SOURCE: “‘The Greatest Uncertainty’: The Perils of Performance in Thomas Bernhard’s Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige,” in Modern Drama, Vol. 23, No. 4, January, 1981, pp. 385–92.

In the following essay, Gross discusses Bernhard’s treatment of death in Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige.

Thomas Bernhard’s recognition of the omnipresence of death has provided the background for all of his dramatic works to appear thus far. For Bernhard, death is not a single, unique event that occurs at the conclusion of each life, but a current of negation that runs throughout the whole of human existence, manifesting itself in sickness, exhaustion and decay. The Writer in Die Jagdgesellschaft presents the Bernhardian vision of death in its most unadorned form:

Wir sind allein oder nicht allein wir hören Musik oder wir hören nicht Musik Jeder Gegenstand gnädige Frau ist der Tod(1) (We are alone or not alone we...