The Loser

The Loser is a novel by the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard in 1983 will tell the professional and personal career three budding concert pianist, one of which -. Glenn Gould - who actually lived, as well as her lifelong struggle with the demand for perfection in piano playing.

Action

The central characters in the novel are three piano virtuoso Glenn Gould, Wertheimer ( " The Loser " ) and the first-person narrator. You get to know in 1953, when she simultaneously " Horowitz " - study at the Mozarteum in Salzburg - bearers of the name of a person who has also actually lived. All three are committed to " only the highest" in art and set largest demands on themselves as they recognize the genius Gould in rehearsing and the presentation of the Goldberg Variations, and The Art of Fugue, give Wertheimer and the narrator playing the piano ado to. You recognize, can never reach this level of perfection.

Wertheimer, the Gould nickname is The Loser, is in the following 28 years of idleness after keeping his sister in an oppressive relationship in the shared apartment in Vienna, until it separates from him and a rich Swiss marries with the name Duttweiler and moves to Chur. Almost simultaneously, dies Gould, Wertheimer and kills himself in front of his sister's house. The narrator gave away his Steinway grand piano and confined himself again and again to begin a discussion about Glenn Gould and discard each. He had meanwhile fled the expectant for him a burden Vienna to Madrid, from where he traveled for the funeral Wertheimer to Chur. From there, he wants to go to Vienna, where he still owns an apartment, back to Madrid, but he keeps in Wankham on to once again visit the house Wertheimer in Traich.

Time and place

The novel is set in the Upper Austrian Wankham - the narrator also comes from the region - after the funeral Wertheimer in Chur. The narrator reflects the common ( and parallel ) life cycle of the three protagonists and the reason for Wertheimer's suicide on three interlaced layers of time: the history, the moment the memory of this history ( when entering the Wankhamer guest house ) and the time of writing the memory of this history.

Fiction and reality

In the novel, authentic and erdichtetes material is so interwoven that a boundary line is difficult to see. The fictional character Glenn Gould differs in some ways different from the real person Glenn Gould. The real Glenn Gould has never studied in Salzburg and also not with Vladimir Horowitz, who stylistically the opposite of Gould embodied what Thomas Bernhard certainly knew. In his novel, he never mentioned the name of Horowitz. In addition, the fictional character is 51 years old, while the real Gould few days after his 50th birthday - has died - though from a stroke, but not sitting at the piano, as described in the novel.

Formal Aspects

The novel has a motto: "Long precomputed suicide, I thought, not a spontaneous act of desperation. "

A conspicuous feature of this novel is the outer form. There are four paragraphs in this book. At the very beginning three sets are deducted - the fourth paragraph, however, takes place in practice until the end of the book. This fact, however, that the initiation rates are raised, is no coincidence. Finally, in the first four sets, the main themes of the book are anticipated. The Loser does not contain any direct speech, instead indirect quotations that are set in italics as the only loosening. With the idiosyncratic punctuation Bernard inserts in unusual places pause signals in the text.

Music

The genesis of the Goldberg Variations is being satirized, the connection to the two folk songs of the Quodlibet ask the hostess and the Woodcutter ago and shape and number systems of the Goldberg Variations are taken up in the loser. So the word Aria comes twice, the word Goldberg Variations 32 times before and in the opening paragraphs is exposed similar to the Aria themes material determined in variations of the entire novel.

Book editions

  • First edition: Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-518-04507-5
  • Bibliothek Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main, 1986, ISBN 3- 518-01899 -X
  • Paperback: Frankfurt 1988, ISBN 3-518-37997-6
  • Süddeutsche Zeitung library: Munich 2004, ISBN 3-937793-04-6
  • Factory Edition, Volume 6: Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-518-41506-9
Mozarteum University of Salzburg Frost (novel) The Lime Works Correction (novel) Old Masters (novel)
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