Wittgenstein's Nephew: A Friendship

by Thomas Bernhard

Book Overview

It is 1967. In separate wings of a Viennese hospital, two men lie bedridden. The narrator, named Thomas Bernhard, is stricken with a lung ailment; his friend Paul, nephew of the celebrated philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, is suffering from one of his periodic bouts of madness. As their once-casual friendship quickens, these two eccentric men begin to discover in each other a possible antidote to their feelings of hopelessness and mortality--a spiritual...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400077567
• ISBN13: 9781400077564
• Release Date: October 2009
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 112 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

An Homage to a Dear and Difficult Friend

Thomas Bernhard is a wonderful wordsmith. He weaves his story in riffs like jazz motifs or the most beautiful of tapestries. In a tapestry, there may be repeat stitches but the colors and gauge change, the dynamic conspires to grow and become something else just as it is being created. Like a weaver or jazz musician, Bernhard repeats the essence of his message in many ways, giving the reader a marvelous opportunity to see into the protagonist's mind. He is a natural story teller. This book is considered a novel but it is very autobiographical in nature. The novel opens up in 1967 in a Viennese hospital. It is about the author's friendship with the nephew of the great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Ludwig's nephew's name is Paul and he is considered a madman, a 'lunatic' in his day. He is also considered a great lover of opera and music, perhaps a bit of a dandy at times. The story starts out as the author is recuperating in a hospital that has two pavilions, one for pulmonary patients and one for psychiatric patients. The author is in the pulmonary wing. He has just had a huge tumor removed from his thoracic region and is expected to die. Paul Wittgenstein is in the psychiatric unit for one of his regular stays. He suffers from an unnamed ailment but his relatives find him a burden and suspect he is harmful to others so they have him committed. The author is no friend of psychiatry. He states "Psychiatrists are the real demons of our age, going about their business with impunity and constrained by neither law nor conscience." Paul Wittgenstein was born to great wealth and prestige but used up all his money and now lives on the hand-outs of family and friends. He has a loyal wife who stands by him through thick and thin. The author is a writer who met Paul at a mutual friend's home and they became "difficult" friends from the start. There was nothing they could not talk about, be it music, philosophy, literature, politics. Paul is an opera lover, a lover of music in general and also a lover of race car driving. He is a man of anomalies and paradoxes. In a sense, we learn much more about Paul in this book than we learn about the author. The book seems to be an homage to Paul and to a great friendship. The author is appalled at the state of psychiatric care in Vienna. He believes that Paul is hospitalized to drain him of his life forces. Paul is given electro-convulsive therapy, medications, treatments and put in an environment designed to sap the life out of him. When he is as close to death as he can be, he is discharged until he gets sick again, usually in four or five months. The symptoms that plague Paul sound very much like manic depressive disorder - pressured speech, volatile moods, strange movements, serious depression, obvious mania, narcissism. The story plays out in the author's telling of multiple vignettes and thoughts about the nature of the friendship. He repeats aspects of the stories over and over in

My favorite Bernhard title

Really the finest book Bernhard has written, in my view, and the one that continues to haunt me decades after I first read it. Well worth the short time it takes to consume it.

"To Receive An Award Is To Be Pissed On"

I'd heard about Thomas Bernhard's 'rant like novels' for years, but had dosed myself with so much literary pessimism that I needed a break. After reading the first few paragraphs of "Wittgenstein's Nephew", I knew I had misjudged the man's writing beforehand. This is not so much Schopenhauer or Cioran as it is Ionesco or Gombrowicz; there is an element of humor in Bernhard's work (although not overt) which exposes the comedy of human existence in a comedic, rather than depressing and foreboding, way.Bernhard's narrator is a close friend with Paul Wittgenstein, nephew of the famous philosopher. Paul, while as brilliant and analytical as his prestigious nephew, is unfortunately quite insane and completely misanthropic. Bernhard takes pains to highlight the fact that Paul, despite his pronounced writers' block and inability to produce anything (except a few scattered memoirs, which are apparently destroyed before his death), is as much of a giant as his nephew. The absurdity of life surrounds the two friends, as they are both incarcerated for more-or-less terminal illnesses, the narrator's being physical, Paul's being mental. We watch the sad deterioration of this once outgoing genius to a raving maniac, unable to pass a homeless man without giving away his life savings. The narrator describes his nearly inescapable feelings of hopelessness as his troubled friend Paul responds to everything with a disturbing:"Grotesque, grotesque."The narrator hates nature, and here we are reminded of Huysmans. His descriptions of the 'walks' he is recommended to take ("I was never a walker") arouse in him nothing but the most repulsed feelings. Bernhard's writing sometimes reminds one of Schopenhauer's essays; once he or his character voices an emotion or thought on human existence, they feel the need to repeat it five thousand times in five thousand different ways. In Schopenhauer, this is merely annoying. In Bernhard, it is funny.The ending is the saddest part of the novel. The narrator, out of a "sickening instinct of life preservation," avoids his friend. He appears psychotic and talks of nothing but death. Paul, hated by his family (along with his nephew, the two are the familial outcasts), decides to play a "prank" which does not go over well. The last line by the narrator is crushing: "I have not visited his grave to this day."

an bernhard for a start

i am a 23 old from austria, and like reading bernhard for a couple of years now. but its not just his books, but the person itself that fascinates me (and many others) a lot. i actually live 30min from bernhards farm near gmunden/ohlsdorf in upper-austria, which i visited a couple of times. is bernhard a missanthrop, or not? is he a pessimistic, or not? i came to the conclusion that he is not. in many times and ways he was fooling medias, newspapers and interviewers, he had his fun, he sold lots of books, he made a point, lots of money and he is a legend. his books are translated in over 30 lanuages. if you want to learn about bernhard you might read the book from karl ignaz hennetmair called "ein jahr mit thomas bernhard". that hennetmair is b. neighbour, and close friend for some 10 years until they disbanded for some reasons, nobody knows. actually, i tried bernhard in english, but, its not meeting the spirit of b. at all. maybe the meaning is still there but in german, the text reads like music. its unique..."wittgensteins neffe" is a good bernhard starter, including the musical writing, and the bernhard world, without digging too deep (if you wanna dig really deep, choose "frost").my favourite bernhard book is "das kalkwerk", and "der untergeher". - any emails are welcomed.

Forgive Me Friend, Here Is The Eulogy I Promised

"Wittgenstein's Nephew" is a reflection on friendship and loss, a remembrance of a dear friend, and a regret for a missed eulogy. It is written by Thomas Bernhard, about Paul Wittgenstein, who were good friends for over a decade. It ranks unquestionably among Berhnard's finest works. (The book was written in 1982. Bernhard was Austrian, 1931-1989, and met Wittgentstein (1924-1979) in 1967).The book holds to no fixed plot, but is a series of discursive episodes about the author and his friend engaged in various episodes: meeting in a hospital, attending the opera, visiting a once-cosmopolitan friend now living in the remote rural lands of Austria, frequenting the same literary clubs and cafes, and many similar tales.Every vignette is a jewel, and they are plenty, but few are about Paul directly, or reveal Thomas's feelings explicitly. Each time Bernhard begins talking directly about Paul, or his inner feelings, he diverts attention quickly to another story. His heart is so obviously broken he cannot bear to talk about his friend, but only their good times together. Still, it is abundantly clear from his story-telling, Thomas loves Paul like a brother, truly a "best friend."Paul was a brilliant man, like his famous uncle Ludwig, the philosopher, and musically talented, like another Paul Wittgenstein (Ludwig's brother, the pianist) but also emotionally unstable, and financially irresponsible. After a late-life divorce, in his usual ill health, Bernhard describes Paul crying, in his dark and empty apartment, in rough condition despite its prime city location, but tells us he left Paul alone in his misery, to go sit in the park. Thomas cannot face his emotions at all. He cannot express himself this way, and to this day it eats him up inside. As an author, and a man of erudition and education, he does his best to express himself in the only way he understands, which is through intellectual discourse.During their friendship, Paul asked Thomas to speak at his funeral of an optimistically projected "two hundred friends." "Wittgenstein's Nephew" is essentially that eulogy, delivered with loving tenderness, and heartaching apology. It is not melodramatic, it is always in intellectual control, but it communicates its tragedy effectively clearly nonetheless. It begins unremarkably, and seems to wander thereafter without much direction, but by the end it has proven itself compelling and interesting. We are delighted to read the personal tale of two best friends, yet also sympathetic toward Thomas's need to unburden his soul. It is undoubtedly one of Bernhard's superior works, like "Yes" before it (1978), and "Extinction" afterward (1986).