Nothing Matters - Bernhard

from Gathering Evidence


He too, like all provincials, despised the Viennese.  In a way, he said, without saying in what way he meant, he was satisfied with his situation, however lousy it was.  At his age it was all the same: one clung to life, but it was all the same when it was over.  Nothing mattered -- that was the truth of it.  It was a question of age.  Nothing mattered.  At that moment I also felt nothing mattered.  It was a nice, clear, concise, handy phrase: 'nothing mattered.'  We understood each other...What characterizes me today is my indifference, aware as I am that there are no differences in value among the things that have been or are now or will be in the future.  There is no scale of values -- that is all done with.  Human beings are as they are and cannot be changed, any more than the objects they have made in the past or make now or will make in the future.  Nature knows no scale of values.  It knows only human beings, with all their weaknesses, all their physical and spiritual dirt, every day that dawns.  It is a matter of indifference whether one of them despairs as he stands over his pneumatic drill or another as he sits at his typewriter.  Only theories can cripple us -- that is obvious -- all the philosophies and systems of thought which block the way to clarity with their unusable insights...


trns. by David McLintock

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