Download or read book The Nihilism of Thomas Bernhard written by Martin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-12-18 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines the nihilistic basis of Bernhard's writing, and traces developments in the author's nihilistic stance throughout his career. In the first period of his prose fiction (1963-1975), nihilism is reluctantly accepted by Bernhard's fictional characters as a necessary response to a world perceived as meaningless. Various possible sources of transcendence are explored, and rejected. The autobiographical texts (1975-1982) then represent a sustained attempt by the author himself to transcend his own essentially nihilistic state. The apparent success of this attempt is quickly revealed to be illusory in the prose fiction of the second period (1978-1986), and it becomes apparent that nihilism is a no less necessary response to Austrian social reality than to the (more purely) personal problems which first motivated Bernhard's writing.