ABSTRACT
The critical response to a genealogy which includes illegitimacy has generally been to enshroud it in a kind of tactful silence. Writers deemed worthy of critical discussion have, as it were, already been relegitimated artistically and, hence, it is implied, recuperated into the law of the Father. An understandable revulsion against the excesses of biographical criticism led to a counter-emphasis that criticism should be derived from the text and the text alone, but this stricture is obviously not applicable to the criticism of autobiographical literature. While critical ‘outing’ of the facts of birth may contribute nothing to the study of a writer who has been happily relegitimated, by adoption for instance, it is strange to find the origins of authors who have made major contributions to the writing of illegitimacy enveloped in the same discretion. This is not
just a phenomenon of the age of cant. Take the case of Thomas Bernhard, the Austrian writer, whose autobiography, which includes Die Ursache (The Origin) (1975), Der Keller (The Cellar) (1976) and Das Kind (The Child) (1982), is a major modern study of bastardy. I was startled to find that on the back cover of the Gallimard editions of his work the biographical note begins: ‘Born on the 10th February 1931 at Heerlen in Holland, Thomas Bernhard is the son of an Austrian farmer….’ This bland note gives a totally erroneous impression. In fact, it establishes a paternal genealogy in spite of the author himself, who insists he never saw or knew his father, and who took his mother’s name. The traditional critical response to ‘canonical’ bastards and their writing (did you know Erasmus was illegitimate?) is likely to follow this pattern.
