Gelo is Bernhard's first novel and already, as in Walking, the entire complexity of this writer who is by no means easy to read emerges. His writings are steeped in philosophy, with which he investigates the "illness of living".

“I can get through the night, get through that terrible despair, you must know, that becomes visible on the walls that I cover with scratches with my fingers. See,” said the painter, “I have broken nails. The pain that spreads from my head is something so unthinkable that I can't express it in words.”

The protagonist of this novel is a young medical student, to whom the task of watching over the painter Strauch is entrusted, who lives in Weng, a remote mountain village.

The painter is an eccentric, marginalized, solitary, misogynistic individual, who has nevertheless developed in his almost isolation a particularly acute perception of himself and the world.

“I observe that your brother is fundamentally 'in a continuous process of formation' starting from only two crucial domains of life, but 'always on the defensive': the political one and what you call 'the relational dream'. These two lives flow in a pure liquid state through the entire geometry of the established and unchangeable choices and with the same naturalness through that always moving internal space that you call 'the Nothing concatenated with the All'.”

“What difference does it make if I am at a height of three hundred meters or three thousand? The difference lies in the fact that the second feat is more dangerous than the first, the first is not really a test of great ability while the other - apparently - is. Often I have seen how young people lose their strength just because suddenly they find themselves surrounded by darkness. And who does it serve that we continue to stay there with the medicine box when the priest has already left?”

Through the painter, we will be immersed in the meanders of philosophy, in search of the unhappy condition of contemporary man.

To be read and reread.

Hot comment: Bernhard is by no means easy to read.

Last year, I read the phenomenal novel "Woodcutters": an incredibly gripping crescendo of desperate anger, and the first book I ever read by Thomas Bernhard. Encouraged by this, I read his debut novel "Correction". That is clearly a different book: I did not find the endlessly penetrating sentences that make "Woodcutters" so gripping here, and also far fewer of those characteristic hilarious tirades and diatribes. It was, for me, also less readable than "Woodcutters": I could hardly put that book down, while I could only take in "Correction" in small pieces. This is also because "Correction" focuses more strongly on despair, confusion, madness, and hopelessness. And that makes "Correction" again very intriguing.

The narrator in "Correction" is a medical student who, as part of his internship, observes the painter Strauch who has withdrawn, sick and disillusioned, to a remote mountain village. This medical student writes down at night what Strauch does and - especially - says during the day, for 27 days, which results in 27 chapters full of quotes from Strauch supplemented with paraphrases or the student's own considerations. In this way, we follow Strauch's increasingly confused and bilious confessions, and we notice how the already melancholic and misanthropic narrator becomes more and more infected with Strauch's confused biliousness and idiotic illness. And especially with Strauch's angry suffering from what he considers to be a completely sick and rotten world, in which everything is filled with stench, insanely barking dogs, fear, decay, disillusionment, and death. So that as a reader, you are also submerged in 310 pages full of pitch-black misanthropy and bilious, almost insane hopelessness.

Sometimes this leads to hilarious passages. For example, about a landlady whom Strauch finds repulsive, it is said that she "lived [...] for her physical sensations, for a stopper that she played with herself, in the dark, with fat and simple sayings, three or four, but held together". Moreover, it often leads to incredibly beautiful bilious aphorisms. For example: "Man, who writhes like a worm in all the mirrors in which he is forced to look". I also find passages like " 'I would really like to take you to the poorhouse sometime', said the painter. 'Maybe it's very good when a person like you, who is still inexperienced - I'm right about that, aren't I?', he said, 'takes a look at one of the most depressing forms of human misery there is, at the rotting together of only self-muttering senile incapacity' " not insignificant. And Strauch's various memories of the just past war are very disturbing. Such as the following: " 'At the end of the war, the forests had been full of military equipment, tanks and armored reconnaissance vehicles and cannons and motorcycles and cars had stood everywhere between the tree trunks. Some blew up on impact. Often, the corpses of the crew were found in the tanks, huddled closely together, with torn lungs. The people who opened the hatches made terrible discoveries', he said. 'Over time, the people dared to dismantle the military equipment and they also began to bury the dead soldiers, they buried them on the spot in the ground, because they didn't want them in the cemetery, they thought they were too strange. When they touched them, they fell apart, the air had caused them to decompose over time. Pieces of children, you know, in the trees' ".

Dead soldiers who are too strange to be buried in the cemetery..... How bizarre. Pieces of children in trees..... How insane. And formulations like "rotting together of only self-muttering senile incapacity" are rather hyperbolic. Moreover, many of Strauch's hyperboles are on the verge of madness and hopelessness: "Here you can clearly see the torn open. Hacked open. Of course, the scream is still there, of course! If you listen, you can still hear the scream. You can still hear the scream, even though the screaming machine is dead, long hacked to pieces, torn apart. The vocal cords have already been severed, but the scream is still there! The observation that the vocal cords have already been smashed to pieces, hacked to pieces, cut to pieces, but that the scream is STILL there is a monstrous phenomenon. That the scream is always there". As the novel progresses, Strauch increasingly speaks in this kind of intense and confused hyperboles, and the scenes also become increasingly surreal, absurd, nightmare-like, unrealistic, confused, and hopeless. As a result, "Correction" becomes increasingly incomprehensible and unreadable. But that seems to be what Bernhard is after. In a rather desperate letter to Strauch's brother, the narrator writes that he can hardly follow Strauch's heated hyperboles and can hardly move rationally within Strauch's thoughts, because "from our thinking, you can probably only FEEL them in all their supposed changes". What Strauch fires at him (and: the reader) in all his monologues is the unthinkable, the completely dark side of this world, the madness of this world, everything that our rational thinking cannot grasp or shrinks from in fear. And precisely that becomes palpable through Strauch's increasingly confused use of language, his increasingly insane and darker hyperboles, his increasingly surreal and insane visions. This is madness that you can only try to feel and not try to understand. That's what, in my opinion, the narrator of "Correction" says. And that's what, in my opinion, you experience more and more as a reader as the book progresses.

In my opinion, "Correction" is therefore written from the premise that the world is permeated with hopelessly making madness and darkness. And in my opinion, "Correction" does not try to convince us of that premise with rational arguments, but tries to make that madness palpable and tangible by infecting us as readers with it. Just as Strauch does to the narrator of "Correction", Bernhard does, in my opinion, to the reader. Such an approach is certainly not to everyone's taste, and perhaps not everyone thinks that "Correction" has been successful in this approach. But I found "Correction" intriguing, stimulating, and at times even formidable. Despite various passages that I could not make head or tail of. So I'm far from done with Thomas Bernhard.

Thomas Bernhard's first novel, in my opinion, is the most intense, exhausting, and craziest among the Bernhard books I have read so far. I couldn't put it down, but I really struggled. You can find all the author's negative thoughts about life and people.

The painter G. Strauch, who has psychological problems caused by his childhood and youth years, withdraws into seclusion in the village of Weng, on the outskirts of Austria, and isolates himself from the world, especially from his family. His surgeon brother (there is also a sister who is often mentioned in the novel) monitors him by sending an intern from Strauch's clinic to Weng. The independent inn where Strauch lives is run by a woman who had sex with a man and whose husband was sent to prison after being reported by his wife. Many people come and go in this inn, such as engineers, undertakers, teachers, etc.

Strauch's long analyses of life, his argot and swearword-laden addresses, his gossip-style conversations were the parts that I had difficulty following. In fact, this intensity can be seen in all of Bernhard's works written in this style later, and moreover, he usually repeats the sentences with slight changes. When the book ends, in the last sentence, the meaning of the book's title (perhaps "freezing" would be more appropriate instead of "frozen") is gained.

I think Thomas Bernhard should be read, but I don't think this book is suitable for starting.

In the direction of excessive insensitivity and excessive sensitivity, the pain curve is rising sharply within time intervals... The temperature levels are reaching thousands... Here I am carrying a headache in which the horizons are overturned. If only I could be in a state that could be more than just an image to you...

This kind of experience is truly overwhelming. It's as if being caught in a whirlwind of extreme emotions and sensations. The excessive insensitivity makes one numb, while the excessive sensitivity magnifies every little thing, causing the pain to intensify. The rising temperature levels add to the chaos, making it feel like being in a furnace. And that headache, with the overturned horizons, is like a heavy burden that one can hardly bear.

One can only long for a different state, a state where things are not so extreme, where one can find a bit of peace and stability. But in this moment, it seems so elusive, just a distant dream.

When we reach the autumn of our lives and cast our gaze backward, what lies before our eyes?

Youth, it seems, is often a realm of mistakes. And yet, as we age, the error perhaps lies in our perception of those youthful missteps.

We have an observer and the man he observes: youth and old age, the rational and the irrational, a patient and a diagnostician. Who will have the upper hand in this complex interplay? Who will emerge victorious in the battle of the minds?

As we grapple with these questions, we are also led to ponder the nature of imagination. Is it, as one might suggest, an illness? An affliction that we don't contract but rather carry within us from the start, responsible for both the ridiculous and the malignant?

Furthermore, we must ask ourselves: which is more healthy – optimism or pessimism? And which one aligns more closely with reality?

In "Frost," Thomas Bernhard offers a scathing and unflinching critique of humanity. He描绘s a world in which everything has crumbled, dissolved, and lost its meaning. All the reference points have shifted, and nothing seems to exist anymore. Belief and unbelief have vanished, and even science has been cast aside. It is a world of frozen air, where dreams die and everything turns cold.

For those who have succumbed to this frost, there appears to be no hope. Bernhard's work forces us to confront the harsh realities of existence and question the very essence of our being.

The reading of this book really exasperated me.

I found myself constantly asking if what I was reading made any sense.

And yet, while I was asking myself this question, I continued to read.

This led me into a spiral of madness.

So, I believe that Bernhard has done his job well.

He has managed to create a work that elicits such strong emotions and reactions from the reader.

The confusion and frustration that I felt while reading were almost palpable.

But at the same time, there was something about the book that kept pulling me back in.

Maybe it was the unique writing style or the strange and complex characters.

Whatever it was, I couldn't help but keep reading, even though I knew it was driving me crazy.

In the end, I think that's the mark of a truly great book.

It makes you think, it makes you feel, and it leaves a lasting impression on you.

And that's exactly what Bernhard's book has done for me.

Letto in copia bibliotecaria timbrata 8 agosto 1986, inesorabilmente fuori catalogo. The first novel of Bernhard is the image of a still-evolving style, with almost all the key themes already in relief.

It is not very suitable for starting to get to know him as it lacks synthesis and in the second part it weighs down quite a bit. There are at least another 5 or 6 of his books to prefer immediately, but this one, published at 32 years old, is a stunning debut.

[72/100]

Frasario minimo/

~ I don't remember what I was about to say, only that it was a malignancy. This I know. Often of all that one is about to say, only this sensation remains, that one was about to say a malignancy.

~ It is a serious crime to generate a person of whom one knows that they will be unhappy, that at least once sooner or later will be unhappy. The unhappiness contained in a moment is already all the unhappiness.

~ It occurred to me that today I am twenty-three years old. No one, really no one, has thought of it. Maybe someone has thought of it, but no one knows where I am.

~ The pains in my head have reached a degree of intolerability unknown to science.

~ What do people say about me? – he asked. – Do they call me an idiot? What do people say?

~ Voluntary destruction for the love of a possible greater simplicity of vision.

~ What is this mountaineering then? What difference does it make if I am at a height of three hundred meters or three thousand meters? The difference lies in the fact that the second undertaking is more dangerous than the first, the first is not really a test of great ability while the other – apparently – is a test of great ability.

~ At forty, these men are ruined. They are finished. They are still seen for a while, then one hears that they have simply fallen from a vertical cliff. They hang themselves in warehouses, in the sheds of the power station, in the washing rooms of the cellulose factory.

~ I read in the newspaper about men who had claims, about men who had notions, about others who had neither claims nor notions, about cities that were sinking, about celestial bodies that are no longer far away.

~ Often I read entire pages without knowing what I have read. Then I start again from the beginning and discover how beautiful what I had read was.

~ From me, she should not expect anything other than an incomplete account that describes more or less approximately the superficial structure of her brother and that will not go beyond the phosphorescent aspect – however scrupulously described – of such a superficial structure and not even the currents (which probably remain wrapped in darkness) and the countercurrents (transformations) underlying it.

~ Colors, odors, degrees of cold – this frost that advances, that advances in everything and in every thing and everywhere with its unheard-of capacity to expand concepts.

Bernhard's entire body of work is perhaps one of the hardest. In the figure of the painter Strauch, nihilism reaches its highest levels.

And yet, stylistically, he had not yet achieved "his style." "Helada" was his first work, but its quality is beyond doubt.

That coldness and that inner (and also outer) darkness, since the valley and its inhabitants are as oppressive as the painter himself, must also be placed in the context of the post-war period and the desperate struggle for survival that the young Bernhard had. Due to his early and very serious health problems, he wandered more dead than alive through hospitals and sanatoriums.

In short, it is a book for "tough" readers who want to escape from mediocrity and stupidity. It offers a profound exploration of the human condition in a harsh and unforgiving world, challenging the reader to confront their own beliefs and values.

The painter Strauch is a psychiatric case.

He explained how he had learned to treat people like stones and to consider new things as old facts. How he had discovered what is without thought, what makes us without thought, lonely, and torpid. How within himself he knew how to reconcile the future, the present, and the past, and carry on this game until it began to slip out of his hands. How he had learned with a simple calculation to extinguish his own body, to extinguish also the spirit, to push it in a direction that for him at that given moment was the pre-established one, "the only direction", a sensation that perhaps lasted only a fraction of a second. How he dared to live only among the dead, the retirees, the spent, the destitute, the precipitated. He passed through life as through an endless tunnel and to nothing but darkness. And cold.

Warning: this first novel of Thomas Bernhard is very gloomy; to get to the end without overly depressing the reader, one must possess good qualities of perseverance and endurance.

In "The Book of the Boy," Nikolidis said that if we know the depth of Bernhard's pain, we will feel at ease! I had to face Bernhard to understand.

The Snowmen is a story about a medical intern whose teacher assigns him to go to a distant village called Weng to observe his brother "Asterix."

This village has a strange atmosphere. In the middle of a frozen and snow-covered valley, with mostly short and sick people, for whom death is common and they use alcohol to silence the children.

The story progresses through the conversations of the narrator and Asterix. Asterix is a man with deep and extremely pessimistic thoughts. He has deliberately secluded himself from humanity and not only has no hope for the human race but even the basic needs of humans seem meaningless to him. Asterix believes that loneliness is an inherent part of human nature, even if we ignore it. The proof of this is the formation of society, religion, and other groups; countless attempts to deny the profound loneliness of humans.

During the conversations between the narrator and Asterix, the narrator is gradually influenced by Asterix's dark thoughts to such an extent that it becomes impossible to clearly define the boundary between the two.

Cold, darkness, and death are the themes on which this book is based. These are not things that happen gradually. Sometimes you see a frozen scene, and sometimes darkness engulfs you. Darkness and death suddenly attack.

From the author's perspective, cold is a symbol of reflection within us when no warmth from any news can penetrate. A world that will completely freeze in the future, not only geographically but also in the sense that there will be very little hope left.

The Snowmen and their silence are death itself.

At one point, Asterix says: "We are prisoners in the depths of a chasm that is within us." Bernhard is that monster who stands at the entrance of this chasm and pulls us there, to that point where we have a terrifying vision of the cold, seclusion, silence, and death.

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#TheSnowmen #ThomasBernhard

Bernhard's autobiographical work focuses on the period he spent in a sanatorium while being treated for tuberculosis, an illness he suffered from during his adolescence. The Austrian author describes his experience in the sanatorium brutally. Although the repetition and rhythm that would later define his prose are not yet as prominent, we can still find the pessimistic and anguished atmospheres, as well as themes such as despair, death, and suicide, which are common in all his works.

«My grandfather made me acquainted with the truth, not only his truth, the absolute truth, but also the total errors of this truth. The truth is always an error, even if it is 100% truth. Every error is nothing but the truth […]»

"El fred" not only speaks of illness but also delves deeper into the exploration of the human being in its struggle against adversity, loneliness, and the absurdity of existence. As always, it is a pleasure to read the twisted and realistic mind of the Austrian genius.

«My grandfather had seen the world as it was: as a hothouse in which the most beautiful and complex forms develop if one looks at it long enough, if one abandons one's gaze to that microscopic perseverance. The hothouse had the beauties of nature ready for the perspicacious gaze, for the revolutionary gaze. But it was still a hothouse. And whoever looks at it for a long time, for decades, gets tired and dies and/or throws himself into it. Nature was what he classified as cruel, and people were what he described as desperate and vile.»

Thomas Bernhard's debut novel from 1963 is something like the antithesis of the trivial regional novel. There is absolutely no trace of the idyllic, simple rural life in front of a dreamy mountain backdrop. Instead, the Austrian province is shown as a haven of stupidity and degeneration. On the orders of his superior, a young assistant goes to the small village of Weng. There he is to observe its brother, the painter Strauch, and report on his condition. For the aspiring doctor, this assignment develops into a veritable journey into the heart of the darkness of human existence. Because the painter leads a life in abysmal despair. According to his own account, incurably ill, he lives in the midst of a spiritual desert, populated by brutish and instinct-driven locals. His only reading is the Pensées / Thoughts of Blaise Pascal. Pascal once spoke of the horror in the face of the eternal silence of the infinite spaces. The painter Strauch also seems to be shaken to the core by a similarly deep horror. The assistant becomes a witness to an unstoppable decline, but unconsciously falls under the spell of the painter. The boundary between observer and study object becomes increasingly blurred as the events progress - gradually giving way to an uncanny fascination.

I initially had some difficulties with the book. In Strauch's utterances, a chaotic stream of thought fragments, it is initially hardly possible to recognize a meaningful connection. Many sentences just rush through one's head without really sticking. But among them, thoughts of a surprisingly clear nature keep emerging, which suggest a highly sensitive character. Strauch's sensitivity is synonymous with his fate. In contrast to all the others, he has the ability of an unadorned, sensual perception. This makes him a blatant outsider. His problem is the inability to come to terms with the given circumstances. Manically driven, he opposes the thoughtlessness of his fellow human beings, against the power of habits and self-evident things. In a world of rural dullness, he has become a prisoner of his own thinking, sitting like a hare in the trap of his clarity of vision.

The contrast of two irreconcilable realities is what is actually exciting about this novel. In the figure of the painter, a free artistic nature is embodied, which stands in complete contradiction to the rational functionality of its environment. With the exception of Strauch, the others appear only as nameless functionaries (the assistant, the engineer, the landlady, the policeman, the gamekeeper, etc.). Everything is fixed in this world of frost and snow; frozen like the icy ground in Dante's vision of hell. What is really tragic is the hopelessness of the situation. Normally, the artist should bring the impressions streaming in on him into an order through the path of creative shaping. Cynically, the author denies him this possibility and leaves him hanging without a real point of reference, as a foreign body in the airless space. Condemned to an existence in absolute solitude and artistic impotence. The highest punishment also lies in the fact that Strauch is fully aware of his situation. There, true abysses are revealed. It is a cruel game that Thomas Bernhard is playing here with his character.

Despite a certain clumsiness, the book has left a strong impression on me. Especially since the predominant depressive, pessimistic tone is constantly interrupted by a grotesque humor. To what extent Bernhard himself has inscribed himself in the figure of the painter, as a genius misunderstood by the world (or at least by Austria), I cannot really judge. But between the lines, there is undoubtedly a certain pleasure in provocation to be recognized. All in all, a novel that still occupies me even a few days after reading and definitely deserves a second reading in the future.