Correction

by Thomas Bernhard

  intentions which are seen standing around all over the surface of the globe, I fulfilled my intention, I managed to realize and fulfill it even though I had to do so in a frenzy of irritation, everything tends only to irritate me, so Roithamer. Every idea leads to extreme irritation, so Roithamer. The head of a planner and builder, so Roithamer, has to reach and fulfill its aim in a state of extreme irritation, so Roithamer. First there were the socalled geologists whom I felt obliged to consult and who caused me the utmost irritation with their disdain, then I suffered extreme, utmost irritation and disdain from the socalled architects, then from the skilled workers, again extreme irritation and disdain, but all this utmost irritation and disdain was necessary, so Roithamer, to make me create and perfect the Cone, I’d never have reached my goal without my irritation and their disdain, I’d simply have been too weak to fulfill it. They all told me that I lacked all the necessary qualifications to create, much less fulfill my plan, yet now I am in a position to say that I had precisely all the necessary qualifications, because the Cone is done, perfectly. Even though the effect of the finished Cone is not as anticipated, so Roithamer, but the effect of a finished task is always unexpected, it’s always the opposite of what we expected and very often a deadly effect, so Roithamer. They told me that while I have the talent I do not have the staying power, but I did have the staying power and luckily I was also, during the whole time they were building the Cone, absolutely unyielding against everything, “everything” underlined. Suddenly I’d realized that the people around me, whom I’d considered competent because I thought them more experienced than myself, were totally incompetent, that the so-called competent people are never and in no way competent and that it’s always only one’s own head, and only that part of one’s head which is wholly concentrated on its objective, which can be competent, so Roithamer, but to reach that point I had a long, weary, and painful way to go. A man who says that he is building for his sister an edifice designed especially for her, with the air- and light-conditioning that will be perfect for her, and who even names the site (an impossible site to obtain) and says that he won’t let anything get in the way of his plan or the realization of his plan, such a man is seen as a madman by all those to whom he’s confided his intention, so Roithamer, and so, while they had to accept me as an established scientist they also had to regard me as an absolute madman. And so the people around me simulate respect and do all they can to destroy my ideas, all ideas, so Roithamer. Wherever we turn in this world, all we see is nothing but destroyed ideas, all there is, as any reasonable person must admit, is nothing but destroyed ideas, just as everything is only a fragment, it’s always only an abandoned intention, so Roithamer. But the world has resigned itself to this state of affairs and made itself at home in it, so Roithamer. While they (the so-called architects) regard themselves as competent, as renewers of the earth’s surface, as bold, openminded free planners, they’re in fact nothing but chronic deserters of original ideas, they create nothing, build nothing, accomplish nothing, they only produce mere fragments, always, so Roithamer, the earth’s surface is cluttered with their fragments. They couldn’t and certainly wouldn’t understand my idea, anyway they never had accepted it, while all the time masquerading as the most fearless avant-garde building artists in the world, so Roithamer. They hadn’t gone along with my ideas at all, never went with me for even the shortest distance in my thinking, made too uneasy, probably, by the thought of where I might lead them, so they’d always given up at the outset, when I asked them to join me in my ideas, in my thinking, they held back, but after never even entering into my thinking they decided I was crazy, in the very act of pronouncing the idea I’d given them of my plan interesting, they were saying that I was crazy, so Roithamer. They were afraid of choking to death inside my mental processes, so Roithamer. And so I had only Hoeller, in reality and in fact, Hoeller followed me into my mental processes from the first, he’d dared to follow me in my thinking because it was not unfamiliar to him, it resembled his own, so that he had preceded me there, to him it wasn’t the dark frightening maze it was to those architects, though he might have felt a bit queasy entering into my much longer (than his) mental processes, so Roithamer, but Hoeller never thought me crazy, never, so Roithamer, because he, Hoeller, was experienced along such lines of thought and had no need to be afraid, “no need to be afraid” underlined, of and inside such lines of thought. One has to be able to get up and walk away from every social gathering that’s a waste of one’s time, so Roithamer, to leave behind the nothing faces and the often boundlessly stupid heads, and to walk out and down and into the open air and leave everything connected with this worthless society behind, so Roithamer, one must have the strength and the courage and the relentlessness even toward oneself, to leave all these ridiculous, useless, dim-witted people and heads behind and breathe free, breathe out what’s been left behind and breathe in something new, one must abandon at top speed these useless social agglomerations, banded together for their inevitable dim-witted purposes, so as not to become part of these dim-witted social groups, to get back to oneself from these social doings and find peace and light in oneself, so Roithamer. One must have the courage and the strength to break away from such company, such entertainment, such verbal violence andsoforth, in which one has become involved against one’s will, one must break away under any circumstances, so Roithamer, one must break off every one of these unspeakably stupid conversations, break away and walk away from all these senseless, useless and invariably dangerous subjects, to save oneself, rescue one’s own head by escaping at any moment, at any time, from wherever it is, to escape into the open air, so Roithamer. To be honest, almost all the social gatherings we’ve ever been drawn into, without quite knowing how or why, strike us as useless, they serve no purpose at all, all they do is weaken us. At the right moment we must get up and leave such gatherings, circumstances, conditions, for what naturally becomes a lengthy, lasting, always unending solitude, so Roithamer. Such a rising up and going away is a daily occurrence, always we leave behind a society that repels us, so Roithamer. But as we keep leaving them, they more and more regard us as crazy and hate us, a situation that worsens from day to day, that militates against our head and against our character and against our whole being, so Roithamer. That the people I described in “About Altensam and about everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone” are not the same as those I knew grew clear to me when I stepped into my train, my second-class compartment, in London, or rather at Victoria Station. Even before the train left, so Roithamer, I’d realized that everything I’d described in my manuscript was not so, that everything is always different from the way it’s been described, the actual is always different from the description, Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, it’s different. Dover, Brussels, Cologne, I had to recognize that everything in my manuscript was all wrong, the characters are different, the character is another, so Roithamer. As my brothers came forward to meet me in Stocket, I had the evidence that everything I’d described was all wrong. Even before Dover I’d started to make corrections in the manuscript and little by little I’d corrected everything and finally realized that nothing in it expresses the reality as it actually is, the description runs counter to the actuality, but I drew the logical consequences from this insight, so Roithamer, I did not hesitate to correct everything all over again and in the process of correcting everything all over again, so Roithamer, I destroyed everything. That none of them are what they are, that nothing is what it is, so Roithamer, as I realized back at Victoria Station. The fact of my sister’s funeral on the one hand, the fact that everything is all wrong on the other, I was preoccupied with these facts while crossing the Channel to the Continent and on through the incessant downpour along the whole plain all the way to Altensam, where my first encounter with my brothers proved to me that everything I feared was indeed true, so Roithamer. I had taken my manuscript out of my traveling bag and I’d seen at once that ever
ything in my manuscript was all wrong, that I’d not only described some things badly, but that I’d described everything all wrong, because the opposite is true, so Roithamer. Yet I suddenly again felt like changing what I had done in years of hard effort into something else, suddenly on the train I was once more in the same state in which I’ve always been when I believed I was finished with something, at such a moment I know it’s all the other way round, and I’m willing to do it over the other way around. Little by little a new manuscript would be the result, as it is now again, an entirely different, new manuscript resulting from the destruction of the old one, but best of all was not to let a new one come into being, to stop making positive corrections, best to destroy it altogether, so Roithamer. When I make corrections, I destroy, when I destroy, I annihilate, so Roithamer. What I used to consider an improvement, formerly, is after all nothing but deterioration, destruction, annihilation. Every correction is destruction, annihilation, so Roithamer. This manuscript too is nothing but a mad aberration, just as perhaps and with certainty, “with certainty” underlined, the erection of the Cone was nothing but a mad aberration, those who always regarded the building of the Cone as a mad aberration, seem to have been proven basically right, so the manuscript was also nothing but a mad aberration, but he’d have to accept responsibility for this mad aberration and take it to its logical conclusion, it was absolute madness, so Roithamer, to build the Cone and to write this manuscript about Altensam, and these two crazy acts, one resulting from the other and both with the utmost ruthlessness, have done me in, “have done me in”

  underlined. When I said to my sister, the Cone is yours, it belongs to you, I built it for you, and specifically in the center of the Kobernausser forest, I saw that the effect of the Cone on my sister was devastating. What followed was sheer horror, so Roithamer, nothing else, slow death, immersion in her sickness unto death, nothing else, from that moment onward everything led to her certain death (May 3). All of them secluded in their rooms waiting for their supper, which has always been an occasion for every kind of mutual recrimination, as though supper were the time to release twenty-two hours of accumulated hatred, aversion, mutual hatred, mutual aversion, so Roithamer. Silence at first (but a different kind of silence from that in Hoeller’s house) then recriminations, politeness followed by insinuations, then open hatred in every direction, so Roithamer. The Eferding woman always had more than one complaint to air, insinuations against myself and my sister primarily and against my father who ended up always taking his food in a state of apathy, fixedly staring at the tabletop, he simply withdrew from all that mealtime verbal filth, so Roithamer. The rest all went at it, attacking each other brutally every way they could think of, vulgarly, viciously. With the entrée came the overture, as it were, of accusations, the main course was the outbreak of the verbal storm, so Roithamer. Wounding the heart and the mind, so Roithamer. Crippling souls, wrecking brains, so Roithamer. It was all far beyond anything an outsider could imagine, day after day, the terrifying regularity of it, so Roithamer. When we had guests, we might exercise some self-control for an hour, no longer, then it broke down, we were no longer embarrassed even by the presence of the guests, soon guests became a rarity at Altensam, so Roithamer. Even in earliest childhood I’d preferred being alone, I lived a shut-in solitary life, my childhood was always lived alongside, but not with, the others. Alongside my parents and siblings, I was always alone, alongside my schoolmates, I was alone, alongside the others I pursued my studies, my science, realization, fulfillment, destruction, annihilation. In every case and in every cause this was the sequence, so Roithamer. I could be among (and with) people for only the briefest periods of time, my tendency was to start withdrawing, retreating from them, even at the moment of approaching them, even while drawing closer to them, so Roithamer. Experience teaches you to keep your distance to the end of your life, because people only come close and close in on you to disturb and destroy you, always, so my uncle, so Roithamer. A man approaches another only to destroy him, so Roithamer. We go out to meet people because we think it’s to our advantage to do so, always keeping the true (only) reason for meeting them, society, to ourselves, our so-called selflessness is a false front, so Roithamer. Whenever we see someone getting along well we soon take a hand, we go to him to disturb him, to destroy, to annihilate him, if we can. However we can manage it, so Roithamer. Parents seen as the first destroyers of their children, annihilators of their children, and vice versa. Being on our guard against everything, we end up being for the longest time alone with ourselves, totally, painfully out of touch, so Roithamer. If we make contact, we must break it off at once, if we’re men of character, still have character, so Roithamer. More and more only the briefest social experiences, so Roithamer. While building the Cone I met all sorts of people, never before so many, and I worked with all of these people and was happy with all these people, but I was never so alone as with and among all these people, so Roithamer. Completely alone with my idea, so Roithamer. We are different from the person who is being judged when it is our own person, our own character, that is being judged, so Roithamer. Like the landscape, like the natural scene in (around) us, like whatever we have created, so Roithamer. We see a landscape and we see a man in that landscape and the landscape and the man are always different, each moment, although we assume that everything always remains the same, and thanks to this false assumption we dare to go on with our existence, so Roithamer. So we’re never exactly the person we are, but always already something different, though still just barely ourselves if we’re lucky, so Roithamer. We’ve developed by surrendering something of ourselves, little by little, and so we’ve remained the same, though changed, so Roithamer.

  But the schools we’ve attended have been wholly devastating in their influence on us, they depressed me, every school I ever attended, had to attend, has humiliated me. At first I listened in every direction and entered into all these directions, then I stopped listening, stopped entering into things, so Roithamer. Soon I’d latched onto one system, then to another system, now I’d be convinced by the one, then again by another, so Roithamer. In the schools it’s always the same old stale stuff that’s spread before us, it destroys the mind and the spirit of the learner, the student, stage by stage, in the schools we are turned into despairing men, who can never again escape from their despair, so Roithamer, we enter a school only to be destroyed by that school, annihilated by history, so Roithamer, mathematics annihilates us, the unnaturalness of school annihilates us, so Roithamer. We never recover from school once we’ve left school, any school, we’re branded by the school, i.e., we’re destroyed, so Roithamer. We always enter a school only to be annihilated, the schools are gigantic institutions for the annihilation of the young, those who come to them for help are annihilated, but the state has its own good reasons for financing the schools, so Roithamer, once we leave school, our slow death has simply reached a more advanced stage, nothing else. Like madmen those who need spiritual help enter a school and leave it as dead men, and no one rebels against this, so Roithamer. The young people, healthy individuals, enter the schools looking for help, they come out destroyed, crippled, debilitated for life, so Roithamer. The destruction of the very young starts in grade school, so Roithamer, imagine then what goes on in the secondary schools and the institutions of higher and highest learning. Institutions for the deformation of human beings, so Roithamer. “About Altensam and everything connected with Altensam, with special attention to the Cone” I had first to bring to its conclusion before I could realize that everything is different, “everything”