persze, ezt a Kioltás c. regényének főszereplője mondja Goethéről, nem maga T.Bernhard (sőt, Murau igazából csak egy mögöttes főszereplő az egyes szám 1.személyű narrátorhoz képest, de ebbe ne is menjünk bele... B. egyik írói fogása, hogy -- akár egy hosszú mondaton belül, akár tovább -- bizonytalanságban tartja az olvasót arról, ki is teszi ezt vagy azt az izgalmas (vagy provokatív, vagy egyenesen abszurd...) állítást, amit ha akar, megold a legutolsó vessző után odabiggyesztve:

"..., mondta X."

 

Annyira egyébként nem ismerem B-t, hogy tudjam, miként értékelte ő maga Goethét. Ez az önéletírásából nem derül ki, (szemben pl. azzal, hogy Montaigne-ért szinte rajongott).

 

Nekem mindenesetre gyanús, hogy nem kedvelte igazán... Tessék, egy adalék ehhez, ami persze nem bizonyíték:

 

Goethe Dies, translated from the German by James Reidel (Seagull; $21), is a brief and headlong collection—just four stories in 76 pages—but any reader susceptible to Thomas Bernhard’s charm will be transfixed by it in a few sentences. Bernhard, who died in 1989 at the age of 58, is one of the great stylists of the 20th century, and his writing is an irreducible essence, an ungovernable torrent of lunacy and glee, impossible to paraphrase but immediately recognizable.

 

In the title story, Goethe dies as advertised. Before he does, however, he conceives a desire to summon Wittgenstein to his bedside (the two men are contemporaries in this reality). But Wittgenstein dies before the meeting can be arranged—and this is essentially all that happens. The story consists of the remarks, or an elaborate description of the remarks, that Goethe’s secretary and various associates make about his desire that the meeting should take place. This is a desire they aim to gratify or frustrate, according to obscure whims of their own.

The narrator, who may be present for some of this and may be a fanciful version of Bernhard himself, is painstaking in his attribution of the most irrelevant statements, which produces wonderfully tortured formulations like “Riemer underscored that Goethe allegedly said…,” or, even better, this: “the idea of inviting Wittgenstein to Weimar occurred to Goethe at the end of February, thus said Riemer presently, and not at the beginning of March, as Kräuter maintained, and it was Kräuter who learned from Eckermann that Eckermann would prevent Wittgenstein from travelling to Weimar to see Goethe at all costs.”

 

The end of February, the beginning of March—which is it? Who is alleged to have said so, and when? Bernhard’s narrators approach their task with an air of deep and fanatical solemnity: They repeat themselves often, they repeat themselves again, and yet they hardly ever manage to say anything. The statements they organize with such care are often ludicrous, although it’s all the same to them. In the first story’s opening passage, the narrator reports that according to Riemer, “the hardest part of holding a conversation with a man who lies on his deathbed more or less motionless the whole time, a genius staring in the direction of the window, is to find the appropriate pitch in one’s own voice.”...

 

Jóllehet, csak én nem kedvelem igazán Goethét, és tévesen tulajdonítok hasonló véleményt Bernhardnak. Rögtön hozzáteszem, keveset olvastam G.-től, a Faust 2. részét pl egyszerűen abbahagytam vagy harminc éve, és azóta vettem elő:)