From logic to nonsense: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language in Walking of Thomas Bernhard

Abstract

The article attempts to reveal the scale of influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus on the subject matter and writing method of Thomas Bernhard. On the basis of the novella Walking, published in 1970, we demonstrate that the issues raised by Wittgenstein at the beginning of the 20th century were of primary importance for Bernhard. The Austrian writer was interested not only in establishing the relationship between the world and language, but also in extrapolating this metaphysical problem to an understanding of the nature of literary creativity. Wittgenstein in his work asked the critical question about the possibility of adequate transmission of events by means of language and sought to explore its ontological and logical foundations. However, this idea of the philosopher receives an unusual refraction in the novella Walking. On the one hand, Bernhard casts doubt on Wittgenstein’s assumption about the initial isomorphism of words and objects and condemns his characters to endless wandering in the closed space of speech. On the other hand, in such a negative way he confirms the ideological core of the “linguistic turn”, and, in fact, that human existence is determined by language. Thus, literary exploration of themes of madness, suicide, the deceptiveness of reality, which in the logical continuum of the Tractatus are declared nonsensical, leads Bernhard’s narrative to an existential level.