Hermitix Bernhard and Wittgenstein: Perfection, Suicide, Love with Steve Dowden and Bryan Counter
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Apr 15, 2026 
Steve Dowden, a German literature professor, and Bryan Counter, a comparative literature lecturer, discuss Thomas Bernhard’s Correction and Wittgenstein’s Nephew. They explore Bernhard’s critique of Austrian culture, the cone as a symbol of perfection and failure, surprising warmth and friendship in Wittgenstein’s Nephew, and links between architecture, repetition, and musical rhythm.
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Correction Is An Impossible March Toward Death
- Perfection in Bernhard is both an obsessive project and a suicidal dead end, not an attained ideal.
- Reuthammer's corrections and aim for finality culminate in self-destruction because absolute correction proves impossible and dehumanising.
Wittgenstein Furious Over A One Centimeter Ceiling
- Steve recounts an anecdote about Wittgenstein furious over a ceiling being one centimeter too high during house construction.
- That anecdote illustrates Wittgenstein's obsessive demand for precision, which Bernhard amplifies into fatal perfectionism.
Austrian Modernism Vs Messy Human Interior
- Bernhard contrasts architectural modernist austerity with the human need for ornament and messy interior life.
- The cone and taxidermy are extreme attempts to control nature that reveal a deeper inhumanity and failure to understand persons.
