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From An Abandoned Homage To Thomas Bernhard | Jun 03 2007

I’ve never liked the word cunt. Not that pussy is any better. Cunt seems demeaning, while pussy seems—what?—silly. I can never decide which to use in my diary. I try cunt for a time, then switch to pussy, then return to cunt, sometimes in a single sentence.

In desperation I resort, now and then, to vagina. But vagina is so medical-sounding that I invariably cross it out. My diary is littered with sentences in which I’ve drawn a line through vagina and written cunt or pussy in the space above it.

A few times I’ve considered using the word sex (meaning vagina), but sex is far too poetical. No one uses sex (meaning vagina) in everyday speech for fear of sounding lofty or prudish, or both at once.

Baudelaire, if I’m not mistaken, used the word sex. Or rather his translators did—lord knows what word Baudelaire used.

Bernhard, by contrast, never mentioned this part of the female anatomy. Of course I’m referring to that portion of Bernhard’s work which has been translated into English. Because for all I know, Bernhard used the German equivalent of cunt or pussy in one of his lesser plays or novels, or perhaps in one of his poems (not one of which has yet made it into English!)

Still, I’m dubious, because nowhere in Bernhard’s translated work—twelve novels, three plays, and a three-volume memoir—does he refer, direct or otherwise, to sex (meaning sex). The only possible exception is the scene in Bernhard’s final novel, Extinction, in which the naked protagonist encounters his spinster sister in the hall on the morning of their parents’ funeral and sneers, Haven’t you seen a naked man before?

In a sense this is Bernhard’s only sex scene—his only scene, really: a repulsive man taunts his sister with his nakedness.