A Translation of "Bernhards Plädoyer," a 1984 letter from Thomas Bernhard to the editors of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Bernhard’s Plea

On the lawsuit in Vienna

Occasioned by Woodcutters [1]

I know that in central Europe it is unprecedented for a literary critic and editor of the literary supplement of a so-called reputable newspaper to haul an author and fellow-countryman into court on account of a work of art produced by this author.  Mr. Haider can be motivated by nothing but animosity towards me.  I have seen him in person exactly three times in my life: first six years ago in Trieste, where a so-called symposium on my work was held.  He spoke to me, but he did not interest me. Next, at a dinner-table at the hotel Regina a year ago, when he nodded at me.  Then, at the airport at Frankfurt am Main a couple of weeks ago, when he nodded at me.  Mr. Haider nodded and waved and immediately looked down at the floor.

Mr. Haider urged Mr. Lampersberg to file this complaint that Mr. Lampersberg has filed against me.  Mr. Haider maintains that my character Auersberger in Woodcutters is Mr. Lampersberg.  Mr. Lampersberg has nothing to do with my Auersberger.  Mr. Auersberger in my book is called Auersberger and not Lampersberg, and all the places in my book are different from the places inhabited by Mr. Lampersberg.  That Mr. Lampersberg glimpses resemblances to himself in my Mr. Auersberger is possible, because every reader glimpses resemblances to himself in the text he is reading.

And so from now on all the people who discover some sort of resemblance to themselves in every book are going to run to the law courts and have these books in which they have detected some resemblance confiscated.  And all these readers who have detected some resemblance can rest assured that the book that they have run to the courts to lodge a complaint against and in which they could not help detecting some resemblance will be confiscated.

Even before the author of one of these books has been questioned, armed policemen are being sent into all the Austrian bookstores, and the books supposedly containing something that the instigator of confiscation supposedly construes as a resemblance are being confiscated.  All at the behest of the instigator of confiscation, absent any say from the author.  The instigator of confiscation can look on with delight at the confiscation of the book in which he has detected some sort of resemblance to himself; the author too can look on at this confiscation, albeit with the greatest concern, nay, with outright horror!

The court is confiscating a book that nobody can have known the slightest thing about at the moment of the confiscation order, and doing so solely at the behest of the instigator of confiscation and on the additional evidence of the instigator of confiscation’s gross misquotation from an advance copy.

The court is confiscating on the additional evidence of an expert opinion delivered by Haider the literary critic, an opinion that is not merely bristling with errors but also catastrophically misconceived at its very core.

The court is also making this catastrophically error-ridden, false, and mendacious expert opinion its own, in the text of its confiscation order, and is having the book confiscated and does not even know who the author of this book is, because it has yet to hear a word of testimony from him, as is evident, and it is confiscating the book in a coup de main; it is summarily slamming the book shut.  Justice has in this case flagrantly disregarded its duty of care. 

The author has seen how his books have been cleared out of the bookstores by police brutality, and is completely helpless.  The author awaits a written statement from the court.  No such statement arrives.  A full six weeks (mark my words: six weeks!) after the confiscation the author receives from the court a summons in which it is mentioned that a hearing against him is scheduled for November 9.  For six long weeks the court deemed the author unworthy of the most trifling communication.  The author has been treated as a minor by the Austrian judicial system.  The court, which has carried out the confiscation and thereby inflicted irreparable injury on the author, has violated the author’s rights in the crassest fashion.  I am certain that in any other country in Europe, apart from the eastern dictatorships, such a procedure would be impossible.

The author has written a book entitled Woodcutters, in which a dinner party hosted by a Mr. and Mrs. Auersberger serves as the setting of the happenstances and circumstances of this book.  This Mr. and Mrs. Auersberger have nothing to do with the plaintiff, Mr. Auersberger.  Mr. Lampersberg, who used to be called Lampersberger and who in recent decades has been repeatedly and in any case at least partially declared a legal minor, sees resemblances to himself in my book.  That is his problem.  To drag me into court with the assistance of Mr. Haider and to inflict irreparable injury not only on me but in the final analysis on every writer of fictional literature in this country with the assistance of a frivolously finagled judicial confiscation order ought not to be his privilege.

In a radio interview Mr. Haider has proclaimed that he trusts the court implicitly!  What a fine future writers and literature have to look forward to in the house of Austria, a future when literary critics will automatically place their implicit trust in the courts!  I suggest to Mr. Haider that he look through all my previously published books to see if he comes across many more characters who bear plausible comparison to certain people.  He will track down hundreds of such apparent dead ringers in my books, and then, I presume, successfully incite each of their supposed counterparts to file a lawsuit against me.

Perhaps in the future it will be the remit of this country’s literary critics to alert semblable depictees to their depicted semblables and to bring the originators of these depictions to court.  And perhaps in the future it will be the remit of our judicial system to pass judgment on written works of art and in one case after another frivolously, nay, blindly to hound authors with a radical confiscation order, as it has done in the case of my Woodcutters.

In this trial there are only two guilty parties: Mr. Haider and the judicial system, which has evinced neither the slightest regard for its obligations nor the faintest consciousness of its responsibilities.  That this judicial system will be chastened as a result of having behaved so uncouthly and negligently I do not believe.  I am standing before the bench of an Austrian court for the fourth and not the first time under the auspices of a complaint that never would have been brought to trial in any other central European country and certainly not in any so-called civilized nation, and therefore I must submit myself for the fourth time to a judicial procedure that is nothing but depressing and degrading and in the long run incapacitating to my artistic work, which is my sole mission in life; and it really would seem as though the government of this country had no other interest in me beyond dragging me into court from time to time.

What is coming to light here is intolerable to an accused party in any reputable Austrian courtroom.  Literally abrading and degrading and intolerable.  And it ought not to be happening.  Any paragraphs in our judicial code that allow such intolerable conditions to be imposed on defendants and accused parties ought to be summarily abolished.  Such paragraphs hardly redound to the credit of a country’s system of government and render that system not merely ridiculous but also ominous.  My book has been dragged through the dirt thanks to the plaintiff and his abettor, their lawsuit, and its consequences.  It is high time for the book to be pulled back out of that dirt.

Thomas Bernhard 

[1] Editors’ note.  First published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 15, 1984.  Below the article the editors remarked, “Dr. Hans Haider is the cultural editor of the Viennese daily newspaper Die Presse.”

Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2014 by Douglas Robertson

Source: Der Wahrheit auf der Spur.  Reden, Leserbriefe, Interviews, Feuilletons.  Herausgegeben von Wolfram Bayer, Raimund Fellingerund und Martin Huber [Stalking the Truth.  Speeches, Open Letters, Interviews, Newspaper Articles.  Edited by Wolfram Bayer et al.](Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2011), pp. 226-230.

THE END

A Translation of "Ich hab' praktisch ehh alle gegen mich" (Thomas Bernhard interviewed by Brigitte Hofer in 1984).

I Can Count Practically Every Single One of Them as an Enemy [1]

BRIGITTE HOFFER: We reached Thomas Bernhard by telephone in the afternoon.  He spoke in a relaxed tone.

THOMAS BERNHARD: At the moment it’s no concern of mine.  It’s first and foremost a financial matter, isn’t it?—something Suhrkamp has got to contend with.  And of course one has got to know who initiated it; as of now, I don’t know nothin’.

BRIGITTE HOFFER: You don’t know who initiated it?

THOMAS BERNHARD: No, and if I had to guess who it was … a whole gang of writers are secretly behind it, writers who of course are known to me.  I can count practically every single one of them as an enemy, and of course they’re always ringing one another up.

BRIGITTE HOFFER: Is what’s happening now a confirmation of your book?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Yes, but of course these people are much more horrible than anything that can be put in writing.  That’s the truth.  They ring one another up even in connection with the “Best-of List,” as in the past year’s best [i.e., books? (DR)]: “We can’t allow so-and-so to score one more point”’; there are about fifteen people who get together and fix the whole thing; but the whole thing’s a stupid joke anyway, isn’t it?

BRIGITTE HOFFER: But perhaps they, too, feel they’ve been horribly dealt with in some way.

THOMAS BERNHARD: By whom?

BRIGITTE HOFFER: Why, by you, of course, via your book!

THOMAS BERNHARD: But what’s in the book isn’t of my making; it’s just the plain and simple truth!  These people commit acts of the most wanton savagery and think they can go on committing them for decades, behind everybody’s back, but they simply can’t.  At some point somebody really has said such things.  Except that in the book the names, the places, are different, which means it’s legally unassailable, to my mind.  But now it is a legal matter, isn’t it?— in Austria if you can be sued for something, somebody will sue you for it.  I obviously can’t do a thing about that—except inasmuch as I have plenty experiences with such cases, like for instance the time, ten years ago, when I said that a certain priest had a rosy peasant’s face, and I was prosecuted for it.  That kind of thing is always possible in Austria.

BRIGITTE HOFFER: Sure, but when you use names like, for instance, Jeannie...

THOMAS BERNHARD: You can check for yourself if she’s called “Jeannie Bilroth,” since nobody should ever write a book again, because everybody’s going to recognize herself in some part of it.  The book is half made up and half true; it’s a mixture, so what’s all the fuss about?  Basically the horribleness of people beggars any possible description; that’s the gist of what I think.

BRIGITTE HOFFER: Are you angry right now?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Well, I mean, what am I supposed to do?  I’ve always been alone, and that’s always going to be a done deal.  There’s nothin’ to say: if somebody wants to sue me, if somebody does sue me, there’s nothin’ I can do. When and only when they do I’ll have somethin’ to say.  When you’re taken to court, you have to say somethin’, to testify—that I know, because after all I have already been through three trials.

BRIGITTE HOFFER: Were you ever convicted at the end of any of these trials?

THOMAS BERNHARD: Each of them ended in an out-of-court settlement.

[1] Editors' note: Transcript of an interview first aired on the ORF program Abendjournal on August 29, 1984.  First published in Von einer Katastrophe in die andere, edited by Sepp Dreissinger, Weitra, 1992, pp. 114-118.

The interviewer, Brigitte Hoffer, provided a spoken introduction: “Austria’s cultural life is one scandal richer.  At the request of a plaintiff whose identity is not known, the author Thomas Bernhard’s latest book, entitled Woodcutters, was confiscated under the auspices of an interlocutory injunction.  The plaintiff believed himself libeled by Bernhard’s novel, which deals very roughly with Austria’s creative artists. Bernhard attacks the Austrian cultural scene in general and the Burgtheater in particular.  The publication of the German firm of Suhrkamp was delivered to the bookstores only a few days ago and has now disappeared from them.

“A soiree in the Gentzgasse in Vienna.  Everyone is awaiting the dinnertime arrival of a prominent Burgtheater actor who wishes to mingle with the illustrious guests after a premiere of The Wild Duck—this is the setting and starting-point of Thomas Bernhard’s latest book Woodcutters, a book that like many other works of the great literary lone wolf unceremoniously settles his score with Austria, with its culture and its cultural scene.

“A sample passage: ‘The career of the majority of artists in Austria consists in currying favor with and sponging off the government, no matter who is in power, throughout one’s life.  The career of an Austrian artist is a vulgar and mendacious path of governmental opportunism that is paved with stipends and prizes and wallpapered with medals and merit badges and ends in a grave of honor in the Central Cemetery.’

“Bernhard’s chief targets this time round are artists and cultural functionaries—men and women of letters, Burgtheater actors, composers with fictitious names.  A certain person detected a portrait of himself in Bernhard’s text and filed a lawsuit.  His lawyer, Dr. Edwin Morent, says, ‘I am in no position to divulge my client’s name.  I can only say that Thomas Bernhard’s work is a roman à clef that personally attacks my client’s right of publicity.   In the light of the danger that would be occasioned by any delay, the Vienna Regional court has issued an interlocutory injunction.  On the authority of this injunction our security services, meaning the police departments and constabularies throughout Austria, have already been ordered to prohibit any further sale of the novel and to confiscate all copies of the novel from the booksellers.’”

The background: On August 21, 1984, the composer Gerhard Lampersberg, whom Bernhard had befriended in the nineteen-fifties, had at the Vienna Regional Court filed a complaint against Thomas Bernhard and Siegfried Unseld for defamation of character and libel in the novel Woodcutters, and had immediately requested an interlocutory injunction.  The request was granted on August 27, 1984, and the book was removed from all Austrian bookstores on August 29.  The book critic of the Viennese daily newspaper Die Presse, Hans Haider, being in possession of an advance copy of the novel, had informed Lampersberg of the contents of Woodcutters (See also “"Interdiction" and “Bernhard’s Plea” [yet to be translated (DR)]).  The complaint was withdrawn by Lampersberg at the beginning of 1985. 

THE END

Translation unauthorized but Copyright ©2014 by Douglas Robertson

Source: Der Wahrheit auf der Spur.  Reden, Leserbriefe, Interviews, Feuilletons.  Herausgegeben von Wolfram Bayer, Raimund Fellingerund und Martin Huber [Stalking the Truth.  Speeches, Open Letters, Interviews, Newspaper Articles.  Edited by Wolfram Bayer et al.](Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2011), pp. 223-224.