Library

On November 4, 1988, "Heroes' Square" broke through numerous obstacles and premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Austria. The performance was unprecedented and attracted the attention of Europe and even the world. This was the last play written by Thomas Bernhard. For ten or eleven years, the professor's wife always heard the shouts in Heroes' Square. No one could hear the shouts but she could hear them... She had heard the shouts of the people in Heroes' Square for several months. The shouts made her restless all day long. You know, on March 15, 1938, Hitler drove into Heroes' Square...

Thomas Bernhard is a frequent recipient of literary awards and has won dozens of important awards, including the most important Büchner Prize in German literature, the Austrian National Prize, etc. But he soon lost interest in winning awards and refused to accept any literary awards. In the mid-1970s, Bernhard was twice nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize. In the end, the jury decided to avoid touching this thorn in view of his attitude towards the award. "My Literary Prize" contains 9 articles by Bernhard about his love and hatred for winning the literary prize, 4 speeches at the award ceremony, and 1 confession about withdrawing from the German Academy of Philology and Literature. Thomas Bernhard roared at all mankind and shook his head at himself as he recorded his true experience of receiving literary awards and prizes.

In the 1980s, in Vienna, Austria, the Olsbergers held an "artist dinner" at their home. At 11:30 in the evening, the so-called "artist dinner" has not yet started, and everyone is waiting for the arrival of the dinner guest - the famous Burgtheater actor. I sat on the sofa chair with a headrest and waited while observing the people at the dinner party. I recalled my experience of being close to and alienated from the art world over the past few decades, the various situations of artists, and Joanna's funeral during the day today. In my eyes, they suffered artistic or spiritual collapse decades ago. It can even be said that their entire souls collapsed. All the people in the music room heard me say the words "art world" and "art spirit" as if I were talking, like the Olsbergers, about "artists' dinners". They only paid attention to the sound of these words when I said them, and they had no way of understanding what meaning these words meant to me when I said them.

In 1967, my friend Paul Wittgenstein (nephew of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein) and I were living in a hospital in Vienna at the same time, me being treated for a lung disease and he being treated for psychiatry. I don't think it was a coincidence that we were suddenly hospitalized at the same time and once again nearing the end of our lives. But I also don't let this fact carry too much fate. I was in the Hermann ward, and the thought of my friend Paul in the Ludwig ward made me feel less lonely. I am not going to deceive myself anymore, I am not going to beautify anything, there is nothing that can be beautified, what is going on non-stop in this society and this world is to beautify everything, and in the most disgusting way.