Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard Read Free Book Online Page A

pressed on their canvases, my dear Atzbacher, he said. Of course you are bound to say that this is the art of painting at its peak, he said yesterday, but do not forget to mention, or at least to think, at least to think for yourself, that it is also an infamous art of painting, the infamous about this art is at the same time the religious, that is what is so repulsive about it. If you post yourself, as I did the day before yesterday, in front of the Mantegna for an hour, you suddenly feel like tearing this Mantegna off the wall, because quite suddenly you perceive it as a great painted infamy. Or if you spent some time standing in front of the Biliverti or in front of the Campagnola. These people, after all, only painted in order to survive and for money and in order to end up in heaven and not in hell, which all their lives they feared above everything else, even though they were very clever but at the same time also very weak characters. The painters altogether did not have a good character, in fact they always had a very bad character and therefore, basically, also always had very bad taste, Reger said yesterday, you will not find a single so-called great painter, or let us say a so-called old master, who had a good character and good taste, and by a good character I mean quite simply an incorruptible character. All these artists as old masters were corruptible and that makes their art so repulsive to me. Everything they have painted and which is hanging here is repulsive to me, I often think, he said yesterday, and yet for decades I have been unable to avoid studying it. That is the most terrible thing, he said yesterday, that I find these old masters most profoundly repulsive and again and again I continue to study them. But they are repellent, that is perfectly clear, he said yesterday. The old masters, as they have now been called for centuries, only stand up to superficial viewing; if we view them thoroughly they gradually become diminished, and when we have studied them really and truly, and that means as thoroughly as possible for as long as possible, they dissolve, they crumble for us, leaving only a flat taste, in fact most of the time a very bad taste, in our mouths. The greatest and most significant work of art ultimately weighs heavily on our heads, as a huge lump of baseness and lies, rather as an excessively large lump of meat might weigh on our stomachs. We are fascinated by a work of art and ultimately it is ridiculous. If you take the trouble, for once, to read Goethe more intently than usual, you will ultimately find that what you read is ridiculous, no matter what it is, you only have to read it more often than usual, it will inevitably become ridiculous and even the cleverest thing is ultimately a nonsense. Alas, once you read more intently you ruin everything for yourself, everything you read. It makes no difference what you read, in the end it will become ridiculous and in the end it will be worthless. Beware of penetrating into a work of art, he said, you will ruin each and every one for yourself, even those you love most. Do not look at a picture for too long, do not read a book too intently, do not listen to a piece of music with the greatest intensity. You will ruin everything for yourself, and thus the most beautiful and the most useful things in the world. Read what you love but do not penetrate totally, listen to what you love but do not listen to it totally, look at what you love but do not look at it totally. Because I have always looked at everything totally, always listened to everything totally, always read everything totally, or at least always tried to listen to everything totally and to read and view everything totally, I ended up by ultimately making everything abhorrent to me, in this way I made all art and all music and all literature abhorrent to me, he said yesterday. As I have, by the same method, made the whole world abhorrent to me, simply everything. For years I simply made