SOURCE: “Comitragedies: Thomas Bernhard’s Marionette Theater,” in Modern Language Notes, Vol. 111, No. 3, April, 1996, pp. 533–59.

In the following essay, Theisen examines Bernhard’s treatment of genre in his work—particularly comedy and tragedy—and asserts that the playwright “experiments with the delimitations of genre, which he dissolves and draws anew as observations of observations.”

Almost everything comic depends on the appearance of self-annihilation.

—Friedrich Schlegel

Unsatisfied with what comedy writers have to offer, four actors band together to write their own comedy. Although each actor is supposed to write a role for himself, “each one naturally only [writes] about himself.” The actors could not have titled the comedy “they produced after weeks of painstaking study anything but The Author.” “But even with this Author, it is reported, they had no success.”¹ Thomas Bernhard could not have titled this anecdote in Stimmenimitator anything but Komödie. A different title...