Icon: enlarge
Playwright Bernhard 1976: "My illness is distance"
Photo:
Michael Horowitz / Anzenberger
Loneliness, contempt, keeping the world at a distance.
These basic motifs of his life and writing would have prepared the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931 to 1989) for the world these days quite well.
And so do his readers.
Out of the wing chair of self-isolation, he observed and condemned the world and people throughout his life in his novel “Holzfalls” and actually in all of his works.
"My illness is distance," he once wrote to his younger half-brother Peter Fabjan.
Keeping the world at bay for a lifetime, keeping people at bay, insulting them, describing them.
Create total self-art out of the lockdown world.
Long before this pandemic forced people to live as loneliness artists.
Fabjan was born seven years after Thomas Bernhard, he worked as an internist and in the last years of his brother's life was something like his brother's personal doctor, who visited him every evening, accompanied him on his travels and stayed by his side until the moment of death.
After Bernhard's death, he looked after his legacy, established an archive and a foundation to look after the work.
He himself always stayed in the background.
Now, more than 30 years after the death of Bernhard, he has written a book about him.
Read more with Spiegel Plus
More perspectives, more understanding.
Your advantages with SPIEGEL +
Icon: Check
SPIEGEL as a magazine
as an app, e-paper and on the e-reader
Icon: Check
All articles on SPIEGEL.de
Exclusive texts for SPIEGEL + readers
Icon: Check
Try one month for free
Cancel anytime online
A price
only € 19.99 per month
One month for € 0.00
Try now for 0.00 € Buy nowArrow to the right
Already have a digital subscription? Register here
Restore iTunes subscription
SPIEGEL + is processed via your iTunes account and paid for with a purchase confirmation.
24 hours before it expires, the subscription is automatically renewed by one month at the current price of € 19.99.
You can cancel the subscription at any time in the settings of your iTunes account.
In order to use SPIEGEL + outside of this app, you must link the subscription to a SPIEGEL ID account immediately after purchase.
With the purchase you accept our general terms and conditions and privacy policy.