Internationally acclaimed Austrian novelist, playwright, and memoirist
Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) has been compared to Kafka and Beckett, and
critics have ranked his novels among the masterpieces of the twentieth
century. But in fact he began his career in the 1950s as a poet,
publishing three books of well-received verse before turning to fiction.
In Hora Mortis / Under the Iron of the Moon is the first book of his
expressionist-like poetry to be published in English. Bringing together
Bernhard's second and third books of poetry, the collection's short,
untitled lyrics reveal his early explorations of themes that would
continue to preoccupy him in his novels, plays, and other
writings--especially his intense ambivalence toward the land and people
of Austria and their then-recent Nazi past. As the translator James
Reidel writes in his preface, "Bernhard found Austrian soil . . . to be
like a hair shirt and a blanket. It is a killing ground but with a
postcard setting." In poems that both subvert and pay homage to such
influences as Georg Trakl, Bernhard begins to develop his characteristic
dark humor while exploring themes of nature, death, meaninglessness, and
faith.