Vladimir Rannev: EREIGNISSE (EVENTS)

Thomas Bernhard’s existential miniatures, grouped under the short and almost indifferently neutral title »Events,« are written in a rigorous and precise language. It is precisely through this tautness and the startling obviousness in which the author reports surreal and often shocking events that these sketches leave a strong emotional impression. Bernhard does not judge or accuse. He only records the predetermination and ordinariness of the tragic in life. He lets his characters pause for a while on the border between life and death, and from this vantage point look at themselves and their surroundings.

 

In this position it becomes clear that »appearances are deceptive« (this is the title of a play by Bernhard) and that the personality sung about by European humanism, with all its cultivated ups and downs, manifests itself only as a »funny little man in a newspaper cap« (like the painter, a character in »Events«). All these text miniatures are about the surrender of humanism, which brings these miniatures closer to modern social reality and the current political agenda.

(Vladimir Rannev)