Correction

by Thomas Bernhard

  Every idea and every pursuit of an idea inside us is life, so Roithamer, the lack of ideas is death. And the person under consideration may appear as simple as we choose to think, which he never really is, however, or else as complicated as we like to think, which he never is either, so Roithamer. A man’s lack of ideas is his death, so Roithamer, just think how many there are quite without ideas, entirely lacking any idea, they don’t exist. Ads to begin with, then real estate agents, so Roithamer, but the utmost caution is called for with those real estate agents, it’s the same as with everything else, the utmost mistrust is in order, the more mistrust the better, but then, once a certain point of understanding has been reached, action must be taken. We always need to compare the various possibilities, without a chance to compare, we can’t think, we can’t act, we’re stymied, so Roithamer. Compare properties and prices, so Roithamer. Find out about the actual situation in real estate, the market situation. Understand that sellers and buyers always play the same roles, always liable to be conned by the other fellow. What a sensation when I sell Altensam, so Roithamer, so it must all be kept in the background, handled as inconspicuously as possible. No talk about it, not even when it’s done, no talk whatsoever about it. And take care beforehand that, first of all, my sister’s interests are safeguarded, that no one is unfairly implicated in that sale, not even my brothers, although to spare my brothers verges on idiocy, when did they ever spare me? they are not sparing me even now, but I won’t throw them out without compensation, though they have no right whatever to compensation, neither legally nor morally, they’ve always been against me, their aberrant brother, they made no bones about their contempt and their hatred for me, they really worked at becoming adepts in the art of tormenting me, not to forget their inventiveness in torturing me, their finesse in humiliating me was always extraordinary, not to forget that they never had any use for me whatsoever, still, that’s no reason to treat them without any consideration at all, anyway I’ll spare them, not because they deserve it, they don’t deserve it, but only because I want them out of the way, out of my way. And I want my sister inside the Cone I’ve built for her, once the Cone is all furnished she’ll move in, it’s the perfect work of art, building art, for her to live in, which I was actually capable of though it runs counter to my mind and counter to all, even my, reason. The Cone’s placement in the center of the Kobernausser forest is exactly right for her. Supreme happiness? Then we wake up and see that we’ve achieved what we wanted to achieve by being relentless and most of all relentless toward ourselves, by not deluding ourselves and by paying no attention to what other people say, for if we’d paid attention to other people, so Roithamer, we wouldn’t have achieved anything, because the others are always against us, that’s the only truth. Sell Altensam and use the proceeds to put the released convicts back on their feet. Offend against so-called good taste, against which I’ve always offended, all my life I’ve always offended against so-called good taste. Once we fail to offend against so-called good taste by doing something tasteful, we can say good-bye to our character, our reason, our self. Anyway it wouldn’t make sense to remodel Altensam for the convicts, the place wouldn’t suit them. It would make Altensam nothing more than one of many such places, in our country so many penitentiaries are located in the most beautiful landscapes, oh no, that’s out, why, that would be crazy! “that would be crazy” is crossed out, then stetted. The thing is to sell Altensam with everything in it, sell it at a good price, not at a loss, without squandering it, to sell it, using my head and perfect timing. Keep a sharp eye on the notary and pay him only for work actually done, not by the official legal tariff (or his own inflated expectations). His fee must reflect his actual success with the sale. But the question is whether I can’t sell Altensam myself, on my own, by some lucky chance perhaps, in which case I’ll save the middleman’s fee. They’ve always let themselves be taken by the notaries and the lawyers, all of them, that hasn’t changed. “Buy a smaller property for my brothers” is crossed out. Take care of all my sister’s needs for life.

  “Contractual basis” is underlined. We reject everything having to do with contracts, because we reject bureaucracy in toto, but in fact the world is only held together by a patchwork of contracts, as we soon perceive, and in this network of hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands and millions and billions of contracts the trapped human beings are squirming. There’s no way to get around contracts except by suicide. Contracts everywhere, they’ve already choked everything to death, a whole world choking to death on its contracts, so Roithamer. To suppose that it is possible to exist without contracts or other written agreements and run away, anywhere at all, is to find ourselves soon caught again in contracts and written agreements, anyone who thinks otherwise is a madman, a malicious falsifier of the nature of things. It’s only in childhood that we don’t know what kind of a trap it is in which we squirm and despair and keep on despairing as we go on squirming in it, ignorant that these are the nets of contracts and other written agreements made by the grown-ups, by history. If anyone were to succeed in doing away with all these contracts and other written agreements, all he’d have accomplished would be the end of the whole world. In the future, where everything is possible, this too is possible. But so far it hasn’t been possible, nor is it possible in the immediate future, so Roithamer, the foreseeable future is all contracts, written agreements, and the resulting fits of despair, impediments, sicknesses, causes of death, that’s all. Our entire being is tied to contracts, written agreements, assessments, we’re trapped in them for life, no matter what we do, no matter who we are. Still we keep trying all our lives to escape from these contracts and other written agreements, efforts as painful as they are senseless, so Roithamer. Look up lawyers, notaries, find out just how sharp they are, conversely, how defenseless I am, compare the ignorance of the lawyers, the notaries, with my own defenselessness. Remember that everything that was sold hitherto was sold too cheaply, everything bought hitherto, bought too dear. Commercial instincts, perceptions, money, usury, swindle, forgery, sharp practice, so Roithamer.

  Ours are the finest forests in the world, as well as the most productive, a hundred years’ growth. Quality of the soil A-1. And all those rights belonging to Altensam, fishing rights, lumbering rights, hunting rights etcetera. Bound to fetch a record price, anything else unthinkable. All living and dead inventory included. Make a study of traditional and untraditional agreements-to-purchase, financial regulations, buying-out nonsense, so Roithamer. Get the Cone finished, forget work on Cone, resume my scientific work while also getting on with selling off Altensam, so Roithamer. Working out of England at first, because I must get back into my Cambridge routine, where I hardly feel at home anymore, using Hoeller’s insights in Hoeller’s garret everything’s to be considered toward securing my career, my future, then operate from Hoeller’s garret. Observe my sister as she enters the finished Cone, show her the Cone’s interior from top to bottom, not from the ground up, may have to blindfold her when we enter the Cone, lead her up to the inside tip of the Cone, then open her eyes and bit by bit familiarize her with the entire interior of the Cone. Clear my head of everything connected with Richter’s Fundamentals of Statics and stress analysis, forget Chmelka, Melan, forget everything I was absorbed in during the building of the Cone, first during three years of planning, then during the three years it took to build the Cone, try to clear my head of everything connected with the Cone, try especially to get rid of the word “statics” that keeps turning up through the night, makes it impossible for me even to think of falling asleep, the moment I drop off, the word “statics” comes into my head and actually stops me from falling asleep, for years now. Terminate everything connected with the Cone and with finishing the Cone before I liquidate Altensam. Sister provided for by being stuck away in the Cone by her brother, as I hear it, that crazy eccentric brother, so Roithamer, that crazy, mad, eccentric, blasphemous, insane construction. Just the same I shan’t let any so-calle
d architects come near the Cone even in the future, I must secure the Cone against all building professionals. These so-called architects and building professionals only show up in order to kill off the work of art, which it is, by setting foot in it, they destroy it, merely by looking it over. It’s the work of a madman, a violent intellectual, a crazy obsessed with a senseless idea, so said my brother, so Roithamer, the word “crazy” underlined. But I’ve never in my life cared what people said, not even what they always thought (about me), so I’m sure that I won’t bother about them in the future either. Professional riffraff, so-called architects, intellectual charlatans, so Roithamer, exploiters of their clients, knuckleheads, brains of cement. Never answered a single inquiry, its origin suspect, some architect or building professional might be behind it. They never heard of James Gandon, for example, Sir John Soane, John Nash etcetera. When we act, we know the source of our action, when we think, the source of our thinking. Boulle, Hamilton, Vignon, conceptual change etcetera, so Roithamer, we mention in vain. I’d merely make a suggestion, and they go to pieces. Nothing from Neutra’s publications, everything from Mies van der Rohe’s, “nothing” and “everything” underlined. No dealings with the professionals because they destroy our ideas, they are single-mindedly intent upon undermining our idea, upon destroying it. Never advance an idea to a professional because if you do it won’t be long before that idea will be shaky, the image dubious, impossible to realize, leave the idea in its hiding place until it’s realized, fulfilled. Leave the thought and the idea in its isolation cell until the utmost degree of realization, substantiation, perfection has been reached. Think how many will then be living off our idea, the idea we had,

  “we” underlined, our idea gets picked up and shamelessly exploited, we see it happening time and again, how an idea is picked up and shamelessly exploited by hundreds of imitators, which is a way of destroying the idea, but if it’s a good idea it can’t be destroyed. An idea, always an extraordinary idea, attracts hundreds of parasites who hook onto it and suck it dry and ruthlessly capitalize on it, always to the loss of the person who had the idea in the first place. Keep thought and idea immured as long as possible. Yield it up when perfected, pay the price of absolute misery for it. Most people, the highest percentage of people, live off ideas not their own, which they exploit to the utter limit without shame, but they’re never called to account for this, on the contrary, they’re praised for it everywhere. Wherever we turn we see exploiters of (other people’s) ideas, making good money off them. So, I won’t let the so-called professionals come near my Cone, but the time must come when I can no longer hide the Cone, whereupon the so-called professional world will pounce on the Cone and exploit the idea, there’s no point in holding back the inevitable, sooner or later the Cone will be discovered, they’ll all pounce on the idea and on the hundreds and thousands of ideas connected with it, and the Cone will be exploited, ruthlessly. But no one can say the idea is mine, mine for life, “for life” underlined. We draw attention to something new and they all hurl themselves into this new thing even though this new thing was pointed out by us, but that’s never mentioned anymore. We’re the ones who make a discovery but we don’t exploit this discovery, it’s the people who exploit it who make a splash with it. First I must finish the Cone, then concentrate on the sale of Altensam, then resume my scientific work, Cambridge, London, London, Cambridge alternately, because that’s always done me good, if this leave of absence is to have served its purpose, in that the Cone will have been built and finished, Altensam will have been sold off. Although we hate everything at times, we find it possible, or even because we at times hate everything, it is at times possible to move onward, propelled by nothing but hatred, to move ahead.

  Because we are weak, infirm, we must tolerate no weakness whatever. And if it isn’t life and if it isn’t nature then it’s what we read, it’s the life and the nature of what we read, for long stretches there’s only the nature we get out of our reading, life out of books, periodicals, all kinds of writings, we bridge the gaps between our contact with nature Itself by reading that represents nature, represents life. Because we can’t always, no organism is capable of it, absorb nature into ourselves, absorb life-as-nature into ourselves, we go for long stretches, for years on end absorbing it only through reading matter, from the newspapers, from written stuff. In several languages, for variety’s sake. At certain points in our existence we break off the nature of our existence and proceed to exist only in books, in written stuff, until we again have the opportunity to exist in nature and continue to exist in nature, very often as another person, always as another person, “always as another person” underlined. We couldn’t endure a life in nature, necessarily always a free nature, without respite, so we always step outside nature, for no reason but survival, and take refuge in our reading, and live for a long time in our books, a more undisturbed life. I’ve lived half my life not in nature but in my books as a nature-substitute, and the one half was made possible only by the other half. Or else we exist in both simultaneously, in nature and in reading-as-nature, in this extreme nervous tension which as a form of consciousness is endurable only for the shortest possible time span. The question can’t be whether I live in nature as nature, or in reading-as-nature, or in nature-as-reading, in the nature of nature-as-reading andsoforth, so Roithamer. To everything that we think and fill our own life and that we hear and see, perceive, we always have to add: the truth, however, is … as a result, uncertainty has become a chronic condition with us. Those abrupt transitions from one nature into the other, from one form of awareness into the other, so Roithamer. When we think, we know nothing, everything is open, nothing, so Roithamer. The nature of the case is always something else, so Roithamer. First, the Cone offers views in all directions, then, the Cone offers views only southward and northward, then, only to the west and to the east, finally, only to the north. The spaces, not rooms, the spaces are such as to correspond perfectly to my sister’s nature, they are designed to adapt themselves to whatever state of mind my sister finds herself in as she enters these spaces, and to do so immediately. To achieve this it was naturally necessary to have kept my sister under constant observation, continuous observation of my sister from earliest childhood on, it’s been most helpful that I’ve always kept her under the most intensive observation, and always quite objectively, trying to understand her nature through all the years of her life, even before it ever occurred to me to build the Cone for her. My observation of my sister turned into an art and into a science of observation.

  And I naturally also observed everything connected with my sister, above all her habits, her possibilities, “possibilities” underlined, her impossibilities, what she was born with, what was bred into her, what she displays openly.

  Constant study of her inner life, insofar as this was possible by means of constant, continual observation and the constant and continuous study of her appearance, the inside and the outside are the same, everything depends on the observer’s judgment. Knowing that I must never relax this observation of my sister, must never relinquish this observation, mustn’t allow my judgment to be swayed, to become imprecise. First I had to concentrate my entire being, meaning all my mind and feeling, on my sister, then I had to do the same for the construction of the Cone, finally I applied my observations as insights to the construction of the Cone, so that I must assume that the Cone is ideal for my sister. The Cone’s interior corresponding to my sister’s inner being, the Cone’s exterior to her outward being, and together her whole being expressed as the Cone’s character, the inside and outside of the Cone are as inseparable as the inside and outside of my sister, but the incessant observation of my sister and the incessant observation of the construction of the Cone have led to the result which now stands in the center of the Kobernausser forest. Therefore, if my observation of my sister is correct, then the construction of the Cone is correct, so Roithamer. The consistent study of one object (of my sister), the consistent mode of const
ruction of the other object (the Cone). The construction of such a Cone for such a person as my sister is feasible only after the study of the person (my sister) for whom such an edifice (the Cone) is being erected, has been completed. First I study the person for whom I am building such an edifice, then I build the edifice on the basis of my study, and such a study must be ultraconsistent. And only after I have truly studied that person’s nature and gone far enough in my study to have grasped that person’s nature, or at least grasped it insofar as it is humanly possible to grasp it, can I be sufficiently clear in my own mind as to what I am building and what materials I must use to build with. This is an edifice of stone and brick. The problem of the statics of the one (the Cone) is the problem of the nature of the other (my sister). And to build against that person’s will, because one can build only against the will of a person like my sister. Not because of this person for whom I am building, but because of the person’s character, and in that character the one, if not emotionally sensitive, perhaps the one intellectually sensitive point. We decide to build though we don’t know what it means to build, as everyone knows, especially not what it means to build such an unheard-of edifice as the Cone for a person like my sister, we don’t realize that it is basically a lethal process.