Bernhard, Suffering, and the Value of Language

In memoriam Sidney MorgenbesserReflection on the nature of language dominated twentieth-century philosophy in both its Anglo-American and European veins. Both traditions are concerned to investigate the relation of language, broadly conceived, to experience, broadly conceived, and, at the limit, this can touch upon constitutive relations: can "experience" correctly so-called be extra-linguistic? If so: how and to what extent? When basic questions like these are reached, it is but one step to ask about the value of language, either of particular aspects or uses of language or, again at the limit, of language as such. Of course the formulation "value of language" borders on the vacuous; language has many uses, and many of those uses are in domains in which questions of value frequently arise. But there is a possible set of questions that are more general than those contemplated as restricted to domains of linguistic use, questions having to do with the value of linguistic meaning for human experience. In particular, one might think that issues of the therapeutic potential of language, in particular in relation to suffering, are especially pressing in the twentieth century. Nietzsche famously held that it is not suffering that is intolerable for humans, but rather suffering without meaning. Language is a primary manner in which the world is taken to be meaningful, so questions of the value of language to alleviate, increase, or otherwise give form to suffering naturally arise. Is language in twentieth-century Europe still a resource in this regard, or has a combination of intensified, large-scale suffering and a concurrent depletion of linguistic imagination foreclosed this possibility?Anglo-American philosophy of language registers absolutely no interest in this topic, but philosophers of language in Europe have not ignored it: W alter Benj amin, Martin Heidegger, Jacques Lacan, and Jacques Derrida are all exemplary in this regard. And, of course, the development of psychoanalysis in its various forms takes the relation of language to suffering quite seriously. Still, it has been twentieth-centuiy literature rather than philosophy of any technical sort that has typically been the vehicle for raising this question of linguistic value in a particularly pointed and interesting way, i.e., from within a linguistic practice in which that value is placed at the forefront. It is easy to see why this is the case: some experimental literaiy practices take on as part of their meaning an instantiation rather than a description of the problem. The novels of Thomas Bernhard are particularly compelling and cohesive instances. Scholarship on Bernhard's novels-on what he preferred to call his "prose"-tends to focus on the twin, interlocking themes of his relation to the Austrian terroir and the tragicomic theatricality of the work.2 Hans Holler has gone so far as to designate Bernhard's final novel, Ausloschung (1986), the "Comedie humaine der osterreichischen Geschichte unseres Jahrhunderts" (108). I am not sure I would go that far, but in taking a different tack here, I do not mean to slight such approaches. I wish to maintain a tight focus on the issues of language and suffering, even at the danger of being overly selective. I do not tiy to canvas all of the novels in which this is a concern or to situate those novels I single out in relation to Bernhard's plays, poems, and expressly autobiographical work.3 I attempt to provide, rather, three case studies, snapshots, or tableaux that illustrate and instantiate in an especially vivid way the theme I have chosen. Lodged between these studies-so to speak, as entr'actes-are more properly philosophical treatments of Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer. The structure of the essay is, then, a bit less linear than may be standard in a scholarly journal.Frost (1963)An unnamed medical intern is given the assignment of observing the painter Strauch, the estranged brother of his superior at the hospital, who, he is told by the brother, is mentally ill. …