Lukas Kummer adapts Thomas Bernhard | EUROtoday

Im siebten Jahr ist es vollbracht: Lukas Kummer schließt seine Comic-Adaption von Thomas Bernhards autobiographischen Büchern ab. Fünf gibt es davon, und erschienen waren sie von 1975 bis 1982 (Bernhard brauchte additionally ähnlich viel Zeit für die Niederschrift wie Kummer für die Umsetzung in Bilder) im österreichischen Residenz Verlag – damals sehr zum Ärger von Bernhards deutschem Stammverlag Suhrkamp, aber bei Residenz hatte der Schriftsteller wiederum seine ganz frühen Werke publiziert; es conflict additionally eine Heimkehr (und wie beim geldgierigen Bernhard zu erwarten auch ein kleines Erpressungsmanöver). Bei den Bernhard-Comics verlief es umgekehrt: Suhrkamp brachte 2011 Nicolas Mahlers Adaption der Erzählung „Alte Meister“ heraus, mit Riesenerfolg, dem dann noch Weiteres von Mahler über Bernhard folgte, und Residenz hängte sich daran: eben mit den fünf populären Bernhard-Selbstauskünften, über deren Rechte man verfügte.

They are not the worst books in his extensive oeuvre, even if one should not take this multi-part autobiography, which only tells of childhood and young years, at face value. When Thomas Bernhard wrote them, his distinctive prose style was already fully developed and he now applied it to his own life, but he had also previously presented the characters in his books as spokesmen for his own skeptical, desperate view of humanity: in either a complaining or scolding style it is what Bernhard would ultimately put into the title of his most extensive novel: “Extinction”. In the autobiographical quantity “The Child” you may learn concerning the corresponding affect of his grandfather, the largely unsuccessful author Johannes Freumbichler, who was by no means named by Bernhard, on his grandson: “In theory, I destroy everything every day, you understand,” he stated. He discovered this concept to be the best. I adopted this concept myself and performed with it my entire life.”

Lukas Kummer naturally edited this quote from the booklet printed in 1982 because the conclusion of the autobiographical cycle (however chronologically overlaying the earliest age of its writer) from Bernhard’s textual content stream. It is on web page 19 of the comedian “The Child”, which is now additionally printed as the top of the quintet, fairly early contemplating it’s 100 pages lengthy. Incidentally, all 5 Kummer volumes have the identical size; This is a particular function with which Lukas Kummer additional will increase the precept of formal rigor that Bernhard’s books already convey by way of their litany tone.

Otherwise, his work is an virtually exemplary adaptation of the supply textual content. Of course, all of the formulations used within the comics are pure Bernhard, they usually observe the sequence within the prose books – a loyalty that Nicolas Mahler didn’t train as a result of the templates function materials for an association in keeping with his personal style. Lukas Kummer, born in 1988, virtually 20 years youthful than Mahler and maybe due to this fact just a little extra reverent in direction of the writer, who died in 1989, limits his particular person expression to the photographs. Above all, he makes repetition a graphic precept – and the robust stylization of his figures and the strict black-grey-white of the panels assist him, as each components convey the sensation of pictograms, as we all know them from instruction manuals.

But let nobody suppose that these drawings are soulless. Rather, by way of the blankness of his characters’ faces, Kummer has managed to go away area for our personal concepts about them based mostly on what’s advised. As is well-known, that is the precept of the Ligne claire, and only some have practiced it as persistently as Kummer. One may virtually see his Bernhard Pentalogy as a crash course in graphic storytelling. But it also needs to be stated on this regard that there’s nothing technical about this. Rather, the younger Bernhard’s desperation within the face of the society surrounding him, which is made up of Nazis, arch-Catholics and bourgeois, one after the opposite or aspect by aspect, is conveyed significantly vividly by the truth that the cascades of phrases that he finds for it discover their counterpart in sequences of photos, no matter begin once more on the similar factors. You cannot escape your origins. Bernhard’s writing follows a vicious circle, as does Kummer’s drawing.

That’s why it is logical that “The Child” is the conclusion to the challenge, as a result of on the finish we come again to the purpose the place “The Cause” started, the primary quantity of the autobiographical cycle. The fifth additionally differs from the 4 predecessors in that it not belongs to a “genre” – Bernhard had subtitled the sooner volumes as “an intimation”, “a withdrawal”, “a decision” and “an isolation”. “The Child,” alternatively, stands fully by itself. Or for all of this. However, Kummer omitted these additional provisions in all of his comedian diversifications. Maybe as a result of Bernhard’s band “last hand” had executed it too.

The undeniable fact that Residenz Verlag persevered with the collection of publications, though they didn’t attain the gross sales figures of Nicolas Mahler’s Bernhard comics, honors him and creates a masterpiece for up to date German-language comics. And there are additionally all 5 Kummer volumes mixed in a slipcase (Residency had already executed this with Bernhard’s unique books), which at 99 euros is eleven euros cheaper than the acquisition value for all the person volumes. If you have not began studying but, do it now! Reading Bernhard’s and Kummer’s cycles in parallel is especially worthwhile. The solely lapse within the latter: For the writer’s details about Thomas Bernhard in “The Child”, Residenz merely adopted the textual content from “The Cold”, the fourth quantity of the difference. As if the brand new one did not even exist. Or is that this a very delicate type of erasure?