask him for something to direct.  So provided you agreed to it—and I don’t doubt that you would—Klingenberg could engage Dorn.  But for Klingenberg everything is contingent on whether and how he can cast your play.  He must come to a decision about this in the first week of December.   

1. On November 12 Unseld attended the world premiere1a. of The Game of the Powerful, based on Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays, at the Burgtheater in Vienna.  Under the heading Vienna, November 10-13, 1975, the Chronicle records of the encounter with Klingenberg: “Conversation with the general manager of the Burg, Mr. Klingenberg.  Duration: one minute.

For budgetary reasons the minister of culture has vetoed two major projects: a series of performances of Faust and the new Bernhard play [The Celebrities].

After reading the play and deciding in its favor, he might be able to say that we had already come to a verbal agreement about it.” 

1a. From Letter No. 257 and its fifth note one gathers that The Game of the Powerful received an earlier performance at the 1973 Salzburg Festival. [DR]

1976

Letter No.  332

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

February 3, 1976

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I am writing to inform you of the publication of the film-scenario Kulterer in the suhrkamp taschenbücher.  We are printing a run of 10,000 copies; the retail price is

DM 4.00.  Distribution will be handled by Residenz Publications.1

A copy is already on its way to you.  You will receive the remaining copies from Residenz Publications.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]2

    Bernhard reworked the short story “Kulterer” into a screenplay (see n. 1 to Letter No. 271 as well as Vol. 11, pp. 366-371 of Bernhard’s Works).

    Less than two weeks earlier, on January 22, Bernhard and Unseld met in Frankfurt.  The Chronicle reads:

“Thomas Bernhard at the firm; to my surprise he announced that he had been in Brussels and had allowed himself to be ‘spoiled’ there.  He was in an excellent mood, and he gave me the manuscripts of no fewer than two plays: The Celebrities and Minetti: A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man. 

He is in dazzlingly rare form; he is delighted with the BS-prospectus, which is already finished, and he made a special comment about each author, and he praised Burgel Zeeh: ‘If your authors worked as perfectly as Ms. Zeeh, you would have nothing but good authors.’  But at bottom he obviously still wants to be alone.  Our financial agreement expired on 12.31.1975.  By then all remittances to him apart from the new loan of DM 100,000.00 [see n. 1 to Letter No. 312] had effectively been offset by sales and royalties.  If he receives more honoraria and royalties, he will be remitted the surplus; if there is a shortfall, we will have to write it off.

He is quite excited about the library for young readers and would like to be a part of it.  Everything else is amicable.  We have lunch together, and then he flies on to Vienna.

In the evening I read The Celebrities.  I am quite pleasantly surprised.  Once again, Bernhard has managed to improve on his earlier plays.  His dialogues have become livelier.  His theme is the old problem of artists and other creative people versus society.  This time the gang even includes a publisher.  Next morning I talk with Bernhard by phone and tell him I like the play very much.  And he was very pleased to hear this.

In a note Unseld wrote of some additional consequences of this visit: “Peter Hamm is editing an About Thomas Bernhard volume.  This volume will mark a continuation of the first volume, but it won’t recycle any of its contributions.  It is slated to begin with a long interview of Bernhard by Peter Hamm.

[…] The second play is dedicated to the actor Minetti […].  Premiere in the 2nd half of March.  We are planning to print this in a limited run.  Large, slim format, a bit like Bloch’s Experimentum Mundi, perhaps an extra centimeter in length, black cloth, a black jacket that is divided in half.  On the left side the title, on the right side a photo of the actor Minetti.  Large typeface, 6 photos of Minetti on one of the versos of each copy; 1,000 numbered copies, copies 1-10 in leather.”

Letter No. 333

Frankfurt am Main

February 20, 1976

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Sincere congratulations on the magnificent Correction review in the Times Literary Supplement by no less a personage than George Steiner, the coiner of the phrase “Suhrkamp culture.”

As soon as I learn anything new from Vienna, I will get in touch.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

Enclosure2

    Unseld is referring to difficulties associated with the performance of The Celebrities (see n. 1 to Letter No. 331).

    The enclosure has not survived.  Presumably it was a copy of “Conic Sections,” George Steiner’s review ofCorrection in the February 13, 1976 number of the Times Literary Supplement.  The review concludes, “The feeling grows that Thomas Bernhard is now the most original, concentrated novelist writing in German.  His connections, at once developmental and contrastive, with the great ‘Austrian’ constellation of Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Musil and Broch become ever clearer.”  Steiner formulated the concept of “Suhrkamp culture” two years earlier in aTLS review of Theodor W. Adorno’s Collected Works.

Letter No. 334

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

March 10, 1976

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Our get-together in Vienna was a melancholy one.  Unfortunately there were unavoidable reasons for that.  But we will get past those.1

On my return I came upon the first copy of Amras in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.  I am highly pleased with it, and I hope you are too.  That is us to a turn: working silently for your benefit.2

We ought to enter into another agreement soon.  There also may yet be another constellation for The Celebrities.  I will be returning on March 21, 1976 and will get in touch with you afterwards.3

I hope in the meantime you take pleasure in Amras.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Dr. Siegfried Unseld]

(dictating during a travel absence)

Helma Marinoff

(secretary)

    In the Travel Journal Vienna, March 6-8, 1976, Unseld wrote of the jeopardization of the premiere of The Celebrities in the context of the Vienna Festival Week:

“On arriving at the hotel in Vienna I received a telegram: ‘Situation very grave.  Regards Baumgartner Viennafestival.’  Everywhere in Austria the situation is very grave at the moment.  Television: drastic cutbacks and reneging on commitments.  It is exactly the same in the art scene as described to me by Schmögner.

Things are especially catastrophic at the Burgtheater: three plays, along with their rehearsal dates, have had to be postponed.  Thanks to these postponements the actors who were expected to be cast for the Bernhard play will no longer be able to take part in the rehearsals.[...]

Mr. Baumgartner would like to try some other solutions, but the whole thing is hopeless and also basically no longer his responsibility.  The festival has fixed dates, and not even the costumes can be gotten ready by then.   



I had a very extensive conversation with Thomas Bernhard on this subject.  He of course wanted the Vienna performance to take place at all costs; naturally he is dejected at the fact that it is coming to nothing and that he is now going to have to wait.  Claus Peymann had told me over the phone that he would be willing to direct The Celebrities under any circumstances--admittedly not before May 0f 1977.  Bernhard is in principle content with our giving Peymann this chance, but in his view the play is ‘history,’ and his enthusiasm has faded.  He is working on a new prose text and also on yet another play.” 

2. The Bibliothek Suhrkamp edition of Amras, Volume 489 in the series, was published on March 9, 1976.

3. From March 17-21, Unseld was in the United States, where among other things he opened the Deutsche Buchausstellung [German Book Exhibition] in Los Angeles and delivered two lectures at the University of Southern California--one in German on Hesse and another bearing the English title “Literary Publishing in Germany.” 

Letter No. 335

[Address: (Ohlsdorf); telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

April 6, 1976

Urgently requesting phone call.  Regards S.U.

Letter No. 336

Frankfurt am Main

April 8, 1976

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

On my way back from Zurich I could be arriving at Salzburg Airport at 3:35 p.m. on May 10, 1976.1  Will we see each other then?  I would be flying on to Munich at 6:43 p.m.  I hope that is convenient for you.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

|Today the contract, text, and a letter were sent by me to Vienna (Festival Week office).|2

    On May 9, Unseld visited Max Frisch, to whom he presented copies of his Collected Works, which were going to be published on Frisch’s 65th birthday, May 15.  After the stopover in Salzburg on the 10th he flew to Munich where he met with Ernst Augustin, Herbert Achternbusch, and others.

    The postscript is in Burgel Zeeh’s handwriting and appears only on the carbon copy.

On April 8, 1976, Unseld wrote to Ulrich Baumgartner, the general administrator of the Vienna Festival Week in the matter of The Celebrities: “[...] We urgently need to sort out the performance contract together.  After our last communication in Vienna I was of the opinion that the play could no longer be realized, and I also informed the author of this.  But thanks to your intensity it now looks as though it will be possible to have the premiere in the setting of the Vienna Festival Week.  Admittedly, owing to the brevity of the time remaining we must with the utmost urgency ask you to move forward with the utmost artistic concentration on all preparations that are still possible.”  In the remainder of the letter Unseld discusses the contract attached to it and certain already extant agreements regarding the directing and casting of the play.  For additional performance history see the commentary on The Celebrities in Vol. 16, pp. 390-405 of Bernhard’s Works. 

    

Letter No. 337

Ohlsdorf

4.27.76

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I had a very good conversation with Lotschak the director in Vienna and am glad that The Celebrities will be brought into the world there on May 23; the amount of rehearsal time is copious, because the Theater an der Wien has placed almost three days and nights at the ensemble’s disposal and the union isn’t putting any pressure on them.  I don’t think there is any better place for the play at this, the best possible time for it.

We shall meet if we must on the 10th, hence also in Salzburg and in point of fact a parley about all our basic questions is indispensable; we must once again inspect the foundation and address the cracks in the pedestal.  We will then once again have a new starting point for a new epoch qua future.  Moreover our finances need to be clarified once again.

I myself am enjoying excellent periods of activity and am sticking to my work: the utmost discipline qua refresher of existence.

Sincerely,

Thomas B.

Tomorrow I shall send you the corrected Celebrities galley proofs; I am looking forward to the book.1

    The Celebrities was published in June of 1976 as Volume 495 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.

Letter No. 338

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

May 3, 1976

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Warm thanks for your letter of April 27, 1976.  I am very glad that you had a good conversation with Lotschak in Vienna.  We are hoping for May 23.  I obviously will be there.1

So we will be meeting on the 10th.  I am flying from Zurich to Salzburg and arriving at the airport at 1:35 p.m.  Can you meet me there?  If not, then I’ll hang out at the Österreichischer Hof and will expect you there an hour after my arrival.  Late that afternoon I shall be flying back to Frankfurt via Munich.

Yours with sincere regards

and hoping for a good reunion,2

[Siegfried Unseld]

---dictated during a travel absence--

The corrected galley proofs have punctually arrived.  MANY THANKS! 

    The Celebrities was ultimately premiered on June 8, 1976 during the Vienna Festival in a performance directed by Peter Lotschak at the Theater an der Wien.  The cast included Johanna Matz, Bibiana Zeller, Horst Christian Beckmann, Wolfgang Gasser, and Rudolf Wessely.  In his Travel Journal Vienna, June 7-9, 1976: Unseld noted:

“It is difficult not to write a novel.

By chance at midnight I met Thomas Bernhard, the director Peter Lotschak, Claus Peymann, Mrs. Maleta, a few friends of Bernhard’s.  Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves; Bernhard had seen the rehearsals, and was satisfied; the director was optimistic, which is always a very bad omen for a premiere. 

Our problem was that despite all our complaints, telegrams, and threats, the general administrator of the Vienna Festival Weeks had declared himself unprepared to sign the contract.  It must be admitted that the contract was fairly severe: the premiere, a few additional performance-dates, and nothing else, and firm assent to our choices of director and performers of the principal roles.  In the morning I tried telephoning the general administrator of the Vienna Festival Weeks; I ended up hearing only from his secretary’s office; it was not known there when Mr. Baumgartner would be reachable.  I tried ringing again at 10 a.m., again with no clear result.  The dress rehearsal began at 10:30; I called the administrator’s office one more time just before then; he was out.  So I gave them a choice: either the administrator could call me out of the rehearsal for a conference, or I could show up at the administrator’s office at 3:00 p.m. to sign the contract; if the administrator wasn’t there then and the contract remained unsigned, then most likely an hour later Suhrkamp Publications would issue an order to cancel the evening’s performance.

I was at the dress rehearsal, for which the audience had been very, very carefully selected; everybody who had sneaked in was shooed back outside, and the play began with a major failure of the lighting; the beginning had to be repeated several times; then the first prologue and the first scene were performed straight through; then there was another major breakdown of the lighting and communication, finally things resumed after interruptions, and the conclusion was an absolute fiasco.

I have gotten ahead of myself: right in the middle of the rehearsal a messenger found me and asked me to come to the general administrator’s room. [...] I was able to inform Bernhard of the finalization and signing of the contract before the end of the rehearsal.

For me this dress rehearsal was a signal.  There was a foul-up at the very beginning, in the middle there was a major obstacle, the performance had to be interrupted, and at the end the whole thing really fell to pieces.  The reaction was quite remarkable: Peymann thought the performance was still workable; Bernhard was very happy.  I had lunch with him.  He described our meeting in Salzburg and at Maria Plain as magnificent, one-of-a-kind; during a recent stop in Frankfurt he had preferred not to get in touch so as not to spoil this one-of-a-kindness.  After we parted he met with Minetti for an hour and then drove back to Ohlsdorf while the premiere was taking place in Vienna.

This evening of June 8 in Vienna is destined to be remembered as some kind of landmark.  Bernhard’s play is basically pretty cut-and-dried in its first third; everybody knows there aren’t any disturbing plot twists. In point of fact, this first third seemed quite successful, and one would have hoped the dramaturgical team had a sufficient grasp of things.  And yet the dramaturgy was missing from the play.  To whom were they opposed; who were their adversaries; who were their abettors?  And during the performance itself the conclusion was completely incomprehensible: in the text the ‘celebrities’ are wearing animal masks; their high-society palaver increases ad absurdum, which means after a certain point they are supposed to speak only in animal language, and then for an interval of a few seconds the cock crows out his traitorous cock-a-doodle-do--none of this was included in the performance; you couldn’t make sense of it.  The director, Lotschak, basically had no understanding of the poetry of the text, of its poetic dimensions, and the whole thing was banal, a cabaret act, and a bad one at that.  Fine, there will be mixed reviews; my prognosis is that the German critics will find the play interesting but the performance offputting.

I myself am of the opinion that the play was sold short.  Somebody really could do something worthwhile with it!

I had various other problems: to be sure, I had pressed for the signature of the contract with the Vienna Festival Weeks, but we ourselves still lacked a contract with Bernhard; so then Bernhard also signed an author’s contract forThe Celebrities between Suhrkamp Zurich and him within a matter of seconds!”

The premiere of The Celebrities was more than reluctantly received by the critics; the reactions are typified by a declaration by Paul Blahas in Weltwoche: “The Celebrities, Thomas Bernhard’s diatribe against the art industry, is most certainly not a betrayal of art.  The Celebrities is merely an exceptionally bad play.  The Celebrities is the worst work by Bernhard that has ever been presented to us.”  See also the commentary on The Celebrities in Volume 16, pp. 390-405 of Bernhard’s Works.

2. Under the title “Encounter with Thomas Bernhard in Salzburg on May 10, 1976,” Unseld devoted a three-page chronicle entry to his stay in Salzburg:

“The flight from Zurich arrived punctually at Salzburg Airport.  Bernhard was waiting for me.  We then went into the airport restaurant for lunch.  The usual civilities.  Questions about his aunt, questions about Ms. Zeeh.  I read him an excerpt from a discussion Bruno Kreisky had had with some schoolchildren.  ‘What kind of international standing does Austria have?’ asked one of the pupils.  And Kreisky ‘lets rip.’  First mention: the UN general-secretary [Kurt Waldheim] and a commandant on the Golan Heights [Major-General Hannes Philipp].  Then in second place comes ‘Many of the greatest writers of the younger generation are Austrians.’  Here Kreisky lets slip something quite interesting.

I can clearly see that he is nervous and is going to press for what he wrote to me about [i.e., in Letter No. 337] […].

He said: ‘Shall we begin with the negatives or with the positives?’  I opted for the negative, but when he began with what I had feared, namely the fact that he had promised Schaffler another short book, I interrupted and asked him to save it for later.  Then he said, ‘Fine, let’s talk about money.’  I was then quite prepared to do that.  Of course, many years earlier we had struck up an agreement, according to the terms of which various remittances to him, sums running at least into the high six figures, were not to be paid off individually; rather, we were planning to make up a ‘balance sheet’ on 12.31.1975.  If we had paid him more than the total of the balance, the shortfall would be written off; if we had paid him less, he would be our creditor by a certain sum, a sum which he would subsequently receive.  I asked him to assess how the situation stood.  He had no idea.  He was then surprised that I had drawn up a well-arranged, easy-to-read one-page statement.  Nevertheless, he immediately turned around and said that regardless of how the accounts now stood, he still wanted me to issue him another DM 40,000.00.  I calmly heard out this request of his and asked him just to take a careful look at the statement.  He was greatly surprised by the favorable bottom line: a credit of DM 50,000.00 in Frankfurt, a credit of DM 50,000.00 in Zurich—he was elated, he found this ‘ideal’ and was ‘very happy.’  Then came the masterstroke of surprise: I proposed to him that we should apply half of this credit to paying off his loan.  ‘And the other half?’ he asked.  Then I opened my suitcase and handed him 50,000 Swiss francs in cash.  He definitely hadn’t been expecting that to happen!

He was certainly in high spirits, and in this pleasant atmosphere I really didn’t want to speak with him again about his intention to give another book to Schaffler.  He explained it to me thus:

In Vienna, he said, I had not only failed to support him in a difficult situation but had left him in the lurch.  I had criticized him on account of his open letter to Canetti.  I had repeatedly told him that this letter was doing him harm and had never said a word about the harm Canetti had done him with his speech.  [On February 6, 1976 Die Zeit printed published Elias Canetti’s speech on the occasion of his acceptance of an honorary doctorate from the University of Munich, a speech in which with pointed reference to Bernhard as “somebody who writes,” (as Bernhard had styled himself in the film Three Days; see n. 1 to Letter No. 115),  he stated “[…] but there were also others […] who composed bitter and very promising books, rose very quickly to fame as ‘somebody who writes,’ and then did what earlier writers [Dichter] had been wont to do: instead of falling silent, writing the same book over and over again.  However unimprovable and capitally criminal humanity seemed to them, it retained one function: applauding them.”  On February 27 Die Zeit published a letter from Thomas Bernhard in which he characterized Canetti as a “huckster of aphorisms,” a “poor-man’s Kant,” and a  “mini-Schopenhauer.”] He had been stung by my failure to come to his defense.  The next morning he had rung up Schaffler and told him he could have the book [The Cellar].  Naturally with no advance and the ordinary 10%, just like with The Cause.  He said it was very much a side-project, a sequel to The Cause, a Salzburg story, mainly of local interest, and so forth.  I dwelt on this subject and dwelt on it tenaciously, but he said he had already given Schaffler his word and that was that.  Then on the other hand he rather sheepishly asked: “do you plan on letting me go like Barbara Frischmuth?”  A long silence.  In this connection he could not refrain from saying that one must protest against one’s father in order survive. [...] Bernhard kept taking up the volume of Max Frisch; he liked both the outside and the inside of the edition, and was quite impressed by Frisch’s dedication to me in this book. [The dedication in the first volume of Max Frisch’sCollected Works reads: “In friendship I thank Siegfried Unseld, the great publisher.”  Max Frisch, May 10, 1976.”]  He kept murmuring: ‘It’s right: the simple and clear is true...’

Then we left the airport restaurant and went to a second locale: a restaurant near the church of Maria Plain.  We drove there in his new car--lo and behold, a new Mercedes.  He got lost a bit, but soon we were standing high above Salzburg in the garden of this restaurant.  It was exceptionally beautiful.  The föhn raged,  Hohensalzburg castle and the city drew ever nearer, a strong warm wind whipped through the garden and repeatedly lifted the tablecloths, imparting a peculiar dynamism to the garden in which we eventually found ourselves sitting quite alone.  It was like swimming in an ocean of wind.  We started again from scratch.  The balance sheet; he said it really was enormously gratifying.  The cash; uncommonly agreeable.  As far as Schaffler went, he said it was the last book he was giving him, that he wouldn’t enter into any further agreements of the kind with him.  In any case, he said, the catalogue of Schaffler’s firm was basically a joke.

He will also revise his contracts with Schaffler so that he will have the right to issue  the texts in another setting anytime he likes.

He urged me to come up with a proposal for the settlement of his literary estate.

Then he spoke euphorically about his work plans.  He said he was hatching a play dealing with the subject of ‘judges and art.’  Six characters.

He said the prose volume Remembering was almost finished.

The two books could then be issued in the spring of 1977 followed in the the fall of 1977 by the new novel and--this is his wish--the Reader [see Letter No. 214].

He said that these were his major works and that they were intended for Suhrkamp and that he was fanatically preoccupied with them. [...]

He said that I shouldn’t look so much into the future, that only the present state of the firm was of any interest to him.

He said that he had achieved what he had set out to achieve: the material security of his work.  That he was now independent, that he could write whatever he wished.”

          

Letter No. 339

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

July 7, 1976

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

My wife, my son, and I would be delighted if you were to join us for dinner at the Hotel Bachmaier am See in Rottach-Egern at 6:00 p.m. on Friday.

Perhaps with Mrs. Maleta--yours sincerely Siegfried Unseld.

ze.--8:40 a.m. [1a.]

1a. I suppose this note signifies that Burgel Zeeh sent the telegram-memorandum at the indicated time. [DR]

    Unseld stayed with his family on the Tegernsee from the 8th through the 10th of July; during this stay he visited Ernst Bloch, who was observing his 91st birthday at the Alpine Sanatorium in Bad Wiesee, and others, and made a side trip to Starnberg to visit Jurgen Habermas.  Unseld wrote about his meeting with Bernhard and Gerda Maleta in his Travel Journal Bad Wiessee--Rottach--Egern--Starnberg, July 8-10, 1976:

“Thomas Bernhard came to visit and brought Mrs. Gerda Maleta with him.  The two of them had gone to the trouble of traveling at least two hours by car.  Bernhard was in stunning form; only at one brief point was mention made of the play he is working on and that he plans to finish by October.  Otherwise there was not a word of ‘shop talk.’

In the July 10 FAZ I had read a remark by Heinz Politzer: ‘During a recent visit to Vienna, a resident of Frankfurt from Magdeburg, namely Horst Krüger, asked himself in bewilderment, “What is Austria?” and provided his own answer to the question: “Austria is a neverending Thomas Bernhard play.  A gruesome, beautiful theatrical scene filled with utterly terminal states of affairs.”  But this aperçu sums up Austria less tidily than it does a rather considerable portion of Austrian literature.  A Hermann Bahr, a Josef Nadler, the baroque, and especially the grotesque, cannot be expelled from this literary tradition, and Thomas Bernhard, that etcher of absurd frost flowers of isolation and despair on windowpanes, has a secure place at its very heart.’

The ‘etcher of isolation and despair’ was cheerful, gregarious, full of jokes and jests; he drank champagne, then wine at dinner, and tucked into his onion soup and Tegernsee whitefish with great gusto.  Mrs. Maleta had brought along some photos; she had of course been with him in Portugal.  One of them resembled Caspar David Friedrich’sMonk by the Sea, the other shows an elegant poet in light-colored trousers and shoes and a dark jacket; he is gazing meditatively out at the sea or into his own depths; he is content with himself and is neither isolated nor despair-ridden.  The mystery of his wanderings elicits endless speculation.”

Bernhard in Portugal.jpg

  

Bernhard “gazing meditatively out at the sea or into his own depths” in Portugal

in May of 1976

Letter No. 340

Frankfurt am Main

October 1, 1976

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

An interim notice regarding Minetti.  The book is looking very nice!  But we don’t plan to ship it out before the end of the year; rather, we will wait until February.  But you and Minetti should be receiving a copy before Christmas.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    In his Travel Journal, Stuttgart, September 1, 1976, Siegfried Unseld commented on the premiere ofMinetti under the direction of Claus Peymann at the Württembergische Staatstheater:

“In Stuttgart a conversation with Bernhard.  It was another of our usual conversations.  His affability took a money-hungry turn.  He had seen the rehearsal, was enthusiastic, found it ‘magnificent.’  He refused to sign the special edition of Minetti; he didn’t even want to sign the first 100 copies, which we might bind in leather.  I firmly insisted on his doing the second.  He wanted to have another DM 30,000.00 even though he still had a credit from the Vienna honorarium; I deferred this question to December.

He intends to stick to his plan.  Through the end of October he will be working on his play Denken im Lärchenwald [Thinking in the Larch Wood].1a  A family history with seven characters.  The premiere is supposed to take place in June in Stuttgart.  Then this play will also pass through us.  Over the winter he will be writing the novel Unrest.  He plans to finish it by March so that the book can be published in the fall.  After that will come theReader, which I shall edit myself at Bernhard’s pressing request.

The performance of the play Minetti.  A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man, with Bernhard Minetti in the completely monological title role, was a great success.  Minetti surpassed himself, and his fits of despair, his assertions, and his prognoses took on a palpable form.  Claus Peymann had put an enormous amount of work into the production; a magnificent set design, which successfully imparted the distinctive atmosphere of the lobby of a grand hotel in Ostend.  Almost everybody in the company had a part, and the silent roles were played by outstanding actors.  The elderly married couple were played by Edith Heerdegen and Hans Mahnke, the drunkard by Traugott Buhre.  The epilogue, Minetti on a bench at edge of the raging sea, donning Ensor’s Lear mask, engulfed by the snowstorm.  Two heckles during the play, ‘Hi there, Bernhard!’ which was aimed at the incessant repetitions of death art, and ‘Tomorrow in Augsburg,’ when Minetti was unleashing his tirades against the noisomeness of Lübeck and his banishment to Dinkelsbühl.  Resounding applause.  Minetti had to keep bowing over and over again.”         

1a. In their index of works the editors report that this play was never

completed (DR).

Letter No. 341

Ohlsdorf

11.15.76

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Your lines from Austin have put me into a very lovely, slightly melancholy, or rather philosophical-cum-melancholy, mood vis-à-vis our mutual relationship and I do not wish to let slip the opportunity of reporting to you on this mood before you are back in Europe.1

I am reporting on a condition subsisting between two people who stick together over the course of a fairly long lifetime for their own most exclusive purpose and for their own pleasure.

An absence of the sort that you are practicing right now makes much that was unclear clear and probably imparts distinctness to important connections.  For you Austin will be a place of this elemental sort, a place in which the foundation of (your) existence will become distinct. 

A human being comes closer and is suddenly quite nearby and can be regarded from every possible side of his nature and from within and without and vice-versa,  with the highest degree of understanding and feeling, when he is far away, has distanced himself, is unreachable.

When I regard it dispassionately from all sides, I have to say that together we have produced something quite important and also very beautiful (in the deepest sense, but also in the ordinary one), and I think we still have great lashings of good fortune in store for us.

So, being in possession of this thought as I am, I am finding it easy enough to salute you.  Everything will be very simple, so long as we remember to service our complicated, our enormously complicated (mental) apparatus.

Nature is the path, we have only to walk along it.

Yours very sincerely,

Thomas B.2

1. From October 24 through December 2, 1976 Unseld had a guest professorship at the University of Texas at Austin, from which he wrote picture postcards to the firm’s authors.  His “lines from Austin” to Bernhard have not survived.  But perhaps they referred to a certain incident that he had learned about from Burgel Zeeh and that he described as “the Bernhard miracle” in his November 1 Chronicle entry.  In Vienna on October 21, Gerda Maleta and Bernhard boarded a plane bound for London, where among other things they were to attend a rehearsal of The Force of Habit, the English version of Die Macht der Gewohnheit, at the National Theatre; the premiere of the play under the direction of Elija Moshinsky was on November 9.  The circumstances of the flight were reported in a Kurier article headlined “Several Good Moods Spoiled on London Flight”: “Ashen-faced and trembling, 45 passengers and six crew members alighted from an English commercial airliner at Vienna International Airport on Thursday.  An explosion in the right engine put the fear of death in them--fortunately everything held together during the shock: within a few minutes of the incident the pilot succeeded in descending from an altitude of 10,000 meters and making a smooth landing on the very same VIA runway he had taken off from shortly before.”  On

October 27 Bernhard sent Burgel Zeeh the newspaper cutting with these accompanying words: “[...] for the near future instead of flying I shall be working.  This ‘contretemps’ is an episode in my ‘history.’  Totally sunny days all over the earth now.  Please give my regards to our publisher and accept my thanks for all transactions.”

2. On the envelope Bernhard gave his return address as “Thomas Bernhard A 4694, Ohlsdorf, Europe,” which suggests that he mailed the letter directly to Austin.  In the November 23 entry in his Travel Journal, USA--Mexico, October 20 -December 15, 1976 Unseld commented on the letter as follows: “(the master has written me what is by his standards a very gracious letter).”

Letter No. 342

[Address: (Ohlsdorf); handwritten]

Frankfurt am Main

December 1976

My dear and esteemed friend,

I am certain this Minetti will please you as much as it does me!  A lovely book made into a habit…1

In quoting this I am

your old [xxx]2 [Unseld]

    In The Force of Habit one reads: “Precise / As my uncle always says / Precise / make precision a habit” (Bernhard, Works, p. 52).  Minetti was published in a form fairly close to that specified in the note on Bernhard’s March 1977 visit to Frankfurt (see n. 2 to Letter No. 332).  The white clothbound book includes 16 photographs taken by Digne Meller Marcovicz; two of these also grace the slipcase in which it is enclosed.

    A single word is illegible.

Bernhard at the Maletas'.jpg

Thomas Bernhard at the Maleta family’s house in Oberweis,

not far from his own house in Ohlsdorf, in 1977

1977

Letter No. 343

Frankfurt am Main

January 11, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

So, Trieste: I am arriving on Wednesday, January 26, at 1:45 p.m.  Where shall I lay down my weary head in the evening?  And on that Wednesday we shall be meeting alone; at least I hope so. 

At 7:00 a.m. on Friday, January 28, I shall have to leave Trieste in order attend to my duties here.

I hope this is all agreeable to you.  I shall bring the agreed-upon amount with me.1

I thank you warmly for your presence in Frankfurt.  I now know what friendliness feels like.

Yours

sincerely,

[Siegfried Unseld] 

    Bernhard and Unseld stayed in Trieste between January 26 and 28 in connection with a Bernhard symposium being held there.  Regarding his conversation with Bernhard on the evening of the symposium Unseld wrote in hisTravel Journal, Trieste, January 26-28, 1977:

“We spent the evening chatting, telling anecdotes, reflecting on our day trip [to Castle Duino the previous morning]; on a business envelope from the Zürcher Schauspielhaus I outlined the state of his accounts for him, and I gave him the sum he desired [DM 60,000.00].

He is elated about Minetti.

He wants to record his old radio play Misses Nightflowers Monolog [(sic) on all anomalies in the title, which seems pointless to translate (DR)] someday.  It dates from 25 years ago and is his only radio play.  It is centered on a character character called Joana the actress, a bibulous type.  [Joana is one of the principal characters in the novelWoodcutters.]  Tomorrow he will read from Watten; he asked if the book was still in the e.s.?  I said that it was, but even as I did I was silently asking myself whether this book was still in print in the e.s.

He is writing the play The Thinker.  And then he will write the novel Unrest; both of these can be slated for publication in the fall of 1978.

[…] In the evening the beginning of the Thomas Bernhard symposium at the University of Trieste.  Organized by the Austrian Culture Institute. […] That night a reception at the Austrian general consul’s; I arrive a bit too early, and so the consul doesn’t know to whom he is talking; he cannot contain his disappointment in Thomas Bernhard, or his disconsolation on discovering that the Austrian State spends its tax revenues on such muddleheaded prose texts!”

Hilde Spiel chose to conclude her report on the symposium in the February 3 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung with a description of the author’s role: “And Bernhard himself?  He had at least shown up, given a reading, and listened to his intellectual work being clinically dissected for entire evening […].  Afterwards he refrained from adding his voice to any of the statements or taking part in any of the discussions.  But despite his taciturn public demeanor, in an informal small-group setting he proved not at all averse to conversation and was indeed delighted at having found friends and readers in this forlorn and forgotten corner of Europe.  The idea of bringing an author face-to-face with his interpreters and putting them both in front of an audience had in Thomas Bernhard’s specific case turned out to be an unqualified—and, one is tempted to add, surprising—success.”

2. In celebration of a personal milestone—the 25th anniversary of January 7, 1952, his first day working at Suhrkamp—Unseld threw a party, of which the January 14, 1977 number of Die Zeit reported: “at a Frankfurt ‘office party’ to which Suhrkamp’s and Insel’s personnel and authors (Jürgen Becker, Thomas Bernhard, Jürgen Habermas, Peter Handke, Uwe Johson, Wolfgang Koeppen, Hans Mayer, Alexander Mitscherlich, Martin Walser, Peter Wapnewski, and Peter Weiss, among many others) had been invited to fete Suhrkamp’s boss Siegfried Unseld, […] one of Max Frisch’s official speeches was delivered.”

In his Chronicle Unseld described the party, which took place on January 8, as follows: “[…] it was planned as an evening in Siesmayerstraße to be attended by all the authors and employees and no members of their families […] no other configuration suggested itself, for nothing is more difficult than picking and choosing among one’s authors and employees.  And yet I got the impression there, hopefully for the last time, that such a large assembly of intellectual substances and powers—roughly 120 authors, translators, editors, illustrators, heirs, and executors were present—is almost a contradiction in terms.  An author wants above all else to be seen as an individual, and at this gathering there was a very great danger that each author would believe he was simply disappearing into the ‘mass’ and indeed being extinguished by it.  Nevertheless, the beauty of such an evening ought to consist in a sense of commonality between authors and employees, but such feelings were not evidence.”       

Letter No. 344

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

January 18, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

You had spoken to Ms. Doufexis about the reprinting of Minetti in Theater heute.  I had no knowledge of this event.  It now transpires that Rudolf Rach authorized the reprint.  The honorarium that Mr. Rach agreed to comes to DM 1,000.00.  The sum has just arrived here.

I am not very happy about this event and would have preferred to see our publication rights to the text kept exclusive.  But perhaps in hindsight it isn’t all that big of a screw-up.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    During his visit in Frankfurt on January 8, Bernhard pointed out to Renate Doufexis and Helene Ritzerfeld thatMinetti had been reprinted without his permission in the October issue of Theater heute.

Letter No. 345

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

January 19, 1977

Urgently requesting phone call from you--regards Unseld

Letter No. 346

Frankfurt am Main

January 24, 1977

Requesting phone call from you--regards Unseld1

    According to notes taken by Burgel Zeeh,the telephone conversation that followed the two telegrams dealt first with organizational matters relating to Unseld and Bernhard’s meeting in Trieste and then with the question of whether Bernhard cared to speak at a memorial service for Carl Zuckmayer, who had died on January 18, a service that was to be held at the Corso, the interim home of the Zurich Schauspielhaus.

Under the date-heading of January 30 Unseld wrote about the function in Zurich in his Chronicle: “Thomas Bernhard gives his memorial speech.  It is a Bernhardian text; he loved Zuckmayer, and Zuckmayer loved him.  Nobody had a greater understanding of his prose than Zuckmayer had, Bernhard said.  But the discrepancy (the inner discrepancy) between him and Zuckmayer is glaring.”

Bernhard wrote his speech by hand on the stationery of the Hotel Europe in Zurich the day before the service; after the function he gave the manuscript of the speech to Unseld.         

Bernhard--Zuckmayer speech.jpg

The second page of the manuscript of Bernhard’s speech

for the memorial service for Carl Zuckmayer

Letter No. 347

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

February 4, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

You inquired about the sales figures for Watten.  The book was published in the edition suhrkamp in 1969.  We printed a run of 14,000 copies.  So far we have shipped 13,293 copies.  Even if one assumes that we handed out about 300 copies as complimentary copies, this figure of 13,000 may still be regarded as quite a handsome outcome.  We have 707 copies left.  I would propose our keeping the book in the edition suhrkamp through the end of the year, then pulping the remaining stock and reissuing the book at the end of 1978 as a suhrkamp taschenbuch.  Is this acceptable to you?1

Our recent time in Trieste, in Zurich, was really very nice.

Yours

sincerely,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Watten went through five printings in the edition suhrkamp through 1986; in 1987 it was published in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, and the following year it appeared as a suhrkamp taschenbuch in the context of an edition of Bernhard’s works [see n. 1 to Letter No. 514]. 

Letter No. 348

[Address: Tehran ; handwritten on note-paper bearing the address “Aryan Sheraton Hotel / Tehran, Iran”]

[Tehran

May 8, 1977]

Dear S. U.,

We shall see each other in Shiraz.  Good luck in TEH.--You’ll see what I mean!

Sincerely,

Th. B.

    From April 30 through May 19 Bernhard traveled in the Middle East; at the invitation of the German Publishers and Booksellers’ Association he gave two talks, one on May 4 in Shiraz, the other on May 7 in Teheran in the context of the German Book Exposition and in association with the local Goethe Institute.  On May 5 he met Unseld--who from April 29 through May 12 toured Israel, Iran, and Egypt with his wife Hildegard--in Shiraz.  The day before, Unseld gave a talk on Hermann Hesse in Teheran.  From Iran the Unselds and Bernhard went to Egypt, where they traveled together, and between May 12 and 19 Bernhard was on his own in Jerusalem.  In his Travel Journal, Israel--Iran--Egypt, April 29-May 12, 1977, Unseld wrote about his experiences in Iran:

“The chaotic structure of the country even impinged on the structure of the Goethe Institute.  Dr. Becker [...] informed neither the institute in Kabul that I wouldn’t be coming nor the institute in Shiraz that I would be coming.  So the talk in Shiraz was canceled.  At his talk in Shiraz Bernhard had an audience of five whole people! [...]

Dr. Friedrich Niewöhner, the Goethe Institute at Shiraz.  Admittedly Dr. Niewöhner neglected to come fetch Bernhard, which provoked much severe remonstration from Bernhard, but then Bernhard made his peace with Niewöhner, and not even the meager turnout of five listeners proved any threat to their reconciliation.  We rode with Dr. Niewöhner to Persepolis [...]

At the airport [in Cairo] we were greeted by the cultural attaché from the [German] embassy, Dr. Schellert, and by the amiable representative of the Goethe Institute, Dr. Stephan Nobbe, and on that same day we went to see the pyramids and that stone monument known as the sphinx, which in Egyptian mythology is not feminine but masculine, a prince’s son.  Two walks through the desert, which we had to undertake in heat that probably reached 50 degrees.

[...] Our time together with Thomas Bernhard was uncommonly pleasant.  He was even game for joining us on excursions, although at bottom his tolerance for other people’s company tended not to be very long-lasting.  He was given to withdrawing into himself under the pretext that his occupation (on his passport his stated occupation is “farmer”) made him unfit for lengthy cultural excursions. [...]   

We had plenty of time to take a tour d’horizon of the firm as well as of his own problems.  I believe he has finished writing his new novel.  We will receive it at the end of June, and his next play seems to be nearly finished.  In any case he is already busily at work on the one after it.”

Seven years later, in Unseld, a text written in honor of Unseld’s sixtieth birthday, Bernhard reminisced about--among other things--his time spent with his publisher during this trip as follows:

“In the company of Unseld, the epitome of punctuality and reliability, I have taken walks in many cities and along many banks and shores, and also climbed many hills and mountains.  [...]  At the ruins of Persepolis he constructed a new paperback series, in the Egyptian desert he devised a Hesse contract.  One evening, a small, smelly oil stove in a hotel in Shiraz inspired him to deliver with great vehemence a thoroughly philosophical disquisition on life and the world that lasted until three in the morning.  At the desert necropolis of Saccara I have marvelled alongside him at the famous bull sarcophagus in thirteen-degrees-below zero cold, under the earth, and then, back in the light of day, and in forty-two-degrees-above zero heat, I have succumbed alongside him to a single shared paroxysm of laughter.  On the thirteenth floor of the Sheraton Hotel in Tehran, I gazed down along with him at the swimming pool, which contained not a drop of water and was serving as the hotel’s garbage dump.  Never, either before or since, have I beheld a more mournful Siegfried Unseld.  After a banquet hosted for a diplomatic delegation in Cairo, the cable of an elevator was severed a meter-and-a-half shy of the elevator’s destination.  Had the cable been severed a mere half-second earlier, both Unseld and Bernhard would have ceased to exist a full seven years ago.  We shook the dust and bits of cement out of our hair and off our clothes and burst into laughter.”  (Thomas Bernhard, Unseld, p. 52f.; see Photo No. 12)

Bernhard _ Unselds at Persepolis.jpg

Bernhard (left), Hildegard Unseld (center; identification tentative),

and Siegfried Unseld (right) at the ruins of Persepolis

Letter No. 349

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

May 25, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I hope you have returned safely from your journey.  How were things in Israel?  You once jocularly mentioned you wanted to give a reading in a church, and at some later point I flippantly mentioned this in Switzerland.  Now the gentlemen of the “Boswil Old Church” foundation have taken up the idea and invited you to come and give a reading.  Please see the attached documents.  Of course we could perhaps postpone this to the fall and meet up in Switzerland at some point then.  That wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    The attachments have not survived.

Letter No. 350

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

May 31, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

In Zurich I recently met a bright young man, Jens Dittmar, who has written a licentiate thesis entitled “Thomas Bernhard--Life as Art against the Backdrop of Death” and who with the help of Werner Weber is preparing to write a dissertation on your work.  Mr. Dittmar had proposed to me the idea of a Bernhard reader that doesn’t precisely tally with the one we have discussed.  But Mr. Dittmar has been collecting your earlier texts for six years, and in the course of this conversation we came up with the idea of someday gathering up all your early works and compiling them in a single edition, perhaps with a limited print run.  Mr. Dittmar would be eminently qualified to do this.  There is no rush to get this done, but the edition would perhaps be suitable for publication on 2.9.1981.  What do you think of this?

Yours

sincerely,

[Siegfried Unseld]   

Letter No. 351

Ohlsdorf

6.27.77

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

On waking up today I thought I must write to Unseld to tell him what a good effect the Persian trip has had and that I accept his invitation to discover a new continent with him--in the future.

For weeks I have been working and uninterested in anything else.

Soon there will be nothing left but the labor of writing and some ever-so-brief breaks that will still have something to do with this labor.

This is the path of a happy human being.

Work doing duty for life, the never-ending orchestral score doing duty for life.

I think I shall be sending The Persian Woman in two weeks.

Someday I will take off for Vienna on the fly, wander about there and come back and cover the entire thing on foot.

I think back on Cairo more than on anything else; it was the high point, and I plan to go back there in November/December; it was too brief.

In Israel I was always more or less depressed by that experiment that is doomed to failure; it isn’t a country that you can look in the eye and announce to it that it has an incurable illness and is going to die soon; it is not an organism of that genus.  It is a beloved incurable in whose presence one must endlessly dissemble.

I think back wistfully on the Grand Hotel in Shiraz, but not so on that Hiltonesque American monstrosity, with its abominable infernal roomettes.  We advance further into the wasteland.

Yours

with fondest thoughts of you and your wife,

Thomas B.

Letter No. 352

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

August 8, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

This is how things are going for me today: as I woke up today I was thinking about you.  Even though today’s agenda really couldn’t have less to do with you--I have to go to Tübingen, where tomorrow we are laying to rest Ernst Bloch.

After that I plan to go into a kind of retreat for mind and body, whatever that is.  At the end of August I shall emerge from my seclusion and get back in touch with you.1

By the way: we really should see each other again some time!

Yours

sincerely,

[Siegfried Unseld ]

    On returning from Ernst Bloch’s interment in the Bergfriedhof in Tübingen, Unseld began a “bio-norm-cure with abstinence from alcohol”; as he recorded under the date heading of August 10-20 in his Chronicle: “Throughout this period I have been spending an hour or two at the office each morning; otherwise I have been working at home until about four in the afternoon, then a walk in the woods, some swimming in a thermal pool [...].” 

Letter No. 353

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

August 25, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

M. Voisin of L’Arche, our theater representative in Paris, has written to me today as follows:1a

I would be able to negotiate for the dramatic realization in French of Thomas Bernhard’s play The Ignoramus and the Madman, translated by Michel Demet, according to the following terms:

    The play would be directed by Henri Ronse and performed in the small auditorium of the Compagnie du Rideau de Bruxelles, 23 rue Ravenstein, Brussels, Belgium, between January 7 and February 7, 1978.  A minimum of 24 performances would be guaranteed.  On a foundation of 10% author’s fees, a minimum of 2,000 Belgian francs in fees per performance would be guaranteed, plus a forfeit of 2,500 FB to be paid for each non-occurring performance less than the 24 guaranteed, or of 75,000 FB to be paid in the event that no performances occur.

    Afterwards the spectacle, meaning the same production, would be transported to Paris, to the Théâtre Oblique, 76 rue de la Roquette, 11th arrondissement, Paris, where, beginning on March 15 1978, a minimum of 25 performances would be given; for these performances I am expecting to ask, on a foundation of 12% author’s fees, for a minimum of 200 French francs in fees per performances, plus a forfeit of 250 FF for each non-occurring performance less than the 25 guaranteed, or of 7,000 FF in the event that no performances occur.

We here at the house were in favor of accepting this offer.  Are you also in favor of that?

Yours

[Siegfried Unseld]1

      

1a. Unseld quoted Voisin’s letter in its original French.  Out of pure selfishness, specifically the selfishness of one who can think of more pleasurable ways of spending four or five hours than cutting and pasting Google Docs special characters, I have translated the excerpt rather than transcribed it.  This choice has rendered the editors’ condensed German paraphrase of the excerpt in n. 1 below redundant if not otiose; I have accordingly refrained from providing an English version of this paraphrase, whose place is taken by the phrase “about Voisin’s proposal.” (DR)

    Bernhard answered Unseld’s question about Voisin’s proposal in the affirmative; Burgel Zeeh wrote “telephone call on 9.12: okay” on the letter.  The performances of L’ignorant et le fou (set designs: Franz Salieri; cast: Colette Emmanuelle, Philippe Lehembre, François Michaux, Henri Pillsbury, and Marie Pomarat) took place in 1978 as planned.  The director reported that many spectators had walked out on the Brussels premiere.  (See Henri Ronse: “Un archipel de la cruauté” in Pierre Chabert/Barbara Hutt (eds.): Thomas Bernhard, p. 363.)

Letter No. 354

[Frankfurt: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

October 3, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

My time at the Kobenzl was lovely, stimulating, enjoyable.  I got myself a prestigiously deep suntan just in time for the book fair!

I have committed everything precisely to the tables of my head and heart; the financial situation is being taken care of.  Please send me the manuscript for the prose volume The Year soon.  I do of course have to write a synopsis text for it soon.1

I have drafted the synopsis text for Immanuel Kant; it is attached.  Are you satisfied with it?

I enjoyed reading part of your grandfather’s book; it shortened my trip from Salzburg to Frankfurt very agreeably.  In the next few days I shall be talking to some people about Mr. Maleta’s request.2

Yours

with sincere regards,3

Siegfried Unseld

P. S. Why in Immanuel Kant do you write “Columbia-Universität” and not “Columbia University”?4

    It is not unequivocally clear whether by The Year Unseld meant Yes--in his

June 27 letter Bernhard still refers to this text, which was written mainly in the first half of 1977, as The Persian Woman, but Bernhard may have temporarily changed its title to The Year in the meantime--or Unseld was referring to Der Stimmenimitator [The Voice Imitator] which is composed of short prose texts and was published in 1978, or a collection of other prose texts [or indeed another freestanding prose text (DR)] that never came to fruition.

2.        In his Travel Journal, Salzburg, September 30, 1977, Unseld wrote about, among

      other things, his meeting with Bernhard at the Hotel Kobenzl (on the Gaisberg):

“During the flight I read the comedy Immanuel Kant.  At the very least one must say that it is authentic Bernhard.  And next, that it is certainly an actable play that will be easy to produce. [...]

Thomas Bernhard himself was in fine form--indeed, friendly, acquiescent, not provocative, not aggressive.

He is full of plans, work-projects; that is all.

We discussed the following:

Immanuel Kant.  Premiere Peymann, Stuttgart.  (Peymann will be visiting him next week.)  The rehearsals will begin in October.  I have brought the text back with me; it has been slightly modified by Bernhard.  [The original motto, a quotation from Diderot, was replaced by one from Artaud.]  He doesn’t intend to make any further changes to the text either for the performance or for the book.  We wish to arrange things so that we can issue the book unannounced and ship it during the height of the run.  We are going to undertake a very small print run.

He himself is writing a second play, The Voice-Boxes.  It will be finished by the spring of 1978 and therefore ready for performance in the ’78-’79 season.

He is still working on the novel Unrest (a working title that may change), but he plans to finish up work on it by May 1, so the book can be slated for publication in the second half of 1978.

He would like to have a new volume of prose, The Year, in the BS very soon, preferably in March or April of 1978.  We will receive the manuscript in three weeks.  So for this we must leave open a space in the BS schedule.

He is also working on Remembering, which he plans to finish in the winter of ’78.

Atzbach will also be completed in the winter of ’78.

He is very eager to see Ereignisse [Occurrences], which was published in 1969 by the Berlin-based firm of Colloquium, in the Insel Bücherei (not in the suhrkamp taschenbücher).  His collection of poems In hora mortis cd. conceivably be admitted into the Insel Bücherei as well, but I demurred quite emphatically at the idea.

At the same time, he has no objections to the inclusion of his play Minetti in Spectaculum 1978.

Then he spoke at great length about his grandfather, Johannes Freumbichler.  In 1942 the firm of Rainer Wunderlich published his book Auszug und Heimkehr des Jodok Fink.  Ein Buch vom Abenteuer des Lebens [Departure and Homecoming of Jodok Fink.  A Book about the Adventure of Life]; it received exactly one reprinting some years later.  The rights reverted to the author’s family; they are now held by Bernhard.  He implored me to reissue this book through Insel Publications; he said that the book was tailor-made for Insel and for our time.  I would like to ask Mr. Berthel to read this novel.  I read about 40 pages of it on the flight from Salzburg to Frankfurt; naturally it’s a bit smugly plain-folksy, but it also conveys a great deal of immediacy.

Bernhard would be very pleased to have the rights of Freumbichler’s novel Philomena Ellenhub back from Zsolnay Publications, but they refuse to give them up. […]

He wishes to have DM 30,000.00 of his credit; the amount of the monthly remittances is to be raised to DM 1,700 on January 1, 1978. […]

He then gave me a letter from Mr. Andreas Maleta, the son of the editor of the Oberösterreichischen Nachrichten [Upper-Austrian News].  I am supposed to obtain for him an internship or paying position at a newspaper.  I will make enquiries about this at the FNP [Frankfurter Neue Presse] and also talk to Joachim Kaiser about it.

3. The notation “cc Frau Duofexis” appears at the bottom of the firm’s file copy of the letter. 

4. The announcement text for Immanuel Kant subsequently printed on p. 21 of Suhrkamp Publications’ schedule preview for the first half of 1978 is identical to Unseld’s enclosed draft save for the absence of a hyphen from “Columbia-University.”  In abbreviated form it served as the blurb of the book version of the play, which was published on March 7, 1978 as Volume 556 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.

Letter No. 355

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

November 4, 1977

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

During the typesetting of Kant the following things have caught our eye:

    After the dramatis personae and in the first act one reads, “auf hoher See [on the high seas]”;

in the second and third acts, “auf Hoher See.”

    On p. 14, the newspapers are 6 weeks old;

on p. 24, 4 weeks old.

    On p. 28, “Kant...gazes into [‘ins...hinaus’] the ocean”; everywhere else one reads, “out at [‘aufs...hinaus’] the ocean.”

    On p. 29, Kant says, “Haven’t I learned [‘gelernt’] you all those ways of gripping the head.” “Haven’t I taught [‘gelehrt’] you all those ways of gripping the head.”

    Twice on p. 35 one reads, “Seeehe.” [“sea marriage”].  I am all for retaining these three e’s, but this will put us at odds with Duden, which allows only two e’s.

The page numbers are those of the manuscript.  Please be mindful of these comments as you are correcting the galley proofs, which are expected to arrive at the beginning of December.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    In the published version of Immanuel Kant  the “Hoher” in the frequently occurring phrase “auf Hoher See” is consistently capitalized; “out at the ocean” is also employed uniformly.  No changes were made to any of the other passages flagged by Unseld.  [Not true: in the passage flagged in point 4, “gelehrt” was substituted for “gelernt.” (DR)]

Letter No. 356

Hotel Astarea

Mlini / Dubrovnik

11.22.77

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I have finally managed to make a photocopy of Yes, which will be departing for Frankfurt along with this letter.  I am finally rid of the MS and can now dedicate myself to the “novel.”  I think it has become a prose text that will make me “happy”...

Regarding Kant, please do not under any circumstances [put in] University, in other words  Yewniversity, but rather always Universität!  University just sounds thoroughly awful in the context of Kant.

I am once again immersed in Unrest; I think the title will stick.

Yes would look best as a white book inscribed in black.  I am looking forward to the stripe under the word “Yes.”

Here I am enjoying excellent conditions for work at the moment, and I intend to hold on to them past December.

I am reachable here at any time.

At the Kobenzl we had an enjoyable few hours  whose effect has even now not yet worn off.  We are steering a sturdy ship--on the high seas, like the ones overlooked by my window, which are more riled-up than I have ever seen them.

The unrest of the sea all day and all night; what more do I need.  The fruits of this will be either significant or nonexistent.

Yours,

Thomas B.

P.S. The terrorism hysteria1 has even taken its toll on the general manager of the theater in Stuttgart, who will come here in a couple of days and then begin his rehearsals in January.  So Kant will go ashore in February.

    Claus Peymann was swept up into press coverage of the events of the “German Autumn” as a consequence of his support for a fundraising campaign initiated in May of 1977 by Ilse Ensslin, Gudrun Ensslin’s mother, towards paying for a dental operation for Jan Carl Raspe, a Red Army Faction member who was then an inmate of Stammheim prison.  The story was picked up by the tabloid newspaper Bild, which pilloried Peymann for his involvement in the campaign   

in its number of August 29, 1977--a month after the murder of Jürgen Ponto, the head of Dresdner Bank by members of the Red Army Faction, and a week before Hanns-Martin Schleyer, the president of the German Employers’ Association, was abducted and four members of his escort were shot dead.  In the light of the tense political situation, the possibility of summarily firing Peymann from his post as general manager of the Württemburg State Theater was discussed in the Baden-Württemburg state parliament.  Eventually it was agreed that Peymann would be allowed to stay at the State Theater until his contract expired in August of 1979.  On August 23, 1977, under the headline, “Witch-Hunting, Swabian Style,” Benjamin Heinrichs wrote in Der Zeit, “The manhunt for the kidnappers of Hanns-Martin Schleyer had so far turned up nothing.  Another chase proved much more successful: this was the search for the intellectual accomplices of the terror, the search for the so-called sympathizers. [...] Even in Stuttgart they have discovered a sympathizer: the general manager of the state theater, Claus Peymann.”  In its readers’ letters section of October 7, Die Zeit printed a telegram from Bernhard commenting on Heinrichs’s article: “witch-hunting swabian style logically conceived perfectly written.”

Peymann’s period at Stuttgart was rounded out by his production of Vor dem Ruhestand [Eve of Retirement], a play that Bernhard had written in response to the Filbinger affair, which had ended in the governor’s forced resignation (cf. n. 1 to Letter No. 377).  On July 6, 1979, under the headline “Mr. Bernhard and the Germans,” Benjamin Heinrichs commented on the premiere of Vor dem Ruhestand: “Governor Filbinger found Mr. Peymann unacceptable as general manager of the State Theater.  A lovely irony: the governor was obliged to retire before the general manager.  But it had [...] come to light that he himself had once been a sympathizer, and not only that--that he had done a nicely lethal job as Hitler’s naval judge.”  Cf. the commentary on Vor dem Ruhestand in Bernhard,Works, Vol. 18, pp. 377-382.

Letter No. 357 

  

[Address: Hotel Astarea, Mlini/Dubrovnik and Ohlsdorf; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

December 21, 1977

I am saying a hearty YES to Yes--Stop--All the best and the usual season’s greetings and best wishes for 1978 as well yours Siegfried Unseld

1978

Letter No. 358

Ohlsdorf

1.23.78

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I have been in Ohlsdorf for two days and am having a rough time acclimatizing myself to the abominableness of the Alps, but this will pass.

I am happy to accept your invitation to Zurich; I have been fond of Robert Walser ever since I got to know him and that was three decades ago.  I can fly to Zurich on 4.13 from Vienna, where I shall have something to do as late as the 12th.  Make whatever arrangements you want to with Biel; perhaps I shall be in the mood for it in April.1 I didn’t find anything from you here apart from the Yes telegram.  I had compelling reasons for wishing Yes to come out in March in the Bibliothek S.  The spring prospectus leaves out Yes entirely, which makes it a totally negative, us-less prospect for me.  Why did I bother sending in the manuscript in November?  I am now basically asking myself, “Why did we even bother meeting at the Kobenzl in Salzburg at the beginning of October?”  We discussed numerous and sundry matters there, but it seems as though everything has fallen by the wayside since.  My salary hasn’t been raised by the agreed-upon amount of DM 500 either; January saw the posting of the old unrevised version to my account.

I wish to have Yes behind me by the end of spring, because I wish to bring an entirely new project to fruition in the autumn, and Yes is standing in the way of my getting started on it.  I literally have to say Yea in order to be able to say B etcetera.

Once everything between us has been clarified, I plan to bring my autumn2 with me to Zurich.

Ah yes, my ever-unreliable publisher, to whom I am abjectly subservient.  What a fool I am.

Here I wish to do nothing but take a vacation.

At my hotel by the sea I was working better than I had done in years, and I had to go and expel myself from my own paradise, idiot that I am.  But I am on a roll now.  I abhor stagnation.  I am reviewing Kant; I shall send it in in the next few days; please have Minetti meticulously proofread and all its mis-typesettings corrected; I refuse to take on such a stultifying job myself.3

The premiere in Stuttgart is in mid-March (the 17th).  If it is then.  If it is isn’t, then it’ll be at some other time.  Who cares when.

All in all: the best of times, the best of moods.

I will have finished my new play by the time I leave here next, in three weeks.

Yours, and also, I hasten to add, Ms. Zeeh’s

sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

We really should talk to each other again soon.  Between two “downhill runs,” perhaps.4

    Under the date heading of January 4, Unseld wrote in his Chronicle:  “At the firm letters and telephone conversations regarding the April undertakings for Robert Walser.”  Perhaps in connection with these undertakings Unseld invited Thomas Bernhard to come to Zurich [see n. 2 to Letter No. 362], where on April 15, 1978 in celebration of the centenary of Robert Walser’s birth and the publication of a new edition of his work by Suhrkamp, a critical symposium--organized by the city  of Zurich, the Carl Seelig Foundation, and Suhrkamp Publications--entitled In Honor of Robert Walser and a reading by 18 authors took place at the Zurich Congress House.  A day later in Biel there was another occasion involving a reading by several authors--Marianne Fritz’s reception of the Robert Walser literary prize for her first novel, Die Schwerkraft der Verhältnisse [The Gravity of Relationships].

    Thomas Bernhard underlined and circled the phrase “my autumn.”

    On January 17, Burgel Zee sent Bernhard a complete set of galley proofs for Minetti with the following comment: “The text will be appearing in the next Spectaculum (No. 28).  You had told Dr. Unseld you had no objections to this during your most recent meeting with him in Salzburg.  Here in the house, the text has been quite scrupulously proofread; having said that, I would like to say that if we haven’t heard anything from you within the next 10 days, we will assume you are satisfied with the text.”

    From January 29 to February 5, the World Alpine Ski Championships took place in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria.

Letter No. 359

Frankfurt am Main

January 30, 1978

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

So, from the hospital (I’m here more for monitoring and as a precaution than for treatment) I thank you for your letter of January 23.1  Burgel Zeeh has already spoken to you by telephone at my request, so I don’t need to go over all that with you again.2

As far as I am concerned this is all that matters right now: if you send back the galley proofs of Kant soon, the book will be able to come out just in time for the premiere.

But please do give a look-through to the transcription of Yes at some point; the typesetter found the photocopy you sent us impossible to read; the transcriber managed to read it only with great difficulty, and on many pages the margins were cut off.  I hope she didn’t have to rely too heavily on her imagination.

So Kant on March 17 in Stuttgart, or rather in Königsberg, because of course wherever Kant is is Königsberg.

One of these days it will of course become clear which of us is the more reliable, the publisher or the author.

Speaking of reliability: please urge Schaffler not to hawk the third chunk of pages to dtv, and tell him that you would instead prefer to see all three volumes published together in a suhrkamp taschenbuch.3

Hospitals make healthy people ill.

Yours

sincerely,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Between January 24 and February 2, 1978, as an inpatient at the Frankfurt University medical clinic, Unseld was monitored for a suspected case of acute hearing loss.  In a journal of his stay at the clinic he quoted a January 29, 1978 letter from Bernhard to Burgel Zeeh: “My undivided attention is concentrated on the health of my publisher and on the successful future of his work.  All this while I am enjoying the best thoughts.”

    In a telephone message dated January 26, Burgel Zeeh wrote:

“Telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard

I talked through his letter of January 23 with him.  Zurich, Robert Walser: okay.  He will also bring something ‘with’ him for the fall.  Today I am sending him the transcription of the manuscript and the copy he sent in.  He will read the manuscript and send it back to us with his corrections, so that we can immediately give it to the typesetter.  A May publication date would be good for him, or even an April one, however we can manage it.  I explained to him that we had not announced the text as a BS title because the MS did not reach the house until the end of November, and all the announcements had already been prepared by then.

Color: white with black lettering.

Typeface: very large.  The manuscript is only 80 pages long!

Announcement on January 28 at the sales representatives’ conference.

Kant: he sent off the galley proofs on Monday; this weekend he is expecting a visit from Claus Peymann, with whom he plans to have a thorough discussion of the final corrections.  The premiere is on March 17 (prospectively) in Stuttgart, so advance copies must be available by then.

Color: we should choose one that will blend in with the volumes that are already in print.

On February 12 he is going to Rome for a week.  After that he might go to Australia for two months.

Contract with Stuttgart: we should finalize the usual contract with Stuttgart;

he has—and this has nothing to do with the contract—received a commission fee for Kant.  When he said ‘usual’ I pointed out to him that we have so far never finalized any contract with Stuttgart; he had negotiated the deal forMinetti himself.  Ms. Doufexis will ask for DM 8,000.00.

He was, amid all ‘the abominations of my surroundings here, amid the fog, in uncomfortably’ good spirits.

Best regards and wishes to Mr. Unseld.”

3. Just like its predecessors, Die Ursache [An Indication of the Cause] and Der Keller [The Cellar], the third part of Bernhard’s autobiography, Der Atem [Breath], was first published by Residenz and then reissued as a paperback by dtv in 1981.  In 1979, Residenz granted the Deutsche Buchgemeinschaft [German Book Club] a book-club license to issue a one-volume edition of Die Ursache, Der Keller, and Der Atem.

Letter No. 360

[Address: Ohlsdorf, telegram]

Frankfurt am Main

February 9, 1978

yes to the present day1 and yes yet again to “yes” in the bibliothek suhrkamp in may yours siegfried unseld and yours burgel z. who says yes to everything.

1. Bernhard’s 47th birthday (DR).

Letter No. 361

Ohlsdorf

2.15.78

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I have always valued illnesses more highly than anything else, because emerging from them in a healthy state has always been an enormous and incredibly significant intellectual boon.  A single illness that hurls you into your sickbed is worth a lifetime of fat tomes.

We have come down with three severe illnesses in one lifetime, and if we have the head and the guts for it, we’ll be able to get so far ahead of all the other ones that in looking back on them we’ll have a hard time even recognizing them.

Every illness makes us stronger; with every illness we acquire deeper insight; each of them is incomparably priceless.  Provided we ride them out, because we wish to, with our heads.

Heads know what they know on the sly; this is why they fall ill every now and then.

I am looking forward to April 15 in Zurich.

I shall be at home for another week; then I plan to be in Spain for the whole of March.

Peymann has been rehearsing for a week.  The premiere will be between the beginning and the middle of April.

I am writing a play for Minetti and a young girl that he |Peymann| plans to stage next winter.  For now it is called The Milk Jug.1

Kaut wrote me a letter and who knows: perhaps I actually will feel like coming up with a play for Salzburg in the summer of seventy-nine.

After Kaut the so-called festival president in Salzburg will be a good man for us in any case.2

I have renounced Australia.  And everywhere else.

When I am working, I am happy.

Sincerely,

Thomas B.

    In June of this year Bernhard informed Burgel Zeeh that the title of The Milk Jug had been changed to Der Weltverbesserer [The World-Fixer or The Utopian].  But the constellation of characters obviously reminds one more of the play published in 1986 under the title Einfach kompliziert [Simply Complicated] than ofDer Weltverbesserer.  Also reminiscent of Einfach kompliziert is a summary of the planned play that Bernhard sketched during his April 26, 1978 visit to Frankfurt and that Unseld reported in his Chronicle: “The situation is that of an old writer who sits in a forest.  A 17-year-old girl comes and visits him.  She brings milk.  The tension arises from the fact that this 17-year-old girl with this sexually symbolic milk jug is walking through the forest.”

    In a letter dated February 9, 1978 and typed on the official stationery of the president of the Salzburg Festival, Kaut congratulated Bernhard on his birthday and asked him about his “theater plans”; he hinted at the possibility—one contingent, he said, on much careful long-term planning–of his admitting a Bernhard play into the festival’s program.  But it was in fact only three years later that the hiatus in the festival’s collaboration with Bernhard ended:Am Ziel [At the Goal] was premiered in Salzburg on August 18, 1981, in a Claus Peymann-directed co-production with the Schauspielhaus Bochum.

At a meeting with Unseld, Bernhard again raised the question of who Kaut’s successor would be; regarding this, Unseld noted in his Travel Journal, Hamburg-Salzburg-Munich, August 21-23, 1978, “Kaut’s successor as director of the Salzburg Festival will be Gerd Bacher in 1980.”  As it happened, Kaut stayed on as president of the festival until his death on June 8, 1983, and he was succeeded not by Gerd Bacher but by Albert Moser. 

Letter No. 362

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

February 17, 1978

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I am about to embark on a weeklong journey into the snow, into a district you are well acquainted with, a place still haunted by the spirit of Nietzsche and where a certain Thomas Bernhard went on many a meditative hike.1  I am hoping for a new concentration of my energies there.  Naturally I know that in the final analysis we can find fulfilment only in work.

I was very pleased to hear your news and to learn of how productive you now are.

We shall see each other at the premiere in Stuttgart and then in Zurich, where we will absent ourselves for a bit in order to speak with each other face to face.2

I am delighted that you are able to work and that you are working happily.

Yours

sincerely--

[Siegfried Unseld]

    From February 17 through February 28 Unseld was in Switzerland, where in addition to spending six days on a ski holiday in St. Moritz, he met with Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Max Frisch, Adolf Muschg, and others.  Unseld and Bernhard jointly sojourned in St. Moritz in 1975 (see Letter No. 308). 

    Unseld and Bernhard did not see each other either at the Robert Walser conference in Zurich or at the premiere of Immanuel Kant in Stuttgart: the two events took place on the same date, April 15.  In his Travel Journal, Zurich-Biel, April 14-16, 1978, Unseld commented on the opening of the celebrations in Zurich: “The authors all showed up, with two exceptions: Handke and Bernhard; Burgel Zeeh tried to reach him, and the city wanted to make a helicopter available to him” [I suppose the idea was for somebody in a helicopter to pick Bernhard up in Ohlsdorf and fly him to Zurich and not for Bernhard to fly himself there (DR)].  In lieu of the Zurich and Stuttgart rendezvous, the two of them met in Frankfurt on April 26; Unseld wrote about this encounter in his Chronicle:

“Burgel Zeeh [...] accompanies me to the airport; where we await the arrival of Thomas Bernhard, who is coming from Salzburg expressly for this conversation.  A very detailed conversation lasting into the small hours of the morning.  We slowly grope our way to unanimity.  He gives me the manuscript of Der Stimmenimitator [The Voice Imitator].  He asked me to read three [sic (DR)] texts: ‘Hamsun,’ and then particularly, ‘In Rome,’ a story about Ingeborg Bachmann.  I insist on a revision; I remind him that after sustaining her burn injuries Bachmann neither lost consciousness nor failed to regain it.  Initially he refuses to strike the passage, but in the end he strikes it.

The he tells me about his plans: another novella to be published as a separate book [Die Billigesser (The Cheap-Eaters)], another play [The Milk Jug] and then, next fall, the novel Unrest.  And then we sneak up on the decisive point: I tell him that I can’t put up with any further Residenz editions.  I can’t for purely psychological reasons.  He promises nothing apart from a two-year break, but the relationship is very warm-hearted; when I subsequently find myself pressed for time, he gives me a hug.  He has never done that before.  We agree to meet again in July.” 

Letter No. 363

[Address: Ohlsdorf; picture postcard: “San Francisco, The Golden Gate Bridge”]

San Francisco

May 8 [1978]

Dear Thomas

I liked our meeting in Frankfurt.1a

It is really gorgeous here, and so many people would like to have you here.  Why don’t we meet some time in S.F.

Yours sincerely S.U.1

1a. This sentence is in English in the original (DR)

    From April 28 through May 18, Unseld was in the United States.  Between May 6 and 10 he was in San Francisco, a city he much admired and about whose landmarks he noted in his Travel Journal USA, April 28-May 18, 1978: “[Drive] across the Golden Gate Bridge, always a grand experience; it fittingly puts me in mind of Thomas Bernhard, who once said that big bridges, power stations, and the opening moments of airplane flights are the secular descendants of the holy sanctuaries of yore.” 

Letter No. 364

Ohlsdorf

7.31.78

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

We had planned to see each other in July.  Tomorrow is the first of August, and so my query whether we are going to meet at my house in August is an urgent one.  It is something I was keen on happening.

The day before yesterday I came out of the hospital after a necessary operation.  Everything is back in working order.  Today the stitches are coming out.  My brother has done this very well once before.

I am in excellent fettle!

Sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

P.S. Between the 11th and the 19th I shall be in Vienna!1

    A note in Unseld’s handwriting in the upper-right corner of the letter reads, “21st/22nd by tel[ephone]. U.”

Letter No. 365

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

August 15, 1978

Must come later on Tuesday, August 22nd.  Arrival Salzburg 10:15 a.m.  Expect you at airport.  Very sincerely Siegfried Unseld.1

    Unseld wrote about this meeting in his Travel Journal, Hamburg--Salzburg--Munich, August 21st-23rd, 1978:

“Five-hour-long conversation with Thomas Bernhard, once again [see n. 2 to Letter No. 338] on the lofty terrace of the Maria Plain restaurant.

The BS edition of Yes is teeming with transcription errors and compositor’s mistakes.  It serves Bernhard right; he didn’t feel like rereading the text after we sent him the transcript we had prepared here.

He is sending us a corrected copy.  If we reprint it, he wants us to change the color as well; he would prefer the usual black-and-white scheme.

He gave me the manuscript of Der Weltverbesserer.  It is going to be prepublished in Theater heute [Theater 1979.  Special Issue of the Journal “Theater heute,” pp. 88-102].  The rehearsals in Stuttgart will begin in three weeks.  Principal roles: Minetti and [Edith] Heerdegen.  Bernhard is thinking that he won’t license it any further afterwards and so we must keep in touch with him about this.

We discussed the manuscript of The Voice Imitator.  I was still brimming over with enthusiasm from my reading of the rough paginated copy; a delightful book; it’s almost as if there’s a Bernhard novel on every page or in every vignette!

The stories are now sequenced in the exact order in which they were written.  The book was originally entitled “The Probable/Improbable,” but he now plans to save this title for a more important work.

The Voice Imitator: the writer himself is also this kind of imitator, an impressionist; after all, he cannot write exactly what he is thinking.  Thus, everything that is written is an impression.  Only the thoughts are original.  And in some sense every vignette is an act, a circus act. [...]

In November, Bernhard plans to go to Mallorca for three months to work on the novel Unrest.”

Letter No. 366

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 11, 1978

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Ernst Wendt of the Munich Kammerspiele is very keen on restaging Der Weltverbesserer.  You told me earlier that you didn’t want any restagings, but I am of the opinion that we should reverse this decision.  After all, Ernst Wendt isn’t just some nobody.1

Yours

with warm regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

(dictated during a travel absence)

typed by Burgel Zeeh

    In her notes on a telephone conversation she had with Bernhard on September 15, 1978, Burgel Zeeh wrote: “He thanks you for his letter about Wendt / Munich Kammerspiele / Weltverbesserer.  He would really like additionally to know: who is directing, who is playing the principal roles; he would prefer not to make any decision before he knows these things.  He says Wendt is a good man, but he--Bernhard--has some misgivings.

He said he was feeling better again, at any rate better than on the day when you were in Salzburg.  He said he had not discussed everything with you, and for this reason he would very much like to come to Frankfurt in October.”

Der Weltverbesserer was premiered on September 6, 1980 in Bochum in a production directed by Claus Peymann.  See n. 1 to Letter No. 411.     

Letter No. 367

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

October 13, 1978

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

So, Friday, October 13: I was really geared up for your visit, and I wasn’t the only one; so we were all disappointed.  On the other hand, you shouldn’t and mustn’t expose yourself to any risk.1

But I am glad we will be able to see each other in Vienna later on.  My proposal: on the evening of the 25th, at a meeting of the literary society, I will be giving a talk on that Goethe poem that you are of course familiar with from Volume 1,000 of the Insel Bücherei.2  I had geared myself up to pay visits to book dealers throughout the next day, but I hear that it is a national holiday and that businesses will be closed.  Could you arrange for us to meet on the morning of Tuesday, October 26, at the Hilton Hotel--perhaps quite early, at 9:00, for breakfast, or anything else?  We would then have all the morning to ourselves, right up to lunchtime.  I am engaged for lunch, but the young lady would unquestionably be thrilled if you were to join us for this meal.2a

Now to the subject of your books and the printings of them:

We haven’t officially recorded any sales figures for The Voice Imitator, but we have been keeping track of them: first printing 1978.  A run of 9,000 copies was printed, and we have already sold 4,751 of them; that is really quite a tidy success.3

We have now printed a second run of Yes, meaning that we have also printed copies nos. 4,000 through 6,000; we will have a copy sent to you; the text on the sash around the book will certainly please you.4  Have patience regarding the advertisements.  As I told you, they have already been purchased and will be appearing in Die Zeit, the FAZ, and Die Presse in Vienna.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Under the date-heading of October 13, Unseld recorded in his Chronicle: “Early today, starting at six in the morning, I read Thomas Bernhard for two hours, mainly The Voice Imitator, in preparation for his visit.  Another stimulating session of reading. [...] by comparison my ensuing daily read-through of the FAZ was like an encounter with sheer nothing.

But Bernhard ended up not coming.  In Vienna fog was forecast for Frankfurt.

He phoned; we agreed to meet on November 25 [a slip for October 25].”

    Volume 1,000 of the Insel Bücherei, »Das Tagebuche« Goethes und Rilkes »Sieben Gedichte« [Goethe’s “The Diary” and Rilke’s “Seven Poems”], edited by Unseld, was published in June of 1978.

2a.  For reasons doubtless best known to themselves, the editors make no comment

on the identity of the “young lady.” (DR)

3. The Voice Imitator was delivered to the bookstores on September 21, 1978.

4. The first printing of Yes was published as Volume 600 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp on June 6, 1978.  The cover: white writing on a blue background.  The cover of the second printing had a black background in conformity with the author’s wishes (see n. 1 to Letter No. 365).  The text of the sash reads: “For YES is a masterpiece, and everybody who would rather not miss out on the literature of his time must read it.”  The sentence was taken from Andreas Müller’s review of Yes, “One Must Be Able to Fail if One Wishes to Survive,” in Abendzeitung München, August 16, 1978. 

Letter No. 368

Ohlsdorf

10.15.78

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I would like to thank you quite unsentimentally for your letter from Friday and also most decisively and affectionately highlight more than anything else the three points that I was planning to propose in Frankfurt.  These are the three desires whose granting seems necessary to me in the light of the immediate future; I wish to press ahead with my work both calmly and unflaggingly:

first I  am requesting two thousand marks per month, beginning in January of ’79;

second the complete expungement of my loan debt;

third, that you should bring forty-thousand marks to me in Vienna.

We ought to have the monthly remittances issued over a period of six years with a cutoff date at the end of ’85.

The expungement of the loan debt dates back to your own proposal in July; I was quite keen on it. 

The forty thousand are necessary for an instantaneous general cleansing of my finances.

The future is going to yield what we agreed it would yield; above all, within the next year, the novel, which nevertheless  should be placed in the dead center of the schedule and benefit from every last thrust the firm and its passion can call upon.  The World-Fixer will be coming out in January or February with Minetti and in the Bibliothek Unseld, which should not fail to make my happiness complete, in black and white.1

And now, by way of distributing all the weights evenly: I shall not continue the so-called autobiography in our unmannerly Salzburg house, if that is your wish.

I intend to ring  you to discuss all these points at ten in the morning this coming Friday.  This above all because when I rang you last Friday I completely forgot that all next week I am going to be in Malta and so most certainly cannot be in Vienna, a fact that I let slip from my mind in my enthusiasm about meeting up with you.  From Sunday to Sunday, if I make it through the whole week, I shall be in Malta, at the Hotel Cavalieri, where Ingeborg B. lived many years ago.2

I will be glad to make an appearance at the Kammerspiele in November; the people should let me know when by letter.

I am very unhappy that next week I shall be in Malta and not in Vienna.  But the trip to Malta has been on my calendar for months and is unpostponable.

I shall send the letter to Klettenbergstrasse, because I think that’s better.

With best wishes for the fair

and naturally also to your wife

very sincerely,

Thomas B.

    Der Weltverbesserer, which in the schedule preview was announced as a separate edition in the main schedule, was published in March of 1979--with a black cover with white lettering--in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.

    Ingeborg Bachmann and Bernhard were friends with Alfred Griesel, who managed a hotel in Malta.

Letter No. 369

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

October 16, 1978

Reminding you of your agreement to Munich evening reading--Munich’s cultural adviser Kolbe will wire you tomorrow1--sincere regards and see you no later than October 26 in Vienna--Yours Siegfried Unseld2

    On November 9, Burgel Zeeh wrote to Bernhard: “Dear Thomas Bernhard, the organizers of the event in Munich are getting slightly nervous because they have still not received any notification of agreement from you.  I initially informed the gentlemen that you had already given your agreement to Dr. Unseld; but in the end I urgently asked them to write you not a telegram but a letter stating all the particulars.  I hope this has been done in the meantime.”]

    The meeting took place and was described in Unseld’s Travel Journal, Vienna, October 25-26, 1978:

“After the obligatory courtesies, the bandying to and fro of salutations, the presentation of signed copies of The Voice Imitator for Burgel Zeeh and me.  [... we] then [discussed] the details of our [arrangement] precisely and extensively.  The starting point was Bernhard’s letter of 10.15.1978.  The sum of money.  The augmented monthly remittance.  The expungement of the loan debt.  Signing of new contracts; I had read them over several times in the morning, and I myself now found the tone of a certain passage rather off-putting.  In this very passage Bernhard characteristically changed a “pledges not to” into a “will not.”  [In its original version the agreement stipulated both that the loan of March 15, 1975 (see n. 1 to Letter No. 312) would be treated as a one-time special remittance and that Bernhard “pledge[d] not to” continue his autobiography under the imprint of Residenz.  The corrected sentence reads: “Thomas Bernhard is not going to continue his autobiography under the imprint of Residenz and will not allow any more of his books to be published by that firm without prior consultation with Dr. Unseld.”]  This was literally the work of minutes; then we discussed his productive business.  Time and again I marvel at his precision, his intensity, his self-will whenever his own texts are the central topic.”

Regarding The World-Fixer: I wanted a second volume of Collected Plays after the Salzburg Plays; he wanted a dedicated edition in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.  But probably he sensed that I had reservations about any edition, and so the “Bibliothek Suhrkamp question” never even came up, although I did finally decide to allow him his dedicated edition in the spring of 1979.  […] I criticized the dedication of the play, ‘To Minetti—who else?’  Every actor aside from Minetti was bound to feel snubbed by this, but that made no difference to him, because, he said, they were all second-rate.  [As eventually printed, the play bears the dedication “To Minetti.”]  But this gave him occasion to say that nobody but Minetti should ever perform this play—at least not as long as Minetti was still alive; that once he was dead and no longer able to act, the play would be open to other actors.

Bernhard is working on two new things: on the novel Gegenruhe [Antirest] (an outstanding title) and on a new play to launch Peymann’s tenure at Bochum.  For the launch of his novel Antirest he would like a good point of embarkation in our schedule—if possible an exclusive one.  This was something I could guarantee him, because after all, Walser, Frisch, and Krolow’s books are all going to be issued in the spring.  On the one hand he wants his publisher to give the book a mighty shove into the world, on the other hand he loathes overblown publicity; on the one hand he recently complained that we were bound to do too little for The Voice Imitator and Yes, but then again when he later saw the ads in Die Presse and the FAZ, he thought they were almost excessive, and the only thing about them that got him at all excited was the fact that we had made a grammatical error in them! [The advertisement in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung whose tag is a quotation from Munich’s Abendzeitung—“If there is any contemporary German-language literature that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Musil and Kafka, this is it!”—contains a grammatical error in its description of The Voice Imitator: “Each these stories [diese (“this” or “these”) appears in place of dieser (“of these”) (DR)] is a Thomas Bernhard novel.”] […]

A conversation about The Voice Imitator.  In his opinion this book is a work of slight importance.  He said he had written it in five days, which I find almost incredible.  On two or three occasions he had taken phrases directly from newspaper stories.  I vehemently disagreed with him and told him over and over again that in every single one of these prose pieces I could discern a Thomas Bernhard novel in nuce, and that this book struck me as a case in proof of his mastery of hypotaxis, and that it contained a conspicuous prevalence of the adjectives ‘natural,’ ‘actual,’ and ‘complete.’

[...] He is coming to the reading in Munich on November 23.  Before that he will read at Peymann’s theater in Stuttgart.  The date has not yet been fixed, but we should get them to settle on one and then inform the book dealers in Stuttgart of it.  Between Stuttgart and Munich a couple of days in the Black Forest and then Ohlsdorf through Christmas and New Year’s; after that he plans to disappear for a couple of months.  I personally assume he will have finished the text entitled Antirest by then.

[...] A punctual departure.  I continue reading The Voice Imitator, and give especially close attention to the stories to which Bernhard refers in his dedication to me, to ‘A Headstrong Author’ and ‘Giants.’”  The dedication reads: “From the ‘headstrong author’ to the GIANT (among publishers) / at break-fast / in Vienna / Hilton 10.26.78 / Thomas B. / X page 119 / t page 105”--the pages are those containing the stories of the same titles in the first printing of The Voice Imitator.

Letter No. 370     

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

November 30, 1978

Dear Thomas,

Hopefully you made it back in one piece.  I am very sorry about the whole thing; there really was no need for such a thoroughly German experience.  But I am of course certain that you did not see the disruption as being directed at you personally; the very next day Lars Gustafson read without encountering any interference whatsoever.  On that day of the canceled Kroetz reading and the forbidden shah demonstration the watches of those gentlemen were simply synchronized for protest.  What is more, the newspapers condemned the incident so harshly that in hindsight even the protesters clearly saw how ridiculous and outrageous it had been.  Moreover, you did of course get to make your point that they were doing to you exactly what they were protesting against the president of the university for doing.1

The Voice Imitator keeps on imitating with great vigor.  In Holland and Italy the rights have been officially acquired by the publishing firms of de Arbeiderspers and Adelphi; their acquisition in the USA by Knopf and in France by Gallimard is in the offing.  The sales figures are also picking up nicely.

So things are going nicely; they are developing as we meant them to develop.

I wish you a happy spell of writing and living.  And if you go to some other place, please send us your address.2

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

  

    Under the date-heading of November 22-24, Unseld reported on the foiling of Bernhard’s reading in the context of a series of functions called Writers Read in Munich, Part I, organized by the city of Munich:

“Thomas Bernhard.  He arrived accompanied by his aunt, Mrs. Stavianicek.  He was indignant because he had been promised a reading at the theater and not at the university.  I prepped him in nonchalant anticipation of possible protests.  But then came something that we really weren’t expecting: Bernhard’s reading was the evening of the day a reading by Kroetz had originally been scheduled to take place.  [The president of the university, Nikolaus Lobkowicz, prohibited the reading because its sponsor, the Marxist student organization Spartakus, had been banned from the university by the Bavarian ministry of culture.]  And then came another surprise: the communist groups were planning to hold a demonstration in protest against the shah.  The president of the university forbade this as well.  The would-be rioters and troublemakers were already at the university, and they now resolved not to allow Bernhard to give his reading.  Again the same old situation: an auditorium filled to capacity, even more people than the evening before [at a reading given by Max Frisch].  It was downright claustrophobia-inducing.  A single spark of any kind could have touched off a general panic.  Then the protesters started making speeches, and they never stopped.  Again a classic case: a small, brutal, truncheon-armed minority was terrorizing the majority.  I succeeded in snatching the microphone away from the guys.  Bernhard managed to make the point that they were doing to him precisely what they were protesting against the president of the university for doing, that they were keeping a writer from giving a reading.  Then the microphone was snatched back out of his hands.  I succeeded once again in giving him the microphone; he read a story from The Voice Imitator having to do with Persia, but he was once again shouted down, and so we left the hall.  I had to spend a good part of the night calming him down.   

2. On December 31, Bernhard wrote to Burgel Zeeh informing her that he was leaving that evening for the Hotel Amfora on the island of Havar: “I shall be exclusively occupied with working on the novel there and have packed all my work papers for the trip.  I am setting off from Vienna tonight.  On New Year’s Day I shall be on the train; certainly a fantastic situation.”

Bernhard in Munich--11.23.78.jpg

The University of Munich, November 23, 1978.  Bernhard (sitting in the front row between Unseld and Hedwig Stavianicek) looks on as a student protester occupies the podium from which he was to have read. 

Letter No. 371

Ohlsdorf

11.29.78

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The 23rd of November, last Thursday, is a date that I shall never forget.  It was (and is!) disgraceful.  As far as I am concerned, the very thought of Germany is depressing.  If you yourself had not been present as a witness, I would have to recapitulate the events at that lecture hall in Munich; I have had yet another appalling experience that I cannot allow to be minimized if I am to take myself and my existence seriously and to take seriously the society in which I am forced to exist.

At the very least some rights, which are talked so much about in Germany nowadays, were bludgeoned, and I am referring here not only to my specific personal rights but also the rights of the hundreds of other people, in whom, thanks to a vulgar and dastardly minority--let them call themselves whatever they like--was inculcated a better, meaning a more repellent, understanding of democracy.   

Not to mention the fact that I was ultimately present at the University as a foreigner and as an invited guest of the city of Munich.

I believe that from the forceful preemptive silencing of a person (in this case me) while slapping him in the face with a violation of his rights of hospitality--and the suppression was indeed more or less an act of brute physical force, as you saw--it is a short step to the utter annihilation of that person and his work.  By comparison even book-burning is a harmlessly symbolic act.

The more I think back on those events, the more sinister they seem to me; even though they really are nothing more than a confirmation of my writings.

As horrifying as those events in house of the Scholl Siblings were for me, I am much more horrified by the fact that I seem to have been left to endure the horror on my lonesome.  The reality of present-day Germany is much more brutal and vulgar than even the most attentive person, so long as he observes it merely as a writer, will ever believe.

According to the Abendzeitung [a Munich tabloid newspaper (DR)], Mr. Kroetz, to whom in the final analysis these events of the 23rd must be ascribed, made an appearance on the stage of a Munich cabaret a few days after the 23rd.  At this cabaret, the Munich “Laughing and Firing Squad,” he is said to have said that he “did not authorize his people to crash the Bernhard reading.”  And yet his people did not obey his orders.  According to the Abendzeitung, Mr. Kroetz garnered tempests of enthusiastic laughter.  Mr. Kroetz and his people remind me of Munich’s Nazis.1

Germany’s schizophrenia is a once-in-a-century spiritual disorder.  I used to tell myself, come on, lighten up, pal; you mustn’t take it seriously.  But now I have had no choice but to take it seriously and hard.

I was very glad that you were present at the time.

Yours very sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard   

    Under the headline No Red Monster in the Abendzeitung Andreas Müller reported on Franz Xaver Kroetz’s appearance at “Laughing and Firing-Talk” on November 26, 1978: “Playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz, who had recently been chased out of the university as a threat to State security, sent the audience of the Munich Laughing and Firing Squad’s Sunday talk show into paroxysms of laughter.  At no point was the dangerousness of this man apparent [...] His [Kroetz’s] followers stampeded a reading of the Austrian writer Bernhard that by chance had been scheduled for the same time block in the auditorium.  What they had done there, Kroetz declared during the talk show, had never been authorized by him.  ‘I expressly forbade my people to sabotage the Bernhard reading.’  Unfortunately Kroetz’s fiat proved ineffectual.  This charming overgrown boy evidently had had no influence on the events he had triggered.”   

Letter No. 372

Frankfurt am Main

December 1, 1978

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I have received your letter of November 29; many thanks.  I understand your reaction, and also why you discern a confirmation of your writings in these events.  What you experienced is in point of fact a German reality, and it is--as you say--brutal and vulgar.  And yet, my dear Thomas Bernhard, this isn’t the entire German reality; it is is a minuscule piece of it, a pebble that admittedly forms part of this mosaic.  But there are other pebbles, and one should also keep these in view.

Regarding Kroetz specifically, he has a sort of Bavarian sense of humor that basically makes no sense to anyone.  It may be completely true that he said hadn’t authorized “his people” to sabotage your reading.   You will recall that the first lady who read there was a member of Kroetz’s Spartakus group.  But the other “speakers” were rival left-wing groups, notably the Communist Association of West Germany, who are firm enemies of the Spartakus organization.  So on this point we really ought to make some distinctions.

And another thing: you know how strongly I condemned the incident and regarded it as disgraceful, and I made my attitude perfectly clear to the responsible parties, as you also heard, but the attack was not directed at you personally; it would have alighted on anybody who was supposed to read that night--be it Koeppen--Struck--Frisch, or Lars Gustafsson.  Those people were hell-bent on destruction.  Admittedly that doesn’t make the whole thing any better.  For me it was obvious to be on your side, and you should know that I shall continue to be on your side in times to come.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Dr. Siegfried Unseld]

1979

Letter No. 373

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

February 8, 1979

Requesting phone call from you--regards Unseld1

    Under the date-heading of February 9, Unseld commented: “Telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard, whose birthday is today.”

Letter No. 374

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

March 5, 1979

Requesting phone call.  Regards Unseld

Letter No. 375

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

March 5, 1979

Dear Thomas,

Behold The World-Fixer in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.  Your plays now form a long series there.  But with every addition its importance grows, I think.1

In a separate post six more documents will be sent to you  (in two packages); please let me know if you would like to have more copies.  And please also tell me when I can give you a ring--but perhaps that will have already happened by the time this letter reaches you.

[signed Siegfried Unseld]

p.p.

Burgel Zeeh

Enclosure

    Der Weltverbesserer was issued as Volume 646 of the BS on March 1, 1979.

    Burgel Zeeh spoke with Bernhard by telephone on March 6 and prepared the following notes of the conversation for Unseld:

“He had in any case already been expecting your call and your question about whether and when we would be receiving the prose manuscript.

First of all: he was handicapped by the flu for an entire week; now he is finishing up the play, which Peymann will bring to the stage before the end of spring.

He says the new book is ready, but he would like to let it sit for a while.  He says he has considered this carefully; he really doesn’t want to publish any prose texts this year; three books by him have already come out in the past year, which is quite enough for now.

Then his question: has Handke been here, and has he finished his new book?  If so it would come out in the fall, and that, he thought, would be quite fitting; hence it would be also be fitting for his book to come out no earlier than the spring of next year.  He said he was quite content with this decision.” 

Letter No. 376

Frankfurt am Main

April 3, 1979

Dear Thomas,

I read the entire play last night.1  I most heartily congratulate you on it!  You have successfully prepared another payload, and this time one with a theme that will naturally be quite explosive here in the Federal Republic.  The people will sit up and take notice!

I would urgently like to propose a change to p. 91; one reads there: “On the other hand, of course we now have a president who used to be a National Socialist.”

Either the current president, Mr. Scheel, or the next one, Mr. Carstens, could regard such a turn of phrase as an aspersion of the head of state.  In this country people have a harder time understanding jokes than in Austria.  I could propose to you a minimal revision that will get the point across just as precisely: “…a president who used to be in the Nazi party.”  Or: “…a ‘party member.’”  These are turns of phrase that nobody can take any exception to; they are factually accurate; but here “National Socialist” can and will be regarded as flagrantly libelous, and it can be opposed with a ban on performances or a ban on the dissemination of the text.  Please do think this over.2

So we will be speaking with each other on Good Friday morning.  I shall expect your call between 9:00 and 11:00 a.m. at Klettenbergstraße (55 28 67).

It was nice having you here.  The various stops at the firm, Königstein, and Frankfurter Hof were exceedingly pleasant, and I am very happy about “our” schedule.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[signed Siegfried Unseld]

on his behalf p.p.: Yours, Burgel Zeeh3

1. On April 2, Unseld met with Bernhard in Frankfurt and Königstein; he wrote some notes about the encounter:

He came via Salzburg, where Schaffler begged him for another book; he declined to offer him one; then a conversation with the head of the Festival, Kaut, in the course of which Bernhard had reviled him in abusive language, and via Stuttgart, where he spoke and negotiated with Claus Peymann.

Bernhard wrote his new play, The Eve of Retirement.  A Comedy about the German Soul, within the span of a fortnight.  Peymann read it and was immediately prepared to change his season schedule, to stop working on Tasso and to have this play performed instead on June 1.  Set design Hermann; main role Traugott Buhre.  This naturally caused a furore in Stuttgart, but Peymann got his way.  From there he has again compelled Bernhard to issue the rights for the Stuttgart performances directly to him; there will be about two or three of them; then Peymann will put it on in Bochum, and after that Suhrkamp Publications will take over.   And Bernhard should also allow the play to be printed in the playbill [I suppose by the ‘playbill’ Unseld means Spectaculum (DR)] .

The play is very much like a Strindberg play, a dream play in a certain sense; it is, according to Bernhard, a melange of Strindberg and Henry James.

[...] Preparations for the premiere must take place in the greatest secrecy.  Towards this end I think we should completely refrain from showcasing the author, because Bernhard has promised to give Peymann a head start.  We will first announce the book in our ‘financial newsletter,’ after the theater in Stuttgart has made its own announcement [...]

His upcoming publication plans:

so on June 1, 1979: Eve of Retirement.

In the fall of 1979 The World-Fixer with Minetti will be staged in Bochum.

We will speak by telephone on Good Friday, and I will then learn whether Bernhard has any objection to our compiling a kind of omnibus comprising his complete novellas.

In April/May of 1980 the prose text Remembering will be published in the BS.  There will be a few volumes of this.

The new edition suhrkamp may be a good spot for The Cheap-Eaters, a prose text about 70 pages long, which in book form would be about 120-130 pages, hence an ideal length.  The manuscript can be gotten from Bernhard at any time.

After that the novel Antirest in the fall of 1980. 

He also has a finished fairy tale, ‘The Fairy Tale about the Salzburgers or the Idiot from the North.”  I shall try to get in touch with Horst Jannsen and see if he is interested in illustrating something like that.  Even though Bernhard is none too keen on having it illustrated.  There are no contemporary artists that he thinks of as significant.

2. The phrase was not altered.

3. On April 3, Unseld traveled for ten days to the United States, where the first German Book Week took place at New York University’s Deutsches Haus.  In his Travel Journal, USA, April 3-12, 1979, he described a panel discussion in which he had been compelled by default to play the role of “the man who complains that American publishers publish so few German-language books, that they ignore books that would be important additions to their catalogues, and that the German language was an ever-diminishing presence in the editors’ offices of American publishing firms.”  Nevertheless in his journal he observed: “It is remarkable, but it is true: Thomas Bernhard deserves a special mention.  His Corrections[sic on the incorrect proto-Franzenian English title!! {DR}] will be coming out soon; it would already have been published by now, had the publishing firm, Alfred Knopf, not had to reprint it; somebody had chosen for it a piece of modern art that already adorned the cover of another book! [...] In all the discussions during the book week Bernhard’s name blazed up as a counterexample adduced by the American publishers, who fairly bedizened themselves in their publication of Bernhard.”     

Letter No. 377

Frankfurt am Main

April 27, 1979

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

We are receiving some pressing telephone calls.  In the gazettes, for example in the Frankfurter Rundschau, it is being reported that Peymann is working on a production of The Eve of Retirement in Stuttgart and will bring it to the stage in June.1   There are theaters that are strongly interested in the text and that are asking about the possibility of staging performances of it.  The Burgtheater in Vienna is interested in having Erwin Axer direct the play there.  The Zurich Schauspielhaus is requesting an option for a Swiss performance.  Could we talk about this by phone sometime?  This is an urgent and importunate matter. 

Yours

with warm regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Ten days later, under a dateline of May 7, Der Spiegel commented on the course of events as follows: “Under conditions of strictest secrecy involving daily confiscation of the six texts in use at the theater, Claus Peymann is working on a production of Thomas Bernhard’s latest play, Eve of Retirement, subtitled A Comedy about the German Soul.  And Suhrkamp Publications is preparing the no less jealously shielded book version of the play for the premiere at the end of June.  Is it possible that all the while everybody was waiting spellbound for something from Hochhuth, Bernhard was secretly bringing a play-à-clef about Filbinger into the world?”

In the February 17, 1978 number of Die Zeit, Rolf Hochhuth had published a excerpt from his novella Eine Liebe in Deutschland [A Love in Germany], with which he drew the public’s attention to the fact that the then-present governor of Baden-Württemberg, Hans Filbinger, had as a naval judge sentenced people to death shortly before Germany’s surrender in World War II.  Filbinger, who denied the accusations and took legal proceedings against Hochhuth and Die Zeit, was compelled to tender his resignation on August 7, 1978.  Hochhuth’s playJuristen [Jurists], which takes the Filbinger affair as its subject, was originally scheduled to be premiered during Peymann’s last season at the Staatstheather Stuttgart, but it was not finished in time.  Peymann replaced it on the schedule with Eve of Retirement (see n. 1 to Letter No. 384 and the commentary on Eve of Retirement in V. 18, pp. 377-397 of Bernhard’s Works). 

  

Letter No. 378

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

May 4, 1979

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

After our telephone conversation I rang Mr. Peymann, but I didn’t manage to reach him, though I did reach Mr. Beil.1  He told me that the premiere of the play is now firmly scheduled for June 29.  I am passing on this news.  Incidentally Beil said that everything was going well and according to plan during the rehearsals.

June 29 isn’t so good for me, because in Frankfurt that evening there is going to be a grand fête for Mircea Eliade, a function which several of the firm’s authors will be also be coming to Frankfurt to attend.2 Well, we shall see; after all, in the theater dates are never very firm.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]



    In a May 4 telephone memo that he forwarded to the theatrical publications division, Unseld wrote:

“Telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard

on May 4, Vienna.

He didn’t receive my letter of April 27.  On the phone today I discussed the Eve of Retirement situation.  He has no objection to our offering the play for sale in the regular way.  He is not opposed to subsequent performances, but he naturally wants to be sure that these are good performances and hopes that we will ask for guarantees  for them from the theaters.”

On a note addressed to Renate Doufexis, Claus Carlé, and Rolf Staudt on the same day, Unseld wrote:

“Thomas Bernhard, Claus Peymann, and I have agreed on the following strategy for the presentation of the playEve of Retirement:

Neither the author nor the theater will give the text of the play to a third party before the run of performances.  There is to be no other theater than Stuttgart, and no critics are to receive the text of the play before the run.  After the run we will be offering the play for sale in the regular way, and at some appreciable time after the premiere, meaning roughly in mid-July, we will also be issuing the book.  It is our collective intention to try to enable a Bernhard play to have an effect of complete immediacy onstage for a change.  It is clear to me that the unusual circumstances of the performance’s gestation will occasion a fair amount of discontent, particularly among the critics, but we will weather the consequences.

I am urgently requesting all parties involved, the theatrical publications division and press office, to maintain absolute silence regarding this play.  Mr. Peymann for his part has pledged his dramaturgs to do the same.     

2. The fête did not take place on this date.  [So did it take place on any other date?  Was Unseld making the whole thing up? (DR)]

Letter No. 379

Ohlsdorf

May 7, 79

Dear Dr. Unseld,

Regarding the play that is being rehearsed in Stuttgart at the moment, I must ask you to keep everything absolutely and in all circumstances under wraps and not to drop any hints to a single human individual; only if this is done will there be any chance of the thing’s being successfully executed.  We must keep the text from getting into the hands of gossipers and intriguers before the premiere; we must keep it away from those well-known names, who for all their well-knownness have nothing in their heads but gossip and intrigues.  We have completely destroyed our own rough draft.

The play must exert an immediate effect in a performance, and not allow itself to be annihilated from the get-go by all those unprecedentedly moronic and unscrupulous Kaisers and Jennys and Heinrichses.  Not one of those people has a scintilla of insight into the theater, and it is precisely thanks to their incompetence that they are so unpalatable and ubiquitous and repellent. 

I very much hope that the manuscript of Retirement has not already fallen into enemy hands, and in keeping with your promise, it ought not to be seen by anybody apart from you and the compositor.  Out of a regard not only for my interest but also for your own, you ought to put Retirement into a safe and not take it out until after the performance in Stuttgart.

I would very much like you to publish the play exactly one week after the premiere in Stuttgart.

It has always been a huge mistake to throw the manuscript to every last pair of gaping jaws along the Munich-Hamburg corridor even before the premiere.

I am being quite serious in requesting you to keep Retirement completely under wraps.

Yours,

Thomas Bernhard

Letter No. 380

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

May 9, 1979

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Today you will receive Dr. Guth’s invitation; I am delighted that you will be coming.

We will reserve you a room at the Frankfurter Hof Hotel.

Ms. Zeeh would be happy to send you your ticket or have it held for you at the airport; where will you be embarking from?

If you will be coming from Salzburg, you would have to leave by Saturday evening (because the only Frankfurt-bound flight from Salzburg is an evening one); that wouldn’t be so bad except that many weeks ago I committed myself to being in Memmingen all that day and the following night; I won’t be returning to Frankfurt until Sunday morning.

From Vienna on the other hand you would have two possibilities:

LH 253 leaving Vienna at 10:30 a.m. / arriving at Frankfurt at 11:55 a.m.

or

OS 403 leaving Vienna at 2:25 p.m. / arriving at Frankfurt at 3:45 p.m.

The first possibility would give us the opportunity to meet at midday, but we’ll also be pleased to greet you at 3:45 in the afternoon!

Please let us know what your decision is so that we can get everything necessary moving.1

Has anybody from Vienna gotten in touch with you to ask you about the text of the play? 

We gave the Burgtheater permission to do that because we haven’t got a text version here.  I think this is our usual procedure.2

Yours

with sincere regards—and till soon,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    On July 6 Unseld traveled to Ulm, where he had received an emergency secondary school diploma in 1943 and a regular secondary school diploma in 1946 [Presumably this distinction between emergency and regular diplomas was an irregularity in scholastic accreditation occasioned by the war (DR)].  In nearby Memmingen a school class reunion took place on July 7.

    The first performance of Eve of Retirement at the Burgtheater did not take place until 20 years later.  Peter von Becker commented on this performance in the Tagesspiegel on January 15, 2000: “Claus Peymann had directed the premiere in the summer of 1979 in Stuttgart […] with virtually identical sets, which had also been designed by Karl-Ernst Hermann, and with the same three actors.  This was during Peymann’s farewell season at Stuttgart, before his move to Bochum.  […] Twenty years later Peymann directed the remake with Dene (Clara), Traugott Buhre (Höller), and Eleonore Zetzsche (Vera) in Vienna, once again as one of his farewell productions, this time his farewell to the Burgtheater.

Letter No. 381

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

May 9, 1979

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Warm thanks for your letter of May 7.  Materially speaking it was superfluous; I have already told you over the phone recently that everything is in order; nobody is going to see it, and the shipment will take place eight days after the performance.

We always work well when we work in concert.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

|Could you send me the novella The Cheap-Eaters?|1

    The handwritten postscript was jotted on the carbon copy by Burgel Zeeh.  [I suppose this means she rewrote (or darkened) a note already on the original, because if the postscript had been only on the copy, Bernhard never could have seen it (DR).]

Letter No. 382

Ohlsdorf

6.18.79

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

If the nature of the thing and nature full stop permits, we shall see each other on the 29th, the Friday after next, in Stuttgart.

I am in good form and so not a single one of my vital signs can get away with making the slightest excuse between now and that date.

Regarding our friends in the Taunus: I intend to keep all my options open through July.

A person who is working ought to give his all to his work; that or nothing.

Yours

very sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

Letter No. 383

Frankfurt am Main

June 20, 1979

Dear Thomas,

So here is the prospective list of contents for The Novellas.  Do you have any objections to it?  Do you still remember the text called “The Crazy Magdalena”?  I would be in favor of including this text.  What do you think of that?

I would be grateful to you if you could respond to the legal situation that we noted.

We intend to put into the volume an extensive bibliography by Mr. Dittmar and an afterword by Ulrich Greiner.  I hope you have no objections to this either.

Will we see each other on June 28 in Stuttgart?  In any case, I am looking forward to midday on July 8.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Dr. Siegfried Unseld]

[Enclosure 1; memorandum1]

Thomas Bernhard, The Novellas

“The Crazy Magdalena”

“The Swine-Keeper” (1956)

Occurrences

“In the Poorhouse” (1963)

“The Postman” (1963)

“The Italian” (1963)

Amras (1976)2

“An Eyewitness Report” (1964)

“The Carpenter”

“The Malefaction of an Innsbruck Tradesman’s Son”

“A Young Writer” (1965)

Viktor Halfwit (1966)

Verstörung

“The Prince”

“Henzig, Huber, Zehetmeyer”

“Jauregg”

“Attaché”

“Two Tutors”

“The Cap”

“Is It a Comedy?  Is it a Tragedy?” (1967)

“Timberline” (1967/68)

Ungenach (1968)

“Midland at Stilfs” (1971)

“The Weatherproof Cape” (1967)

“Watten.  A Legacy” (1969)

“A Smiling Confidence Trickster”

“As an Administrator at the Asylum.  A Fragment”

“Yes” (1978)

“Walking”

“At the Ortler”

(Complete narrative prose, including the autobiographical writings, the novels, and The Voice Imitator)

The legal situation must be clarified in the following cases:

“The Italian”--written in 1963, first published in the Insel Almanac in 1965, then included in the collection entitled At the Timberline, which was published by Residenz and later reprinted as a dtv.

“At the Timberline”--(first published in Growth Rings, 1967/68)

“Victor Halfwit”--it first appeared in the collection Voices of the Present, edited by Hans Weigel, Vienna and Munich, 1956

“Kulterer”

    The list of contents is based on a proposal by Jens Dittmar.

    In 1976 Amras (first published in 1964) was added to the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.

Letter No. 384

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

June 27, 1979

Propose meeting 6 p.m. lobby Hotel Zeppelin--stop--please bring manuscript “Cheap-Eaters” with you.

Regards Unseld1

    Unseld met Bernhard at the premiere of Eve of Retirement on June 29.  In his Travel Journal, Stuttgart, June 29-30, Unseld wrote the following, inter alia:

“The premiere--directed by Claus Peymann; Höller: Traugott Buhre; Clara: Kirsten Dene; Vera: Eleonore Zetzsche.

Every appraisal of the premiere must begin with the sentence: three-and-a-quarter hours--that is too long.  Otherwise much about the production was compelling.  Peymann had the play performed in such a way that no misunderstanding could arise at any point, and the audience noticed this.  Resounding applause, a few boos, which only provoked more vigorous applause. [...]

Time did not permit us to have an extensive discussion about the collection of novellas; we postponed this to Sunday, July 8, in Frankfurt.”

On the July 8 conversation Unseld wrote in his Chronicle: “I am reading the early novellas of Thomas Bernhard.  I am supposed to meet with him now, and we also rendezvous at the Frankfurter Hof.  He is cheerful, serene, he once again gives me a new version of an early novella [“The Crazy Magdalena”], which appeared in the Linzer Tagblatt.

Then we go to Königstein [im Taunus].  Wilfried Guth, spokesman of the executive board of Deutsche Bank, turned 60 today.  He very much wanted Thomas Bernhard to read aloud at his house.  A select gathering, a concert, Bernhard read ten texts from The Voice Imitator.”  A separate note on the July 8 conversation in Frankfurt is devoted to the topic of Novellas:

“He has no objection to the idea of the collection entitled The Novellas.  Please if at all possible go back to the first versions; don’t bring in any excerpts from the novels, so no ‘In the Poorhouse’ and no ‘Henzig, Huber, Zehetmayer.’  For ‘Kulterer’ use the version called ‘The Postman.’

For ‘The Crazy Magdalena’ use the text from the Linzer Tagblatt (enclosed).  Please make sure that the text of ‘The Swine-Keeper’ receives an addition of four new lines, which Bernhard has given me.  He also attaches the utmost importance to the reprinting of the motto from Pascal.”

On the two versions of “Kulterer” see n. 1 to Letter No. 332 as well as the commentary in Vol. 11, pp. 366-371 of Bernhard’s Works.  The version of “The Crazy Magdalena” [“Die verrückte Magdalena”] from the Linzer Tagblatt of January 17, 1953 is identical to the one printed on the same day in the Demokratische Volksblatt (see the commentary in Vol. 14, p. 587f. in Bernhard’s Works; on the various final versions of “The Swine-Keeper” [“Der Schweinehüter”] see the commentary in Vol. 14, pp. 581-583 of Bernhard’s Works).   

    

Letter No. 385

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

July 16, 1979

Dear Thomas,

I have announced your decision here in the house, and it caused a great deal of genuine wailing!1  The sales representatives are doing an outstanding job selling the book.  Our advertising people have already committed themselves to a major sales campaign.  The production plant has already spent DM 10,000.00 on typesetting costs.  Our sales manager is on the verge of killing himself because 1,200 book dealers know about the edition, and now it’s not supposed to be coming!

The following solution could work: we’ll drop the title The Novellas.  We’ll leave out the early novellas that you find so offensive and begin with the texts that you yourself have included in book-length editions.  It would then be a book of Thomas Bernhard novellas and to my mind, it would not be a comprehensive collection and would be a concentrated set of the most important texts.

Please do drop me another line, or send me a telegram, lest there should be an outbreak of mass despair and a series of suicides here in the house.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Under the date-heading of August [a slip for July] 6, noted in his Chronicle:

“Commotion over Thomas Bernhard.  Suddenly he isn’t satisfied with the plan for The Novellas; he doesn’t wantThe Novellas, i.e., the early novellas, in it anymore, but he wants to keep the title for the book anyway. 

  

Letter No. 386

Ohlsdorf

July 18, 79

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The suicide rate in Germany, in contrast to that in Austria, is so piddling that in this age that is overpopulated to the bursting point we could kill off a full third of the Germans without batting an eyelid, but these brave souls must not by any means be culled from the ranks of Suhrkamp Publications, of which centuries hence it will be said that it was one of the very few genuinely meritorious institutions in Europe; an institution1a that will be spoken of with veneration.  If in the year 3,000 the archeologists unearth every last thing bearing the seal of Suhrkamp Publications they will have unearthed the entire genius of our century.  They will be astonished at the treasures that will have been left behind by what to our eyes seems an appallingly brainless age.

Since, then, I wish to prevent a mass suicide at the poetic precincts of Lindenstrasse, being as I am a reasonable human being in all circumstances, we will put together the compilation volume after all, even though I don’t want there to be one.  But since there has to be one, it absolutely must be called The Novellas and not merely Novellas, which I find revolting; but I will allow it to contain only the novellas from Amras through Yes, in other words nothing before Amras and nothingafter Yes.  Moreover, it must be confined to the so-called long novellas, and I will not allow it to include so much as a hint of anything from the novels.  In short: nothing but Amras through Yes and nothing but the so-called proper novellas.  And it must naturally be entitled The Novellas.

To close on this subject: please send me all your spare lengths of rope (regardless of the quality) and pistol bullets so that we can make sure that they won’t be used, at least not in the near future. 

I have put up with so much already that I can also put up with The Novellas.  I take it as a given that it will be manufactured in such a way as not to elicit my horror, preferably with a white title against a black background, or else not at all.

It is with just such a layout, once we have settled this whole business amicably, that I would like to have Minetti, the play, published in the BS.  In the spring.

If you are cursing me now yet again, I am obviously so far away that it cannot upset me.

Please give my regards to Burgel Zeeh, who arranged my last flight to Frankfurt so perfectly.  I have had no regrets on its score.

Yours

Thomas B.

P.S. I also will not allow the The Novellas to contain  any commentary, or, as always, any abominable so-called bibliography.  

1a.  This “an institution” is an interpolation via which I have not-quite silently patched up an anacoluthon [sic]ed by the editors. (DR)

Letter No. 387

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

July 24, 1979

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Thank you for your letter of July 18.  I am very glad that you were able to reconcile yourself to our considerations.  We of course both wish to do what is right and what is rational and perhaps sometimes even what is hyper-rational.

The book will bear the title The Novellas, and it will contain the novellas from Amras through Yes and omit everything before Amras and after Yes.  Moreover, we will submit to you in advance the editorial note that we wish to include.

And we will also forgo a bibliography. 

As far as the jacket goes, we will be happy to accommodate your choice of its color: namely, white.  On the other hand, we would prefer to retain our layout for it; Fleckhaus’s jacket design is really quite lovely.

Please don’t worry about the announcement “With a preface by Ulrich Greiner”--by now that is out of the question.

In principle I am quite prepared to add Minetti to the BS, but first please let’s sell all the copies of the oversized edition.1               

I will most likely be not far from Salzburg on August 20 or 21.  Perhaps you can be seen then?  I would be delighted.

Ms. Zeeh was happy to “arrange” your trip to Frankfurt, and we all were glad to have you here.  And your reading at Mr. Guth’s house is having more than good aftereffects.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[signed Siegfried Unseld]

(dictating during a travel absence)

Yours, Burgel Zeeh

Enclosures2

    Minetti was never admitted into the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.

    The enclosure has not survived.  It was presumably Suhrkamp Publications’ schedule preview for the second half of 1979; on page 8 of that preview the announcement for The Novellas [Die Erzählungen] includes the phrase “With a preface by Ulrich Greiner.”  The book was published as The Novellas in October of 1979 without a bibliography or editorial note or any other extra material but a list of sources; its jacket, designed by Willy Fleckhaus, featured black lettering on a white background and a photograph of Bernhard by Andrej Reiser.  The blurb essentially consisted of a quotation from a review of The Voice Imitator and Yes that Ulrich Greiner had published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on November 22, 1978.

    

Letter No. 388

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 3, 1979

Dear Thomas,

Once again my compliments on The Cheap-Eaters; I have now read the novella twice in order to get my head around the Viennese circular high jinks.  We will receive a substantial echo from this novella.1

I had a few pages of the manuscript retyped, because our increasingly inept typesetter never would have found his way among the corrections.  But there are still a few passages that are unclear even to me.

I think the best thing for me to do is to point out these passages on a separate sheet of paper.  As I don’t know if you have a corrected manuscript ready to hand, I am going to write out each of the passages in full.

It was really nice that we got to see each other recently, even if the conversation perhaps wasn’t quite up to par.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld 

[Enclosure; remarks on The Cheap-Eaters]

Page 9, four lines from the bottom:

...he was worried, “that people in the VPK would immediately notice that he was a cripple and subsequently never take their...eyes off of him.”  You have equipped these eyes with a handwritten adjective that unfortunately is undecipherable.  Are they perverse eyes?

Now that I am dictating VPK: I would propose not capitalizing the whole thing and leaving the p lowercase, like this: VpK.  What do you think?   

Page 2

“would have gotten on to a different, possibly even antithetical, subject, than he had gotten on to,...”

Shouldn’t that read: “than the one he had gotten on to”?

Page 10, line 16

“...and would have allowed him to seat at the best place at their table as if as a matter of course.”  Shouldn’t a “himself” be appended to “seat”?

Page 10, line 26

“as he had attempted with both hands to lean his crutches against the wall behind him…” Must this not read, “behind himself”? 



Page 12, line 30

“It was, said Koller, legible on all four cheap-eaters’ faces that they could use someone like he at their table…”  Shouldn’t that read, “someone like him”?

Page 27a, line 11

“...but I naturally could not allow myself to believe that he had forgotten about it…”--“about it” is of course logically possible, but rather vague.  Shouldn’t something more precise be in its place?

Page 43, line 30

“Nor on this day had he forgotten his so-called window inspection, which had become a habit to him over the course of decades.”

This is naturally admissible as it is, but wouldn’t it perhaps be worthwhile to substitute the verb “forgo” for “forget”?  In that case the sentence would naturally have to be recast.

Page 47, line 5

“Several times Weninger quite abruptly asked the remaining cheap-eaters for the time...”  Shouldn’t one say, “asked the remaining cheap-eaters the time”?

Page 49, line 23

“About language he is said to have said that it consisted mainly of words like weights, by which thoughts were constantly being weighed down and pressed to the ground, and that for that reason they can never, on any occasion, become manifest in its entire significance and literal infinitude.”

Shouldn’t we make it “their entire significance,” and shouldn’t “can” be “could”?

Page 20, line 31

Probably a typing error: “...in order to furnish me and himself the proof from time…”  Must it not read, “from time to time”?

9.3.1979

dr. u./gl[aser]

    The Travel Journal, Salzburg, August 20-22 reports: “Conversation with Thomas Bernhard.  Handing over of the manuscript of The Cheap-Eaters.  He didn’t want it in the esNF [edition suhrkamp Neue Folge {New Series}], because he thought that in a series it would sink without a trace.  I begged to differ with him.  The problem hasn’t yet been thrashed out.  I read the manuscript during the trip; it is a typical Bernhard text, once again he is varying his theme, the triumph of the mind over humanity’s crippledness.

The manuscript is textually in good shape, to be sure, but a few pages need to be re-transcribed and two passages must be deciphered.

The novella is the story of four “cheap-eaters” who dine at the Vienna public kitchen (VPK--hence the vpk, humanity1a) and whose physiognomy is described typologically.  In contrast to them, the healthy and spiritually impoverished dine at a restaurant, The Eye of God.  One of the cheap-eaters is a book-dealer, and the book trade doesn’t seem to come out looking very good. 

Bernhard once again confirmed the table of contents for The Novellas:

Amras

“The Malefaction of an Innsbruck Tradesman’s Son”

“The Carpenter”

“Jauregg”

“Two Tutors”

“The Cap”

“Is It a Comedy?  Is it a Tragedy?”

“Viktor Halfwit.  A Winter’s Tale”

“Attaché at the French Embassy”

“At the Timberline”

Ungenach

“Watten.  A Legacy”

“Midland at Stilfs”

“The Weatherproof Cape”

“On the Ortler”

“Walking”

Yes

  

Conversation with Claus Peymann and Thomas Bernhard.  Peymann will direct performances of Eve of Retirement at other theaters, and then in the spring of next year he will premiere a new Bernhard play.”

1a. Presumably (or at least conjecturably) the German original of VPK, WÖK, reminded Unseld of Volk, meaning “people.”

Letter No. 389

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 20, 1979

Dear Thomas,

Once again I have been contacted by the cultural adviser of the capital of Bavaria, Dr. Kolbe.  He would like to invite you to give a reading on November 19, 20, 24, 26, 27, or 28.  Honorarium: DM 2,000.00 plus coverage of travel and accommodation expenses.  Please do consider it.1  Unfortunately I cannot arrange for us to see each other on any of these dates; on the first of the days specified I shall be in Spain and after that in the U.S.A.2

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    On October 23, 1979, Jürgen Kolbe, the cultural adviser of Munich, wrote to Bernhard: “Dear Mr. Bernhard, we are highly delighted that you have agreed to participate in the cultural bureau of the Bavarian capital’s seriesLiterature in Munich II, which this year is entitled In a Nascent Condition and will be taking place in the context of the traditional Munich book exhibition.  We are especially grateful to you for having arranged your schedule to allow for your participation.  We have set aside 9:00 p.m. on November 20 for you.”  (See also Letters Nos. 370 and 371.)

    From November 19 through 22, Unseld was in Barcelona, where he gave a lecture at the opening of the city’s German Book exhibition.  From November 23 through December 2 he was in the United States; one of the purposes of his trip was to engage in preliminary talks regarding the establishment of an American subsidiary of Suhrkamp Publications.

Letter No. 390

Ohlsdorf

10.1.79 

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

In eight out of ten points the creator thanks his sagacious proofreader; the relevant passages are checkmarked.1

I am in my element and working.  Still.  This coming week I shall be in America.2

You are quite right; our conversation was subpar, but our eyes were vigilant.

In the future reside all possibilities.

Yours very, very sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

    The letter was accompanied by Unseld’s page of notes on The Cheap-Eaters (see the enclosure accompanying Letter No. 388).  Bernhard indicated his assent to the proposed changes with checkmarks next to the proposing questions; next to each of the checkmarks he wrote out the revised version of its associated passage by hand.  He inserted “perfidious” as a correction of “perverse” into the note on page 9, four lines from the bottom, and next to “leaving the p lowercase” in the same note he commented, “must remain capitalized!”; he also put a wavy line under the “rather” in the note Page 27a, line 11, on which he otherwise did not comment.  In the published book both passages are unchanged.

    In an October 2 memorandum to Unseld, Burgel Zeeh wrote: “Telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard [...].  In October he will be going to New York for two weeks; he has notified Ms. Wilson, who will surely apprise Ms. Honegger in turn.  I quickly told him that we had received a favorable report on her translation of The Hunting Party.”  During his stay in New York--the only trip to the United States Bernhard ever took--he met Gita Honegger, who translated several of his plays into English and described her first encounter with the author as follows: “He traveled with his brother and his close friends Viktor and Grete Hufnagl.  As I had translated his plays, he wanted to meet me.  He told me that Suhrkamp’s evaluators were impressed by my most recent translation,The Hunting Party.  Then he asked me whether I could help him find a store in New York that sold Arrow shirts.  I did” (Gitta Honegger, Thomas Bernhard, The Making of an Austrian [New Haven: Yale UP, 2001, pp. xvi-xvii] The editors quote in German from a 2003 text, Thomas Bernhard.  Was ist das für ein Naar?  [What Kind of Fool Is This?], presumably Honegger’s own translation of The Making of an Austrian.)

Letter No. 391

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

October 23, 1979

Requesting telephone call1--Very sincerely Siegfried Unseld Suhrkamp Publications

    As Unseld wrote in his Chronicle for October 23, “Only one topic: esNF,” it may be assumed that in a telephone conversation on this date he overcame Bernhard’s resistance to the inclusion of The Cheap-Eaters in the new series of the edition suhrkamp. 

Letter No. 392

Frankfurt am Main

October 31, 1979

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

The Novellas have been published; you will have received a few copies; the book is intended as a one-time thing, hence the low retail price: DM 28.00 for 608 clothbound pages.  We printed a run of 10,000 copies.  Apart from the novellas for which we have obtained republication rights, all the texts have been previously issued by Suhrkamp or Insel and are already associated with contracts.  We will calculate your share of sales from this book using our usual formula for our hardcover publications (even though there will be a shortfall in revenues because of its length), i.e., 10% for the first 10,000, and 12% after that.   

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    In a Chronicle entry also dated October 31, Unseld wrote: “At night I read the Thomas Bernhard novellas that I have not previously read.  What a great writer!” 

Letter No. 393

Crete, Creta maris

11.26.79

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

I am here, contrary to expectation, after a horrifying nosedive, in the happiest shape imaginable, and I am writing to you because I have visited Minos Beach; but here everything is much nicer, because from my window I can see the actual open sea, rather than the lame old Bay of the dull and sluggish Agios Nikolaos.1  I wish to take this opportunity to thank you for your visit to Ohlsdorf, although I got the impression that your thoughts were elsewhere rather than with me.  But this kind of thing happens to the best minds.2

Regarding Madame Maleta: she is an extraordinarily good friend, but she is also so inescapably stuck in the diplomatic-cum-industrial quagmire that I often find it difficult to keep my composure around her.  By way of clearing up all misunderstandings: the business milieu she inhabits is anathema to me, but as a person she has some merit.

I didn’t get the impression that you were especially interested in my work.  You reacted to my news that I had just finished a new play as if I had just said I found the Last Supper quite tasty.  But that naturally also fits in with the “moral of your visit.”

It is certainly not a good idea to take two “poets” in one flight; even though you know everything, you don’t know that!!!

The genius has shown his weak side and that makes him easy to sympathize with.  Are you satisfied with the wording of the previous sentence?  Naturally you shouldn’t get angry but rather rejoice on behalf of your happy author.

You  surely will have read by now that I have left the stupid academy.  |with an  upset stomach, as I know for a fact!| I had been searching for years for an excuse to vanish from that superfluous institution.  Academies are anathema to me.  I had not cast a vote in that one in over ten years.  Now I have escaped from it and I shall soon be sailing completely alone with my passion.

Yours and also Burgel Zeeh’s very sincerely,

Thomas B.

The collection of novellas looks very nice, as I said, but because for whatever reason it slipped out of control, it is not quite an occasion for pure joy on my part.  But books fly just like time; we leave them behind us.  Thank God for that!!!

|P.S. Please make sure that The Cheap-Eaters is printed in a very large typeface; it must be at least 160 pages in length; otherwise the whole spirit of the thing will be contravened.|

    On September 27 Unseld was obliged to cancel a weeklong holiday he had planned to take in Crete in October.  Under the date heading of October 1 in his Chronicle he ruefully noted, “No Minos Beach [which is not far from the capital of Lasithi, Agios Nikolaos, on the east side of Crete’s northern coast].”

    In his Travel Journal, Salzburg, November 5-6, 1979, Unseld wrote first about a meeting with Peter Handke, and then about an encounter with Bernhard in Ohlsdorf and Gmunden: “He had concocted a precise strategy for the conversation: The Cheap Eaters in the spring of 1980, and now in the esNF, and Unrest no earlier than the second half of 1980.

He tells me about his new play, which is about a writer who is a latecomer.  We chat about it.  I had of course just seen Hermann Lenz during my meeting with Handke earlier, and the next day Bernhard told me had found a title for the play: Später Ruhm [Late Renown].  I should speak with Peymann; he would be sending him the new play soon; moreover, he was expecting a visit from Peymann sometime between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Bernhard will be in Crete from November 16 through December 16, and then at  the beginning of January he will be in Yugoslavia.

Then his wish, on which he says everything depends: he wants to live at the Plaza Hotel in New York from October 1, 1980 through April 30, 1981.  Top floor, small room, a view of Central Park.  I am supposed to organize and finance this; he would write a book during this stretch of time.  It is just that simple.

We spoke at length about the reactions to Günther Busch in the press. [At the beginning of October Busch resigned from his position as a reader at Suhrkamp; on October 1, 1980 he assumed directorship of the Europäische Verlagsanstalt {European Publishing House}.]  Bernhard doesn’t think it is a good thing that we are turning the old edition into a ‘New Series’; why not an ‘edition unseld,’ he asked?  In any case, something new would be better.

He is anxiously looking forward to the arrival of the galley proofs for The Cheap- Eaters on December 17.

The customs duty is a big problem.  In order to pick up his complimentary copies of The Novellas he would have had to drive to Linz.  Bernhard was not about to do that.  So he went to the bookstore in Gmunden and took a look at the book; he was pleased with its appearance.  I would be happy to take steps to ensure that Bernhard is exempted from paying customs duty on such occasions.”

During his stay in the United States from November 23 through December 2, 1979, Unseld gathered some intelligence on the Plaza Hotel; his travel journal  reads: “Thomas Bernhard’s insane desire to live at the Plaza Hotel: I spoke with the Managing Director J. Phillip Hughes, to whom we had been referred by Mrs. [Elisabeth] Waldheim [Yes: Kurt Waldheim’s wife {DR}].  The hotel is not interested in such guests because except in January it is always fully booked.  What is more, the rates will go up twice during that period.  We could count on paying $95 dollars a day for a simple room, plus 8% city tax, and then the rates would probably go up 10% each of the two times.  So we could count on this venture costing $3,000 a month, hence $24,000 over eight months.       

Mr. Hughes directed me to the St. Moritz Hotel and to the Manager of the Essex Hotel (John Herold), but the prices were not substantially different there.

3. Bernhard resigned from the German Academy for Language and Literature [Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung].  On December 8 the Frankurter Allgemeine Zeitung printed his argument in substantiation of this move under the title "On My Exit.”

Letter No. 394

[Address (Chersonissos, Crete); telegram]

Frankfurt am Main

December 6, 1979

can you confirm that mr. thomas bernhard stays in your hotel??  please forward this telex to him.1

dear mr. bernhard, dieter dorn accepts the guarantee for a production of  “eve of retirement” at the munich kammerspielen.  can you give us your consent?

sincere regards to you

siegfried unseld

suhrkamp publications

Frankfurt

if mr. bernhard doesn’t stay in your hotel please inform us.  thank you very much.1

1. These sentences are in English in the original (DR).

Letter No. 395

[Telegram]

[Chersonissos]

12.6.79

dorn yes1 sincerely

bernhard

1. Eve of Retirement was performed in February 1980 at the Munich Kammerspielen by Irmgard Först, Christiane Hammacher, and Helmut Stange under the direction of Wolfgang Gropper.  In a February 25, 1980 review, somebody at the Schwäbische Zeitung wrote, “In contrast to the premiere, with which Peymann bade goodbye to Stuttgart, the play was truncated to a performance length of exactly three hours, without any diminution of impact […] thanks to the diction—and very much in turn to the director’s restraint–it proved to be a penetrating and profoundly significant study of right-wing psychology.”

1980

Letter No. 396

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

January 23, 1980

Dear Thomas,

We have received your January 20 letter and your corrections to The Cheap-Eaters.1  As you can see, we have granted [erfüllt2] you your wish and set the type at such an imposing point-size that the book will in fact be exactly as voluminous as you wished it to be.  And that was your wish, and mine was nothing but to have the book in the edition suhrkamp.  Now of course we have absolutely no choice but to grant ourselves these two wishes because this is how the announcements already read.  And you will see that your book is in good company, so that it will be rolling along excellently in a reliable vehicle.3

If we were accurately informed, you are now promenading around Mallorca.  Let me know when you get back so that we can see each other in Ohlsdorf or somewhere else.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    On January 20, 1980, Bernhard wrote to Burgel Zeeh:

“Dear Ms. Zeeh,

After my return I came down with a so-called virus infection and spent two weeks out of commission in a montane village where I was hoping to get some work done.

Now everything is back in order.

It would be better to publish the book as a dedicated edition, and not in the series, for a number of reasons; by the book I mean The Cheap-Eaters.

Yours very sincerely,

Thomas B.”

2. In the original this word is desired [erwünscht].

3. The Cheap-Eaters was published as a 150-page book and as Volume No. 1006 of the edition suhrkamp New Series in May 1980.  The first installment of the New Series included nineteen other volumes, among them Gertrud Leutenegger’s dramatic poem Lebewohl, Gute Reise [Farewell, Bon Voyage], Octavio Paz’s bilingual poetry collectionSuche nach einer Mitte [Search for a Mean], and Uwe Johnson’s Frankfurt poetic lectures Begleitumstände [Attendant Circumstances]. 

Letter No. 397

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram]

Frankfurt am Main

February 9, 1980

sincere congratulations on today’s occasion1 and am announcing a letter and expressing the wish to see you soon.

yours with sincere regards

siegfried unseld

    Bernhard turned 49 on February 9.

Letter No. 398

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

February 13, 1980

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I hope the express parcel reached you speedily, and that you will have the whole thing sent back to me, also by express mail.  In the galley proofs the passages that may require some minor emendations from you have been marked; these should now only be questions of sentence structure or punctuation.  Please get in touch soon.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

Letter No. 399

Ohlsdorf

Feb. 20, ’80

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The corrections to The Cheap-Eaters are an absolute boon and I accept them and we shall see in which direction the madmen float.  I have canceled all travel plans and am working.1

Here I enjoy ideal conditions and don’t bother myself about anything but my sentences.

My house is tailor-made for me.

What I am doing here has a great deal in common with both downhill and cross-country skiing; I am conducting my own private olympics; here, too, everything is measured in hundredths of a second, which is nothing new for my brain.2

I do not envisage any change of abode in the near or even imaginable future.

Exactly fifteen years ago I visited you in Klettenbergstrasse (a street name rich in associative overtones in your case!2a) and begged you for forty-thousand marks, and with that sum I laid my most important cornerstone.3

I am requesting precisely the same sum from you now.  Perhaps it will be possible in the course of the next week to deposit the amount in the so-called HYPO-bank in Freilassing.  From there I can pick it up myself.

I very much wish to see you soon.  But I don’t know where or in what sort of setting.

Sincerely,

Thomas B.

    The galley proofs of The Cheap-Eaters have not survived.  On the genesis of The Cheap-Eaters see Vol. 13, pp. 328-337 of Bernhard’s Works.

    The 1980 Winter Olympics were then taking place in Lake Placid, New York.

2a.  The “Klette” in “Klettenbergstrasse” is a word for a number of things that cling--e.g., a burr, a louse, and a leech; so Bernhard seems here to be saying that the street name should remind Unseld of what an unshakeable pest he picked up while living in that street [DR].

3.  See n. 5 to Letter No. 3. 

Letter No. 400 

Frankfurt am Main

February 22, 1980

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram]

in order to put my mind at ease re freilassing, i am very urgently requesting the manuscript of “unrest.”1

yours with sincere regards

siegfried unseld

    In his Chronicle entry for February 22 wrote: “In the mail came one of the most characteristic of Thomas Bernhard’s letters (20 February).  He praises our copy-editing on The Cheap-Eaters, indirectly agrees to the esNF edition.”  Then Unseld quotes the author’s request for DM 40,000 and his own reply to it, and concludes the paragraph by remarking, “An act of blackmail in exchange for the other one.”

Letter No. 401

Ohlsdorf

Feb. 23, ’80

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

For Freilassing I am immeasurably appreciative.

Regarding the manuscript of the novel: The Cheap-Eaters must be published with the greatest possible degree of custodial solicitude before I part with it. 

In future there must be no rushing of either events or books.

Moreover, the novel must not be published this year; I wantonly conjured up a massacre in which my children are killing each other off.

Late spring will see the arrival of The World-Fixer, and in the fall, if the actors haven’t died by then, the new play entitledOn the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace [Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh] will be performed in Bochum.  And late May or earlier, I can’t be sure which, will see the arrival of The Cheap-Eaters.

We should let this book unfold in peace and not cut the ground from under its feet by bringing out another one.  I reckon that with its rights to my works this firm should still be raking in immense sums decades after my death.

I am wholeheartedly concentrated on my work and oriented toward Freilassing with comparable intensity.

Very sincerely,

Thomas B.

Letter No. 402

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

March 4, 1980

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Warm thanks for your letter of Feb. 23.  The payment is on its way to Freilassing.

I presume we will be acquiring The World-Fixer and the play On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace on the same terms of those of earlier agreements and also with our usual share.  Could I read  On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peacesometime soon?  I am very curious!

I am glad to hear that you are perching so concentratedly before your work projects; I am doing the same.  The new series of the edition suhrkamp has been announced; the dogs are baying, but the caravan keeps moving along.1

In case we plan to meet on Piz Corvatsch at 1:00 p.m. one of these days, I shall be there from the 23rd through the 29th.2

Yours

sincerely, as ever,

Siegfried Unseld

    In Frankfurt on February 28, Unseld held a press conference in which he unveiled the first year’s schedule of the edition suhrkamp New Series (48 volumes).  The new conception of the series had been greeted with scepticism by the public well in advance, beginning in July of 1979.  Günther Busch, the editor of the series since 1963, resigned from the firm effective March 31, 1980.  In an April 2, 1979 letter to Jürgen Habermas, Unseld summed up the planned shift in the series’s emphasis: “We want to have less sociology, and to put in more literature in its place, in conformity with the principle on which edition suhrkamp was originally founded.”  The arts sections of the newspapers reacted ambivalently: while the new schedule was certainly much acclaimed, some doubted whether it could survive in such altered conditions.

    Under the date heading of March 22-30, Unseld wrote in his chronicle: “St. Moritz.  Ski trip.  Visited Wolfgang Hildesheimer in Poschiavo, spoke by telephone with Muschg, Pedretti [...].”

Letter No. 403

Frankfurt am Main

March 11, 1980

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Mr. Jürgen Tomm from the broadcaster Freies Berlin would like to obtain you for its series Author Scooter; it is a program which is broadcast live at 8:15 p.m. and in which authors can say whatever they like.  The moderators of the broadcast are Wapnewski and Raddatz in alternation.  Dieter Kühn and Thomas Brasch have been on the show, and Mr. Tomm assures us that they were very enthusiastic.

I am passing this on to you.  If I were in your place, I wouldn’t do it, but you may have your own thoughts on it.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld   

    Bernhard never appeared on this show.



Letter No. 404

[Address: (Ohlsdorf); handwritten; picture postcard: “Hotel Inter Continental Vienna”]

Vienna

March 18 [1980]

We celebrate both the author of The Cheap-Eaters and the New Series of the es

Siegfried Unseld1

    Unseld’s signature is followed by those of certain of the firm’s employees, of certain employees of the firm’s distributor, Mohr, and of certain Viennese book-dealers.  In his Travel Journal, Vienna, March 18-19, 1980, Unseld wrote, “Picked up at Vienna International Airport by Dorli Berger; rode to the Intercontinental, where the first book-dealers were already arriving.  Presentation on the edition suhrkamp New Series, then the conversations over lunch. [...] the book-dealers promised that May 20 [the date of the series’s first delivery] would be focused on edition suhrkamp.

  

Letter No. 405

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

March 31, 1980

Urgently requesting call for return call--regards S.U. and B.Z.

Letter No. 406

[Address: (Ohlsdorf)]

Dear Thomas,

Frankfurt am Main

April 8, 1980

I certainly had the best will in the world, but as I was setting out in the morning in a VW equipped with only near-bald summer tires,  I skidded before I even reached the end of the on-ramp, and then I tuned into the traffic report, and what I learned from that was the final straw for me.  I think it would have been foolish to drive to and back from your house in those conditions.  And I had to be back in Frankfurt by Sunday evening in order to wrap up some projects that simply had to be completed before my trip to the U.S.A.  So we didn’t see each other, but I somehow have the feeling that we spoke with each other anyway!1

I have to get Suhrkamp Publishers Boston running; on May 5 I shall be back in Germany.2   But even after that I shall still have some obligatory trips to make.  But from June 1 onwards my calendar is radiant with pristine white space.  What do you say to our seeing each other someplace in the middle of June or at the beginning of July?  I would very much like that.

Yours

with sincere regards and another request for pardon for not coming,

Siegfried Unseld

  

|Ms. Zeeh is following me to New York on April 24.  She can bring along a letter from you or your corporeal self|3

    On April 5-6, Unseld stayed overnight in Salzburg.  On the fifth, he had a meeting with Peter Handke.  On the sixth, Easter Sunday, he was scheduled to visit Bernhard in Ohlsdorf.  In a Supplemental Addendum to his Travel Journal, Salzburg, April 5-6, 1980, Unseld wrote: “At six in the morning [...] a deafening noise that tore me out of bed.  The Austrian army was testing the engineering of the bridge spanning the Salzach!  But you couldn’t see it because it was hidden by a thick curtain of snow.  I checked out the traffic report: the roads were in very bad shape, and I could easily imagine what the drive to Ohlsdorf would have been like.  So I decided not to drive to Ohlsdorf and to cancel my visit at Thomas Bernhard’s.  Fortunately I managed to get in touch with Mrs. Maleta, who was able to pass on the news to him.”  On April 9, Unseld flew to Mexico, and from there he traveled to the United States.

    A press release from April 1980 reads: “On May 1, 1980, Suhrkamp Publications Frankfurt and Zurich will launch a new firm in Boston, Massachusetts, USA:

SUHRKAMP PUBLISHERS BOSTON INC.

Suhrkamp Publications will endeavor to establish a new platform for publishing in the U.S.A.  Initially the firm will work in conjunction with the American subsidiary of the Swiss publishing firm of Birkhäuser as a distribution point for the German-language books issued by the firms of Suhrkamp and Insel in Frankfurt.  At a later point of time Suhrkamp Publishers Boston Inc. will develop a dedicated production line consisting partly of translations of our German-language titles and partly of English-language books that will subsequently be added in German translation to the schedules of Suhrkamp Publications Frankfurt and Zurich. [...] Suhrkamp Publishers Boston Inc.’s launching ceremony, at which Professor Egon Schwarz of Washington University St. Louis will speak, will be held on May 1, 1980 on the premises of the Goethe Institut Boston.  The ceremony will coincide with the opening of a first-time exhibition of original watercolors by Hermann Hesse at the Goethe Institut Boston.  Viewers of this exhibition will also be able to see Suhrkamp Boston Publishers’ Inc.’s first publication.  Hesse as Painter.  Painting for Pleasure. Translated by Ralph Manheim.  With 20 Watercolours by Hermann Hesse will be published on May 1, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. [...]

The president of Suhrkamp Publishers Boston Inc. is Dr. Klaus Peters; its chairman is Dr. Siegfried Unseld.”         

3. The bottom margin of the letter bears a handwritten postscript from Burgel Zeeh: “The plane takes off at 1:30 p.m. from Frankfurt Airport (LH404).  Will you get in touch?” 

Letter No. 407

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

June 16, 1980

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I had firmly hoped to meet up with you on June 21 in Bochum at the premiere, but now of course that just isn’t going to happen.1

But I do think we should still see each other again sometime.  What do you say to my coming to visit you on July 24?  Where do you expect to be then?  If you are going to be in Ohlsdorf, I would spend the night of July 24-25 in Gmunden; in the event that you were in Vienna or Salzburg, I would do my best to find a place to stay myself.2  

Please let yourself be heard from.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    In a February 25 letter, Claus Peymann announced to Bernhard that the premiere of The World-Fixer at the Schauspielhaus Bochum was scheduled for June 21.  But because the rehearsals were getting off to a difficult start, the premiere was postponed to the fall (see n. 1 to Letter No. 411).

    In his Travel Journal, Salzburg, July 24-26, 1980, Unseld wrote about his meeting with Thomas Bernhard in Ohlsdorf: “I arrived at the appointed time, 11:30 a.m., “My publisher is punctual.” Arduous conversation about everything under the sun; i.e., via a discussion of general topics we gradually make the transition to talking about Olympia, the Salzburg Festival, his criticism of the edition suhrkamp old and new and of the theatrical publications division.  He is sorry that The Cheap-Eaters was published in the New Series; he has a high opinion of all the German titles but of none of the rest; they are all wastepaper, all purely derivative.  Apart from Octavio Paz; he, according to Bernhard, is the only one worth drawing anyone’s attention to.

[…] He talks off his anger; he says he really is just an employee of the firm, which pays him DM 2,000.00 a month; and that he certainly delivers his goods, but that the firm values him as nothing more than its Hard-Working Hired-Writer No. 27.  He says he sent in his manuscripts to the firm and then heard nothing; afterwards he saw the book nicely turned out according to Suhrkamp regulations, but the rest was silence.  Finally, he says, he got a letter from Ms. Ritzerfeld informing him of the publication of a Polish translation.  We drive to a tavern in the woods.  He slowly eats his lunch, a heartily portioned one; I of course am fasting, which makes things even more uncomfortable.  Afterwards we take an hour-long walk; then we go back to his farmhouse in Ohlsdorf.  Again the question: what do I mean to you, what do I mean to the firm?  I show him the account balance sheet, because I know that only monetary figures can convince him.  The account balance sheet for 6.30.1980 shows net honoraria revenues totaling DM 88,000.00.  I was quite taken aback by this total when I came across it as I was looking over the statement during the flight.  Where did this sum come from?  Even if this should turn out to have been an error, we will have to cut our losses, because he was elated by this figure of DM 88,000.00, meaning a virtual credit and a tie with the balance in Zurich.  He had not been expecting that; he thought he owed us money; now he was a like a completely different person.  “So could I have DM 15,000.00?”  I said he could, because the account balance sheet showed a credit of at least DM 32,000.00.  Next morning DM 20,000.00 was deducted from this sum, and by the time we said our goodbyes that afternoon, DM 25,000.00 had been deducted from it.

Then the conversation was a bit more hassle-free.  He told me about his plans.  Peymann would now be premieringThe World-Fixer in September.  Naturally, he said, this was contingent on the principal actors’, Minetti and Heerdegen’s, being in good health.

In May 1981 Peymann would be putting on the new comedy, On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace.  Bernhard wants us to typeset the text now as it will appear in the BS edition later on so that the actors can learn their parts using the text in that format.  I told him we would do this, and we will try to make it our first order of business.

Then the longer-term strategy.  He does not want to put out the novel in the spring of 1981; he would like to go over it one more time.  The book is no longer entitled Unrest but Obituary.  We will receive the manuscript of it in the second half of 1981.

I kept thinking about Dittmar’s ‘history of a literary corpus’ and repeatedly made mention of his earlier works; no, he said, he wouldn’t have it; ‘You can publish them after I’m dead.’  Then I came to speak of his collection of poetry,In hora mortis, published in 1958 by Otto Müller Publications in Salzburg; he owns the rights.  We had agreed that Suhrkamp would publish it as far back as three years ago in Trieste [i.e., in January 1977, when they were both in Trieste for the Bernhard symposium (see Letter No. 343 and its first note)], he thought.  He would welcome its publication now, but only as part of the BS.  He admits there is one difficulty: the lines of verse are quite short.  He admits that he is effectively asking us to typeset a prayer book: a large typeface, if possible only on the recto.  The dedication is to be omitted.

Next he confessed that he had finished a prose text approximately 60 pages in length: In den Hohen Tauern [In the Upper Tauern].  He said he had earmarked this text for the BS, and that it would also look good alongsideTodesstunde [Hora mortis in German (DR)] (the poems).  We could have the manuscript.

I was of course mindful of the fact that in February of 1981 he would turn 50; initially he didn’t want to talk about this birthday at all.  But then he was cheered by the idea of having two BS volumes--In hora mortis and In the Upper Tauern--published on that date.  I took the book of poems with me back to Frankfurt; he is willing to send me the prose manuscript if I write to him telling him that we plan to publish it in the BS.

Do we want this, this massive accumulation of Thomas Bernhard texts in the BS, with On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace coming out in May?

Then he said he had just finished transcribing a new play: Am Ziel [The Goal Attained].  The play is set in the antechamber of a set of boxes at an opera house!  It is the intermission.  A man has been ruined by his adopted children.  Instead of calling for champagne they call for a lawyer and force him to give up his estate and sign over their legacies to them.  So they have reached their ‘goal.’  Bernhard would like to have this play performed at the 1982 Salzburg Festival.  The director of the festival, Mr. Kaut, is oblivious of his own good fortune because the two of them have of course been enemies since the scandal of 1976-’77 [see n. 1 to Letter No. 325].

After three hours of conversation, we drive to Gmunden, where I am to spend the night.  Dinner at a restaurant on the Traunsee.  Immense scenic landscapes.  On the one side lowering cliffs, on the other a lovely red evening sky over the lake.  Everything was going so well, he tried to tempt me, the faster, to drink, but without success.  He said had reserved me the finest room in the hotel and also prepaid the bill.  I scented some sort of mischief was imminent.  And mischief did indeed follow.

He said he had completed a fourth segment of his autobiography, The Cold, and that it would have to be published by Residenz Publications.  Silence.  An excessively long silence.  Then: he said that he would write three more segments over the course of three years.  That the whole thing was a unity.  I proposed our making it into one big book entitled Childhood and Youth.  That brightened his mood right away, but he said he had already promised Mr. Schaffler this continuation.  Another silence.  Then he started jesting: ‘We’ve been together for 16 years, we have had a good run together, our accounts are square, won’t it be better if we separate?  You will head back home, there will be no more monthly remittances, no more trouble with your employee, Th. B.’  Another silence.  I don’t think I had ever before just sat somewhere in silence and consternation for such a long time; behind me were the cliffs, in front of me was the lake rippling in the red light of the setting sun.  I can’t describe how he kept clownishly retorting to me that he could earn DM 2,000.00 some other way.  That he didn’t need to write.  That a distant cousin of his sat in a quarry and counted the trucks entering and leaving and also got DM 2,000.00.  My orgy of mineral water, a cheerless antithesis to cheerlessness.  We were effectively acting out a scene from a Thomas Bernhard comedy.  Every single move available to us was comical.  We could just as easily go one way as the other.  From my attitude he could not help inferring that I agreed with him, that I was saying, ‘Sure, we might as well call it quits with each other.’  He was prepared for anything; I wasn’t, so the stakes were higher for him.  I don’t know if I shall ever have the nerve to get through another conversation like that one.

We left the restaurant and drove to my hotel, 11 at night; everybody had already gone to bed, you couldn’t even get a bottle of mineral water.  Again a cheerless situation straight out of a play by Th. B.  Then in the space of a minute we made the following resolution: I proposed that if this text, The Cold, had to be issued by Residenz, then it should be published not in the spring of 1981 as scheduled but rather this coming fall without an announcement.  That brightened his mood, perhaps, he said, that would do the least ‘damage,’ to publish it quickly and forget it on December 31--that was how he imagined it.  He said that this would irrevocably be the last text published by Residenz; he had already promised me this once before, in Vienna [see n. 2 to Letter No. 369].  That he would write the next three segments, Part V, The Court Reporter, Part VI, The Beginning of a Writer’s Career, and Part VII,Early Childhood.  That afterwards we would publish a collection, Childhood and Youth; it would consist of the four segments published by Residenz and the three unpublished segments; Part VII would serve as its first chapter.  A hardcover book.  A year earlier, meaning in 1982, we could put out the Collected Plays.  In 1984 the Collected Novellas, probably in two volumes.  Then the novels.  A collection called The Early Bernhard should be published only after his death.

At midnight we decide that the next morning he will ride with me to Salzburg, where he will speak with Schaffler immediately and put this decision into immediate effect. [...]

At 11:30 a.m. we meet at the Café Bazar [in Salzburg].  By then he had spoken with Schaffler; their conversation lasted 20 minutes; Schaffler intends to ‘give priority’ to the book, so The Cold will be on display at the book fair.  Then, because their interview was so short, he had immediately gone to the lion’s den, to see Mr. Kaut, the director of the festival, and offered him the play The Goal Attained for 1982; Mr. Kaut was delighted and promised him that it would be accepted.  [...]   He kept a jealous eye on how I spent my hours in Salzburg; Handke’s name was never mentioned and was off-limits for mentioning.  So we drove to this really unusual estate, a possession of Mrs. Schubert, the consul’s wife, in Berchtesgaden [in Bavaria], an estate where Bernhard in his grandiosity admittedly fitted right in.  I somehow couldn’t get over the feeling that Adolf Hitler was saluting us from the Obersalzberg…

Late in the afternoon we said our goodbyes at my hotel in Salzburg.   As he was seeing me off he raised the sum disbursed to him by DM 5,000.00, then he said, ‘come again soon.’ [...]

The flight from Salzburg to Frankfurt.  I read Bernhard’s comedy On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace.  A successful writer, an author of bestsellers, has written a tetralogy; a female graduate student and a critic from theFAZ, both admirers of his, are discussing his work with him.  Enter the author’s publisher, ‘punctually, like a publisher.’  He wants to have the manuscript, but the author knows that one has to play this manuscript game.  At the conclusion a passage is read out in honor of the publisher.  The next day I send Bernhard a telegram asking him to think seriously about changing the conclusion.”   

  

Letter No. 408

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram]

Frankfurt am Main

July 28, 1980

the summit comedy is splendid but i would reconsider the conclusion and the remark about proust-translation1

bank transfer underway

yours sincerely siegfried unseld

    On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace contains the following passage of dialogue between the author Moritz Meister and his publisher: “PUBLISHER [...] Of course the French will all have to be retranslated from scratch / but by whom that is the question / for years I have been searching for good translators / but I haven’t found any acceptable ones

MR MEISTER Proust for example has already been translated two or three times / and every time they say it’s a brilliant translation / but after ten years at the latest it turns out / that this brilliant translation is pure dilettantism / And it’s the same with Joyce” (Bernhard, Works, Vol. 18, p. 238).

“And it’s the same with Joyce” is an insertion that Bernhard added in a later draft of the play that is now the oldest surviving one.  On the other hand Bernhard made no alteration to the conclusion referred to by Unseld; after the author has finally read from his manuscript, the play ends with the publisher saying, “That is simply mag / [stage direction] shaking his head, which is held high /nificent” as the other listeners applaud.  Additionally, in an August 7 letter Burgel Zeeh asked Bernhard: “On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace: the text is now being prepared for typesetting.  Dr. Unseld asked me to ask you if you had a subtitle or motto in mind--will you please give me some information about this?” 

Letter No. 409

[Address: (Ohlsdorf); circular letter]

Frankfurt am Main

August 21, 1980

To the

authors of the Suhrkamp Theatrical Publications Division

I would like to inform you that on July 1, 1981, RUDOLF RACH will resume leadership of the Suhrkamp Theatrical Publications Division.  Dr. Rudolf Rach was formerly active in this capacity at our firm from 1971 through 1976, at which point it became his desire to undertake the practical work of bringing plays to the stage at a theater.  I am delighted that Rudolf Rach is returning to us after his years of successful practical theater experience; his active involvement in the Theatrical Publications Division will intensify its work.

Ms. Renate Doufexis retired from her position as head of the administrative subdivision on June 30 of this year.  Now as before the dramaturgical subdivision is staffed by Wend Kässens and Burkhard Schlichting and the administrative subdivision by Ms. Claudia Ständer; these employees of the firm are always available to help you.

I personally will be devoting more attention to the firm’s theatrical division pending Mr. Rudolf Rach’s arrival; should you have any questions or desires, please do not hesitate to get in touch with me at any time.

Dr. Siegfried Unseld1

    There is a note in Unseld’s handwriting on this letter; it reads, “as previously announced sincerely S.U.”

Letter No. 410

[Address: (Ohlsdorf); telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

August 22, 1980

Kölner Schauspiel wants to stage Retirement stop director Walter Adler young not untalented stop cast from ensemble on average good stop low risk stop would be in favor of giving permission sincere regards S.U.1

    In a memorandum dated August 26, 1980, Burgel Zeeh wrote:

“Phone call from Thomas Bernhard at 9:45 a.m. on 8.26.80.

On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace: the play has a subtitle: ‘A Day in the Life of a German Writer in 1980.’

[...] He says yes to Retirement in Cologne.

From September 2 onwards he will be in Bochum for rehearsals of The World-Fixer.  As he must speak with Dr. Unseld, I am scheduling a Saturday-afternoon meeting in Bochum.

President Kaut finds the bait of The Goal Attained so enticing that he would like to stage the play in Salzburg as early as 1981.  Now Bernhard plans to buckle down and get to work and make sure he has finished the play by October.  So The Goal Attained will be performed in 1981 in Salzburg.  Naturally this pleases him very much.” 

Letter No. 411

[Address: Ohlsdorf; telegram]

Frankfurt am Main

September 7, 1980

outstanding performance minetti and heerdegen compelling stop thomas bernhards definitive breakthrough on the german stage “there is no past, but only the future,” best wishes and hope to see you again1 soon yours

siegfried unseld

    The World-Fixer received its premiere on September 8, 1980 at the Schauspielhaus Bochum in a production directed by Claus Peymann; Bernhard Minetti, to whom the play is dedicated, played the title role; Edith Heerdegen played the woman next to him.  In his Travel Journal, Bochum-Berlin, September 6-8, 1980, Unseld wrote: The premiere of The World-Fixer was absolutely magnificent.  Ultimately yet another evening at the theater in which you felt completely enraptured.  I believe that the date of this performance will be an historic one for Bernhard.  With this play Bernhard has definitely made his breakthrough on the stage.  The play was of course written for Minetti, but I am of the opinion that another great actor will be capable of starring in it.  I regard the play itself as a continuation and supersession of the spirit of Beckett. 

Letter No. 412

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 9, 1980

Dear Thomas,

By now you will have received my telegram, and knowing you as I do, I am sure that over the past couple of days you have been sitting in cafés in Gmunden and diligently studying your triumph.  For a triumph it was, in every single respect.1

By now I have been accosted by various theater people who are thinking about putting on a production of The World-Fixer.  I have had a remarkable revelation: probably you wrote this play and this character with Minetti in mind, and he has presented it perfectly.  But I believe that Minetti is not the only person who can play this role, and I am even of the opinion that an attempt must be made to entrust the role to another great actor.  I hope that you are of one mind with me on this.  It is out of the question for just anybody to star in this play, but I would find it uncommonly interesting to see how another actor managed to fill out the role.

I have now learned that I am not even worth a telegram to you.  I was sitting in my hotel in Bochum at 5:00 p.m. sharp, and by 5:05 I could already sense that you weren’t in town.  I don’t mind telling you that I left Frankfurt four hours early for the sake of that meeting; in consequence I took a fruitless walk around Bochum; compared with Bochum, Augsburg and Trier are oases of amenity.2

As promised, in February of 1981 we will be bringing out the poetry collection In hora mortis in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, along with In the Upper Tauern, if you send us the text now.  But as I have said before, without a manuscript we cannot produce the book. 

Minetti, Heergarden, and Peymann said they would be “sincerely glad” to come to Frankfurt on February 8, 1981.  Minetti plans to arrange his Berlin acting schedule so that he is free on that evening, but none of the parties mentioned would ever come to Frankfurt on my account. 

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    Under the date-heading of September 6-8 in his Chronicle, Unseld mentions a “hymn” to the production of The World-Fixer from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of two days after the premiere; in it, Georg Hensel observes: “[...] never before has Thomas Bernhard negated the world so gleefully.  It is the darkest and at the same time the funniest Bernhard work there has yet been. [...] a grand evening--for Thomas Bernhard, for Minetti, for Peymann, for German theater.”  And in the Süddeutsche Zeitung Heinrich Vormweg observed of the same occasion: “Even if the combination of Minetti, Bernhard, and Peymann no longer has any surprises in store, it continues to be good at delivering climaxes.”

    In The Force of Habit, the circus director Caribaldi describes Augsburg as a “musty, pestiferous nest,” and as the “cloaca of the Lech” (see Vol. 16, p. 102 of Bernhard’s Works).  In The World Fixer the title character declares, “In Trier intelligence / feels ill at ease,” in preparation for formulating a maxim: “Never again Trier / never again on the Mosel” (Bernhard: Plays, Vol. 3, pp. 144 and 154).

Letter No. 413

Ohlsdorf

September 15, ’80

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Our meeting in Bochum fell victim to a misunderstanding; I no longer have any recollection of where and when we were supposed to see each other, although most likely I did establish a quite precise where and when over the phone with the ever- unflaggingly magnificent Ms. Zeeh.1  My multi-day infection with its forty-degree fever flung me to the floor and smashed my head to pieces.

You write that you have now learned that you “are not even worth a telegram” to me;  this jest is very wounding to a man who is obviously completely convinced of your worth to me; if I had to enumerate your worth in telegrams, the figure would exceed that of the total number of them that have been sent in the entire history of the German postal service.  And if I included all the express letters and news items in the tally it would still be insignificant by comparison with this worth of yours to me.  Based on what I had heard from the playhouse in Bochum I was of the opinion that you had been precisely informed of everything and hence, among other things, of where I was.  I assume, though, that a clever man like you did not find the four hours intellectually unprofitable.  And even if I subtract your anger at me from the tally, you still will have netted a hefty margin.  And an even heftier one in such a ghastly dump of a town.  The most hideous places are at the same time always the most lucrative ones.

Regarding The World-Fixer: I don’t intend to allow any further performances of it to take place during Minetti’s lifetime.  We will let this evening in Bochum rest on its laurels.  About performances in languages other than German and outside the three German-speaking provinces I couldn’t care less either way.

Regarding In the Upper Tauern: of course it needn’t appear within the next year.  There cannot be too few books.

Regarding my birthday: I intend to let it slip by like all the other forty-nine so far, and it is immeasurably valuable to me when nobody and nothing takes any notice of them.  I must ask you to forget this birthday completely.  I myself of course can hardly avoid this lamentable circumstance; one cannot undo a birth, although it is true that I much more often think to myself “If only I had never been born!” than “I’m alive.”

The world is without a doubt the greatest of all experiences, but for the most part it is simply knackering itself in an appalling orgy of exertion.  The world is becoming more and more of a pokey dungeon in which the untried prisoner one is spends his entire wretched life breathing in the stalest imaginable air and has absolutely no hope of being acquitted.

Regarding Salzburg: as focused as I am on it, it really must be put on no earlier than in ’82, because ’81 is too soon and will inevitably lead to an all-too neck-breakingly paced compromise.  What is more I insist on Peymann, whom Kaut for his part refuses to have, so he has got to make up his mind whether it is going to be with Peymann or not at all.  The fair city on the Salzach remains for me the darkest of hellholes into which I am loath to throw myself until I have been guaranteed every possible safeguard.  This whole region positively stinks if not quite to high heaven then at least as high as every single window of my house.2

I take pleasure in the successful realization of one of my works, and that is all.

From Friday through Monday I shall be in Bochum to take a look at the old loon.  But I know full well what torture it is to hear one’s own sentences--sentences one can no longer hear--spoken once again, and spoken in each and every case in a different way than one had imagined them; it is to submit to a most unsavory ordeal.  But naturally I am smitten with theart of acting; that is true.

This winter I plan not to be here; where I shall be I don’t know yet.

I would certainly be glad to drive with you once again through forests and fields--and let our goal once again be a beer princess in a brewer’s castle, from which the cracking of Chilean whips resounds and submissive senior forestry officials come running to wish us a good day and, as I also fancy, a good night. 

I am thinking of the pond in which the Watzmann is mirrored and from which happiness can never be so easily obtained as the beer from the barrels there.3

Yours sincerely,

Thomas B. 

    In an August 26 letter to Bernhard, Burgel Zeeh did indeed propose a meeting at 5:00 p.m. at the Bundesbahn Hotel on September 6. 

    The Goal Attained was premiered at the Salzburg Festival in 1981 (see n. 1 to Letter No. 435).  On November 21,  via Burgel Zeeh, Bernhard communicated the following instructions to his publisher regarding negotiations with the Salzburg Festival: “Telephone call from Thomas Bernhard from Mallorca.  When we draw up the contract with Kaut for The Goal Attained: he would like the same share as he got in 1974 for The Force of Habit: DM 40,000.00.  He says that everything above that can go to the firm.  He says that this is certainly not exorbitant, that everything else has gotten more expensive in the past six years, and that it also happens to be the share that Peymann is getting. [...] P.S. He will be in Mallorca for another week and will then be in Ohlsdorf.” 

    In July Bernhard and Unseld visited Inge and Bruno H. Schubert’s estate, the Bogensberglehen (see n. 1 to Letter No. 407).  Mr. Schubert owned the Henninger brewery in Frankfurt and had been Consul General of Chile since the early 1950s. 

Letter No. 414

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

      Frankfurt am Main

September 23, 1980

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Thanks for your letter of 9.15.  I am sorry that the infection has played such havoc with you.

I have taken note of your desire to have your birthday go unmentioned.  I am sorry about this, because my memories of Brussels are both lovely and vivid.  And one really ought to make at least a bare confession of one’s existence every now and then.1

I am rather concerned at your attitude to future performances of The World-Fixer.  I fully understand your admiration of Minetti, but not this fixation.  I am of the opinion that it would be fine and proper to intend Minetti exclusively for Minetti, but to prohibit other actors from attempting The World-Fixer strikes me as unfair to the art of acting that you admire so much.  Couldn’t you give another thought to this?

Nobody moves mountains, but you are moving the Upper Tauern.  We would have had it otherwise.

Next week I am finally going to take a five-day vacation of my own on your beloved Portuguese beaches; I am thinking here of a specific photographic image.2

Burgel Zeeh, who sends her regards, will be leaving town for a vacation on October 18.  On Sunday the 19th I am going to be solitary and free.  Mightn’t I invite you to a plane trip and a dinner in Frankfurt?

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    Unseld and Bernhard celebrated Bernhard’s fortieth birthday together in Brussels in 1971.  See n. 1 to Letter No. 147.

    Unseld vacationed in the Algarve from September 29 through October 4.  The picture Unseld had in mind was the one taken by Gerda Maleta and reproduced after Letter No. 339 in Part XIV of this translation.  This picture hung in Unseld’s study in his house in Klettenbergstraße in Frankfurt.

      

Letter No. 415

[Address: Ohlsdorf; handwritten; picture postcards: “Albufeira/Algarve”]

Albufeira

October 2, 1980

A certain person is missing from the beach here!  (here where, according to Alberti, “the land ends and the sea begins”)1

Who is he?

Take a guess

Yours

sincerely,

S.U.

    The first stanza of Rafael Alberti’s poem “Si mi voz muriera en tierra” (“If My Voice Dies Onshore” (from the collection Marinero en tierra) reads: Si mi voz muriera en tierra, llevadla al nivel del mar y dejadla en la ribera” (“If my voice dies onshore, / bring it down to the beach / and leave it on the beach for me.”)  [The translators quote from a German translation in which Land and Strande (“beach”) both appear. (DR)]

Unseld--Postcard.jpg

Unseld’s October 2, 1980 postcard to Bernhard

Letter No. 416

Frankfurt am Main

October 10, 1980

Dear Thomas,

So--you can’t come on the 18th-19th; that is too bad, and you will be away in November.  Where will you be traveling to?1

My wife and I will be on a weeklong ski holiday in Arosa from December 6 through 13.  We could meet between the 1st and the 3rd, but perhaps December 14-15 would be better.  Which would you prefer?  I would be very grateful to you if you could let me know which days you prefer before your departure in November.  And actually it would be good if you came to Frankfurt, because there are a lot of people here who would like to talk to you.  If you will be coming here, I shall ask Rudolf Rach to come to Frankfurt as well so that we can finally have an extensive conversation about the theater situation.

Otherwise things are going well.  The World-Fixer is enjoying a significant amount of acclaim, and we are having a hard time turning everybody down.2

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    In an October 9, 1980 telephone memorandum Burgel Zeeh wrote:

“Regards from Thomas Bernhard.  He cannot come on the 18th-19th, because that is his aunt’s birthday, perhaps her last one.

He said he had written you an extremely serious letter, and then you had replied to it in a way that was not at all serious.  So that’s the way things stand now, he says.

He is doing fine; at the end of November he will be going away to some place or other.  [Bernhard traveled to Mallorca, where Krista Fleischmann’s interview film Thomas Bernhard.  Eine Herausforderung.  Monologe auf Mallorca [Thomas Bernhard. A Provocation.  Monologues at Mallorca] was shot in the first few days of November.  The film was broadcast on the ORF in February of 1981 in honor of Bernhard’s fiftieth birthday.]  After that, he said, he would be happy to see you at some point in December; “we should all see one another,” at which point I told him that would be possible only in Frankfurt.  All right, fine: so he’ll go to the paradise that is Frankfurt.

World-Fixer (I asked about him about it again on the basis of a memo from the theatrical publications division as well as your own repeated inquiries): no, he doesn’t want any further performances of it.  He says that he has got a new play and that it will be better to have the new one performed.  We must let The World-Fixer sit. 

2.   In the lower-right corner of the letter Bernhard  wrote the then-current Frankfurt area code, 0611, and Suhrkamp’s telephone number, 740231; the left edge of the letterhead is adorned by a hand-drawn prolate rectangle.

Letter No. 417

[Stationery of the Hotel Palas Atenea]

Palma de Mallorca

November 1, ’80

Dear Dr. Unseld,

I must ask you not to allow my Hora mortis to be published under any circumstances.  I could not but have rejected such a plan from the outset; the book gives me no pleasure.  My decision is unequivocal.1

Has On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace been typeset yet?2

It is possible that next summer The Goal Attained will be performed in Salzburg with Marianne Hoppe; it all depends upon the Salzburgers and Peymann, to both of whom I have given carte blanche.

They say you have said that Peymann shouldn’t always be directing productions of Bernhard, that your firm has plenty of other authors in its catalogue.

What am I supposed to say to this?

Best regards,

Thomas B.3

    This cancellation of the publication of In hora mortis was preceded by a correspondence between Bernhard and Maria Dessauer, who had written to him as follows on October 17:

“Dear Mr. Bernhard, In February 0f 1981 your cycle of poems In hora mortis is scheduled to be published in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.

We must try to make the printed book ‘ample’ enough; to this end we could have every poem begin on a recto page and leave the verso blank whenever a poem begins and ends on the same page.  It is clear that this is not the case on pages 9-10.   

It strikes us as ambiguous on pages 7-8 (one poem or two?), 21 and 22, and on pages 27-28.

Please also let us know whether the dedication should be included and whether it should be at the end of the book, where it is in the Salzburg edition.

In a letter dated October 24, 1980, Bernhard replied: “[...] I wrote this poem twenty-five years ago as the libretto of an oratorio composed in collaboration with the composer Lampersberg.  It turned out to be a piece whose execution occasions incredibly enormous difficulties, and for this reason it has, as far as I know, received only a single performance [See n. 1 to Letter No. 24].  Lampersberg was a student of Hauer, of Schoenberg, and he especially revered Webern, whose technique he had used as the basis of the oratorio.

Nowadays I myself recoil in horror from the phrase ‘lord and God,’even if I do regard In hora mortis as a successful work, even at the level of the structure of the text.  The subject has not jibed with my intellectual constitution for well over twenty years.

Pages 7 and 8 are two ‘poems,’ naturally, so it is only natural that your questions have alighted on those two pages.

It must be explicitly stated both that this “poem” originated more than a quarter of a century ago and for what purpose it originated, and the dedication must be discarded as well.

Perhaps I should have died back then with nothing but this ‘poem’ to my name.

Who knows?

Yours,

Thomas Bernhard

P.S. From Saturday morning onwards I shall be reachable at the Hotel Palas Atenea in Palma, Mallorca; please do me the favor of making this known to Dr. Unseld, to whom I shall write from Palma.”

And on November 6 he reported to Maria Dessauer: “[...] in the meantime I have canceled the Hour of Death and informed Dr. Unseld of this decision about a week ago.

Nothing could make me happier now than the non-publication of the composition.

Stupidity mustn’t be carried to extremes.

Yours sincerely, Thomas Bernhard

P.S. These lines are being sent off immediately.

With my thanks for your services as a gravedigger!”

In hora mortis was published in the Insel Bücherei in 1987.

2.     On December 15, Hans-Burkhard Schlichting wrote to Bernhard: “By the same post I am sending you a copy of the corrected galley proofs of the printed version of On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace.  In the event that you wish to forgo a detailed perusal of the proofs, I would appreciate your making a brief note to that effect.”

3. On November 18, Unseld spoke by telephone with Bernhard, who was in Mallorca, and described the substance of their conversation in a note: “He informed me that in a telephone conversation he had given the Burgtheater permission to stage The President for a fee of 100,000.00 schillings.  (A year earlier the Burg had offered 60,00.00, and he had turned them down.)  The sum is to be regarded as a downpayment on royalties, but of course it is already so high that additional payments are probably not forthcoming.

Once this has been carried through, Bernhard is also prepared to give the Burg performance rights for The World-Fixer.  The terms of these have yet to be settled.

Nothing about television rights has so far been settled.  Originally Austrian Television planned to record the German performances, but Austrian Television does not know that performances at the Burg are now in the offing.  Ms. Ritzerfeld would like initially to send word of them to Austrian Television and find out whether they would rather record the German performances or wait and record the Austrian ones.  After that I will run everything by Bernhard once again.”

On the same date, Unseld ordered Suhrkamp’s accounting office to remit the sum of DM 20,000.00 to Bernhard’s account in Freilassing.

1981


Letter No. 418


Ohlsdorf
January 5, 1981

Dear Siegfried Unseld,


Today I am sending you the Summit comedy, and my only wish is for you to send me the finished book as soon as possible.


I would like The Goal Attained to have the same layout as The Ignoramus had in its day, and perhaps this book can be finished by June.1


I am working on the novel; its title is The Son.


From January 7 through about the 28th I shall be reachable at the spa hotel in Bad Ischl.


Over the past few days I have been repeatedly thinking about how far apart we have grown over the past two years; have you slipped away from me or I from you at a greater velocity than that of time itself?  I don’t know.


For two days I have been going around with the following sentence in my head: I have a publishing firm but no publisher.


Right now, though, instead of brooding I shall work.


Otherwise I love my life at least exactly as often as I execrate it.


When things are serious, I fail to receive any lines from Siegfried Unseld.  It’s too bad my publisher isn’t also my friend.


But probably everything is best just as it is.


Only a madman perpetually expects to have his ideal picture of things made into a reality.  Probably I am mad.  But I am also the opposite.


I am thinking |*|about your antechamber blithely and with the utmost delight!2.


Very sincerely yours,
Thomas Bernhard
|*only| 


    On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace, whose corrected galley-proofs Bernhard sent back to the firm [presumably also on January 5 but in a separate envelope (DR)], was published as Volume 728 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp on April 29, 1981.  This letter was accompanied by the manuscript of the play The Goal Attained.

    On January 7, Burgel Zeeh sent Bernhard, then in Bad Ischl, a telex that read: “The antechamber of which you are so blithely thinking would like to ask you to keep yourself in readiness for a telephone call from the chamber itself at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, January 9.”  From Bernhard’s list of questions to be asked, which is also dated January 9, one infers that during this telephone conversation Unseld and Bernhard agreed to meet in Bad Ischl on January 12, 1981.  Unseld wrote about his trip for the meeting in his Travel Journal, Munich--Salzburg--Bad Ischl, January 10-12, 1981:


“The length of the journey [from Salzburg] to Bad Ischl (1-and-a-half hours by bus, almost two by train) was offset by a beautiful winter panorama: Kaiser Franz Joseph knew what he was doing when he had his summer palace built in Bad Ischl, which is now hibernating.


Thomas Bernhard had already spent ten days in Bad Ischl, where his aunt is taking the cure.  He was planning to stay there eight more days; on the one hand he found the town climatically beneficial, ‘salubrious’; on the other hand he was finding the town and the people there more and more nauseating, a fact which, on yet another hand, he said, was quite beneficial to his work.  Yes, he said, he was working well; he expected the manuscript of The Son to be finished in March.


As soon as we were alone, we began conferring, with the aid of the manuscript, about his new play The Goal Attained.


He had expected my first question: wasn’t this an entirely different play from the one he had briefed me on during my last visit [see n. 2 to Letter No. 407] and that he had subsequently ‘sold’ to the president of the Salzburg Festival?  He laughingly said, yes, you’re right; but as the Salzburgers don’t read and Peymann hadn’t yet read the play, he was going to entitle the new play The Goal Attained.  This retitling struck me as a bad move, especially given that the title The Goal Attained was hardly appropriate for the new play and was in fact downright nonsensical in a way, inasmuch as it was of course quite evident that these three characters did not attain their goal.  He will give some thought to this.


Then came my second objection: in this three-character play a ‘dramatist’ [‘dramatischer Schriftsteller’] makes an appearance.  The principal character, the mother, terms him a dramatist, and so does the dramatis personae.  Although one could in a pinch accept the old woman’s calling him a dramatist because there was a dash of utopia in the designation, it really had no place in the dramatis personae.  He said he would give some thought to this as well. 


Then there were a few details that to my great surprise he received in a very interested and amicable spirit.  One or two lines were missing from two passages; I asked him for a new manuscript for us to typeset, because the photocopy made by Peymann is of such poor quality that at least the top two lines are scarcely legible anymore.


After the examination of the manuscript came the agenda-items: [...]


Bernhard doesn’t want any further performances in Austria, at any rate any normal ones.  Should anything extraordinary (in terms of the cast or the honorarium) be offered, it is to be discussed with Bernhard.


Bernhard and Peymann were of the opinion that the Salzburg Festival had definitely decided to host the premiere of the play The Goal Attained.  I have not seen an announcement; do we know of one?  If so, as established in my most recent letter to President Kaut, we must send him the contract.


Performances in Germany.  Only Minetti can star in Minetti, and The World-Fixer is temporarily reserved for Minetti.  Despite this we can still grant performance rights: to be sure, the author will on no account tolerate ‘the proliferation of lousy performances,’ and he is right not to tolerate it.  And so: now as ever we will proceed selectively.


After the agenda-items we took a long walk through the city’s garden-cum-park.  During this walk he was markedly cheerful and in the mood for jokes.  So, for example, he joked that he was planning to team up with the Germanists.  He said that he had set the manuscript of Unrest [later retitled Auslöschung {Extinction}] aside, that he would publish it later, after he had run out of ideas.  Yes, and then on February 9 would come his 50th birthday.  He didn’t want a dinner; he said that the dinner I had arranged for his 40th birthday in Brussels had been really lovely and that there was no need to repeat it.  He asked me to give his regards to Minetti and Peymann [see Letter No. 412], and then he added: I would like nothing better than to have dinner just with you on that day.  I promised him to arrange that, but he would have to choose a place that was as close as possible to an airport.  Then we talked about everything under the sun.  He knew that Peter Handke had written a play [Over the Villages in Wim Wenders’s production] and that this play was going to be performed in Salzburg in 1982.  Firm appraisals of colleagues, the general managers of theaters, directors, critics.  He had no desire to read the very fine, lengthy review of The Cheap-Eaters in the Frankfurter Rundschau that I had brought him [Werner Irro: “Einer gegen den Massenwahnsinn,” [“One Man against the Madness of the Masses”] in the Frankfurter Rundschau, January 8, 1981].


Dinner with his aunt, Mrs. Stavianicek, and my wife.  Bernhard had invited us and was an attentive host.  During my stay Mr. Schaffler from Residenz Publications had called twice; Bernhard did not answer the phone.  Probably Schaffler wanted to inform him of the publication of the book [The Cold], which now was supposed to come out at the very beginning of January rather than at the end of December.  To my question whether Schaffler knew that this was the last book he would be receiving from him, and that we were going to be bringing together the four Residenz-issued books with new texts and publishing it all as a book called Childhood and Youth, he answered: no, Schaffler didn’t know anything about any of this.  But he said there was plenty of time left in which to tell him.   Now the otherwise so sunny and clear-skied town of Bad Ischl was being darkened by a few clouds.  Then came the rogue’s riposte: it’s only clouds that make the sky beautiful.


P.S.: Regarding his contribution to the Frisch festschrift: He said he couldn’t write anything about Frisch.  When I asked him about his first encounter with Frisch, he launched into a story: he had seen Homo Faber in two separate private libraries and read it.  Now he is going to attempt to describe this encounter. [Bernhard did not write anything for Begegnungen {Encounters}, the festschrift commemorating the seventieth birthday of Max Frisch].


Letter No. 419


Bad Ischl
10 Voglhuberstraße
1.23.81



[Letterhead of the Spa Hotel at Bad Ischl1]


I am so irritated by our last telephone conversation that I would like to reinstate my original plan, namely that of spending my birthday alone.


I must ask you not to come on February 9; I shan’t be at home on that day.


From the beginning it was always my intention to be not at home and completely alone on that dubious 9th, and I must ask you to show me some understanding.


Of course we had a very fine and lovely get-together here in Ischl!  I have always abhorred birthdays--my own most especially--and I have also never--apart from my fortieth way back when in Brussels--taken any notice of them.  I must ask you not to take any notice of this birthday.


Very sincerely

yours, Thomas B.

    Bernhard crossed out “Spa Hotel Bad Ischl” in the letterhead.



Letter No. 420


Frankfurt am Main
January 29, 1981



Dear Thomas Bernhard,


During my last telephone call I forgot yet again to remind you of something: In Bad Ischl we agreed that you were going to resend me the manuscript of the play The Goal Attained because the copy I have here is unsatisfactory.  The first lines are illegible, and so it is unusable by the typesetter.  We of course spoke about one or two passages containing transcription errors.  Please send this manuscript to me soon, because of course we are supposed to have the Bibliothek Suhrkamp book in print in time for the performance. 


When and where may I get the manuscript of the The Son from you?  And can you please send me the dedication, along with your written assurance that that book The Cold was the last one?


I recently spoke with Klingenberg of the Züricher Schauspielhaus.  He had heard about your play The Goal Attained from Kaut and would be very interested in having a performance at the Schauspielhaus in Zurich.  But of course to start with we will need to have your final version.     


Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]


P.S.: The first French performance of The President, in a production by Roger Blin, is scheduled to take place on March 3.  Would that be a possible occasion for a meeting?1


    The performance of Claude Porcell’s translation of the play took place at the Théâtre de Michodière.  The cast included Eléonore Hirt and Guy Tréja.  The meeting in Paris did not materialize.



Letter No. 421


Ohlsdorf
February 3, ’81


Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Here you have the complete, unmutilated manuscript of the Salzburg play.  The sentence from Dostoyevsky still has to be inserted and all of page 48 eliminated.1  I think the title can’t be improved.


It will be fitting to have the book published in June.  Regarding my Summit comedy, I would be immeasurably pleased if, irrespective of the performance, which we are postponing for Salzburg’s sake, it were to come into my hands as soon as possible.  And it would be nice if that turned out to be in the next few weeks, irrespective of the announcement in May.  It is after all a book to be read!  And apart from this I would get a kick out of a physical object for a change.


We have already talked a great deal about my birthday; in a couple of days it will have come and gone--which is a good thing--and been forgotten.  Aren’t you glad about not having to travel to this perverse Danubean republic once again?  I shall gather up the fallen branches in the orchard and read Dostoyevsky in a corner behind locked doors and consequently never break character with the quotidian role assigned to me.  And if work comes my way, I’ll even work.  What a slacker I am!


For the first time in thirty years I have published a book review, a review that was self-commissioned and that has promptly flushed out a ton of letters.  It is a review of an execrable book about Kreisky.  You were of course sitting alongside that monument at the Academy Theater this past Sunday, and I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand it.


The chancellor of Austria and the “triptych” from Switzerland!2


During this premiere my brother and I discussed a cortisone treatment for the swollen glands under my breastbone.  A stupid thing that in the past half-year, after thirty years’ respite, has flared up again.  You see how it’s not only in the theater that there are problems.  Since I’ll be running out of air pretty soon, something must be done about it.  But I am quite confident and have resolved to continue working during the treatment.  And naturally to stay at home.  From there, in good time, I will tell you when my Son has grown up  so that I can throw him out of the house.


Very sincerely, in especial consideration of your antechamber,3 yours,


Thomas Bernhard


    As he was correcting the galley proofs, Bernhard struck out the motto from Dostoyevsky (“In thanks for this naive and harmless candor you have compared me to a clown, which has genuinely amused me”) and replaced it with a motto from Pascal.  See Bernhard, Works, Vol. 18, p. 419.

    On January 26, 1981, profil published "The Pensioned Salon Socialist,"  Bernhard’s review of Gerhard Roth and Peter Turrini’s Bruno Kreisky (Berlin, 1981), a book commemorating the Austrian Chancellor Kreisky’s seventieth birthday.  On February 1, 1981, Max Frisch, Bruno Kreisky, and Unseld were all present at the premiere of Frisch’s play Triptychon [Triptych].  Unseld described the aftermath of the “commotion over Bernhard” in his Travel Journal, Vienna 1-3, 1981: “At the ORF it has caused such great offense that they don’t want to sign the television contract for The President and The World-Fixer anymore [see n. 1 to Letter No. 416].   A pitched battle over it has broken out between the [general] administrator, Bacher, and the chief television director [Wolf In der Mauer, chief administrator of television programming at ORF].”  (For more on the scandal and its context, see Raimund Fellinger, “Antworter sind immer falsch” [“Answers Are Always Wrong”], pp. 20-26.

    The word “Express” is written on the letter in the hand of an unknown third party.


Letter No. 422


[Address: (Ohlsdorf); handwritten on Suhrkamp Publications’ stationery]


Frankfurt am Main

in February 1981
[before February 9]


Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Now we won’t be seeing each other on the day of your fiftieth birthday.  Despite this, on that very day my thoughts will still be devoted to you with sincerely undiminished intensity.  For you, my dear Thomas Bernhard, as for me, ultimately nothing matters but work; that is the idea.  I wish you an undisturbed continuation of your exceedingly significant works, nothing more, nothing less.


As a gift to my wishes an allegory of the [xxx]1 of your protean creative power will be coming to you.


Sincerely, as always,

Yours, Siegfried Unseld

    Here a word is illegible.


Letter No. 423


Frankfurt am Main
February 10, 1981

Dear Thomas Bernhard,


I sincerely thank you for your letter of February 3 and for your submission of the unmutilated manuscript of The Goal Attained.  We are having it typeset; it will be released at the end of July so that it can be in all the bookstores on time, on August 18.


The rough paginated copy of the Summit comedy has arrived; you have of course corrected a version.  We are printing the text and will have the book issued in March.


Your little book review has made enormous waves, not to mention billows.  The contracts are now sitting at the ORF; we must wait to see whether they will be signed.


On March 3 The President will be performed in Paris.  Wouldn’t that be a good date and place on and in which to commit your now fully grown Son into my hands?  Or would you prefer a little ristorante in Trastavere as a site for the handover and the after-celebration?


I hope The Cold with a dedication is on its way to me!


Sincere regards, as always,

[Siegfried Unseld]


Letter No. 424


Ohlsdorf
February 22, ’81


Dear Siegfried Unseld,


We have got the illness under precise control and will banish it completely; we have already put it to flight.


I have, as I can now see, got these past few weeks behind me as deftly as can be, and all the spells of turbulence have paid off.


In this phase, to be busy and not unbusy was the best way of proceeding, and all the dust that was stirred up eventually settled down and left me sitting unscathed at my desk.


I am working and making better progress in my work than ever before.


In the midst of my birthday travails I opened a mysterious package from Vienna, and within I discovered what seemed to me to be a challenge addressed by you to a new Goethe.  The inkwell with its magical play of light is something that I naturally shall fill not with ink but with my ideas, and I shall process these ideas and send them to Frankfurt; in the future let there be a constant flood of ideas, a veritable Danube and a Main flowing upstream into my head.


When I now write that I am in finest fettle, this is tantamount to a quite natural statement to the contrary that is the truth.1


My Son is looking ever more dapper; at the same time I am having to go to a lot of bother over some pantaloon who is supposed to make his entrance on to the stage in the next year.


In two weeks I shall take a brief round trip to Vienna, and perhaps take just as brief  a trip to Bochum at the end of March, but then I shall keep calm inside my house, which at the moment makes me very happy.  Everything is now ideal here, and I have the perfect physician.


The Cold is an unpleasant book that is nonetheless necessary if I wish to make any progress, and the bare simple fact is that I am afflicted with stepfatherly inhibitions on the score of this book and won’t send it in by post but rather bring it to you in person someday.  And perhaps someday I shall be welcome at the Lindenstrasse and settle down there in an Austrian hour.


A short sentence for my (and the best!) publisher: we will write all the books and abide by all the contracts!


Very sincerely,

Thomas B.


P. S. I wish to publish in the |*|fall schedule a book that is very important to me and that is entitled War and subtitledInjuries, a book that I shall deliver on April 31, if this is all right with you!!!


|*in the normal schedule
                            ↓
                           main


    On the same day Bernhard wrote to Burgel Zeeh, “It was extremely careless of me to mention my illness, but the frail human mind obviously can’t reign supreme over everything, and so the news that I was ill slipped out.  As a matter of fact authorities of all sorts had been trying to get to the root of the problem for over a year and naturally those authorities of all sorts had not managed to find it--and then my brother hit upon that very root.  Then on February 9 to the day we started the so-called targeted treatment and achieved the hoped-for result--in other words, confirmation that we hit the exact thing that we were hoping to hit.  I believe that the race is run and that aside from the precision of the treatment, we have driven out the nasty thing; the illness is in full flight and Thomas Bernhard feels like a newborn babe, meaning that it is as if for years on end he had had no clue as to how pleasant being alive is, how beneficial it is; now he is all of a sudden breathing freely again, and once again taking in deep draughts of air, and he wants this free-breathing to continue for at least the next ten years.


The nice thing, of course, is knowing that I underwent this same treatment thirteen years ago, and that it was followed by much more than ten years of peace, so now things should be and go the same way.”           


Letter No. 425


Ohlsdorf
Feb. 28, ’81


Dear Doctor Unseld,


Two visitors I have hosted here in the house in the past few days are making it impossible for me not to write the following letter and I have literally been conquered into writing it.


Mr. Rach, who you announced would be taking over the directorship of your theatrical publications division in July,1 has, as you know, done me nothing but harm as long as he has been active in the Suhrkamp theatrical publications division, and whenever I think of this man’s approach to the theater, my hair stands on end.  In theatrical matters Mr. Rach is an absolute moron, and on top of this Mr. Rach’s character is downright depressing, as I have learned from my own experience.  But I have already told you all these things, and they have, as I now see, had no effect whatsoever on you, because otherwise you would not have once again chosen Mr. Rach to head your theatrical publications division.


Now, as I can prove, Rach is roaming all over the place as my full-fledged enemy, vilifying my work and therefore me wherever he shows his face.  He goes into the theaters and quite characteristically broadcasts his disfavor and enmity in a vulgar, backstabbing manner, doubtlessly without suspecting that news of his agitation is not being confined to him and his ilk and that with every instance of it he is merely adding another series of brush-strokes to his dubious corpus of paintings.  Rach cannot get his fill in Germany; he also treads the boards in America in the role of my adversary, as I know for a fact, and broadcasts his anti-Bernhardian sentiment in New York.  And this at the very moment when, as I know for a fact, in America a significant boost to my work and to my entire development is beginning to build.  Mr. Rach roams all over New York and deals out helpings of wounded vanity, because I have never made any bones about what I think of him either, and of kicks at me.  Again, characteristically, in a back-stabbing manner.  His primitivist’s  motto reads: I am all for light-entertainment literature and loathe and despise everything highfalutin!  I very much hope you yourself haven’t made this your personal slogan!  After all that I now know of Rach’s activities and in view of what I picture when I picture this man, namely a man who travels widely in the theatrical world stepping into the theater lobbies and dealing out his clandestine and therefore all the more vulgar cuffs to my ears, I am unable to bear the thought that this man of all people is supposed to be representing my interests in the theatrical publications division.  You must admit that this is absurd!  And yet you have actually hired Rach a second time even though you are precisely familiar with the true state of affairs and even though it has after all been discussed by us on more than one occasion.  You have installed an enemy of my work in your house; that is the truth, and it really can be as depressing as I just now depicted it.  My question now is, what are you going to do?  I refuse to have anything whatsoever to do with Mr. Rach, and if this gentleman has made his entrance at the firm, then I am going to have to make my exit from the Suhrkamp theatrical publications division.  I cannot envisage any other solution.  We now find ourselves in a difficult position.  If I was not formerly aware of your doubts as to the merit of my plays, I am unfortunately aware of them now, and aware that throughout the full decade during which my plays were being performed, you were full of doubt and uncertainty about them and must only ever have been brought around to the contrary opinion, namely that they had some merit to them after all, at the very last minute.  And all the while I suffered as a result; this is something that must be said.  But you can hardly expect me to accept a man who is sawing down the wild and prodigiously huge tree that has shot up to a genuinely imposing height in the midst of the vast, mindless theatrical wasteland, with that public menace of a saw of his!


I quite simply cannot come to terms with the stupidity of this appointment from any point of view whatsoever!2

Only once this matter—which to the best of my present knowledge seems one of great urgency—has been cleared up will it be possible for us to move forward.  With the plays or with the prose works.


A few days ago, brimful of hope and exuberance, I wrote to you and said—yet again, in defiance of all inward reservations—that you were the best publisher!  As far as I am concerned, today I must put a great big fat question mark behind thisthe best.


Yours very sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard


    See Letter No. 409.

    The firm’s archive contains the originals of two letters from Rudolf Rach to Unseld and Bernhard, respectively.  The one to Bernhard is dated March 8, 1981 and reads: “Dear Mr. Bernhard, I have heard of your accusations.  There is no point in going into the particulars here.  Chitchat and gossip, which are the permanent order of the day and night in the theatrical world, are of no interest to me.  If I am writing to you it is because I detect a certain anxiety in your letter, an anxiety that gives me concern, and because I understand this anxiety all too well.  To be brief: they say that I am a friend of lowbrow light entertainment, an enemy of everything complicated and difficult and therefore your enemy as well.  What a misunderstanding.  What ignorance on the part of those who fancy they can bring something like that into the world.  The only reason I left my theater--a government-subsidized German municipal theater full of party-political and bureaucratic cliquishness--was to escape from that degenerate form of theater.  I think I know Suhrkamp Publications well enough to know the sorts of projects and possibilities that are in store for me there.  Moreover, I think it is advisable, in the event that there really is such an enemy, to look that enemy in the eye.  By doing that one can see more precisely with whom one is dealing.  Yours with friendly regards, Rudolf Rach.  The letter addressed to Unseld is dated March 7 and reads: “Dear Mr. Unseld, That is all. That and nothing more. It has to do with more things than with you and with loyalty to the firm.  I say this only by way of apprising you of the stance that gave rise to the letter.  Because I would prefer my daily endeavors to walk tall rather than collapse at the outset.  Moreover, I really do believe that firmness is the only proper policy in such situations.  That attempted blackmail and guilty feelings maximize honoraria is a lesson that I have to keep relearning every single day.  Yours sincerely, Rudolf Rach.”


Letter No. 426                     


Frankfurt am Main
March 2, 1981



Dear Thomas Bernhard,


Warm thanks for your letter of February 22.  I am delighted that you have put your illness to flight.  So the well has reached you in one piece, and I am also delighted about that.  It was indeed conceived of as a well of ideas.


You write that you will be going to Bochum at the end of March.  Could you not arrange your itinerary so that you would be passing through Frankfurt on March 27?  That would be very nice!  After quite a long stint at my desk, I am planning to leave on March 30 for a fortnight-long trip to the U.S.A.  The March 27 meeting-date would of course also be convenient because we could talk about the book War then.  You of course know that this coming May we will be printing our schedule for the second half of the year.  It would of course probably be best for the book to be announced in the regular way.  Or would you prefer a surprise attack? 


Ms. Helene Ritzerfeld has briefed me on your telephone conversation with her.1  Kaut has the contract for The Goal Attained, but he has not yet sent it back with his signature.  We are now sending him a reminder to do that, because without the signed contract the festival could not have announced the performance of the play.


Yours
with sincere regards,
Siegfried Unseld


    Bernhard got directly in touch with Helene Ritzerfeld regarding the broadcasts of The President and The World-Fixer.  On February 24, 1981, he wrote to her: “The general administrator of the ORF, with whom I am personally acquainted, proposed the following to me: that Suhrkamp Publications should accept the ORF’s maximum rate forThe President and The World-Fixer and make its acceptance official by signature.  The difference between this maximum rate and the amount demanded by me and hence by us would then be paid directly and personally to me by the ORF under the auspices of a separate paragraph. [...] But this proposal of the director general’s is to be kept strictly entre nous; I am certain that it will be.  But unlike the director general, meaning the Almighty, who is a friend of my work and is forcing it through, the director of the first channel is my enemy in this matter.  The whole thing is quite gamey, like the world itself, but that is of course a good thing.”  On February 27, 1981 he telephoned Ritzerfeld to discuss the same subject.  In her notes on their conversation she wrote: “Thomas Bernhard is asking us not to undertake anything in this matter in advance and not to send any new contracts to the ORF either.  He wants to be quite clear beforehand on how the difference will be remitted to him by the ORF.  Until he has worked on an agreement with the ORF regarding this, the firm is not authorized to send any new contracts to the ORF.  If we cannot give him this assurance he would rather let the whole thing go bust.  Bernhard called again and briefly spoke to the following effect: I must calculate for him precisely how much per minute will be left over after after taxes so that he subsequently asks for the additional amount.  He was extremely polite, but also quite jittery.


Regarding Salzburg: he would like to know if the contract for the performance [of The Goal Attained] has been finalized.” On March 6, he informed Helene Ritzerfeld, “I have managed to clarify everything and I am requesting that you sign and have signed the contract with the ORF for The President and The World-Fixer.”       


Letter No. 427


[Address: (Ohsldorf); telegram memorandum]


Zurich
March 4, 1981


Can one change from best to worst in a few days--stop--Because I am on the road I cannot answer your letter before Monday1--stop--Proposing meeting March 24 or March 25 in Salzburg or Ohlsdorf or March 27 in Frankfurt.  Sincerely your old SU

    On March 4, 1981, Unseld was in Geneva for conferences with Alice Miller and Madeleine Hohl, and later that same day he stopped in Zurich.

Letter No. 428

Ohlsdorf
March 6, ’81



Dear Dr. Unseld,


I plan to be in Bochum from the 24th through the 18th, and perhaps at some point during that stretch we can engage for an entire day in an extensive and radical discussion of our future, a discussion undisrupted by any third party and aided by all the relevant thoughts and documents.  The Bochum Playhouse knows where I shall be staying.


Sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard



Letter No. 429


Frankfurt am Main
March 9, 1981


Dear Thomas Bernhard,


I thank you for your letter of March 6.  It would really be entirely reasonable for us to find ourselves conversing in peace with the aid of “all thoughts, documents, and figures.”  If it is all right with you, I will come to Bochum on the afternoon of Wednesday, March 25; we could meet from 5 p.m. onwards.  I can place myself at your disposal for the entire afternoon, the evening, the night, and, if you wish, the next day as well.


Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]   



Letter No. 430


[Address: Ohlsdorf, telegram memorandum]


Frankfurt am Main
March 10, 1981


Signed “The Goal Attained” contract from arrived from Salzburg.  Yours sincerely Siegfried Unseld.



Letter No. 431


[Handwritten; picture postcard: “Istanbul, Blue Mosque”]


[Istanbul]
3.13.81


I propose the 26th in Bochum.


Sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard


Letter No. 432


[Telex]


Bad Ischl
[Before March 24]



25th bochum hotel above playhouse1

sincerely bernhard


    The meeting between Bernhard and Unseld took place on March 25, 1981.  Among the documents that Unseld brought with him to the encounter was a breakdown of the sales figures of all of Bernhard’s books published through the end of 1980.  This breakdown showed that by that point 312,855 copies of his books had been sold in the German-speaking countries. Unseld wrote about the meeting in his Travel Journal, Bochum/Bonn, March 25-27, 1981:


“The conversation lasted five-and-a-half hours.


The general situation: he said several times that it made no difference to him whether his books were promoted or not, that he was literally smarting under the flood of Suhrkamp advertisements for those works and authors whom he ultimately could not but regard as epigonal imitators of himself.  That his books were brought into the world by the firm, that they were reviewed a bit, read and sold a bit, and then it was all over and ‘basta’ [...]   


The second complaint: he never receives anything from us, which naturally is a horrendous exaggeration when you consider that he has never wanted any reviews of any sort sent to him.  But he would like to hear something extraordinary.  For example, it would mean a lot to him to observe the effect of his work in foreign countries.  For him the most important resource is the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.  He calls it his series.  He says that that is where he belongs, that that is what he writes for.  In a letter I had informed him that On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace would be published in March, and now, he says, he read through our March BS announcement at a bookstore in Bochum and noticed that the title of his play wasn’t listed in it.  (The book will be published in April, disp[atched] by telex.)

Then Rudolf Rach.  Bernhard says that Rudolf Rach, like Karlheinz Braun earlier on, doesn’t care for his plays; he says he has plenty of evidence of this.  He says Rudolf Rach’s behavior in the U.S.A. was really quite scandalous, and irresponsible for someone entrusted to represent a business.  It was a difficult conversation whose details I most certainly cannot repeat.     


Then the financial side.  His accounts are of course more or less balanced despite the high remittances he has been receiving from us.  And he was quite pleased about this.  He had added up the combined prospective sums for the television rights to The World-Fixer and The President on the one hand and The Goal Attained on the other (ca. DA 90,000 in total) and then rounded this sum up to DM 100,000, which he wanted us to pay him.  He was delighted at the fact that I had a check for this amount with me, and then we discussed the individual points again.  At Easter he will give us the manuscript of his new text, War, subtitled Damages.  Three chapters, no longer than 60 pages; we should take our cues for the typography and layout from the Residenz volumes.  And he wants advertisements and a special commitment from the publisher.


We then discussed the theater situation once again.  Rudolf Rach is to be given another chance to prove that he is not an ‘enemy’ and can stick up for Bernhard’s plays.  So Rach will also be responsible for Bernhard’s affairs in the theatrical publications division.  Nevertheless I was obliged to promise that I would be in communication with Rach during important decisions regarding Bernhard’s affairs.


[...]


Yet again we argued about the four autobiographical volumes published by Residenz.  Yet again we confirmed that he would write a fifth and sixth autobiographical volume and that we would then put out a collection calledChildhood and Youth.  This would be in the form of a complete edition, which of course we initiated with the collection The Novellas.


In the first half of 1982 a short collection called For Actors can be published.  These are practice plays.  [See n. 1 to Letter No. 9.]  The novel The Son would be published in the fall of 1982; he said he had earmarked the novelUnrest [Bernhard entertained both titles for the novel that ultimately bore the title Extinction.] for the fall of 1983.


[...] He handed over to me his corrections and imprimatur for the BS volume The Goal Attained. 


As we said our goodbyes we agreed that the letter of February 28 was null and void and that only the one before it counted.”



Letter No. 433


Ohlsdorf
6.21.81


Dear Siegfried Unseld,


For today’s return trip to Frankfurt you have chosen a day of jubilation for a new France, and I hope you savor this fact well into the night and privately direct your best wishes to Mr. Mitterrand.1


Whereas in the human imagination a new world is coming into being every day and every hour, in politics this happens in such a radiant fashion only a couple of times per century.  Here we distinctly behold the inertness of the earth’s surface.


A fortnight ago in Vienna I discovered a poem that in 1960 marked a decisive end to my composition of poetry.  In ’59 and ’60 I was in London and in Italy, and it was in these countries that this poem, Ave Virgil, came into being.  I am sending it to you as my autumn wish for the BS.  It compendiously encapsulates my frame of mind in those days.  It is a single poem and is meant to be read straight through.


War will follow in the next few days.   


We should think in French when we (perforce) speak in German and speak French when we (perforce) think in German.


With Ms. Zeeh I had the very best contact.


Very much to your advantage.


Yet again megalomaniacally yours,


Thomas B.


    On the evening of June 20, 1981, Unseld returned from an intensive French course in Grimaud.  On May 21, President François Mitterrand, who had been elected on May 10, dissolved the national assembly by decree.  In a second ballot on June 21, Mitterand’s socialist party got 49.28% of the popular vote and thereby secured an absolute majority in the assembly.


Letter No. 434


[Address: Ohlsdorf]


Frankfurt am Main
July 3, 1981



Dear Thomas Bernhard,


I think that we too should meet again soon, no later than August.  Where will you be staying?


I would be happy to speak with you about the poems once again.  Wouldn’t it be better to think about planning a collection?


I am also expectantly awaiting the manuscript of War. Damages.  And I also recall that we had considered Childhood and Youth for 1982.  Please let me hear from you.1


Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld 


P.S.: A first copy of The Goal Attained is being sent to you in a separate post!2


    A meeting took place on August 7, 1981.  Unseld recounted the encounter in a Chronicle entry entitled “Salzburg, August 7, 1981”:


“Never before had I geared myself up for a visit with Thomas Bernhard as thoroughly as I did for this one.  The night before I read the poem-cycle Ave Vergil, and also my most recent travel journals in order to refresh my memory of things he had said and of the atmosphere of earlier encounters, although of course all of my encounters with Bernhard are somehow inexpungeable from my memory.  The problem of this visit, of which Bernhard presumably had not an inkling:


Bernhard and Rach had ‘patched things up’ in Vienna (in Salzburg he told me he had again made his peace with his ‘mortal enemy’), and during this Viennese conversation emerged the idea of collecting and releasing in a suhrkamp taschenbuch the little mini-plays that Bernhard has written and dispersively published.  One of these mini-plays is called “All or Nothing”; I cannot imagine that Rach read it before this conversation, nor did he inform me of the questionable nature of the play; that task was left to Ms. Laux.  And when I read the text in Theater heute [Vol. 5, May 1981, pp. 5-9], I was truly appalled.  The scene: a television talk show host and the “three pinnacles of the State”: President Carstens, Chancellor Schmidt, and Genscher, the foreign minister.  They are represented as doing everything possible or impossible to pick up votes, and at the end they are posed the morally charged question: “Are you a Nazi at heart?”  And all the politicians answer “like a shot”: “Yes.”  It was immediately clear to me that I was not going to print this and immortalize it in a book.  But the consequences of this rejection were also clear to me: to refrain from publishing a play by a highly significant author, a play that had already been pre-printed and was expected to be performed in Bochum, would be seen by the public as an act of censorship, and that would have consequences for my relations with authors.  In a short time, the motive for my censorship would be forgotten, but the fact of it would remain on the record for all eternity.


I sent the text to Jürgen Becker, Martin Walser, and Max Frisch.  All these authors were of the opinion that it should not be printed.  Moreover, they were all surprised that nobody had reacted to the printing in Theater heute.  Martin Walser wanted to write a polemical piece against the play right away; I discouraged him in the light of my forthcoming conversation with Bernhard.  But now at least I had a certain amount of moral support for my firm decision.

I got up early in order to read these mini-plays.  Since then Bernhard has written two more of them; there are seven of them in all: “A Doda,” [Die Zeit, December 12, 1980] ‘Match,’ ‘The German Lunch Table,’ ‘May Devotions,’ ‘All or Nothing,’ ‘Ice,’ and ‘Acquittal.’


All of them are essentially cabaret sketches.  For the most part they just go for cheap laughs.  ‘The German Lunch Table’ was published in Der Zeit [December 19, 1979]; in this play there is another sentence--‘The new president of West Germany is a Nazi,’ which is confirmed by the great-grandson: ‘And the former president was a Nazi,’ which prompts the grandson to say: ‘The Germans are all Nazis.’  I would not have published that either.  Certainly the theme of Nazism must be discussed, and in the course of this discussion we Germans, not on account of a collective guilt, but on account of a collective shame, must endure much, but it must be mediated and cannot be allowed to come across as nothing but a cheap gag.


Incidentally, the mini-play called ‘Ice’ is the only one of them that has any real literary merit.  But even here Bernhard uses two unnamed prime ministers as characters; can he really not get by without this veneer of scandal?  Then during the flight I read The Goal Attained.  This struck me as really quite good even after two or three readings.  At bottom it is of course a play about the creativity of a writer.  ‘What is all this mystery surrounding artists?  What is so special about them?  They are different.  That is true.’  On the writer: ‘he calls his play Save Yourself if You Can, because it is clear that nobody can save himself.’  And then again another insight: ‘Either one is a classic writer at the outset, or one is not.’


The flight arrived punctually to the minute, and Bernhard was there.  I passed on to him regards from Hilde, Burgel Zeeh, and Dr. Guth; Dr. Guth he had in fact heard something about; he had tried to invite him to the premiere [ofThe Goal Attained on August 18, 1981], but he had most certainly been away, and he would most certainly not be coming to the premiere.  A day earlier he had left for a ten-day trip to Styria.  Without leaving an address.


Our first stop was a café on the Salzach.  We found a table in the shade and directly next to the river; despite the 25-degree heat it was pleasant thanks to a gentle breeze. […]

Once again I learned that the better you are acquainted with an author’s texts and the more accurate your recollection of his account balance is, the better you will be able to speak with him and negotiate with him.  I shall never forget those two hours in that café.  We were sitting there in a world of tourists; over and over again somebody or other would come up to Bernhard or me to greet one of us.  We were on the Salzach surrounded by the sorts of tourists who only ever think other people are tourists. […]


He was, as usual, very well informed.  The videotaping for television [of the Salzburg production of ] The Goal Attained fell through.  It did so not because of any remissness of conduct towards him on the part of the Festival administration or the ORF or the political authorities, or the size of the admittedly fairly hefty honorarium he had demanded, but because the demands of one of the unions could not be met.  The ORF would have been required to work out a contract with every single technician, and in each of these contracts everything would have had to be spelled out: the overtime rate, insurance, etc.  In Bernhard’s case that might still have been feasible, but in the case of an opera taping they would have to generate hundreds of technicians’ contracts.   


He was also aware of the performance of Eve of Retirement [an English translation of Vor dem Ruhestand] in a production directed by Liviu Ciulei at the Guthrie Theater, currently the best American theater, in Minneapolis.  He was also delighted about this because it casts an unfavorable light on the judgment of Rach, who hadn’t thought it would be possible.  But of course now he had made peace with his mortal ‘enemy.’  But there are still vestiges of the enmity left.  He didn’t know whether he wanted to go over there [i.e., I believe, to the States, to see Eve of Retirement (DR)].  He would certainly find it interesting.


Why, I asked him, had he not sent me the manuscript of War. Damages?  He said the thing was finished, as good as finished, but that the text shouldn’t come out so soon after The Cold.  Somehow, he said, you make yourself look ridiculous if you are too productive.


This was naturally my cue to mention All or Nothing.  I was braced for anything; I was after all about to try to convince him not to put out the book All or Nothing with the seven mini-plays, and I was prepared at a pinch to go so far as flatly to refuse to publish it, and also prepared to weather all the consequences—personal, professional, and public.  The ensuing events played out in the course of a few minutes, and I really do think Bernhard put me to shame.  S.U.: You are right, one shouldn’t be so productive.  Th. B.: Yes, you make yourself look ridiculous.  S.U.: We have three major titles in the BS this year, On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace, The Goal Attained, and then we are unconditionally committed to publishing the poem Ave Vergil.  Th. B.:  You’re committed to that?  S.U. Yes I am.  But I would like to propose to you our forgoing the publication of the book with the mini-plays.  A pause.  Th. B.: What did you say?  I repeated what I had said.  A pause. Th.B.: Why? S.U.: The artistic gap between them and your major plays is too wide.  Th.B.: Yes, so then we won’t do it.  A pause.  Th.B.: Of course we shouldn’t do what we are bound to regret a half a year later.    

I misunderstood him.  S.U.: In a half a year we can always think everything over once again.  Th.B.: No, we shouldn’t ever put out a book that we are going to regret. Pause. Th.B.: No, it’s good that we can say ‘No.’ A pause. Th.B.: A person has got to have character, to be insistent, but he needn’t be inflexible; he must be prepared to see things a different way, to change.  A pause.  Th.B.: Of course Peymann is already rehearsing.  He won’t be directing the things himself, because that would make them seem far too important.  And they can be done in a light, cabaret-ish style.  And of course Peymann can have a few or all of the mini-plays printed in the program.  That way the text can exist and yet not exist.  The texts must be regarded as “ephemera.”  Their ephemerality is essential.  We did not return to this subject at any later point that day.  I felt no less ashamed than relieved.  All or Nothing.  That trophy slipped past me and the firm at that moment.  [In 1988, all seven mini-plays were published together as The German Lunch Table, Volume 1480 in the edition suhrkamp.]  We were both fully conscious of this precisely because we did not speak about it again that day.  Naturally the prevailing amicability of this day mustn’t be allowed to delude one into harboring false hopes.  Every line that Bernhard has ever written means more to him than his relationship with me does.  He really is for all or nothing.  ‘Probably our literary dramatist actually does have a guilty conscience.’ (The Goal Attained, p. 70) [Bernhard, Works, Vol. 18, p. 306.]


After all that had been said in that vein, there was naturally some residual tension about what might happen over the course of the rest of the day.  We changed venues, took a walk through the tourist-filled streets of Salzburg and sought out the nearest garden café.  Again the situation of people greeting me, the author greeting Dr. Pohl from Nomos Publications. 


Now we could settle the other things; he has finished two prose works, War. Damages and The Son.  In February of 1982 we will decide what should be brought out in the fall.  On the Far Side of Every Summit Is Peace would be directed not by Peymann but by Luc Bondy in Bochum.  One shouldn’t gear everything to one director, to one actor or actress, even though the best one is only ever barely good enough. [...] Bernhard and I spoke about authors; Handke’s name never came up.  Another thing we didn’t discuss: will we be putting together the compilation volume Childhood and Youth, and is there any truth in the rumor that a text of his is slated to be published by Residenz in 1982?  We didn’t touch on either of these questions.  A difficult enough problem to solve, to be sure.  I invited him to come to Boston on the weekend of September 19-20, when I also would be in Boston.  And then we would visit Niagara Falls together.  He was delighted and moved by this.  For me this was a trifle that I found worth spending to secure such gladness.  ‘Isn’t it unusual to buy a man one hardly knows a train ticket [...] [Daughter:] But everybody knows him really well;

he is a celebrity.’ (The Goal Attained, p. 71 [Bernhard, Works, Vol. 18, pp. 308 f.).

[...]


Late in the afternoon, as we were saying our goodbyes, Bernhard asked to be allowed to speak for a quarter of an hour alone with Peymann.  We agreed to meet up a half an hour later at the space where Bernhard’s car was parked.  Was Bernhard planning to discuss the All or Nothing question with Peymann and what would Peymann say?  When Bernhard arrived, punctually to the minute, he was still relaxed and cheerful.  I was planning to ask him to ride with me in a taxi to the airport, but he insisted on driving me to the airport himself ‘as a capstone and final flourish.’  We were driving in the direction of the airport, and then he asked me if we mightn’t take a detour to the cemetery?  He wanted to see if the grave was being well tended.  I didn’t know what grave he was talking about, but then it turned out to be the grave of his grandfather: Johannes Freumblichler, born in Henndorf in 1881, and it was also the grave of his grandfather’s son and of his mother’s mother.  The grave had been well tended. (Bernhard had once offered me a book by his grandfather--Auszug und Heimkehr des Jodok Fink.  Ein Buch vom Abenteuer des Lebens [Departure and Homecoming of Jodok Fink.  A Book about the Adventure of Life], published in 1942 by the firm of Rainer Wunderlich--for republication, but that was out of the question.)


As we were getting into the car to resume our drive to the airport, he took advantage of this last opportunity and asked me about finances.  The DM 100,000.00 that he had received in Bochum were naturally founded on the roughly DM 40,000 in television moneys that were not going to materialize now, but, oh wonder of wonders, thanks to the account statements of 3.30 and 6.30.1981, DM 78,000.00 of the DM 100,000.00 had already been paid off.


Then the drive to the airport.  Meanwhile it had grown quite unbearably hot.  he wanted to walk around with me until the flight, but I asked him if I could spend the interval alone.  Sure, he said; abrupt farewells are best.  Give my regards to the people who gave me their regards, and tell Dr. Guth he should visit me in Nathal.  Sincere thanks for your visit.  Once again expressions of gratitude, friendly feelings, until soon.  Until Boston?


I felt almost paralyzed as the tension of this day abated.  I couldn’t get Bernhard’s expressions out of my head, and I was also haunted by something he had said regarding our present age: Save yourself if you can.  He doesn’t think of this as all that cynical.  In particular he regards the age in which we live as a magnificent one, as an age of transition; indeed, it’s marvelous.”


2. The Goal Attained, Volume 767 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, was published in July 1981.                       


Letter No. 435


Frankfurt am Main
August 24, 1981


Dear Thomas Bernhard,


I thoroughly enjoyed the performance in Salzburg, it turned out too long, with a few forgotten lines along the way, but the evening was a great success for you and a success for Marianne Hoppe as well.  My sincere congratulations.  The reviews have been mixed, a little of this, a little of that--but of course during your travels you will have long since read them along with the unfamiliar locale and by now you have probably already forgotten them.  Several theaters have already gotten in touch with us, but we have granted them only tentative permission; initially of course this performance must be given a head start.1


Now to our Niagara venture: when Burgel Zeeh takes charge of something like this, she takes charge of it and of us.  Enclosed you will find an itinerary that makes perfect sense to me.  Please tell me whether it is convenient for you or if you have other wishes and ideas.  I am looking forward to our trip!


Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]


Enclosure2    


    In his Travel Journal, Munich-Salzburg, August 18-19, 1981, Unseld gave an account of the premiere of The Goal Attained on August 19, 1981 at the Salzburg Festival in a production directed by Claus Peymann: “On the one hand, the performance was quite successful in terms of the audience’s reception, and perhaps it will continue to be so; on the other hand the length of the play was a decided drawback: three-and-a-half hours is simply too long for this text; it hangs fire, and so a good portion of it comes across as banal in performance.  In the end the production was not tight enough conceptually; Marianne Hoppe [the mother] got better and better once she saw that she was up to the job.  Kirsten Dene [the daughter], an outstanding actress; nevertheless, her grandiosely melodious and intelligent voice was inappropriate for the simpleton-cum-downtrodden victim that she was required to portray.  Branko Samarovski had been a bad casting choice for the role of the playwright.  But there was resounding applause.  I am anxious to see how literary criticism, described in the play as ‘unpredictable,’ will react.”  Unseld pasted two reviews into the Chronicle; the one by Urs Jenny in Der Spiegel (August 24, 1981) ends with the words, “The Goal Attained, to the extent that it must be seen as his goal, Thomas Bernhard presents himself as an author who now merely flirts to dazzling effect with everything, literally everything, that he used to regard as a wound and an affliction.”  Paul Kruntorad concluded his review (Frankfurter Rundschau, August 22, 1981) as follows: “So once again we have received a gift from Thomas Bernhard’s exclusive studio, a play tailor-made for the performing team, disconcerting in virtue of its veracity and irritating in virtue of the hermetic form in which this truth is straitjacketed.”     

            

    The “VIENNA-BOSTON-Niagara Falls / BUFFALO-MINNEAPOLIS Itinerary” devised by Burgel Zeeh scheduled the flight from Boston for September 19, 1981, the flight from Boston to Buffalo with an excursion to Niagara Falls for the 20th, and the continuation of the journey to Minneapolis for the 21st.  The journey did not take place.  Zeeh noted of an August 27, 1981 telephone conversation: “The trip to America is a total non-starter: he is working on a new text, and this is more important to him.  The people in Minneapolis can do whatever the hell they like.  He was sorry about the trip to Niagara Falls, but because of his work on the text he can’t go anywhere.” 


Letter No. 436


Frankfurt am Main
September 30, 1981


Dear Thomas,


Both the U.S.A. and France are adorning themselves with front covers featuring Thomas Bernhard.1


I was in Boston.  It’s too bad that we didn’t go on our excursion to Niagara Falls.  Now I am working on trying out a new vacation home for you: in Madeira.  Then the book fair, and I hope we shall see each other soon after that.


The policy of high interest rates has not left even us unscarred.  It is economically senseless at present to be obliged to borrow money at an interest rate of 15%.  I am sure you appreciate this.  Incidentally, we have made plenty of pre-payments.  Hopefully things will be looking better in the near future.


I am writing to you on my birthday.


Yours

as ever with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    The front cover of La Quinzaine littéraire, No. 354, September 1-15, 1981 features a photograph of Bernhard alongside a reference to a reader’s guide contained within the magazine.


Letter No. 437


Ohlsdorf

December 17, ’81


Dear Siegfried Unseld,


The fact that I have cut myself off for solitude’s sake and have not yielded to your seductive advances from Frankfurt has been greatly beneficial to my work, which, propped up as I am by snow masses and the glum December faces in the neighborhood of  my house,  I am managing to propel forward as I have not been able to in a very long time.  The sea cleared my head and calmed my nerves and got my genius going again.  When I do the sums, I realize that for the best part of my life I have existed in a place that I have repudiated.1


This letter has only a couple of points to justify its existence:


Ave Vergil has brought me great joy.2


Mr. Tismar’s so-called History of a Literary Corpus is a completely superfluous abomination; it is bristling with typographical errors and deserves to be withdrawn from circulation immediately.  Capricious, clueless, moronic--that is my impression.  At bottom it is a piece of trash that injures me and is of no use to anybody.3


As regards my work: I have written my new play to a finish in the truest sense of the word.  It has a splendid title and is expecting to be completely misunderstood like all the others.  I have come to terms with the critics.  I believe my play can be performed next season.


Concurrently this coming fall I plan to publish my “novel.”


Meanwhile I have concluded my Biography with a fifth segment that I shall be issuing next February and that, like the whole thing, is entitled A Child.  With this segment, along with me at nineteen at the opposite end, my childhood has been nailed firmly in place.  To the cross of human frailty.


I think it was a misjudgment on my part to ask Dr. Rach for twenty thousand marks three times and thereby, as you yourself never responded to my requests, to put Dr. Rach into an awkward position.  I am absolutely reliant upon this sum.  On the one hand, I am happy to keep living; on the other hand, I am finding that fifty years are plenty.  Everything after fifty is a da capo on crutches.


Yours sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard


    Bernhard spent November at the Hotel Ambassador in Opatja, Croatia.

    Ave Vergil was published as Volume 769 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp on October 29, 1981.

    Thomas Bernhard. Werkgeschichte [A History of a Literary Corpus], edited by Jens Dittmar, was published as Volume 2 of the suhrkamp taschenbuch materialien.


Letter No. 438


Frankfurt am Main
December 29, 1981


Dear Thomas Bernhard,


To put it as kindly as possible, you are stabbing me in the heart and breaking agreements that we had finalized man to man, firmly and succinctly: there were to be no further texts issued by Residenz, and all the parts were to be published as a whole by us.  And now once again a piece of what many people describe as the most important facet of your output has been published by another house.  This makes me sad, as you can well imagine.


Have you finalized a contract with Residenz, or, what would be just as bad, because then it will be business as usual, is there no contract?  Could we publish the five-part autobiography in one volume on April 1, 1983?  I would plan on producing a 20 DM book and envisage an initial print run of at least 25,000.


When can I read the play, when can I read the novel?  Please give me some news about them.  As soon as that happens, the sum of 20,000.00 DM will be at your disposal.


Sincerely,
your sorrowful

Siegfried U.


1982

Letter No. 439

[Ohlsdorf]

January 7, 1982

Dear Dr. Unseld,

Effective immediately I am prohibiting the preparation of any further editions or printings of my books hitherto published by the firms of Suhrkamp and Insel.  This prohibition applies to all books hitherto published by these two firms--they must be discontinued and then officially designated as out of print.  Regarding the plays, my desire is that effective immediately no further contracts should be concluded with any theater or any person without my express consent.

I am requesting the immediate transmission to me of a complete list of all theaters and promoters with whom contracts have been concluded for all planned and currently running performances of my plays.

I am expressly requesting to be communicated with only in writing and never by telephone.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

Letter No. 440

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

January 18, 1982

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Your letter of January 7 has arrived here.

Dr. Rach will immediately see that you receive the desired lists of planned and contracted performances.  We have noted that no subsequent contract is to be finalized unless you have agreed to it.  This has admittedly always been our policy in the past as well, as Dr. Rach informs me.

Regarding your other instructions, they would have such far-reaching consequences that they surely cannot be taken care of in four lines of a letter.  Moreover, we have already finalized a contract that applies to all your works published to date and that is legally binding.

I am reiterating my proposal that we should see and speak to each other at a place that is agreeable to you.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

P.S. I am enclosing a check for DM 20,000.00 with this letter.

D.O.     

Letter No. 441

[Telex]

Palma de Mallorca

[before January 28]

come on february 91 damn it all

thomas bernhard

    The meeting between Bernhard and Unseld materialized on March 13 and 14 in Palma de Mallorca, where Bernhard stayed between January 25 and March 14.  In the pertinent Travel Journal one reads:

“On the flight to Palma read Jens Dittmar’s history of Bernhard’s literary corpus.

In spite of Bernhard’s verdict I find it a very useful undertaking.  Informative and thoroughly gripping. 

Thomas Bernhard met me at the airport; we drove into the city, then took a two-hour walk through the old quarter, had lunch, all the while engaging in forced conversations about everything under the sun.

After a brief pause we climbed into the ring and our exchange lasted three hours.

He, Bernhard, says that he plays no role at Suhrkamp Publications.  That his books are published, to be sure, that he takes pleasure in that, but that then nothing further happens, that the firm effects nothing more than what the books themselves have effected.  That other authors, Walser and Handke, are “fast-tracked.”  That there is no trace of any effort on his behalf.  That the collection entitled Novellas, while nice in itself (with the exception of those individual texts that do not belong in it), had not enjoyed the success that I had predicted, that even in its case there was no commitment from the firm, nothing noteworthy.  He had no interest whatsoever in hearing the sales figures, but he said that of the 50,000 or 20,000 that I had spoken to him of some point, there was pretty much nothing left.  He refused to allow any weight to my objection that he had excluded all the unpublished novellas that would have made the collection especially attractive.  In sum, he said that Suhrkamp Publications, just like the other publishing firms, was an assembly line factory, which was inhuman; one shouldn’t handle intellectual products in that way.  That every day two books fell off the line and they were gone.  That he detested paperbacks and found it unnecessary for his books to be published in paperback format.  And that the History of a Literary Corpus was a joke; it had nothing to do with the history of his literary corpus, that at most it dealt with texts associated with the emergence of the corpus.  That his corpus began at the earliest with the poetry collections andEreignisse [Occurrences].  And that the texts that are presented there as his earliest ones were not by any means the earliest.  That he had written about a refugee camp in Mr. Kaut’s newspaper, the Demokratische Zeitung [“Menschen ohne Heimat” {“People without a Homeland”} in the Demokratisches Volksblatt]; that was his first text, but Mr. Dittmar had failed to discover it.  That he had written quite a bit for Der Morgen, the Viennese newspaper co-edited by Wieland Schmied.  A speech to a youth congress about writers in Innsbruck, etc.--none of that was in Dittmar’s book.  And that every page was teeming with typographical errors, that instead of Walzer-Tito [waltzing Tito] it had Walser Trio and so forth.  He said he didn’t want to go into the particulars, but he kept saying: on every page there are dozens of typos.  He said he had no intention of demanding to have its publication revoked, that the best thing would be for it be forgotten as quickly as possible. But this was something I could not promise him; to the contrary, I am quite sure that this book will experience a print run the size of which many of Bernhard’s books themselves have not enjoyed.

Yes, he acknowledged, his books were available, but what did available mean?  Weren’t Ungenach and Watten now effectively entombed in the edition suhrkamp, even if there had once been something there?

And then the ‘refusal’ of the DM 20,000.00, after he had asked Rudolf Rach for it three times.  Why hadn’t he called me, I asked him.  I naturally knew why he hadn’t called me: because he had broken our Bochum agreement, which stipulated that no additional segment [of the autobiography] would be published by Residenz, but that the whole thing, expanded by the addition of a new segment, would be published by us.

This publisher-bashing session lasted three hours; it was much more concrete and less dramatic and demonic than the one during that evening on the Traunsee [see n. 2 to Letter No. 407].  At bottom he probably also wanted to vent his resentment, his rage, his ‘love-hate’ attitude to his publisher, whom he said he ‘sometimes [wanted] to kill for his well-being’s sake.’

Then we studied the finances for 1981.  Just credits of 170,000.00 versus remittances of DM 150,000.00.  He was pleased when he saw a credit of

DM 45,000.00, and he wanted to see this rounded up to DM 100,000.00 for reasons that I am not going to mention here.             

He also justifiably wants to see his monthly remittance from the firm raised to DM 2,560.00.

Once all this had been sorted out, he presented his plan for new texts and publications.  In the main schedule for the fall of 1982 the novella Beton [Concrete].  Same construction as Correction, clothbound, graphical solution of the cover.  A fairly large typeface so that 78 pages can be turned into 200.  He asked to be sent the paginated rough copy (so no galleys) at Ohlsdorf by the middle of March.  He gave me the manuscript.

In December of 1982 or January 1983, in the BS, his new prose work, Wittgenstein’s Nephew.

His magnum opus, a novel, A Family [one of the working titles of Extinction], is slated for publication in the fall of 1983.  His next play, Der Schein trügt [Appearances Are Deceptive] will be staged by Peymann in Bochum in February of 1983.  Then On the Far Side of All  Summits Is Peace by Kirchner in June of 1982.

What a plan!

Then we should give some thought to the following: Ereignisse--he says the rights have reverted to him, because the Literary Colloquium has not reprinted it in many years.  I am to write to Höllerer; he would prefer to see this in the Insel Büchern.  Another possibility would be the two texts, rosen der einöde [roses of the wasteland], published by Samuel Fischer in 1957, and the manuscript of Der Berg [The Mountain], which was slated to be published by Fischer but never issued by them.

And finally we should give some thought to Ungenach and Watten.  He said these were texts that had involved a great deal of work, that his autobiographical texts issued by Residenz had ‘just been jotted down.’  That he had derived no artistic pleasure from writing them, but had simply felt compelled to write them.  But that Watten andUngenach were genuine autobiographies.

After this four-hour conversation we went to dinner at a restaurant at the harbor.  He was in an extremely relaxed mood; I told him about our Goethe undertakings and our Goethe competition, which he thought was fabulous [see n. 1 to Letter No. 446].  On his part he summarized a 10-page contribution that he had written for Die Zeit: Goethe visits Wittgenstein, but when he got [sic on the change of tense (DR)] to England, Goethe was out of luck, because Wittgenstein was dead [“Goethe schtirbt” (“Goethe Dighs”) in Die Zeit, March 19, 1982].  He spontaneously declared himself willing to come to Frankfurt for the matinee on March 21, and, just as spontaneously, for Hans Mayer’s 75th birthday on March 19.  He wanted to set aside Saturday evening for dinner with Elisabeth Borchers and Burgel Zeeh. [...]

Then he told some unbeatable anecdotes drawn from his own life.  He said that one time he had received the Mozarteum’s prize; Councilor Paumgartner had invited him and 14 other scholarship holders to come see him to receive their prizes; the other 14 had all got the prize and prize money, but nothing had been written out for him, and Councilor Paumgartner shoved him off brusquely with the remark that his nomination had been a mistake by the bursary.  And what was more his name had been publicly displayed among those of the awardees for 14 days straight; he could hardly believe it and went home completely distraught, and to this day, he said, he pondered why that sensitive authority on Mozart had left him out in the cold like that.

Then the other story, which involved the famous Mozart conductor Josef Krips: on page 15 of Dittmar’s book there is a quotation from Zuckmayer’s autobiography Aufruf zum Leben [Summons to Life]: ‘My wife procured him (the young Thomas Bernhard) an audition with one of the great Salzburg conductors, whose undoubtedly very famous name now escapes her, but he was certainly one ballsily rude fellow.  No sooner did he remark that Bernhard’s voice was completely ‘untrained’ than he threw him out without further ado--and threw my wife out as well!’  In connection with this, too, Bernhard remarked that it was incredible that such a sensitive person could be so rude.  Once again, he said, he had been cast into a landscape of ice.

Thirty years later, when driving from Salzburg to Vienna, he was passed by an American-model hearse with a Geneva license plate.  Josef Krips had died in Geneva and was being transported to Vienna.  So that was it for him.

One way or another, messing with Bernhard is always fatal.”

    

Letter No. 442

[Address: Ohlsdorf; forwarded to the Hotel Meliá, Palma de Mallorca]

Frankfurt am Main

February 15, 1982

Dear Mr. Bernhard,

The cost of living index went up again in 1981; accordingly we would like to propose to you an increase of your monthly remittances to DM 2,560.00 per month beginning on March 1, 1982.  I presume you are content with this arrangement.

Yours

with best regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 443

[Address: Hotel Meliá, Palma de Mallorca]

Frankfurt am Main

February 15, 1982

Dear Thomas,

I am back in one piece; I think we had quite a good conversation and have once again laid a solid foundation.  In a text by a certain writer I read the following words on the great cities of the world: “Not one of them has ever been as ideal for me as Palma.”1--and I can now say the same of the site of our meeting.

So: best wishes for the remainder of your stay!

I have noted everything; everything has been prepared.  We will see each other from March 19 through March 21, and I very much hope you read an excerpt of your story on the Goethe-Wittgenstein relationship at the matinee.

You will be bring me your Residenz book, and at the end of March, Joachim will send you his Kafka.2

At the airport I bought some Carta Blanca Agustín Blazquez3, and during the flight I was fascinated by Rudolf’s text.  More on this soon.

And at home I was greeted by something I had hoped to bring with me, namely the matrix of our advertisement for The Novellas; it is enclosed.  What Ulrich Greiner writes in it is equally true of Concrete.

Yours

with sincere regards and, once again, best wishes for the remainder of your stay,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure4

    This is a pronouncement by Rudolf, the narrator of Concrete; see Bernhard, Works, Vol. 5, p. 53.

    Joachim Unseld’s dissertation, Franz Kafka.  Ein Schriftstellerleben [A Writer’s Life], was published in 1982 by Hanser Publications.

    A Spanish cognac. [Actually it is a sherry.  In Concrete, the narrator Rudolf’s sister drinks “a whole glass of Agustín Blazquez sherry.” (DR)] 

    The enclosure is an advertisement from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for The Novellas.  It quotes a passage from Ulrich Greiner’s review of the book in the FAZ: “In its first sentence the novella Yes is already wrenching the reader into the undertow of this prose idiom.  There is no [other (DR)] living storyteller who would be capable of expressing in such colossal sentences a linguistic movement that is also simultaneously a movement of the text’s subject matter.”

Letter No. 444

[Address: Hotel Meliá Mallorca, Palma de Mallorca]

Frankfurt am Main

February 16, 1982

Dear Thomas,

A magnificent piece of prose!  I am sure the critics will see this as well.  And perhaps even the book dealers will for a change.  In any case, I am going to do everything I can to communicate my fascination and enthusiasm to others.

After a more careful read-through of the manuscript (although I am having 12 pages of it transcribed for the compositor) the whole thing is now going to be typeset and paginated.  I presume that on returning to Ohlsdorf you will find the paginated rough copy waiting for you.  There are still a couple of stylistic trivialities to be addressed.

Page 10: Here there is a clause reading, “obwohl es sie abstoßen hätte müssen.” [“though they ought to have been disgusted.”]  This postpositive helping verb [hätte] crops up frequently in your writings; the correct and established construction is “obwohl es sie hätte abstoßen müssen.”1  It crops up in other places, p. 36, e.g., five lines from the bottom: “Auch wenn ich das niemals wahrhaben hatte wollen.” [“Even if I had never been willing to believe this.”]  Here, too, it should probably read: “niemals hatte wahrhaben wollen.”2  Is the narrator supposed to summon his sister by telegram on p. 12, by telephone on p. 13, and again by telegram on p. 16?3

Page 31a, second third, there is talk of “Mistübeln” [“garbage evils”].  But shouldn’t it be “Mistkübel” [“garbage can”]?

Page 36: At the top you have inserted the word “farce.”  I can’t make sense of the sentence into which you have inserted it.  Could you please write out this sentence again?

Page 55: Here there is a quotation from Zadig, the one about the most ravishing of all bosoms.  Then comes this clause: “About something that needn’t make me feel ashamed.”   I don’t understand what this something is supposed to be.  Couldn’t you elucidate this for me?4

Now two serious things:

On page 54 there is a mention of a certain senile moron, a chancellor turned lout.  This could provoke a ban on publication, because it is obvious who is meant.  I strongly advise you to remove the passage; at minimum the title of chancellor of the republic should not appear.  |And don’t forget you once felt sorry for him.|5  

Page 75: Here the Sony corporation is referenced.  This corporation actually exists, and it most certainly could get an injunction issued.  Shouldn’t we substitute a slightly different name, e.g., the Soby corporation?  Everybody would be able to guess which corporation was meant, but it wouldn’t be stated outright and therefore wouldn’t constitute a breach of the law.  And what is more, it really isn’t anything very crucial.6

I hope you will forgive me for these queries.  The whole thing is, as I said, absolutely fascinating.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    Bernhard accepted Unseld’s proposed change; see Vol. 5, p. 21 of Bernhard’s Works.

    Bernhard accepted Unseld’s proposed change; see Vol. 5, p. 65 of Bernhard’s Works.

    In the published book, she is consistently summoned by telegram.

    The clause is unchanged in the published book.

    In the published version the passage reads: “A refractory, perfidious blockhead of an old chancellor--megalomaniacal, capricious, a public menace” [or, in the words of David McLintock’s version, which outside this note I have imported from without comment, “An obstinate old idiot who, having become chancellor, is now quite unpredictable, a megalomaniac and a public menace.”  From the pagination one can see that Unseld is in fact referring to an earlier passage that reads, “a public menace of a chancellor is issuing equally public-menacing orders to his ministers” (cf. David McLintock’s version: “...a half-crazed Chancellor is at large, issuing half-crazed orders to his idiotic ministers”). (DR)]

    In the published version the reference is to an “American corporation”; see Bernhard, Works, Vol. 5, p. 129

Letter No. 445

[Stationery of the Hotel Meliá Mallorca, Palma de Mallorca]

[Palma de Mallorca]

February 25, ’82

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The yacht from Monrovia is still here, and the sheik hasn’t left Palma yet either; to the contrary, he was visited today by King Hassan, as I noticed; unfortunately the silent spectator from Frankfurt has been gone for some time.

So now—after the visit of the people from Vienna!—I am back walking along my lonely path and preoccupying myself with more sentences and with the lethal mantraps hidden within them.  This is of course the way it will be right up until the end, and I hereby declare this preoccupation to be my one and only true passion.

I don’t think the requested corrections to Concrete will be difficult to make once I have the rough paginated copy at Ohlsdorf.

Your letter was an agreeable companion during my walk today.  In three weeks we will see each other and I find the thought of that equally agreeable.

Yours,

Thomas B.

Letter No. 446

Lovran

April 7, ’82

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Out of all the people at your two organizations I have always liked the Jews the best, and now I love them more than ever by comparison with the simpleminded remainder of all German heads--and you were the victor!  All right then!

Goethe’s right leg in the Tischbein portrait ended up being at least fifteen centimeters too long; if Goethe were to stand up he would inevitably scare the life out of the entire German nation and concurrently put them in stitches.1

But seriously: I am already working in my luscious room above the sound of the sea and observing nature as a soundless explosion.  I have literally reined in one of the most beautiful balconies in the world and absolutely reined in my ideas.

There are a few improvements that need to be made to Wittgenstein, but none of them is grave enough to forestall the printing of a rough paginated copy.  By way of remedying the cosmetic appearance of my manuscript, I shall undergo an actual course of treatment next time.   And for just this time I shall bow my head a couple of apologetic degrees to the proof-reader.

The Voice Imitator arrived yesterday and I am completely and utterly pleased with it.  What a majestic shade of blue!!!2

The novel ends with Rabbi Eisenberg, which can’t mean anything to you as of yet, but to me it is the most important thing.

A day before my departure I telephoned Schaffler and became acquainted with the German Booksellers’ Association’s proposal to print the five books in “an enormous run” in ’84.  What do you think of that!  Whereupon I replied to Schaffler in writing (as I already had done viva voce!) that I was declining the German Booksellers’ Association’s offer and proposing that such a five-for-one volume should be “issued” as a “special edition under the auspices of” Suhrkamp and with all rights “to be retained” by Schaffler “upon the Child’s expiration”--to employ the insufferable argot of the publishing industry.  And that he should meet with you and me as well.  What do you think of that!!!

I take this to be yet another proof of the charmedness of my existence.  I am now going to sup on on some scampi in white wine sauce--and I am not feeling ashamed in the least.

Yours with complete and utter regards,

Thomas B.

    Bernhard was in Frankfurt am Main between March 19 and March 21.  On March 19, there was a gathering in celebration of the 75th birthday of Hans Mayer.  In addition to Bernhard the authors Ilse Aichinger, Peter Bichsel, Max Frisch, Stephan Hermlin, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, Rolf Hochhuth, Karen Kiwus, Karl Krolow, Adolf Muschg, Hans Werner Richter, and Martin Walser were in attendance.  Unseld delivered the welcome speech.  At 11 a.m. on March 21 a matinee commemorating the 150th anniversary of Goethe’s death commenced at the Frankfurt Playhouse; part of this matinee involved the presentation of the fruits (i.e., five best submitted poems) of a competition called My Goethe, sponsored by the city of Frankfurt, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, and Insel Publications.  The stage decor consisted of Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein’s painting Goethe in the Roman Campagna and Andy Warhol’s version of the painting.  After some introductory remarks by Unseld, Adolf Muschg gave a speech and Martin Walser read from his play In Goethes Hand.  On March 21, Bernhard signed a contract for a DM 55,000 loan from Suhrkamp Publications.  On the same day he handed over the typescript of Wittgensteins Neffe [Wittgenstein’s Nephew].

    The Bibliothek Suhrkamp edition of Der Stimmenimitator [The Voice-Imitator], Volume 770 of the series, was published on March 31, 1982. 

Letter No. 447

[Address: Hotel Beograd, Lovran/Opatija/Yugoslavia]

Frankfurt am Main

April 19, 1982

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Warm thanks for your letter of April 7, which gives me such a vivid picture of this perennially charmed Thomas Bernhard!  It was very nice to have you here with us for a change, and nice that you did not feel so ill at ease after all in this social setting, or, as you would put it, in this “horde of people of my stripe.”

Your observation on the Tischbein portrait of Goethe is quite accurate: the leg turned out a bit too long, but even more shockingly: he switched the left shoe with the right one!

I am dictating this letter on Saturday, April 17, and today I read Wittgenstein’s Nephew for the second time, and I liked it very much: it is a new form of your autobiography, and what a fascinating and colorful figure is cut by this nephew, who, as you quite rightly say, is as revolutionary in his idiosyncrasy as his uncle was in his philosophy.  Whereof one cannot be silent, thereof one must speak!1a

I also find it quite astonishing how this story of a death is woven into the story of your life and how this dying man has imparted as much strength to you as your “Lebensmensch”1b.  It is all quite Goethean, a grand confession.  I am very glad that you have now reacted to Schaffler; we must now wait a bit for his reply, and if he doesn’t answer I shall write to him once again.1  It would be nice if we could bring out the five narratives in April of next year.  We would issue them in a large print run, and if Schaffler does not request (or cannot request) any share of the honorarium, then we will receive the entire honorarium, and it will be several times as large as the one the German Book Club can offer. 

Yours

with sincere regards as ever,

Siegfried Unseld

P.S. Regarding Concrete: we have changed Sony=Cony to “a Japanese corporation.”2

1a. Cf. the final proposition of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” (DR)

1b. Lebensmensch (literally life-person)--Bernhard’s term for his “aunt,” Hedwig Stavianicek, in Wittgensteins Neffe.  In the authorized English translation by David McLintock the term is rendered as life support. (DR)

    On May 3, 1982, Unseld wrote to Wolfgang Schaffler: “[...] I am getting in touch with you at Thomas Bernhard’s request. It would please him very much to see the five autobiographical books in your catalogue reissued by Suhrkamp Publications in the spring of of next year, in a collected edition entitled Nineteen Years.  He and I conceived of this collected edition as a single volume issued in a large print run and reasonably priced; but he has just informed me that he would also like to issue five individual volumes as a boxed set. [...] Mr. Bernhard is of the opinion that he can authorize us to issue this five-volume set, but we have received only the rights for this boxed set, and no others [...].  This author-desired  arrangement is certainly unusual, but as we know, this author has a penchant for the unusual, and he is urging us very strongly to accommodate him in this.”  In a letter dated June 20, 1982, Bernhard himself contacted Schaffler regarding this subject: “That I am only too desirous for there to be a complete, first-rate edition ofNineteen Years goes without saying, as does the fact that it makes a difference whether this edition is published by the slatternly book club or by Suhrkamp.  In my letter from Lovran at the beginning of April [see Letter No. 446] I wrote that this could only ever be a one-time licensed edition.  Please work out some sort of agreement with Unseld that will allow him to be of service to my ‘autobiography’ and to me.”

    In the published book the “Japanese corporation” has been turned into an “American” one.

Letter No. 448

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

August 10, 1982

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Appearances are not deceptive: it was one of the most pleasant dinners whose enjoyment I have ever been afforded.  I would very much like to apologize for my unpunctuality, which marked my falling out of character as a publisher, but the circumstances were simply different.  I had a lot to tell you about and I did it gladly, and we dredged up a lot of things and didn’t say a lot of things.

For example--that Piper has absolutely no wish to give us permission to put out a selection of the poems of Ingeborg Bachmann edited by you.1

Also that I am very pleased that we will be receiving the manuscript of Appearances Are Deceptive in October.

And Sunday, September 5 is looking like a good date for Ludwigsburg.  It would be a nice reunion, and you would have have your every wish fulfilled by three people.2

I have removed the collection of Bernhard’s Plays in One Volume from Suhrkamp Publications’ “white schedule”; it was a rather painful operation for me, but I perceive your idiosyncratic opposition to such a collection, and I attach more importance to making you happy than to making you angry.  Should you remain adamant in your refusal even after thinking it over, we can include Frost in the schedule instead of the Plays.  In any case, I would like to add something of yours to this schedule.3

Incidentally, September 5 is also the date of the ZDF broadcast of the videotaped performance of On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace.  We could actually watch half of the play live and the other half on television!

If this September 5 meeting materializes, we should arrange it so that you fly to Frankfurt and we then have an opportunity for a conversation and then drive together to Ludwigsburg.  It would be nice if you could come to a decision soon, so that the ladies who flock to see you can gear themselves up for your arrival. 

The corrections to Wittgenstein’s Nephew arrived safely in Frankfurt; they are being solicitously effectuated.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    On May 22, Bernhard wrote to Burgel Zeeh: “Regarding the spirited Lavant poems, I would much rather first ‘assemble’ whichever poems of Ingeborg Bachmann have not as yet been published in the BS.  That would be more in keeping with the respective ranks of the two Carinthian geniuses.”  Bernhard prepared a selection of the poems of Christine Lavant for the Bibliothek Suhrkamp in 1987 (see n. 1 to Letter No. 503).

    After the premiere of On the Far Side of All Summits Is Peace on July 25, 1982 the Bochum Playhouse allowed a guest performance to take place in Ludwigsburg in the context of the Ludwigsburg Festival.  The director was Alfred Kirchner; Moritz Meister was played by Traugott Buhre, Mrs. Meister by Anneliese Römer, and the publisher by Wolfgang Höper.

    In his Chronicle entry for August 9, Unseld wrote of his visit with Bernhard in Ohlsdorf: “Thomas Bernhard was very amiable, as always.  He declined my offer to publish his Collected Plays; he had already not been very enthusiastic about the Novellas [see Letters Nos. 385 and 386].  But after I had gotten back to Frankfurt, he called and said that he regretted turning down my offer and that he thought the Collected Plays was an interesting project.”  The Plays 1969-1981 was published in the spring of 1983 in the context of the “white schedule,” Suhrkamp’s biannual schedule featuring previously published titles.

Letter No. 449

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

October 1, 1982

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I know that Ms. Zeeh is keeping you up to date, but of course the publisher should also make sure he gets a word in edgewise at some point.

Venice was relaxing, pretty expensive; too bad that we couldn’t dine there in Torcello.1

Now we are getting ready for the book fair, it will be my 30th one, so nothing new.

But the lively interest in Concrete is nice.  As you will have learned from Ms. Zeeh, we have focused our book-fair advertisements on Concrete, as we were always planning to do, but now fortified by Blökker’s endorsement.  I hope that after the second printing, which has now been shipped, we will be able to print a third run.

With the above in mind I wish you an enjoyable and productive time2 and send you my sincere regards.

Siegfried Unseld 

    Unseld and his wife Hildegard stayed in Venice between September 22 and 27; on September 23, Hildegard celebrated her sixtieth birthday there.

    From October 25 through the end of November, Bernhard stayed in Dubrovnik.  He returned to Ohlsdorf via Frankfurt.  Of his encounter with Bernhard there, Unseld wrote, “Thomas Bernhard was on his way back from Dubrovnik, where he had ‘tarried’ for five and a half weeks in order to annoy himself with the ‘popular-democratic’ institutions and thereby acquire the necessary background [or perhaps Folie here is a Gallicism for madness (DR)] for his works.  He has finished the play Appearances Are Deceptive and gave me Duplicate No. 1.  But we shouldn’t make this public yet, because he wants to give a copy to Peymann first, within the next week.  It is a play with only two characters: Karl, an old artist, and Robert, his brother, and Bernhard has written it for the two actors Minetti and Buhre.  Peymann plans to stage it in Bochum in June.  Bernhard would be pleased to see us issue it in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, and specifically with the same design as the one for The Force of Habit.  He has a 350-page manuscript in reserve.  Formerly entitled Unruhe [Unrest], it is now called Auslöschung [Extinction].  But he would like to let it sit.  He is mentally planning a new prose work that he will have finished by April of 1983 and that will be published in the following fall.”

Letter No. 450

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

October 4, 1982

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

In case Saturday’s FAZ has given you the slip, here once again is the arts page with the advertisement for Concrete.

As you can see, we are touting.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

1 Enclosure1

    On p. 25 of the October 2, 1982 number of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the firm promoted Concrete with two sentences from Günter Blökker’s review entitled “A Couple of Death’s Heads” (from the FAZ of September 25): “The volcanic quality of the early climaxes, the restrained abundance of the autobiographical phase, the self-parodic comedianism of the scenic studies--in this narrative they do not stand in juxtaposition or opposition to one another; rather they are perfectly equilibrated in the figure of the narrator...We have--amid pain and laughter--been present at an anthropogenesis.”

Letter  No. 451

[Address: Hotel Argentina, 20, Fran Suplia, Dubrovnik]

Frankfurt am Main

November 11, 1982

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Today we sold Concrete to Knopf in N.Y., and that marks the fifth finalization of a foreign-language edition after England, France, Sweden, and Italy!  I hope this brings you even more sunshine than the abundance of it that I am sure you have already gotten there in Yugoslavia.

And then for some time I have been meaning to send you the enclosed page: the Heidelberg Cement Corporation has ordered a copy of Concrete from our firm.  That is quite a noteworthy event of a most peculiar kind!

And how are you doing?  Are you feeling well--workwise?  Here everything is fine; things are steadily developing, and in my work I am feeling very much in my element!

Yours

wishing you all the best and with sincere regards from me and those closest to me--

Siegfried Unseld 

Enclosure

Letter No. 452

[On stationery of the Hotel Panhans, Semmering]

Ohlsdorf

12.27.82

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The greatness of the publisher of the same name could never again be in doubt even after the literal end of the world, but the man who has gone down in history as such a paragon will still be obliged despite his grandeur to fight a running battle with the abstruse absurdities of the literature-manufacturing industry as long as, so to speak, his gigantic heart continues to beat and naturally also obliged to get together in the near future with the author Thomas Bernhard in order to discuss finances, to which both of them, the author and the publisher, obviously must attach the greatest importance if they don’t wish to fall through the cracks of this gruesome age.

In Vienna1 we did nothing of the kind--as the scene at Bochum two years ago (in March)2 cannot be repeated, perhaps on my way back from Bochum on January 17 there will be a sandwich filler-esque stopover in Frankfurt, a stopover that will differ from the one in Bochum by a hair in the truest sense of the word.

My wishes and regards are the epitome of obviousness and any embellishment of them would transform them into an epitome of tastelessness that I shun assiduously at the end of the year.

Your accidental resident of a more or less execrable hotel,

Thomas B.

    Bernhard and Unseld met in Vienna on December 18 and on the morning of December 19.  In his Chronicle, Unseld reported, “That afternoon Bernhard was friendly and amiable; he said not a word about money.  He smilingly acknowledged the validity of my riposte that the unavailability of Wittgenstein’s Nephew was a sign of the book’s success. [...]  Next morning I was supposed to have breakfast with Ms. Mayröcker at 10 o’clock.  But Bernhard would have things otherwise: he insisted that we should meet at the abode of Mrs. Maleta, the wife of the former president of the republic.  I managed to talk this over with Ms. Mayröcker, and so punctually at 10:00 a.m. Bernhard and I, along with Mrs. Maleta’s son, turned up at the house of this lady who did not so much hold court as play at being a housewife in her spacious abode.  [...] And then came his prognosis, in this conservative’s house, that the conservatives didn’t have a prayer.  But he said that the Socialists didn’t have a prayer either, and that neither did the Greens--that nobody had a prayer; so here Bernhard was again being his old familiar self.”

    Unseld and Bernhard’s Bochum conference took place on March 25, 1981.

1983

Letter No. 453

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

January 3, 1983

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Warm thanks for your letter of December 27, which reached me today, the firm’s first workday of the year.  I am delighted that we will be meeting on January 17; I am sure you will soon have a more precise idea of your time of arrival, and I shall be thoroughly prepared.  I am looking forward to our reencounter.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

P.S. written since our telephone conversation: I can either meet you at the gate at 11:55 a.m. or we can meet up at the so-called “meeting-point”1a  (arrivals level--a floor below the gate), Lobby B.

Ms. Zeeh will book the Vienna-bound flight for 4:4o p.m. (LH 254).1

1a. Meeting-point: in English in the original.

1.   Bernhard alighted at Frankfurt Airport on January 17.  In his Chronicle Unseld remarked, “We drive to the firm.  He is furious about sloppiness in general, about the ‘muck’-production at the theaters, about the kitsch he said Koeppen has written in Die Mauer schwankt [The Wall Is Tottering]; he pours scorn on everything. […] By the time we got to the firm he was calmer; he greeted Joachim, dedicated his books to him ‘In passing and for a start.’  In 30 seconds flat he looked over the statement of his honoraria accounts, said he was happy to be able to receive a hundred thousand marks, and signed the receipt, but then he said he wanted to have those hundred thousand marks in schillings. […] Then he said he had finished his new 200-page novella, Chur [eventually entitled Der Untergeher {and, in English, The Loser (DR)}].  We should be receiving it March.  For the edition of Appearances Are Deceptive in the BS he gives me a precise color scheme: dark olive and black.

And then yet another twist.  He is very glad about the Collected Plays in the white schedule, but he would have been equally pleased to pull Frost out of the cupboard in the fall.  He said that there had been twenty years of Frost—and that a generation of writers had profited from it.  We should put out a new edition in the main schedule and perhaps quickly assemble a collection of secondary materials.

Letter No. 454

[Circular letter to authors and friends of the firm]

Frankfurt am Main

January 7, 1983

A piece of news for the New Year: my son Joachim began actively working at our firm on January 3, 1983.  After graduating from secondary school, he served his apprenticeship as a book dealer with us, interned at our Frankurt book shop and at Osiander1, studied at Munich, and received his doctorate in Berlin with a dissertation on Franz Kafka’s relationship with his writings and his publications and published by Hanser last year under the title Franz Kafka: A Writer’s Life.  Over the past few years he has worked at publishing and booksellers’ firms in France, the U.S.A, and Spain.  Since 1978 Joachim Unseld has been an associate of the publishing firms of Suhrkamp, Insel, and Nomos and along with Dr. Heribert Marré and Dr. Gottfried Honnefelder has assisted Volker Schwarz in the management of Nomos Publications in Baden-Baden.

Now Joachim has taken on a full-time position at our firm.  He is heading our sales and distribution division, just as I did when I started here under the direction of Peter Suhrkamp in 1952.  For a publisher the “making” of fine books is indeed one thing and the selling of them quite another and equally important one, and this is something that must be learned through experience.  Joachim Unseld will be seeking to engage in a personal conversation with you; please accept his approaches in a friendly spirit.

Gottfried Honnefelder is staying on as director of Suhrkamp’s paperback books division and maintaining his existing ties with you, and vis-à-vis the German classics division he will soon be establishing new ties with you.  And so, secured as it now is by a belt and two pairs of braces–with me functioning not merely in the background–our relationship will grow ever stronger.

With friendly regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

1. The book dealership of Osiander has been in continuous existence since its founding in Tübingen in 1596.

Letter No. 455

Frankfurt am Main

January 11, 1983

Dear Thomas,

So that you can see how much we Germans value you, I am sending you an article from Le Monde.

Yours

very sincerely,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure1

1.  The Thomas Bernhard archive contains a copy of “Aveux et paradoxes de Thomas Bernhard,” an article from p. 1 of the January 7, 1983 of Le Monde that refers the reader to an interview, also entitled “Aveux et paradoxes….,” of Bernhard by Jean-Louis de Rambures.  In the German version of the interview, “Alle Menschen sind Monster, sobald sie ihren Panzer lüften” [“All Human Beings Are Monsters As Soon As They Show Their Armor”], Bernhard says, “My way of writing would be unthinkable in a German author, and what’s more I have a genuine antipathy to the Germans.”

Letter No. 456

Frankfurt am Main

February 8, 1983 

Dear Thomas,

Mr. Reich-Ranicki’s review in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung will surely not have escaped your notice.  Are you also acquainted with the review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of February 4?1  I am sending you these along with the last page of Die Zeit, in which we do some touting of our own.  Still to come are two more advertisements in which we incorporate the voice of Mr. Reich-Ranicki.

You see: we are doing something.

Yours

with friendly regards

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Wittgenstein’s Nephew was published on November 30, 1982 as Volume 788 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.  In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of February 5, 1983, Marcel Reich-Ranicki reviewed the book under the headline “Der Sieg vor dem Abgrund” [“Victory at the Edge of the Abyss”]: “But what was already in evidence in the novella Concrete is confirmed here: he is writing more easily, relaxedly, transparently.  His style has become more equanimous and more masterly.  Perhaps one can even get away with calling it more mature.”  In the review in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (“Aeusserster Schwierigkeit einer Freundschaft” [“The Extreme Arduousness of a Friendship”) one reads: “Bernhard sketches such a nuanced portrait of his friend that the reader believes he has encountered him in the streets of Vienna, and the characterization of his intellectual qualities is so intensive that one fancies one has engaged in face-to-face conversations with Paul Wittgenstein.”  The advertisement in the February 4 number of Die Zeit centers on a quotation from a review on North German Radio.

Letter No. 457 

[Telegram memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

March 3, 1983

Dear Thomas--I congratulate you on the 15 tsd. Wittgenstein’s Nephews--we are going to print that many copies again.  All corrections have been made.  Copy on its way.

Yours with sincere regards Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 458

[Handwritten; postcard: “Sevilla, Patio Banderas”]

[Seville]

[March 25, 1983]

Dear S.U.

the author is traveling & writing!1--I am very much in the mood to see you* soon,

Yours Thomas B.

*fit as a fiddle!2

    Between March 18 and 28, Bernhard traveled around Spain.

    When Unseld called Bernhard to congratulate him on his fifty-second birthday, the publisher had just gotten over a case of influenza.  He and Bernhard met on April 21 in Vienna.  In his Travel Journal, Paris-Vienna, April 19-21, 1983, Unseld wrote:

“This is Bernhard-related.  I land punctually, take a taxi to the Hilton Hotel.  As I step into the lobby, I find Bernhard already there; he arrived a minute earlier.  Of course he has a penchant for punctuality.  A walk in a park, then lunch at the International.  He is convivial, relaxed, cheerful.  He gives me the corrections to his play Appearances Are Deceptive.  Pages 58 and 59 are missing.  We will have to collate them with the manuscript ourselves.  He mustn’t see it ever again. [...]

He had no objection to Peymann’s staging the play Appearances Are Deceptive in Bochum next season, meaning probably in October.

Peymann is now busy with the premiere of The Winter’s Tale, which will take place at end of April or beginning of May.  So after The Winter’s Tale he will put on the premiere of Appearances Are Deceptive in October.  Accordingly, Bernhard says he must meet with Peymann in the middle of May in Barcelona, Madrid, or some other place.  He says it is indeed very important for him to have finished reading the galleys of his new novel by then so that he will be able to concentrate fully on the play.  So we should really try hard to get the galleys delivered to Bernhard by May 12 or 13.

Then he gave me the manuscript of the text, which used to be called Chur, then Der Asphaltgeher [The Asphalt-Walker], and is now called Der Untergeher [The Undergoer or (more contentiously but by now quasi-officially) The Loser (DR)].  He is envisaging a design like that of Concrete, but with a cover with typography like that of Verstörung, and the most important thing: the colors must be yellow and black.  The manuscript is over 90 pages long, so he guesses it will be 240 pages when typeset.

And then the really remarkable thing happens: without any prompting at all, he tells me the plot of this text.  He said that when outstanding talents came into contact with a genius, the outstanding talents always sank without a trace while the genius lived on.  That in this book he was presenting three people who were bound together in a kind of friendship.

The preeminent of the three is Glenn Gould, the most significant pianist of this century; the other two are a Mr. Wertheim [sic] and the narrator.  Bernhard tries hard to give me a sense of the entire narrative trajectory.  These three are together at the Mozarteum, and subsequently together in Horowitz’s piano class.  Everybody knows that Glenn Gould is The Great One.  The narrator could perhaps also make it as a piano virtuoso, but Wertheim knows he could never make it.  So the narrator finds it fairly easy to give up the piano, but Wertheim finds it very difficult to renounce his vocation.  While Glenn Gould is a madman, plays the piano publicly and gives 34 concerts in two years, but then stops, withdraws to a house in the woods in the U.S.A. and does nothing but make records in his studio, and then meets his predestined end, Wertheim is completely devastated by Glenn Gould’s fate.  He lived with his sister for almost 20 years.  His sister was everyone and everything to him.  He says he sacrificed his career for his sister’s sake, i.e. gave up playing the piano for his sister’s sake.  But at the age of 46 he learns that his sister has met a Swiss man, the head of a chemical company in Chur, and although he has bound his sister to himself by every possible means and never gives her a chance to escape, she takes advantage of this opportunity.  ‘Go away and marry this man’ and Wertheim is alone.  He is devastated by Glenn Gould’s death and by the departure of his sister, which leaves him feeling let down by her.  Wertheim follows her to Chur and hangs himself a hundred meters away from her house there.  The narrator, having been invited to Wertheim’s funeral by the sister, attends it and then travels to Traich, to Wertheim’s last residence, where his papers are said to be preserved.  On the way, he visits an inn, the Wankham, and when he enters the inn his reflections and the entire story are played through once again.  I think it is a good Thomas Bernhard text, a successful Thomas Bernhard text, but that it lacks the significance and brilliance of Concrete and Wittgenstein’s Nephew.

Once again he recalls, quite justifiably, because on May 24 it will have been 20 years since we purchased Insel Publications, that Frost played an important role back then.  He recoils from the idea of a book about Frost, but he says he would have been highly gratified if we had reissued Frost in a clothbound edition.  And incidentally, he says he would like to have DM 30,000.00 posted to his Freilassing account.

He is delighted with the cover that Fleckhaus designed for Chur.  We must send him a photocopy posthaste.”

Letter No. 459 

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

April 26, 1983

Dear Thomas,

I was very glad that you liked the text of Der Untergeher.  So this week we will announce the book, and we hope it will find many readers.1

The manuscript has already been typeset.  The production division has promised us to have the galleys ready by March 10.  If we hear nothing further from you, Ms. Zeeh will arrange to have the galleys sent directly to you in Ohlsdorf from the printers in Nördlingen.

You see, we are working with great promptness.

I have had a photographic copy of Fleckhaus’s cover design for Chur made for you.

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

Enclosure2

    In his Chronicle entry for April 23, Unseld wrote: “My principal task for Saturday morning between 9:00 and 11:30, after my second reading of the manuscript of Thomas Bernhard’s Der Untergeher, is to write an announcement text for the book [for the sales representatives and the firm’s schedule preview].  I have read the manuscript very carefully and twice through, but the structure of a piece becomes clearer during the second reading, but basically you really understand a text best of all when you have to write something about it.”  The Chronicle entry for April 24 contains the following remark: “Phone call to Thomas Bernhard.  I read him the announcement text.  He was quite ‘enthusiastic.’”

    The enclosure has not survived.  It was presumably the copy of the preliminary cover design for Der Untergeher referred to in the letter.  The designer, Willy Fleckhaus, was working under the assumption that the novella was going to be entitled Chur.  Fleckhaus’s draft is reproduced on p. 159 of Vol. 6 of Bernhard’s Works.       

Letter No. 460

Ohlsdorf

May 20, ’83

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The galleys made me very happy.1

Yours,

Thomas B.

    Burgel Zeeh’s handwritten note suggests that the corrected galleys for Der Untergeher were delivered “to Ms. Borchers.”

Letter No. 461

[telegram; wolfseggamhausruck]

[Wolfsegg]

6.27.83

requesting different cover very sincerely bernhard1

    The telegram bears a typewritten note by Burgel Zeeh: “Mr. Staudt will call Mr. Bernhard to ask him what it is he has a problem with.  Bernhard and Rach have both agreed to this.  The cover printed on p. 6 of the Program Schedule 1983, Part 2 (and reproduced on Volume 6, p. 177 of Bernhard’s Works) was altered.  Between June 5 and 26, Unseld was taking his yearly fasting cure in Überlingen and consequently not at the firm.  In his Travel Journal, Salzburg, July 26-29, 1983, he wrote as follows of a face-to-face meeting with Bernhard: “During the flight and my layover in Fuchsl I once again read through his new play, Der Theatermacher [The Scene-Maker orHistrionics].  This play has much more to offer than I thought as I was reading it the first time.  “The wheel of history more or less cast like pearls before swine”--this phrase, Bernhard’s motto for the play, very precisely hits the mark.  The process of history is adumbrated time and again here.  We see how inexorable it is, and how closely we would have to study it, more or less, and this ‘history’ also includes the personal history of the author, who in this play not only articulates his views on the theater and the world but also draws upon his own biography and his personal experiences in forming his arguments.  And this notion of ‘pearls before swine’ is of course also more or less on-target .  The public is not a community of connoisseurs. 

He was relaxed and in good spirits.  He cheerfully endorsed his account balance [DM 100,000 in the black] and asked for a remittance.  He was very pleased with the new version of the cover: he said that he thought he never would have been able forgive Fleckhaus for the original version.  That that diagonal Untergeher had really been too much.  I refrained from revealing to him that Fleckhaus was not the originator of that cover.  He quite liked the new one, because those lines on the cover looked to him like lines on a music staff, and of course Der Untergeher has an enormous amount to do with music.  He is in favor of the new yellow-and-black solution.  Then our announcement of the ‘limited-run edition of Frost with each copy signed by the author.’  He knew that he had agreed to this on the telephone with me, but he said he couldn’t handle it.  He said that after signing ten times his hand would seize up.  So we simply gave up on the idea of this edition.  At some time or other we could always make an edition out of the thousand sheets we had printed.

He amusedly put up with the reviews; he spent about ten minutes looking through them, and then he said that that was quite enough of that.  He said that the positive ones were boring and had nothing new to say and that the negative ones didn’t bother him because they were wrong.  But one point made in one of them must have bothered him after all, because he kept coming back to it: he said he wasn’t going to write anything else for a while, because he had been accused of writing too much.  So now he was just going to withdraw back into himself.  Sure, he said, he was participating in the literature industry; the next day he was going to meet with no less than Peter Handke.  Peter Handke did not inform me of this.  Bernhard tried to rope me into staying longer and being present at this encounter.  It was of course not an unimportant event, he said, or was it?  For security’s sake they were each going to be accompanied by a female escort whose job would be to fill out all the pauses, because of course they were both famous for their eloquent silence.

We then spoke about a possible leading man for The Scene-Maker.

He said that Minetti should be given a break, that Oskar Werner was on the verge of institutionalization, that Hans Christian Blech was “too spent [abgeblecht],”

that Horst Bollmann was a great actor, but physically too small for the role,

that Will Quadflieg was a dimwit,

that Heinz Reincke could be a possibility but was lackluster; Bernhard was ill-disposed to him,

that Ernst Schröder really wouldn’t do either,

Peter Lühr, no, because he wasn’t theatrical enough,

that Klaus Maria Brandauer, who is playing the title role in Haeusserman’s production of Everyman with Marthe Keller as the mistress, was out of the question [...].

But on further reflection he kept coming back to Heinz Reincke, who he said could perhaps be quite good.

He wanted to let me take care of negotiating the honorarium rate with President Moser.

He worked himself up into an ecstasy of good cheer and ended up asking himself why he should refuse to sign the copies for the special edition.  I was supposed to figure out how this could be taken care of, and thus it was resolved that there would be a trip to Alsace during which he would sign the thousand sheets.

My visit with the new president of the Salzburg Festivals, Mr. Moser, was almost a farce.

I had to wait in the antechamber, which was like a sauna on account of the heating, for a quarter of an hour before he let me see him.  He knew for a certainty, thanks to the old office secretary, that I had had a good relationship with his predecessor and had often acted as the captain of the fire department during Peymann’s campaigns.

I gave him the manuscript of The Scene-Maker and summarized it for him. He said that he would consider himself lucky to host such a premiere.  That it was ideal for the festival and its audience.  And that the role was seemingly predestined for a great actor and that it was genuine drama with touches of history, of autobiography, of criticism (but not criticism of the harsh political sort), and that the whole thing was quite light-hearted, a joke with  touches of great profundity.   I am not about to record here everything this man said to me; the gist is: he simply had only the vaguest of clues, and so I proposed DM 70,000.00 to DM 75,000.00 to him as a base sum, and also once again mentioned the possibility of a telecast, which he had never given a single thought of his own to.  He took notes and was planning to read the play soon.  We are supposed to send him a performance contract soon.”

Letter No. 462

[Handwritten on stationery headed “Dr. Siegfried Unseld, 35 Klettenbergstraße, Frankfurt am Main 6”]

[Frankfurt am Main]

Sunday, August 7 [1983]

Dear Thomas Bernhard

Everything was magnificent!1

Your assiduous, self-unsparing “writing” achievement—

My conversations with you--

Your amicable commentary--

the dinner with Guth--

“our ladies”--

the ambience--

the excursion--

One must try to force out greatness each and every time!

Please keep in mind my request regarding the “suhrkamp taschenbuch schedule for No. 1,000.”  I and we would very much like you to take part in it (I know that you have other shores and goals to reach).  For us the ideal and perfect thing would be if we could issue a new text (30, 40 pages) by you.2

In the event that the attested set of drawers in Vienna did not contain the embarrassment of riches that I took completely for granted, I am proposing the following:

The Scene-Maker (June-July premiere) in the suhrkamp taschenbuch: a new book by Thomas Bernhard very inexpensively priced for the first time.  First printing: 20,000 copies.  Bargain sale during the festival.  We can accompany the Salzburg performance with showcasing in the windows of bookstores throughout Austria.

Then Concrete, which I love very much, would stand alone in the Bibliothek.

The collection Plays in the white schedule will be available by December 31.  Then it will vanish so that it can be eventually republished (perhaps alongside a second Plays collection) in hardcover.  That would be alongside a Novellas and hopefully also alongside the autobiography...this way your corpus as a whole would emerge organically, logically, self-evidently.  We would then have a good, rich, but not cluttered itinerary for 1984:

March: BS: Eigernordwand [The North Face of the Eiger]

July: st: Scene-Maker

Sept: hdcvr book: Extinction3

Nov: BS: Concrete  

Yes, just make a plan...4

Sincere regards

and

Tomorrow in Basel5

Yours

Siegfried Unseld

    Unseld’s Travel Journal Baden-Baden / Strasbourg, August 4-5, 1983 contains this passage:

“The impetus of this trip originated 20 years ago.  Thomas Bernhard had the desire to have his first novel, Frost, issued by Insel in 1963, republished in hardcover.  Now this is not a text previously unpublished by us; in 1972 it was added to the suhrkamp taschenbuch series, and our records show that 29,000 were printed.  So I came up with an idea of a facsimile of that first edition, a thousand numbered copies signed by the author.  Over the telephone Bernhard agreed to this, but then when the time came to sign the books, he wanted to pull out.  So in Salzburg we agreed to a trip to Alsace during which he would do all the signing.  I can well understand why Bernhard is so attached to this first novel; you have only to read the first page to see that all of Bernhard’s work is already discernible in this first-born: ‘To explore something unexplorable.  Until one has uncovered a certain astonishing degree of possibilities.  As one uncovers a conspiracy.’

Bernhard came to Frankfurt on August 3.  We had dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Guth; it dragged on until midnight.

Next morning Bernhard and Burgel Zeeh took the Intercity to Baden-Baden.  The inescapability of a train compartment facilitated the signing, which then proceeded more smoothly than we had feared.  At the Baden-Baden station they were met by Mr. Schwarz and invited to dinner at Schloß Neuweier.

In the afternoon Bernhard checked into Brenners Park-Hotel; as he cherishes this setting, this hotel, and was in a very good mood, by the evening, when I arrived, he had already signed 750 sheets.  Burgel Zeeh can give an account of the pranks he indulged in as he signed: sometimes the signatures read ‘Thomas Mann,’ ‘Thomas Aquinas,’ ‘Thomas Bernhold,’ ‘Heimito von Doderer,’ ‘Thomas Unseld,’ and one of them took the form of a caricaturistic sketch.

In the evening he was in good form.  Why should one always be refusing to do things; one can always get to work on something and then get it done.



He was disturbed by the news that according to Mr. Jung, Residenz Publications had repunctuated his prose works to bring them into line with Duden’s rules.  It caused him to launch into a tirade against the asininity of that firm [...].  Under no circumstances, he said, would he have wanted that to be done; he never would have sanctioned it; admittedly, he said, he hadn’t read those books at all since finishing them.

On the morning of August 5, he returned to this subject.  He said that he had gotten so worked up about it that it had given him insomnia.  That under no circumstances did he desire this kind of standardization; that it went without saying that he wanted there to be no punctuation at all in his plays, but that he also wanted the prose texts to be typeset with the punctuation he had given them in his manuscripts.  That it was so relentless for the sake of the rhythm, of the structure of his prose, which, he said, was governed by musical laws.  But that he also wasn’t going to break off contact with us if out of our regard for these rules we caught him out in an error.

Then with Burgel Zeeh’s assistance he signed the last sheets.

[...] We met up in Strasbourg, where Bernhard good-humoredly took a tour of Strasbourg cathedral along with a bit of the old quarter and put up with my Strasbourgian expectorations: that further construction of the cathedral would not have been possible without the architects from Ulm; the story of the kettle of millet that the Swiss brought still warm to Strasbourg by boat in 17 hours via the Limmat, Aare, and Rhine (Fischarts, The Lucky Ship of Zurich).  Luther; the Bundschuh movement and the revolutionizing Alsatian peasants; the house in which Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed the ‘Chant de guerre pour l’armée du Rhin,’ which later became La Marseillaise and the French national anthem.

The return trip via the Sheraton Hotel in Baden-Baden, where we arrived, as previously scheduled, at 8:30 p.m. to the minute.  “Everything was just right;everything was magnificent,” was Thomas Bernhard’s verdict.’

2.  Volume 1,000 of the suhrkamp taschenbücher was scheduled to be published in May of 1984.

3. In her typewritten journal Trip with Thomas Bernhard, August 4-5, Baden-Baden/Strasbourg, Burgel Zeeh recorded Bernhard’s oral statement about this book: “His next book is called Eigernordwand (written as one word), ca. 60 pages.  Exactly two days earlier he had read in a newspaper that the hundredth anniversary of the first scaling of the north face of the Eiger had just been commemorated.  The book is the story of a man who wishes to conquer the north face of Eigner, and this causes his family difficulties and catastrophes.

After this book, Extinction is supposed to be published, in the fall; he says that’s an autumnal sort of title, extinction.  But here he has a few difficulties.  In this book Mrs. Maleta is basically made into a character in some manner or other, and the locale of Wolfsegg is depicted especially extensively.  He says that it’s too conspicuous but that he can’t substitute any other name for Wolfsegg, that he has already tried to do that.  So he plans to let it sit for a bit longer.”     

4.  Here Unseld is quoting Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera.  Burgel Zeeh noted Bernhard’s reaction to these plans in a telephone memorandum dated August 11: “He said today he had received your letter, for which he thanks, whether I know him?  He says the plan is magnificent, but that he wants to look it over again and then make his reply.” 

5. Here Unseld is playing on the circus director Caribaldi’s recurring interjection “Tomorrow [in] Augsburg” in The Force of Habit, as well as on a wish Bernhard had expressed to Burgel Zeeh during the trip to Baden-Baden, namely to travel to Basel because his grandparents had once lived there.

Letter No. 463

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

August 31, 1983

Dear Thomas,

Just briefly informing you that Der Untergeher has been delivered to the book-dealers.  The retail price is DM 26.00.  We have printed 10,000 copies for the first run.  I am sure we will soon be reaching a second printing.

We are having twenty complimentary copies sent to you.  Further copies are available to you on demand.

I am glad this book can now run its race in public.

Yours

with sincere regards,

S.U.

Letter No. 464

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 8, 1983

Dear Thomas,

You expressed no objections to Friedrich Cerha’s setting an excerpt from Walking to music under the title Requiem for Hollensteiner.  So we drew up a contract with Universal Edition Vienna.  We have heard today from Universal Edition that the premiere will take place in Graz, and specifically in the inaugural concert of the 1984 Styrian Fall Festival.  This is for your information.

I hope to hear from you soon.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Bernhard reacted to this letter via a September 11 telephone conversation with Burgel Zeeh.  She took notes on his remarks:

“He sends his very sincere regards.  He has a big problem: he still hadn’t written to you and thanked you for that lovely undertaking; now five weeks had already gone down the drain.  You had written to him, and written him a magnificent letter to boot, a letter that was literally unanswerable.  But he had spent half a day writing to you; he wanted to do this specifically by hand and with his new fountain pen.  But after half a page he could no longer stand the sight of his own handwriting, so the 15 attempts had ended up in the furnace and the letter had still not been written.  Now this pen [the same one he had used in signing the jubilee edition of Frost] was taking its revenge: he couldn’t write to his publisher with it!!  I advised him to use just half a sheet--but now he seriously refuses to try to do it again!  But he pressed me to report to you immediately on this ghastly exercise in futility and to give you his sincere regards.”

Bernhard never did write this letter or any others to Unseld before the end of 1983, but the two men did meet between October 2 and 4 in Venice.  Unseld composed some notes about the meeting:

“He signed the publication contract for Untergeher and Scene-Maker.  At the same time, he agreed to allow The Scene-Maker to be published in the context of the schedule of No. 1,000 of the suhrkamp taschenbücher.

The publication date of The Scene-Maker: the performance will be in July/August at the Salzburg Festival.  Bernhard is leaving the publication date up to us; indeed, he would almost be glad if it came early, but Peymann is anxiously requesting the coordination of the publication date with the performance.  He would on the whole prefer to have the book published only much later.  I think we should arrange it so that the book can actually be delivered eight days before the premiere; at Salzburg we can urge the book-dealerships not to begin selling the book until after the date of the premiere itself.

In November 1984, Peymann will stage the West-German premiere of The Scene-Maker in Bochum.

Subsequently the play will go on a tour to be organized by the Berlin tour-firm of Greve.

The play Appearances Are Deceptive: prospective date of the premiere with Minetti/Buhre as the cast is the beginning of December 1983.  But it is possible that the first performance will have to take place even later owing to the state of Minetti’s health.

The second performance will eventually take place in Berlin.  Boy Gobert would like to direct the play with Schellow/Bollmann.

The Yale Theater Magazine will print Appearances Are Deceiving, Gitta Honegger’s translation of Der Schein trügt.  The journal is offering 100 dollars to the author and translator.  Bernhard has no objections to Gitta Honegger’s receiving the 100 dollars.

Bernhard plans to travel to Palermo to receive the Mondello Prize.  It is the most important literary prize in Italy.  Thanks to this prize associated with 10 million lire (about DM 16,500), Bernhard will become a millionaire for the first time.  If he fails to show up, the prize money will be given to the second-place author, Yves Bonnefoy.

Bernhard was quite taken with the facsimile edition of Frost.  In the copy dedicated to me he listed the stops on the dedication journey--Baden-Baden, Strasbourg, Venice.”

1984

Letter No. 465

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

February 3, 1984

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I am delighted that we will be seeing each other on February 10.  It simply has been too long since we last spoke to each other; whence the irritations, doubts, sulks.1

There is something we must discuss once again: The Scene-Maker.  You will recall that you have fulfilled this one personal wish of mine: in the context of the schedule for the 1,000th number of the suhrkamp taschenbücher we have been planning to showcase our most important authors’ books in paperback format.  Volume 1,000 will be Ludwig Hohl’s Notes, followed by books by Brecht, Hesse, Joyce, Proust, Beckett, Hildesheimer, and new publications by Muschg, Walser, Kühn, Johnson; we have included The Scene-Maker in this No. 1,000 schedule; we have advertised this 15,000-fold, and so the book-dealers are aware of it.  I am of course aware of your predilection for the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, and you know that I have always taken into consideration your wish to have the play published in that series.  We can see to that as well in the future, but in all deference to you we are keeping the play in the suhrkamp taschenbücher.  Obviously the play can be published at any time; we have now scheduled it for July of 1984 in disregard of whether the performance makes it to the stage in 1984 or 1985.  Incidentally, we shouldn’t yet give up on a performance before the end of the year!2 

And if we have further plans: on March 1 and 2 I shall be in Vienna again; if you expect to be there at that time, we could arrange to meet on the the evening of March 2.3        

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    On January 20, 1984, Burgel Zeeh wrote as follows in a telephone memorandum for Unseld:

“Regards from Thomas Bernhard

He is in Vienna through Sunday and on Saturday evening he is going to do nothing but wait for Peymann’s phone call!

He didn’t want to talk to you now; he said that of course it wasn’t about anything anyway, but he will write to you what he wants to say...He sounded a bit tired, although he assured me he was doing well.”

Bernhard waited for Peymann’s telephone call after the premiere of Appearances Are Deceptive, which took place on January 21, 1984 at the Schauspielhaus Bochum (Director: Claus Peymann, Karl: Bernhard Minetti, Robert: Traugott Buhre).  Unseld attended the performance and wrote of it as follows in his Chronicle:

“In Bochum the premiere of Thomas Bernhard’s Appearances Are Deceptive.  A very interesting performance.  The text was a very sophisticated Bernhard text.  Bernhard keeps getting freer and freer.  He is now able to deal with himself ironically, and so the entire thing becomes a lovely game played by the deceptions, self-deceptions, and misunderstandings, that tend to play a role in people’s lives precisely when they are most intimately involved with one another.  It is a genuine endgame, a worthy successor of Samuel Beckett’s play.  The performance was absolutely guaranteed to stay on track in any case, because the two roles were played by Bernhard Minetti and Traugott Buhre.  And it certainly did stay on track.  Magnificent; Minetti in particular was in peak form. [...] Telephone conversation with Bernhard in Vienna; he was happy.”

And in his Travel Journal, Bochum-Celle, January 21-22, 1984, Unseld wrote of this telephone conversation: “He seemed glad, relaxed, and cheerful, but he was really less interested in hearing about the success of the play than in wishing a pleasant evening to all parties involved.  I promised to get in touch with him soon.”  During the party in celebration of the premiere, Unseld also chatted with Claus Peymann and noted: “Peymann can’t find an actor for Salzburg and The Scene-Maker [meaning an actor to play the principal role of Bruscon], a fairly incredible predicament.”

2. In some notes on his conversations with Bernhard in Frankfurt on February 10, Unseld wrote:

“We had agreed to meet at 9:00 a.m. at the Frankfurter Hof Hotel and then to drive to Klettenbergstraße and have breakfast there. But he asked me to stay a little while longer at the Frankfurter Hof and then decisively declared to me:

1)     That he now wished to make a definitive ‘break’ with Minetti, that he had paid him all due obeisance, but that on the other hand he had exploited him as much as could ever be useful for his purposes. That this was the end, that he would now employ a completely different type of actor.

2)     That he found Peymann’s behavior ridiculous.  That the only reason Peymann did not want to stage The Scene-Maker was that he didn’t want any ‘cat in his bed’ after Salzburg and that that was why he had been pretending he couldn’t find an actor after Minetti’s cancellation.  Bernhard also stressed that he had never had Minetti in mind for this role.  [...] He plans to ask Peymann to ensure that the performance takes place, and if Peymann does not find an actor the theatrical publications division will have to deal with it.  I have fully and completely guaranteed this to him.  We have agreed that I will call him on Saturday evening in Vienna.  He will then tell me what the upshot of his conversation with Peyman is.     

After that we drove to Klettenbergstraße.  Small talk.  I also pushed for the firm.  Here too we seemed initially to have discussed nothing.  He wanted to see his statement of accounts.  And when he saw a credit balance of DM 83,000.00, he asked for DM 50,000.00.

I introduced him to Fellinger and Ms. Strausfield, who invited him to Spain; he would be quite glad to accept such an invitation for a March or April visit.

Then suddenly he snapped into action.  He said I should write to Schaffler about the reversion of the rights for the autobiographical novellas.  It would have to be a lengthy letter that also made mention of Bernhard’s high regard for Schaffler.  He would be very pleased if it would be possible to issue this in 1985.  It would be in our marbeled gift-edition format.

Then, what are we doing with Correction?  No, he says, it can’t be published as a paperback; he says he doesn’t want any paperbacks.  And so although a paperback edition of Correction has been announced, it won’t be coming out.  I told him that we would put together an especially attractive special edition of Correction in the fall.

The Scene-Maker: he was emphatic: no edition in the suhrkamp taschenbücher.  We must change that.  He adamantly wishes to see his play published in the BS.  This incidentally regardless of the premiere; e.g., we should get it done in the way we think is right and not to suit Peymann’s plans.

Yes, and what was going on with Watten?  He said he got the impression that this text was completely forgotten.

Suddenly the subject switched to the text version of The Scene-Maker.  He said that he had worked through the play again, that this time there were no errors in the manuscript.  Mr. Fellinger will oversee the production of the book.  This time it really should be our ambition to produce a typo-free copy.  We stayed long enough to photocopy his text, and then we hurried to the airport.  On the way he told me that we probably didn’t need to talk any more about his new book for the fall.  I insisted that this book would be the centerpiece of our March 2 conversation.

3. Unseld’s meeting with Bernhard took place in Vienna on March 2.  Unseld gave an account of it in his Travel Journal, Vienna, February 29-March 3, 1984:

“I arrived at the hotel not a moment too soon to get in touch with Thomas Bernhard [...] I reached Bernhard at 7:00 p.m., and we agreed to meet up that evening at the Rauchfangkehrer.

The agenda of the conversation: Scene-Maker in Salzburg.  Ultimately, he said, it was no longer possible, because by that point he could have brought it about only by force, and he was not about to do that, so he gave Peymann the option of making an ‘artistic decision.’  Peymann took advantage of Bernhard’s concession and cancelled for 1984, remarking that Minetti was in no position to learn this part.  And that Buhre wasn’t either, because both of them were so preoccupied by performances of Appearances Are Deceptive that one couldn’t ask Buhre to take on the part either.

I find this deeply unconvincing.  The truth is that from now on Peymann wants to concentrate more on his career as a general manager of theaters than on isolated productions.  And as far as Peymann’s career goes, Bernhard has firmly made up his mind: he must be stopped from going to the Burg, because he would inevitably suffer a shipwreck there.  So let’s get Peymann in Frankfurt!

Regarding the book version [of The Scene-Maker], he asked us if we could send him the rough paginated copy now (done--ze. [i.e., done by Burgel Zeeh]); he thanks us for Raimund Fellinger’s perusal of the manuscript; so the BS edition should be published no earlier than 1985. [The Scene-Maker was actually published as Volume 870 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp on August 28, 1984.]

Bernhard and Peymann have agreed that Peymann will be premiering a new play in December 1984.  It is calledRitter, Dene, Voss and gears itself to the names of the actors Ilse Ritter, Kirsten Dene, and Gert Voss--[the next phrase is in English in the original (DR)]whatever this means.

Then without any prompting at all he held forth about his new prose work and about the fact that he would be happy to see a new book appear in the fall; to be sure, he said, he had already finished a complete draft, but he had to go through it once again, and he would be ready to submit it no earlier than April.  I was not satisfied with this, because of course we have the meeting with the sales representatives coming up, and I most certainly ought to be familiar with the text.  It is entitled Holzfällen [Wood-Cutting; this is the book known in English asWoodcutters and Cutting Timber (DR)].  The book takes place during a dinner party attended by a decadent circle of friends which despite its decadence somehow wishes to develop a longing for something different.  It is about as long as Der Untergeher.  I wrested from him a promise to get the manuscript into our hands by April 14.

And then regarding Mr. Schaffler’s letter: he said he had done what he could do, namely tell Mr. Schaffler in no uncertain terms that he desired no continuation of the autobiographical series at Residenz Publications, and hence no licensing of any sort of new edition.  Naturally Mr. Schaffler refused to take cognizance of this.  Bernhard thought I should apply to Mr. Schaffler myself and propose hiring a legal adviser to deal with this question.  Admittedly this will be a difficult business, because the legal situation is really unclear.

The conversation was carried on at a very concentrated pace, because he had a  meeting with his brother at 11:00 p.m.  He repeatedly assured me that he would be working concentratedly on the prose text Woodcutters and had no intention of occupying himself with anything else from now on.  After that, he said, he would like to take a trip somewhere, e.g., to Rome.  I invited him to meet me in Rome to hand over the manuscript of Woodcutters on the weekend of April 7-9. [...] The prospect of being in Rome delighted him inordinately.  Then we walked to the place where he was to meet his brother, a doctor, a very nice person.  We then sat there in the Luger Eck for a good full hour and drank some red wine and talked about everything under the sun.

Next morning I called him at 9:00.  [...]  He thanked me for the evening, expressed his delight at the prospective trip to Rome, and related the following anecdote to me: earlier that morning he had told his aunt and his brother about his new prose work; he did not mention a title.  But then his aunt said that the night before she had been reading a book entitled Woodcutters.       

Letter No. 466

[Address: Vienna]

Frankfurt am Main

April 11, 1984

Dear Thomas,

My phone call will have proved to you that I arrived in Frankfurt safe and sound with the manuscript, and it was a magnificent flight because I could begin my reading-session, which I kept going well into the night.  This time I am especially awestruck by the musical structure of the entire work; moreover, it is classic Bernhard!1

In tandem with me Raimund Fellinger is reading a copy; we plan to have the whole manuscript transcribed; the transcription will be supervised by Mr. Fellinger, so I hope we will have an error-free typesetting.  You see: all signs are pointing to Thomas Bernhard here. 

I must thank you very heartily for that encounter in Vienna.  It was certainly one of the finest and most pleasant ones in the history of our relationship. 

For the days and weeks to come, which will make more than the usual demands on you, I wish you all the imaginable best.

I am delighted that we have already made an appointment for Venice.  As you said: a quattro.2

Yours

wishing you everything good and with sincere regards,

Siegfried U. 

    Bernhard canceled the planned encounter with Unseld in Rome; Unseld wrote about the circumstances of the cancellation in his Chronicle: “He had pulled his ‘Lebensmensch,’ Hede Stavianicek, out of the hospital, because the conditions there were too degrading, and he said he couldn’t leave her and so he couldn’t come to Rome.”  In lieu of this Unseld traveled to Vienna on April 6.  His Travel Journal, Vienna, April 6-7, 1984 contains the following remarks on the trip:

“On the one hand, Thomas Bernhard was in a magnificent mood; on the other  hand, he was depressed about the fact that his ‘Lebensmensch,’ Hede Stavianicek, was dying.  She was at home, then in the hospital, but it was so terrible there that he pulled her out.  He said he wanted to let her die at home, but that this was quite hard to do owing to this woman’s peculiar temperament.  For she is physically weak but mentally present; she knows that she must die and now indulges in acts of charity and prodigality in an almost brutally regal fashion.  Bernhard is at her side; he keeps talking to her about dying, death, the afterlife, in which of course he does not believe, but the woman would like to believe; she has lost seven kilos, which in itself doesn’t bother him, but it occasions him a few headaches.  Two nurses look after her in alternating shifts; he is there for her at night.

Bernhard spends the evening and the ensuing night at her house, but each morning at nine, when the first nurse arrives, he goes out and does not return until the evening.  So he is reachable only before 9 a.m., and today he waited for Peymann’s call but it did not come.  Anyhow, if Peymann came he would also fail.  The problem, he said, was larger than life-sized, but he would almost bet that even after Peymann signed the contract his planned arrival at the Burg would still be another two years off.  Time enough to change everything once again, or, for example, to fall ill.  Even now, when his assent was still forthcoming, some poison pills were already being prepared.  Bernhard spoke quite openly about his manuscript, which he held on to the entire time and handed over to me only at the end of our encounter.  Woodcutters naturally had nothing to with felling trees, and yet he could picture it in a dark brown cover with white lettering.  This time his favorite hue, dark green, was not even mooted.  Incidentally, he said, this manuscript was autobiographical through and through.  He said that the principal characters, the Auersbergers, were an actual married couple (their actual surname is Lampersberg), and their friend Joanna, who killed herself, is the writer and actor Jeannie Ebner.  To be sure, Bernhard has changed one thing: Ebner’s boyfriend had found an apartment for her in Vienna, and the very evening before she was to move in he had had a magnificent chandelier installed; the next morning she had hanged herself from this chandelier.  Bernhard said that that was too much for him, that it was kitschy.  In his manuscript he has her hang herself from a rafter.  Yes, and then, he said, something happened that would displease me.  He said that I must be mindful of the fact that the book depicts a period twenty years in the past, in other words the end of the 1950s.  That back then he had worshiped Jeannie Ebner and a poet who figures in the book under the name of ‘Juniröcker.’  And that now he had to say he found the work of this writer quite deeply underwhelming.  Additionally, he said, Woodcutters was the story of an ‘artistic’ dinner party.  That it exposed the hollowness of high society, which tarts itself up with big-name actors, and the hollowness of big-name actors, who allow themselves to be corrupted by high society, and the worthlessness of the Burg, which is nothing but an institution for the annihilation of writers etc. etc. [...]

He, Bernhard, said that in three letters to Schaffler he had forbidden him to issue a new edition in one volume and new editions of the individual books.  He said that he wanted to get them out of that firm’s catalogue.  He said that Schaffler had cheated him in that he did not inform him that he was selling his firm to the Austrian state’s press, and that at a news conference when the director of this state press was asked what he would do if Thomas Bernhard started leveling his curses, complaints, and calumnies at the chancellor of the Austrian republic under the auspices of Residenz, he replied that that sort of thing would have to be nipped in the bud.  And so, he said, a policy of censorship, however veiled it might be, would be in effect, and that he didn’t want to be published by this press.  I advised him against engaging in this dispute in public and suggested his writing Schaffler one more letter mustering all the arguments, a letter starting from the assumption that the legal basis has changed owing to the sale of the firm and that he did not care to be subject to censorship of any sort imposed by a governmental undertaking.  He said that he had already written to Schaffler three times; that Schaffler had always replied evasively and invited him over for dinner or a serving of his wife’s famous apple strudel [...]

He was holding on to the corrections for The Scene-Maker for the time being.  He said that now on the one hand he was busy with the manuscript of Woodcutters and that on the other he was writing a new play for Peymann, a play whose very title makes it quite obvious that it is dedicated to the three actors Ritter, Dene, Voss.  His account of his life now: sick-bed duty in the evening, at night.  At nine in the morning he goes out; he writes in a café, jots down notes, meditates.  Then in the evening he would incorporate significant additions, notes jotted down on little slips of paper, into the manuscript of Woodcutters.  So sick-bed duty, writing, and, during the free intervals, walking; he never reads for more than a moment at a stretch.  When I asked him what he was reading, he replied: Pascal, Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov.

He hopes to have finished his play by the end of May.  But he can’t bring it to completion until he has read the galleys for Woodcutters.  Would it be possible, he asked, for him to receive them by May 10?  Layout and typography the same as Der Untergeher. [...] 

At all our encounters, it was he who decided when they were over.  This time I was obliged to go away early on the day of our last meeting.  He thanked me effusively.  He also insisted on paying all my expenses apart for the bill for “my hotel,” the Hilton.  This is Vienna, after all, he said.  He gave his warm regards to Frankfurt, said that it had been quite lovely and that we must meet again soon.  I said that because I had an original manuscript and he did not have a copy of it I trusted that this time he certainly didn’t want my plane to crash.  No, he said, he never would have wished for that.

It really was my finest encounter with Thomas Bernhard.  Not because there was no talk about money, because in a sense that subject was spoken of on both sides, but because it testified to a certain trustfulness that he felt towards me and that simply made me very happy.

I needed a half an hour to meditate on this encounter, so I sat in the Café Demel drinking a large espresso and looking through the manuscript of Woodcutters.  Once again I was afforded a glimpse into the mode of existence, the labor of a great writer.  And here there is of course only a single life preserver.”

2. On April 9, 1984, Unseld composed a memorandum that reads as follows: “I told him that I was going to be in Venice on September 28 and that I was going to invite him, Frisch, Handke, and Walser to join me there.  ‘A quattro,’ he then said and agreed to come.  Bernhard did not attend Unseld’s sixtieth birthday celebration in Venice (see n. 1 to Letter No. 468), but he did contribute a text entitled “Unseld” to pp. 52-54 of the book Der Verleger und seine Autoren (The Publisher and His Authors) published in commemoration of this birthday. 

Bernhard--Unseld Galleys.jpg

The first two pages of the corrected galleys of Bernhard’s birthday tribute, “Unseld”

          

Letter No. 467

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

June 8, 1984

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

The Suhrkamp preview of the second half of the year has been published.   I am sending a copy of it to you by the same post.  We announced Woodcutters on p. 3.  You are already acquainted with the announcement text.1  I am hoping it has a good effect.

I am sure you are at least pleased with the photographic element of the item facing the announcement on page 2.  And then please notice the announcement of the special edition of Correction on page 25, the announcement of Concrete in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp and of Appearances Are Deceptive in Spectaculum on page 28.2

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    On May 10, Unseld and Bernhard met again in Vienna; in his Travel Journal, Vienna-Zurich, May 9-11, one reads:

“Thomas Bernhard.

Earlier that day he had laid to rest his Lebensmensch, Mrs. Hede Stavianicek.  He brushed off my condolences, but in the course of our three-hour meeting he kept coming back to the subjects of her life, her death, and what this all now means for him.

The handing over of the honorarium.  I read him the announcement text for Woodcutters.  Perusal of the corrected galleys.

He has the following wishes:

No advertisements at the end of the book.

On the title page make the so-called genre-specification ‘An Irritation’ bigger.

Voltaire in roman typeface, but the motto in italics.

He had a precise idea of what the jacket should look like and described it to me: black background, white lettering; in the upper-left corner, close to the margin, Thomas Bernhard; in the center very small, if possible in italics, Woodcutters.

Suhrkamp at the bottom.

He evinced great satisfaction with the standardizing of the transcription and with the checklisted questions.  He said it saved him a great deal of work.

Then the delicate subject of legally actionable passages.  In addressing this he really behaved splendidly.  He said that if the passage I had incriminated was detrimental to his book, it certainly mustn’t continue to be so, and that he was prepared to alter it.  He maintained that he had written these three pages [about Friederike Mayröcker and Ernst Jandl: in the novel (Works, Vol. 7, pp. 156-162) the passage is centered on Anna Schrecker and her male companion] as a late addition and that in them he had perhaps gotten a bit carried away with his rage.  He understands my attitude to it, my sense that the whole thing is not up to the level of his usual fairness.  We shall now wait and see what he does.”  Bernhard made substantial changes to the galleys before sending them back to the firm on July 8.

2. On p. 2 of the Schedule Preview of the second half of 1984 Michel, sag ich [Michel, I Say] is announced alongside a photograph of its author, Ulla Berkéwicz.  The special edition of Correction was published in September 1984,  Concrete (BS 857) on January 29, 1985, and Vol. 39 of Spectaculum on October 16, 1984.

In a July 27  memorandum, Burgel Zeeh reported on a telephone conversation with Bernhard: “Then he told me that he needed to meet with Mr. Unseld very soon, that he was even prepared to come to Frankfurt.  This becauseRitter, Dene, Voss was finished; probably the play will be performed in in December/January in Bochum; he said he had been wondering whether to set aside The Scene-Maker and put out this play instead or to put out both or whatever.  In any case he would very much like to get rid of the thing and very soon, but he would much prefer to hand it over to Dr. Unseld himself.”  The desired encounter materialized on August 20-21 in Frankfurt.  In a memorandum by Unseld one reads:

“He was in good form; he wanted to have dinner.  We stayed at the Frankfurter Hof until 11:00 p.m.

He was delighted with Woodcutters, he was positively enchanted by the jacket, and he also alleviated my concern regarding The Scene-Maker: he had of course telephoned and requested a postponement of its publication, but that was no longer possible.  Now he was actually completely happy about it.

He handed over to me his new play, Ritter, Dene, Voss.  That very evening I took it to Mr. Fellinger, who read it; I read it the next morning, and I must say that I am quite smitten with this play, which in a certain sense is an analogue of Dürer’s Knight [Ritter], Death, and the Devil. He wants it to be published soon and in the BS, if possible at the same time as the premiere, which will take place in December of ’84 or January of ’85.

Then in commemoration of Minetti’s 80th birthday at the end of January 1985 he has written yet another manuscript: Simply Complicated.  Three Entrances for Minetti.  He will bring the manuscript to me in Venice.  We will have a copy ready by Minetti’s birthday, but the book itself will be delivered later, in March.

He has three further projects finished or in progress:

    A prose text, Quarry, 60 pages.  A novella.
    Goethe schtirbt [Goethe Dighs].  Five novellas.  ca. 60 pages.
    The major project Extinction.  He said that this was his longest book to date, that it comprised at least 300 pages, but that he did not know whether he could still stand by the text.  He said that back when he had written it he had used a typewriter with one letter missing, and that in typing it he had ruined the whole machine.

When he heard he had a credit balance of DM 88,000.00, he asked for DM 40,000.00.

Earlier in Vienna we of course discussed the possibility of a reading from Wittgenstein’s Nephew by Minetti.  In connection with this he suggested we might use the day leading up to the guest performance of Appearances Are Deceptive in Vienna and arrange such a reading: probably this guest performance will take place between November 11 and 14 at the Akadamie Theater.

Letter No. 468

[Address: Vienna]

Frankfurt am Main

September 7, 1984

Dear Thomas Bernhard:

I am sending you a letter about actual concerns as an attachment.  Make a decision, please, in the light of the circumstances immediately in play.1  For understandable reasons, a reading now would draw a huge crowd.

And I am also sending you the ORF’s letter of inquiry regarding Appearances Are Deceptive.  What do you think of it?

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

2 Enclosures2

1.  By “the circumstances immediately in play” Unseld means the confiscation of Woodcutters, which went on sale on August 24, from the distributor Mohr and all bookstores (see the detailed description in Bernhard, Works, Vol. 7, pp. 203 ff.).  Unseld made no reply to a written request (dated August 20 and received at Suhrkamp on August 22) from the law firm of Morent (who enclosed Hans Haider’s “expert opinion,” a document in which Haider described himself as the cultural editor of the daily newspaper The Press, editor of Literaricum, The Press’s literary supplement, and visiting lecturer on the sociology of literature at the University of Innsbruck) to postpone the delivery of Woodcutters to the bookstores.  By August 21 in Vienna, Morent, who represented Gerhard Lampersberg, was requesting a writ of injunction forbidding the firm of Mohr to distribute Woodcutters.  This request was granted on August 27.  On the same day, at the Vienna regional court, Morent filed a complaint for libel and defamation of character against Bernhard as the author and Unseld as the publisher of the novel and requested the issuing of a writ of injunction ordering the confiscation of all existing copies in Austria.  This request was granted on August 29.

Unseld summarized the events in his Chronicle:

“August 27: […] Then a bomb went off.  In Vienna our exclusive distributor, Mohr—Dr. Berger—asked us to comment on a possible writ of injunction against Bernhard’s Woodcutters.  It struck me as almost absurd that such an injunction could even be possible. […]

August 29: Now it is clear: Berger received the writ of injunction at 10:35 a.m.  I am very glad that as soon as soon as the [courtroom] hearing was announced, I arranged to have the delivery of the books to Vienna expedited, and that by Friday [August 24] they had already been delivered.  On Monday the delivery of the book to the German states follow[ed].  I learned of the issuing of the writ at 11:55 a.m. and then decided to take the 12:50 p.m. flight to Vienna.  I was greeted at the airport by Mr. Zakravsky; the writ was followed by a second court’s initiation of criminal proceedings against us, and the books were ordered to be confiscated.  Within three hours the books had been confiscated from Vienna’s and Austria’s book dealers.  Hectic hours.  A conference with Dr. Berger’s lawyer; then a conversation with the president of the Austrian bar association, Dr. Schuppich, on ORF television; a meeting with Thomas Bernhard and Krista Fleischmann.

August 30: Two lawyers refuse to take on Bernhard’s case; they don’t want to have anything to do with this man who befouls his own nest.

I go see Dr. Perner, who accepts the job. [...] My conversations with jurists in Vienna have convinced me that we will lose the trial in Vienna.  I can hardly believe that it will be possible to republish Woodcutters in its present form in Austria.

On arriving back in Frankfurt, I immediately go see the lawyer Rudiger Volhard.  We must take preventative measures to ensure that we are not caught off guard by a writ of injunction in Germany.  But this writ need not by any means be issued in Frankfurt; it could happen in any place in the FRG, e.g., in Bad Reichenhall, where Austrians purchase the book. 

In all the newspapers and journals, on radio, and television, the confiscation is being talked about.  A huge scandal, a huge furore is inexorably building.  On the one hand this is very good for the book’s public profile, but our legal situation is deteriorating.  As long as more people can be ‘positively identified,’ we will be less and less able to maintain that this novel is not a roman à clef.

Telephoning to and fro.  Hilde Spiel plans to provide an opinion if she can speak with Bernhard, who will have to explain a number of things to her.  [On October 11, 1984, Hilde Spiel gave Hans Perner a six-page opinion on Woodcutters.  The last sentence of the opinion reads: “The complaint drafted by the journalist and critic Hans Haider (who is not an author of creative literary works) and subsequently signed by Gerhard Lampersberg is perforce doomed to defeat, because the charges brought forward in it are untenable, because artistic categories are incommensurable with literary categories, and legislation aimed at punishing crimes and misdemeanors loses much of its legal force in the aesthetic domain.”]  Dr. Perner must also speak with Bernhard, but Bernhard himself is very upset, more than I thought, and when I spoke with him I also told him that I was expecting a writ of injunction, not in connection with this case, but in connection with the president of the Austrian cultural senate [In Woodcutters Rudolf Heinz is characterized as “a dimwitted, low-bred, arch-Catholic art-molester,” as “this country’s biggest befouler of the cultural environment”; see Bernhard, Works, Vol. 7, p. 160.]

I draft a letter to the Austrian book-dealers.  We intend to fight; we intend to champion this book, but are the Austrian book-dealers sympathetic to our intention? […]

August 31.  In the morning a discussion of a protective brief that Volhard is working on and is going to present to the Frankfurt regional court.  Telephone conversation with the book-dealer in Reichenhall; ‘Austrians are storming’ his shop, and he has no more copies left.  Tonight he will get some from Klotz, our bookbinder in Augsburg. […]

What a remarkable series of days, what a remarkable amount of strain, what remarkable concentration.  I am only now gradually realizing that for the first time in my life I am involved in a criminal lawsuit.  Dr. Sieger, who came back early from his vacation, gives me no hope of winning the trial in Austria, but some of winning it in Germany.  If I lose the trial, I shall have a ‘criminal record.’

2. The enclosures have not survived.  In one of the margins of the carbon copy of the letter, there is a handwritten sign denoting a negative reply next to the first paragraph, and the word “done” is written next to the second paragraph.

In a September 4 letter from ORF to Suhrkamp, Georgia Hölzel queried Helene Ritzerfeld regarding the apportionment of honoraria and licenses and asked her whether rights were obtainable for a broadcast of Appearances Are Deceptive in Austria including South Tyrol.  Helene Ritzerfeld wrote a note in the upper-right corner of the letter: “Could Mr. Unseld ask about this during his next telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard?”

On September 7, Burgel Zeeh spoke with Bernhard by telephone, and in a memorandum of their conversation, she wrote: “Either he will come to Venice, or he will come to Frankfurt.  He says that he is after all suffering from a heart condition and cannot undertake both trips.  That he must take care of himself!

And Venice: he said that he wouldn’t be all that keen on going there, on account of the air; that in any case you would have everybody you wanted with you there anyway, so that he would rather come to Frankfurt, as you would have him there also and that in any case that would be much more sensible, because of course he could do something.”

Unseld’s birthday celebration on September 28 and 29 in Venice was attended by the authors Max Frisch, Peter Handke, Wolfgang Koeppen, and Martin Walser.

Letter No. 469

Ohlsdorf

9.12.84

Dear Dr. Unseld,

After receiving a letter from Dr. Perner which I have just read, I think it is appropriate for me to send you the attached letter addressed from me to you. You now have in your hands the document that was requested on one occasion, the document stating that the Auersbergs are not the Lampersbergs.  This statement of the facts is of course the only accurate one.

On Tuesday I am flying to Bochum, where I stayed overnight once upon a time.  I have a layover at the Frankfurt airport between 11:45 a.m. and 1:00 p.m.  Perhaps you will have a half an hour to spare.1

Sincerely,

Thomas B.

Possibly Dr. Perner, being already “familiar” with the case, is our best choice to represent us jointly in court.  But I won’t be making my decision until the last minute.2

[Enclosure; letter from Bernhard to Unseld]

Ohlsdorf

9.12.84

Dear Dr. Unseld,

I can only describe the confiscation of my Woodcutters as an enormity that is literally unprecedented in the postwar history of this country and that is in the highest degree injurious to me.  So far the newspapers have been my sole source of information on the judicial proceedings and decisions pertaining to this confiscation, and I have yet to receive a single communication from any Austrian court.  It was in a Vienna daily that I was obliged to read for the first time that Mr. Lampersberg had filed a lawsuit against me and that my trial had been scheduled to begin on October 23.  More than two full weeks after the lawsuit against me became a topic of discussion, as I again learned only from the Viennese newspapers, I had still not alighted upon a single judicial communication, at least none addressed to me at my principal residence at Ohlsdorf.  But as I said, even as of now I have yet to receive a single judicial communication.  Dr. Perner wrote to me today that a summons to the court had not been issued to me because the court “does not have your exact addresses at its disposal.”  In a governmental complex where every date in history is known and kept on file, it is more than remarkable that the address of a well-known author should be untraceable for weeks on end.

In response to any possible legal complaint from Mr. Lampersberg, I am obliged to say decisively and with crystal clarity that the married couple known as the Auersbergs in my Woodcutters are by no means and hence in no case identical to the married couple known as the Lampersbergs (whom I have only ever known as the Lampersbergs!).  My book is a work of art, a so-called allegory if you will, and in it I have not written about a married couple called the Lampersbergs but about a married couple called the Auersbergs.  A book about the married couple called the Lampersbergs would be a completely different kind of book, and I had and have no intention of writing such a book.  Just as I recognize myself in books by Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy, other people may recognize themselves in my books, but that is not and never can be the subject of a lawsuit.  In the course of my life I have not often been as horribly depressed as I am now at this moment when I am being forced to see copies of my book Woodcutters being removed from the window displays of the Viennese bookshops before my very eyes.  To be removed by the armed force of the police is a genuinely horrifying experience; when the police clear books from the shop-windows and terrorize bookshop-owners and readers with their intrusive presence, one expects nothing good to ensue.  Naturally I can no longer place any trust in the government of this country.  Quite apart from the material damage that has been inflicted on me by the judicial measures, I am, thanks to these brutal measures, richer to the tune of an appalling experience centered on the government of this country of mine.  The initiators of these actions, who do not figure by name either directly or indirectly in my book, and for whom there never even could have been a place in my book, have acted utterly irresponsibly and therefore as if they were actually looking for a scandal. 

Woodcutters is my attempt to make progress in my art, nothing more.  The judicial measures and theconsequent scandal, have only hindered this attempt.

Your with sincere regards,

Thomas Bernhard

    The rendezvous did not materialize.

    In a September 10, 1984 letter accompanied by copies of Hans Haider’s “opinion” on Woodcutters and the writ of injunction, among other documents, Hans Perner brought Bernhard up to date on the legal dispute overWoodcutters.  He wrote that he had received power of attorney from Unseld and asked if Bernhard would likewise grant it to him: “I shall in any case file a remonstrance at the high court of appeal in Vienna, but I cannot do this until I know how you plan to react to the legal measures taken by Mr. Lampersberg.”

Letter No. 470

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 19, 1984

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

The special edition of Correction has been published.  We will be delivering the book to the book-dealers on September 20.  I am sending you an advance copy.  Please get in touch with me if you desire additional complimentary copies.

In the matter of the “excitation”  there have been no new twists or turns.  I still haven’t received the list of charges.  But it is effectively in order to acquire this document that we have laid out our sixty thousand!1

Sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    Under the date heading of September 5, Unseld remarked in his Chronicle: “Throughout this period the affair of the confiscation of Thomas Bernhard has been making great waves.  But the fact is that the majority of the confiscations have not gone down well.  A steady stream of articles.  There will be a Bernhard reader’s guide charting the developments.  I am writing a letter to the Austrian book trade; the letter will be printed not only in the Financial Newspaper of the German Book Trade [Nr. 73, September 11, 1984, p. 212f.] but also in the Austrian Financial Newspaper.

We are making 50 free copies of Woodcutters available to the Austrian libraries, because, after all, the book is not prohibited from being borrowed, but just from being sold.

During the 1984 Frankfurt Book Fair, Bernhard, Unseld, and the lawyer Ferdinand Sieger sounded off on the confiscation at a press conference; in his chronicle, Unseld noted:

“October 4, 9:00 a.m., the Bernhard press conference.  It providentially occurred to me that this confiscation was the only thing dealt with at the fair that bore any relation to its theme: ‘Orwell 2000.’  The press conference went off stunningly.  In the FAZ there was something about the ‘humorous proceedings’ at the fair.”

In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of October 5, 1984, under the headline “The Man with Right on His Side,” Ulrich Weinzierl wrote:

“The great writer himself simply took questions and said some nicely formulated nasty things—some charmingly turned uncharming phrases—about his homeland. […]  As a consequence, in the auditorium, as elsewhere, and most notably in the courtroom, buoyant lightheartedness carried the day.”

Woodcutters Press Conference.jpg

Unseld (center) and Bernhard (right) at their press conference at the Frankfurt Book Fair on October 4, 1984

Letter No. 471

[handwritten; postcard: “Sintra—Portugal Hotel Palácio de Seteais”]

[Sintra]

X.16.84

The Lebensmensch & my publisher—these were the two most important of all.  Now that the “Lebensmensch” is dead, I want my publisher to live as long as possible—I would like to have a speedy peaceful meeting in November.

Thomas Bernhard

Letter No. 472

Vienna

November 71, ’84

Dear Dr. Unseld,

I hereby request that you immediately discontinue the delivery to Austria of all my books published by your firm.  This prohibition of delivery on my part, a prohibition [applying to] all Thomas Bernhard books ever published by Suhrkamp Publications, is to remain in effect until the end of the legal term of copyright and hence until after my death.  I am requesting that you comply with my wish forthwith.

With sincere regards,

Thomas Bernhard 

1. In the original letter the date provided is October 7.   That the letter was actually written in November may be inferred not only from a date stamp recording its arrival at Suhrkamp on November 9 but also from Burgel Zeeh’s memorandum of a November 7, 1984 telephone conversation:

“After he had told me at 4:45 p.m. what he wanted to say to Dr. Unseld, namely:

that there were to be no further deliveries to Austria of any book authored by him

I rang him again.  He had just returned from the post office: he had already mailed a letter to Dr. Unseld.”

Letter No. 473

[Address: Vienna]

Frankfurt am Main

November 9, 1984

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

In the wake of a successful exhibition in New York, the German Publishers and Booksellers Association is now also organizing a German book fair in Madrid.  Suhrkamp Publications will be participating in this fair with a large booth, partly on account of the significance the firm attaches to Spanish-language authors.

I do realize, however, that in Madrid Suhrkamp Publications will be presenting itself first and foremost as a publisher of German-language literature.  In recognition of this, on this occasion we will be issuing an almanac featuring a few of our authors whose works have already been or are going to be translated into Spanish.  It would mean a great deal to me if you were represented in this almanac by a text that you also deemed especially well-suited to this purpose, in other words a text that had something to do with Spain or that Spaniards in particular would find interesting.  I would be very grateful if you could propose something to me.  I am certainly not expecting anybody to write a text specifically for this; on the other hand, it would naturally be a bonus if we could say that the almanac had a few previously unpublished works to offer.

Certainly none of the texts should exceed two or three typewritten pages.  Any of the texts that have not yet been translated will be translated into Spanish.  For this reason we really should have them before Christmas if at all possible.  And one more question: are there any photos of you in a Spanish setting?  Photos with female flamenco dancers [!(DR)] would be preferred.

Sincere regards.

[Siegfried Unseld]1      



    On p. 24 of the Almanaque de las Editoriales Insel y Suhrkamp con ocasión de la Semana de Libro Aléman en Madrid (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), there is a portrait of Bernhard.  Four texts from Miguel Sáenz’s translation of the The Voice Imitator--“Der Fürst,” [“The Prince”] “Fruchtbarkeit,” [“Fruitfulness”] “Abgefunden,” [“Coming to Terms”] and “Expedition” (see Vol. 14, pp. 321, 323, 324, and 330 of Bernhard’sWorks)--were reprinted in the almanac.

Letter No. 474

[Address: Vienna; telegram-memorandum]

Frankfurt am Main

November 9, 1984

Owing to flight scheduling meeting at Café Sacher possible no earlier than 1 p.m.  Regards Unseld.1

    November 9 witnessed not only the arrival of Bernhard’s letter of prohibition at Suhrkamp but also Die Presse’s publication of a press statement from Bernhard under the headline “Bernhard forbids the delivery of his books to Austria”:

“I have given my German publisher Unseld immediately effective instructions not to issue my books in Austria for the duration of the legal copyright, in other words from today onwards until 75 years after my death.   This interdiction of publication applies in every single jurisdiction of Austria and to every single one of my books.

As the Austrian government’s interest in me and my work has for decades consisted exclusively in dragging me and my work into court from time to time, my decision is merely logical.

For the fourth and not the first time, I am now being subjected in my capacity as an author to one of these ridiculous multi-year trials for which the government of this country is responsible.

Regard for the state of my health alone precludes me from indulging in degrading and humiliating trials of this sort, which could never possibly take place in any other central European country.”

The prohibition order occasioned a conference between Bernhard and Unseld at “1:00 p.m. sharp” on November 10, 1984 at the red salon of the Café Sacher in Vienna.  In his Chronicle Unseld wrote of this conference:

“November 10-11, 1984: Vienna.  The trip to Vienna had been necessitated by Bernhard’s escalation of the affair.  Incensed, inflamed, and injured by the scandal of the Austrian judiciary, he had desired the ‘prohibition of publication of all his books in Austria.’

I talked with him over the phone all day, and we agreed to meet.

In the morning, because it was foggy, I checked up on whether the plane would be able to take off and to land in Vienna.  At the Lufthansa VIP lounge I was informed that there was no ‘fog’ in Vienna, but the computer indicated ‘mist’ [the English word (DR)] in Vienna and ‘Mist’ [“dung” or “rubbish”] was also a topic of our conversation.  Shortly after we exchanged greetings, Bernhard asked me if I had heard what the judge had said: that it made no difference to her whether it was a work of art or dung. [...] [On November 9, 1984, Judge Brigitte Klatt presided at the first hearing of the case against Bernhard; it must be mentioned that neither the plaintiff nor the defendant was present at the hearing.]

My conversation with Bernhard proceeded in a very pleasant atmosphere of frankness.  I made it very clear to him that while I found his desire for the cessation of delivery of his books to Austria quite understandable, I would be unable to countenance it.  I also explained to him that he most certainly could not impose a ‘prohibition’ of any kind, let alone one for the duration of the copyright.  That he had unfortunately made a fool of himself with that thing [the press release], and that he really should have run it by me beforehand.  But he repeated to me his explanation of why he felt so aggrieved by the scandal.  He said that if I couldn’t agree to a cessation of delivery he would stop writing.  This threat was certainly over-the-top, and I can hardly imagine that an author as prolific as Bernhard would stop writing, but on the other hand I have gotten to know him very well by now, and I know that he is capable of sticking to even the most bizarre resolutions.  And so in the end I went over to his side, although I explained to him that my refraining from distribution could not impede the free flow of books [“FFOB”--in English in the original (DR)], and that therefore any Austrian book-dealer would be able to obtain these books from wholesalers in Frankfurt, Hamburg, Olten, or Luxembourg.

Afterwards the almost four-hour conversation-cum-statement on ORF television, then an interview on ORF radio and in the evening the guest performance from Bochum of Appearances Are Deceptive with Minetti and Traugott Buhre.  A tremendous success.”

In his Travel Journal, Vienna, November 10-11, 1984 Unseld summed up the trip and reported on Bernhard’s next project:

“He was relieved, because he had come to the Sacher in order to arrive at some common ground or to part ways with me, whatever the latter would have meant by now.  Apart from this, he said that he was full of plans. That he had a story brewing in him, and that the only thing he wanted to do now was to get out of Vienna as quickly as possible and go to some place where he could get to work with his typewriter and plenty of paper.  That that place would be Madrid (Hotel Imperator, Gran Via), to which he would fly next Friday.”

For the story of the genesis of Bernhard’s last finished novel, Alte Meister [Old Masters], see Vol. 8, pp. 198f. of Bernhard’s Works.   

  

Letter No. 475

[Address: Hotel Emperador Madrid]

Frankfurt am Main

November 15, 1984

Dear Thomas,

This is an inaugural greeting to you in Madrid.  I am enclosing a copy of my letter--the one we sent  to Dr. Berger by registered post.  It is my wish for you to attain a great measure of distance from the Viennese “dung.”  I am convinced that at least in the end things will take a good turn.

Mrs. Strausfeld will get in touch with you on Wednesday or Thursday.  But in case you need any kind of assistance, I am giving you her address and telephone number:

Dr. Michi Strausfeld

Jiloc 8,5 izq.

E-28016 Madrid

Telephone: 259 72 36

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

Enclosure

[Enclosure; registered letter from Unseld to Dr. Gottfried Berger; address: Law Firm of Robert Mohr, 12 Singerstrasse, Vienna 1010]

Frankfurt am Main

November 14, 1984

Dear Mr. Berger,

I must inform you today that Suhrkamp Publications will be delivering no books by Thomas Bernhard to you or any Austrian book-dealers for an indefinite period.  I am adhering to this arrangement at the desire of the author.  I have explained to him that I do not countenance his line of thinking but that I can understand his desire to protect himself.

The Austrian judiciary has behaved towards Thomas Bernhard in a scandalous fashion, not only procedurally, in its unflagging sluggishness to respond to our objections and grievances, in the postponement of the trial to an indefinite date, but also via the mere fact of the case itself.  Hitherto the Austrian judiciary has refused to consider the affair under the auspices of a work of art and thereby of the artistic freedom guaranteed by the Austrian constitution.  What the judge stated on the case’s only day in court: “it makes no difference to me whether it is a work of art or dung,” is simply outrageous.  As Thomas Bernhard himself has emphasized, if he is to be subjected to trials that drag on for years on end, he will no longer be in any position to produce new works.  In this matter I cannot but feel in complete solidarity with him.  Accordingly I am asking you to accept my stipulation in a sympathetic spirit.  I shall try to modify it at the earliest possible date at which I can do so in concert with the author.

Obviously you will deliver in the usual fashion all of Thomas Bernhard’s books that have already been purchased from you.  In accordance with this stipulation we will henceforth be unable to fulfill any further orders from Austria from our end.  Earlier today Thomas Bernhard reaffirmed to me by telephone that his books in the catalog of Residenz Publications must not be republished--they will be sold out in a short time.  The limited-term license agreement with dtv will not be renewed either. 

We will now wait for a little while to see what happens.  Perhaps yet another miracle will take place in the Austrian courts.  As soon as everything is clear, I shall get in touch with you again in a letter regarding the Austrian segment of our catalog.

Once again: I am asking you to accept my conduct in a sympathetic spirit, and I am--with friendly regards--

Yours,

Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 476

[Stationery of the Hotel Plaza Madrid]

Madrid

November 19, ’84

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

My brother, who is a magnificent internist, and to whom I have said this just as rarely as he has told me that I am an equally great writer, proposed a new treatment for my old complaint and recommended my receiving this treatment as an inpatient at a clinic in Vienna.  I thought that instead of checking into a Viennese clinic I could go to Madrid and administer this course of treatment to myself.  I began the treatment yesterday after a breakfast at the Ritz and after a lunch there in what is probably the best hotel in the world, I continued the treatment and after an “artistic dinner” in the same marvelous Ritz in the company of an “artistic” female friend, a classmate of mine from thirty years ago,1 I could already perceive the first so-called side effect: I became rather dizzy upon stepping into this abominablePlaza before midnight.  My brother had already foretold me of this side effect, and so it upset me only to the extent of compelling me to write these lines to you.

Probably the Ritz is the absolute pinnacle of today’s hotel industry; but if I were to live at the Ritz, my entire life’s work would be destroyed.  I would be unable to write any lines there; at most I would be in the position of writing to you with a demand for an honorarium as big as the Ritz.  I thought I could exist and write here at the Plaza as I had done before at the Emperador.  But that was an erroneous assumption.  So once again at the Ritz I had a flight booked for Palma, where I shall be tomorrow. I love Madrid as much as I do Palma, but in my present condition Madrid isn’t possible; perhaps Palma is.  I shall see.  When I arrived here on Friday I thought I had escaped from a literary limbo, from the Viennese judicial thunderstorm and especially from all those tabloid journalistic devils on the Danube.  If I manage to live any length of time without suffering a complete mental collapse, I shall be subsisting in full consciousness of the fact that not a single one of my books is being delivered to the Austrian bookstores.  And also that the books that were engendered and published there are no longer being sold in Austria.  And that no play written by me will ever again be performed in Vienna.  At this very moment Minetti has just had his greatest triumph in which I myself experienced the bitterest sense of defeat.2  So as far as I am concerned, it can all be summed up in a single sentence--“it” being my Austrian literary situation, naturally.  My books and my plays shall be heard throughout the world--but not in Austria.  Till the end of time!  Books are children; authors are fathers.  If one of a literary father’s children is abused and moreover in the most brutal manner, this literary father must protect his remaining children from such brutal abuse; he must quite simply withdraw them from the realm of commerce in which brutal abusers and the most brutal abusers reign supreme.

Spanish is doing my ears good.

I love Vienna, as you know; Madrid pacifies me.  I shall round the detour of pacification in Madrid, as I have done so often before; then in December I shall come back to Vienna.  But tomorrow* I am traveling to Palma simply in order to give the treatment the serious attention it requires in the climate best suited to it.  I shall exchange the roar of Madrid’s four million citizens for the roar of the sea.

At least I can travel to wherever I wish.  This really gives my mind the highest degree of freedom.  The principal drug in my course of treatment over the next few weeks will be work.

I hereby give my very sincere regards to my ingenious publisher, my editor who is no confectioner, unlike most of them, almost all of them.3

Thomas Bernhard   

*actually today!

    Ingrid Bühlau.

    See n. 8 to Letter No. 484.  On November 10, 1984, Bernhard Minetti and Traugott Buhre gave a guest performance of Appearances Are Deceptive at the Burgtheater in Vienna; see n. 1 to Letter No. 473.

    Unseld mentioned this letter in his Chronicle entry for November 22: “Thomas Bernhard left Vienna for Madrid; on the 19th he wrote me an enthusiastic letter about a dinner at the Ritz.  ‘I love Madrid as much as I do Palma, but in my present condition Madrid isn’t possible; perhaps Palma is.’  On the 20th he went to Palma, from which he was to go right back to Vienna on the 22nd.  I am getting worried about his health.” 

1985

No. 477

[Address: Vienna]

Frankfurt am Main

January 7, 1985

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I could come to Vienna on Sunday, January, 27—you would have me from early evening onwards; on Monday the 28th I shall have to travel from Vienna to Hamburg.1

Is that Sunday a day on which we can see and speak to each other?2

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    In Hamburg there was an exhibition showcasing the first volumes of the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag [A subsidiary of Suhrkamp and Insel dedicated to the German classics (DR)]; Albrecht Schöne gave a talk about Goethe’s Faust there.

    As of the beginning of 1985, the state of Lampersberg’s lawsuits against Bernhard was as follows (for a detailed account see Vol. 7, pp. 209-240 of Bernhard’s Works): on December 21, 1984, the high court of appeal in Vienna rescinded the writ of injunction ordering the confiscation of Woodcutters; consequently the book became legally obtainable again in Austria.  Meanwhile three defamation of character and libel suits in which Lampersberg was the plaintiff were still pending.  The first dated back to August 27, 1984 and pertained to certain passages in the novel (see n. 1 to Letter No. 468); the second to a statement on the main hearing against him (on November 9, 1984) that Bernhard made on November 15, 1984 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung under the headline “Bernhard’s Plea” and in which he maintained that Gerhard Lampersberg “in recent decades has been repeatedly, as I know for a fact, and in any case at least partially declared a legal minor”; the third complaint was directed at the reprinting of this article in the December 1984 issue of the magazine Wiener under the title Die Abrechnung: Thomas Bernhard, dessen ›Holzfällen‹ Anfang September beschlagnahmt wurde, schreibt über seinen Prozeß  “The Reckoning: Thomas Bernhard, Whose Woodcutters Was Confiscated at the Beginning of September, Speaks about His Trial.”

The original of an unsent letter from Bernhard to Unseld headed “Vienna 1.8.85” is on file at the Thomas Bernhard archive; the letter reads as follows:

“Dear Siegfried Unseld,

After the rescission of the confiscation injunction against Woodcutters, I have had the enormous displeasure of seeing copies of Woodcutters in the Viennese bookstores.

The rescission of the confiscation injunction against my book is of course something to be taken for granted and has nothing to do with my resolution to prohibit any further sales of any of my books in Austrian bookstores.  I hope you respect the seriousness of my refusal to allow any of any of my books to be offered for sale in Austria ever again and hence for as long as I live.  I likewise refuse to allow any of my plays to be performed in Austria in the future.  Once the terms of the Salzburg contract [regarding the premiere of The Scene-Maker at the 1985 Salzburg Festival] have been fulfilled, there will be no further performances in Austria of any play by me.

I know that regarding the books I am completely and utterly dependent upon your will.  There must not be any so-called ‘loopholes’ either.

I will publish a book again only once I have received a guarantee that Austria has been completely cut off.  It is my country, but it is no nation for me.

Otherwise I am working against all the odds as always, with the greatest intensity and joy.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

Bernhard accepted Unseld’s proposal; they met in Vienna on January 27, 1985; in his Travel Journal, Vienna-Hamburg, January 27-29, 1985, he wrote of the meeting:

“Thomas Bernhard.  A radiant mood on the one hand; he said that he was able to work, that Vienna was productive for him.  I would like to come again at the end of March; he would then give me the manuscript of his next novel, Old Masters.

I gave him a portion of his honorarium in cash.

He said he wanted to see Minetti in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, and specifically in an edition including the three new scenes he had written—“Competent.”  “Incompetent.” “Disastrous.”

Then he said he attached a great deal of importance to a collection called Goethe Dighs.  It contains the texts “Goethe Dighs,” “Wiedersehen” [“Reunion”], and “Montaigne.”  And two plays that are still untitled.  He did not mention the BS, but naturally this is what he wants, but I am hesitant to admit these texts into the BS.  [Goethe Dighs was never included in the BS; for the genesis and publication history of “Goethe Dighs,” “Reunion,” and “Montaigne,” see Bernhard, Works, Vol. 14, pp. 571f. and 591.]  He was pleased with the BS edition of Concrete, which I had brought him.

And then he came out with another request.   In a plastic bag he had brought along The Departure and Homecoming of Jodok Fink.  A Book about the Adventure of Life by Johannes Freumbichler.  Freumbichler was Bernhard’s grandfather, who served as a father figure to him until he was 16 years old.  We have already discussed the book once, ten years ago, and I also have the book in my personal library.  Back then I could not make up my mind to publish it.  Since then another book by Freumbichler, Philomena Ellenhub, has been published by dtv.  But of course we must now reconsider the question in the light of the even greater fame of his grandson.  When I asked him if he could write a literary portrait of his grandfather, he said he could.  He cherishes the book even though it is understandably not his idea of great literature. [...]

So much for the one hand.  As for the other hand: he was just as upset as before about the lawsuits.  He said that he had received 12 summonses to two trials, first at Ohlsdorf and then at Vienna (whereupon Dr. Perner queried Judge Klatt; she said that she had wanted to be quite sure that Bernhard received the summons!), and that these had made him feel ‘criminalized.’ [...]

We then spoke of a book with the working title The Trial.  In this book all the documents would be brought together; admittedly the whole thing would have to be edited by a real whiz kid, so that the book would have some pizazz and amount to something more than a collection of documents.  Thomas Bernhard is quite in demand as a kind of court reporter. [...] 

Towards the end of dinner we were joined by Claus Peymann.  Elegant in his double-breasted suit, Peymann was a different man in Vienna. [...]  He aims to turn the Burg into the best theater in the German-speaking world and perhaps in Europe.  A modest aspiration.  And to achieve it he needs Thomas Bernhard.  And accordingly he took up Thomas Bernhard’s other hand and opined that it must be possible for a man of my authority to buy off Mr. Lampersberg with a large sum, perhaps 100,000 deutschmarks.  Upon hearing this, I told the two of them that there was a feasible way of getting the plaintiff to withdraw his lawsuit: an Austrian woman living in Germany has offered to reimburse our expenses.  Bernhard was delighted and asked me to expedite this, if possible before I left Vienna.  I called the lawyer Dr. Volhard later that very night.

Nevertheless, Bernhard intends to keep his ‘prohibition of delivery’ to Austria in force, and the prohibition is going to have to apply to performances of plays as well.  But he has proposed to Peymann an expedient by which he would be able to save face despite this prohibition: The Scene-Maker will be premiered at the 1985 Salzburg Festival.  In 1986, Peymann is supposed to direct the premiere of Ritter, Dene, Voss in Salzburg, and he will be allowed to transfer this production to the Burg!  Behold: Thomas Bernhard, the most brilliant director of himself.”

Instead of handing over the manuscript of Old Masters to Unseld at another meeting in Vienna as originally planned, Bernhard brought it to Frankfurt at the end of March; Unseld wrote of Bernhard’s visit in hisChronicle as follows:

“March 30 […] In the evening I pick up Thomas Bernhard at the airport.  He is in good shape and in a very good mood.  We sit in the little bar-cum-restaurant at the Frankfurter Hof; the waitress breaks my glass and spills champagne all over my trousers and jacket.  Our conversation gets off to a rather slow start, but he is quite talkative, and it is nearly midnight when he lets me go.  He kept muttering to himself a certain sentence that he had used as a witticism in earlier conversations: Death doesn’t need to be lucky.

Then he hands over to me the manuscript of his new prose work: Old Masters.  A Comedy.  The motto is from Kierkegaard [; its English wording here is taken from Ewald Oser’s translation of Alte Meister (DR)]: “The punishment matches the guilt: to be deprived of all appetite for life, to be brought to the highest degree of weariness of life.”

March 31: Sunday. I get up at 6:30 a.m. and begin reading Bernhard’s Old Masters.  A difficult beginning; the famous Bernhardian undertow is not always exactly in evidence; every other morning the music critic Reger goes to the picture gallery of the Kunsthistorisches Museum.  He stations himself on a settee in the Bordonne Room and gazes at Tintoretto’s White-Bearded Man.  Today Reger has surprisingly asked his ‘friend Atzbacher,’ a writer who observes Reger, to come to the picture gallery.  Surprisingly because Reger was there as recently as yesterday.  Atzbacher comes an hour early in order to observe Reger, his ‘intellectual father.’ And so Atzbacher can look at his childhood through Reger and through the White-Bearded Man.  Reger talks, and Atzbacher takes notes.  Everything is talked about, and everything is ridiculous, trashy, and rotten.  But then Reger speaks about the death of his wife, and there are some moving sentences: “But when we love a person as unreservedly as I loved my wife, we actually believe they will live for ever and for an infinite amount of time.”

Another two-hour session of reading the manuscript, then went with Joachim to get Bernhard; we drove to the Altes Zollhaus [the Old Customs House, a Frankfurt restaurant (DR)].  In the course of our conversation I wrung a few corrections out of him; the pope is described as rotten and vulgar; politicians are assassins of the State, and not only Stifter himself but also his prophet from Mönchsberg [Peter Handke] is criticized.  But he plans to cut all this out now.

When I get back home at 11 p.m., I read some more of the manuscript.  I come across yet another attack on Austria and the trashy Austrian people; Reger says that the most prominent cabinet ministers are Nazis, but that the people don’t deserve anything different.

Bernhard’s book makes me sleep badly.  A book about life and death, about art and literature, about love, and most of all, about hate.  I find this kind of indiscriminate havoc-wreaking almost unbearable, but Bernhard wreaks it with genuinely great artistry.

April 1, 1985

In the morning Thomas Bernhard comes to the firm’s offices.  We again discuss passages in the manuscript of Old Masters that could provoke the courts to ban the book.  The most inflammatory statements are on p. 96 of the manuscript.  The most important Austrian cabinet ministers are Nazis, and the remaining Austrian cabinet ministers are morons, and then these ministers are actually listed by title.  And he also eliminates this sentence: ‘But the populace of every nation deserves the government that it has, and as our populace is vulgar and petty and dimwitted and rapacious and totally stultified it has a vulgar and petty and dimwitted and rapacious and totally stultified government.’

It was easier this time to convince Bernhard to revise or eliminate these passages.

Then Bernhard speaks with Fellinger; kills several hours with Burgel Zeeh while eating and drinking coffee and talking and talking; in the evening yet another meeting with Rudolf Rach.’

In the published text there is no longer any talk of “the prophet from Mönchsberg,” and the passage that formerly mentioned him reads: “[…] I really wonder why this provincial dilettante, who was after all never anything but a school inspector in Upper Austria, is so highly regarded by, of all people, writers, and especially by young writers and not even only the most obscure or inconspicuous young writers” (Bernhard, Works, Vol. 8, p. 47).  Unseld preserved a copy of p. 96 of the manuscript in his Chronicle; the following passages on that page have been crossed out with a pencil: ‘The people in power are either National Socialists or morons; the most important cabinet ministers in the present government are Nazis; this is the truth; the justice minister is a Nazi, the minister of defense is a Nazi, the minister of commerce is a Nazi, and two more Nazis are serving as permanent secretaries, and the vice-chancellor is also a Nazi.  The most important Austrian cabinet ministers are Nazis and the rest of the Austrian cabinet ministers are morons, and even one of the speakers of the parliament is a Nazi, so Reger.  In many Austrian towns today there are National-Socialist mayors or chiefs of police, so Reger.  Forty years after the absolute nadir of Austrian history we have re-attained this nadir, that is the truth; say what you will, that is the irrevocable and depressing truth.  At the moment this country is being ruled solely by National Socialists and morons, because at the moment this country is being ruled by National Socialists and by Socialists, and the Socialists are morons, so Reger.  And these socialist morons also happen to be the most unprincipled ones there have ever been in Austria, so Reger.  We make believe to the world that we are a democracy, said Reger, and yet we are ruled entirely by rapacious traitors to the people and public menaces who are driven by nothing but a perfidious governmental shamelessness.  This country and this nation are to be sure small and insignificant, but that is the everyday truth for all those concerned, who are immersed abysmally deep in the moral morass.  National Socialists and morons reign unchallenged on the Ballhausplatz and in the parliament, that is the truth, my dear Atzbacher, said Reger, and all the while he was intently contemplating The White-Bearded Man; that is the truth, Atzbacher; for ages National Socialists and pseudo-socialist morons have been defrauding us of everything that is of any value to us.  Morally speaking, not dim-wittedly economically speaking, in the last forty years the people of this country have become enmired in the moral morass to a frightening, indeed, an appalling degree; such that there is scarcely any longer hope of escaping from it; that is what is so depressing.”

The sentence immediately after this passage (“Such a beautiful country, said Reger, and such an abysmal moral morass, he said, and such a thoroughly brutal and vulgar and self-destructive society.”) was not crossed out, but the next sentence but one (“But the populace of every nation deserves the government that it has, and as our populace is vulgar and petty and dimwitted and rapacious and totally stultified it has a vulgar and petty and dimwitted and rapacious and totally stultified government, so Reger.”) was.  In the published book (see Works, Vol. 8) this sentence appears six lines from the top on p. 164, after “is what is so depressing.”  In Bernhard’s revision of the manuscript, specific individuals can no longer be identified, and the passages that originally applied to them have been turned into generalizations.  For an account of the history of the genesis and development of Old Masters (including the question of which changes Bernhard actually carried out) see the commentary in Bernhard’sWorks, Vol. 8, pp. 197 ff.

At the end of April, Bernhard returned to Frankfurt; this time the occasion of his visit was the awarding of an honorary doctorate to Unseld by Johann Wolfgang Goethe University.  On the morning after the ceremony Unseld and Bernhard met at the Frankfurter Hof; under the date heading of April 30, 1985, Unseld wrote of this meeting as follows:

“[...], then a conversation with Thomas Bernhard.  I wring clearance for his books for Austria out of him!  He confidentially explains to me how I can straighten the whole thing out.  Once again we have to speak about a few points of his text.  The chancellor of Austria is dimwitted and idiotic; surely the chancellor wouldn’t simply swallow this without protest.”

No. 478

[Address: (Ohlsdorf); letter with a photograph of Burgel Zeeh, Unseld, and Joachim Unseld in Venice]

[Frankfurt am Main]

February 6, 1985

Dear Mr. Bernhard,

here are three people who always believed1 in our victory, and already believed in it on September 29, 1984, and who between February 6 and 9, 1985 wish you everything good imaginable!

Siegfried Unseld

sincerely yours Joachim Unseld

and just as sincerely Burgel Zeeh

    On February 6, 1985, Hans Perner telephoned Unseld to inform him that Gerhard Lampersberg had agreed to withdraw his three lawsuits against Thomas Bernhard.  On the same date, Perner wrote to Bernhard: “I have received written notification that for order’s sake Mr. Lampersberg has also decided to withdraw the other two complaints against you.   This has prompted me to confirm to the mediating attorney in this matter, Dr. Victor Cerha, with reference to my letter of 1.31.1985, that as of now all conditions for the effectuation of an agreement to a cessation of the trial are now in place.  I am enclosing a photocopy of this letter for your information.  In this connection I again emphasized that the cessation of the legal disputes must ensue without any fuss and that you in particular are not required to tender any explanatory statements about your book Woodcutters or its contents.”

In Perner’s letter one reads, inter alia: “Thomas Bernhard and Suhrkamp Publications, who are both represented by me, have agreed to the cessation of the trials now pending in the regional criminal court of Vienna [...] on condition that Mr. Lampersberg withdraws the complaints, and that I in my capacity as representative of my clients furnish an irrevocable declaration that no claims against Mr. Lampersberg or any third parties in connection with the complaint will be made provided that the withdrawal of the complaint ensues by the beginning of the main trial on 2.8.1985 and that my clients’ aggregated costs are reimbursed according to the attached fee note.  In this connection I must expressly emphasize that it is of no concern to my clients whether their costs are reimbursed by Mr. Lampersberg himself or by a third party [...], in particular my clients are in no position to make any changes to the book Woodcutters.” For a detailed account of the settlement of the legal dispute about Woodcutters, see Bernhard, Works, Vol. 7, p. 240.

No. 479

Frankfurt am Main

May 17, 1985

Dear Thomas,

Attached is a letter from the attorney Dr. Viktor Cerha.  I hope that it is all over and done with now.  By the way, we paid the lawyers DM 55,000.00 for the burial.1

I shall vanish for three weeks in June for my fast, but from July 1 onwards I shall be back here.2  I hope that we can see each other at some point before August 17.3

Yours

with sincere regards,

[Siegfried Unseld]

    In the attached letter, dated May 6, the Vienna attorney Viktor Cerha informed his Frankfurt colleague Rüdiger Volhard that according to Gerhard Lampersberg’s attorney, Edwin Morent, Lampersberg’s last lawsuit, the one against Wiener magazine for reprinting Bernhard’s opinion piece on the main trial in November 1984 (see n. 2 to Letter No. 477), had been withdrawn and that therefore Bernhard was not going to be summoned to court as a witness.

    Unseld fasted from June 9 to 29 at the Buchinger clinic in Überlingen on Lake Constance.

    August 17, 1985 was the date of the premiere of The Scene-Maker at the Salzburg Festival (see n. 8 to Letter No. 484).  Bernhard and Unseld did not meet at any point in July. 

No. 4801

Vienna

July 14, ’85

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Too bad that you won’t be able to hand over to me this Simply Complicated, black, white type, when we meet on that week that is not yet the next one in Salzburg.

Till we see each other in the infernal city,

Thomas B.

    This is a cover letter to Bernhard’s submission of the manuscript of the play Simply Complicated.  On the original of the letter, the title of the play has been underlined by an unidentified third party, and a line trails off into a question mark on the bottom half of the page.  The entry in Unseld’s Chronicle for July 15 reads: 

“Bernhard calls me, asks me if we have noticed that Old Masters is his ‘best book.’

In the afternoon his new play Simply Complicated arrives.  I read it immediately, and for the first time I am deeply disappointed.  It is a tired rehash.  How am I going to tell my child this?”     

Letter No. 481

Frankfurt am Main

July 17, 1985

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

You have heard of the Uwe Johnson Archive.  The curator of the archive, Dr. Eberhard Fahlke, has now written a report that I would merely like to bring to your attention.1

Yours

with warm regards

Siegfried Unseld

    The attachment has not survived.  In Forschung Frankfurt [Frankfurt Research], Vol. 1, 1985, pp. 2-8, there is an article by Eberhald Fahlke entitled “Das Handwerk des Schreibens [The Craft of Writing].  Das Uwe Johnson-Archiv an der Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universtät.”

Letter No. 482

Vienna

August 1, 1985

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Before the Old Masters are delivered in the truest sense of the word, I must say as explicitly as possible that I wish there to be no delivery to Austria under any circumstances.  This applies not to Old Masters exclusively but to all my published books.  I am therefore reaffirming my resolution of last year by means of the total seriousness of my position.

I do of course live here in Austria, but I want nothing further to do with this country; I absolutely never wish to see my works in Austrian bookshops ever again.

As I have already told Ms. Zeeh, I also want there to be not a single review copy sent to the editorial office of any newspaper in Austria.1

Regarding my work for the theater: it is obviously linked to Peymann by ties of artistic collaboration and friendship, and in the light of this I have come up with the Salzburg expedient.

I am not going to make any more trips to Salzburg and will take my one look at The Scene-Maker in Bochum, so it would be ideal if you could decide on a Vienna-departing flight as soon as possible—you with your deep pockets.

This wisecrack also gives me an excuse to say that present-day literary production has attained a nadir and a level of tastelessness not seen in centuries.  I hope you also realize this.  Nothing but kitschy and mindless pap is printed; over so many years it gets quite depressing.  The writers are artless morons, and the critics are sentimental gossips.  I myself cling to life in an atmosphere of envy and hatred by means of uninterrupted work.  This life, the life of work, is for me the greatest pleasure imaginable.2

Your fool in both prose and drama,

Thomas B.

    After a telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard on July 29, Burgel Zeeh noted: “And we also must not send any press copies to Austria.”

    A complete and signed but unsent alternative version of this letter, dated July 29, 1985, has survived in Bernhard’s papers at Ohlsdorf:

“Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Before the Old Masters are finished and have been delivered, I wish to say quite explicitly one more time that I do not want any of these books—or any of the others that have so far been published!--to be delivered to Austria; hence, my wish in this matter remains in effect now as before, and with even greater vehemence than perhaps will have been ascribed to it.

I am also opposed to the sending of so much as a single review copy to the editorial office of any Austrian newspaper.

I am serious about this.

Should my wish not be met, I shall be unable to do anything about it.

As I am being harassed here as never before, starting tomorrow I shall be in Vienna, where I know how to protect myself.

It is obvious that I shall be very glad to meet with you in the very near future.

As far as the “literary life” goes, it—and I hope you, too, are not failing to notice this!—has lately reached such a disastrous nadir that I basically wish to have nothing further to do with it.  The books that are now printed are every bit as wretchedly mindless as the age that puts them up for sale.

Yours,

Thomas B.”   

Letter No. 483

Ohlsdorf

August 5, ’85

Dear Dr. Unseld,

There are two reasons for the fact that I no longer wish for a single one of my Suhrkamp Publications-issued books to be delivered to Austria:

    In consequence of the governmentally ordered confiscation of my book Woodcutters and
    The blanket degeneracy and ignobility of the Austrian government, with which, as regards my literary output, I wish to have nothing further to do.

It stands to reason that I also do not wish for a single one of my books to be sent to the editorial office of any Austrian newspaper.

I assume that you will grant me my wish for the complete absence of my literary publications from Austria, and I would also like you to take pains to ensure that my writings in your catalogue that appear under the name of Thomas Bernhard do not make it into Austria under the auspices of any loopholes.

I very much hope we see each other within the next two weeks.

Yours sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

Letter No. 484

Frankfurt am Main

August 7, 1985

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Ms. Zeeh has been unable to reach you by telephone, and in any case, perhaps it is good that I am expressing myself in writing regarding your letter of August 1.

At our last meeting but one, at the Frankfurter Hof, we agreed that when it came time for your new book, Old Masters, to be distributed, the delivery block would be lifted.  There were good reasons for this: in your new book you attack your fellow-countrymen more harshly and pitilessly than in any of your earlier texts.  It struck us both as “unfair” to write such a critique and yet theoretically withhold or even conceal it from those at whom it was directed.  My own view has not since changed in the slightest.  You know how very closely and publicly I stood by you in connection with your first wish, and how I not only sympathized with your attitude but pleaded your cause quite openly and aggressively in public.1  I did this this despite the incongruity of my delivery block with the fact that the bookstores can procure your books from German wholesalers, because there is a certain important principle that applies to us, namely the free flow of books, a principle to which we all must adhere; wherever it is impeded, dictatorships are at work, and it is our aim to prevent this.  In the past few weeks I have spoken several times with some Austrian book dealers, and on the basis of our conversation at the Frankfurter Hof I have informed them that the firm is going to lift the block.  You yourself indeed spoke to similar effect with Mr. Heidrich, who immediately after his conversation with you got in touch with Dr. Berger, who for his part has also approached me, again since that conversation with Mr. Heidrich.  During a visit to them by Suhrkamp’s sales representative, a visit that was paid after our conversation at the Frankfurter Hof, the Austrian book-dealers ordered the new book, Old Masters; our representative accepted these orders, and we are therefore now obligated to deliver the books.  Moreover, the newspapers have already received orders for advertisements, orders that it is already too late to cancel.

You know how hard I campaigned, at your request, to avoid a trial.  I have disbursed more than DM 50,000 in legal expenses for that campaign, and invoices from those remarkable lawyers just keep rolling in.2

We have gotten what we wanted for the public; the Austrian government has seen the error of its ways and withdrawn the confiscation decree; our adversaries have withdrawn their suit against us.  In the eyes of the public we now cut quite a convincing figure, but that same public would desert us if Old Masters had been published but was only indirectly available in Austria.  That would be a material injury that would impinge upon not only your own books but also the overall demeanor of Suhrkamp Publications.  But that would just be on the one hand.  On the other would be the lack of sympathy with this demeanor which would be expressed and which would have consequences in the media that you most certainly would not find desirable.3

Your own demeanor vis-à-vis the theatrical side of things, which consists in standing by and joining forces with Peymann the German, is of course quite reasonable in your eyes but not the eyes of the public.  The public sees the Salzburg performance as a sign not of your loyalty to Peymann but of your dependence on a festival that is of course funded exclusively by the Austrian State and whose moral reputation is not exactly spotless in cultural circles.4

My dear Thomas Bernhard, you write to me that you don’t “wish to have anything further whatsoever to do with this State.” I understand your not wishing to have anything to do with that State, but denying your books to your readers, a circle of readers that has expanded dramatically in the past decade, is another matter.  Your weapon is the pen, and you wield it brilliantly and influentially, and that is really what your life is all about.  A block on distribution would counteract this: your readers would be offended; your enemies would merely gloat.  People would cease to be able to understand this; in hindsight they would even regard our demeanor leading to the block as a gimmick.  In short, we would both expose ourselves to globally resounding ridicule.5

My job is “to amplify and disseminate.”  You need not expose yourself to reactions if you do not wish to.   Perhaps in point of fact the best thing for you to do would be to take a trip around the world lasting a few weeks after the books are delivered in August.  We could meet, e.g., in New York, or at the end of October in Tokyo,6 or I could rearrange my return trip so that I can see you in Hawaii on my way back.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

P. S. We shall certainly see each other somewhere or other on August 18, when my wallet will be full--and I would also like to speak with you about the play Simply Complicated then.8

    Unseld is referring to Bernhard’s prohibition of delivery of his books to Austria in 1984 (see n. 5 to Letter No. 472).  On the original of the letter, preserved in his personal papers, Bernhard has underlined “aggressively in public” and appended a question mark to it.

    Bernhard underlined this sentence and beneath it remarked “extortionate.”

    Bernhard flagged the entire paragraph with a wavy line and a question mark; in the left margin he wrote, “moronic.”

    Next to this paragraph Bernhard wrote, “vile.”

    Bernhard circled this paragraph and below it remarked, “quite the reverse”; in the left margin he wrote “moronic” again.

    Unseld visited Tokyo and Kyoto from October 20 through November 3.

    In the left margin next to this paragraph, Bernhard remarked, “hypocritical.”

    In his Chronicle, under the date heading of August 7, 1985, Unseld remarked, “Thomas Bernhard’s second letter has now also arrived; it it he says ‘as explicitly as possible that I wish there to be no delivery to Austria under any circumstances.  This applies not to Old Masters exclusively but to all my published books.  I am therefore reaffirming my resolution of last year by means of the total seriousness of my position.’  The second letter, he says, makes his prohibition even more restrictive.  I replied to him in a letter dated August 7 and explained to him why I could not side with him this time.  Is a dramatic conflict in the offing?  We must wait and see. 

And in the entry for August 9, one reads: “How will Bernhard react to my letter?”

Bernhard’s reaction is recorded in a telephone message by Burgel Zeeh dated August 12, 1985: “8:50 a.m. I called Bernhard, who immediately said that HE had just been about to call!  He said that he had written three letters, every single one of which was just as inane and pathetic as your letter.  But that now he was over the hump, and that everything should stay just as it was!  In answer to my question: how do things stand?, he said: yeah, sure, just as the doctor wrote; I’m fine with everything, the book can be delivered.

But he doesn’t want to speak with you by telephone; he would prefer to see you:

This is what I arranged with him:

the morning of Sunday, August 18, in Ohlsdorf. [...]”

All three of the letters referred to by Bernhard have survived in his papers (NLTB, B 614/1/2); all are dated August 9, 1985.  The first one, longer than the other two, comprises two heavily corrected pages not in fair copy; it is unsigned and is therefore probably the first draft of a reply:

“Dear Dr. Unseld,

Your letter of August 7 has been dictated by such a depressing lack of comprehension of my situation that I cannot believe it is addressed to me, and, not to mince words, you wrote this letter, which in tone and contents is grievously detrimental to our relationship, to a Thomas Bernhard who doesn’t even exist.  To your letter, which is aimed at an author who I never have been and never shall be, I must nevertheless reply as the Thomas Bernhard who I actually am.

To put it as briefly as possible: in two consecutive letters I have clearly informed you of my wish not to have any more of my books in the catalogue of your firm distributed in Austria and also to have no further review copies sent to Austria, and I shall no longer deviate from this wish, especially inasmuch as your letter from August has quite fundamentally strengthened my conviction in the justness of my decision.

In every line your letter privileges and emphasizes nothing but the business interests of your firm and fails to evince the most niggling regard for my position, with which, as I am potentially and regrettably obliged to realize, you have yet to come to grips in any respect whatsoever.

Do you seriously believe that merely because Suhrkamp Publications is worried about the attrition of its sales revenues from Austria I am about to surrender my next book to the mercies of a State that confiscated my last book and literally dragged it through the mud?

Do you seriously believe that I am about to surrender my next book to the mercies of a country that tormented me for months on end with dozens of summonses to every conceivable kind of court?

Do you seriously believe that I am about to allow my new book to be sent to the very editorial offices that ultimately brought me up before the courts, the very editorial offices that instigated this lawsuit and libeled and vilified me for months on end and sullied my good name with their lies?

Do you seriously believe that I am about to toss my moral potency overboard for sake of safeguarding the ease and comfort of a publishing firm?

And do you seriously believe that now that Old Masters has been published I am about to act as though nothing has happened merely because you have incurred DM 50,000 in legal costs, an incurrence arising from your own voluntary decision and without my knowledge?

Your hectoring me for the god-awful umpteenth time about these DM 50,000.00 strikes me as the epicenter of your letter’s gaucherie and tastelessness.

You write that “in the eyes of the public we are striking a convincing stance.”  I absolutely couldn’t care less about the sort of stance I strike in the eyes of the public, but I care very much about the sort of stance I strike in my own eyes.  And in order to strike a proper stance in my own eyes, I must react to the confiscation of Woodcutters, which has had the most profound and personal effect imaginable on me, but which is regarded by the public as some jokey bagatelle or vulgar Bernhardian hoax, and it is the most natural reaction imaginable on my part to keep my books at arm’s length from this vulgar and addlebrained country.

It was appropriate for me to go along with you at the Frankfurter Hof and to consent to the distribution of Old Masters in Austria.  But in the meantime I have come to believe that on grounds of self esteem alone I cannot consent to the distribution of this book in Austria.  And I also refuse to consent to the distribution in Austria of any of my other books in the Suhrkamp catalogue.  If Suhrkamp Publications continues to distribute the books, it will still be within its legal rights, but it will be acting in contravention of my express will.  Anybody in Austria who wishes to read my books can somehow manage to get hold of them.  Anybody who wishes to read them with no strings attached is somebody I can easily do without.

In your letter you are constantly going on about public opinion, and I must tell you that I naturally and obviouslycould care less about public opinion, but that it obviously yields pride of place to my own opinion.

At the climax of your outrageous faux pas of a letter you unwarrantably and more than subliminally accuse me of opportunism vis-à-vis the Austrian government by mentioning the “festivals that are in fact funded exclusively by this Austrian State.”

This accusation is so petty both in form and in content that I cannot comment any further on it.

You write, “My job is to amplify and disseminate.”  My job is to keep living a bit longer.  Nothing more.

Yours, Thomas Bernhard”

“Dear Dr. Unseld,

Your letter of August 7 contains so many falsehoods, so many unprecedented instances of gaucherie and tastelessness, and so many worse things than these, that I am absolutely incapable of commenting on it in detail, and it has only fundamentally strengthened my adherence to my decision not to allow any of my books to be distributed in Austria in future.

It was appropriate for me to go along with you at the Frankfurter Hof and to consent to the distribution of Old Masters in Austria.  But in the meantime I have come to believe that on grounds of self esteem alone I cannot consent to the distribution of this book in Austria.  And I also refuse to consent to the distribution in Austria of any of my other books in the Suhrkamp catalogue.  If Suhrkamp Publications continues to distribute the books, it will still be within its legal rights, but it will be acting in contravention of my express will. 

As you won’t understand anyway, do as you wish.



Yours,

Thomas Bernhard”

Unseld attended the premiere of The Scene-Maker at the Salzburg Festival on August 17, 1985 and drove to Ohlsdorf to visit Bernhard the following day.  In Unseld’s Travel Journal, Zurich-Salzburg, August 14-19 August one reads:

“Salzburg.  The town is choking on the hustle-and-bustle of the festival and the tourists. [...]

Then the premiere of Bernhard’s Scene-Maker at the state theater.  Minetti, who was of course originally supposed to play the lead role last year, and for whose sake the premiere had been postponed, was once again sitting in the audience instead of acting onstage.  Traugott Buhre was perhaps not a completely adequate substitute, but he made it brilliantly through the three long hours.  He gradually found his feet in the part, and the play had a real shining moment when, along with his son Ferruccio, played brilliantly by Martin Schwab, he repeatedly rehearsed the sentence ‘It is what has been, what is ongoing, what has been’ scenically and verbally.  Karl-Ernst Herrmann’s set design was completely appropriate; it highlighted the desolation of this dance hall at the Black Stag in Utzbach, so that ‘Utzbach like Butzbach’ became optically distinct.  Claus Peymann has developed a new directing style, flatly realistic, and at the end water flowed in streams onstage. [...]  Visit to Thomas Bernhard in Ohlsdorf.  He greeted me with a half hour-long cannonade of accusations: my letter regarding the stoppage of delivery.  He said that it was a good thing that I would never see his marginalia to the letter.  That he had already drafted two replies effectively breaking off our relationship.  That he didn’t want a publisher like me.  That my entire letter was too pathetic by half, that only two words of it were true, the ones stating that a publisher was supposed to ‘amplify and disseminate.’  He said that he did that too.  But that he was a shopkeeper like any other shopkeeper.  That he was going to try to pass off spoiled goods as new.  That apprentices would be hired to get the mildew off the grain and then sell the goods as fresh goods.  What was left of the entire history of Suhrkamp Publications now anyway?  What had become of the heroic intellectual figures of the fifties and sixties?  He said that he had calculated that we put out roughly 300 titles per year.  That that was truly horrifying, that we were by no means a boutique purveying intellectual goods, but rather a factory turning out miscellaneous commodities.  That no author could put up with it [...].

This lasted for about a half an hour.  Then I had an opportunity to hand his honorarium over to him; without counting it beforehand, he stuck it in a drawer that was in plain view; he even let it sit there when we left for lunch.

He was cheered by the news of the successful denouement of the premiere, but he rebuked Peymann’s imprecision and was surprised by Buhre’s lack of staying power, by his making such dilettantish blunders in the midst of all his professionalism. [...]

At a previously appointed time, Minetti came with his daughter.  He was delighted with Simply Complicated, which was dedicated to him, as he told everybody he met. [...] Then lunch with Bernhard at the Park Hotel on the shore of the Traunsee.  He was amiable and signed the 162 sheets I had brought along.

His projects were going well.  He said that Peymann would produce Ritter, Dene, Voss at the next Salzburg Festival and then take the play with him to Berlin, and that he was now working on the great play of his career, which Peymann was supposed to premiere at the Burg.  Thus are the times changing and is Bernhard changing with them.  Let’s live as long as we are alive.

Simply Complicated.  He was already aware that I had reservations about the quality of the play.  But despite this didn’t want a Minetti Book [Minetti.  A Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man.  With Sixteen Photos by Digne Melle Marcovicz was published in 1977 in a one-time edition of a thousand copies], but rather a volume in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.  Large typeface, lightly and finely typeset, black-and-white cover.

Otherwise, it was all the same to him; we could do what we wanted.  To be sure, he said, we kept using the old photos, and we hadn’t updated his bibliography in ten years.  Even though he had written a few things since.  Indeed, he asked, who had written as much as him?

Otherwise, it was all the same to him, and he kept saying ‘let’s live as long as we are alive.’  Next morning at 11 he would go the café, study all the newspapers and read his reviews; afterwards he would eat a hearty meal, and by three in the afternoon he would have forgotten everything.  Let’s live as long as we are alive.

At the end of September, Bernhard came to Frankfurt to attend a performance of The Scene-Maker and help Unseld celebrate his 61st birthday; Unseld wrote of Bernhard’s visit in a Chronicle entry dated September 29 and 30, 1985:

“Bernhard is in a cheerful mood.  We see each other in the evening. The city of Frankfurt is in turmoil.  At a protest a protester was run over and killed by one of the police’s water cannons.  A shocking accident.  Granted, when a person puts himself in harm’s way...From now on there is going to be more unrest.  As there was on Sunday evening when the people flocked to the [Bochum guest] performance of Bernhard’s Scene-Maker.

I pick up Bernhard at 1o p.m.; we wait for guests to arrive for our midnight reception.  And they do arrive, literally at midnight.  They are enthusiastic about the premiere.  The actors clearly felt quite at home in our house.  Martin Schwab stayed till seven in the morning!

Claus Peymann sends his thanks in a lengthy telegram. [...]

30 September 1985

Next Thomas Bernhard is at the firm; once again he shovels up his 60,000 Deutschmarks.  But otherwise he is of good cheer.  He pays a visit to what he calls the Suhrkamp House of Culture, dines with Burgel Zeeh, Rach, and Joachim at the Café Laumer and then vanishes back into his Austrian home pastures to see how things stand there.  Probably Moritz the cultural minister’s chair is teetering [For the context of this reference to the then Austrian minister of education, art, and sport, see n. 1 to Letter No. 485]; Peymann has already protested and said that he is now going to make a point of staging Bernhard.  This is naturally a gambit intended to secure Bernhard’s definitive consent to a performance, which Bernhard naturally finds very tempting.”

            

Letter No. 485

Vienna

November 26, 1985

Dear Doctor Unseld,

When I think of what a gigantic advertising budget you assiduously lavished on Mr. Walser’s book over a period of three months, when you did virtually nothing for my Old Masters despite the fact that you know that advertising is almost all that matters nowadays, it really is enough to eradicate every trace of my pleasure in collaborating with the firm.

But of course I write for myself and not for my publisher and money obviously really has nothing to do with it.

And even in other respects you have, as I have said, literally left my work to crumble in the rain.

Life is too short to make it even shorter with nagging and ragging, but you must be made aware that I remain a keen observer of what is going on.

  

Yours,

Thomas Bernhard

P. S.: The shamelessness with which you launched this ghastly book of Walser’s into the skies is absolutely tasteless and as an augury of the future of publishing quite depressing!1

    This is another letter with a lengthy back-story and with several unsent earlier versions surviving in Bernhard’s papers.  In the same August 7 Chronicle entry in which Unseld noted his receipt of Thomas Bernhard’s letter requesting the non-distribution of Old Masters in Austria (see n. 8 to Letter No. 485), Unseld remarked, “At the firm making plans: Martin Walser’s Brandung [Breakers] as a bestseller.  We have already committed to making it one.  The author expects it, but so does everybody else.”  Although Bernhard could have known nothing of these in-house machinations, the advertising campaign for Walser’s novel launched in November 1985 occasioned him considerable disgruntlement.  Even before Bernhard’s letter reached the firm, this disgruntlement was heralded in a telephone conversation with Burgel Zeeh; in her telephone message of November 19, 1985, one reads:

“He was in a really foul mood, almost silent, unaccommodating.  He is brooding over something.  He says that he has written to you again only to refrain from sending the letter—‘What’s the use?’

So are there any problems?  Yes, plenty of them.  He says that perhaps you and he should talk sometime.”

Bernhard’s papers contain three unsent letters to Unseld—letters dated November 3, 10, and 18—that may be regarded as drafts of the letter of November 26; the first, written in Vienna, is also the most detailed:

“Dear Dr. Unseld,

From Ms. Zeeh I have learned that Old Masters has so far sold more than thirty-thousand copies, which in itself is highly gratifying.

But in Spain, where I was last week for the sake of having a language other than the uncouth German one in my ears, I reflected that it could have been far more than thirty thousand copies if you had given my Old Masters precisely as forceful an advertising boost as the one you gave to Martin Walser’s unregenerate petit-bourgeois rubbish.

You have fueled my Rolls Royce with a single liter of regular unleaded gasoline and let it idle, whereas you have augmented your friend’s Opal Kadett with four or five supplemental tanks and had them filled up with super unleaded fuel.

With Old Masters I could in point of fact have enjoyed every chance of an enormous commercial success, which you wrested from me even while investing your full advertising vigor in Mr. Walser’s book and more or less leaving me lying in the dirt.

I understand your strategy, but both as an experienced businessman and an associate of yours in absolute possession of his senses, and as a person quite wantonly injured by your decision, I am naturally pained by this strategy.

This is not about money, which of course I don’t need at all--and I have given away at least half my earnings, for some idiotic reason!-- , but rather about saying my piece on certain operations that have not escaped my attention.  As far as Austria goes, owing to a concatenation of a number of misunderstandings, an enormous commercial success has quite spontaneously erupted there, and I think that fate would have been treating me very brutally indeed if I had not enjoyed this unlooked-for ‘success’ in Austria and been forced to rely solely on the firm’s assistance.

At minimum I expected some moral support from your end, after several hysterically partisan so-called red cabinet ministers and subsequently their entire mendacious red government had more or less threatened me with, if not quite commitment to a madhouse, as originally intended, then total damnation.  [Bernhard is referring here to the then Austrian finance minister Franz Vranitzky’s statement to the effect that attacks on Austria such as those contained in The Scene-Maker should cease to be funded by taxpayers, and the minister of education, Herbert Moritz’s expression of the opinion that the author of Old Masters was becoming more and more of an object of interest for science, by which he said he did not merely mean the science of literary criticism; Bernhard for his part retorted with an article called Vranitzky.  Eine Erwiderung (“Vranitzky. A Rejoinder”) in Die Presse on September 13, 1985, and Antwort.  Neue Attacke des Dichters (“Reply. A New Attack from the Writer”); see Bernhard, Works, Vol. 8, pp. 231ff.]  At minimum I could have imagined a poster for the book-dealers on which the publisher in chief of Suhrkamp Publications poses the question of whether it is permissible for a cabinet minister to pronounce an ex officio damnation and death sentence against one of his authors.  The outrageousness of the accusations to which I have been and continue to be exposed obviously cannot have remained a secret to you.  But you have kept absolutely mum about the entire affair.  You are and remain the great publisher, the publisher whom I am singling out for special treatment in apostrophizing as great, but perhaps for reasons of vital self-protection it will quite simply be better for me to publish no further books through Suhrkamp Publications from now on, if Mr. Walser or Mr. Handke is going to publish any of his own through Suhrkamp Publications.  Against these two gentlemen, I haven’t got a chance as far as the advertising coffer of my great publisher is concerned.

Your relationship with my work is an ideal one: ambivalent, aloof.

I don’t want any arguments!

Yours pitilessly,

Thomas Bernhard”

Bernhard next spoke with Unseld on December 18, 1985 at the Hotel Sacher; Unseld wrote about their meeting in his Travel Journal, Vienna-Paris, December 16-19, 1985:

“then Thomas Bernhard arrived; he took a seat in the hotel lobby and immediately launched into an incomparable Bernhardian tirade that served as a prelude to an indiscriminate, no-holds-barred assault.  The last bit of local news he had heard before his departure was about two bricklayers who had built a wall, which a storm had blown down; one of the bricklayers was now dead, and the other had a broken leg.  He said that of course our fate was now ours to choose.  I gave him the homemade marmelade from Ms. Zeeh.  He thought it was completely uncalled-for; of course, he said, he never ate sweets, and you couldn’t keep eating the same marmelade, and anyway, after nine days it would be all mouldy and no longer edible.

Yes, and then the firm.  He said that Fellinger had found three errors and otherwise did nothing but smile.  But that perhaps he smiled at everybody.  That Joachim arguably had no connection to his work.  That he heard nothing from Elisabeth Borchers either, that the last time he had was when Anneliese Botond was still his editor.  But then he came to the actual subject of the evening.  He said that the whole of German literature published by German publishing firms was pretty much worthless rubbish, trash, out and out literary abominations, and that now his publisher of all people was just touting and touting and touting for the most abominable work of all.  That all the newspapers were full of advertisements for a good-for-nothing novel, which he found incredible.  Sure, he said, it was all the same to him, but he couldn’t help feeling almost ashamed to be writing for such a publishing firm. 

When I tried to reason with him and told him that after all it was the authors and not the publisher who wrote the texts, he gave way to another outburst.  ‘Texts,’ he said, was one of the most abominable words of modern times, because what did it even mean?  He said that it was a really awful, cheap, hollow bit of terminology that had nothing to do with literature; that indeed, perhaps it was true that German publishing firms (he kept talking about German publishing firms while naturally meaning Suhrkamp) put out nothing but ‘texts.’  The second outburst came when I told him that we had advertised so intensively for Breakers because Walser had traveled for six weeks straight, had given readings, devoted hours to signing books, and the ‘market’ demanded that these activities should be accompanied by advertisements.  The ‘market’--this was what touched off the outburst.  He said that he certainly didn’t care at all about the market, that he so to speak didn’t give a shit about it, but that it was truly laughable to try to find a market for such an inferior work, and so on and so forth.  Finally, the publisher himself came into the direct line of fire; he said he felt abandoned, without any ‘backup,’ in the midst of his struggle in Austria.  When at this point I grew heated and yet again reminded him of our financial commitment in connection with the recent lawsuits, he got angry again.  He said that he didn’t want to hear any such talk, that even at the time he had not been satisfied with the way I had wrapped the whole thing up.  Upon my hinting that he himself had wanted the whole thing wrapped up and that I hadn’t exactly had very many means of wrapping it up at my disposal, he once again started heaping abuse on the Austrian judiciary and on the state of affairs in Austria [...]  All this lasted about an hour, by the beginning of the second half of which I had stopped talking, and all the while I was struggling to figure out if I shouldn’t just leave and take the honorarium I had brought for him back to Frankfurt.  At the end of it, he seemed to feel that he had gone far enough or too far, and he immediately made a subtle sort of wisecrack to the effect that I would dislocate my neck unless I stopped looking everywhere but at him.  At any rate, he said, he wouldn’t be living much longer despite the fact that things were really going quite well for him at the moment and that Ms. Zeeh was a thoroughly wonderful woman.  He said that the title of his next work, a novel, wasNewfoundland.  That the title of the prose book after that was going to be Blind Hatred, and that the play he had promised Peymann would be entitled Credit Where Credit Is Due.  Well now.” 

Bernhard in Ohlsdorf--ca. 1985.jpg

Thomas Bernhard at his house in Ohlsdorf, circa 1985

1986

Letter No. 486

[On stationery of the Hotel Madeira Palácio, Funchal, Madeira]

[Funchal]

January 19, 1986

Dear Dr. Unseld,

Before my departure from Austria I had time to cast a glance at your publishing catastrophe; what you have allowed to be printed and published in those more than 3,000 pages is the biggest publishing embarrassment yet known to me.1  To print and bind more than 3,000 pages of such addlebrained proletarian rubbish is an act worthy of inclusion in the book of records--as the world record in stupidity.

I am not talking here about the woman who has given birth to this 3,000 plus-page piece of drivel, but rather about the fact that in personally issuing this load of imbecilic trash my publisher has made it clear that he is literally non compos mentis.  The editor of the whole thing is of course a petit-bourgeois Swiss blockhead and the house reader who “supervised” the whole thing is in a manner of speaking a blessed idiot.  How has this person come, as it seems to me she1a. has done, to stick to you so firmly and indelibly; how have you come to be so smitten with this patch of glue that you have trodden on?  That is not the only question.  The most important question now is how is it going to be possible in future to commit a manuscript into the hands of this publisher, who before this incident obviously always appeared to be a publisher of substance?  If the whole episode weren’t so embarrassing, one could send this rubbishy Viennese slattern to the Devil and your editorial office quite simply straight to hell, and be done with it.  But humor has its limits when it is entangled with anything fundamentally serious.  In questions of so-called high art I am not someone you want to joke around with.

The cuff to my ears that you have administered via the publication of these dubious 3,000 pages is having a profound effect.

You could just as easily have made it into the book of records if instead of publishing Ms. Fritz’s drivel you had simply printed a 3,000-square roll of toilet paper and issued it under the Suhrkamp label.

Yours,

Thomas Bernhard

    Marianne Fritz’s novel, Dessen Sprache du nicht verstehst, [He Whose Language You Don’t Understand], was published on November 11, 1985 in three volumes totaling 3,389 pages.  Concurrently, Suhrkamp issued a book entitled Marianne Fritz, “Was soll man da machen.”  Eine Einführung zu dem Roman [“What Is One Supposed to Do.” An Introduction to the Novel] “Dessen Sprache du nicht versteht.”  It contained an introduction by Heinz F. Schafroth and letters from the author to the publisher’s reader Otto F. Böhmer.

1a. I originally had “he” here on the assumption that the “person” was Heinz Schafroth, but on reflection I believe that she was Marianne Fritz herself (DR).

Letter No. 487

Frankfurt am Main

February 3, 1986

[Address: Ohlsdorf |sent to Madeira|]

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

From 1963 onwards I defended the works of a certain Thomas Bernhard against attacks from his fellow-writers.  This is no longer necessary; nothing procures the respect of one’s colleagues so effectively as success.  I listen to writers, and in many ways I take my cues from their experiences; but when they talk about their colleagues, I hear them out and keep my thoughts to myself, or I call up certain historical anecdotes.  Shortly after the publication of Ulysses, T. S. Eliot visited Virginia Woolf at Hogarth House at teatime.  Woolf didn’t care for the book at all; she said it was “underbred,” “the book of a self-taught working man,” of a “queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”  Eliot initially defended the book, but in the course of their conversation, he conceded that it gave “no new insight into human nature…Bloom tells us nothing; indeed, this new method proves to my mind that it doesn’t work.”  Later Eliot described Ulysses as the chef d’oeuvre of European literature.

Yours

with warm regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 488

[On stationery of the Hotel Madeira Palácio, Funchal, Madeira]

[Funchal]

February 9, 1986

Dear Dr. Unseld,

I am not expecting a reply to my last letter from Funchal.  But as I am continuing to work and am thinking of having my works published in the future and I neither wish nor am able to forego without great regret your personal charm or your unsurpassable qualities in dealing with me, of which you are aware, or your indisputably world-renowned one-of-a-kind dedication as a publisher, I must ask you to inform me how we are supposed to move forward.  As far back as eight, nine years ago, I indicated to you that I planned to write and publish seven books under the title Remembering.  Book one is slated to be printed this fall.  After an epoch of experience lasting many decades, I have been immersed in a period of remembering for quite some time.

As always, both in relation to you and to everybody else, it is under the auspices of mutual ambivalence that I would wish to resume living with you, to begin afresh with you.

Probably for this purpose a face-to-face meeting is absolutely essential.

I hear that you are ill and that you caught this illness in Vienna.1  It serves you right!  But illnesses, once they have been ridden out, make people—including and most especially you!--even stronger.

On account of the climate I obviously should spend the rest of my life here, but the beauty of the south and the world as one big park are nothing to an idiot as smitten with work as I am.  So in the event that you can write again or at least dictate, I am touting for business as a recipient of an epistle from Frankfurt.2

Yours,

Thomas Bernhard

    On January 27, 1986, Unseld gave an introductory talk on Dessen Sprache du nicht verstehst in Vienna.  On February 3, he noted in his chronicle, “Since I left Vienna I have been struggling with a case of the flu, and now it’s getting worse.”

    In the February 22-23 entry of his Chronicle, Unseld recorded his receipt of this letter and added, “I am not going to write back, especially given that he is still on his way home.”  On February 28 Unseld and Bernhard spoke by telephone; the conversation was occasioned by the premiere of Simply Complicated at the Schiller Theater in Berlin that same day (Director-- Klaus André; Cast--Old Actor: Bernhard Minetti; Young Girl: Vera Milde-Karkos).  Unseld noted in his Travel Journal, Berlin, February 28-March 1, 1986: “The whole thing was bound to stand or fall with Minetti, and it stood; the play was rather weak, but Minetti was great, and so there were standing ovations at the end.  I spoke in person with Minetti, and with Bernhard by telephone later that night; he chalked it up as a ‘success,’ but we can expect the critics to react very irately.  Under the headline Mit Gefühl [“With Feeling”/“Condolences”] in the March 3, 1986 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Georg Hensel wrote, “The self-imitations may even be termed self-quotations; this sounds much better: Thomas Bernhard Minetti’s Greatest Hits.  But Bernhard should perturb.  Nowadays he risks nothing but private lawsuits.  He has long since ceased playing for high stakes with his art.”

Letter No. 489

[Address: Vienna]

Frankfurt am Main

March 10, 1986

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I would like to send you last Friday’s Le Monde.  Pauvre Thomas Bernhard!  But here are “La célebrité de l’Autrichien” and “Irritation et fascination.”1

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

  

    Unseld refers here to Jean-Louis Rambures’s March 7, 1986 Le Monde article La célebrité de l’Autrichien Thomas Bernhard.  Son dernier livre ›Alte Meister‹.  [“The Celebrity of the Austrian Thomas Bernhard.  His Latest Book,Old Masters.”

Letter No. 490

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

April 2, 1986

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Burgel Zeeh is playing Russian; hopefully not roulette, but for now we are restricted to written communication.1  From her you have learned that I will be in Vienna on April 14.  Would it be possible for us to meet at about 9:00 p.m. on April 15 at the café at the Hotel Sacher?  By then I hope to have discharged all my duties to you and to be debt-free as far as you are concerned.2

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    Burgel Zeeh was in Moscow throughout the first half of April.  Before her departure, she wrote in a telephone memorandum, “Telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard.  He is going to be in Vienna on or about April 14; so a meeting is possible and also desirable as far as he is concerned—otherwise, he says, he might as well stay in Ohlsdorf.  So the two of you still have to settle on a meeting time, for example, the evening of the 13th or April 15.

    The meeting at the Sacher took place on April 14.  Before the meeting Unseld attended the award ceremony for the Austrian State Prize for European Literature, which was presented to Stanislaw Lem by the minister for education, art, and sports, Herbert Moritz.  In a September 20, 1985 ORF interview regarding Old Masters, Moritz—the editor assigned to Bernhard at the Demokratisches Volksblatt in the 1950s (see Moritz’sLehrjahre [Apprenticeship]) stated that Bernhard was “becoming  increasingly interesting as an object of scientific study, and by science I don’t merely mean the science of literary criticism.”  Bernhard addressed this remark in Die Presse on September 25, 1985: “The monstrous things that Mr. Moritz has said about me and my work merely offer further confirmation of the squalidness and mendaciousness of the current Austrian State and its representatives. […] a slur and a psychiatric referral by an incumbent culture minister before a television audience numbering in the hundreds of thousands; […] the Austria-agitator and moralist of my book Old Masters would even say that not only is it eminently prosecutable by criminal proceedings that I naturally have no inclination to initiate, but that is also a national disgrace.”  See n. 1 to Letter No. 485.

Upon reading Bernhard’s reply, Moritz sought out and obtained a conference with Unseld, who wrote of their meeting in his Travel Journal, Vienna, April 14-15, 1985:

“The topic: Thomas Bernhard.  He says that he holds him in high regard. […] That Bernhard naturally seizes every opportunity to foul his own nest.  He asks me if I know what Bernhard had seen fit to tell him.  I was obliged to tell him that Bernhard regarded himself as a master of exaggeration and that I had come to realize that he was a man who loved Austria and Vienna despite all his criticism.  To be sure, Bernhard is making things very difficult for the minister.  At the suggestion of the Graz association of authors, Moritz had offered him the honorary title of professor.  Bernhard issued the following communiqué to the press:

Professor

My contribution to the containment of the inflation of the professoriate in Austria.  There are to be sure many more professors than waiters and busboys put together.  The source of this nauseating epidemic of professors is above all the so-called ministry of art and education and sports, which every year doles out thousands and thousands upon thousands of ridiculous professors and other titles and drenches all of poor Austria in its malodorous education-cum-art-cum-sports sauce. […]

At 6:00 p.m. at the Austrian Regional Bank: the board of directors as represented by its chairman, Gernhard Wagner, awarded the Austrian Regional Bank Prize to Marianne Fritz.  I accepted the prize and above all the 70,000-schilling check, and made a short speech. […]

I had agreed to meet Thomas Bernhard at 9:00 p.m. at the Sacher.  I arrived ten minutes early, and so I set out on a little walk around the outside of the Sacher, and who should be doing the same thing but Thomas Bernhard?  We ran into each other on Kärtner Straße and then went into the Sacher.  I had to endure some abuse on account of my ‘Day of Culture’ earlier that day.  He said he found it ‘inconceivable’ that I had shaken hands with a ‘swine’ like Moritz, ‘inconceivable’ that Lem had said what he had said in his acceptance speech at the official ceremony (in point of fact the speech wasn’t very good), that Lem could not have crawled any farther up the esteemed minister’s ass.  That was his assessment.  He naturally knew that I had also spoken at the Marianne Fritz ceremony.  When he yet again came to speak about the multitude of the firm’s advertisements for Martin Walser, I told him that the way he was behaving was very small-minded in the light of all we had done for him here in Austria.  But he was of the opinion that we had left him standing in the rain [see Letter No. 485].

It was an arduous conversation.  I pointed to his little rucksack, which was bulging with something A4-sized, and asked him if he had brought the manuscript with him.  Yes, he said, and added that on the one hand he shouldn’t publish anything else through this firm, while on the other—the other publishing firms obviously weren’t any better, and Suhrkamp was still the best one available for the time being, and so he was giving me the manuscript of hisExtinction.  He wants to have the typography of Woodcutters and Old Masters, and he says that that will yield 700 to 800 pages, that he couldn’t care less what the retail price is.  The jacket in the style of Woodcutters, thin lettering, dark almond-brown, with the layout like that of the jacket of Woodcutters.

He would rather not see anything further and just have the rough paginated copy; he says there is really hardly anything that needs to be changed anyway.

Then he handed over the manuscript to me.  I told him that I was going straight back to the hotel to read it.  He checked up on it one more time [via a telephone call to the hotel], and that night I did in fact read the first 40 pages, so that I could brief the sales representatives on Extinction, about its first-person narrator, who expatiates on the fate of his family to his pupil Gambetti; this family was wealthy and propertied, but it also had a Nazi past, which recently induced the narrator, when his parents and brother died and consequently brought about an extinction of the family line, to extinguish the material possessions of the family as well and to bequeath them to the Israeli cultural center in Vienna.”

In his Chronicle, Unseld additionally remarked on this meeting: “He is still trying to come up with a subtitle.  ‘A Decline.’  This was rejected; then later came ‘A Legacy’—which it has already had once before.”

Bernhard came to Frankfurt on April 29, 1986 to make a decision on some proposed amendments to Extinction.  Unseld wrote about this visit in his Chronicle entry for April 28.  “Otherwise preparing for Thomas Bernhard’s visit tomorrow.  Read Extinction for three hours.  We lengthened the manuscript.  Now it reads more smoothly and its perfidious subtleties and the undertow of its language stand out more sharply.”

And in the entry for April 29, he noted:

“Thomas Bernhard at the firm.  He declined to have lunch and insisted on getting to work right away.  It is astonishing how open-minded he is towards everything I and especially Raimund Fellinger have to say to him.  I am no writer, it says in the manuscript, I have absolutely no talent for writing.  Isn’t this coquettish? asked Bernhard.  I said, yes, too coquettish.  It was changed.  Our work on the manuscript lasts until 7 p.m.  Then Rudolf Rach drives us to the airport.  We eat asparagus in the restaurant called Five Continents; Bernhard is relaxed, relieved, nay, grateful.  He flies back to Vienna.  In a message dated May 2, Burgel Zeeh reported to Unseld on a telephone conversation with Bernhard: “He asked both Mr. Fellinger […] and me to leave in the original subtitle: Extinction.  A Disintegration.  And he asks you to do the same.”

Letter No. 491

[Address: (Ohlsdorf)]

Frankfurt am Main         

May 15, 1986

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Mr. Staudt has had two test typesettings done.

Test typesetting No. 1: a yield of 820 pages, so quite unreasonable.

Test typesetting No. 2: a yield of about 600 pages.

Test typesetting No. 3: a yield of 480 pages.

None of this can be precisely calculated, because there are of course quite a number of handwritten changes to the manuscript that are causing difficulties to the employees in the production department who are making the calculations.  But I think the situation is clear: 800 pages would really be an absurdity; we should go with that second option.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosures mentioned1

    The enclosures are test-typesettings for Extinction in 12/14 type size (800 pages), 11/13 (600 pages), and 10/12 (480 pages).  On May 20, Rudolf Rach summarized a telephone conversation with Bernhard for Rolf Staudt, the director of the production department: “[…] he would prefer the section option, which yields about 600 pages and is suitable for a 12 x 20 paper size.  Additionally, he is asking us to typeset the manuscript immediately.”

In a May 15 letter to Bernhard, Burgel Zeeh asked him to pick one of the proposed test-typesettings soon, then wrote: “On his way to today’s birthday celebrations for Max Frisch, Dr. Unseld asked me to send you in advance the attached announcement, which will be going to the press in the next few weeks and will also be published inTheater heute, for your information, so to speak.  Volume 6 of Theater heute contains the “announcement” from Suhrkamp Publications: “Rudolf Rach, who with one interruption has been the director of Suhrkamp’s Theatrical Publications Division since 1971, will be leaving Suhrkamp Publications at the end of 1986.  We thank him for the magnificent work he has done.  Rudof Rach is going to Paris, where he will be an executive and managing director of the French publishing firm of L’Arche, Paris, which among other things represents Suhrkamp Publications’ catalogue in the French-speaking countries.  Siegfried Unseld.”

Letter No. 492

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

May 21, 1986

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

The manuscript of Extinction. A Decline is being typeset according to your instructions via telephone to Dr. Rach.  So we are going with the second option with 11/13.  The precise page-length is still uncertain, because the total length of the handwritten additions is difficult to quantify.  In any case it will end up being a bulky and attractive book.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 493

[Address: Vienna]

Frankfurt am Main

June 4, 1986

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

This is the jacket.  Is it to your liking?

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 494

Frankfurt am Main

June 11, 1986

Dear Thomas,

Here is yet another test-printing of the jacket in the colors you wanted.  A green background and yellow lettering.

Do you like it like this?

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure1

    On June 18, after receiving the test-printing of the jacket, Bernhard got in touch with Burgel Zeeh by telephone; in her message for Unseld, she wrote: “He has received the jacket for Extinction.  Unfortunately it is not the way he wanted it.

The green should be very dark; so dark, indeed, as to make it difficult to decide if it is green or black.

And he would like the ‘yellow’ lettering to be even more muted.

He would like to know if we could try to redo it.  Apart from that, he is quite enthusiastic about the paginated rough copy, which is punctilious and very fine.

The firm fulfilled Bernhard’s wishes regarding the jacket, and in an additional telephone message dated June 26, Burgel Zeeh was able to report:

“Call from Thomas Bernhard.

1. The jacket is marvelous, genuinely perfect.  He thanks you very warmly.

2. Today he sent in the paginated rough copy addressed to me.  I shall promptly give it to Mr. Fellinger.  His chief wish is—and Dr. Unseld has not only told him this but has even ‘promised’ it to him: it would be ‘ideal’ if the book could be available ‘by’ Salzburg, meaning by August 18, the date of the premiere of his play [Ritter, Dene, Voss] there.

How is that looking?”

Unseld presented Bernhard with an advance copy of Extinction during their meeting on the occasion of the premiere of Ritter, Dene, Voss in Salzburg (see n. 2 to Letter No. 497).  The delivery of the book to the shops followed on August 25, 1986.

Letter No. 495

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

June 12, 1986

Dear Thomas,

We have something in common: namely our common American publisher, Chicago University [sic] Press.  It has published my little book The Author and His Publisher; admittedly—and such now are the subtle differences—it has not received as lovely a poster as the one that has been done for you.  As a minor author one is of course often slighted in favor of major ones; the minor author becomes a major megalomaniac when dealing with major authors!

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

The poster is being sent in a separate mailing.

Letter No. 496

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

July 28, 1986 

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

In memory of July 22, a couple of snapshots.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure1

1On the eve of Wolfgang Koeppen’s 80th birthday, Unseld, Bernhard, and other authors and critics selected by Koeppen attended a dinner hosted by the president of West Germany, Richard von Weiszsäcker.  In a passage devoted to the dinner in his Chronicle, Unseld wrote: “Drove back with a cheerful Thomas Bernhard, who told me stories about hisLebensmensch for a half an hour.”

Letter No. 497

[Address: Vienna]

Frankfurt am Main

August 28, 1986

Dear Thomas,

At the time of its original publication, we agreed that Woodcutters would be issued in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp; delivery to the bookstores is scheduled for October.  At the beginning of next January we would like to republish Der Untergeher as one of the suhrkamp taschenbücher.  I am aware of your reservations about paperbacks, but here we really ought to prove the rule via reservations and an exception.  Are you amenable?1

I am very sorry that my ear is making a cancellation slash through the Vienna trip.  I very much hope that everything goes well despite this.2

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    A Bibliothek Suhrkamp edition (Vol. 927) of Woodcutters was published in September 1986.  As of the writing of this letter, Der Untergeher had already been issued as a Bibliothek Suhrkamp volume (Vol. 899) on January 28, 1986.

    An acute attack of deafness for which Unseld had to receive in-patient treatment at the University of Frankfurt’s clinic between August 20 and 28 prevented him from realizing his plan to travel to Vienna to attend the two Bernhard performances with which Claus Peymann was inaugurating his tenure as general manager of the Burgtheater.  The Scene-Maker had its Burg premiere on the main stage on September 1, 1986; in the end, Ritter, Dene, Voss had its Burg premiere at the Akademietheater on September 4, 1986.  Bernhard briefed Burgel Zeeh on the September 4 performance in a September 8 telephone conversation; in her message reporting on the conversation, she wrote: “He says Vienna was a huge success, the likes of which there hadn’t been at the Akademie-Theater in decades.”

Shortly before, Unseld attended the world premiere of Ritter, Dene, Voss in Salzburg and met with Bernhard several times between August 14 and 18.  In his Chronicle, Unseld wrote the following about these meetings: “Conversations with Thomas Bernhard.  It is admirable the way this writer manages to develop inwardly, to become ever freer and more sovereign.  We met in Salzburg at the Hotel Bristol next door to the state theater, where Bernhard had seen a beginning-to-end rehearsal of the play.  He was fully satisfied, indeed, even quasi-enthusiastic.  Admittedly, even without intermissions the performance lasted 3 1/2 hours.  Can the play hold together over such a stretch? […]”

On Sunday Burgel Zeeh had brought an advance-copy of Extinction with her.  I ordered champagne [at the Hotel Furschl] and handed this book over to Bernhard: ‘It is your best prose work.’  He: ‘Yes, perhaps, like Amras way back when.’  He glided contentedly over the jacket, which really does have something self-evidently right about it, and he skimmed almost tenderly through the pages.  When we visited him in Ohlsdorf, the book was lying on the sole piece of furniture in the room apart from the chairs, a kind of bureau.  Here the book with the dark green jacket and citron-yellow jacket looked quite Bernhardian.  Everything in the room was one of these two colors, and the book was lying in a prominent place like the book of books, the Bible.  Thus is this author celebrating his book. […]

In the evening the first performance of Ritter, Dene, Voss, performed by Ritter, Dene, Voss.  For me it was again a fascinating experience: for the first time in a long time a work for the theater that was authentically theatrical; a brilliant text wittily and brilliantly […] acted.  Not for a second did I ever get any sort of feeling that things were dragging, and including the intermission it lasted four hours.  And it is simple and complicated; it is by no means a play about the actors Ritter, Dene, Voss, but rather one about Wittgenstein; the genius Bernhard is simply possessed by this genius, in the sense of being attracted and repelled by him.  But because he saw these three actors in Bochum and was impressed by them, he wrote a play for these three people, but it isn’t a play about Ludwig Wittgenstein as seen by Bernhard either; rather, it is a play about Bernhard by Bernhard.  Simply complicated.     

  

After the performance I telephoned him in Ohlsdorf.  To be sure, he had told me that would be in bed and wouldn’t answer the telephone, but he answered right away, and he was happy that I was able to tell him about the extremely successful performance and the resounding applause from the audience.”

Letter No. 498

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 8, 1986

Dear Thomas,

I am sending you page 3 of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.  As you can see, we are beginning our advertising campaign, and we will wage it with renewed intensity.  You will also notice this in the Austrian newspapers.

Page 3 is the page whose advertisements readers pay the closest attention to, and so “naturally” it is also the most expensive one.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure2

  

    In a September 8 telephone message, Burgel Zeeh wrote of the  advertisement for Extinction: “He saw theFAZ ad, and purely by chance, during the same browsing-session, he also noticed that there was no ad in The Press.  He hasn’t yet seen the poster; he asked for a ‘sample’ poster; I made him three of them.  Naturally, he says, he would like to know how you are doing.  Regards.” 



    The first advertisement for Extinction appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on September 8.

Letter No. 499

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 11, 1986

Dear Thomas,

I have just received Residenz Publications’ new catalogue in the mail; the five volumes of your Salzburg prose work andThe Italian are listed on p. 5.

From the newspapers I gather that Mr. Schaffler has now definitively severed all ties with Residenz Publications.  Wouldn’t this be a good time to make your own separation definitive?  Perhaps the briefest approach is the best approach: you can reference your earlier separation announcements and inform Residenz Publications that you have transferred the rights to us.  We will of course have to see how they react, but I really am of the opinion that this is feasible now.

We just keep living off the magnificent impression Ohlsdorf made on us yet again.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

1. On September 27 and 28, Bernhard returned to Frankfurt for the celebration of Unseld’s 62nd birthday.  In theChronicle entry devoted to this event, Unseld wrote: “Then, beginning at 11 a.m., the guests arrive.  Authors: Jürgen and Rango Becker, Jurek and Christine Becker, Thomas Bernhard, Ulla Berkéwicz, Wolfgang Koeppen, Martin and Käthe Walser […].  By around noon we are all gathered together, and Edith Clever comes in.  She reads what I want to hear today--namely, the last few pages of Ulysses.  I introduce and read Joyce’s August 16, 1921, letter to Frank Budgen, Latinizing the obscene passages as I go. […] Edith Clever reads the admittedly audacious passages so superbly that only a handful of prudes are shocked.  A community comes into being; there is a feeling of mutual harmony.  Even Thomas Bernhard, who really wanted to leave town, because he would have to pay his hotel bill and so didn’t visit Suhrkamp Publications, seemed quite content then: admittedly I also had to slip 80,000 Deutschmarks into his hand then.”  Shortly thereafter, on October 9, Unseld and Burgel Zeeh traveled to Ohlsdorf.  “The television crew [for a film portrait of Unseld] is here and records footage of Bernhard and me in his farmhouse.  An affable Bernhard.”  (Chronicle, October 10).

Letter No. 500

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

October 16, 1986

Dear Thomas,

The new director of the theatrical publications division is named Rainer Weiss.  He has my trust.  He is intelligent, witty, imaginative.  He will not take long to familiarize himself with this material, which is not entirely new to him.  He values your works, and you may rest assured that he will safeguard your interests in the way you desire.

A request or a question: shouldn’t Rainer Weiss and I fly to Vienna and sit down at a table with you and Peymann?

I think this would be a good idea.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure1    

1.   The enclosure has not survived in Bernhard’s papers.  It was presumably an October 16 Suhrkamp Publications “press release” to “authors, employees, editors of the theatrical publications division / To the theaters, agencies, and publishing firms working in collaboration with the theatrical publications division”: “In June of this year Suhrkamp Publications announced that on October 31 Rudolf Rach would be handing over the leadership of the Suhrkamp theatrical publications division in order to work in France as a publisher at the firm of L’Arche, Paris. [...]

On November 1, Rainer Weiss will take over the leadership of the theatrical publications division.  Weiss, born in 1949, a student of Ernesto Grassi, has a PhD; he worked for a year as a press agent and then for five years as an editor at Piper Publications, Munich.  Since April 1985 he has been in charge of the German-language editorial office at Suhrkamp.  Rainer Weiss’s assumption of the leadership of the theatrical publications division will coincide with Suhrkamp Publications’ development of new authors’ initiatives in German-language and foreign-language drama.”

Letter No. 501

[Address: Hotel Equador, Cascais]

Frankfurt am Main

November 25, 1986

Dear Thomas,

The “monk on the mountain”’s remarks, if he really phrased them that way, are foolish, moronic, unpardonable, tasteless.1

We are reacting to them with a salvo on behalf of Thomas Bernhard; e.g., on p. 3 of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of the weekend of November 22-23, which you have certainly seen--even in Madeira.

I wish you a pleasant stay.  From what I hear, the conditions there are naturally ideal.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried U.

1.Unseld is referring to Siegfried Löffler’s multipage cover story on Peter Handke, Der Mönch auf dem Berge [“The Monk on the Mountain”], in the November 17, 1986 issue of the Austrian news magazine profil.   A copy of the story survives in Bernhard’s papers; Bernhard flagged a passage in it with exclamation marks and large question marks.  The passage [or possibly the story; the pronoun “sie” with which this sentence begins may refer to either (DR)] begins by quoting Handke directly:

“I cherish what Thomas Bernhard does, but in my view it isn’t literature.”

Ah yes, Thomas Bernhard, the room-clearer of Austrian literature.  “His suggestive power consists in his ability to exploit and assemble prejudices.  It affects me like an article from Der Spiegel.  I often think he is our best Spiegel correspondent in Austria.  Because the things he writes don’t tackle problems of narrative or form at all, they seem to me to be having an almost detrimental effect on art.  I found his last few books to be almost criminal in their shoddiness.  Apart from his suggestive power, which of course is unique to him and always extremely effective, there was nothing there.  But in his new book, Extinction, I am suddenly seeing the rudiments of description, of enthusiastic description of locales and spaces, which for me is of course the most important thing in literature.  Otherwise it is of course difficult not think of this drama about the lord of a castle as [Ludwig Ganghofer’s 1895 novel] Castle Hubertus, only with a negative spin.  But I was cheered and relieved by those descriptions of the orangery or of the kitchen, because I was able to enjoy a feeling of parity.  Of course I wish I could approve of him; I have indeed revered him for 25 years as a kind of secular Austrian saint.”

On December 30 Unseld wrote a letter to Peter Handke: “At Samuel Fischer’s publishing house the never-ending conflict between Thomas Mann and Döblin rumbled on.  Fischer couldn’t settle it, and friendships shattered.  Thomas Bernhard has enough trouble dealing with himself and the world around him.  I would prefer not to see any friendships shattered.”   

1987

Letter No. 502

[Address: Hotel Tivoli, Sintra]

Frankfurt am Main

January 29, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

There is a piece of news that I wish to share with you before you discover it in the newspapers, which I am sure you are studying even in Portugal.

I am delighted that I shall be seeing you soon.  I shall arrive on the afternoon of Saturday, February 7, and I shall be staying at the place you recommended, the Avenida Palace in Lisbon.  Shall we leave it at my calling you and our working out the particulars of a meeting then?1  On Monday I shall fly back.

Yours

wishing you all the best until then and with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure2

1.    At the beginning of 1987, Bernhard and Burgel Zeeh agreed that they would speak by telephone at fortnightly intervals from then on.  This accounts for the decreased frequency of letters in the last two years of the correspondence, and there is no reason to suppose that any letters are missing.

2.   The enclosure has not survived in Bernhard’s papers.  Presumably it was a news release issued by Suhrkamp Publications on February 3, 1987: “Effective April 1, 1987, Dr. Urs Bugmann will be working as a reader at Suhrkamp Publications.  He will be looking after the firm’s German editorial office and younger and newer German-language authors in particular.  He is succeeding Dr. Rainer Weiss, who has hitherto occupied this position and has taken over the leadership of the Suhrkamp theatrical publications division.  Dr. Urs Bugmann was born in Cham, Switzerland in 1951; he received his doctorate in 1981 at the University of Zurich with a dissertation on Thomas Bernhard’s autobiographical writings supervised by Professor Peter von Matt.  Urs Bugmann has garnered experience as a reader at Walter Publications, Olten; he has published pieces of literary criticism in, inter alia, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the Schweizer Monatshefte.

Letter No. 503

[Address: Hotel Tivoli, Sintra]

Frankfurt am Main

February 10, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Everything was magnificent; the said and the unsaid, the bread and the wine, the park and the sea, the sun and the rain.  This Portuguese weekend is one that I shan’t very easily forget.

We have agreed: we will see each other again somewhere on April 15, 1987 at the latest.  On that date you intended to hand over to me the manuscripts of Newfoundland and The Hard of Hearing and to move your account.1.

I was unable to answer your question about In hora mortis; I thought the manuscript had already been typeset, but as the enclosed letter from Elisabeth Borchers makes clear, she is still waiting for a reply from you.  Unfortunately this letter didn’t reach your house while you were still there.  I am also enclosing a copy of the January 14 letter from Otto Müller Publications.

Regarding the complex and the problem of Doubt.  Naturally my own proposal is gnawing away at me, but in hindsight it is also being corroborated by common sense.  And yet I would sincerely like to ask you to be fortiter not only in re but alsoin modo.  Three clear conditions are attached to the transfer:

    A non-exclusive right to publish for three years;
    No ancillary rights whatsoever, in particular no translation rights;
    The firm definitively confirms your unwaveringly desired return of the rights to the five autobiographical prose pieces.2

We are thinking about the poems.  The paperbacks for 1988 and the following years are unhurriedly in preparation.

I think back with pleasure on the TIVOLI as well as on the STETEAIS and know that you are being productively edified in this setting.3

Yours

with sincere regards and best wishes,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosures4    

    Bernhard made no further progress towards completing the prospective novel Newfoundland and the play Die Schwerhörigen [The Hard of Hearing], not least because of the precarious state of his health.  Typescripts and fragments of typescripts of both prospective works have survived in Bernhard’s papers; while what is left of the draft of the novel amounts to only a few pages, the surviving draft of the play extends to a considerable length.

    Under contractually stipulated conditions, Residenz Publications was ceded the right to publish Der Zweifel [Doubt] as the sixth and last volume of Bernhard’s autobiography; after its initial publication, all the rights to the entire work were to belong to Suhrkamp Publications; this project was never realized; see Vol. 20, pp. 524f. of Bernhard’s Works.

    In the February 7-9 entry of his Chronicle Unseld wrote:

“Visit with Thomas Bernhard in Lisbon and Sintra.

A changed Thomas Bernhard.  On the one hand he had become alarmingly thin, on the other he was in a stunningly great mood.

Upon arriving at the hotel he stays put there, and even after midnight he is still virtually inseparable from his coffee at the hotel bar.  On Sunday, I visit him in Sintra, a town whose unusually mild climate, majestic gardens, and lush vegetation lure kings and aristocrats to summer there.  At the center of Sintra the Paseo Real de Sintra with its beautiful swans’ and magpies’ room.  The kitchen’s two towering cone-shaped chimneys have become landmarks in Sintra.  Bernhard is staying in the Hotel Tivoli, seventh floor, a lovely room.  Quite tidy.  On a small table there are photos of his Lebensmensch.

We sit on a huge terrace that adjoins his room; here it is certainly easy to work.

We take a ten-hour drive into the countryside, to the Sintra Mountains including the Castle of the Moors.

Bernhard had still never been to the national park of Monserrate, in which plants from almost all climatic zones of the earth can be seen.  One can live there at the Quinta de Penha Verde and at the Seteais Palace, in a five-star hotel with the peculiar name of The Seven Sighs.

We drive to Cabo da Rocca.  It is the westernmost point on the European mainland.  A 150-meter tall crag of the Sintra mountains that steeply slopes down to the sea.  Then along the coast: Praia do Guincho and to the Boca do Inferno, on the Costa dol Sol.  In the fishing town of Cascais, Bernhard greets an old woman selling odds and ends in the middle of the crowd.  Finally we drink tea in Estoril, which certainly used to be the most elegant and sophisticated sea resort in Portugal.  There can’t be anywhere else in Europe that has a milder climate than here.  The flowers bloom twice a year. 

Evening traffic congestion, because everybody is trying to get back to Lisbon.  Once more Bernhard proposes a dinner, and yet again it gets late.  Monday, February 9: Bernhard’s 56th birthday.  He accepts my gift, a silk scarf, with pleasure and wears it all morning.

We talk over the concrete points, the manuscript of the prose work Newfoundland, the play The Hard of Hearing, the autobiographical narrative Doubt.  I have written about this in my travel journal.

Lunch at the Seteais Palace, a real Bernhardian drama: in the ancient, beautifully furnished hotel a colossal dining room; the tables are adorned with towering napkins, everything is beautiful and noble.  We are the only guests; only later were we joined by a gentleman who looked like Friedrich Dürrenmatt.   The waiter, who has nothing to do, stands around; every movement at our table is observed; so sooner does one of us take a sip of wine or water than his glass is topped up.  Bernhard seems to relish it.  He is sorry when the hour of my departure strikes.”

In the Travel Journal referred to in the Chronicle, Lisbon, February 7-9, 1987, Unseld concentrates on the publication plans he discussed with Bernhard: 

“The farther I travel in order to meet him, the more closely he associates his publisher with his publishing firm.  Everything, absolutely everything, proceeds according to the desiderata of common sense.

The manuscript of the prose work Newfoundland, about the same length as Woodcutters, is finished; it will be read through one more time after his return home; I shall receive it on April 15, hence still very much in time for me to be able to present it at my meeting with the sales representatives on April 22.

I shall receive the play The Hard of Hearing on the same date.  Prospective publication in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp October/November 1987, in time for the performance of the play at the Burg.  [But on February 20, Bernhard informed Burgel Zeeh by telephone that the play Claus Peymann would next stage in Vienna was not The Hard of Hearing but rather Elizabeth II, which was also slated to be published in the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.]

The shorter ‘autobiographical narrative,’ Doubt.  Two years ago, when Mr. Schaffler was ill, and Mrs. Schaffler averred to Bernhard that one final book for Residenz would be a lifesaver for Schaffler, Bernhard agreed to give Residenz Publications one more book.  But since then, Schaffler has severed all ties with Residenz, and Residenz has become a state publishing house owned by the Austrian government.  Bernhard no longer feels any obligation to keep his promise, but on the other hand there are still some delicate connections there.

I proposed the following plan of my own devising: 

That he, Bernhard, should call in Schaffler as a ‘mediator.’  Residenz Publications will receive this new manuscript once again, one final time, but under the following conditions:

    Residenz will receive a non-exclusive right for three years; thereafter it will totally revert to Thomas Bernhard and will never again be included in Residenz’s catalogue;
    No ancillary rights, and no translation rights;
    If this transfer is to occur, the rights to the five autobiographical volumes must revert to Thomas Bernhard. 

If Residenz Publications does not yield to these conditions, it will not receive the autobiographical narrative Doubt.

In hora mortis: Bernhard is eagerly awaiting its publication in the Insel-Bücherei.

He is now also willing for there to be a collection of his Poems.”

And then the project of the year of Bernhard in paperback format.  Must I be published in paperbacks? he asked me when I presented the idea of the undertaking to him the day before.  I told him that it only made sense, and he acquiesced.  We can proceed as we like, along the lines of the proposal that has been drafted.  [The first volumes of the 24-volume paperback edition of the works of Thomas Bernhard appeared in November; see n. 1 to Letter No. 514.]

The festive mood was undoubtedly heightened by the state of his finances, and perhaps also by a newly acquired relationship with his family, with his brother, with his sister, and above all with his sister’s daughter, all of whom he invited to visit him in Sintra.

Regards to everyone.  Cheese was ready to be rolled to Burgel Zeeh.”     



4. The enclosures were a letter from Elisabeth Borchers to Bernhard and a letter from Otto Müller Publications, Salzburg.  The letter from the Austrian publishing firm, in which the firm consented to the publication of a Bernhard-edited Bibliothek Suhrkamp edition of a selection of poems by Christine Lavant, has not survived in Bernhard’s papers.

In a letter dated January 21, 1987, Borchers wrote to Bernhard at his Ohlsdorf address as follows:

“Dear Thomas Bernhard,

There are two excuses for me to write to you; I am delighted by this.

Please read the letter from Salzburg.  So we’re seeing people eat humble pie...Is your  Lavant pledge still in effect?

Please say yes.

And: so as had we agreed in Bonn, In hora mortis will be published in the autumn as a volume of the Insel-Bücherei.

In order to reach 38 pages (the length of Cornet!), we should make each of the roman numerals into an intertitle on a recto and leave the following page blank.

In Bonn we had also stipulated that the book should have a dedication.  Later, after a conversation between you and the publisher, I read in a memo that this volume was to be published without the dedication from the first edition.  I have the text of the volume in front of me: not a trace of a dedication; just a Leonardo epigraph.  Can you say something to me about this?

I send you my very warm regards.

Yours,

Elisabeth Borchers”

Bernhard replied to Borchers on the stationery of the Hotel Tivoli, Sintra, on March 3, 1987:

“Dear Elisabeth Borchers,

I would like nothing more than in three hours to walk with you from here down to and through the avenues and into my favorite tavern for a dinner of my equally favorite espada, the Madeiran swordfish, to talk about poetry; I believe the eucalyptus trees foster such desires, intentions, and lyrical transgressions in the highest measure.  But merely in thinking of you as I walk, I am already afforded the necessary boost to the charm of absolute solitude. 

Perhaps we can play our game in Frankfurt, in some secluded corner with an absolutely clear view of all and sundry?  I intend to get hold of the Lavant poems, and I am in utter and total secrecy looking forward to the slender volume for merry days of mourning in the autumn.  With no dedication, just with Leonardo! 

Naturally Müller’s letterhead has sent me many more than thirty years back in time, but of course there’s no harm in that; indeed, it may even help me attain a productive melancholy.

Here I have written a play, Elizabeth II, to which at midday yesterday, as I sat outdoors in 25 degree weather in front of the old Hotel Central, I devoted exactly half my attention, the other half being devoted to Peymann’s flights of fancy.  We were in exceedingly high spirits.  Your lines make clear how often equally worthy and valuable relationships cannot but suffer neglect when those who live off them as I do fail to write.

With the warmest thoughts

Thomas B.”

On April 13, Bernhard sent [whom? presumably Borchers (DR)] his selection of poems by Christine Lavant and remarked in his cover letter: “Our poetess [Christine Lavant] is one of the most important of all poets, and she deserves to be introduced to the entire world.  The melancholy-inducing, mindless and other- and unworldly Carinthians exerted a deplorable Andalusian effect on the lyrical sisters, Bachmann and Lavant; the mind-murdering, stultifying region of Andalusia with its homicidal nature has had exactly the same effect on Spanish literature as the one that the no-less mind-murdering, stultifying, homicidal region of Carinthia has had on German literature.

Out of this horrible mindless Carinthia our two female lyricists’ poems of longing emerged.

Regarding Lavant specifically: between the pinnacles of her experiences and hence pinnacles of the German lyric tradition, there is an incredible amount of kitschy rubbish; God on autopilot and poppies for the masses inundate the pages of the books published by Müller.  The poems in Art like Mine… are almost nauseating.

Her Catholically mendacious knitwork is scarcely endurable.  After I forgot her abominable letters, her gruesomely infantile sentimental prose works, which are more hypocrisy than necessity, her folksiness and her childish-cum-religious mendacity, there eventually emerged, amid the driving snow and rain of recent days, a book by a poet who, as I said earlier, is fully and truly significant, a book by a great poet.

May the good Lord forgive me for having chased him out of the four books [Der Bettlerschale {The Beggar’s Bowl},Spindel im Mond {Spindle in the Moon}, Der Pfauenschrei {The Cry of the Peacock}, and Kunst wie meine ist nur verstümmeltes Leben {Art Like Mine Is Only Mutilated Life} as much as possible.  Despite this, he gets up to a fair amount of his usual mischief in my selection.

Ms. Lavant was an utterly impish, highly gifted, sly vixen.  She lived on the concrete ceiling [Perhaps he means “roof” (DR)] of a supermarket at an intersection in Wolfsberg with a giant filling station and typed her poems directly into her typewriter.  In my view this is more awe-inspiring than the valley Romanticism-garnished, mendacious fairy tale about the starry-eyed innocent, the God-bespoken fairy tale, that has been circulated about her ad nauseam until now.

Above all Ludwig von Ficker, who doled out his horrendous allotment of Wittgenstein to Trakl, Rilke, and the gang, circulated this lyrical horror story with enormous sentimentally Catholic vehemence until the day of his death […].”

Letter No. 504

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

May 13, 1987

Dear Thomas,

That certainly wasn’t good news that you shared with Burgel Zeeh today.1  I can well understand that there are periods in which a writer discountenances or even disowns his own earlier works, but I am certain that there are again going to be periods when you will again wish to have what you have written presented to the public.  You may rest assured: these poems can subsist.  They may no longer express what you believe, but that ultimately makes no difference whatsoever. The only thing that matters is that these verses were written at some point.  So I am asking you to think this over one more time.  The volume number for In hora mortis in the Insel-Bücherei is a firm one; the title has been announced; the book trade knows about it.  And so the world is waiting.

Regarding Christine Lavant it’s a different story.  At your request we acquired the rights; the publishing firm initially refused to grant them to us.  Then we applied to an heir, whose publisher agreed to grant us the rights in the light of the fact that you were going to be the one making the selection.  Then we finalized a contract committing us to publication.  I know for a fact that you have already made the selection.  We could print this selection without including any mention of the selector.  Can you apprise me of the sequence of your selection?

I request that you show some understanding for my requests.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried U.



1. Unseld is referring to a May 13 telephone conversation whose particulars Zeeh recorded in a telephone message:

“Entirely without warning he informed me of his newest and latest and definitive decision: he would rather not produce ‘either’ book, the two books being:

    In hora mortis, second half of 1987

and

    Christine Lavant. Poems, BS 970 (December)

He is respectfully asking us to understand; he is working on a letter to Ms. Borchers; he apologizes copiously.  So this year only Elizabeth II would be coming out; then next year there would be a thunderclap.”

The letter to Elisabeth Borchers is likewise dated May 13 and reads:

“Dear Elisabeth Borchers,

I cannot edit the Lavant poems; after weeks of intensive preoccupation with the collection, everything within me gainsays it, and I must give over the idea.  So this is just another variation on a theme that has been taken up again after many years, a variation from which I have learned something, and hopefully you aren’t too angry at me about it.

In hora mortis won’t be published either.  So this project has also come to a permanent standstill in two separately typeset rough paginated copies.

I earnestly implore you to be lenient to me for what probably seems to you an all-too abrupt abandonment of these two onerous but not globally significant projects.

If I were in Frankfurt, my predicament would not be any easier; during a lunch with you I would probably, in addition to its intrinsic pleasures, enjoy better chances of elegantly explaining this predicament to you than on paper.

Yours

with head hung low,

Thomas Bernhard”   

Letter No. 505

Ohlsdorf

May 18, ’87

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Your letter of the 13th compels me to release not only In hora mortis but also the Lavant poems.   In hora mortis as planned and the Lavant poems as “poems edited by Thomas Bernhard.”  I have nothing to withhold and nothing to whitewash.  I am not going to write any sort of after- or foreword, because in this case there obviously is nothing to explain or to prove.

In the same post I am sending the 79 Lavant poems, which I have selected and numbered in chronological order.  Like In hora mortis, they ought to be typeset; it will do them good.

Your letter caught me in a good mood, as you can see, and it also reminded me that I had not yet explicitly thanked you at all for your Portugal visit, which has a first-place position in my memories and immediately catalyzes a feeling of happiness.  Nor do I wish to hold my peace on the very powerful access of emotion I experienced in Frankfurt amid the mighty wallops of ministration I received from the publisher and his faithful followers.1  On that day I really did believe that I had arrived in a version of Paradise itself.  You may gather from these lines how far I have advanced into a Christian-Catholic verbal framework thanks to my preoccupation with the Lavant verses.  What a good thing it is that I have always been an expert at breaking out of any jail.  I don’t think there will be any further correspondence whatsoever about the two “volumes” in question; please just send me the paginated rough copy of the Lavant poems when it is ready.

It would give me the greatest pleasure to come to Frankfurt sometime for an overnight stay via Vienna, to which I will be going in the next few days if I start finding the countryside too beautiful and therefore insufferable.2

Sincerely your obedient servant,

Thomas B.

    Bernhard alludes here to an impromptu March 26 stopover in Frankfurt on his return trip from Portugal, a trip made difficult by health problems.  Unseld wrote about the stopover in his March 26 Chronicle entry:

“Much commotion over Thomas Bernhard: today he was supposed to fly back from Lisbon to Vienna, but in Lisbon misfortune struck him: his bladder was full, but he was unable to urinate.  A stone or adhesions?  He didn’t know.  His brother strongly advised him to go to a clinic.  This he did, and he had to have a catheter inserted.  He arrived in Frankfurt in the afternoon and couldn’t stop saying one thing: I am happy; I have escaped from hell.  For four hours Bugel Zeeh, Raimund Fellinger, and I ‘treated’ the man, who really was seriously ill.  On the one hand he was charming, but on the other he was terribly debilitated and really did not look healthy.  I still took him to his plane.  In Salzburg his brother picked him up and checked him into a clinic, where he would have to spend a few days.”                     

2. On the letter a third party has written “6/25” and “6/1,” proposed dates for Bernhard’s visit to Frankfurt.  The brief visit was ultimately scheduled for June 1.  In a Chronicle entry for this date, Unseld wrote: “Late in the afternoon Bernhard is at the firm.  We chat, I walk with him to Neu-Isenburg for dinner, then spend some more time with him at the Frankfurter Hof.  Very good conversation.  He expatiates on his idea for a Suhrkamp literary prize to be funded by the Peter Suhrkamp Foundation.”  On June 2 Bernhard and Unseld  breakfasted with Krista Fleischmann, whose film about Bernhard, Die Ursache bin ich selbst [I Am My Own Cause], Unseld saw on television two weeks later; in a Chronicle entry dated June 15, 1986, Unseld commented as follows on this film: “It is a fascinating experience: this author’s monologue is a grand dialogue with time, with the world, with us.” 





Letter No. 506

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

July 2, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

The acrobatic feat entitled Watten has now also been incorporated into the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.  I am delighted about this.  The shade of green on the jacket is not the one we were aiming for, but it is still quite striking and not unattractive.1    

Two forsaken men are exchanging greetings.2

Yours

sincerely,

Siegfried Unseld

    Watten was republished on June 24 as Volume 955 of the Bibliothek Suhrkamp.

    Bernhard and Unseld had been “forsaken” by Burgel Zeeh, who could not have her fortnightly telephone conversation with Bernhard between the end of June and the beginning of August because she was traveling in China then.

Letter No. 507

[Address (Ohlsdorf)]

Frankfurt am Main

July 28, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I have received a remarkable piece of news from Salzburg.  Mr. Jung of Residenz Publications writes that you and he have discussed a special edition of your autobiographical writings.1  I hope that this is not true.  It was our old plan to make this a one-time thing.  And in Lisbon we talked about it, and agreed that you would give Residenz Publications the new work only if it finally actually agreed to comply with your dictum and not to issue any new editions.  Now this special edition is supposed to be coming out.  That really would be very painful.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    Unseld refers here to a July 24, 1987 letter from Jochen Jung to Unseld.  In this letter, Jung described Bernhard’s autobiography as the most important and most magnificent thing that Residenz Publications had ever published.  If Residenz were to renounce the rights to such a work, Jung wrote, it would effectively be shooting itself in the foot.  He added that he intended to retain the rights to the autobiographical books and to issue a one-volume special edition of them in the following year, that he had discussed this edition with Bernhard, and that Bernhard had asked him to notify Unseld of it. 

Letter No. 508

Ohlsdorf

August 8, ’87

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Several months after my interview with Mr. Schaffler regarding my memoirs of my childhood and adolescence, Dr. Jung requested an interview with me, an interview that took place in Salzburg three weeks ago and in which Dr. Jung called attention to the fact that he alone made all the decisions having to do with Residenz Publications and that Mr. Schaffler no longer had any power whatsoever to make any decisions regarding that selfsame Residenz Publications.  Mr. Jung declared to me that henceforth Residenz Publications would not under any circumstances renounce its rights to the Bernhard-penned work in question and that my negotiations with Wolfgang Schaffler were null and void.  In response to this I made my own standpoint, which I had previously discussed with you, quite clear—and this in an entirely amicable tone.  I left Mr. Jung  (along with the lovely gardens of the Schlosswirt in Anim!) with my firm declaration that as far as I was concerned my agreement with Wolfgang Schaffler was still in force.

Not long afterwards Mr. Jung wrote you a letter in which he speaks of my assent to the publication of a prospective volume or several volumes of my autobiography; in any event, in this letter he leads you to believe that I have assented to this.  I have in fact assented to nothing whatsoever.  As I have already told you, I have wished and continue to wish for all future installments of my autobiography to be issued by Suhrkamp Publications.

I have no idea of how this is going to be possible now that I obviously no longer have any means of enforcing such a wish apart from a lawsuit, which I am not about to initiate in a million years, because that obviously would be the most absurd thing imaginable.

My work on its own is more important to me than all the quarrels about this or that put together, and from now on it really should be the business of my publisher and his publishing firm to come to an understanding on this (to my eyes) quite laughable matter—or not.  I myself am no longer going to initiate anything whatsoever towards that end.   If you wish to acquire the rights to the autobiography for Suhrkamp publications, only your own efforts can have an effect in that direction.

Otherwise everything is going excellently for me and I am working, with my routine being spiced every now and then by some ridiculous caper in one of the dailies, which is fine by me.1  A couple of days ago I turned down the Feltrinelli Prize of the Roman Academy of Sciences, just as I have all the other prizes and honors that have been assigned to me.  An honor-laden Th. B. is something you will not see in your lifetime.2

Yours,

Thomas B.

    On August 6, 1987, Die Presse published an open letter from Bernhard to Claus Peymann in which he objected to a guest production of The Scene-Maker in Brussels on the grounds that the production was subsidized by the Austrian state.

    A September 7, 1987 telephone message from Burgel Zeeh reveals that Bernhard did not manage to decline the prize so simply:

“He requests your help!  In June the Italian Academy of Sciences informed him in writing that its jury had awarded him the Antonio Feltrinelli Prize.  Subsequently, on July 9, he wrote a letter declining the prize.  He dictated to me the entire text of the letter:     

‘Most highly honored Academy,

As for many years I have not accepted either prizes or distinctions or titles of any kind, I must to my immeasurable regret also decline your Antonio Feltrinelli Prize.

I am very well aware of the extraordinariness of your prize, and I must ask you to convey my admiration and my very especial gratitude to the jury of your prize for its high estimation of my work.

As a scholar and friend of Italy, I salute you with the very highest degree of respect.

Yours,

Thomas Bernhard’

Subsequently letters and telegrams arrived; they asked him to furnish the particulars of his Vita, etc., and made no mention of his letter.  Now he has just received a telegram: the prize has been awarded; where is the money to be sent?”

Letter No. 509

[Address: (Ohlsdorf)]

Frankfurt am Main

August 13, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Thank you for your letter of August 8.  By now I have discussed the vexatious question yet another time with Mr. Jung directly, and I am enclosing a copy of my letter.  I am really of the opinion that this is a fair proposal.  If we both stand firm, e.g., if you don’t give your assent to Doubt and I hold out for our option, we can probably get our way in this business and Residenz Publications can still save face.  And if after five years it still wishes to keep including the titles in its catalogue, we can of course talk about the whole thing again then.  The most important thing for me now is simply to clear up the legal situation definitively. 

I am following the “ridiculous capers in the dailies.”  You’ve got to stick to your guns.

Yours

with best wishes and sincere regards,

Siegfried U.

Enclosure

[Enclosure; letter from Unseld to Jochen Jung]

Frankfurt am Main

August 13, 1987

Dear Mr. Jung,

I acknowledge receipt of your letter of July 24.  Because I was traveling I am only now able to get in touch with Thomas Bernhard.  It is good that we are finally talking about the five autobiographical volumes.  It is understandable that the author wishes the collection of his works to be published by Suhrkamp Publications; it is understandable that I am happy to comply with his wish, and no less understandable that you are fighting to hold on to your rights.  Nevertheless, the wishes and desires of the author should take precedence over the danger of your firm’s “shooting itself in the foot.”  Accordingly, as publishers we should come to a solution to this problem.

I shall start out by summarizing the facts:

In the beginning there was one book; I agreed to allow it be published by Mr. Schaffler and Residenz Publications.  Then came the other four books.  Thomas Bernhard required my consent because in our author’s contract with him we have a clear option on his next work, an option attached to the payment of a five-figure sum.  In other words: without my approval he never would have been able to publish a book through Residenz.  That is the first point.

Secondly:

In the “aftermath” of the volumes, Thomas Bernhard and I came to a clear, unwavering mutual understanding that a one-volume compilation of these memoirs of his youth was subsequently to be published by Suhrkamp Publication.  Never and at no point has Residenz Publications had a legal right to issue these five books in a single volume.

Thirdly:

Here I am touching a sore point: Residenz Publications has changed owners.  The new owner, via the state publishing house, is the Austrian government.  In juridical terms, it is at minimum debatable whether rights can be transferred so straightforwardly in the course of such a fundamental change of ownership.  And I have not yet even broached the issue of Thomas Bernhard’s peculiar attitude to the Austrian government.  Residenz Publications might not find it pleasant to have to explain this issue to the public either.

Fourthly:

During our conversation in Sintra I told Thomas Bernhard that I was yet again prepared to waive my option, and would agree to allow the new, sixth autobiographical work, Doubt, to be published by your firm, but I also made it quite clear that this transfer could take place only if you definitively respected the author’s wish for the rights to go to us.  If this condition is not met, I shall avail myself of my “right,” insist on my paid-for option, and then it will be impossible for you to issue the text entitled Doubt.

These, Mr. Jung, are the facts.  How shall we solve the problem?  My proposal:

    In the spring of 1988 you will publish the sixth volume, Doubt.
    Concurrently the one-volume collection of all six texts will be published by us.
    For the next five years you will be entitled to continue including those individual editions in your catalogue and selling them at the current retail price.
    You will declare yourself prepared immediately to cease granting licenses; this will apply to paperback licenses as well as translation licenses.
    For the next five years we are likewise prepared to enter into all paperback contracts, i.e. additionally to award you the licenses for the paperback editions of all six of these titles. 

My dear Mr. Jung, to me this seems a reasonable proposal that protects your interests as well as those of Thomas Bernhard and Suhrkamp.  Any agreement along the lines of this proposal will be a friendly and orderly one, and we won’t have to grapple with any unpleasant business.

I would like to mention once again that we attach great importance to our association with you, and there are an array of relationships between our two houses that we really do wish to foster.  I would much appreciate your replying promptly to me and to Thomas Bernhard, to whom I am sending a copy of this letter.1

Yours

with best regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    In an August 31 telephone message, Burgel Zeeh wrote: “He finds Dr. Unseld’s letter to Residenz Publications ‘unfortunate,’ but he says that it makes no difference to him, that it is a matter between the two publishers, that his ‘biography’ is no longer of any interest to him.”   

Letter No. 510

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 9, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Elisabeth Borchers has forwarded me your letter of September 1 and communicated to me your desire for a different type-size for the Christine Lavant poems.  We have been conferring about this here at the firm; it is by no means a simple matter.

In the first place I have to say that Ms. Lavant’s poems have nothing to do with your texts, neither with In hora mortis nor with Simply Complicated and I would much prefer if they weren’t exactly identical to them.  But that is not the decisive reason, which lies elsewhere: if we use an especially large typeface like that of Simply Complicated, we will have to introduce numerous additional breaks in some of the longer lines of Lavant’s poems.  Not to mention that several poems would then run to more than two pages.  But obviously we are complying with your wish; we are making a new typesetting and adjusting the size of the typeface enough to obviate an excessive number of line breaks.  I am sending you a sample that will surely convince you.  I am sure that you will not only understand this but even endorse it.2

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Enclosure3

    Bernhard’s September 1 letter reads as follows:

“Dear Elisabeth Borchers,

My delight with the rough paginated copy of the Lavant evaporated the moment I turned over its first page, because it hasn’t been typeset as I wanted it to be: namely, like the BS edition of Simply Complicated.   

The poems are not half as effective in a small type-size, and if we want our poetess to have the best possible debut in the ‘great wide’ world, we must have the book reset in type that is exactly the same size as that of Simply Complicated.

With poems the size of the typeface is decisive for their effect on the reader.

Of course I had also wanted the same Simply/Complicated type-size for my In hora mortis, and now I don’t know whether my wish has been granted.

I implore you for a new typesetting (of both books if possible) and send you my regards along with every token of reverence.

Yours,

Thomas Bernhard”

2. In a September 18 telephone message Burgel Zeeh wrote: “Sincere regards to his publisher and thanks for the letter.  But: he insistently requests a new typesetting of the Lavant poems; he finds the compromise utterly and totally unsatisfactory.”

3. The enclosure has not survived in Bernhard’s papers.

Letter No. 511

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

September 18, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I am not in the habit of encumbering you with our scientific books, but you just might take an interest in the Polish scientist Jacek Wozniakowski’s “Die Wildnis.  Zur Deutungsgeschichte des Berges in der europäischen Neuzeit.” [The Wilderness.  On the History of the Interpretation of the Mountain in Modern Europe]  I am sending it to you in the same post.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

Letter No. 512

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

October 13, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

For the second time we have tried to write a history of Suhrkamp Publications.  That history naturally includes the stages of our relationship with you.  This relationship began in 1965 with the publication of the novella entitled Amras in the edition suhrkamp.  And I hope that in the next years and decades we can incorporate many another opus into the history.

I am sending you a copy.  In the event that you desire further copies, please let Ms. Zeeh know.1

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld

    Next to the inside address the letter bears a handwritten note from a third party: “deliver personally.”  Bernhard came to Frankfurt on March 15, 1987. In his Chronicle Unseld wrote of the visit: “In the afternoon Thomas Bernhard comes in.  To be sure, he hasn’t brought the manuscript of Newfoundland with him, but we had an outstanding conversation; together we wrote a letter to Residenz Publications (10.16) towards the end of codifying Bernhard’s relations and dealings with Residenz Publications and getting back hold of the autobiographical books.  Mr. Jung will have to chew on this letter.

Bernhard’s credit balance: DM 319,000.00.  Quite a dramatic change, when you consider that our relationship with him began with a loan of DM 40,000.00.”

Bernhard and Unseld’s jointly signed October 16, 1987 letter to Jochen Jung reads as follows:

“Dear Mr. Jung,

Thomas Bernhard is in Frankfurt, and we have had yet another discussion about what is most important to him: he wishes to have his entire oeuvre in the hands of a single party and for all the transactions involving it to be centrally coordinated over the long term.  In the light of this consideration we, Thomas Bernhard and I, are tendering the following proposal to you: The volume entitled Doubt may be published by Residenz Publications in the spring of 1988 under the following conditions:

1.       Effective January 1, 1991 all rights to the Thomas Bernhard-authored books that you have published will revert to him; he will then transfer those rights to us.  This is to happen in view of the following points:

2.      For an unlimited time, Residenz Publications may continue to issue in separate editions all Thomas Bernhard-authored works that it has hitherto published; Suhrkamp Publications for its part pledges not to issue any separate editions of these titles after 1991.  Hence, these Thomas Bernhard titles can continue to be included in the catalogue of Residenz Publications as long as they remain available for purchase.

3.      Residenz Publications will not extend any currently active contracts for paperback editions and effective immediately will not finalize any further contracts for paperback editions.  Here Suhrkamp Publications is receiving an option: beginning on January 1, 1991, Suhrkamp Publications will enter into all pertinent contracts.

My dear Mr. Jung, Thomas Bernhard and I have calmly and carefully deliberated this proposal.  On the surface, from the perspective of the book market and the public, these specific titles will remain in the custody of Residenz Publications; fundamentally, the oeuvre as a whole will be concentrated in a single place.  We hope that you can agree to the terms of this proposal.

Yours

with friendly regards,

Siegfried Unseld

|Yours with sincere regards,

Thomas Bernhard|

Letter No. 513

[Handwritten on stationery of the Hotel Frankfurter Hof, Frankfurt]

Frankfurt am Main

October 16, ’87

Dear S.U.,

Belatedly, but not too belatedly, the Germans, in also applying the highest standards, will recognize that there hasnever yet been a more important publisher, nor hence one more significant to intellectual history, than you—you who to their benefit have exerted your genius entirely out of the love of literature and out of the delight of those who create it.       

I thank you for the evening that has just ended and not only for that one.

Your simply/complicated

Thomas Bernhard

Letter No. 514

Ohlsdorf

November 4, ’87

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

My delight in the first two volumes of the paperback edition-in-progress, so to speak, of my works has already been blasted to pieces with my first inspective glance:  apart from the fact that in each volume it is stated that he lives in Ohlsdorf…which I have interdicted so many times already as so much perverse, asinine blurbese, it places The Utopian and At the Goal under the heading of “Prose”!  I don’t think anything more is needed to make one turn away in disgust from this exercise in publicational sloppiness.

Apart from that, I hope everything is well with you.

Yours,

Thomas Bernhard

P. S.  Most stunningly of all, according to this blurb I haven’t written or published a single thing since Retirement!!!  An edition like this one should at least be worth re-typesetting a single page for!  Or shouldn’t it?1

    In November 1987 the first two volumes (Frost and Wittgenstein’s Nephew) of the 24-volume paperback edition of Bernhard’s works were published.  Their covers differed from those of other volumes in the suhrkamp taschenbücher series in virtue of their distinctive color and starkly separated lettering.  Two volumes of the edition per month were issued through August 1988.  Bernhard had agreed to allow his books to be published in paperback format during his meeting with Unseld in Lisbon; see n. 3 to Letter No. 503. 

Letter No. 515

Frankfurt am Main

November 16, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Enclosed you will find the copy of Jochen Jung’s October 29 letter. [...]1

What do we plan to do?  There are three possibilities:

    I could write to him that his 10.29 letter is in no sense a reply to our jointly penned letter of 10.16.1987.
    We could agree to a three-way conversation in Vienna.
    You could write him a letter to the following effect:

    Given that his reply to our jointly penned 10.16 letter is completely unsatisfactory, Doubt will be published in the spring of 1988 by Suhrkamp Publications.
    You will not allow Residenz Publications to issue any further reprints of the five autobiographical books.  The firm may continue to sell its existing stock.  None of the currently active contracts with third parties will be renewed.
    You are transferring to Suhrkamp Publications the right to supervise the expiration of the contracts.

All of this--unless he gives some serious attention to our jointly penned letter of 10.16.1987.

Yours

with sincere regards

[Siegfried Unseld]

Enclosure2

    Here two sentences have been omitted for the protection of the privacy of certain third parties.

    In his October 29, 1987 letter, Jochen Jung declared that he was not going to agree to the offer tendered in the letter of October 16, and that Bernhard had accepted this in a conversation with him in Ohlsdorf.

Letter No. 516

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

November 17, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

I have just received the first copies of the second series of the paperbacks: The Voice Imitator and The Lime Works.  You will observe that Ohlsdorf has been eliminated, and it will not resurface in subsequent volumes; and at the end you will find listed all the Thomas Bernhard titles that have been published by Suhrkamp Publications so far.  Addenda and corrections are possible in every new print run of the paperbacks!

I send you my regards and hope that this paperback edition that is now growing month by month at least pleases you a little bit!

Yours

very sincerely,

Siegfried Unseld 

2 Enclosures1

    The enclosures were probably copies of the paperback editions of The Voice Imitator and The Lime Works referred to in the letter.

Letter No. 517

Ohlsdorf

11.29.87

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

The attached letter is being sent by the same post to Dr. Jung.

Sincerely,

Thomas Bernhard

[Attachment: Letter from Bernhard to Jochen Jung]

Ohlsdorf

November 23, 1987

Dear Dr. Jung,

Allow me to procure myself some clarity and order before the end of the year and return to the starting point of the since-fatalized case of Bernhard / Residenz Publications by way of absolutely severing all ties between my works and the firm of Residenz Publications, lately purchased by the Austrian government.

As you know, I came to an arrangement with Mr. Schaffler as a publisher and a man of honor that in compliance with my wish and in acknowledgment of the peculiar character of my relations with the Austrian government, upon the passage of ownership of ownership of Residenz Publications from Mr. Schaffler into the hands of the Austrian government, all my rights to my works in Residenz Publications’ catalogue were to revert to me with all due self-evidence, as the Austrian government tries to thwart me in all things and is in all things and in every respect supremely abhorrent to me; there was one single condition: that as a personal gesture to Mr. Schaffler, one more of my books should be published by Residenz Publications.  The book in question was Doubt.

My reasons for severing my ties to Residenz Publications at the moment of its acquisition by the Austrian state, and hence for severing my ties to the firm’s new proprietary and intellectual dispensation, are well known to you.  In the meantime these reasons have been substantiated in an appalling fashion and an insufferable respect, and this is not the time or place to recite the whole litany yet again.  Acting on my own behalf, I materially and self-evidently effected the severance of my ties to Residenz Publications at the moment of Mr. Schaffler’s sale of the firm to the government, and I notified both you and the firm of this severance without delay.  Upon receiving this notification, Mr. Schaffler made an appearance at Ohlsdorf, and we ultimately came to the abovementioned settlement.  Some time later, you came to Ohlsdorf and said that you would not abide by this SETTLEMENT.  I adamantly stood by it, albeit in the most friendly and amiable terms.

This letter, amid all the decidedly ignoble to-ing and fro-ing that has gone on so far, is intended to make clear my absolute desire for a complete severance of my works from Residenz Publications, and I am asking you in all amiability to restore to me all my rights that are now held by Residenz Publications.  A juridical path is one that I really believe we obviously ought to avoid pursuing.  If you accept Unseld’s offer, which I have of course signed myself, I shall be satisfied.  Residenz Publications has always and repeatedly affirmed, both orally and in writing, how much it owes to me and how colossally important I have always been for it.  Now would be a good opportunity for it to show its gratitude.  My publications in Residenz Publications’ catalogue were always personal attributes.

My main aim, in view of the dwindling amount of time I have left—and as you know, that is very little time indeed—is to bring my works together in one main building, under one roof, and that roof can only be Suhrkamp Publications.

As far as I am concerned it will be completely out of the question in future, and hence from today onwards, for any publication of mine to appear under the imprint of Residenz Publications.

My personal relations with you are unclouded by this; remember that and give me the self-evident green light that I am awaiting.

I am also sending this letter to Siegfried Unseld!

Yours with very sincere regards,

Th. B.

Letter No. 518

[Address (Ohlsdorf); handwritten on personal stationery]

Überlingen

December 5, 1987

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Today I received the copy of your Nov. 29 letter to Dr. Jung.  I am very moved and I thank you for your trust; it will further oblige me, and I am very happy about this commonality of ours.

Now we must wait and see what Mr. Jung decides to do; in any case all that ignoble to-ing and fro-ing has been decisively put paid to by you.1

I am fasting and exercising and hence feeling well.2

I hope we see each other and speak with each other soon.

Yours gratefully,

Siegfried Unseld

    In his December 3, 1987 letter of reply to Bernhard, Jung began by averring that so far mere proposals rather than any legal justification or binding settlement had been adduced in support of the idea of severing Thomas Bernhard’s work from Residenz Publications.  Now, he continued, for the first time Bernhard himself was demanding this severance; that in this fiat he was seconding the terms of the proposal of October 16, 1987, admittedly with the difference that now Residenz Publications would have to be reimbursed by Suhrkamp Publications in the amount of the value of the global rights.  Jung concluded by announcing that a copy of the letter was being sent to Unseld.  Bernhard and

Unseld’s efforts to acquire the rights from Residenz ultimately came to nothing because a financial agreement never materialized.

2. Unseld took a fasting cure at the Buchinger Clinic in Überlingen between November 27 and December 10. 

1988

Letter No. 519

[Address: (Ohlsdorf); circular letter]

Frankfurt am Main

January 1988

To our authors and the friends of the firm

Beginning in January 1988, my son, Dr. Joachim Unseld, who has been a partner of the firm for ten years, and part of the firm’s management for five, will be a full-fledged co-publisher at Suhrkamp, Insel, and Nomo Publications.  For him it is another definitive step towards becoming my successor.

Having two publishers in this publishing house, which has always been centered on a single publisher, first Peter Suhrkamp and then me, will not always be easy, and it will be a learning process for both of us.  In any case, it is a challenge that we are genuinely happy to face, as the two of us have a specific goal in view, in mind, and in our hearts.

Joachim Unseld has chosen three difficult projects for his field of operations: the scheduling of the suhrkamp taschenbücher, the publishing conception of the edition suhrkamp, and the integral maintenance of recent German literature and new German-language authors; experience suggests to me that by engaging in such work he will make the most substantial progress towards the next phase of his career.

I am sure that you will welcome this step, which is beneficial to the continuity of our work at the firm, and I firmly hope that you will be happy to collaborate with him and with the two of us jointly.

Dr. Siegfried Unseld 

Letter No. 520

[Address: Ohlsdorf]

Frankfurt am Main

August 26, 1988

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

We had an extremely enjoyable day; I thank you very warmly both on my own behalf and on that of Ulla Berkéwicz.1

I shall have to curb my curiosity until March of 1989, and I wish you all the best in the completion of the second prose work. 

On the Residenz affair:

Residenz Publications wants us to pay them a transfer fee to be determined by the honorarium statements from the past year.  We have asked Jochen Jung for copies of the statements; he is refusing to give them to us and indicates that he sent you itemized lists “on the dates in question as at all other times,” and that you could surely send me these lists.2  Perhaps you can do some digging yet again?

I hope we can see each other in Zurich from September 10 through 12.

Yours

with sincere regards,

Siegfried Unseld 

    The thanks are for an August 23 meeting with Bernhard, which Unseld reported on in his Travel Journal, Bayreuth--Brannenburg--Poschiavo--St. Moritz--Salzburg, August 12-24, 1988:

“Tuesday, August 23, was devoted to Thomas Bernhard.  I had agreed to meet him in Ohlsdorf at 10 a.m.; we were then supposed to drive to Fuschl to have lunch with Ulla at noon.

I was running so far ahead of schedule that morning that before the meeting I had a half an hour to spend reading the short story ‘At the Ortler,’ which had been included in one of the two paperbacks that I was able to hand over to him as specimens of the concluding volumes of the paperback edition of his works [see n. 1 to Letter No. 514].  He was delighted by my punctual arrival.  Upon my presenting him the two books in lieu of flowers, he immediately criticized their comical shared title, Novellas [Erzählungen; suhrkamp taschenbuch Vol. 1564], and their unusual style of manufacture.  I told him that I assumed that he had spoken with Fellinger (as the latter subsequently confirmed), but one thing in particular struck him: the short story “At the Timberline”  had been published in the Residenz Publications book of the same name.  Had we obtained the rights to it?

In the ground-floor living room we then sat in two chairs facing each other; in the main he talked about the party at the Maletas’ [the night before]; he said he had pretty much commandeered the aristocrats, because he had an extraordinarily high opinion of, for example, Countess Clam.  She sat next to me at dinner, and she didn’t smoke because she knew that it would disturb Bernhard.  She is the proprietress of Clam Castle in Upper Austria; Strindberg visited Klam [sic (DR)] where he wrote parts of Inferno, which takes place in Klam.  She had asked me about the book version of Elisabeth II, because she said that the balcony that is featured in it was her balcony, and Bernhard confirmed this: he said it was a terrifying balcony, because it jutted out over a nearly 200 meter-deep gorge. [...]

Bernhard had also brought Marianne Hoppe to the Maletas’ party; he had paid a visit to her the day before because in the final scene of Heldenplatz she is supposed to play the role of Hedwig Schuster, the wife of the dead professor, and her appearance is intended to insure that this play concludes on yet another grand histrionic high note. [...]

Then on to Peymann.  He spoke for almost an hour about him.  Bernhard said that while that Peymann had not been very diplomatic in that ominous interview, which indeed could not be appraised using the standards of good taste, after he had given it he really should have stood by him.  But, said Bernhard, he had done no such thing and had indeed let him down several times.  Incidentally, said Bernhard, he had strongly encouraged Peymann to give a public interview; he had even had Die Zeit send him the interview, probably unintentionally.  He said that he doubted Peymann had even read it beforehand, and that if he hadn’t this certainly had not been very responsible.  That Peymann could now do nothing but prove himself by putting on good productions, and that his next job would in fact be Heldenplatz.  [Ich bin ein Sonntagskind.  André Müller spricht mit Burgtheaterdirektor Claus Peymann, in: Die Zeit, May 27, 1988]  He seemed to have put together his cast; Bernhard didn’t know for sure, because Peymann hadn’t been in touch with him in two months, which he didn’t understand, because rehearsals were supposed to begin this week.

  

A few actors were going to have to be replaced, because they didn’t want to work under Peymann’s direction anymore.

The business-related points of our meeting were quickly taken care of: I informed him of the state of his accounts; he was delighted by the 282,000 deutschmarks and the 63,000 Swiss francs in Zurich (which was to prove erroneous; these are also deutschmarks); he said he wanted to receive these francs from an employee of Suhrkamp Publications Zurich dressed in a black suit and white gloves.  So he said he would drive to Zurich sometime soon, and we vaguely mulled over a date of September 10 or 11, when of course I am going to be in Zurich anyway.

Then: he said he had given Newfoundland another look-through, that it was finished, but that he was hesitant to hand it over, because now he was working on a second prose work that would be finished before the end of the year, and he didn’t know which of them should come out first.  He said that in March of 1989 we would receive this prose work, together with a play, which he has probably also already written.

Two-and-a-half hours had passed; he said we had solved every puzzle in sight, and then the question of what to do about lunch and Ulla Berkéwicz was broached by both of us at the same time.  He said that he really had to go to Gmunden to deliver to his brother a medicine-bag that he had forgotten.  From this I concluded that now—as always so far—after a very long conversation he wished to be alone again, and I offered to leave or have a quick bite with just him, and he said, Will that do? Will that do?  I assured him that it would do and phoned Ulla in Fuschl to tell her about this and to let her know that I would be returning at 4 p.m.  He had listened in on my conversation, and after I had hung up the receiver, he said that perhaps we could do something else instead: Ulla could just take a taxi to the Häupl in Seewalchen, and the three of us could dine together there.  You don’t need to be Freud to see what this maneuver was all about.  Even if it wasn’t a conscious act, his unconscious had to tried to figure out what was more important to me, and once I had shown him what this more important thing was, he came straight back to the original plan of all three of us having dinner together.

Then we drove to Seewalchen; Bernhard’s idea was really pretty crazy, because at first Ulla couldn’t get hold of a taxi; it had to come from Salzburg, and the cab driver, a woman, couldn’t find Seewalchen!  So she arrived a full hour late, and the taxi fare came to DM 170.00.  Over the course of that hour, though, once we were seated in the Häupl and had drunk a couple of drops of wine, Bernhard thawed out.  He talked and talked and asked me about my personal situation, about my relationship with my wife and with Ulla, about certain of the firm’s employees, about Joachim--it was pretty much the most personal conversation I had ever had with Bernhard.  Then Ulla arrived, and Bernhard was quite gentlemanly, zealously polite.  We ate; then he asked to go out on to the terrace for a cup of coffee and dessert; at the end of two hours we started getting ready to leave; he insisted on our staying ten more minutes, then five more minutes; finally he suggested that we should just accompany him on his visit to his brother in Gmunden.  So we did that, and as we were about to take leave of him at the end of this trip to Gmunden, he asked us if we wouldn’t like to drive with him to Wolfsegg right then; he wanted to show me his house there, which I had indeed never seen.  It was sited a full 30 km away from Gmunden, literally in the boondocks.  An uncanny silence, a house from which you can see nothing but trees, fields, and meadows.  When we were about to take leave of him again after that, he insisted on our having supper with him and his brother in Gmunden, and here again it was the same routine: we wanted to be on our way, but he insisted on our staying longer.

Ours had been a highly genial conversation.  We settled the particulars of the Zurich trip, agreed to appoint Mrs. Maleta as the representative for the sale of the ‘gospels’ in Austria; he asked me to give his very sincere regards to Burgel Zeeh; apologized once again for not having answered the telephone that morning, but, he said, he was expecting some truly horrendous calls.  In short, this was an animated, approachable, amiable Thomas Bernhard.”       

2. Unseld is quoting a December 29, 1987 letter from Jochen Jung to him.



  

Letter No. 521

[Address: Vienna]

Frankfurt am Main

October 14, 1988

Dear Thomas Bernhard,

Enclosed is the contract for Heldenplatz.1  The preceding contracts were briefer, because they always contained a clause reading “otherwise we shall be adhering to the terms of the §§ of the contracts for, e.g., Midland at Stilfs.”  I have now explicitly cited those terms from Midland at Stilfs once again, because we must clearly demonstrate to our legal counsel that in a sense we have the pre-publication rights for every edition.  Whence the more extensive contract.  The wording corresponds exactly to that of the preceding contracts; not a single new word has been interpolated.  But I really wanted to have everything in a single contract for the sake of persuading our legal counsel and also of being able to go to court with this contract if need be.

I have committed the single solecism of putting the date down as January 28, 1988, because that was the date on which the play came, so to speak, here to Frankfurt, and I believe that it is good to know that the text has been ready to hand, so to speak, for a very long time.  All that is left for me to do is to wish you all the best; ideally this would mean your opting for a sojourn in the country in preference to all that urban hustle and bustle!  I am thinking about you, and I send you my sincere regards--

Yours,

Siegfried Unseld

Please sign the contract... 

    In his Chronicle entry for January 21, 1988, Unseld wrote: “In the afternoon, I read Thomas Bernhard’s new play,Heldenplatz.  On March 15, 1938, the Anschluss of Germany and Austria took place.  In Heldenplatz, the masses cheered Adolf Hitler.  Bernhard’s starting point is this: a Jewish family lives on Heldenplatz; the husband, a professor of philosophy, has thrown himself out the window; his wife incessantly still hears the masses shouting.  There really isn’t anything more in the way of ‘action.’  Bernhard uses the drama as a way of saying: today there are as many anti-Semites and Nazis as back then, that they are creeping out of every nook and cranny.  And there’s also his tirade against politicians, the clergy, businesspeople; he says they’re all swine.  I must speak with Bernhard.  If we make any of this public before the performance that Peymann is scheduled to stage in September, Peymann won’t be able to do it anymore.”

In April of 1988, Bernhard came to Frankfurt, partly in order to discuss proposed corrections to Heldenplatz with Unseld and Raimund Fellinger.  In the Chronicle entry for April 21, 1988, one reads:

“In the afternoon Thomas Bernhard.  Burgel Zeeh had picked him up at the airport and brought him to Klettenbergstrasse.  We converse for a half an hour in a very one-sided manner.  He takes DM 100,000.00 and orders a remittance of this amount for May (his account balance does after all total DM 374,000.00).  He reluctantly signs contracts for B[ibliothek] S[uhrkamp] and I[nsel]B[ücherei], and then I wanted to talk to him in detail about his play Heldenplatz.  I was obliged to tell him that on many occasions he made assertions that he could not prove.  Wherever he confines himself to generalities, the text may pass muster as it is (Graz, the nest of Nazis; Austria, the ‘the most homicidal of all European countries...where swinishness is the cardinal rule’ (35); labor leaders involved in unscrupulous financial dealings (102)).  All this may pass muster, but these things emphatically do not: the director of the national library, ‘that nightmarish idiot’ (66).  ‘The president of the republic is a liar’ (102); ‘a chancellor who is perpetually struggling with his own illiteracy’ (124).  Bernhard didn’t even want to get started on any discussion; he said wasn’t going to change a single word.  Whereupon I told him that he was going to have to deal with lawsuits.  He said that made no difference to him.  When I hinted that at one point it had made quite a big difference to him, he reacted by saying that he was of a different frame of mind now, that nothing could hurt him anymore.  He said that Peymann was going to stage it, and specifically at the Burg on October 14 on the occasion of the centenary of the opening of the of the Burg and in the presence of official ceremonial guests--I doubted that that would be possible, but Bernhard was impervious to persuasion, broke off the discussion, which had been a non-discussion--and then the remarkable thing--after our lunch, he met with Fellinger at a neutral spot in the Frankfurter Hof.  Without further ado he struck out the lines that I had objected to!  In my presence he pretended to be Mr. Implacable-and- Unaccommodating; when he was with Fellinger he revised if not quite gamely then at least with understanding.  We would have to make the corrections quickly, print the paginated rough copy, and then send that copy to Vienna for the actors.

At about 1:30 p.m. Joachim arrived.  We had dinner in Klettenbergstrasse, and Bernhard was convivial, as he can be every now and then.  Admittedly, he impressed me as being a much diminished version of himself.  His skin lesion is growing; his body keeps getting thinner and probably less and less capable of putting up a fight.  To Fellinger, who had just asked him if he would do an interview, he remarked that it would have to be done quickly because he might be dead soon.  Regarding Newfoundland, he told me that the manuscript had been sitting for three years now, that at the moment he was in no rush to read it again.  But he said that he was planning to write something new in May/June and that it might be ready in time for the fall of 1989.  No matter what, he said, he had no intention of producing at an assembly line.

[...] Now, he said, he was going to withdraw back into his cloister, lie low, try to work.  Of course, he said, everything was pointless, but even pointlessness had a point.  He found fault with a proposition from Adorno that I had quoted, ‘There is no wrong life in the right one’ [“Es gibt kein falsches Leben im richtigen,” whose established English translation,”Wrong life cannot be lived rightly,” is unusable in this context (DR)].  Somewhat surprisingly, he demurred, ‘Life is everywhere.’  This would void both propositions.

Thomas Bernhard is playing his clownish game with Peymann, with me, with the theater, with the firm, with the public.  As Peter von Becker noted in Theater 1987: ‘Ideally, says the great writer (Bernhard), he would have just one copy of each book printed. For himself. But not by a vanity press.  Because of course that wouldn’t be any fun.’

And in the Chronicle entry for the following day, April 22, 1988, one reads:

“In the morning, before I left for my swim, Burgel Zeeh got in touch with me.  She had phoned Bernhard: she said he had been like a completely different person.  He had thanked us for how beautifully we had organized everything--the dinner in Klettenbergstrasse, the atmosphere in Klettenbergstrasse, the conversation with Fellinger and me.  He had said he had only one wish: to have me all to himself again for an evening.  This is the other side of Thomas Bernhard.”

The furore that broke out in Austria even before the publication and premiere of Heldenzplatz also found its way into the Chronicle; for example, into the entry for October 13, 1988: “It seemed exigent to take a spontaneous trip to Vienna. [...] A play has never caused so much brouhaha; by comparison even [Rudolf Hochhuth’s] Stellvertreterreceived only mild protests.

President Waldheim thought that the Austrian people had been libeled; others wanted to throw Bernhard out of Austria.  The premiere received bomb threats.  One can only say that the reality represented in this play has long since been overtaken by reality itself.  Bernhard was extremely angry about an interview I had given [on the ORF] that afternoon: my presence seemed to be having a mollifying influence on him.  I was, however, obliged to expurgate the justifiable if insulting remark that the president of Austria was a ‘liar,’ as it didn’t occur in our book.  At his request I appeared on television a second time; conversations with Peymann, Beil, Sonja Kaplan, and the industrious Ms. Maleta.”

In the Chronicle entry for October 28, Unseld noted:

“And finally we had the interview with Bernhard [in Basta, October 26]: ‘I haven’t a clue how Unseld, that jackass, got it into his head to maintain something like that on TV yesterday!  He really was too idiotic by half.  The guy is a creep!  [...] The man cares about nothing but his tiny and lowly little shop, to the exclusion of everything else!  Naturally I could say I’m never going to say another word to him and change publishing firms.  But it would be just as awful at the next one.”  Here Bernhard has blurted out something he actually thinks. [...] But the bit about my caring about nothing but my tiny and lowly little shop to the exclusion of everything else naturally already has the makings of a good play.”

Letter No. 522

Vienna

11.20.88

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

Two days ago I met with Mr. Jung of Residenz Publications, and I very strongly regretted on this occasion that my two publishers had not come to terms regarding my autobiographical books.  As I have said, I am not going to meddle any further in this business myself.  I submitted to Mr. Jung a manuscript for publication, a manuscript having directly to do with the city of Salzburg, and I did so with a view to the fact that I am already planning to have another book issued by Suhrkamp Publications next fall.  It is entitled On High; a Rescue Attempt; Nonsense; the contract has been concluded in such a fashion that it grants Residenz Publications the right to a single print run, nothing more, and so a clear path is open to the Bibliothek Suhrkamp, within the confines of which I would like the book to be issued two years later.1  Perhaps this book will induce you to try one more time to come to terms with Residenz Publications regarding my autobiographical books.  Jung said you had still not replied to a letter he had sent you more than a year ago.  As far as Heldenplatz goes, all the performances sold out, and every night it went off as calmly as can be with the utmost attention being paid by the audience, who after the final curtain showered the stage with the most voluminous applause possible.  Unfortunately all the reviews were pure drivel because people never take the trouble to read the book; they really never even take a single peek at it; but by now I am used to this.  Posterity will single out this play as quite a special one indeed and bear me out on every single point.  Already its truthfulness is being unveiled under cover of evening in the loveliest manner.  Not to mention the fact that as an addition to my “artistic” oeuvre it also makes its progenitor very happy. 

A Suhrkamp banner advertisement in the newspapers certainly wouldn’t have done any harm either.2

On the 27th there will be a departure for Spain.  After the Sacher a seaside meeting would hardly be unreasonable.3

Yours,

Thomas B.

    On High; a Rescue Attempt; Nonsense was published by Residenz Publications in February of 1989.  The manuscript had been previously published in the late 1950s and was substantially reworked for publication by Bernhard.  It was added to the Bibliothek Suhrkamp in 1990 as Volume 1085.  See Bernhard, Works, Vol. 11, pp. 336ff.

    The world premiere of Heldenplatz took place on November 4, 1988 at the Burgtheater in Vienna in a production directed by Claus Peymann.  In his Chronicle entry for this date, Unseld noted:

“What a day!  In the morning I was with Marianne Fritz.  She reprimanded me simply because I had described Bernhard as a ‘specialist in exaggeration,’ which of course is Bernhard’s own description of himself.  Bernhard was understating, she thought.  She said that the situation in Vienna was much worse than Bernhard’s depiction of it.  This in a sense was the morning’s word on the evening’s performance. [...]

Then in the evening the performance of Bernhard’s Heldenplatz at the Burg.  Difficile est satiram non scribere.  Two months of tumult enveloped in scandal.  Was the play going to be banned, was Peymann going to have to leave Austria?  Mudslinging and threats directed at Bernhard.  With the exception of Die Presse, all of the most important organs of journalism pounce without permission on this text that nobody has seen; they quote excerpts from earlier versions of it. 

We are taking legal action against Basta and Die Kronenzeitung.  Our lawyer, Dr. Guido Kucsko, is lodging a legal claim against the newspapers, who are being required to issue apologies but are taking a snide tone again even while apologizing.

On the day of the performance there are demonstrations, then counterdemonstrations, and finally counter-counterdemonstrations.  When Ulla and I arrive at the Burg, there is a huge crowd of people, including some right-wingers who are in the mood to dish out dirt.  The box-office is crammed with people still trying to get tickets.  The performance takes place under police protection.  But I must say: the police behaved very reasonably, and the only uniformed officers in sight were actually there purely as honorary guests of the house.

In the afternoon our distributor punctually delivered the BS volume to the Viennese book dealers.  Thus, it was only then that friends and foes of the text could become directly acquainted with it.  The theater was obliged to fend off an insinuation in the Austrian parliament that it had issued complimentary tickets exclusively to people sympathetic to the play.  This was not the case.  Admittedly Peymann had described certain politicians, for example the Austrian foreign minister, as ‘free admission-seeking moochers whom we don’t need in our theater.’

The beginning of the performance at 7:00 p.m.  The mood is strikingly calm, apparently relaxed.  But when in the dramatically weak first scene Anneliese Römer as Zittel the landlady entered and made the first critical remark about Vienna and Austria, there ensued an orgy of hisses such as had probably never been heard at the Burg.  Then the orgy of hisses provoked applause, and the more the orgy of hisses crescendoed, the more the applause also crescendoed until it was as loud as a hurricane, and amid the duel of protestation and approbation, and thanks especially to a well-written and beautifully designed second scene with sets by Karl-Ernst Herrmann, the whole thing secured Bernhard and Peymann a genuine triumph.  Instead of lasting only two-and-a-half hours the whole thing lasted almost five hours.  Loud arguments during the intermission, arguments after the final curtain, but all told everybody was relieved.  After the final curtain, there were ovations for the actors, for Peymann, and for Thomas Bernhard, who came on to the stage for the first time ever and completely unexpectedly.  Even for him it was a very moving moment.  A writer was being transformed into a representative of his entire country.

The play may have certain flaws; the production may not have been perfect down to the last detail, but what was offered was still magnificent drama on a grand scale.  As I put it on Austrian television after the final curtain: a triumph for the play and its author, a triumph for Peymann, but also a triumph for this Viennese audience.

Sunday’s and Monday’s newspapers had just one topic: Peymann and Bernhard’s Viennese global theater.  Rolf Hochhuth in Die Welt am Sonntag: “The spectators delivered a standing ovation to this author, to whom by means of this homage they have affirmed that he is the greatest Austrian writer since the death of [Alexander] Lernet-Holenia.”

It was also a triumph for the actor Wolfgang Gasser, who embodied Professor Schuster’s brother.  Razumovsky will write in the FAZ: ‘This Professor Robert has certain lines that schoolchildren here will someday have to learn by heart, alongside a handful of those of Grillparzer, whether their author likes it or not: ‘The Austrians are obsessed with unhappiness; the Austrian is inherently unhappy--and if he is ever happy for a change, he feels ashamed and hides his happiness in his despair.’ The whole thing, writes Razumovsky, is ‘a kind of elevated act of art-husbandry, a kind of virtuoso temper tantrum.  Here Bernhard is clearly continuing the Austrian literary tradition from Nestroy to Doderer.’” 

3. This trip to Torremolinos on the Costa del Sol was Bernhard’s last one abroad.  He stayed in Spain through the end of 1988. 

Bernhard viewing the dress rehearsal of Heldenplatz from a box at the Burgtheater

in November 1988

Letter No. 523

[Address: Vienna; telegram]

Frankfurt am Main

November 24, 1988

dear mr bernhard

yesterday i received your letter of november 20.  for me a threshold of pain has been not only attained but exceeded.  after all we had in common for decades and especially in the past two years, you are disavowing me along with my employees who are devoted to and working for you, and you are disavowing the firm.  i can’t go on any longer.

yours siegfried unseld

Letter No. 524

Vienna

November 25, ’88

Dear Siegfried Unseld,

If, as your telegram proclaims, you “can’t go on any longer,” then just erase me from your firm’s catalogue and from your memory.

I was surely one of the most uncomplicated authors you ever had.1

Yours very respectfully,

Thomas Bernhard

    The end of the correspondence does not mark the last verbal exchange between Bernhard and Unseld.  In Salzburg on January 28, hence almost exactly two weeks before Bernhard’s death, the two of them met one last time.  Unseld reported on the meeting in his Travel Journal, Salzburg, Saturday, January 28, 1989: “It was very foggy in the morning when the plane took off, but afterwards the plane flew continuously over a blanket of clouds that fiercely reflected the sun and literally doubled me from both above and below; it was blinding.  A blind descent to Salzburg; suddenly the airport was there, radiant and dark.  Beauty and danger commingled.

I had agreed to meet Bernhard at the Sheraton at 11:00 a.m.  At the moment of my arrival at the hotel by taxi, Austrian radio announced that it was ‘11 o’clock on the dot.’

He was sitting in the lobby, dressed in elegant English clothes, a stylish red-striped shirt.  He affected the air of a charming and witty smoothie; I brought him a plastic bag with calcium tablets from Spain.  Of course in Austria there are such tablets that are just as effective, but they don’t taste the same; he said he would use these tablets to alleviate his cramps.  I was reserved in the truest sense of the the word; I waited for explanations, but he held on to his nervous-cum-anxious demeanor.  So he said that he had reckoned that I would be there punctually despite AUA, that he had told his brother that I was the most punctual person in the world.  That his brother was going to stop by again to pick him up at 2:00 p.m., so that whatever we couldn’t discuss in three hours would just have to go undiscussed.  He asked me if I had read Dalí’s obituary [Nachruf] in the FAZ.  Sure, he said, Dalí had been an eccentric, that people catcalled [nachgerufen] him and whatnot, but that at the same time he was the most normal person ever.  He said that people were accusing him of contriving scandals.  Bernhard had already read what I, on the plane, had also read: in that day’s SZ Tadeusz Rozewicz said: ‘Unlike Thomas Bernhard, for example, I don’t concoct scandals.  I don’t approve of that.’ He said that people accused him of contriving scandals when all the while he was laid up in his house in Gmunden and unable to go out anymore.  Naturally, he said, he himself had been doing everything wrong and thereby damaged his health.  For example, when he ran into Max Frisch at the airport in Málaga: at the time, the end of December 1988, all the flights had been canceled on account of a strike; only Swiss Air was taking passengers.  He said that Frisch had looked very droll, dressed as he had been like a hybrid of a tramp and a stranded fisherman; that he had been carrying a heavy basket, probably full of wine bottles, and Bernhard had tried to help him carry this basket, but had had no idea how heavy it would be.  He said that it had certainly done him no good, but that Frisch had looked simply horrible, not like a man who had just come out of a sanatorium but rather like somebody who needed to check into one.  Incidentally, he said, Frisch had asked him, because he had read the first few pages of Heldenplatz during his layover, when the premiere of the play was?  Who was pulling whose leg here?

After the first ten minutes, we went to a different part of the hotel and he came ‘to the point.’  He gave me the contract that he had finalized with Residenz Publications in Torremolinos on December 13, 1988.  (One presumes that Dr. Jochen Jung came to Torremolinos because Torremolinos is explicitly mentioned at the beginning, in the middle, and at the conclusion of the contract.)  He committed to Residenz Publications his work On High; a Rescue Attempt; Nonsense for ‘a one-time edition in a a format to be determined entirely by the author, and in an unlimited print-run.’  Residenz is permitted to negotiate rights to foreign-language editions.  Apart from these two rights it has no other rights.  ‘The author expressly waives financial proceeds from these two one-time rights and decrees that from these proceeds no donations or bequests of any sort may be remitted to any persons or institutions.’

On June 13, 1990 the rights are to revert to the author.

I explained to Bernhard that while the contract was certainly unambiguous on one level, it was also construable in a number of senses, because at least in theory Residenz Publications can print this one-time unlimited edition in a run of 100,000 copies and ‘sell it off’ until doomsday.  But that wasn’t the main problem: why, I asked him, hadn’t he also included the stipulation that the rights to the five other Residenz titles were to revert to him?  He didn’t want to talk about that, and so an awkward mood immediately set in.  He said that he couldn’t understand my reaction, that no matter what happened, I would find myself in the position of having to buy the rights from Residenz Publications.  I told him that this new contract had now made that practically impossible.

But I could easily see that in the light of his personal situation this issue no longer interested him, at least not urgently.  He said it was my affair, and that it would work itself out in the long run.  And then he described his new situation to me: In hora mortis.

He says that he doesn’t think that he will survive the year.  That the weakness of his heart, combined with an ever-increasingly noticeable dilation of the organ, is becoming more and more burdensome.  That operations are now out of the question; that he would have to have a heart transplant, but he doesn’t want one.  That he doesn’t want to check into a hospital ever again and most certainly doesn’t want to go into an intensive care unit and hang on tubes again. ‘[...] I’m leaving as I arrived, unnoticed.  Nobody is going to be allowed to hear about my death; my funeral is to be attended only by my brother and my sister, if they want to attend it.  Burgel Zeeh will be notified a week later.’

He says that he is having to acclimatize himself to the situation and that  he is managing to do so quite well.  That all told everything in his life has gone outstandingly well.  That everything he had touched he had turned into money; that in this respect he was just like Siegfried Unseld.  On Siegfried Unseld: sure, he said, 90% of the time Unseld was sympathetically and amicably disposed to him; the other 10% he and his firm spent being abominable to him in all sorts of ways, and after Unseld came Burgel Zeeh of course.  Basically the only people who mattered.  Of course, he said, he couldn’t complain; he had gotten everything he’d wanted; a person could hardly ask for anything more.  ‘Life is wonderful, the world is magnificent, we live in a grand age.’

He incidentally said that he was planning to annihilate everything, that there would be no posthumous papers.

I asked him about Newfoundland.  Yes, he said, the manuscript existed, but he would have to go over it again, and probably he wouldn’t be thrilled with it; he said that he couldn’t type anymore with his gouty fingers, that he would probably still jot down a note here and there with a pencil while sitting in bed. [...]

When I pressed him to try depicting his own situation in writing as Proust had done: Sure, he said, he still had the urge to write, ‘I could write another hundred books, but I don’t have the strength anymore.’

How did I envisage my administration of his literary estate?  I expounded to him my old idea of a three-headed committee–an heir, myself, and a critic or some other person who was ‘receptive’ to Bernhard’s work.  But he just laughed at all this.  He said that there were no critics or any other people who were ‘receptive’ to his work.  That in any case he didn’t want anything like that; rather, he wanted his brother and me to be joint executors of the estate, and in connection with this plan he had told his brother, had warned him, that I was an extremely crafty businessman whom he should never trust very much; but on the other hand, he said, his brother really didn’t need to get involved at all, because he, Bernhard, was of the opinion that in the end I really would arrange things in the best way, and that time had proved that what was best for Bernhard was also best for Unseld and/or vice-versa. […]

Then he got around to talking about Nathal (Ohlsdorf), his farmhouse with a courtyard, his main domicile, his work-site, probably his one true home.  Now, he said, he could never go back there; he found it too taxing to be there.  He could never leave the house; he even had to be led to dinner, or his dinner had to be brought to him.  I could hardly believe this.  Today, he said, was the exception; he was nervous, agitated, and this agitation was keeping him on his feet.

Nathal--I could sense where he was headed on this point--Nathal: he said that he wanted to place it in my hands; what did I say to that?  I said No, so he said he would just give it to his relatives as well.

So he wanted to bequeath Nathal to Siegfried Unseld.  He said that Nathal--the building, the property and the meadows, fields, and a patch of woodlands that were attached to it--was altogether worth two million deutschmarks, and oh miracle of miracles--I was supposed to convert it into a Bernhard museum!  Ideally a little ‘hut’ would be built a short distance from the house, and a caretaker could live in it along with everybody else who wanted to work at the museum.  What would be in it for the people who lived and worked there? I asked.  Well, he said, there would just be a caretaker who would keep an eye on things and then people who perhaps would have to be interested in his work, but they wouldn’t have to be scholars who were studying the work of Thomas Bernhard; other subjects could be studied there too.  Perhaps the only important thing would be to have people there who had spent some time living in the country.  I asked him why a new house would have to be built there given that the farmhouse itself was certainly big enough.  Yes, he said, that was true, but he said that he wanted to leave it untouched, that it should stay just the way it is now.  I opined that even so, there would still be plenty of room, that the two or three people involved could still be housed there.  In the end he came around to conceding this.  He said that it was just important to leave the ‘house part,’ his personal living space, undisturbed.  That all the rest really wasn’t all that important, but that this should be preserved.  And that I could rest assured that this would command an enormous amount of respect.  That there weren’t many writers whose dwellings and places of work had been handed down!  That he was now in this position and could play this role.  That in the end he was sure that after his death his work would enjoy a new renaissance.  A renaissance and an influence: he said his work had not been given enough exposure to the public, that Suhrkamp Publications had done too little, that it hadn’t campaigned for him at all, and that for example in the case of Heldenplatz it had not exploited the colossal publicity resources available and hadn’t placed any advertisements (he said: ‘any of the famous banner advertisements’)!  Why, he asked, had Suhrkamp Publications not made special mention of him in its jubilee schedule, for after all, he was an author in the edition suhrkamp!  There was no holding Bernhard back.  And he said that he could already envisage people coming there by bus.  And that I only needed to charge admission to make the museum economically viable.

In such a situation what can one say to an author?  That the idea is tempting but difficult to put into practice. [...] 

At this point in the conversation we shifted our meeting place to the hotel’s large restaurant and had a bite to eat at midday.  He kept emphasizing how physically demanding he found all this, that now he could only drink a small sip of beer, no tea, no coffee.  That his heart couldn’t take it anymore.  That he was forbidden to consume any stimulants or rich foods and that they were all lethal to him.  He kept mentioning Nathal.  No, he said, I shouldn’t let authors stay there.  That authors were incapable of putting themselves in other people’s shoes, and that every one of them thought he was the greatest.  In the same way, of course, that Dalí thought he was greater than Picasso.  But doesn’t Thomas Bernhard also see himself as the greatest?  He kept coming back to Max Frisch and his question about the date of the premiere of Heldenplatz.  Authors will be authors.

He inquired after my own state of health, after the duo in Klettenbergstrasse, after Burgel Zeeh, after Fellinger, who, he said, was of course probably still reading Handke’s manuscripts nonstop.  He said that  ultimately Beckett was the only one who mattered.  I showed him the title page of the December 1988 Theater heute with the gigantic signature: Beckett. Bernhard. Koltès.  Paris. London. Vienna: ‘You see, you see.  You only have to die to become famous.’

It was almost 2:00 p.m.; my plane was scheduled to take off at 3:00.  We rose, asked the waiter for our coats, which he had taken from us at the entrance.  Mine was still there, but Bernhard’s, a green loden coat-- ‘hand-sewn,’ he peevishly remarked--had vanished.  As I was about to get into my taxi, I noticed his brother arriving.  I asked him if Bernhard’s illness was as he had described it to me.  Yes, he said, it was very serious.  I brought the two brothers together and rode off.”   

In his Chronicle entry on Bernhard’s death, Unseld again wrote about this meeting in Salzburg; under the date heading of February 16, one reads: “In the morning there is news from Vienna that Thomas Bernhard is gravely ill. […]

At the firm, during a press conference, the news:

Thomas Bernhard is dead.  Dr. Peyer the attorney, writing to me on behalf of Bernhard’s sister, confirms the news (see note).  Thomas Bernhard is dead.  He died on Sunday, February 12, 1989.  The news arrived just as he was being laid to rest.  It was Bernhard’s wish that nobody should take any notice of this; he has gotten his wish--essentially if not in every respect.

Thomas Bernhard is dead.  This was not unexpected, and yet it is very difficult to take in.  I am writing, amid incessant interruptions, the obituary for the Börsenblatt, and perhaps also an obituary for the Austrian newspapers:

‘Thomas Bernhard is dead.  He died on Sunday, February 12, in Gmunden and was laid to rest on February 16, 1989 in Vienna, at the side of his Lebensmensch, about whom he wrote: ‘All of a sudden we are separated from the person to whom we basically owe everything and who has literally given us their all…’  Thomas Bernhard gave his all.  His first novel, Frost, was published by Insel Publications in 1963.  In this book, the great writer outlined his poetics: ‘To explore the unexplorable.  To uncover it to the extent of disclosing a certain astonishing stratum of possibilities.’  Thomas Bernhard managed to do just this, one book at a time, one play at a time.  No other writer of the present has exerted such an influence, no other writer has shaped the landscape of the theater in the way that he has.  This amiable human being’s life was a tightrope walk; it aimed for wholeness and perfection, all the while knowing that wholeness combined with perfection is unendurable.  ‘If you enjoy being alive as I do, you simply can’t help living with a kind of constant feeling of love-hate towards everything.’  This was even true of his stance towards the country of Austria, in which he lived: a stance of proximity and distance, more love than hate.  An Austrian attitude: simple, complicated.  ‘I am thoroughly happy, from head to toe, from my left hand to my right, and this is like a cross.  And that’s what’s so beautiful about it.’  Suhrkamp Publications mourns its great author.  His work will live.”

I can sense how this news is really moving me in being expected and yet unexpected.  How relieved I am that we got to speak with each other one more time. [...]

In the morning a long telephone conversation with Thomas Bernhard’s brother, Dr. Peter Johannes Fabjan.  He tells me that he was with Bernhard and his lawyer in Salzburg on Friday, that the will was signed and hence is legally valid.  He says that on Saturday they were still in Nathal [...] He, Bernhard’s brother, says that he kept track of the trajectory of Bernhard’s illness, an illness that a patient normally manages to live with for only two to four years.  That thanks to his iron will and his brother’s help Bernhard lived with it for ten years.  But that towards the end he realized that he no longer had the strength to write, that he was exhausted, but that on that last night he talked and talked, including about his relationship with me; he said that he had been very happy that this relationship had been so productive, and that he would die a happy man.

I drive to the firm, and then at midday I fly to Vienna. [...] The drive to Grinzig Cemetery.  I found the grave; it was strewn with red roses; a man who had just strewn some roses of his own took a snapshot: so now Thomas Bernhard is lying beside, or properly speaking above, his Lebensmensch.  I think back on him with affection.  With a profound sense of satisfaction in knowing that I have said as much to the Austrians with my eye-catching notice in the newspaper [a half-page advertisement in Die Presse, February 18, 1989].”

        

Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld "walking and thinking" (so the editors) on the lawn of the "Krucka," one of Bernhard's houses in the Gmunden area.

THE END

Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2016 by Douglas Robertson

Source: Thomas Bernhard. Siegfried Unseld. Der Briefwechsel.  Herausgegeben von [Edited by] Raimund Fellinger, Martin Huber und Julia Ketterer.  Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2011.

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