Ways of Seeing—On Bernhard's Old Masters
True to style, Thomas Bernhard's 156-page novel Old Masters: A Comedy consists of a single paragraph. As with most of Bernhard's works, the plot is minimal. The action is conveyed almost entirely through the perspective of a character named Atzbacher. We are told that, on one particular day, Atzbacher—who is a tutor and also, apparently, a philosopher, even though he has never published anything—has been summoned by his elderly friend Reger for a meeting at Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. That Atzbacher should find Reger at the museum is not surprising. For over thirty years, Reger has visited the museum every other day. That is: exactly every other day. Every other day, Reger has gone to sit in the so-called Bordone room, to look at Tintoretto's painting White-Bearded Man.
Today, Reger has broken his three-decade-long routine. And for reasons unknown to Atzbacher, Reger has invited him—Atzbacher—to meet with him—Reger—in the Bordone room, after he—Reger—had already visited the museum on the previous day. Reger's surprising invitation appears ominous to Atzbacher; especially in light of the recent death of Reger's wife (of which we learn more later). Atzbacher fears that Reger may want to commit suicide. In fact, Reger had wanted to kill himself immediately after his wife’s death, but didn't. He was too cowardly—and then the moment passed. (There is also another reason, revealed later on, which I won't share here out of consideration for those of you who have not yet and still want to read the novel).
The novel is told from the perspective of Atzbacher, although his thoughts and observations sometimes blend with those of Reger's, as he—Atzbacher—tells the reader what he—Reger—has told him at various times in the past. It is not always clear whose perspective is being offered (does it matter?). In terms of content, the novel is a fierce mosaic of musings and rants about the deficiencies of Austria; the limitations (to put it kindly) of Austrian people; the deficiencies of people in the habit of visiting museums; the inadequacies of art historians (who are treated with that special, cutting Bernhardian ruthlessness), philosophers, and writers. Scorn is heaped on all and sundry for their hypocrisy, mendaciousness, and kitschiness.
Heidegger deserves special mention. The German philosopher is lampooned in a scathing attacked by Reger as a philosopher who "has always been repulsive to me, not only the night-cap on his head and his homespun winter long-johns above the stove which he himself had lit at Todtnauberg, not only his Black Forest walking stick which he himself had whittled, in fact his entire hand-whittled Black Forest philosophy, everything about that tragicomic man […] has always profoundly repulsed me whenever I even thought of it." To really stick in the knife, one might say to the core of the philosopher's Being, Reger goes on: "When I think that even super-intelligent people have been taken by Heidegger and that even one of my best women friends wrote a dissertation about Heidegger, and moreover wrote that dissertation quite seriously [Bernhard's emphasis], I feel sick to this day." We find similar diatribes about other writers and artists, especially those of Bernhard's day. Depending on one's tastes and mood, this is good for a laugh or it might be off-putting. Interesting (and justified) as some of these 'attacks' might be, I want to get at the current beneath them.
In particular, I first want to focus on two observations by Reger that revolve around what we might call—echoing John Berger—ways of seeing. That these observations concern ways of seeing is perhaps not immediately obvious; nor is the connection between the two observations immediately clear. But, as I hope to show, the two observations can be seen as variations on a theme, namely that of subjectivity. That the novel centers (quite literally) on a work of art—Tintoretto's White-Bearded Man—is not a coincidence. There are few subjects to which the relation between subjectivity and objectivity is more central than visual art. It is probably only within philosophy that the subject-object relation can be said to be similarly constitutive.
Is there such a thing as objective beauty? If Object X is beautiful, it must be beautiful regardless of whether or not anyone actually happens to find it beautiful. This might be compared to the relativistic idea that beauty—and concepts like it—is a more or less purely subjective matter, so that the most that one can say about Object X being beautiful is that I find it beautiful. I will relate these two points—beauty as something objective and beauty as subjective experience—to a third point, which is related to a way of seeing more indirectly, but which is nevertheless crucial to the novel.
First, speaking of the old masters, Reger points out that everything is flawed. He begins, in Bernhardian fashion, by pointing out the particular paintings that he dislikes and that he thinks are imperfect, and then proceeds to widen the circle of his criticism to include all paintings and, indeed, all art. When you really look at something, when you truly examine anything critically, he argues, you will always find some flaw. Even the greatest works of art are discovered, upon closer and more careful examination, to contain flaws—whether it is a nose that isn't quite perfectly drawn, a brushstroke that really doesn't quite belong there, or a segue that is not exactly in the right place. Seek, and ye shall find a flaw.
And it is not just art that is flawed, Reger goes on—everything is fundamentally flawed. Of course, you might think, this all depends on perspective. You could argue that a painting like Tintoretto's White-Bearded Man must be seen from a distance, that it must be taken in as a whole for its beauty to become apparent. By viewing it up close and seeing the individual brushstrokes, the effect of the painting is lost. Beyond this somewhat banal observation, however, it may also be that the flaw resides not in the painting, but in the viewer. In fact, it may be Reger, this constitutionally flaw-seeking, perpetually flaw-finding Reger, who imposes his flaw-perception on the works of art in front of him or on whatever he happens to throw his flaw-perceiving eye. We may agree with him and follow along with him to a certain point; we may agree that Klimt is kitschy, for instance, and so on; but, regardless of the reality of genuine flaws, there may be a point at which the mission of finding flaws in external reality turns inward so that motivation itself becomes an object for analysis. Might there be something like motivated seeing? Reger surely appears guilty of it.
It is worth noting that the only exception that Reger admits to the general claim that everything is flawed, is nature itself. But then nature, at its heart, is what may be called the given. It is the backdrop to everything; the condition for the existence of all that exists. Most importantly, nature is the view from nowhere—nature itself cannot detect flaws, nor can it possess flaws, because flaws require teleology and intentionality. Unless you have a teleological view of nature (that nature has a purpose, is moving towards some goal) then nature has no ultimate intention, no pre-destined path. It cannot make mistakes, because mistakes arise from misalignments between what is intended and how things actually turn out. In this respect, Reger may be said to be playing a guessing game—his claim is to know how things ought to be from an absolute perspective. Again, we may follow along with him (and Bernhard, for that matter), but there will be limits. We will probably see things differently at some point. As long as we grant authority to his subjectivity—so long as we are tempted to accept that subjectivity as objectivity—we will see flaws as and where he sees them. But it may be otherwise, and we have to remember this.
Second, Reger, beginning once again by pointing out the ridiculousness of particular works of arts, ends up with a page-long monologue about how everything is actually ridiculous when you really think about it. Even the highest forms of art, the works of the very greatest writers—Shakespeare and Goethe—become ridiculous when you really think about them. Reger suggest that to truly understand any of these great works of art, even a magnificent work of philosophy by Kant or Schopenhauer, you should read only a single line: very, very carefully. According to Reger (Bernhard) when people read these great works they read over so much that they never end up fully understanding them. Of course, this is not to be taken literally. However, it tells us something important. This idea is again related to ways of seeing—like seeing a work of art up close (when, arguably, it is meant to be seen in its entirety) and consequently finding flaws. In reverse fashion, one may take a long work of philosophy—which, arguably, also has to be understood as a whole (especially when a philosophical system is at stake—and find not its flaws, but rather its essence in a single line. Perhaps it is only when we look at building blocks, so to speak, that we find no flaws. The meaning, the essence, the intellectual purity is discovered in the minutiae.
In the end, then, things themselves might not be fundamentally flawed. Instead, the flaw may be in our way of seeing. One will always find a flaw when and where one wants to see it. There is a double layer of irony in the dynamic of Reger's criticism. First, Reger takes his own observations entirely seriously, while the reader (and perhaps Atzbacher as well) is unlikely to accept them all—even if we might be seduced into accepting much through Reger's (Bernhard's) language and wit. The perceptive reader comes to realize, however, that there may be another reason—a psychological motivation—behind Reger's observations. Reger's wife has died. She has died as a result of, as Reger puts it, the negligence of the state, the Catholic Church, the hospital, and everything connected to it. Reger his wife died after she fell at the entrance to the museum, and after she was later incorrectly operated on at the local hospital. We learn of Reger's immense hatred for the institutions that killed (or failed to save) his wife. A suspicion creeps upon the reader, then, that the real venom behind Reger's observations is rooted in a tragedy that is personal and subjective rather than objective and intellectual.
This returns us to the question of motivation—or to something that is known in psychology as motivated reasoning. The term has various meanings, some more technical than others, but roughly it is the psychological mechanism by which people, when they are motivated to believe something (that is, when they want something to be a certain way) will find reasons for it being so. We ignore incongruent evidence, for instance, at the cost of inaccuracy but to the benefit of being able to keep our beliefs intact. Rather than motivated reasoning, however, we might say that Reger is engaging in motivated seeing when he sits on his settee in front of Tintoretto's White-Bearded Man. All the pain and rage at the death of his wife are projected onto the world. The question is, of course, whether there is such a thing as non-motivated seeing (or reasoning, for that matter). That question is at the heart of debates about subjectivity in art and philosophy.
At the same time, what Bernhard wants to do here—above all (or so it seems to me)—is to show up people's complacency. He sees mendaciousness and kitschiness and pettiness and small-mindedness all around him (and recognizes it even within himself, I would say) and it bothers him immensely. The only way to rise above this mendaciousness and kitschiness and pettiness and small-mindedness is to ruthlessly (a word Bernhard was fond of using) identify the jarring objects and sources, to lay them bare, to get at and expose them—both within society and the behavior of other human beings, as well is within oneself. Through Reger—through Reger through Bernhard—we see ourselves, if we're reflective and self-critical enough. The challenge is to decide what to accept and what to reject.
Taken together, both points raised by Reger (Bernhard) say something—beyond whatever they directly say about their objects—about human motivation. They highlight a way of looking at the world, a realm of subjectivity. Thomas Bernhard's work generally is marked by this subjectivity—he almost always speaks entirely through his characters. The distinction between the German Erfahrung and Erlebnis, or, respectively (and roughly), experience and lived experience, suffuses Bernhard's works. Experience is supposed to be more or less objective, in the sense that it can be shared between people. It can be said to be intersubjective, whereas lived experience is inextricably tied to the unique being of a person—their individual history, personality, and so on. In Bernhard, we find a fascinating interplay between the two: so many of his characters' ramblings and denunciations we are glad (thrilled) to follow, but only up to a point. When we reach that point, we come to realize that there is something about the characters' particular being that does not translate to us. We find ourselves both drawn and alienated—we may imagine ourselves in a Bernhard novel, knowing that, even as we recognize many of the thoughts, anxieties, and peeves, they are ultimately not our own.
A third and final point involves the death of Reger's wife and how he responds to it. While Reger was at first ambivalent about women generally and specifically about the woman who would be his wife, he quickly grew accustomed to her. She became his closest companion for over thirty years. She would even come to the museum with him every other day. Reflecting on her death to Atzbacher, Reger says: "Of course we get used to a person over the decades and eventually love them more than anything else and cling to them and when we lose them it is truly as if we had lost everything. I have always thought that it was music that meant everything to me, and at times that it was philosophy, or altogether that it was simply art, but none of it, the whole of art or whatever, is nothing compared to that one beloved person."
We get another perspective—that of Reger's wife. Reger recounts how the two of them would read books together for hours: "through those journeys of the mind, on which I accompanied her, we travelled through Schopenhauer and through Nietzsche and through Descartes and through Montaigne and through Pascal, and always for several years." He tells the story in a rather patronizing way, as one of having had to introduce his wife to great writers and philosophy. However, without denying the admittedly condescending way in which Reger at times talks about his wife (which can be a little grating), there is no denying that, during this time, Reger not only did not read these works alone, he saw them with his wife—and this shared seeing was so much more than seeing on his own. And now, he is no longer able to see them in the same way. As he admits, he could only read Schopenhauer after she died—and that only after a considerable time, after starving himself; and not in the way he used to, but by, as he describes it, abusing Schopenhauer for his own purposes, "by quite simply turning him into a prescription for survival."
Albert Camus wrote: "At a certain level of suffering or injustice, no one can do anything for anyone."1 This, in light of Reger (Bernhard), might be amended in the following way: at a certain level of suffering, nothing can do anything for anyone. Not art—not even Schopenhauer. It has to come from within, if it is to come at all.
Camus, Albert. 1985. Caligula and 3 Other Plays. New York: Vintage.