The Loser (1983)

by Thomas Bernhard

Treading and retreading the same ground in an obsessive sestina:

From early childhood he had experienced the wish to die, to commit suicide, as they say, but never was totally concentrated. He could never come to terms with being born into a world that basically repulsed him in every detail from the very beginning. He grew older and thought that his wish to die would suddenly no longer be there, but this wish grew more intense from year to year, without ever becoming totally intense and concentrated. (pg. 47)

He was fascinated with people in their unhappiness, not with people themselves but with their unhappiness, and he found it wherever there were people, I thought, he was addicted to people because he was addicted to unhappiness. Man is unhappiness, he said over and over, I thought, only an idiot would claim otherwise. (pg. 63)

We always have to deal with losers and dead-end types like him, I said to myself and lowered my head into the wind. We have the greatest trouble saving ourselves from these losers and these dead-end types, for these losers and these dead-end types risk everything on terrorizing the people around them, killing off their fellow human beings, I said to myself. Despite their weakness and precisely because of their weak constitution they have the capacity to devastate the people around them, I thought. They are more ruthless with the people around them and with their fellow human beings, I said to myself, than we can initially imagine, and when we discover what makes them tick, discover this deep-rooted loser mechanism and dead-end-type mechanism, it’s usually too late to escape, they drag you down with all their might, wherever they can, I said to myself, for them any victim will do, even their own sister, I thought. They get the most profit out of their unhappiness, their loser mechanism, I said to myself on the way to Traich, even though this profit is naturally of no use to them in the final analysis. (pg. 147)

One aria and thirty variations — a depressive tribute to Bach’s Goldberg Variations.