Correction

by Thomas Bernhard

  “I certainly don’t” underlined. They’d found his shoes at the rim, his jacket too, six months after they noticed that he was gone, his young wife hadn’t missed him until then, from the fact that his shoes and his jacket were found on the rim of that cleft in the rock they deduced that he had thrown himself down the cleft, but there’s no real proof, these clues, yes, but no proof at all, because nobody can get down into the bottom of that cleft. Many people had supposed he’d gone abroad, but then some mountain climbers found his shoes and his jacket at the rim of the cleft, so he must have, I suppose, taken off his shoes and his jacket before he threw himself down into that rock cleft, he didn’t want to throw himself into that rock cleft in his jacket and shoes, so Roithamer. Another of those lonely men, underlined, acquiring a wife at the unhappiest time of his life, a wife who brought him to the point where he threw himself down that rock cleft. The inclination to suicide as a character trait as in the character of my cousin who finally threw himself into that rock cleft, a specific kind of suicide, first climbing up those high mountains, just to throw himself into the depths of that rock cleft, so Roithamer. Because he spoke of it so often and with such passion and such scientific precision at the same time, they no longer believed that he would actually commit suicide, for anyone who talks about it as much as our cousin did, as incidentally the others did too, his father for instance always talked about suicide and kept bringing it up and every time in a better organized frame of mind, such a man, they think, won’t really commit suicide, on the contrary, such a man keeps clarifying the idea of suicide in his head and as a result he doesn’t commit suicide, having this clarification in his head and being constantly capable of analyzing this clarification, he simply can’t commit suicide anymore, because he has this constant clear understanding of suicide, so Roithamer, to act out in reality something he’d always been talking about and which must basically always be repellent to him, he simply couldn’t do it, every possible argument, every possible reason, every possible negation could lead to anything, usually to a mortal disease, but not to suicide, so Roithamer, because ultimately everything inside such a head is against self-destruction, and ‘ yet it’s remarkable how regularly such a man will talk about suicide and about self-destruction, the subject gave him no peace, it tended to warp his reason, which he then proceeded to restore again, and yet one couldn’t help being struck, so Roithamer, by the way our cousin kept talking almost incessantly about suicide after his marriage to the doctor’s daughter from Kirchdorf, but nobody took him seriously, so Roithamer, nobody had the slightest apprehension that he would actually commit suicide, because he was constantly talking about suicide as if he were talking about a subject he entirely understood, though it did remain fascinating to him, just as though he were talking about some work of art, with the most scientific detachment. And anyone who talks so scientifically about suicide, as though it were a work of art, talks about it with a clear precision that humbles the rest of us, why, such a person simply doesn’t commit suicide. Not until he nevertheless did commit suicide, of course, throwing himself down that fissure in the rock, so Roithamer. But to return to my subject, I was speaking of human unions, of living together, of marriage, so Roithamer. People are forever denying the proven fact, so Roithamer, the simple fact of nature’s workings, that the female sex, because it is female, nobody dares to say it in so many words nowadays, that the female sex is anti-intellectual and emotionally predisposed to champion emotion, that it is in fact against intellect in all its possible aspects just as it is emotionally predisposed to emotion in all its possible aspects, so Roithamer. The current fashion is one thing, nature is something else. But then, our times are given over to nonsense and to warping all ideas and all the facts and turning them topsy turvy. I personally know from experience, so Roithamer, that the female human being, “female human being” underlined, that the female sex is incapable of going beyond the first impulse in the direction of the life of the mind. In our case, that of my mother and me, she was only interested in winning me over even if in the process she had to destroy everything I am, my personality, my character, my mind, she had to try it, again and again, in her perverse determination that it must be possible eventually to turn so stubborn a mind as mine, a mind so crazily intent on its own inventions, from its single-track obsession with itself, my self that is, and push it into a crude, Eferding-type domesticity, so Roithamer. She had to cut me down to her own Eferding size, her own existential minimum, and with me she meant to achieve this fully, not only partially as with my father, whom she certainly managed to alienate from himself to at least a high degree, she did alienate my father from himself to a very high, to an ominous degree, as she knew, to her lifelong (Eferdingian) satisfaction. To be fascinated by a man who is different from his observer, viewer, antagonist, yet pitting everything against this man and against the fascination he exerts, to be bent on taking from him everything that makes him fascinating. That woman from Eferding basically hated everything I did or didn’t do and everything my sister did or didn’t do and everything my father did and didn’t do, the victims of her hatred were primarily all those with whom I had intellectual intercourse, beginning with all natural scientists, writers, even poets, philosophers named in my books, in whom she thought she recognized me, and she thought she recognized me in all the books I had in my room, in the most widely differing books belonging to me and used by me all the time. In each one of these books she was bound to recognize me and she hated these books as she hated me, but she didn’t dare to destroy the books, to do away’ with them, she didn’t have the nerve to do that even though her thoughts and everything in her tended in that direction. If I merely think of all the things we came to quarrel about on our socalled walks, with such regularity and occasional obsessiveness, we’d taken our nature walks only to quarrel, always, we walked through the woods, and quarreled, over the meadows, and quarreled, through our gardens, and quarreled, even on the grassy riverbanks, always outwardly exemplars of the greatest serenity at the outset, we quarreled and transformed those grasslands in no time into a noisy, suddenly malignant landscape, where our attacking voices, shouting nothing but insults, could be heard, so Roithamer, all up and down the river. And it always began with trivia, but all these trivia had soon triggered off enormities against our fellow beings, against everything. Even in company the Eferding woman was incapable of controlling herself, of restraining herself, and so our father never took her out socially, after his first efforts along those lines had failed lamentably. Because the good name of all Altensam was always at stake, he had never taken his wife, our mother, the Eferding woman, to any social gathering, though she craved going out socially, but because of my father’s adamant refusal to take her out she soon found it possible to go out only to her own kind of social gathering, the so-called Eferding social gatherings and no longer to the Altensam social gatherings, but her own kind didn’t interest her, what she wanted was to get into Altensam society, which my father, however, denied her; I barred her way, so my father often said, so Roithamer, otherwise she’d have robbed Altensam, which had already lost most of its good name in her time, the Eferding woman’s time that is, she’d have robbed Altensam of all that was left of its good name, so my father, so Roithamer, “all that was left” underlined, but the consequence of this, that my father, after those first failed tries, simply no longer took her along into society but left her sitting at home, was that our mother, the Eferding woman, suddenly hated Altensam more than anything in the world, “more than anything in the world” underlined. My father had fallen prey to the error that he could turn a person like the Eferding woman, an Eferding person that is, into an Altensam person, one kind of person can never be made into another kind of person, so Roithamer, “never” underlined, most especially not an Eferding person into an Altensam person, it was probably because of this error that he took her home and married her, because he understood too late that you can never make an Altensam person out of an Eferding person, n
ever change one species into another. Now and then she tried reading a book, it was all a hypocritical pretense, “hypocritical pretense” underlined, a book of which I had a very high opinion, a book about which I might have said something in her presence showing my great esteem for it, but these efforts of hers were from the first a transparent pretense, of course the Eferding woman’s position in Altensam was always untenable, she should never have come to Altensam in the first place, for if such a person, who isn’t an Altensamer, goes to Altensam, so Roithamer, that person will be destroyed, everything will be done to destroy such a person, to remove the person from Altensam because this is a person who doesn’t belong in Altensam, because this person is different by nature, “different by nature”

  underlined, the Eferding woman should never have committed the crime of coming to Altensam, our father should never have brought her to Altensam, he should have explained to her, but he brought her up to Altensam out of embarrassment and weakmindedness and exposed her from the first to a situation she simply wasn’t equal to handling, even if she never realized it, she, the Eferding woman, simply never had been equal to Altensam, though most of the time she might have thought she was equal to Altensam, even that she dominated Altensam, most of the time, she was not equal to Altensam, though she actually came to dominate Altensam, so Roithamer, as I know, actually did dominate Altensam, but she was never really equal to it, so Roithamer, our father had to pay dearly for the crime of marrying an Eferding woman, so Roithamer, the Eferding woman had to pay for her crime of coming up to Altensam with lifelong unhappiness, for it was by the fact of coming to Altensam that the Eferding woman became an unhappy person, prior to that, in Eferding, in her father’s house, as the daughter of a butcher and an innkeeper, she’d never been unhappy, or she wasn’t likely, during those years, to be considered an unhappy person, not until she came to Altensam. The photographs I’ve seen that show her as the butcher’s daughter, innkeeper’s daughter from Eferding, don’t show an unhappy person, they show a young, though already old person, but’ not an unhappy person, the pictures of her in Altensam that I’ve seen, and my own experience are of an unhappy and always old person who is constantly ailing.

  We children naturally showed no consideration whatever toward our mother,

  “no” and “whatever” underlined, we, my sister and I, so Roithamer, we Altensamers in contrast to the Eferdingers, our brothers. In the early days when I returned from England, for instance, the Eferding woman had often said she’d like to walk down to Stocket with me, because she knew that I always liked walking down to Stocket, but once she’d walked down to Stocket with me, it was soon obvious to me that she’d really had no desire whatever to walk down to Stocket with me, because basically she hated this walking-down-to-Stocket with me and hated Stocket and hated the people down in Stocket. Or else she affected to be interested in a scientific article because she knew that I was interested in this article, but it was all pretense,

  “pretense” underlined, so Roithamer. On such occasions I always countered with some malevolent remark that exposed her utter impudence, and our mutual hatred was reestablished. But it’s not true that we didn’t want to be in agreement. But if I happened to say, I hold so-and-so in contempt, for such-and-such a reason, she always instantly agreed with my verdict and so with my remark, without thinking, and this was bound to repel me. If I happened to show a liking for a certain play and praised this play, she felt obliged to praise the play though she hadn’t seen it, not for my sake, as I know, but for her own sake, even though she didn’t know the play, she nevertheless thought she could praise it too, and I was repelled by that. For instance I’d always said, time and time again, that I loved Goethe’s novel, Elective Affinities, but I knew that she hated Elective Affinities, basically there was no book in the world she hated as intensely as she hated Elective Affinities, yet she claimed that she shared my love for Elective Affinities, this was simply bound to repel me, so Roithamer. Then she claimed to have read Novalis, though she had never read as much as a line by Novalis, but every time it wasn’t really an effort to come closer to me, to try and bring about a real accord between her and me, between us, but rather an attempt to set a trap, but I never went into this trap, at least not in later years, for at first, in my childhood and youth, I did indeed and very often walk into her traps, the Eferding woman had always set traps in Altensam and all of us had always walked into her traps. Elective Affinities as a trap set for me, so Roithamer.

  She had often given me to understand that she was intellectually engaged upon the same subject at the same time I was, but I’d soon found out that it was nothing more than one of her pretenses, that again she’d set me a trap that I was supposed to walk into. All these notes to be utilized one day for a description of my mother, in comparison with my sister and in contrast with my father and brothers, so Roithamer. We must always utilize, work up, everything. When we’re occupied with a so-called intellectual subject, and this subject is so great that we’re totally fascinated by it, we must be absolutely alone in our room (Hoeller’s garret) or wherever we happen to be, even if we’re not (in reality) in Hoeller’s garret, nevertheless in Hoeller’s garret, the place where we happen to find ourselves occupied with such a subject must become Hoeller’s garret for us, we mustn’t tolerate the slightest distraction, even if it came from the person closest to us (sister), we must forestall everything that interferes or could interfere with our concentration on that subject, and therefore could destroy, annihilate, extinguish this subject, which fascinates us, for such a subject is too easily destroyed and annihilated and extinguished and it always is the only subject for us, “only”

  underlined. This intellectual subject matter must be held fast, until we have mastered it, so Roithamer, “mastered” underlined. Attempts to comprehend Altensam, to understand it, and little by little to comprehend and understand everything connected with Altensam, especially everything relating to my father, to keep on trying to find the causes and from these causes arrive at the effects of these causes, nothing can be fully grasped and explained by means of mental and emotional acuity on the one hand, nor by mental and emotional hypocrisy on the other hand, I have to keep reminding myself that it’s all from my point of view, not from the others’ point of view, always only from my point of view, from the others’ point of view it’s something entirely different, probably the opposite. But the opposite is not my task. I’m getting closer to Altensam, but I’m not getting closer to Altensam in order to solve its mystery; for others to explain it to myself is why I am getting closer to Altensam, to my Altensam, the one that I see. While she lived I never asked my mother, never asked her all these unanswered questions, never once asked her a single crucial question, because I never could formulate such a question, I was afraid I might put such a question wrong somehow, and so I never posed it, and so I got no answer. Now the Eferding woman is dead, I can’t ask her, she can’t answer. But would it be any different now, if I could ask her, and she could answer? We don’t ask those we love, just as we don’t ask those we hate, so Roithamer. Actually I’m shocked by everything I’ve just written, what if it was all quite different, I wonder, but I will not correct now what I’ve written, I’ll correct it all when the time for such correction has come and then I’ll correct the corrections and correct again the resulting corrections andsoforth, so Roithamer. We’re constantly correcting, and correcting ourselves, most rigorously, because we recognize at every moment that we did it all wrong (wrote it, thought it, made it all wrong), acted all wrong, how we acted all wrong, that everything to this point in time is a falsification, so we correct this falsification, and then we again correct the correction of this falsification and we correct the result of the correction of a correction andsoforth, so Roithamer. But the ultimate correction is one we keep delaying, the kind others have made without ado from one minute to the next, I think, so Roithamer, the kind they could make, by the time they no longer thought about it, because they were afraid even
to think about it, but then they did correct themselves, like my cousin, like his father, my uncle, like all the others whom we knew, as we thought, whom we knew so thoroughly, yet we didn’t really know all these peoples’ characters, because their self-correction took us by surprise, otherwise we wouldn’t have been surprised by their ultimate existential correction, their suicide. It’s only a thought which keeps turning up, but we don’t take steps to correct ourselves. We sit here for hours on this chair and think about it, we may even be sitting here for days on this same chair, or stand at the window (as for instance in Hoeller’s garret), we may pace the floor in our room, lie on the bed, locked up in Hoeller’s garret or in my room in Altensam, which has always seemed to me my actual correction cell, “correction cell” underlined, but I kept putting off my correction, kept delaying it, though I never gave up the idea of correcting myself, we do it suddenly, quite suddenly we walk out, go away, break off everything, one step off the road, away, gone, so Roithamer, because we’ve lost our mind, so Roithamer, or because we suddenly are everything extreme, so Roithamer. We’re in a state of extreme concentration, we don’t even permit ourselves to change a piece of clothing, we permit ourselves nothing beyond this concentration, but we still don’t do it. We’re always quite close to correcting ourselves, to correcting everything by killing ourselves, but we don’t do it. Ready to correct our entire existence as a bottomless falsification and misrepresentation of our true nature, so Roithamer, but we don’t do it. While this thought keeps sinking in deeper, we’re at its mercy and we yield to it in every respect because we have become totally concentrated on this thought, but we don’t do it. Then we forget this theme, make no corrections, go on existing, until we’re back with this thought, addicted to it, so Roithamer. But one day, from one minute to the next, we’ll do what we have to do, and then there’ll be no difference between us and those who’ve already made their correction, killed themselves. To write to someone, for instance, because we can no longer bear our loneliness, we’ve borne our solitude to the limit, but we can bear it no longer, we write in order to be no longer alone but to be two of us, to my sister for instance, that I’d be glad if she’d come to England, soon, now, we write, to the person we love, the one we know most intimately, I write and telegraph simultaneously, my most intense idea now is that my sister must come to me, from Altensam to England, as quickly as possible, to put an end to this condition of solitude into which I’ve maneuvered myself, so Roithamer, she must come if I’m to be saved, I’m thinking, though I don’t write it, but I think she must come, to save me, because I’ve exhausted all my means of distracting myself, all my tricks of distracting myself, because I can think only this one thing, that I must come to an end in my room, unless this familiar, beloved person comes, I’ve no chances left. For days I wait for an answer, then my sister suddenly sends a telegram, she can’t come, so then I somehow keep going, I don’t put an end to it. It’s back to my work again, total immersion. Suddenly I no longer have any reason to kill myself, to make that correction. The message that my sister isn’t coming because she can’t come is enough to prevent me from doing it. But would I have done it? I ask myself, so Roithamer. Instead of committing suicide, people go to work. All their lives long, as long as their existence allows for this constantly recurring process, so Roithamer. The death of my uncle, so Roithamer, surprised even Hoeller, for Hoeller, like myself, had always been of the opinion that a man like my uncle, who kept coming back to the subject of suicide in conversation, because of the very fact that he keeps coming back to it and talks of it almost constantly, will not commit suicide, but he did commit suicide, the atmosphere in Hoeller’s house at the time was totally conditioned by the surprise of my uncle’s suicide, he’d thrown himself down the cheese-factory’s air shaft in Stocket; the whole Hoeller house, even Hoeller’s garret, I think, so Roithamer, this whole simple house with its complicated conditions, or vice versa, complicated house with its simple conditions, so Roithamer, lay as if under the pall of my uncle’s suicide. The moment I set foot in Hoeller’s house, that’s to say, the moment I clapped eyes on the huge black stuffed bird hanging on the wall of the vestibule, it was clear to me that the whole Hoeller house was under the pall of my uncle’s suicide. Then I remembered my last meeting with my uncle from Stocket, so Roithamer, and I asked myself whether there was anything about the man, on that last encounter, that might have given me a hint of his subsequent suicide, observing him first at the forest’s edge, with his rubber boots, short, frayed old jacket, so Roithamer, the hazel walking stick he’d whittled himself, the black hat on his head, and probably, considering his immobility, he’d had a wooden leg for years, also in view of my sudden presence, he was preoccupied with a so-called philosophical subject, I said to myself as I walked toward him, time had fashioned him into a so-called nature man, because everything in him and about him was predisposed that way, not a comic figure such as we see very often, everything about him said: I can no longer escape from nature; as I walked toward him, probably he didn’t even notice that I was coming toward him because everything seemed to indicate that he never noticed me, he was so preoccupied with his philosophical subject, that philosophical subject which had to do with nature.