Woodcutters by Thomas Bernhard

First published:Holzfällen: Eine Erregung, 1984 (English translation, 1987)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of plot: 1980’s

Locale: Vienna

Principal characters

• The Narrator, a writer
• Auersberger, a composer
• His Wife, a wealthy heir
• Joana, a deceased actor and dancer
• Jeannie Billroth, a writer
• Anna Schreker, another writer
• An Actor, appearing at the Burgtheater

The Story:

One evening the Auersbergers give a so-called artistic dinner at their home in the Gentzgasse to honor the Actor who is playing the role of Ekdal in a performance of Henrik Ibsen’s Vildanden (1884; The Wild Duck, 1891) at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The nameless narrator observes the guests in the music room from his vantage point in a wing chair (in German, an Ohrensessel, literally an easy chair with ears) situated in a dimly lighted anteroom.

The narrator’s invitation to this gathering is the result of a fortuitous meeting with his hosts several days earlier in Vienna’s inner city. The Auersbergers assumed the role of the city’s patrons of “high culture” during the past two decades, a position that gives them high status in Viennese society. The narrator was a member of their circle twenty-five years earlier, but he fled to London when he realized that his fellow artists merely continued to live off their early reputations rather than develop their artistry.

Sitting in his wing chair and speaking only to himself, the narrator directs his greatest malevolence toward Auersberger, who was once described as a “composer in the Anton von Webern tradition.” In all the intervening years he never progressed musically beyond being a poor imitator of that composer. At the time of the dinner he is known for such works as his four-minute chorus, twelve-minute opera, three-minute cantata, and even a one-second opera. On the evening of the dinner Auersberger contributes nothing of artistic value to the conversation. Indeed, the narrator observes that he just becomes more and more inebriated, to the point of falling asleep in the presence of his guests, who are also all “well-known” and “celebrated” artists. His wife is described as a light-minded but charming host who bubbles about the “distinguished” Actor while serving more champagne every fifteen minutes.

The narrator expresses great passion for Joana, a dancer and actor whose funeral he attended earlier that day. Joana showed great talent thirty years earlier when she first established herself in Vienna. Rather than pursuing her own career, however, she assisted in making her husband a world-renowned artist. Once his position was secure, he left Joana, a trauma from which she never recovered. She succumbed to alcoholism, which eventually drove her to suicide. In reflecting on her life, on the funeral earlier that day, and on Ravel’s Bolero, which the Auersbergers were playing a recording of that evening, the narrator decides that the evening’s gathering is a requiem for Joana.

The guests wait several hours before the Actor finally arrives after midnight. At that point, the narrator’s vantage point shifts from the anteroom to the dining room table. Rather than expose himself to the Actor’s pompousness and to hearing pretentious nonsense about the Burgtheater tradition, the narrator employs Jeannie Billroth as his pettifogger.

Jeannie is the spokesperson for and representative of the Viennese literary establishment that evening. For many years she has fancied herself to be the brilliant Virginia Woolf of Vienna. She successfully maneuvers the cultural and political powers of the city to award her literary prizes for her few novels, which are of questionable merit, and for her service as editor of a minor literary journal. That evening she is supported by her longtime friend and even less-competent writer, the high school teacher Anna Schreker, who assumes for herself the pose of being the local Gertrude Stein and Marianne Moore.

At dinner, Jeannie attempts to draw the Actor into one of her “intellectual conversations,” but to no avail. Finally she confronts the tired and aging Actor with the question: “Do you think now at the end of your life that you’ve found fulfillment in your art?” The Actor is outraged and refuses to speak to her any longer, but the narrator is delighted that Jeannie is finally berated for the repulsive insolence she has exhibited her entire life.

The Actor, reflecting on Jeannie’s attack and wondering why he has to contend with the never-ending artificiality of life in the theater, becomes meditative. His ideal, he philosophizes, was not to be on the stage speaking the words others wrote but to be at home in nature, to enter deep into and yield himself to the forest: “The forest, the virgin forest, the life of a woodcutter—that has always been my ideal.” The narrator finds that the Actor’s pronouncement has great insight, and as he leaves the gathering, he resolves to write about this “artistic dinner” at once.

Bibliography

Demetz, Peter. “Thomas Bernhard: The Dark Side of Life.” In After the Fires: Recent Writing in the Germanies, Austria, and Switzerland. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. This comprehensive survey of German literature since 1945 includes a chapter on the important role that Bernhard has played in defining new directions in literature.

Dowden, Stephen D. Understanding Thomas Bernhard. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991. An excellent and complete introduction to the life and works of Bernhard. Dowden correctly places Woodcutters, along with the five-volume memoirs, in the chapter on the autobiographical works.

Fetz, Gerald. “Thomas Bernhard and the ’Modern Novel.’” In The Modern German Novel, edited by Keith Bullivant. New York: Berg, 1987. A critical analysis of the eight major prose works published between 1963 and 1985, concentrating on the uniqueness of Bernhard’s contribution to the genre of the modern novel.

Honegger, Gitta. Thomas Bernhard: The Making of an Austrian. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. The first comprehensive biography of Bernhard in English, it examines the complex connections of Bernhard’s work with the geographical, political, and cultural landscape of twentieth century Austria.

Konzett, Matthias. The Rhetoric of National Dissent in Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Elfriede Jelinek. New York: Camden House, 2000. Konzett analyzes how the three Austrian writers have created new literary strategies in order to expose and to dismantle conventional ideas that impede the development of multicultural awareness and identity.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. A Companion to the Works of Thomas Bernhard. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2002. Collection of essays examining numerous aspects of Bernhard’s work, including his aesthetic sensibility, his impact on Austrian literature, his relation to the legacy of Austrian Jewish culture, and his cosmopolitanism.

Long, Jonathan James. The Novels of Thomas Bernhard: Form and Its Function. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2001. Long’s study aims to be an accessible introduction to Bernhard’s novels for an English-speaking audience. He devotes chapter 6 to an analysis of Woodcutters.

Ryan, Simon. “New Directions in the Austrian Novel.” In The Modern German Novel, edited by Keith Bullivant. New York: Berg, 1987. An excellent survey of the experimentation in language and in writing that has become the hallmark of Austrian literature since the 1960’s. This article should be read in conjunction with Fetz’s study of Bernhard’s novels.