From the poetics of disgust to meta-literary affirmations, or what Bernhard found in Gombrowicz

Marian Bielecki

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A b s t r a k t

This article presents an interpretation of selected novels by Thomas Bernhard based on the hypothesis of literary influence, in the wider perspective of Witold Gombrowicz’s meta-literary and anthropological views. The article argues that the category of “disgust” is reevaluated in Bernhard’s works, where it originally functions as a strategy of radical cultural criticism, and then undergoes transformation by means of the poetics of satire and comedy. Originally, Bernhard and his protagonists read Schopenhauer, then they rely on Nietzsche and Gombrowicz.