Correction

by Thomas Bernhard

  Sifting and Sorting

  He, Roithamer, had never had to get away from Altensam, he had, in fact, struggled all his life only to draw closer to Altensam, to make himself understood where it had always been impossible, a crazy dream, where it always would be impossible for him to be understood, Roithamer had written, nor had he ever achieved the slightest rapprochement with Altensam, for he had always been a foreign element in Altensam. He simply wasn’t the man to adapt himself, against his grain, against the dictates of his character, the word opportune was totally alien, totally inapplicable to anything he could ever think or do, but as for me and my outlook and my ideas and everything, I’d always been an opportunist, Roithamer wrote. Everything in Altensam had always been impossibly hard for him, so he couldn’t stand Altensam from the beginning, he couldn’t give in to Altensam and its rules, he took the first opportunity to get clear of Altensam. Just as Altensam was alien to him, so he must have seemed a foreign element to his family, they had in the end worn each other out and used each other up in chronic mutual recriminations, primordial recriminations, Roithamer wrote, that is, he, Roithamer, on the one side and Roithamer’s family on the other side, were wearing each other out all the time in Altensam in the most inhuman way, a way least worthy of human beings, in this process of sheer mutual exhaustion. His natural bent for studying, i.e., for studying everything, however, had enabled him quite early in life, by studying Altensam, to see through Altensam and thereby to see through himself and to achieve insight and to take action, and thanks to these constant ongoing lifelong studies he’d always had to do as he ended up doing; all his life, though he’d rather call it his existence, or better still, his deathward existence, everything he’d ever done had been based on nothing but this habit of studying which he’d never been able to shake off, where other people get ahead easily and often quite rapidly, he’d never gotten ahead easily or rapidly, obsessed as he was with the habit of always studying, all of him, his organism, his mind, and everything he did, determined by this habit of studying. Everything had always come to him the hard way, the hardest possible. Yet it was evident almost from the beginning that such constant, above normal efforts paid off, Roithamer’s words, because of them everything I did went deeper, no step was taken without a thorough grounding in what preceded it, Roithamer wrote, nothing without completing all prior studies or at least trying to complete them, without trying to have first a clear understanding of everything that went before, although I knew, of course, that no clear understanding of anything is possible, only an approach to an understanding, an approximate though not an actual understanding, nevertheless an approximation. And so, while I loved Altensam more than anything in the world, because Altensam has always been closer to me than anything in the world, I also hated it more than anything in the world, because I’ve always been a foreign element there from the outset, and all my life, my whole existence, my deathward existence, had always been determined by that circumstance, causing a monstrous waste of all my energies. The question has always been only, how can I go on at all, not in what respect and in what condition, so Roithamer. But no one in my vicinity had even the merest inkling of what was going on inside the young man I was, they were never capable of conceiving the possibility of so devastating a state of mind that could determine and devastate and ruin an entire life like this, because they simply did not want to think about it, everything in Altensam always opposed thinking as such, it must be said categorically once and for all, to the discredit of Altensam, that Altensam was opposed to any kind of thought.

  Altensam was always a place disposed to take action, there one took action without stopping to think, there action always excluded thought, and it still is like that, except that nowadays there’s not even any action left in Altensam, the Altensamers today are incapable of taking action, they are condemned to impotence, for lo these many years, they’ve been condemned to inaction, because their time is up, it’s all up with them. But what was Altensam like only thirty or thirty-five years ago? It’s a question I must face again and again, it’s the most important question of all, I must ask myself, What was Altensam, where I come from, thirty or thirty-five years ago, when I was beginning to think for myself? A composite of masonry and men where action was taken without prior thought, for centuries on end. At the outset, in earliest childhood, he, Roithamer, had not yet revealed himself as the person he manifestly came to be later on, not for a long time, not until he was well into grade school, had he himself understood who he really was, that basically, even though he was from Altensam or because he was from Altensam, he had always been against Altensam, as a child he had not yet been recognizably against Altensam though he’d turned against Altensam long since, but outwardly his childhood, at least his earliest childhood, had seemed to be a normal Altensam childhood, not yet an anti-Altensam childhood, although even then, as soon as I began to think at all, as I’ve said, everything inside me turned against Altensam, against everything connected with Altensam, connected with Altensam to this day, anyway there have always been two Altensams, so Roithamer, the one that I loved because it was not against me and the other one, the second one, which I’ve always hated because it was absolutely against me, from the start and with the utmost ruthlessness. The Altensam that I always loved, however, is not the Altensam that has nothing to do with the people in Altensam, Roithamer wrote, it is the one in which my nature always found sanctuary, while the other one, the one I hated, was always the one in which I never found sanctuary, the one that always rubbed me the wrong way. So when I say that I hate Altensam I always mean the Altensam in which I never found sanctuary, the one that always rubbed me the wrong way, rejected me, which is why I had to reject it in turn, and not the other one in which my nature always found refuge and where I was at least left in peace. Of course I tend to be preoccupied with the Altensam that refused me and rejected me and rubbed me the wrong way, not with the other one, as I am always preoccupied with everything that gives me no peace, repels me, rubs me the wrong way. There’s always the kind that leaves us in peace and lets us be ourselves and lets us develop in so many, sometimes quite wonderful ways, and then there’s the other kind that rubs us the wrong way and gives us no peace, no peace all our lives long, and so we are preoccupied with it all our lives long, it makes us fidgety, we become more fidgety day by day, there is no escaping it for the rest of our lives, and so we become angry with everything for the rest of our lives. All the stuff that’s constantly on my mind comes from this, this turmoil, and not from the other, the one that leaves me in peace, Roithamer wrote. From my earliest childhood, in Altensam, it was always the one that gave me no peace that I kept thinking about, not the other one, naturally. We speak, when we speak with all our being, only as we are driven by that unrest, not the other, Roithamer wrote. I have always spoken only out of that unrest, I was never driven to speak by the other one, which after all leaves me in peace, and so enables me to speak of my unrest.

  It is not only a need we have to speak constantly, and to complain, and at least keep our attention on whatever is born of our unrest, since only these thoughts and feelings and thought-feelings and vice versa of course have the greater significance. Peace is not life, Roithamer wrote, perfect peace is death, as Pascal said, wrote Roithamer. But such phrases will get me nowhere, I must get away from these phrases, so Roithamer, I shouldn’t waste my time on truisms already demonstrated by history. My awakening in Altensam was the simultaneous decision to get away from Altensam, to get away from everything, to push off from everything that is Altensam, and this process of pushing off is all I have accomplished so far, no matter where I did it, or under what circumstances, and even when on the face of it there seemed to be no connection with Altensam whatsoever. An awakening in my room in Altensam, perhaps, in my turret room, an awakening at the south wall or the east wall, I loved the south wall and the east wall equally, an awakening perhaps under the linden tree or in the kitchen or in the entrance hall where I often sat for hours on e
nd, waiting for my parents, in the icy cold, studying the floor planks in the hall and then, beginning with the floor planks, studying everything, the staircase, the lamps on the staircase, the chapel door, the kitchen door, the objects in the hall, or else an awakening in one of the cellars where I used to hide so often, sometimes in the wine cellar, sometimes in the beer cellar, sometimes in the apple cellar, so many cellars in Altensam, in one of those cellars came that awakening against Altensam, against everything connected with Altensam, or perhaps on that cliff in the woods where I went so often, or in the clearing where they put up the iron-cross memorial for an ancestor who was killed by a falling tree hit by lightning, or in my brothers’ room or in my sister’s room, the music room perhaps, or possibly the farm buildings, wherever the woodcutters, the farmhands, the maids are put up, I don’t know, Roithamer’s words. It might have been during one of those walks I took with my father, those silent walks, always in the same direction, year in, year out, the same way down from Altensam into that vast primeval forest, that forest which my father always referred to as the natural forest, since it hadn’t been planted in accordance with the rules of forestry but had simply grown, without human intervention, a forest that simply blew in by the most natural route, as my father always said, my father loved this forest, Roithamer wrote, his walks took him only into this forest, and I could come along, but I had to keep quiet. Quite possibly it happened on one of those walks that lasted six or seven hours during which the silence must never be broken. Deep down my father had loved only this natural forest, with its seeds blown in from anywhere, its random mixture of trees, Roithamer wrote, and nothing else.

  My father’s life was unimaginable without this natural, wind-seeded, mixed forest, Roithamer wrote. On one of those walks my sudden awakening against Altensam and against everything connected with Altensam, Roithamer wrote, “everything connected with Altensam” is underlined. Or else it happened the time I was with my mother in the socalled pine woods, or with my sister in her room which was next to my room, I don’t know. But it was an awakening, a sudden awakening of my opposition against Altensam and against everything connected with Altensam, which determined the entire rest of my life. From that moment on I wanted to get away, to get out, but I had many more years to wait. Light broke with my school years, with the opportunity to get away from Altensam on the way down to school, to make contact by myself with other people on this road, with the kind of people who at least had nothing directly to do with Altensam, a wholly different sort of people. For I’d had no opportunity to make contact with other people, in full critical awareness, before my school days, for I’d always been prevented from making such contacts as I could have had in Altensam, in preparation for later contacts as it were, from making contacts up in Altensam to prepare for making contacts down below. If I visited the woodcutters, I was immediately called back home, the same for our own farmhands, but of course I’d always felt attracted to these people, probably from my earliest days and to a great degree, because such contacts were forbidden. And it was precisely their keeping me away from all others than those born at Altensam which caused me to hate them, later on, to hate all of them and everything connected with them. It was hatred, nothing but hatred, Roithamer wrote. The word “hatred” is underlined. But the people with whom I was denied and forbidden to make and keep contact, I loved, so Roithamer. The word “loved” is underlined. My childhood was nothing but wanting to get away from what I’d been forced into from the beginning, in Altensam, that is, and wanting to get into that other world which I was refused and denied and forbidden, wanting this with a perverse determination, as I now see. They must have sensed that I was different even from my own siblings, who had unquestioningly obeyed all the rules at Altensam, who had never rebelled, in contrast to myself who had rebelled from earliest childhood, three or four years old, as I know, against the regulations and against the brutality of those regulations enforced by my parents or the other socalled authorities in Altensam, they had sensed that from my earliest childhood I had felt absolutely independent, and later on had thought along absolutely independent lines, never willing to submit to their ideas and their orders. It was their misfortune to have brought me into the world, this could not be undone, though they probably often wished they could falsify history to this extent, so Roithamer. Neither my parents nor my siblings nor any of the others who came from Altensam or were connected with Altensam, the whole family in all its distant branches, could ever understand that they were confronted with someone who was always against them and their circumstances and conditions with all his mind and feeling, someone they themselves had brought into the world and who bore their name. And so the fact that my father left Altensam to me, so Roithamer, thinking that his other two sons and his only daughter, my sister, could be satisfied with a financial settlement by me, is nothing but an expression of my father’s intention to destroy Altensam by making such a will, giving a rude shock to all and sundry, a will which incidentally was contested in vain, by my brothers, father meant to destroy Altensam by such a will because he knew and above all consciously felt that he was destroying Altensam by leaving it to me, so Roithamer. No mad caprice on his part, he knew what he was doing, so Roithamer had added. For my father knew (seismographically) that Altensam’s time had come. But he preferred, so Roithamer, to destroy Altensam totally by willing it to me, thereby to destroy it totally in the shortest possible time, because he always fully understood that I hate Altensam, rather than let it gradually sink further into decline as would undoubtedly have been the case had he left Altensam not to me but to my oldest brother or to the younger one, or to both of them together, for there was never any question but that he’d have my sister’s share paid out to her.

  When I sell Altensam, as I now intend to do, so Roithamer, and use the proceeds, and that must be a very high sum, I’d rather drag out the sale a little longer than rush it, Altensam must bring a very high price indeed, and when, using these high proceeds, I do all I possibly can for the ex-convicts after their release from the penitentiaries, then my father’s wish to destroy Altensam totally will have been fulfilled. Ads, possibly contact real estate agents, but cautiously, so Roithamer. By selling Altensam I’ll fulfill my dream of doing all I can for the outcasts of society, for the most outcast of all, whom society itself has always most complacently driven into crime, and by that I mean always most complacently without giving it much thought, let alone paid any attention specifically to what it was doing to them, I shall be helping those people whom society has made into, as it pleases to call them, criminals, because society doesn’t think, because it hates thinking, which is alien to its nature, more than anything. For me nothing can be more important than helping those released prisoners, using the proceeds from the sale of Altensam, but also to do something for those still imprisoned, as much as possible. And to smash, to destroy such a property as Altensam, which has simply outlasted its time, for the sake of such an undertaking, is at the moment more important to me than anything else. First, I must put the finishing touches on the Cone, the end is in sight there, secondly, I must sell Altensam for the sake of the convicts. Human society is absolutely shameless vis-à-vis its criminals, whom it locks up in its penitentiaries, so Roithamer, in full consciousness and with all the brutality and meanness and inhumanity which are its distinguishing characteristics, society catapults these people into their so-called crimes which are simply nothing but traps, death traps, set up for them by this inhuman society, and then turns away from them. If I have a mission at all, it is surely this, to help the convicts, those so-called criminals, who are actually our sick people, so Roithamer, those whom society has catapulted into their sickness. No man has the right ever to speak of criminals, no one and never, so Roithamer, it’s always, as with the others, a case of sickness, of those sickened by society, and all of society is nothing but hundreds and many hundreds of millions of people fallen sick of themselves, except that some of them, the unlucky and the most unlucky of t
hem, the most slandered and betrayed, the victims of all the ridicule and mockery and meanness and all that human filth, are locked up and the others aren’t. The purchase price must be the highest possible, so Roithamer. Get various assessments etcetera, so Roithamer. Use the money to do everything possible for those people, so Roithamer, build homes, buildings for them, taking into account my experiences with the Cone project, so Roithamer, always near the centers, population centers, avoid anything contributing to isolation, disregarding the fact that everything is isolation, opportunities for work, opportunities to find occupations, optimal freedom of the individual. Intellectual freedom, physical freedom, so

  Roithamer. Create new provisions for these people. Provision for their entertainment. Growth, so Roithamer. When we are obsessed with an idea and suddenly have an opportunity to realize this idea, because we have been constantly and incessantly preoccupied with this idea and always to the highest degree, always concentrated upon this idea (see Cone), until we became nothing but a mind concentrated only on this idea, when we can make our prediction come true, no matter how crazy we’ve been thought to be and even considered ourselves to be on account of such an idea. When despite everything we’ve succeeded in the realization of this idea. When for years, for decades, we’ve paid attention to nothing but this idea; with which we are identical. We achieve only that aim upon which we concentrate one hundred per cent, including our so-called subconscious, when we pay heed to nothing but this one aim for the longest time until the moment when we have fulfilled this aim. When we are always aware of the fact that everything unites in conspiring against our aim, that everything outside ourselves and very often too a great deal within ourselves is nothing but a conspiracy against our plan, against our aim. When we ruthlessly take a stand, and most ruthlessly of all against everything that obstructs our work toward our aim, everything that torpedoes our aim, until we finally take a stand against ourselves, because we also can no longer believe that we can achieve our aim despite this whole comprehensive, all-comprehending resistance and therefore revulsion against our aim, because we are constantly attacked by doubts of ourselves and thereby of our aim and become weakened by these doubts, which makes it seem impossible that we will achieve our aim, but we must allow nothing, “nothing” is underlined, to deter us from our aim, as I have never let myself be deterred from an aim of mine, so Roithamer, for, so Roithamer, everything is always against every aim. Even the smallest objective must be achieved despite total opposition, how much more so the great objective, so Roithamer. Suddenly there’s an idea and it demands realization, our entire life, our entire existence consists only of such ideas demanding realization, once this process breaks off, our life breaks off, we’re dead. We consist of nothing but ideas that surface inside us and that we want to realize, that we must realize, or else we’re dead, so Roithamer.