Thomas Bernhard is known both in Greece and internationally, primarily as a novelist, secondarily as a playwright. But there is another attribute of his – that of a poet.
The show focuses on this side of it, with guest Christina-Panagiota Grammatikopoulou, who has translated his entire body of poetry work in Greek in the book “Thomas Bernhard – the complete works of poetry“. The author, translator and poet refers to the adventurous life of the great writer and the circumstances that turned him against the regimes of the countries he lived in, leading to sharp criticism through his great and award-winning work and causing many reactions.
‘Everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death’, Bernhard wrote. “I may have been a negative writer all my life, but I must say that I feel perfectly well in this role; I wonder why people say that I am a negative writer, when I am, in effect, a positive person…”.
Christina Panagiota Grammaticopoulou reads poems from Bernhard’s entire body of work, while the actress Betty Arvaniti, who has staged his plays in Greece, also speaks on the show. We listen to Schubert’s “Winter Journey“, which Bernhard admired.