Free Old Masters by Thomas Bernhard Page A

People are unearthing their ancestors and rummage and rummage in their pile of ancestors until they have rummaged it all over and they finish up even more dissatisfied and doubly dismayed and desperate, he said. I have never been a so-called ancestor rummager, I lack the necessary disposition for that, but even a person like me does incidentally come across the strangest specimens of ancestors, this is something no one escapes, no matter how much he resists that so-called exhumation of ancestors, he keeps on digging. All in all I have come from an exceedingly interesting mixture, a cross-section, as it were, o f everything that I am. To know less than I do know would have been better in this respect, but age inevitably brings a lot to the light of day, uninvited, he said. The one I like best is the joiner's apprentice who in eighteen forty-eight learned to read and write at Cattaro and in a letter proudly informed his parents in Linz of the fact, he said. This joiner's apprentice, on my mother's side, was stationed as a gunner at the fortress of Cattaro, present-day Kotor, and I still possess that letter which he, at eighteen it is said, radiant with joy, wrote from Cattaro to his parents in Linz, and on which there is a note from the official imperial post office to the effect that its content is objectionable. We are everything that was in our ancestors, absolutely everything, plus what is in ourselves. To be related to Stifter has been a precious enormity to me all my life, until I discovered that Stifter was not the great writer or poet, whichever, whom I had venerated all my life. That I am related to Heidegger I have always known because my parents let it out at every opportunity. We are related to Stifter, and we are also related to Heidegger, and to Bruckner too, my parents would say at every opportunity, so much so that I often felt embarrassed. To be related to Stifter people always regard as something quite fantastic, certainly in Upper Austria but also throughout Austria, and it counts at least as much in society as if someone were to say that he was related to the Emperor Francis Joseph, but to be related to Stifter and to Heidegger, that is the most extraordinary and the most amazing thing that one can imagine in Austria, and indeed also in Germany. And if, at a suitable moment, Reger said, you then add that you are related to Bruckner too, the people simply cannot recover from their amazement. To have a famous poet among one's relatives is already something special, but to have also a famous philosopher among one's relatives is of course even more fantastic, Reger said, and on top of it to be related to Anton Bruckner is the ultimate. My parents often mentioned his fact and of course derived advantage from it. The only crucial thing, however, was to mention these relationships in the right place; of course it goes without saying that they spoke of their relative Adalbert Stifter whenever they sought an Upper Austrian advantage, for instance from the provincial government on which every Upper Austrian is time and again dependent, or that Anton Bruckner was invoked chiefly when they had a problem in Vienna, Reger said; in the event of a Linz or Wels or Eferdingen problem, that is to say an Upper Austrian problem, they of course mentioned that they were related to Stifter; if they had a Vienna problem they would say that Bruckner was a relative of theirs, and when they were travelling through Germany they would say, a hundred times a day, that Heidegger was a relative of theirs, and they would always say that Heidegger was a close relative of theirs, without honestly stating how closely Heidegger was actually related to them, because in fact Heidegger is related to them and hence also to me, albeit, as the phrase is, very distantly. To Stifter, on the other hand, we are related very closely and to Bruckner also fairly closely, Reger said yesterday. That they were also related to a double murderer who spent the