SOURCE: A review of Der Weltverbesserer, in World Literature Today, Vol. 54, No. 3, Summer, 1980, pp. 424–25.

In the following negative review of Der Weltverbesserer, Rosenfeld finds the play “tedious and boring.”

When the curtain rises on Thomas Bernhard’s play, which bears as its motto Voltaire’s “Ich bin krank. Ich leide von Kopf bis zu den Füssen,” it is five o’clock in the morning. The “Weltverbesserer,” a real or perhaps only imaginary invalid, seemingly confined to his sickroom by disease but possibly by self-imposed isolation from the outside world, is preparing to receive representatives from the town and university, who bear him an honorary degree. For the “Weltverbesserer” is the author of a treatise on improving the world, which has received wide acclaim and has been translated into many languages, although it is understood by no one and in truth proposes nothing less than the radical abolition...