Bernhard, Thomas - Martin Esslin (essay date 1985)

Martin Esslin (essay date 1985)

SOURCE: “Beckett and Bernhard: A Comparison,” in Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 18, No. 2, 1985, pp. 67–78.

[In the following essay, Esslin presents several parallels between the lives and works of Samuel Beckett and Thomas Bernhard.]

It occasionally happens that I am asked to name some of the more important continental playwrights. And occasionally, if I mention among them the name of Thomas Bernhard and am asked what kind of writer he is, I am tempted to sum it all up by saying: “A kind of Austrian Beckett.” Like all such attempts at a snap judgment, this is, of course, highly superficial. But there is also a grain of truth in it. That is why it may be worthwhile to go into the matter at a little greater depth and attempt something like a comparison.

Certainly the parallel has been noticed more than once. In 1972 the German magazine Der Spiegel summed it up in a telling, if...

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