About the work
“Holzfällen. Eine Erregung” (English “Woodcutters”) is a novel by Thomas Bernhard, published by Suhrkamp in 1984. The text is a single block without chapters or paragraphs, the monologue of an unnamed first person narrator. At the Vienna Burgtheater a production by the Musicbanda Franui opened on 12 September 2024, in which Nicholas Ofczarek speaks the text while the ensemble plays funeral marches and funeral music; the text version is by Tamara Metelka and Andreas Schett, the music by Markus Kraler and Andreas Schett.
Plot
The narrator sits in a wing chair at a so called artistic dinner in the Viennese flat of the Auersberger couple. Their mutual acquaintance Joana was buried earlier that day, and everyone is waiting for a famous Burgtheater actor who is to join them after a performance of Ibsen's “The Wild Duck”. As he watches the gathering, his dislike of his former friends and of the Viennese art scene builds into a long tirade, until the tipsy actor starts talking about the forest, the high forest and woodcutting.
Cultural significance
The book is regarded as a roman à clef about Austria's cultural scene and a reckoning with Bernhard's own past; Joana, for instance, has been read as an allusion to Ingeborg Bachmann. The composer Gerhard Lampersberg recognised himself in the character Auersberger and sued for defamation, which led to the book being temporarily seized in Austria; he later withdrew the suit. The novel has been translated into English as “Woodcutters” and as “Cutting Timber”.