SOURCE: “The Excitement of Boredom—Thomas Bernhard,” in A Radical Stage: Theatre in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, edited by W.G. Sebald, St. Martin’s Press, 1988, pp. 161–73.

In the following essay, Görner asserts that “the question of what sustains the individual, given the overwhelming sense of pointlessness, is one of the main concerns in Thomas Bernhard’s dramatic works.”

‘Sometimes boredom was unobtrusive and sometimes nauseating and when I could no longer stand it’, Sartre wrote in his autobiographical essay Les Mots, ‘I would succumb to the deadliest temptation. Orpheus lost Eurydice through impatience; I often lost myself through impatience.’¹ There can be no doubt that ennui has become one of the most debilitating and chronic afflictions of our age. Moreover, the diagnosis is now almost as commonplace as is the syndrome. All needs seem to be satiated, all unknown terrain has been explored, all...