Thomas Bernhard - Is it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy?

Thomas Bernhard - Is it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy?

Thomas Bernhard's short story, Is it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy?, which has appeared elsewhere in print but was taken, for this review, from the new online journal, Asymptote, opens with an angry narrator channeling his rage toward the theatre, an art form he despises while obsessing over its subtleties and intrigues. The narrator – nameless, like many of Bernhard's narrators – is a product of his own hate, feeding on the bile he spews forth, endlessly elaborating on the perceived vulgarity of the subject of his rage.

I haven't been to the theatre any more for eight or ten weeks, I said to myself, and I know why I haven't been to the theatre any more, I despise the theatre, I hate the actors, the theatre is nothing but a perfidious impertinence, an impertinent perfidiousness, and suddenly I'm supposed to go to the theatre again? To a play? What does that mean?

One ordinary day, which is to say, a day spent brooding over the faults and failures of the theatre, angry that he has been forced to buy a theatre ticket instead of being given one (don't they know who he is? Don't they know of his scholarly works? (No)), the narrator, attempting to assuage his parents' concerns that he is going to worry his “overstrained head”, goes for a walk to the Volksgarten park, to watch the people who go to the theatre, and just as important, to watch how they go to theatre.

He ruminates on the structure of his book,

With five, possibly seven, sections, under the title THEATRE--THEATRE? my study will soon be finished. (Once it's finished, you'll burn it, because it's pointless to publish it, you'll read it through and burn it. Publication is ridiculous, wrong aim!) First section THE ACTORS, second section THE ACTORS IN THE ACTORS, third section THE ACTORS IN THE ACTORS OF THE ACTORS and so on...fourth section STAGE EXCESSES and so on... last section: SO, WHAT IS THE THEATRE?

By the time the narrator has rubbed away the details of his theatre ticket, rendering it void for use and forcing him to spend another night apart from his obsession, we have come to the full realisation of his obsession. Bernhard hints strongly at the narrator's ill health, and the proliferation of capitals, of italics, and of sheer unmitigated, well-directed, hate indicates a certain separation from the norms of ordinary citizens. I hesitate to use the word madness, partly because it suggests a lack of intelligence or purpose, when that is clearly not the case, but also because Bernhard's narrator – like all his narrators – possesses a great clarity of expression and his worldview, as alien as it may be, is coherent and well-realised. Not mad, but living in another key. Not mad, but wilfully and distinctly separate from others in an attempt to find the truth that matters to him.

At this juncture, a man asks him the time and the narrator answers,

'It's eight o'clock,' I say, 'the performance has begun.'

Now I turn around and see the man.

The man is tall and thin.

Apart from this man, there is no one in the Volksgarten park, I think.

Immediately I think that I have nothing to lose.

They fall into conversation, and it soon becomes clear that they share a similar aptitude for obsession, and the extreme focus of men who having given up everything in life to pursue the cold burning light of their idea. The narrator, we know, obsesses over theatre. His interlocutor, on the other hand, remains an enigma for much of the story. We learn that he is wearing women's shoes, and then later we learn he is wearing full women's clothing. We learn that he has no watch, which is why he asks the time – but he always asks the time at eight o'clock exactly, and the reason for that is that he really does have a watch, but prefers to ask. We learn that he repeats much of the night's activities whenever there is a theatre performance, and that he has a didactic memory for the amount of steps it takes to walk from one landmark to another in the immediate vicinity.

Equally askew in their perceptions, the two men are curious about one another, though their conversation seems to operate in separate bubbles. They don't really talk, so much as wait for the other to finish speaking before making statements about their individual obsessions. We know the narrator better, so it is from his perspective that we make our assessment of the man in women's clothing. The most striking aspect is that he seems to be even more preoccupied with his obsession than the narrator himself. Side by side, the narrator becomes almost ordinary, and the attraction of his single-minded focus increases.

While reading the opening to the story, we are grounded to the level of the narrator's anger and hate – his personality becomes a baseline. From there, we observe and compare the interlocutor's personality, and accordingly, pass judgement. Bernhard subverts this technique by slowly introducing information in the man in women's clothing's speech to indicate some great loss, some immense sadness, which might explain his behaviour. From the narrator, we have no explanation – but the other man? Perhaps we can understand, even though his obsession seems the greater.

'Now it would indeed be interesting,' [the man in women's clothing] said, 'to know whether at the moment at which we are walking towards the Swiss Wing, a comedy or a tragedy is being performed in the theatre...This is the first time that I don't know what is being performed. But you must not tell me... No, don't say what it is! It should not be hard,' he said, 'by studying you, by concentrating entirely on you, by concerning myself exclusively only with you, to discover whether at this moment a comedy or a tragedy is being performed in the theatre. 'Yes,' he said, 'in time the study of your person will inform me about everything that is happening in the theatre, and about everything that is happening outside the theatre, about everything in the world, which at every moment is entirely linked to you. Finally at some point, the moment really could arrive at which, by studying you as intensively as possible, I know everything about you...'

The conclusion of the story provides an answer to the question of the title, though it isn't, perhaps, what might be expected. Bernhard is well known for his use of immense paragraphs, some of which span an entire book, and he is no stranger to plumbing the depths of anger, hate, and obsession. At times, his novels may be too impenetrable, too angry, too focused on the knife's edge balance between genius and madness. Is it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy? is a distillation of the themes Bernhard revisited again and again in his novels, and as such, provides an excellent introduction to his work.

Is it a Comedy? Is it a Tragedy? by Thomas Bernhard is a short story from Asymptote, a new online journal of literature in translation. The work is freely available online.

See Also

Other titles by Thomas Bernhard under review include:
---Frost

Also of interest: Index of short stories under review