Monday, July 29, 2013

On the revelation of the Ostmark Bell

Apparently, it wasn't just hyperbole:

The bishops...will be followed--with measured tread, as they say--by the Gauleiters, the SS officers, and the members of the Blood Order. And these will be followed by the National Socialist Catholic population, I thought. And the music will be played by our National Socialist Catholic band. The National Socialist salvos will be fired, and the National Socialist bells will toll. And if we're in luck, our National Socialist sun will shine throughout the ceremony, and if we're out of luck we'll be drenched by the National Socialist rain.

[From Thomas Bernhard's, Extinction, trans. by David McLintock, after the narrator Franz-Josef Murau sees the guest list for the funeral of his parents--who were Nazi supporters through the aftermath of World War II--and brother, at the family estate of Wolfsegg, in Austria.]