Goethe Dies
"I went inside myself, so to speak, and not outside myself anymore." - Thomas Bernhard
Thomas Bernhard's Goethe Dies is a collection of four short stories that serve as a concise introduction to the Austrian master's signature style: bleakly comic, inspiringly rancorous, and obsessively musical. The volume captures Bernhard's "philosophy of doubt" through satirical narratives about Europe's intellectual giants and cultural myths.
The four stories include "Goethe Dies": Written for the 150th anniversary of Goethe's death, this title story portrays a dying, solipsistic Goethe who obsesses over his legacy and demands an impossible meeting with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (who was not yet born): "Montaigne: A Story." Follows a young man who seals himself in a tower to read the works of Montaigne, exploring the impulse to escape into intellectual isolation; "Reunion": A satire of the very escape depicted in the previous story. It concludes with "Going up in Flames": a travelogue where Bernhard portrays himself as a victim of his greatest enemy—Austria—unleashing a vision of total destruction in just eight pages.
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