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Thomas Bernhard
Frost
Title: Frost
Author: Thomas Bernhard
Format: Hardcover
Language: German
Pages: 357
Publisher: , 0
ISBN: 3458141235
Format: PDF / Kindle / ePub
Size: 7.5 MB
Download: allowed
Description
Visceral, raw, singular, and distinctive, Frost is the story of a friendship between a young man at
the beginning of his medical career and a painter who is entering his final days.
A writer of world stature, Thomas Bernhard combined a searing wit and an unwavering gaze
into the human condition. Frost follows an unnamed young Austrian who accepts an unusual
assignment. Rather than continue with his medical studies, he travels to a bleak mining town in
the back of beyond, in order to clinically observe the aged painter, Strauch, who happens to be
the brother of this young man’s surgical mentor. The catch is this: Strauch must not know the
young man’s true occupation or the reason for his arrival. Posing as a promising law student
with a love of Henry James, the young man befriends the mad artist and is caught up among an
equally extraordinary cast of local characters, from his resentful landlady to the town’s mining
engineers.
This debut novel by Thomas Bernhard, which came out in German in 1963 and is now being
published in English for the first time, marks the beginning of what was one of the twentieth
century’s most powerful, provocative literary careers.
Insightful reviews
Cristina: En cualquier escrito de Bernhard, por nimio que sea, se encuentra a Bernhard y todo
lo que su obra representa. Las formas en las que el mismo se materialice ya es objeto de
puntualización y son determinadas, en gran medida, por la cronología misma del escritor, pero
el hecho es que incluso en Helada, aun privada de ese estilo característico por el cual el autor
es conocido y reconocido, encontramos los motivos bernhardianos. Y es crudo, es brillante, es
denso y oscuro... una oscuridad, sin embargo, cristalina. Algunos podrán denunciar ese
aparente rasgo de comodidad que a simple vista supone el escribir siempre sobre la misma
temática, sobre la misma perspectiva o sobre cualquier otro aspecto que se quiera abordar. En
mi opinión, en este caso, dicha crítica se vería refutada, no ya por la escritura en sí, sino por el
arte de la escritura que empieza y acaba con Bernhard, de forma radical, tan radical como la
contemplación de la tierra firme y el abismo que nos aguardaría si nos encontráramos al borde
mismo de un acantilado. En suma, tan radical como el mismo autor. Es como el músico que,
tras años de ortodoxa interpretación, es capaz de encontrar su sitio y que de alguna forma
puede ya plasmarlo en un arte, si bien no único, al menos distintivo, que cada vez alcanza
cotas de mayor refinación.
Así el músico, así Bernhard. Tratándose de su primera novela es más que evidente que no es
aquí donde encontraremos semejante depuración estilística, no es este el Bernhard de las
frases interminablemente subordinadas, ni el de la hostilidad hacia los puntos y aparte, ni el de
la repetitiva, obsesiva musicalidad por la que hoy recordamos su arte. Aun así, a pesar de (o
precisamente por) estar escrita, estilísticamente hablando, en clave convencional (teniendo en
cuenta el grado de convención que puede residir en Bernhard), se hace una lectura más
pesada que la de cualquiera de sus otras obras. Con todo, en el libro abundan pensamientos
brillantes (los que se pueden desentrañar, claro) y una direccionalidad un tanto más descriptiva
que hasta entonces no había leído en el autor austriaco.
ben: Meh…
Isabelle: I forgot where that was, but Brod once said something like this to Kafka: I feel like a
mourning man among wedding guests, like a spider among butterflies.
Well, that’s the painter Strauch for you. You might also like to imagine him as the last human
being on earth (that’s how he likes to perceive himself; no, that’s how he must necessarily see
himself, otherwise he couldn’t have kept on existing for such a long time).
Frost is a mediation on self-loathing, a monologue within a monologue. It is Strauch’s endless
rant about himself and a world that he rejects and where he is rejected by everyone. The
nameless narrator is observing Strauch, setting out to explore something inexplorable, trying to
understand this fantastical abyss-human. Strauch, who is always drowning in between people,
but never sinking, finally gets ‘lost’ after emptying himself of all words.
I thought Strauch a character not unlike myself; my despicable last name being an extension of
his stupid last name. He shrinks from most forms of social intercourse, at the same time lacking
the strength to cut all ties with society. He might superficially reject sex and alcohol and all sorts
of base demeanour, but secretly indulges in all these things. That is not to say that he is
ridiculous. In his derangement he is deadly serious and tragic; although, as he says, nothing is
tragic. The ridiculous is more ubiquitous than anything else. Within the ridiculous there are
tragedies, into which one is pushing forward, not being equipped with a light, into a sinister pit.
Language-wise this is probably as grand as it gets; I’ve read most of the novel aloud. And
despite the absence of a discernible storyline and a real plot, those word-constructs are enough
to carry one forward, even if it’s into nothingness.
Nathaniel: here's Thomas Bernhard once more supplying the “philosophy of the exacerbated
bird’s-eye view of impure thought” because it is going “through the nitrogen of the primal
situation of the devil,” “pitch[ing] wildness and quiet alternately on the disquiet of others.” His
voicebox is the painter, Strauch, “one of these humans . . . who tie tourniquets around the
arteries in their thought, yet to no effect; who pour themselves out in suicidal word-spate, who
hate themselves truthfully as the international in their feeling, apprehended as enforced incest,
day-by-day smashes them to smithereens.” Get the picture?Strauch’s disdain is breathless.
Bernhard ensconces him in an environment, “where vulgarity includes its head as excessive as
royalty. Brutality wanders alongside just like the epitome of gentleness, celebrated, ethical,
inimitable.” Strauch deplores the liquor-soaked, “cretins” who encompass the agricultural hotel
to which he retreated after burning all of his work and breaking touch with a person who could
have been within the behavior of putting up with him. His brother, a scientific doctor, sends an
aspiring clinical pupil to monitor Strauch’s habit for thirty days. The ebook transpires during this
implausibly couple of minutes period, narrated by means of the clinical student, who fees
Strauch approximately up to he articulates ideas of his own. The reflections of the clinical
scholar are swiftly infected and overrun by means of the timbre of Strauch’s personal
inexhaustible venom and whereas peripheral characters check in a number of pages worthy of
speaking, they and the clinical pupil all turn out sounding just like the painter, that's one of many
book’s susceptible points.If you had a chum just like the painter, you wouldn't usually
concentrate on what he said. whilst it resonated together with your temper or your conclusions,
it's possible you'll perk up; yet mostly you could track out this sort of individual comfortably and
notice twenty mins (or pages) later, that they're oblivious for your point of alertness and
disinterested on your reception. Worse, you could pretty well instantly come back into the
stream in their discourse since it is predictable in its trajectory and stance. it may be tough to get
traction during this book. while I skim in the course of the components the place I made fewest
notes, i locate passages that I don’t take into account reading. on the related time, the
publication is peppered with rewardingly funny passages which are one of many issues for
which I so much get pleasure from Bernhard:“I can’t be mindful what i wished to say, yet i do
know it used to be anything malicious. Often, of every thing you suggest to say, that’s all that’s
left, the experience that you just had it in brain to claim anything malicious.”“As quickly because
it may possibly blow its personal nose, a baby was once lethal to something it got here involved
with.”“Most of them have by no means performed the rest besides yet load and unload, status
in status water of their gumboots and knocking in bridge piles.”“It’s like having to make my
approach via millennia, simply because a few moments are after me with immense
sticks.”Themes that run all through Bernhard’s writing are already making commonplace
appearances in this, his first novel. A loathing of Austria, universal Austrians and womankind is
all over present. Characters fixate on suicide and suppose beset and undermined by way of the
destructive, crude and insufficient nature of pals and nations. Bernhard’s characters refuse to
combine after which punish themselves for it. The acid humor is the single reduction that you'll
be afforded on your growth via his novels.If you haven't learn Bernhard before, don't commence
here. ponder beginning with “Gargoyles,” his so much episodic paintings that suffers least from
repetition, or his memoir, “Gathering Evidence,” that's shattering, appealing and cruel. so far as
I’m concerned, so much of his center interval works approximately inventive humans whose
creativity is blocked, are a piece too painful for someone who isn’t a literary masochist.
Sarah: lifestyles is the purest, clearest, darkest, such a lot crystalline kind of
hopelessness...There is just one method to go, in the course of the snow and ice into despair;
previous the adultery of reason.Bernhard's no optimist, yet his pessimism isn't boring. In fact, it
is frequently fairly a gorgeous factor at the web page (unlike in life). It teaches us, maybe, that
after you get previous and grumpy, you have to sofa your proceedings in fascinating language
and somebody will come learn you and write a ebook approximately you.
justin: think if Beckett and Celine tagteamed a rewrite of the Magic Mountain, basically the battle
is over, and the high-class health center on a mountaintop is now a dilapidated resort in a
festering valley.
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