I would be the unhappiest person imaginable, confronted daily with disastrous works crying out with errors, imprecision, carelessness, amateurishness. I avoided this punishment by destroying them, I thought, and suddenly I took great pleasure in the word destroying.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the artist's struggle with imperfection and the relief found in destruction of flawed work.
In this quote, Thomas Bernhard articulates the inner turmoil experienced by an artist when faced with their own imperfect creations. He suggests that the agony of confronting flawed work can lead to despair, and ironically, he finds a sense of satisfaction in the act of destruction. This reveals a deeper commentary on the artist's relationship with their work, where instead of embracing failure, the act of obliteration becomes a source of pleasure.
In practice
In a discussion about the creative process, you might refer to this quote to illustrate the torment artists face.
In theory we understand people, but in practice we can't put up with them, I thought, deal with them for the most part reluctantly and always treat them from our point of view. We should observe and treat people not from our point of view but from all angles, I thought, associate with them in such a way that we can say we associate with them so to speak in a completely unbiased way, which however isn't possible, since we actually are always biased against everybody.
Only when I am by seawater can I truly breathe, to say nothing of my ability to think.
Everyone is a virtuoso on his own instrument, but together they add up to an intolerable cacophony.
We have to keep company with supposedly bad characters if we are to survive and not succumb to mental atrophy. People of good character, so called, are the ones who end up boring us to death.
Everything is what it is, that's all. If we keep attaching meanings and mysteries to everything we perceive, everything we see that is, and to everything that goes on inside us, we are bound to go crazy sooner or later, I thought.
Women were like rivers, their banks were unreachable, the night often rang with the cries of the drowned.
To the man with an ear for verbal delicacies- the man who searches painfully for the perfect word, and puts the way of saying a thing above the thing said - there is in writing the constant joy of sudden discovery, of happy accident.
Somehow I started introducing writing into my drawings, and after a time, the language took over and I started getting very involved with the handwriting and then the look of the handwriting.
Artists working for other artists is all about knowing, learning, unlearning, initiating long-term artistic dialogues, making connections, creating covens, and getting temporary shelter from the storm.
I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.
If there is no dance, there is not music.
It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.
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