Thomas Bernhard - Autobiografia

“It is true that the five books of the ‘Autobiography’ [”The Cause“ (1975), ”The Cellar“ (1976), ”The Breath“ (1978), ”The Cold“ (1981) and ”A Child" (1982)] serve Bernhard to show what his childhood and youth were like, but always to the extent that these periods of his life and the events he recounted were relevant to his literary work.

The writer emphasizes the moments that marked him for the rest of his life, noting his problems, his mistakes, his weaknesses and the contradictory aspects of his character, but also his great decisions, his independence, his strength of will, his insubmissive and non-conformist nature, even in the fight for his own life. [Fiction and biography interpenetrate in Bernhard in a way that is not always clear, because both are equally involved in his writing as a work of art and both complement and explain each other. [In fact, this period of childhood and youth, and the Autobiography is limited to it, decisively influences the writer's personality, shapes his character and, in a way, lays the foundations for his literary career. It can even be said that without knowing his origins, the circumstances of his birth, what he was as a child and the trials he went through as an adolescent, it will not be easy to properly understand his work."

- José A. Palma Caetano