4 ideas
In 1967 Bernhard lay in the Hermann Pavilion of Vienna's Baumgartnerhöhe lung hospital with suspected fatal lung disease. A few hundred metres away, his friend Paul Wittgenstein was confined in the Ludwig Pavilion of the Steinhof psychiatric asylum.
Bernhard argues that Paul was as mad as his uncle Ludwig was philosophical, and that the two had the same intensity of mind. The difference was the outlet: Ludwig channelled his compulsions into written philosophy and was canonised, while Paul spent his in unrecorded talk, opera feuds and reckless living and was locked up. The social verdict of 'genius' versus 'lunatic' therefore depends less on the mind than on whether its excess leaves a product the world can consume.
Bernhard confesses that in Paul's final decline he deliberately avoided his friend, even crossing streets to escape him, because Paul's dying reminded him too directly of his own mortality. He then skipped the funeral. Bernhard presents this not as an exceptional failure but as how the healthy typically protect themselves: they keep friendship with the sick only while it does not threaten them, then withdraw and cover the desertion with excuses.
Through this lens, prizes are not recognition of the artist but a ritual that lets the state and cultural establishment display their own importance and absorb the artist. Accepting them makes the recipient complicit in a performance that degrades him.