The poet`s refuge

A place where peace and quiet comes, where the essentials are at stake, the pure. To be undisturbed, to devote oneself to the essential, in search of the essence.

Thomas Bernhard owned 3 farms near to Gmunden – Obernathal, Krucka und Ottnang.

Every room is a composition. Thomas Bernhard bought the farms in the 1960s. He got the furnishings from the region, directly from the farmers. Archaic, functional objects, that’s how he wanted to be surrounded.

Bernhard’s half-brother took me through the Obernathal farm and told me that Thomas Bernhard wanted to be brought by him the day before his death – this place was probably that important to him. The power of the place can be felt. If you stand in the courtyard of the farm, you can experience the balance inherent in all the old courtyards.

The individual pieces of furniture are carefully placed in the interior. Raw materials, simple designs, surfaces with traces and patina. Everything is there, but nothing that distracts.

“Bernhard never wrote more philanthropically, never more tenderly.” is Reich-Ranicki’s commentary on Bernhard’s book “Wittgenstein’s Neffe”. Having read that, I immediately took the book home with me from the writer’s place of desire.

The book excerpts are from “Thomas Bernhard – Hab & Gut, Das Refugium des Dichters” published by Andrè Heller at Brandstätter Verlag.