Tractatus Logico-Suicidalis (On Killing Oneself)
Hermann BurgerBurger is one of the truly great authors of the German language: a
writer of consummate control and range, with a singular and haunting
worldview.” –Uwe Schütte
In the tunnel-village of
Göschenen, a man named Hermann Burger has vanished without a trace from
his hotel room, suspected of suicide. What is found in his room is not a
note, but a 124-page manuscript entitled Tractatus Logico-Suicidalis: an exhaustive manifesto comprising 1,046 “thanatological” aphorisms (or “mortologisms”) advocating suicide. This
“grim science of killing the self” studies the predominance of death
over life, in traumatic experiences such as the breakup of a marriage,
years of depression, the erosion of friendships and the disgrace of
impotence—but the aphoristic text presents something more complicated
than a logical conclusion to life experience. Drawing inspiration from
such authors as Wittgenstein, Cioran and Bernhard, Burger’s unsettling
work would be published shortly before the author would take his own
life.
Hermann Burger
(1942–89) was a Swiss author, critic and professor. Author of four
novels and several volumes of essays, short fiction and poetry, he first
achieved fame with his novel Schilten,
the story of a mad village schoolteacher who teaches his students to
prepare for death. At the end of his life, he was working on the
autobiographical tetralogy Brenner, one of the high points of 20th-century German prose. He died by overdose days after the first volume’s publication.