Peter Handke: Narrative Worlds – Pictorial Orders 3476059316, 9783476059314

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Peter Handke Narrative Worlds – Pictorial Orders Rolf G. Renner

Peter Handke

Rolf G. Renner

Peter Handke Narrative Worlds – Pictorial Orders

Rolf G. Renner Universität Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

ISBN 978-3-476-05931-4    ISBN 978-3-476-05932-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023

The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). The author has subsequently revised the text further in an endeavour to refine the work stylistically.

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin, Germany

“Ich mache, was ich bin: = Schreiben” (AF 189). “Wort und Bild sind Korrelate, die sich immerfort suchen” (J.W. Goethe). “Literatur: Es genügt nicht das Bild – es muß jenes eine (1) Wort dazukommen, welches das Bild erst zum Bild-Pfeil macht” (AF 431).

For Lisaweta

Contents

1

 Narrative Worlds/Image Orders: On the Introduction to the Text ������   1 1.1 Preliminary Considerations and Course of the Investigation��������������   4

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Literary Self-Assertion and Experimentation with Form: The Narrative Beginnings ������������������������������������������������������������������������  25 2.1 Die Hornissen (1966)��������������������������������������������������������������������������  25 2.2 Der Hausierer (1967)��������������������������������������������������������������������������  31 2.3 Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1969)����������������������������������  34

3

Experiment and Design: The Plays, Prose Works and Radio Plays Up to 1973 ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  43 3.1 Publikumsbeschimpfung (1966)����������������������������������������������������������  43 3.2 Sprechstücke (Spoken Pieces, 1969–1972) ����������������������������������������  45 3.3 Kaspar (1967) ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  52 3.4 Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus (1973)����������������������������������������������  57 3.5 Begrüßung des Aufsichtsrats (1967) ��������������������������������������������������  61 3.6 Wind und Meer. Vier Hörspiele (Wind and Sea. Four Radio Plays, 1970) ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  64 3.7 Emergence of Postmodernism: Die offenen Geheimnisse der Technokratie (The Open Secrets of Technocracy, 1974) ��������������������  66

4

 Rediscovery of Subjectivity: Lines of Development in Lyric Poetry ����  71 4.1 Leben ohne Poesie (1969–2007) ��������������������������������������������������������  71 4.2 Gedicht an die Dauer (1986)��������������������������������������������������������������  78

5

 Return to Narrative and New Subjectivity����������������������������������������������  81 5.1 Search Movements: Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell, 1972)����������������������������������������������������  81 5.2 The Power of Others: Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story, 1972)����������������������������������������������������������������  90 5.3 The One and His Property: Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling, 1975)������������������������������������������������������  97 5.4 A Path to the Soul: Die linkshändige Frau (The Left-­Handed Woman, 1976) ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 105

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 Return to the Beginnings of the Ego and the Promise of Images���������� 111 6.1 Spaces of Experience: Langsame Heimkehr (1979) �������������������������� 111 6.2 The Way into the Image: Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire, 1980)���������������������������������������������� 120 6.3 Signs of the Other World: Kindergeschichte (Children’s Story 1981)����� 128 6.4 Construction of Origin: Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Village, 1981) �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 135

7

 Re-founding the Narrative in the Reconnection to Tradition���������������� 141 7.1 The Double Home: Der Chinese des Schmerzes (1983)�������������������� 141 7.2 Rediscovery in the Urtext of Poetry: Die Wiederholung (Repetition, 1986) ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 153 7.3 Forms of Poetic Initiation: Die Abwesenheit. Ein Märchen (Absence, 1987)���������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 160 7.4 The Language Development of the World: In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus (On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House, 1997)���������������������������������������������������������������������� 169 7.5 On the Eros of Storytelling: Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst) (Don Juan (His Own Novel)) (2004)�������������������������������������������������� 175 7.6 Image, Writing and Narration: Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos (2002)��������������������������������������������������������������������� 182

8

Self-Reflection and Poetological Sketches: The Journals, Sketches, and Notes������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 207 8.1 Poetological Notations: Das Gewicht der Welt. Ein Journal (November 1975–März 1977) (1977), Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (1982) and Phantasien der Wiederholung (1983)������������������������������ 207 8.2 Writing, Seeing, Drawing: Das Notizbuch, 31. August 1978–18. Oktober 1978 (2015)�������������������������������������������������������������������������� 213 8.3 Seeing by Night and by Day: Am Felsfenster morgens. Und andere Ortszeiten 1982–1987 (1998)������������������������������������������ 215 8.4 Visual and Reflexive Miniatures: Noch einmal für Thukydides (1990)�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 223 8.5 Fragments of Authorship: Gestern unterwegs. Aufzeichnungen November 1987 bis Juli 1990 (2005)�������������������������������������������������� 225 8.6 Semi-somnolent Images: Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen (A Year Spoken from the Night, 2010)������������������������������������������������ 232 8.7 Completely Different Mirror Images: Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts. Zeichen und Anflüge von der Peripherie 2007–2015 (2016) ����233

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 The Transformation of One’s Own Writing�������������������������������������������� 239 9.1 The Narrator’s Double History: Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. Ein Märchen aus den neuen Zeiten (1994) ���������������������������������������� 239 9.2 Reconstruction of Life: Die Morawische Nacht. Erzählung (2009) �� 258 9.3 The Dialectic of History and the Journey into the Utopia of the Aesthetic �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 273

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10 The  Experiment of Recollective Description ������������������������������������������ 277 10.1 On the Way to Writing: Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers (1987)����� 278 10.2 The Narration of the “Inbilder”/Guiding Images: Versuch über die Müdigkeit (Essay About Fatigue, 1989)�������������������������������������� 281 10.3 Signs of Technology and Signs of the Landscape: Versuch über die Jukebox (Essay About the Jukebox, 1990)���������������������������������� 283 10.4 Writing Attempts: Versuch über den geglückten Tag (Essay on the Successful Day 1991)������������������������������������������������������������������ 289 10.5 The World Circle of Narrative: Versuch über den Stillen Ort (2012)������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 293 10.6 Searching for One’s Own in the Other: Versuch über den Pilznarren (Essay on the Mushroom Hunter, 2013)�������������������������� 296 11 The  Fundamental Other of Poetry: Handke’s Double Discourse on Serbia ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 303 11.1 The Context of ‘Post-War Literature’ and the ‘End of the Post-War Period’ ������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 304 11.2 The Discourse Rule of Media Society���������������������������������������������� 306 11.3 The Media Discourse on Handke and Serbia������������������������������������ 310 11.4 The “bösen Fakten”: Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land. Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien (1996), Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise (1996), Unter Tränen fragend. Nachträgliche Aufzeichnungen von zwei Jugoslawien-­ Durchquerungen im Krieg, März und April (1999), Rund um das Große Tribunal (2003), Die Geschichte des Dragoljub Milanović (2011)������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 312 11.5 The Challenge of Politics and the Promise of Poetry ���������������������� 316 11.6 Places of Resistance and Imagination: Die Tablas von Daimiel. Ein Umwegzeugenbericht zum Prozeß gegen Slobodan Milošević (2005), Die Kuckucke von Velika Hoća. Eine Nachschrift (2009)���� 323 12 Between  Drama and Epic: The Plays After 1989������������������������������������ 329 12.1 “Zum Dreinschlagen fremd”: Das Spiel vom Fragen Oder die Reise zum Sonoren Land (1989) ������������������������������������������������������ 329 12.2 Theatrical Experiments: Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten (1992) and Spuren der Verirrten (2006) ������������������������������ 336 12.3 Under the Law of History: Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit. Ein Königsdrama (1997)������������������������������������������������������������������ 340 12.4 Nema problema. Nema Jugoslavije: Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stück zum Film vom Krieg (1999) ������������������������������������ 344 12.5 “Endstation des Theaters”: “Warum eine Küche?” (2003), Untertagblues. Ein Stationendrama (2003), Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts. Ein Monolog (2008/9)������������ 353 12.6 Homecoming to the Ancestors: Immer noch Sturm (2010)�������������� 356

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12.7 Socialization Games: Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez. Ein Sommerdialog (2012) and Die Unschuldigen, ich und die Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße. Ein Schauspiel in vier Jahreszeiten (2015) �������������������������������������������������������������������������� 361 13 The  Competition of Word and Image������������������������������������������������������ 371 13.1 From Text to Film: Handke as Moviegoer, Author and Director������ 371 13.2 Experiments of Perception: Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse (1971) and Falsche Bewegung (1975)���������������������������������������������� 377 13.3 Semiotics of Perception: Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1970)������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 380 13.4 Gender Roles and Patterns of Perception: Die linkshändige Frau, 1978�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 383 13.5 Textual and Visual Construction of Identity: Der Himmel über Berlin (1987)������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 386 13.6 Visual Inscriptions of the Own: Mal des Todes (1986), Die Abwesenheit (1992), Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez (2017)���������� 389 14 The  Dialectic of History and the Revocation of Modernity ������������������ 405 14.1 The Fairy Tale of the Other World: Kali. Eine Vorwintergeschichte (2007)�������������������������������������������������������������� 405 14.2 The Revocation of Modernity: Der Große Fall (2011)�������������������� 413 14.3 Radicalization of Narrative: Die Obstdiebin oder Einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere (2017)�������������������������������������������������������������������� 426 14.4 Telling the World Anew: Das zweite Schwert (2020) ���������������������� 440 15 Basic  Lines of Handke’s Reception in Literary Criticism and Science�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 451 Bibliography�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 465

List of Figures

Fig. 6.1 Paul Cézanne (1839–1906): La Montagne de Sainte-Victoire vue de Bibémus, 1897 (Baltimore Museum of Art, © Heritage Art/Heritage Images/picture alliance)������������������������������������������������� 122 Fig. 6.2 Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–1682): Der große Wald (c. 1655/60) (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, © picture alliance / Heritage Images | Fine Art Images)������������������������������������� 128 Fig. 8.1 Peter Handke: drawing from Notizbuch, 2015, 14–15. (German Literature Archive Marbach; with the kind permission of Peter Handke)����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 213 Fig. 8.2 Peter Handke: Drawing from Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts. Zeichen und Anflüge von der Peripherie 2007–2005 (VB 409). (German Literature Archive Marbach; with kind permission of Sophie Semin)������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 237 Fig. 9.1 Paul Klee (1879–1940): Erinnerung an einen Garten, 1914. (Düsseldorf, Art Collection of North Rhine-Westphalia, © akg-images/picture alliance)����������������������������������������������������������� 246 Fig. 9.2 Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30–1569): Der düstere Tag, 1565; from the series of six paintings of the Seasons. (Vienna, Museum of Art History, © akg-images/picture alliance)���������254 Fig. 10.1 Cathedral of Santo Domingo in Soria: Romanesque tympanum of the main portal. (© Yvan Travert/akg-images/picture alliance)����� 287 Fig. 10.2 ‘Gulielmus Hogarth’ (1697–1764): Self-portrait, 1745. (© The Print Collector/Heritage Images/picture alliance)������������������ 292 Fig. 10.3 Still from John Ford: Two Rode Together, 02:30�������������������������������� 297 Fig. 11.1 Jan (Johannes) Vermeer, gen. Vermeer van Delft (1632–1675): View of Delft, c. 1660/1661. (The Hague, Mauritshuis, © akg-images/picture alliance)����������������������������������������������������������� 324 Fig. 13.1 Still from Wim Wenders/Peter Handke: Der Himmel über Berlin, 02:34��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 388 Fig. 13.2 Still from Peter Handke: Mal des Todes, 31:08 (ORF)����������������������� 391 Fig. 13.3 Still from Wim Wenders: Aranjuez, 1:03:50��������������������������������������� 403 Fig. 14.1 Nicolas Poussin (1594–1655): The seasons, summer, or Ruth and Booz, 1640–1644. (Paris, Musée du Louvre, © Heritage Art/ Heritage Images/picture alliance)������������������������������������������������������� 436 xiii

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Narrative Worlds/Image Orders: On the Introduction to the Text

Narration and images have been thematic in Handke’s work from the beginning, but since the 1980s they have taken on a new weight in his oeuvre. The question of the image has moved to the centre of an increasingly autoreflexive writing since Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire), and that of narrative since Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across). At least since the so-called “Tetralogie” (Tetralogy), the texts Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming), Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, Kindergeschichte (Children’s Story) and Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Villages), it can be observed that the mere narration of the real recedes to the extent that a separate reality of narration begins to establish itself. This reality creates images and texts that break away from the paradigm of representation. Narrative worlds or narrative realities emerge that can be recognized as elements of a metatext that is always about narrative itself. This is also possible because the sequence of Handke’s texts does not aim for a constant innovation of themes, writing strategies and images, but follows the principle of a creative schematization that uses a limited stock of narrative set pieces to constantly produce new stories and narrative situations. In the process, different aspects of a comparatively closed field of thematic variations of narrative become clear. In the text of Kali (Potash. A Pre-Winter Story), apostrophized as a ‘fairy tale’, the origin of times, of the fairy tale and of narration become one (K 159). The text of In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus (On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House) proves to be part of an overarching narrative play in which several characters are involved and in the course of which the dividing mark between the author and the narrator is systematically crossed again and again (IN 51). The fairy tale of the immediacy of language in the world seems to have become reality there, because even the natural phenomenon of snowing can be evoked by speaking alone. In Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos) narration and language establish a physical relationship between the wanderer and her narrator, while at the same time the dividing line between the story, the actions of the characters and the narration itself disappears. The image of its continued action beyond the coordinates of space and © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_1

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1  Narrative Worlds/Image Orders: On the Introduction to the Text

time vouchsafed by a story becomes a vehicle that stops, but still wavers as it stands. This movement, “which will not have ceased soon”, is the metaphor of narrative itself (BV 759). Consistent with this in Die Obstdiebin. Oder Einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere (The Fruit Thief), the work of reading can mobilize and make permanently accessible experiences that transcend mere experience. It enables a perception that can transform everything that shows itself as reality through imagination and language. At the latest since Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-­ Bay), it has become clear that Handke’s narrative links fictional and autofictional designs in order to insert them into a transtextual system of reference. It is also autoreflexive at every point, placing poetological considerations alongside autoanalytical ones. The resulting text segments can also be read as individual observations or spontaneous reflections and are not dependent on the linearity of narrative. At the same time, these texts design pictorial orders that in different ways organize not only the narrative, but also its self-reflexivity. First of all, the visual evidence of Handke’s narrative is grounded in the fact that he ascribes central importance for writing to contemplation and seeing. “Wie schwer ist das Sehen. Und es gibt keine Schule dafür; jeder kann es nur selbst lernen, Tag für Tag neu. Aber dann, in der Betrachtung, hat selbst das Schwarz der toten Blätter jetzt ein Leuchten” it says in Am Felsfenster morgens (At the Mountain Window in the Morning: And Other Local Times 1982–1987, AF 539). Writing begins as describing and from this already develops an arsenal of fixed images that organizes all texts, albeit in different ways. Not infrequently, these are almost standard images of nature and civilization (IN 209): the unlocations of suburbia, the change of seasons, the beginning of snowfall, or raindrops falling into the dust, to name but a few (IN 78). In addition there are images that are independent of text, they are panel paintings of the painterly tradition or film images that are ekphrastically reproduced, retold or revised. Examples are given by Cézanne’s Montagne Sainte-Victoire and Homme aux bras croisés (LSV 36) in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire as well as the reflection on landscape painting presented there by Ruisdael (LSV 18, 118 f.) via Courbet (LSV 31–33) up to Edward Hopper (LSV 19 f.). Finally, we should also mention Ruisdael’s Great Forest in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (The Story of the Pencil, GB 214), Breughel’s The Gloomy Day in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (MJN 629), Vermeer’s View of Delft in the Serbian Texts (TD 22), Poussin’s depiction of the sacraments in Versuch über die Müdigkeit (VM 57), or of Ruth et Booz in Die Obstdiebin (OD 466). Handke’s own pictures and sketches, which particularly determine the notebooks (NB 34  f.), also belong in this context. In the narrative these images are not infrequently functionalized by organizing or networking them through personal visual worlds that have to be deciphered developmentally as well as psychologically. These images Handke perceives on his travels and in his immediate environment, and he often condenses them through multiple overwriting. Beyond this, however, above all the so-called “Inbilder” are the guiding images that gain text-structuring and psychological significance at the same time. They have centered Handke’s texts since Kindergeschichte (KG 28; Bürger 1983, 501), in Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers (Afternoon of a Writer he explicitly refers to them

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(NS 79), and in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht he defines them as “Kindheitsinbilder” (MJN 771). These image-guided recourse of narrative to the unmistakably own as well as to the past simultaneously sketch out the basic lines of a poetological program that exhibits an intermedial trace but also always transcends the medial boundaries. The narrative aims to overcome the “Systematik des Sehens” and to achieve a “phantasierendes Sehen”, as the 1978 Notizbuch (Notebook) formulates four years before Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (NB 44). At the same time, this Notebook documents that the author’s guiding images formed in this way are also accompanied by drawings, in which precise observation and imagination complement each other. Handke’s detail studies, which often make even the flickering and trembling of the foliage perceptible in just a few strokes (Geimer 2019), are mostly characterized by a striking reduction in size. This gives the impression that the drawn motifs “liberate themselves from the laws of reality in order to cross over into another universe” (Agamben 2019, 14). A transformation comparable to this also determines the linguistic access to reality. Whoever wants to go “Heraus aus der Sprache”, reach his guiding image, his Inbild, and in the end write in images – nothing else is meant by the contemplation on “Innewerden” (PW 40; AR 94, 114) – must first go “ins Innere der Sprache”, where “Welt und Ich” are one (GB 182). Linked to this consideration in Handke’s texts are not only the question of the relationship between language and text, between narration and reading, but also that of the aesthetic specificity and poetological significance of the media of text and image, whose interrelation is staged anew in each case. It becomes apparent that film has a special significance here. The texts refer to it again and again, and at the same time it shapes their narrative: on the one hand, because it organizes image and narrative strategies in equal measure and relates them to one another, and, on the other hand, because it marks the meaning of image and word in the context of contemporary society. Reflecting on this not only gains central importance for Handke’s collaboration with Wim Wenders and his own turn to film, but it also determines the central theme of Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos), which must be seen here as a key text. That film images intertwine the imaginary and the real, inner and outer images, is traced again and again in this and other texts by the author. Although Der Bildverlust explicitly describes the destructive power of technical images, it nevertheless sketches out a determination of the peculiarity of images that also seems appropriate for the film image and its staging of an interweaving of conscious and unconscious perception: “Im Bild erschienen Außen und Innen fusioniert zu etwas Drittem […]” (BV 745; cf. also GU 85). In accordance with Wenders’s statement on the occasion of the film Der Himmel über Berlin (The Sky over Berlin), “Das Wort wird bleiben” (Wenders 1992, 197), Handke’s Versuch über den geglückten Tag (Essay on the Successful Day) does indeed also turn against the illusionism of modern film images, rejecting the claim to autonomy of visual perception with the formulation “Schauen und weiterschauen mit den Augen des richtigen Wortes” (VT 83). Yet in Am Felsfenster morgens, word and image are finally determined as an inseparable correlate: “Am Anfang war das Wort? Am Anfang war das Bild? Das Bild gibt das Wort” (FF 493). Consistent with

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this, the text Der Bildverlust makes a productive interrelation of text and image a precondition of writing. However, this text marks a change of function within the orders of images that must be overcome. In this text, ‘loss of image’ does not at all mean that there are no more images. The term does indeed refer to the psychologically momentous fact that the life-guiding images, memory images, and epitomes in modern society have “keine Wirkung mehr” because they threaten to lose their power under the influence of the “gemachten und gelenkten […] und nach Belieben lenkbaren Bilder” coming from outside (BV 743). Yet at the same time, this text in particular directs attention to an intermedial connection between word and image that is not touched by this historical and social development. Very early on, the protagonist, referring to her memories and her narrator’s narrative project, remarks: “auch einzelne Wörter können aus der Zeit- und Raumferne als Bilder ankommen. Und vielleicht kein durchschlagenderes und innigeres Bild als so ein reines Wortbild” (BV 213). This tension between description and narration, the practice and the poetology of narration, and finally between word and image is pursued in the examination of Peter Handke’s work presented here. It attempts to work out how central lines of development and turning points in the history of the work are reflected in the texts. At the same time, however, these texts are also considered in their entirety in order to be able to adequately grasp their internal functional rule, the course of narrative itself in its respective new configuration.

1.1 Preliminary Considerations and Course of the Investigation The introduction to this volume is oriented towards the sequence of the following individual analyses. In Handke’s work, a play of continuity and variation can be observed. Within the metatext to which all texts belong and in which they participate in different ways, however, his writing is characterized by significant twists and turns that do not allow for a clear attribution of this author to a single literary direction. He uses different registers of twentieth-century literature, often with a time lag and in deliberate disassociation from prevailing trends at the time. In a first phase of his writing, he contrasted the politically committed and realistically oriented literature of the sixties and seventies with experimental texts. They follow avant-garde principles and, influenced by linguistics and structuralism, rely on permanent aesthetic innovation. In a second phase Handke turned to the literary tradition and in the seventies followed the attitude of the so-called ‘new inwardness’. In doing so, he repeats a writing attitude that also defines so-called ‘classical modernism’: In critical reference to the literary tradition, he tries to make the world tellable again from the point of view of the subject. The third phase in the development of his work, which begins with the so-called Tetralogie in 1979, combines autobiographical self-reflection with philosophically based poetological reflection. In the subsequent fourth phase, the existential-ontological character of the narrative is even more sharply contoured.

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The aesthetic designs of these last two phases decidedly transgress the orientations of modernity. On the one hand, they describe – under the influence of post-­ structuralism and Heidegger’s philosophy – a reality withdrawn from the disposal of the subject. They show language and nature as orders preceding human control. On the other hand, they aim at a reconstruction. Beyond their philosophical contouring, these texts once again rely on the aesthetic evidence of narration. In doing so, they follow a tendency of remimeticization that is characteristic of a direction of postmodern writing. For this gesture of reconstructing traditional narrative forms is inconceivable without the preceding questioning of linguistic representation, without the subversion of the categories of subject, author and work. In the fifth phase of the work’s development, these lines are continued, but they establish a new constellation. On the one hand, the orientation towards literary tradition leads Handke’s narrative to fall back on traditional patterns. Kali, Don Juan (von ihm selbst erzählt) (Don Juan  – His Own Version) and Die Abwesenheit (Absence) fairy-tale features, while in Der Bildverlust, Die Morawische Nacht (Moravian Night) and In einer dunklen Nacht narrative strategies of the medieval epic become dominant. On the other hand, the autoanalytical inscription gains even sharper contours in both the narrative texts and the plays. Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht combines the author’s real life with the history and names of his narrative characters in the mode of an overwriting. In Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still), an invented family history overlays the author’s real one. A comparable double strategy of writing also characterizes the Journale (Journals) and the so-called Versuche (Essays). These texts prove to be at once almost experimental combinations of reflection and pictorial representation. The relationship between observation and narration, image and word, characterizes them in their innermost being and at the same time becomes thematic again and again. In the process, they also trace the author’s fascination with the medium of film. The sixth phase of Handke’s oeuvre expresses a new, partly covert but thoroughly purposeful engagement with the modern lifeworld and the political conditions of contemporary society. Der Bildverlust had already marked historical dissonances and confronted societies of different stages of development. In Der große Fall (The Great Fall), on the other hand, the contours of a future social reality and its conflicts appear in a pointed form. The life worlds that Kali and Die Obstdiebin establish are first and foremost counter-designs to the prevailing social reality. Their utopian potential lies precisely in the revocation of traditional drafts of social utopias. All this is preceded by a slow process of differentiation, which co-­ determines the interplay of constancy and variation in the guiding themes and writing strategies. The second chapter of this volume deals with Handke’s attack on so-called ‘descriptive literature’. It is directed both against the magically and metaphysically exaggerated realism of Böll, Andersch and Kolbenhoff, which began immediately after the end of the war, and against Dieter Wellershoff’s concept of ‘New Realism’. Against this “Manier des Realismus” (E 20) Handke wants to show “daß die Literatur mit der Sprache gemacht wird, und nicht mit den Dingen, die mit der Sprache beschrieben werden” (E 29  f.). His demands also follow the guiding

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principles of the Vienna Group, which considers the fable to be used up. In addition, the author opposes any political engagement of literature. This rejection also applies to Sartre and Brecht, whom the Journale still refer to as the destroyer of “freie[.] Literatur” in a formulation that was later deleted (GW 110). In contrast to him, Handke invokes the poetic as well as the consciousness-altering power of the confused sentences of Horváthian figures, the “begriffsauflösende” and “zukunftsmächtige Kraft des poetischen Denkens” (W 76), which relies not on the clarity of the concept but on “Verstörung”. Handke’s narrative beginnings follow these considerations’. The text Die Hornissen (Hornets), described as a novel, develops meticulous descriptions of details and situations from an experimental situation. A blind narrator reconstructs what has been forgotten; in the process, images told, remembered and fantasized overlap for him, they cut up and fragment “die weiße und leere Ebene des Gehirns”. A psychologically haunting image of this is the “Mann mit dem Seesack” who walks through a village flooded by boiling water and whose scalded eyes are “hinter den Blicken schutzlos geworden” (HO 15, 132). Der Hausierer (The Peddler) is more formalistic. There, italicized chapter prefaces quote set pieces of crime stories and are subsequently varied. This “satzweise Zusammenstellung der wahren Geschichte” (H 40) does not allow a coherent text to emerge; even the immanent order of the text proves to be a confusing game with narrative patterns. If one follows this irregular play of quite different sentences, it can be seen that not even the protagonist of the text is clearly outlined. He is a shifter, a reference figure who changes in changing contexts. Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) transforms the language experiment even more decisively psychologically. A murder committed by the protagonist Bloch at the beginning of the text subsequently determines his perception; the criminal plot is intertwined with a psychogram. Handke thus shows “wie sich jemandem die Gegenstände, die er wahrnimmt, in Folge eines Ereignisses […] immer mehr versprachlichen, und, indem die Bilder versprachlicht werden, auch zu Geboten und Verboten werden” (Arnold TK 1, 3). In the end, Bloch’s perceptions, which are subject to a relational constraint, unfold a hieroglyphic pictorial script that is as difficult to decipher as the asymmetrical communication of the football game, because there each player bases his actions on trying to fathom the hidden intentions of the other. The third chapter shows how the plays, prose works and radio plays continue this line of experimental writing into 1974. The play Kaspar in particular confirms this. It is a language experiment, a story of psychogenesis and a historical parable at the same time. Kaspar’s first sentence refers to the historical Kaspar Hauser: “Ich möchte ein solcher werden, wie einmal ein anderer gewesen ist”. He becomes the starting point of a socialization story that aims to show “wie jemand durch Sprechen zum Sprechen gebracht werden kann“; the play shows a “Sprechfolterung” (ST1 103). Its instances are the “Einsager” who exorcise Kaspar’s first sentence and then make him speak again. It becomes clear that the attempts at individual linguistic articulation, socialization through language, and speech torture merge into one another. On the one hand, the one made to speak realizes that he has “in die Falle

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gegangen” (ST1 194), on the other hand, he defends himself against his conditioning with supposedly meaningless sentences, and in the end he asserts himself as a lonely speaker with the formula “Ziegen und Affen” (ST1 197  f.). His counter-­ sentences, literary quotations from Horváth’s Faith Love Hope and from Shakespeare’s Othello, resist the power-occupied discourse order of the Einsager. In parallel, the spoken plays written between 1964 and 1971 and the play Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus (They Are Dying Out) demonstrate the role of communicative language, speech formulae and speechless gestures in given situations. They unfold a “Welt in den Worten selber” (ST1 201) and do not release any theatrical effect. In accordance with this, Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending The Audience) is on the one hand a play, on the other hand an essay dealing with the laws of effect of the theatre, the expectations and reactions of the audience. Its opening sentence, “Dieses Stück ist eine  Vorrede” (ST1 19), links it to the spoken plays, which, as plays without images, are also plays on words without action (ST1 21). The actors’ sentences and the interpolated comments ironize conventional theatre and its staging of ‘meaning’, ‘time’ and played reality. However, it becomes apparent that the theatre business effortlessly absorbed the provocation of Handke’s anti-­ theatre. The plays after 1989 already take this into account when they radicalize the early approaches in different ways. The fourth chapter shows that Handke’s poetry, with the exception of the 1986 poem An die Dauer (To Duration), also initially follows his experimental approaches. The programmatic title of the first volume of poetry, Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt (The Inner World of the Outer World of the Inner World), suggests a relationship between the perception of reality and subjective sensations, which the texts collected there do not want to confirm and probably cannot. Rather, they demonstrate the functional rule of grammatical models or ingrained idioms and phrases, as exemplified by Der Rand der Wörter (The Edge of Words 1, IAI 31) or Wortfamilie (Word Family, IAI 99–103). Many texts show that the power of the given and the handed down also challenges a creative countermovement. Moreover, recourse to traditional forms at least begins to contour a lyrical self. The essay Was ich nicht bin, nicht habe, nicht will, nicht möchte – und was ich möchte, was ich habe und was ich bin (What I Am Not, Do Not Have, Do NotWant, Do Not Want – and What I Want, What I Have and What I Am, IAI 23–26) bears the bracketed subtitle Satzbiographie (Sentence Biography) not without reason. It shows how, under the cover of ordinary sentences, names, and designations, the consciousness of being a distinctive self emerges. The fifth chapter is a first return by Handke to traditional narrative. It combines a conscious orientation towards literary tradition with a concentration on subjective perception and intensive self-reflection. This mode of writing, apostrophized in its reception as a ‘new inwardness’, is prepared in Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell). During a journey from the East to the West of the USA, the protagonist experiences the foreign continent as a place of alienation and at the same time as a dream world that opens up for him the possibility of discovering himself anew. However, the views of nature, perceived solely in perspective and from within the space of civilization, initially show the narrator only his “leidende

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Erinnerung”. He counters the fears of his childhood that recur in it with a new order of signs (KB 105). Sudden epiphanies transform his suffering memory into an ‘active’ memory. Nature, moreover, shows him how “[aus] Verwechslungen und Sinnestäuschungen Metaphern [entstehen]”. In the end, memory, experience, and aesthetic contemplation can lead him to the attitude of “systematischem [Erleben]” (KB 124). This journey into the “land of consciousness” contrasts Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story) with a way back. The story of his mother, which the author writes after her suicide, also leads him into his own past. The writing preserves the “Momente der äußersten Sprachlosigkeit und das Bedürfnis, sie zu formulieren” (WU 11). Yet at no point does the mother allow herself to be presented as a “Kunstfigur” (WU 47). In her description of life, even the childish language games appear as repressive socialization games, as adaptation to relations of ownership and domination, or even to the “Gemeinschaftserlebnisse” staged by the National Socialists. Under these circumstances, even the encounter with literature only leads to the awakening of a stunted ego that is neither physically nor psychologically capable of starting anew. The formula “Selten wunschlos und irgendwie glücklich, meistens wunschlos und ein bißchen unglücklich” (WU 19) does not accidentally negate a common linguistic formula. In the end, death is the only wish the mother can fulfill for herself. In tracing this development, the narrator himself changes and loses his distance. His last sentence, “Später werde ich über das alles Genaueres schreiben” (WU 105), becomes the program of a future narrative that is meant to mediate memory and poetic imagination with one another. Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling) is also about self-loss and self-discovery. At the beginning of the text, the protagonist Gregor Keuschnig dreams that he has become a murderer and continues “sein gewohntes Leben nur der Form nach” (SE 7). A resulting fragmentation of consciousness, a relationship delusion, and abrupt sexual aggressiveness are signs of his psychological regression. The words of Horkheimer used as a motto, “Sind Gewalt und Sinnlosigkeit nicht zuletzt ein und dasselbe?”, point to his unconscious desire to return to a state before culturalization and socialization. What appears to be a psychopathological case study simultaneously unfolds a poetological perspective. For Keuschnig wants to overcome a language that only shows “wie man Leben vortäuscht”. He is looking for a new form of perception and a different system of description, a “nouvelle formule”, which erases the individual in the same and precisely through these releases the imagination. (SE 8 f.). His surrender to the accidental gaze is a “romanticizing” in the sense of Novalis but demands a retreat into an inner world (SE 166). Die Linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman) also shows a solution from given contexts. Her resistance to the game of seduction and love determined by male desires is portrayed scenically, pictorially and distanced. The narrative is phenomenological, unfolding a sequence of images, dispensing with psychological explanations. Goethe’s sentence, quoted by Handke elsewhere, “Auf ihrem höchsten Gipfel wird die Poesie ganz äußerlich sein” is redeemed in just this way (PW 45). The change in the consciousness of the “woman”, as Marianne is called, is

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outlined through images or other texts. Her wishing finds its image in the wishing text of her child, the fantasy of living on an island without tension or relationship. This results in a utopian configuration in the full sense of the word. At the end of the text, the protagonist’s gaze through a window transforms rigid nature into moving nature; she herself appears to be included in a picture of nature through a reflecting pane. In her case, too, a productive force emerges from the unconditional concentration on herself. In the end she looks out of the window and begins to draw. Her double view of her own body and nature, inward and outward, becomes a metaphor for Handke’s writing of this time. The sixth chapter deals with the texts of the so-called Tetralogie. With them, the author attempts to translate the “fixen Ideen einzelner als den Mythos vieler” (GW 242). In Langsame Heimkehr (The Long Way Round), images of nature refer to psychic processes and projections. Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire) adds to this an autobiographically informed mythification of authorship. In parallel, Handke reconstructs developmental stages of his own socialization in Kindergeschichte when looking at his daughter Amina. In doing so, he makes clear the kinship between childlike and aesthetic imagination. In the dramatic poem Über die Dörfer, he thinks back to his real home and to the experiential space of the family. In his speech on receiving the Nobel Prize 2019, the significance of this return is once again emphasized and made recognizable as a prerequisite for his own writing. Within the Tetralogie, Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire forms the center and paradigm of autobiographically shaped poetological reflection. The earth explorer Sorger from Langsame Heimkehr has transformed himself into the author of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire and lives on in it in “vielen Blicken” (LSV 80). Handke’s return to the aesthetic and philosophical tradition of Europe, which is consummated in Die Lehre, is thus put into the picture. In doing so, the narcissistic focus on the self combines an aesthetic orientation with a philosophical one. His search for a “Lehrmeister” (LSV 27) leads the narrator, like the author of Die Lehre to Cézanne, to the tradition of landscape painting. His descriptions of images design “Sehtafeln” to capture a “wiederkehrendes Phantasie- und Lebensbild” (LSV 18). He emphasizes the intrinsic relationship of text and image, viewing landscapes as systems of signs that can be read like writing. This is connected to a philosophical consideration. The interpretation of Cézanne follows precisely the “Eindringen in die Gefahr der äußersten Beziehung zu den einfachen Dingen” (Laemmle 1981, 426–428) that Heidegger discovers in the latter. From the recognition of the connection that the images establish, the desire for a “Freiphantasieren” of the landscapes is founded, which is mediated to the narrative (LSV 79). This is not a presuppositionless inventing, but an ‘unhiding’ in the philosophical sense. It confirms a fundamental intertwining of poetry and thought. For the author, Cézanne’s procedure of ‘réalisation’ corresponds to his own attempt to transform the aesthetic text into a theory in the original sense of Greek natural philosophy. At the same time, this form of imagination is intended to link aesthetic “fantasy images” with life-historical memories. The productive confusion as well as

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the naming establishes a unity between the narrator’s “most ancient past and present” (LSV 11). This mythical genealogy of authorship frees the narrating self for memories. On the Montagne de Sainte-Victoire, the narrator can now discover what Cézanne’s paintings first show him. Following this, he succeeds in a comparable perception in the ‘Morzger  Wäldchen’ near Salzburg. As a primeval landscape and district of childhood, it links geographical spaces of experience, life-historical images and signs of memory in his imagination. It is no coincidence that this existentially exaggerated aesthetic experience is linked to a familial fantasy. The pair of eyes that the narrator fantasizes at the end of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire is its sign; it points directly to Kindergeschichte. The dramatic poem Über die Dörfer later continues this familial recoding of the aesthetic. The seventh chapter shows how the convergence of aesthetic and philosophical design that defines the Tetralogie continues in Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across) and Die Wiederholung (Repetition). In these texts, a dissociated self attempts to find new security through narrative. This attempt to rediscover the identity-creating power of language and poetry can be called Handke’s ‘Kehre’ with reference to Heidegger’s philosophy. Just as the philosopher searches for places of “Wohnen” and “Bauen” in order to be able to speak of the origin of man (Heidegger VO 25), the protagonist Loser uncovers the thresholds of ancient buildings in order to reconstruct them. His archaeology becomes an image for an aesthetic reconstruction of the lost. In keeping with a phrase from Handke’s Journale, the threshold now reveals itself to him as “Schrift und Bild” (PW 78). It points to the architectonics of the world as understood by Heidegger and is at once a sign of the historical past and of an existential situation. Writing has to reconstruct both. Unlike Heidegger, however, Handke’s ontological dimension, which he simultaneously translates into a poetological one, is prepared at every point in the text by a psychological one. Vergil’s formula of the “Tilia Levis”, the light lime tree, transforms Loser into the name of a stranger whom he awaits at the airport. Aesthetic and erotic fantasy, conscious orientation and unconscious desire thus coincide. In the end, Loser becomes capable of a new life, grounded in the succession of Virgil, which also makes him a storyteller. He becomes a “Meister der Wiederholung” (GB 20, 209). Die Wiederholung follows this existential-ontological orientation. Its title, which refers to Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Being and Time, SuZ 385; Heidegger UN 131), points firstly to the inclusion of themes and motifs from Handke’s previous texts. Secondly, he follows their autobiographical trail. More clearly than before, the media of socialization, writing and language, gain significance. Thirdly, this leads to the protagonist Kobal also having to experience that every step into language is necessarily an appropriation of the given, a “Hören”/“hearing” and “Entsprechen”/“corresponding” in the existential-ontological sense (W 257; Heidegger UN 33). He seeks out a script painter as a teacher, and as a result, landscape images and script images overlap for him. Both become signs of a prior order that must be deciphered and transmuted into the space of the imagination as “Luftschrift”.

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However, stepping back behind things and images, renouncing descriptive and ordering categories, at the same time makes Kobal aware of the constraints of socialisation. On his return to the Slovenian countryside, the space of his own origins, the language of his childhood, which he has to learn again, appears to him as a medium of both liberation and limitation. The freedom of origin seems possible only beyond history; the new beginning had as its precondition a catastrophe, the signs of which are preserved in writing. At the same time, the true goal of the search for the brother becomes clear. It is not Kobal’s intention to find him, but to tell about him. But this narration must not congeal into a writing which alone transmits the violence of socialization. Rather, according to the final fantasy of the text, it must “go further” by staying away from the concept. The central theme of narrative, which consistently orients Handke’s later texts, is already sketched out here as a decisive guideline linking autoanalytical and poetological reflection. Handke’s subsequent texts continue this programme and condense it in ever new variations. The text Die Abwesenheit (Absence) described as a ‘fairy tale’, presents situations that are aesthetically haunting and existentially interpretable with a narrowly defined constellation of characters. In the mode of fairy-tale narrative, some typical strategies and orientations of Handke’spoetology are even more sharply contoured than in his other texts. This applies in particular to the alternation between descriptive narration and the presentation of places and scenes that seem to be removed from reality. At the same time, some leitmotifs can certainly be read twice. Beyond mere denotation, they take on a philosophical meaning that opens up a reference back to the existential-philosophical contour of Der Chinese des Schmerzes. Poetologically, this text aims at a representation of fulfilled moments to which the act of narration is supposed to lend duration. But all that this can achieve is the endowment of a “Dauer im Wechsel” in Goethe’s sense. This results in a contrasting of one’s own world (“Eigenwelt”), one’s own time (“Eigenzeit”), and historical time (“historische Zeit”), as it also preludes and accompanies philosophical reflection on the “Eigensinn des Ästhetischen” (Adorno). The poetological resolution of this tension occurs here, as in other texts, through a movement of the figures in space. It establishes the rhythm of the narrative, which, as in other texts by Handke, also enables new perceptions and experiences (Carstensen 2013, 189; Honold 2017, 11, 492). The text In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem Haus (On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House) takes up elements that also define Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay): The focus on visual imagery, the narrative pattern of a circular movement through space, touching imaginary and real places alike. Alongside this is a clear intertextual reference to Chrétien des Troyes’ Lancelot and a chronotopia that can be ascribed to the aventiure as to the narrative in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Here, too, the recourse to medieval epic and fairy tale is not escapism but a procedure for sharpening the view of the present. The memory of the traditional texts and the present perception contour each other in superimposition. Moreover, the striking framing of the narrated images follows Handke’s poetology of epic storytelling, which allows visual schemes to emerge

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again and again. In this way, the Apothecary’s walk across the Steppe becomes both a narrative and a perceptual experiment. Because the protagonist’s movement in space, which is also a search for the lost language (IN 86), is carried by an indeterminate “desire” (IN 87), the traditional narrative schema reveals itself to be inscribed with a completely different story. It reenacts the constitution of the ego through language and the related object constitution as described by Jacques Lacan (Lacan Schrr I, 61–70). In the end, Handke eludes the given traditional narrative patterns he uses in this text. When the protagonist of the narrative becomes a narrator himself at the end, he also emancipates himself beyond the reported stories. Moreover, his self-setting gains contour precisely because at other points in this text “history” appears as an autonomous order from which none of the acting characters, not even the apothecary himself, can escape. The ultimately fatalistic view of history that will determine the texts of Kali, Der große Fall (The Great Fall), and Die Obstdiebin. Oder Einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere is already indicated here. A comparable treatment of a traditional theme also characterizes Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst), (Don Juan – His Own Version), which aims at a formal depotentiation of all specifications from the tradition of this material. Firstly, because Handke’s story of Don Juan takes on fairy-tale features; secondly, because the love theme is increasingly deprived of its sexual references; thirdly, and finally, because this story also ends up reflecting on narrative itself. Don Juan invades the narrator’s garden because he is fleeing from a couple he witnessed having sex. This was not at all out of sexual interest, but rather because he was waiting to see if something different, something new, would show itself in this relationship (DJ 33). In this way, Handke not only takes his cue from Juan de la Cruz’s Llama de Amor viva and Nietzsche, but also falls back on a central idea of his earlier texts: Don Juan experiences the “andere Zeitsystem” (DJ 77). His stories with seven women never happen in “der gewohnten Zeit” but in truth “in keiner Zeit” (DJ 102 f.). This notion is directly linked to a fairy-tale fantasy of the power of storytelling. The lover is transformed into a narrator; this transformation is biblically encoded, for it occurs between the Ascension and Pentecost. Moreover, the miracle of language is combined with a fairy-tale miracle of nature (DJ 24). The fantasy seems to be fulfilled that narrative itself could become a “Zeugen im Geist”, as Thomas Mann once fantasized as a reader of Plato (TMW 8, 493; Reed 1984, 103). Behind this lies a poetological program that aims at the representation of the immediacy of the moment instead of linear contexts. In the text of Don Juan, it is expressed through the dissociation of the unobstructed gaze from the media mediations of language and writing. The last sentence of the book, “Don Juans Geschichte kann kein Ende haben, und das ist, sage und schreibe, die endgültige und wahre Geschichte Don Juans” (DJ 159), calls for abandoning conventional love stories and finding another form of storytelling that gains its persuasive power from itself. Not unlike in the text of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, which repeatedly crosses the boundary between autobiography and autofiction (Wagner-Egelhaaf 2016, 15–21; Röhnert 2014), in Bildverlust both individual images and entire narrative passages can be read multiply because they can be assigned to different contexts

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that overlap. The narrated story, which at first glance follows a linear order, is repeatedly interrupted by inserted narratives, foreshadowing or back-referencing. At their points of contact, complex metonymic entanglements occur, whose proximity to Proust’s metonymic metaphor is unmistakable (Keller 1991, 248). In describing the geographical space of the Sierra de Gredos, verifiable place names are mixed with fanciful names such as “Nuevo Bazar”, or of those that intertwine near and far, familiar, and foreign, such as Spain, Serbia and Alaska (Luckscheiter 2012, 143). Moreover, from the outset, the text, set in a near future, is as much linked to images of the present as it is to memories of the past. At the same time, it constantly refers to another text, Cervantes’ Don Quixote. This is shown on the one hand by his complex narrative structure (Pichler 2013, 35), and on the other hand by his memories of Cervantes’ descriptions of the landscape (MJN 925). That the actual relationship to this author is more fundamental, however, beyond the quotations and formal similarities, is evidenced by the conclusion of the text (BV 709). There, not only is the fundamental question raised as to who is actually narrating in this novel, but reflection on the medium of writing now moves alongside the reflection on the medium of the image, which determines long stretches of the text. With the central question of how reality can be rendered through the signs of language, the modern author, like his predecessor, finds himself referred to the necessity of “Spielen mit Zeichen und Ähnlichkeiten” (Foucault 1971, 79, 81). In this way, too, a constellation of the early work is repeated; at the same time, it becomes the core of an overarching poetology of narrative. Chapter eight shows that a comparable poetological differentiation takes place parallel to the narratives in the so-called Journale, which appear between 1977 and 1982. They emerge from diary entries and, like the essays published under the title Langsam im Schatten in the Gesammelte Verzettelungen 1980–1992 (Slowly in the Shade. Collected Dispersals 1980–1992), are comparable to the fictional texts in terms of structure and content. Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World) attempts to overcome the “ewige Entzweitheit zwischen einem und der Welt” (GW 105) and relies entirely on the power of the “Ich-Gefühl” (GW 47), on narcissistic self-absorption, and on the attempt to think towards the moments in which the world becomes “spruchreif” (GW 171). The Phantasien der Wiederholung (Fantasies of repetition) relate poetological and ontological orientations. Their title refers to Sartre, and they define writing as an existential experience (PW 51). The law of succession, the “Freude des Wiederholens” now takes the place of a self-setting, directed at literary and philosophical tradition. Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (The story of the pencil) transforms the poetological program of succession into a mythically exaggerated idea of authorship, which also relies entirely on the mastery of “repetition” (GB 315). At the same time, the Journale sketch out set pieces of future texts. Their descriptions of nature, which increase in scope and intensity, link aesthetic images and authentic experiences. The desire to grasp the autonomous sign system of nature, not the unbound imagination, guides the writing here (GB 76). This becomes a “Nachsprechen der Welt” (GB 233), the view of the “persönliche Epos” (GW 315)

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of the Journale evokes the desire to write only of the “Schnee in den Rocky Mountains” (GW 321). Das Notizbuch (Notebook) published in 2015, which provides an insight into the relationship of Handke’s notebooks in the narrower sense to the autoreflexive records of the Journale, gains its significance for narrative in the fictional texts by decisively differentiating the opposition of nature and civilisation, which forms a guiding principle not only in Langsame Heimkehr. On the one hand, the narrator feels himself to be a “Zivilisationsdämon” (NB 35); on the other hand, nature and landscape are therefore given a special function for him. They mark an area of protection: the fantasy of being absorbed by nature is linked to the image of a shell, which appears as a graphic on the cover of the printed version of Langsame Heimkehr (NL 34). Am Felsfenster morgens (und andere Ortszeiten 1982–1987) paradigmatically documents the significance of visual perception that informs the Journale. Handke refers to the notations presented here merely as “Reflexe, unwillkürliche, gleichwohl bedeutsame” (AF 7). He explicitly rejects the designation ‘diary’ and speaks of a book characterized by the “Einheit zwischen Reflex, Reflexion und Gegenstand” that is, from the outset he wants to mediate seeing and thinking to one another (AF 97). The cover of the first edition combines an ornamental configuration with an arrow and can thus be related to a definition of literature that sketches an interrelation between the visual and the reflexive, between image and word: “Literatur: Es genügt nicht das Bild – es muß jenes eine (1) Wort dazukommen, welches das Bild erst zum Bild-Pfeil macht” (AF 431), notes a notation. Psychologically, these notes reflect a simultaneously conscious and unconscious fixation on the theme of origins, as had already been indicated in Über die Dörfer at the end of the Tetralogie. It is a line that finds its clearest expression to date in Immer noch Sturm, but equally informs texts such as Die Morawische Nacht. This turnaround is expressed in the first place by the fact that the “Felsfenster” is also a time window that opens up vistas into completely different “Ortszeiten”, the most important of which is childhood. However, the expectation of an account of historical events or historical processes aroused by the name Thucydides is expressly avoided. The secret core of the texts is rather their attempt to write a different history, based solely on contemplation. It is a sequence of images that does not generate causalities. It systematically thwarts the law of general history and of events occurring in the context of history. The journal Gestern unterwegs (Yesterday on the Road) brings together notes from November 1987 to July 1990. The constant change of location that took place during this time has the consequence that in this text the pure “Mit – Schreiben” is repeatedly replaced by a “nachträglichen, leicht zeitversetzten Notieren” (GU 5). Here, too, a basic figure is formed by the interplay between memory and the present, which establishes a reflection on one’s own productive activity with a view to the history of one’s youth. In doing so, the text records both the author’s traumatic experiences at boarding school (GU 57, 208, 326) and his liberation through an orientation towards antiquity, which – according to a guiding concept of his own writing - was “voll klarer Zwischenräume” (GU 56).

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This is different in Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen (A Year Spoken from the Night), where the author writes down exclusively sentences and scenes that are directly attributed to sleep. In a conversation he remarks about these notes: “Irgendwie habe ich innerlich aufgehorcht, ich wurde wach, manchmal mitten in der Nacht, manchmal am frühen Morgen. Ich habe mir die Sätze, die Bilder durch den Kopf gehen lassen und sie dann aufgeschrieben” (Greiner 2010). They do not, however, provide an unbiased view of the author. As dream narratives in the literal sense, they do on the one hand reveal the role of dreams in Handke’s writing. On the other hand, these notations naturally record transformations of the latent dream content into the manifest dream. As such, they are fundamentally concerned with communication and narration, and are thus dependent on adherence to discursive rules. Compared to the programmatic and condensed reflections on life and work history in Gestern unterwegs, the collection of notations in the most recent journal to date, entitled Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts. Zeichen und Anflüge von der Peripherie appears considerably less structured. Moreover, it is a sequence of quite different text forms and segmented texts. In accordance with the chosen motto “das Denken ist nicht in den Haupt-, sondern in den Zeitwörtern” (VB 317), the writer repeatedly searches for verbal circumlocutions, for example verbs for love (VB 367) or for poetry (VB 257). Alongside these are aphorisms by the author, speech verses, and quotations from other authors. Many of them are also designed for interpretation or reinterpretation (VB 110, 276) and open up perspectives on the history of the work through the theme of writing and reading. It is remarkable how this Journal repeatedly refers to Goethe. The journalist describes him as “eine Art Vaterloser, hochfahrend-hoffärtig” (VB 404). It is a formula that certainly corresponds to his own self-image, which is now both legitimized and contoured by the reference to another. Moreover, this constellation opens up another central phantasm of one’s own life, called “Mein” myth. It is a thoroughly irritating identification with Christ that follows a reinterpretation of the Isaac story (VB 172, 383). All in all, this continues the reference back to Christ as the Son of God, who already determines Gestern unterwegs (Yesterday on the Road, GU 390, 514). Chapter nine deals with the central link between fictional and autofictional writing that is constitutive of Handke’s work, using the examples of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht and Die Morawische Nacht. For the text Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, the tension between these registers is fundamental. It is linked to both in multiple and complex ways. First, because it reconstructs a phase of the author’s life autobiographically and at the same time opens up perspectives on the fictional work. Secondly, because the I who speaks in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht bears traits of both the author and his characters. The I speaking there can be compared to the first-person narrator of Proust’s À la Recherche du temps perdu, who is also intertwined with his author. “Der Ich sagt, der Ich aber nicht immer bin” Proust paraphrases this fact (Proust 1963, 61; Keller 1991, 207 f.). However, because Handke’s first-person narrator Keuschnig bears the name of the character in another text, the relationship between fiction and reality, fictional and factual narration, author and character takes on another dimension. By

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allowing itself to be related to the history of the author’s work, it intertwines his biographical with his intellectual development. The demarcation between the author Handke, the narrator in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht and the figures of Handke’s work, who appear in altered form in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, is playfully crossed again and again in the narrative. Die Morawische Nacht opens up references back to both the text Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht and Der Bildverlust. At the same time, it contextualizes images that run through Handke’s previous texts on Serbia. Both the concept of an autofiction in the first text and the narrative-theoretical reflection from the second text are now brought together and linked in a new and almost aleatory way. The conclusion of the narrative makes everything that has been told before seem like a phantasmatic configuration that emerges solely from the imagination determining the narrative. As a foreshadowing of this end, at which the coordinates of space and time dissolve, a passage appears in which the narrator informs us that the journey of the earlier author took place “in keiner Zeit”. Explaining this, he adds that what actually counts in this travel story are “alle Zeiten”, they are “miteinander, durcheinander, gegeneinander  – parallele, gegenläufige, einander zuwiderlaufende, durchkreuzende” (MN 45). In a reflection on narrative itself, the poetological notion of “Erzählzeit” is juxtaposed with the notions of “Zählzeit” and “Erzählzwangzeit” also negotiated in Don Juan (DJ 156). In Handke’s immanent poetology, they circumscribe different strategies for reproducing and linking life-historical processes in such a way that they explain and correct each other. The tenth chapter describes the Versuche (Essays) produced between 1989 and 2013, the second of which, the Versuch über die Jukebox (Essay on the Jukebox), still bears the subtitle of a “Erzählung” in the first edition, and the last of which, the Versuch über den Pilznarren. Eine Geschichte für sich (Essay on the Mushroom Hunter), is first described as “eine Geschichte” in its own right. All of them cannot be clearly classified as a type of text. Moreover, they take up considerations that are already prefigured in Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers (Afternoon of a Writer). Even before Handke tells the double story of his life and writing in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, some of the Versuche establish an intermediate form between auto-­ reflection, autoanalysis and fictional draft. In doing so, they practice a form of inauthentic speech by developing further and associative reflections from immediate descriptions. Thus, the jukebox, which is the subject of the second text, is not only a nostalgically considered object of the history of civilization, but it also represents the guiding metaphor for the law of construction of the Versuche as a whole. It represents nothing other than an archive of medially transformed memories whose songs provide the leitmotifs for experiences in the past and their mobilization in states of mind in the present (Honold 2017, 317). Similarly, The “Versuche” Über die Müdigkeit (Essay on Tiredness), Über den geglückten Tag (Essay on the Successful Day), or Über den Stillen Ort (Essay on the Quite Place), whose observations visualize social contexts, at the same time relate them to their own experiences, especially to memories. This intermedial configuration is joined by other medially mediated memories, especially film sequences. Versuch über den Pilznarren is of

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particular importance in this series because, like Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht and Die Morawische Nacht, it follows an autofictional line. The story of the Pilznarren is that of a doppelganger of the author. It mirrors the latter’s memories of his own origins and development, partly in playful irony, but also through indirect references. Because it begins in childhood, refers to Slovenia and, in the end, has the Mushroom Hunter become a criminal defence lawyer at an international court, it bears traits of a self-description by the author. The eleventh chapter outlines Handke’s confrontation with Serbia in the wake of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. It marks a turning point that fundamentally changes the author’s life and work (MJN 158). When the latter became the focus of a public criticism that he certainly provoked but probably did not really expect in this way, the basic figure of his role as a writer in public discourse after 1966 seemed to repeat itself. On the one hand, this led to an ever sharper contouring of his own stance, and on the other, to self-criticism and self-doubt, which found expression in both narrative and dramatic texts. Die Morawische Nacht, Immer noch Sturm or Die Fahrt im Einbaum (Voyage by Dugout) provide examples of this. The focus on social reality reflected in Wunschloses Unglück is now followed by an examination of political reality. It contours the tension between the real and the poetic world that has been dealt with repeatedly in earlier texts, but it stands in a more complex context. On the one hand, this is because the opinion on the appropriate attitude of the West towards Serbia, which began to prevail after 1996, was only possible on the basis of a change of discourse among German literati and intellectuals, which was to be completed only with the year 1989. Secondly, this is also because the formation of public discourse in the developed media society was subject to its own laws. It seems like an irony of history that this very fact also determined the renewed public discussion about Handke’s attitude to Serbia on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2019. This radicalized the criticism and certainly took on forms of a “Hetzjagd” (Melle 2019). The self-criticism of the media formulated after the first wave of discussion seemed to be forgotten, partly questionable and partly absurd factual conflations now took place as well as demonstrable misreadings of Handke’s texts (Stokowski 2019; Bremer 2019), differentiated statements were the exception (Assheuer 2019; Müller 2019). With a view to the war in Yugoslavia, Handke not only directs attention to the peculiarities of media-mediated public discourse in the introduction to Eine Winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien (A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia). There he also fundamentally and critically addresses the truth content of information in the media age (WR 56). In addition, his examination of Serbia also has poetological consequences, because it takes up and reinforces two guidelines that have always determined his own writing (WR 69). On the one hand, the autofictional recoding leads back to the history of his family, which belongs to the Slovene minority in Carinthia. In it, the author finds coordinates of his own life that already shaped Die Wiederholung (Repetition) but can now be related to the West’s current conflict with Serbia. On the other hand, the fundamental dissonance between the poetic view of

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the world and writing, the medially conveyed image of reality and experienced history, comes to a head. An example of this is provided by the text Rund um das große Tribunal (Around the Great Tribunal), in which Vermeer’s View of Delft becomes a counter-design of a prevailing political system that attempts to make its actions unquestionable in legal terms and through recourse to modern communication media (RT 21, 35). The images and leitmotifs developed in the confrontation with the Serbian war and its legal reappraisal by the International Court of Justice subsequently also organize Handke’s plays and texts. Thematically, they are recognizable in Die Fahrt im Einbaum and Die Morawische Nacht. At the same time, as references and quotations, they permeate all later texts up to Die Obstdiebin. Der Bildverlust in particular describes social constellations reminiscent of the Balkans before, during and after the war. Moreover, these references to Serbia are closely linked to the general theme of history, which acquires a central role not only in the texts and film adaptations of Die Abwesenheit (Absence) and Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez), but especially in the texts critical of civilization in Kali and Der große Fall. The essay Noch einmal für Thukydides (Once more for Thucydides) proves to be a guiding text for opening up this interrelation. The twelfth chapter describes how Handke, in his plays after 1989, falls back on approaches that already determined his first dramatic drafts, and at the same time radicalizes them. In the process, the recourse to the theme of ‘Yugoslavia’ leads to a clearer political contouring. With Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten (The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other) the author initially follows the experimental approach of Das Mündel will Vormund sein (The Ward Wants To Be Warden), and the spoken plays operating as “Schauspiele ohne Bilder” (ST1 21). The actors on stage do not represent roles in their “Sich-Einspielen” (DS 9), but remain dancing, fleeting, changing bodily figures. The reduction of the action of the figures to gestures and movements, which also determines Spuren der Verirrten (The Traces of the Lost), where the stage is transformed into a mere showplace, continues this mode of representation. A comparable experimental strategy determines the texts Handke writes for Mladen Materić’s play La cuisine. It continues in Untertagblues: Ein Stationendrama (Underground Blues: a Station Play) and finally in Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet oder eine Frage des Lichts (Till Day Do You Part, or, A Question of Light). In contrast Das Spiel vom Fragen oder Die Reise zum sonoren Land, (Voyage to the Sonorous Land or the Art of Asking) takes up the mythical constellations of Über die Dörfer. In Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet, the word ‘tempest’, which opens a reference to Shakespeare, was already a metaphor for a problematic relationship between husband and wife. In Immer noch Sturm, it metaphorizes the relationships of three generations of a family and the particular historical constellation that shaped them (BTS 27). Because this play also opens up a view of the author Handke’s real family history, it becomes a paradigm for the interplay of autofiction and fiction that increasingly characterizes the author’s later plays and texts. Everything that happens is mediated through the radically subjective gaze of an ‘I’ who appears as a

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character alongside the family members. The drama of his interior is mirrored in a change of scene and setting in the exterior. In Bis daß der Tod euch scheidet (Till Day You Do Part Or A Question of Light) too, the stage is about a drama of the interior. At the same time, a historical constellation is shown in which the question of the relationship between law and justice in the succession of war and peace takes on a central role (ZU 92). From this perspective, Die Fahrt im Einbaum, performed in 1999, refers to Handke’s texts about Serbia as well as to the public debate about them. The spoken word piece, which can be seen as a new “Nachtrag” to the Balkan war, combines basic patterns and images of Handke’s poetology with the guiding formulas of the media-driven discourse on the war in Yugoslavia. His intention to challenge the audience to react is already prefigured within the piece through an interaction of actors and observers. This results in a double game with the identity of the ego and a theatre depending on contoured genre forms. This constellation continues in the two plays Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez and Die Unschuldigen, ich und die Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße (The Innocent, Me and the Unknown Woman by the Side of the Road). The first text already thwarts the unambiguousness of its designation as a play with its designation as a “Sommerdialog”; the second, under the title Ein Schauspiel in vier Jahreszeiten (A Play in Four Seasons), deals with formal specifications in a similarly playful manner. It takes up the classification as a play in a literal form. As in Spuren der Verirrten (Traces of the Lost), the setting of the stage becomes a co-actor, especially as it makes visible a real place and phantasmatic projections of the ego at the same time (SV 14). In this play of forms, splinters of autobiographical references are brought together as in a “bricolage” (Derrida 1967, 418). The thirteenth chapter describes how the influence of the media of film and images shapes Handke’s writing in different ways. It also shows how the productive engagement with film gains a central role in Handke’s film adaptations of his own texts and in his collaboration with Wim Wenders, which in turn communicates itself to the texts. The first film projects follow the approach of the author’s early plays and texts. Die Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse (Chronicle of Current Events) and Falsche Bewegung (The Wrong Move) can be seen as experiments with the forms of representation of this medium and the laws of visual perception. The Chronik deals with the competition between film and television images; at the same time, it is a “Chronik der Fernsehbilder, die in der Bundesrepublik in den Jahren 1968 und 1969 […] gezeigt wurden” (CLE 128 f.). The text of Falsche Bewegung has been seen as a “Prosaauflösung” of a screenplay (Durzak 1982, 141); the film of the same name aims both at a demonstration of image-seeing and at opening up the special relationship between image and writing (FB 16, 18). The inner law of television reality also determines the protagonist’s writing. Conversely, the film uses the literary model of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, which it retells, retold and used as a blueprint for a new story (FB 77 f.; Pütz 1975, 69). In the same move, Handke inscribes images of his own life and signifiers of his own texts into Wilhelm’s story. Wim Wenders’ film version of Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) translates central motifs and visual

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constellations of Handke’s texts into a cinematographic language of its own. Above all, the reduction of language and action outlined in the author’s play and the confrontation of associative perception with denotative language are brought into the picture by means of fade-ins or camera movements, which for long stretches equate the gaze of the film viewer with that of the protagonist. This gaze control corresponds with the reaction required of the film viewer to the language presented in the film. The spectator becomes a co-actor, as in Handke’s plays. Bloch’s difficulties in deciphering different signs are repeated for the film viewer. In Handke’s film version of Die linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman) on the other hand, language initially recedes in a conspicuous manner, while the images are often encoded in multiple ways. Moreover, images without language repeatedly form a contrast to the speeches, which are mostly dominated by men. Women’s self-­ discovery is not developed in linguistic discourse but visualized through a series of body images. This creates a striking tension between the denotative language and the images; it aims at over-shaping the merely visible through unconscious perception. Handke himself conceives of this form of psychologization as a mythicizing transformation of the film image (Schober 1977, 180). It creates the counter-myth to a “entsemiotisierte Welt” (Grossklaus 1979, 58; Schober 1977, 180). Wim Wenders’ film Der Himmel über Berlin (Sky over Berlin), made in collaboration with Handke, uses cinematographic strategies to address the question of the relationship between language and writing, a question that was central to both the director and the author. Two-dimensional images are deliberately juxtaposed with perspectival views from above the angelic world. The intermediality that the film establishes through the close connection between word and image is simultaneously unfolded as intertextuality. The setting of Berlin is thus transformed into a historical space. In it, events such as becoming human and finding language take place. This leads to a change in function and to an autonomisation of visual and written signs in the film. Image and writing do not proceed there mimetically, but they organize conscious and unconscious perceptions that release memories and fantasies. In this way, the novel’s central theme of Der Bildverlust is prefigured in the film. The last three film adaptations are very close to the respective texts. Wenders’ adaptation of Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez also draws on an arsenal of motifs and images familiar from Handke’s stories. Handke’s cinematic adaptation of Die Abwesenheit and Mal des Todes (The Stigma of Death) also refers to this. Therefore, these films are not only determined by the linearity of their plot, but also by an aleatoric use of images that opens up intertextual and intermedial perspectives at the same time. This also applies to their images of nature and landscapes. Much more clearly than in the image sequences, Handke’s obsessive turn against all forms of civilization noise can also be made clear on the soundtrack of Mal des Todes. These repeatedly signal the intrusion of the historical world and its forms of violence. In long shots showing an almost kaleidoscopic sequence of images, Mal des Todes depicts an encounter between a man and a woman that, without contouring the identity of the two, concentrates on visualizing and commenting on sexual desire. In Absence, a technique of distancing prevails that can be compared to the epic storytelling of the medieval epic as well as to many film beginnings in the

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modern Western, both of which equally focus on the movement of the protagonist in space through a distancing long shot. Wim Wendersʼ film version of Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez condenses and supplements the dialogic structure of the original through a frame of reference created by cinematographic means. This lends the film images both a focalisation and a strict rhythmisation. Alongside the paraphrasing of other texts, the inscription of one’s own into the other and the intermedial transformation, the principle of a variation occurs here, as in the other film adaptations, which, as in the texts, produces an autonomizing field of signs. It becomes clear that Handke, as a director and advisor, also wants to affirm his strategies of narration in the medium of film through a networking of word and image, as well as his ideas of authorship through visualization. The fourteenth chapter deals with Handke’s last stories to date. They combine the recourse to traditional forms of storytelling with a critique of time that focuses more sharply than in previous texts on the political reality of modern media society. Because they are marked by a thoroughly fatalistic image of general history, these narratives read in places like revocations of modern confidence in social and technical progress; they describe a situation after the end of the ‘grands récits’ (Lyotard 1984, 187, 191). In Kali. Eine Vorwintergeschichte Handke first follows Walter Benjamin’s formulation that the “erste wahre Erzähler” is the one of “Märchen” (Benjamin 2007, 121). At the same time, this story has elements of mysticism, epic, initiatory novel, and road movies (Breitenstein 2007; Grossklaus 1979, 58). Many of the fairy-tale and mythical motifs correspond to the “mythe personnel” (Mauron 1962, 284, 286) that the author inscribes in his texts. At the same time, they belong to his cross-­ textual treatment of the themes of perception, experience and memory, of writing and image. In doing so, it becomes apparent that the author makes the psychological turning point of the plot, the love encounter between the protagonist and a man, a turning point of the narrative itself by changing its status. Whereas up to this point the text has been marked only by a secret tension opened up between its realistic and fantastic elements, the description of nature and the mysterious figure of the woman, he subsequently combines the sign order of utopia with that of the fairy tale and the courtly epic. On the one hand, he quotes familiar images and set pieces from these textual genres; on the other, he replaces the description of action with a sequence of signs that condenses everything that happens into images. The narrative is transformed into a symbolic order that unfolds its own logic and at every point transcends the mere depiction of reality. Comparable to this double narrative order, the narrative interplay of quotation and self-quotation characteristic of Handke’s writing leads to a hybridization of narrative in Der große Fall. On the one hand, the intertextual references to other authors as well as to one’s own work are radically transformed and used aleatorically; on the other hand, a new perspective in Handke’s work is established in this way. The narrative play of references directs our gaze to the signs of a catastrophe. A poetological program oriented towards the late Goethe and Heidegger’s assessment of technical civilization lend it contour (Heidegger UN 28).

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The “Endzeit” that the protagonist experiences and that shapes his perceptions portrays a social, historical and mental constellation that bears the signature of the medially mediated modern world. At the same time, this marks the conditions of narration that the author reflects upon in his text. It is therefore no coincidence that the text ends with an image that can be seen as a refutation of earlier names of hope. In Der Chinese des Schmerzes the names “Feuerland oder Montana” were still a formula for the fantasy of a new beginning within history (CS 203). At the conclusion of Der große Fall, however, it becomes clear that the natural land of the ‘Great Falls’ in Montana is also a catastrophic sign. The natural land is also the site of nuclear retaliatory weapons. The signs of an end time are therefore inscribed in this story from the beginning, the “Zwischenräume” are no longer livable (MJN 36 f.; Huber 2005, 116–119; Gamper 1987). They are nothing other than an aesthetic configuration that ends with the narrative and does not outlast it. In several respects, Die Obstdiebin directly follows Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, Der Bildverlust and Die Morawische Nacht. Even the subtitle, which alludes to a “einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere” makes it clear that, as in these texts, the aim is to describe a movement in space; in doing so, the topology of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht is explicitly incorporated. Not only does it outline the journey of the first-person narrator and the one characterized as a fruit thief, but it also opens up spaces of time that can be viewed in different ways: As places of the past and memory, or as signs of new and different experiences. The outsider status of the woman, who eludes the legal and social system of rules, enables her to take a special look at reality, which unfolds an aesthetic dimension because it is directed at the ‘Zwischenräume’ that are still accessible to her, unlike to the protagonist of Der große Fall (OD 171). Her gaze deciphers a system of trigonometric points, which is laid over the landscape like a grid and transforms her unobstructed gaze from the very beginning. Her “Ortwerden” (OD 173), that is the theme of the text, is a metaphor that expresses an existential disposition and opens up an ontological level of meaning. In this respect, this text also connects to the ontological ‘Kehre’ in Handke’s work. In the background of the perceptions of nature that accompany the protagonist’s path, there are also signs of war and violence. Thus, this text is also determined by the dissonant basic figure that is increasingly prominent in Handke’s writing. The phantasmatic gaze of Die Obstdiebin, which also captures earlier battlefields (OD 75, 550), visualizes the notion of a history of violence that persists through all time (OD 256). In this text, too, narrative itself becomes the counter-figure to this historical constellation. At no point, however, is narrative limited to the description of stories; rather, it presents a sequence of images and scenes whose écriture the reader is charged with deciphering anew. This work of reading is intended to release a perception that transforms the merely real through imagination and language. Thus, after passing through different registers of writing and experience under altered conditions, Handke returns to the beginning where, through the power of poetry, everything seemed possible. Now this fantasy has become a writing program that endures and can promise duration.

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In the last text to date, Das zweite Schwert (The Second Sword), this concentration on writing is taken up once again and condensed. In doing so, Handke not only connects to the themes and narrative strategies of his late texts. He also implicitly refers to the public discussions about his political stance on the occasion of the awarding of the Nobel Prize in 2019. At the same time, this text presents a counter-­ draft to the public discourse by radically orienting itself solely to the capacity of the aesthetic and the task of narration. This monograph deals with Peter Handke’s printed texts; the sources in Marbach and Vienna are reserved for further study. The text of the chapters two to seven is partly based on my earlier publication on Peter Handke (Sammlung Metzler 218, Stuttgart 1985). However, these passages have been updated, completely revised, and supplemented. My special thanks go to Thomas Nenon, Memphis, who with his bilingual competence and profound philosophical knowledge reviewed this text for me. I also thank Veronika Walzberg, Freiburg, whose meticulous proofreading and valuable suggestions were essential for the printing of this text.

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Literary Self-Assertion and Experimentation with Form: The Narrative Beginnings

2.1  Die Hornissen (1966) His vehement attack on so-called ‘descriptive literature’ (“Beschreibungsliteratur”) at the meeting of Group 47 in Princeton led Peter Handke to be accused a little later of following the procedure of mere description in his first novel. In fact, the text of Die Hornissen (The Hornets) proves to be a chain of minute descriptions of details and situations, whose factual and contextual coherence is initially not discernible. In particular, the sections “Der Schlüssel” (HO 117–119) and “Die Liturgie” (HO 97–102) seem to reinforce the opinion that mimetic images of reality are presented here. On the other hand, the text makes it clear that its descriptions are at the same time aimed at other, non-executed things (HO 45); the set pieces of the narrative are “nur Beispiele” (HO 39). The section that begins with “Jedesmal wenn” also shows how memories begin to detach themselves from the original experiences and become related to unconscious reactions (HO 156). Only the end of the novel reunites both movements, it relates the experimental linking of remembering, describing and narrating to a plot core. The chapters “Hornissen”, “Die Entstehung der Geschichte” and “Das Aussetzen der Erinnerung” indicate that this text is first and foremost about narrative itself, about a “Grenzfall” in which “Erfindung und Imagination” become the object of the book (Heintz 1970, 88). At first, however, it is noticeable that this story lacks everything that constitutes a story. Robbe-Grillet’s dictum about the end of the obsolete concept of “story” seems applicable to this novel (Heintz 1970, 102): it has neither spatial nor temporal continuity, even an organizing narrative instance is hardly tangible; rather, there is a constant switch between first-person and third-person perspectives at exposed points (e.g. HO 18, 246); moreover, the narrative is accompanied by reflexive interpolations that increase towards the end of the text (HO 15). For this mode of writing, the conclusion of the text provides a rationalizing explanation: the novel depicts the mode of a narrative that takes place under special conditions. A blind narrator reconstructs what has been forgotten. He retells a book that is about two brothers, one of whom later goes blind (HO 243); everything © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_2

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suggests that he is thus retelling a story in which he himself appears. But his memory of the book turns out to be rudimentary and fragile. The blanks it presents are filled by authentic memories or current fantasies of the blind man, which in turn emerge from remembered perceptions. In this way, in addition to the special narrative situation, the novel also fundamentally describes the emergence of narrated reality, which at no point is merely a representation of reality, at no point merely an invention, but always a superposition of both. This complex narrative structure not only shows how and under what conditions a story is told, it also makes clear that narration can simulate that there is a story that can be told at all. In this respect, the novel Die Hornissen can be attributed to Handke’s early reflection on language. For it deals in a general sense with the “Primat der sprachlichen Wirklichkeitskonstitution” (Heintz 1970, 94), thus referring to a problem that Handke will address in the eleventh play of Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt (The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld, IAI 40–42) as well as in Kaspar or Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling). The narrator’s blindness appears as a fiction that makes it possible to point to the linguistic mediatedness of the world (Heintz 1970, 105). Moreover, the fragmentary nature of memory (HO 24) is joined into a whole through its linguistic transformation (HO 31). This assemblage does not require a clearly contoured narrator. Rather, the section on the word “sich verstecken” proves that the author makes every effort to keep the reader in the dark about his identity (Mixner 1977, 14; HO 178 f.). Moreover, the particular narrative situation of the text systematically blurs the line between fiction and reality. The interlocking of memories of what is experienced and what is read is reinforced by authentic perceptions; empirical and literary reality can become equally “Quelle und Bezugspunkt von Erlebnissen” (Heintz 1970, 92). Handke describes this narrative method in detail in a conversation: Der Ausgangspunkt der Geschichte ist der, daß einer, der blind im Bett liegt, sich vorstellt, wie er damals blind geworden ist, wie das damals war. Diese Vorstellung wird ja wieder gebrochen durch das Buch, das er einmal gelesen hat. So erscheint ihm seine Vorstellung eben literarisch, als ob er sie lesen würde, und was er erlebt hat, erscheint dadurch irgendwie in Erzählform. (Bloch/Schneller 1971, 172; Mixner 1977, 19)

This narrative situation is the prerequisite for the fact that the “Verwechseln oder Einswerden von Wortwirklichkeit und wirklicher Wirklichkeit” (Mixner 1977, 7) lends the novel itself a fantastic lability: at every point it erases the boundary between the invented and the authentic. There is something to be said for the fact that the book the blind man remembers is the text of Die Hornissen (Mixner 1977, 7, 18); on the other hand, the blind man bears traits of the author. The inner core of the text is a constellation that Handke describes in his autobiographical sketch in 1957. The reported experiences of the blind man point to authentic, “oft rein magische Erlebnisse von Angst” (Mixner 1977, 19; E 13 ff.), which the author wants to overcome by writing. A few years after the publication of Die Hornissen Handke describes a starting situation that found its way into the novel in a barely altered form.

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Manchmal ist es so, daß ich vor lauter Angst und Mißbehagen tatsächlich nicht mehr beobachten kann und alles ein Zirkelschluß wird. Ich weiß aber nicht, mit welchen Kindheitserlebnissen das zusammenhängen könnte, ich habe schon oft darüber nachgedacht, vielleicht habe ich das alles vergessen, es muß so eine Art Urschock gegeben haben. Manchmal meine ich, es waren diese fürchterlichen Angstzustände als Kind, wenn die Eltern nicht zu Hause waren und dann zurückkamen und sich schreiend im Zimmer prügelten und ich mich unter der Decke versteckte. Aber es nützt mir nichts, wenn ich denke, das sei eine mögliche Erklärung. (Mixner 1977, 16; Linder 1974, 36 ff.; cf. HO 25).

Obviously, the blurring of the boundary between what is experienced, what is thought and what is narrated is a prerequisite of narration. This is indicated by the central metaphor of the thin ice, which threatens to break in on those who, when crossing a snowfield, get out of the orderly flow of movement (HO 246 f.). This metaphor of breaking in, which points to the breaking-in points of the real in the text, corrects the first impression that Die Hornissen are a mere “Sprachspiel”. The “radikale Verfremdung” of the aesthetic discourse points beyond the aesthetic experiment to an autobiographical inscription that the reader is charged with deciphering. It not only deals with the conditions of narration and the reality created by narration and its laws, it demonstrates above all the share of narration in the psychogenetic establishment of identity. This novel thus already anticipates a perspective of Handke’s writing that only becomes fully recognizable and redeemed in his later novels. It is only here that it becomes apparent that the early texts, in their “freiwilligen Reduktionismus” already outline the “imaginären Übergang in einen postreflexiven Zustand” (Bartmann 1984, 47); they are “Ausdruck einer noch nicht zur vollen Entfaltung gekommenen literarischen Produktivität” (Bartmann 1984, 36). It is part of the peculiarity of these first drafts that they bring the formal problems of writing to the fore before they reveal the existential texture of the experimental. This is indicated by the novel’s terse sentence “Dies alles sind nur Beispiele” (HO 39). This is contrasted with a passage of linguistic reflection in which the narrator, forced to speak, has an experience comparable to that of Lord Chandos in Hofmannsthal’s work: he is not in a position to have the appropriate words at his disposal (HO 17 f.). The text of Die Hornissen is conspicuously often about “Erzählen” (HO 36 ff., 109, 135) and about naming (HO 35, 42, 73 ff.). In the process, it becomes apparent that the narrative situations hidden in a rebus of narrative perspectives ultimately outline a theory of narration that is closely linked to the constitution of the self. The end of the novel clarifies that writing emerges from memory, but also makes it clear that this does not only refer to the authentic. Although the blind man also orients himself to memory markers - the sound of the departing omnibus transports the narrator back to situations he has experienced (HO 243) - his memories only acquire their weight through the fantasies they release. They do not require the authentic in every case, though they often arise from it alone. The section entitled “Die Entstehung einer Episode beim Frühstück” is the clearest evidence of this fact. It tells of how imaginations emerge from mere perceptions, the hearing of sound, images that the listener assigns to the sounds (HO 74). Here the text repeats exactly the perception of Noah, described in Proust’s Recherche who imagines the outside

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world in the closed ark (Proust 1924, 11). Moreover, it is made clear that these images can be used to create elaborate scenes, situations that the hearing blind person imagines in relation to the perceived sounds and imagined images (HO 76 f.). Not unlike the other imaginations, these are preceded by simple “Benennen”, which proves to be the original form of imagination (HO 35, 42 f.). By contrast, the section “Der Traum” testifies to how the facets of a story can also be composed from an interior perspective, from unconscious and imagined perceptions. The dreamer, dreaming of a situation directly related to the brother story being told, remarks: Was ich aber jetzt sah, war nicht mehr außer mir, und es war nicht mehr so, daß ich nicht wissen konnte, ob es wirklich so sei, oder ob ich nur schliefe; […] was ich sah, erblickte ich nicht über die Augen, noch beurteilte es dann das Gehirn und gab ihm die gelernten Namen, noch war es den Nerven angenehm oder unangenehm, woraus vielleicht ein Gefühl entsteht: was ich sah, sah ich nicht durch das Auge, sondern durch das Zucken der leblosen Dinge selbst, die ich nicht mehr als anders und von mir entfernt spürte, weil sie, allein dadurch, daß ich sie sah, mir die Adern aufrissen, als könnte dieses Leblose, sozusagen indem es nicht mehr augenscheinlich war, für den, der es ohne die Augen anschaute, vor Schmerzen zucken und diesen fremden Schmerz dem Schauenden mitteilen. (HO 197)

This intensification of the problem of narration is no coincidence. It points to the fact that narrative presupposes reconstruction in several respects. It reconstructs the act of linguistic naming, assembling and transforming reality by describing the path from perceiving to naming and from naming to imagining and thereby shows that all inventing is related back to the given, whether this is experienced or invented. At the same time, narration repeats the constitution of the authentic I, which can certainly be compared to the foundation of the narrating I, with the help of which it reflects and proves its identity. The interrelation between the I imagined in the telling and the authentic I thereby recreates a foundational constellation from the history of psychic ontogenesis. For from the very beginning the narrated as well as the authentic I emerges from the other; already in the opening scene it is said that the narrator sees his brother behind a pane of glass “und weil ich ihn kannte, erkannte ich ihn” (HO 12). This silent gazing at one another seems like perceiving one’s own reflection: “Er machte mir kein Zeichen. Auch ich machte ihm kein Zeichen. Gleichwohl wußten wir voneinander, daß einer den anderen sah. Ich schaute stumm auf den Kopf vor dem Feld, das diesem so nah war, wie wenn ich ihn durch ein Fernrohr anschaute” (HO 13). The narrated episode of the silent gazes depicts an imaginary ego-constitution as it belongs to the pre-linguistic state. It is from here that the aforementioned scene acquires its meaning, in which the narrator, a little later, when it is necessary to bring the news about the brother to the sister, no longer has the language that is directly connected with the reality check and would have to report on the loss of the imaginary fraternal mirror image (HO 17; Lacan Schrr I, 61–70). In contrast, the memory of the imaginary constitution of the ego and the violence of the fantasies released in the process are still preserved in the images of perception, which, since they only report on glances and only focus on a looking ego, but

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not on a human counterpart, cause the boundary between inside and outside to disappear. The viewer who looks out of the window and compares the landscape he sees with one that is narrated, geraten die Ebenen durch einen Schwindel in dem schon leeren Blick durcheinander: die weiße Ebene des Himmels schiebt sich durch die braune und gelbe Ebene des Feldes; die weiße Ebene des Feldes und die vergilbende gelbe Ebene des Himmels schiebt sich durch die weißen Ebenen der Dachpappenschichten, auf denen vor kurzem durch die Wärme eines Körpers (keiner Katze) der Schnee noch vergangen ist, und die weiße Ebene der Dachpappen, die weiße Ebene des Himmels und die weiße Ebene des Feldes, zerstochen nur von den Stichen der Pappeln, schieben sich scharf durch die weiße und leere Ebene der Augen und zerschneiden und zerstückeln die weiße und leere Ebene des Gehirns. (HO 14 f.)

Wherever there is no language, such inversions occur, perceived images are transformed into intrapsychic projections. At the same time, the narrative violence of the images that penetrate consciousness proves to be a metaphor for a narrative that does not need a narrator as an organizing instance. Without question, this blending of perceived images, which ultimately cuts and fragments “die weiße und leere Ebene des Gehirns” reiterates the imaginary constitution of the self based on the law of a vexation. It is worth noting that this view through the window, which cites a constellation of Romantic painting, undergoes a psychologizing culmination that Heinrich von Kleist also describes when viewing Caspar David Friedrich’s Mönch am Meer. As if his eyelids had been cut away, the construction lines of the picture penetrate the eye of this viewer and determine his unconscious perception as contours of the sublime and the monstrous (Kleist 1961, vol. 2, 327 f.). Handke’s text also provides a parallel to this psychological constellation in Kleist. From the imagination of a railway station, which springs from the narrator’s perceptions, arises the fantasy of a man (HO 80 ff.) who later walks through the village flooded by boiling water as the “Mann mit dem Seesack” (HO 131, 133), and who represents one of the many fantastic familial images that relate to the brothers of Handke’s mother. Here, too, a figure is described whose eyes are defenselessly exposed to the encroaching images. The eyes of the man are gleichfalls gesotten und rund und starr aus den Höhlen gestiegen. […] Die verbrühten Augen sind auch hinter den Blicken schutzlos geworden: die Bilder, die das Gedächtnis hinter der Netzhaut als Schutzwall erzeugt hat, sind von den Flammen zu einer Blendung zerschmolzen; während der Wanderer geht, fällt ungehindert das Feuer in sein Gehirn. (HO 132 f.)

The motif of the glare links the brotherly image and the narrator. The fantasy images that the narrator perceives and communicates are in turn imaginary; they too are based on a dissolution of the boundary between inside and outside. Thus, reality is first and foremost constituted in language and in narration. Only those who are blind can see and tell, only they depict reality without presupposition. Only when the brother is fantasized as blinded can the narrator project his phantasms onto him and at the same time see himself. Thus the double blinding of brother and narrator is an image of a relationship between the two that is fantasized in the telling alone,

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without the characters gaining contour. Narrative achieves its binding character only where it mirrors presuppositionless images in one another; therefore, in order to be considered true and to have an effect, it must erase the contingency of a particular subject perspective and describe perceptions that are not filtered through a particular memory. Because narrative invents a narrator who does not see what he reports, and therefore, as the novel’s paradoxical formulation would have it, can see “was ersehen will” (HO 244), it endows perspective. This is indicated by the sentence “Niemand kann ihn von draußen sehen, weil er blind ist; wenn ein Geblendeter vor dem Spiegel steht, so steht niemand vor dem Spiegel” (HO 244). It is precisely by placing so little emphasis on a clearly drawn identity of the narrator that the text of Die Hornissen can provide a grounding of identity in narrative. What the blind man remembers is more than he can directly experience, is both experienced and narrated, the result of primary and secondary socialization. At the same time, the power of the former proves to be a formative pattern that shapes all stages of culturalization. It becomes clear that all perceiving and wanting to know has as its prerequisite the view of oneself. The first imaginary constitution of the ego in the window view outside at the brother’s reflection corresponds to the view of a possible observer from outside into the blind man’s room. Das Fenster seines Zimmers spiegelt von außen, was außen ist; wer hineinschauen (hereinschauen) will, muß, indem er nah an die Scheibe tritt, durch sein eigenes Gesicht hindurchschaun, damit er den Blinden drin sehen kann. Er darf dabei nicht die offene Kalkgrube unter dem Fenster vergessen. […] Zum andern ist der Unsichtbare nicht blind; was er sehen will, das sieht er; wenn er will, hat er ein zweites Gesicht, aus dem ihm auch das fernab Liegende ersichtlich wird. (HO 244)

The fact that the view of oneself is symmetrical with the view of the other, and that all views from the outside in and from the inside out lead through one’s own reflection and are shaped by it, is also confirmed here. It is as an unconscious defense of this realization that Handke first treats the question of the constitution of the ego, which determines his text, as a theme of narration, and that he portrays narration itself as a merely temporary balance between the real and the merely imagined. The fantasies that are possible in narrative and that make the brother walk across the snowfield are destroyed by speech, just as all symbiotic imaginary relationships break down in the sign of speech. Everyone who is invoked sinks in and loses their balance: “Unter der Eisschicht ist der Schnee aus dichtem Staub” (HO 247). The ambivalence that appears in the narrative, in that it portrays the identity of the character as only temporarily established by the narrative, allows the text to go beyond a mere reflection on language. Precisely through it, he points to the life-­ historically significant interplay of authentic memory and aesthetic imagination. He describes the emergence of narration from an autobiographically centred linking of what is remembered, experienced and read. Finally, in addition to the destructive power of others’ speeches, the novel Die Hornissen also reveals the instances of familial socialization, all of which are legitimized through narration and speech. In the section “Das Gesicht des Vaters” not

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only does the narrator’s telling order itself, the father himself proves to be a narrator (HO 87), just as the sister becomes an instance by telling of the mother’s death (HO 112–114). It is this interweaving that matters. The localization of narration in the realm of the familial not only binds the narrated images to the “Grenze der Erfahrung” (HO 84), it also proves that the power of the unconscious as well as the imaginary is both a precondition and a pattern of aesthetic imagination.

2.2  Der Hausierer (1967) Already its formal structure reveals the representational intention of Der Hausierer (The Peddler) Handke explained its construction law in the programmatic essay Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms (I Am a Inhabitant of the Ivory Tower). There he emphasizes that he wants to quote the narrative template of the detective novel in this text. For this reason, each chapter begins with an italicized preface that summarizes and describes various set pieces of crime plots and also provides interpretive reading aids for reading crime novels that are oriented toward cinematic presentation strategies: Die erste Person, die auftritt, wird nur flüchtig beschrieben, aber nicht mit dem Namen genannt. Wird sie von hinten beschrieben, so geht die Beschreibung in der Regel vom künftigen Mörder aus und die von hinten beschriebene Person ist der künftige Tote. Ein von vorn Beschriebener kann sowohl künftiger Toter als auch künftiger Mörder als auch Zeuge sein. […] Wird von einer Person aus beschrieben, die nicht zu einer Gesellschaft gehört, aber sich in einer solchen Lage zur Gesellschaft befindet, daß auch jeder aus der Gesellschaft später die Person beschreiben könnte, so ist sie der künftige Zeuge. Auch eine Person, die zwar der sichtbaren Form nach zur Gesellschaft gehört, in Wahrheit aber nur als Fremder hineingeraten ist, ist der künftige Zeuge. (H 18 f.)

For all that, the “satzweise Zusammenstellung der wahren Geschichte” (H 40) remains a catalogue of possible sentences; at no point does it become a coherent text. The patterns of content and structure are generally followed by individual sentences in normal print, which can be assigned to possible elaborations of these preceding set pieces. Thus, even the external form of the presentation redeems Handke’s intention to show new possibilities in the separation of narrative text and reflection of the descriptive pattern in order “zu lesen, zu spielen, zu überlegen: zu leben” (Mixner 1977, 38). The communication of “satzreflexionen” and “satzreflexe” to which the author refers in a self-interpretation, simultaneously attempts to convey leitmotivically deployed emotional states from Die Hornissen, “Angst”, “Schrecken” and “Schmerz” as experiences without attributing them to a particular subject (Mixner 1977, 39). In this way, the text follows a double coding, as it already characterizes the novel Die Hornissen. The “Spiegelung von Bewußtseinsräumen” thus established, which evokes fear and phobias (Lotz 1097; ÜD 46; Mixner 1977, 39 f.), becomes, as there, the starting point of a critical and a productive capacity at the

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same time. Writing itself points to the compulsive order of the prevailing modes of writing, which everyone who wants to write anew must evade. Wie alle andern Geschichten beginnt auch die Mordgeschichte mit den bestimmenden Artikeln. Im Gegensatz aber zu den andern Geschichten spielt sie mit den nun bestimmten Dingen und Personen; denn sie bestimmt ihre Gegenstände so, daß deren Verhältnis zueinander unbekannt und rätselhaft bleiben muß. Die Mordgeschichte verschweigt die wahre Beziehung der Gegenstände zueinander. Sie besteht in einem Spiel mit möglichen Beziehungen der Gegenstände zueinander. Sie besteht in einem Versteckspiel der Sätze. […] Ihr Standpunkt der Beschreibung ist der eines Fremden. (H 7)

Because the novel shatters common narrative schemes and playfully reassembles them, it also challenges the reader to tell his or her own story. The emergence of narrative is simulated through the use of narrative. Moreover, narrative here also has an autobiographical inscription. As in Die Hornissen, the leitmotifs of the text prove to be “aufgehobene Erinnerungen”; they show as a consistent writing motivation Handke’s attempt to cite horror in order to be able to avert it (Nägele/Voris 1978, 34). A second look at the text, however, reveals that its supposedly clear structural division into two areas of different narration is not constant, but belongs to a confusing game with narrative patterns. In the italicized part of the chapter prefaces are sometimes irritating sentences. The accuracy of their definitions is at odds with the uncertainty they evoke, for no one knows the “andere Geschichte” of which the detective story is the continuation. In part, the sentences of the preface take the form of language games that unfold dialectical figures of thought whose proximity to Kafka is unmistakable: “Durch den Mord wurde die Ordnung zum Teil einer Geschichte der Unordnung” (H 39). At the same time, model sentences, analytical statements, and descriptions of authentic texts are juxtaposed without transition. The subsequent sections are constructed in a similarly confusing manner. There, descriptive sentences are juxtaposed with evaluative ones, entire textual set pieces are juxtaposed with quotations that undoubtedly come from real detective novels, and nonsense sentences: “Niemand spielte mit Knallfröschen” (H 37). Moreover, the narrative section is repeatedly interspersed with passages in italics that refer to the prefaces (H 34, 35 f., 46). The seemingly random game is structured by recurring images and words. Through them, the reader is ever again tempted to follow a trail, as he undertakes in the ordinary reading of detective novels. The quotation from Chandler that precedes the text, “Es gibt nichts, was leerer aussieht als ein leeres Schwimmbecken,” and the account of unsuspicious details at the end of the section “Die Entlarvung” lay this out clearly (H 109). The different areas of language are cited by the Hausierer, who takes the role of a spectator in the novel. Even as an uninvolved observer, however, he presents more than the objectified consciousness of the narrator (Scharang ÜH 50); he points to the procedure and performance of narration itself and underscores the gesture of demonstration that also links the theme of language with that of identity in this text (Bartmann 1984, 6). The novel’s exemplariness points not only to the internal rules of language, but beyond the text to the powerlessness of the subject in the face of the power of antecedent speeches and the order of the “literarischen

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Diskurse” (Bartmann 1984, 33). It is already clear here that demonstration in Handke not only leads to a linguistic and formal deconstruction of given modes of writing and guiding ideas, but already prepares the turn to a “construction” in which that which precedes language and speeches appears itself. However, Handke’s early texts do not arrive at a text-immanent construction of either the ego or the self. Rather, the ego founded in the narrative remains a ‘metafiction’, a ‘shifter’, not a fixed quantity, but a reference variable that changes with the contexts in which it is inserted. Sometimes the narrated I even points to an ‘ordo inversus’, a “Verkehrung des Subjekts der Reflexion zum Objekt der Reflexion eines Anderen” (Bartmann 1984, 53). The I “ist nur eine Puppe, die der Autor in rapidem Wechsel unablässig mit neuen Kleidern behängt” (Scharang ÜH 40). Without having the concept of it, the text thus points to an autoanalytical insight that its author formulates later, in Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World). There he deals with the fact that he had to transform the “vielen gestaltlosen Verpuppungen” inside him “in etwas wesentlich anderes” and that writing was nothing other than “eine Erweckung der gestaltlos verpuppten abertausend Erlebnisse zu völlig neuen Gestalten”, which through feeling “immer noch eine Verbindung mit den ursprünglichen Erlebnissen behielten” (GW 31). Thus, in the literary field, this Journal sketches a relationship between the images of the imagination and the figures of texts, as developed by psychoanalysis as a link between the self and the world of objects, and called intermediary objects or transitional objects, which have crucial importance for the formation of the self (Lacan Schrr I, 61–70). And here, too, the centering of a structural constellation through reactions anchored in the unconscious unfolds a specifically aesthetic dimension. The lability of the depicted subject, whose outline is as little clear in the novel Der Hausierer as the contour of the protagonist in Die Hornissen, requires as a counterforce a “‘phenomenological’ mode of writing” (Bartmann 1984, 21), whose significance only unfolds in Handke’s later texts. Apart from this, it is an achievement of Der Hausierer, as already of Die Hornissen, that precisely the rudimentary and fragmentary keeps an interest in reading. Without doubt, the text, which shatters the stringency of the detective novel, generates a search for clues on the part of the reader; it is precisely the pointillist sketch that challenges the search for connections. At the same time, the order of the crime schema and the narrated structural dichotomy of order and disorder also point to the role of language as an element of psychogenesis and socialization: it is an ordering element in the chaos of random impressions and at the same time a medium of domination; it both orients and conditions. The text of Der Hausierer is not only overall about the power of foreign speeches and the methods of writing that copy them. It simultaneously makes us aware of the process of reading. The criminal schema becomes a paradigm of literature in general, also because it evokes imaginative recognition; it is precisely the borderline between text and commentary, marked at the edge, that points to the fundamental entanglement of “Innenwelt” and “Außenwelt” on which every effect of texts is based. Thus the set pieces of textual and linguistic elements do not merely mark points of rupture; rather, they challenge further fantasizing and productive reading.

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The narrative method of decipherment and the reader’s reactions evoked by the narrative order are centered by the faculty of imagination to which all narrative and reading is subject. In this respect, Der Hausierer draws out a line already sketched in. However, the imagination also aims at a foundation of contexts, which in turn produce fixed interpretative and writing schemes. But the Hausierer’s text resists this consolidation at every point. It binds the imagination to a play of aleatory uses of words that resembles a presuppositionless game. In this respect, the novel confirms the fundamental strangeness of literature vis-à-vis the merely rational and discursive, on which the two essays Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms and Die Literatur ist romantisch insist so vehemently. The link between analysis and fantasy, between deconstruction and motivation, which the text establishes in this way, however, proves to be inverse. In this respect, the novel is indeed related to the theme of Antonioni’s film Blow up, which it precedes in time (Scharang ÜH 48). The approach to detail and its infinite enlargement isolates it from the overall context, from the whole picture, and designs a new context that cannot be found in the original picture. The same applies to writing: infinite enlargement only succeeds with decreasing depth of field; what one thinks one sees more precisely is already concealed under a raster, which blurs the mere contours and requires imagination in order to allow an image to emerge. Thus, the narrative style of Der Hausierer proves demanding in several respects. Not only does it require a reader capable of finishing the book, but it demands a recipient who can relate the set pieces the text offers back to other texts. The story that uses the scheme of detective stories requires the savvy connoisseur of detective stories; the author’s recounted memories of detective stories target the literary memory of an ideal reader. Unlike Die Hornissen, the Hausierer’s text needs the communicative act of reception; it is already designed with this in mind, although it purports to destroy the preconditions of conventional literary communication between author and reader. The erasure of the meaning of the narrator-subject needs the interpretive subjectivity. This second novel, which also belongs to Handke’s early phase of linguistic reflection, is thus inscribed with a contradiction that characterizes Handke’s first texts and plays as a whole: they attempt to distance themselves from literary traditions and at the same time quote them. This becomes particularly clear when one turns to the so-called “Sprechstücke” (Spoken Pieces), above all Kaspar and Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience).

2.3

Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1969)

In a superficial sense, the text of Die Angst des Tormanns (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) ties in with the language problem raised two years earlier in Kaspar. In a letter to the editors of “Text und Kritik”, who provided a preprint of Die Angst des Tormanns, the author states:

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35

[…] das Prinzip war, zu zeigen, wie sich jemandem die Gegenstände, die er wahrnimmt, in Folge eines Ereignisses (eines Mordes) immer mehr versprachlichen und, indem die Bilder versprachlicht werden, auch zu Geboten und Verboten werden. […] Der Schizophrene nimmt also die Gegenstände als Anspielung auf sich, als ›Wortspiele‹ wahr, metaphorisch. Das ist das Prinzip der Erzählung, nur daß eben dieses Verfahren nicht auf einen Schizophrenen angewendet wird (sofern es überhaupt Schizophrene gibt), sondern auf einen ›normalen‹ Helden, einen Fußballtormann. Dieser Vorgang, Gegenstände als Normen zu sehen, soll eben nicht als krankhaft verharmlost, sondern als lebensüblich vorgestellt werden. (TK1 3)

In contrast to his first two novels, Handke’s rendering of Bloch’s story approaches conventional forms of narrative (Nägele/Voris 1978, 45) in that he creates a clearly delineated character and maintains a closed narrative perspective (Mixner 1977, 125). Moreover, the style of this third person narrative seems strikingly detached. Thereis a reason that Handke emphasizes that he wanted to take up the style of Sallust’s historiography: “Ich hatte mir […] vorgenommen, einen Schreibstil zu verwenden, wie ihn Sallust für seine Geschichtsschreibung verwendet hat, einen Geschichtsschreiberstil auf einen einzelnen Menschen angewandt. Die Sätze, die entstanden sind, wirken zwar ganz künstlich und ganz grammatikalisch, erzählen aber dennoch eine Geschichte” (Mixner 1977, 125; Bloch/Schneller 1971, 174). In this way, the narrative makes it clear that the murder reported in the plot is already the result of a particular reaction to reality. This particular processing of perceptions gives the character Bloch his distinctive psychological profile. This is evident from the very beginning of the text. On the one hand, many of the protagonist’s actions are explicable in the context of the crime schema; on the other hand, Bloch constantly belies the expectations built up by this narrative schema (Pütz 1982, 32). The reaction of Bloch, who in a speechless scene, from a gesture of his foreman, believes to realize that he is dismissed, and who finally, almost without transition, goes from lover to murderer, does show, to a superficial degree, the antecedents, conditions and consequences of a murder. But as the plot unfolds, the protagonist behaves only conditionally in a manner appropriate to the situation after his crime. Although he flees to a southern border town in the country, he makes little effort to evade the investigation; rather, he apathetically follows the attempts to track him down and reads with interest how the police investigation approaches him. It is not least from here that it becomes clear that in this text, too, two narrative levels overlap. Here the first, the criminal plot, breaks off completely before the end, when it has fulfilled its function as a form of demonstration (Pütz 1982, 42). The second narrative level deals with Josef Bloch’s psychogram and with his reactions to linguistic and non-linguistic signs, with the particular form of his perception of reality. The main character’s behaviour after the crime unfolds the defining moments of a psychic prehistory of the murder. In some respects, Bloch’s perceptions and reactions can be related to the clinical picture of schizophrenia, or at least they can be attributed to a psychopathology that belongs to the prehistory of schizophrenia. Not without reason, therefore, has Handke’s fascination with Conrad’s book on

36

2  Literary Self-Assertion and Experimentation with Form: The Narrative Beginnings

schizophrenia been emphasized and the reflection of this reading sought in the Tormann text (Mixner 1977, 124, 126). As clear as it is that Handke did not intend to provide a psychopathological case study, on the other hand, it is clear that Bloch’s actions and behavior can be described in the schema of psychopathography. At the same time, they can be related to a theory of perception and signs that underlies the conscious and unconscious actions of the character. The fact that the psychopathographic level of representation is only a pattern of an overarching sign-theoretical statement is supported by the fact that the narrator himself changes in the course of the narrative. Into the account of Bloch’s perceptions he eventually inserts a chain of hieroglyphics, a pictorial language. What Bloch sees is not narrated by the narrator, but merely depicted, with recourse to pictograms (T 105). He himself is subject to the effect of gestures, signs, and perceptions as they determine Bloch’s psychic response. This theory of perception and description reproduced in the narrative is demonstrated by the example of the main character and his originally criminally motivated flight from the police investigation. Even the murder that Bloch commits is obviously triggered by the fact that the cashier, whose wordless gestures originally attract the protagonist (T 7), increasingly attempts to penetrate his world of experience and imagination by speaking and asking questions (Mixner 1977, 134 f.). Nach einiger Zeit merkte Bloch, daß sie von Dingen, von denen er ihr gerade erst erzählt hatte, schon wie von ihren eigenen Dingen redete, während er dagegen, wenn er etwas erwähnte, von dem sie gerade gesprochen hatte, sie entweder immer nur vorsichtig zitierte oder aber, sobald er mit eigenen Worten davon sprach, jedesmal ein befremdendes und distanzierendes ‚Dieser’ oder ‚Diese’ davor setzte, als fürchte er, ihre Angelegenheiten zu den seinen zu machen. […] Einige Male freilich, zwischendurch, wurde ihm kurz das Gespräch so selbstverständlich wie ihr: er fragte sie, und sie antwortete; sie fragte, und er gab eine selbstverständliche Antwort. […] Aber dann störte ihn alles immer mehr. Er wollte ihr antworten, brach aber ab, weil er das, was er vorhatte zu sagen, als bekannt annahm. (T 20 f.)

The psychological development and intensification of the language problem using the example of the character of Josef Bloch sets the Tormann text apart from the preceding novels. For it does not simply point to the unconscious inscription of all linguistic acts, but develops a clear psychogram that can explain the protagonists’ behavior. Whereas in Die Hornissen and Der Hausierer language appears primarily as a force of order whose violence is confirmed in the field of the literary text and the fantasies mobilized by it, Kaspar already deals in a characteristic turn with language as a factor of socialization. Language in Kaspar is first and foremost that which is attributed, a result of culturalisation, which always represents a submission to the power of authority. In Die Angst des Tormanns, on the other hand, the poetological question of the relationship between literary language and reality and the ideology-critical question of the relationship between language and social reality recede. In their place is a general treatment of the connections between language content and experience on

2.3  Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1969)

37

the one hand, and language and signs on the other. In a fundamental sense, the linguistic question of the relation between ‘signifiant’ and ‘signifié’ is thus presented. With this text at the latest, it becomes clear that Handke’s writing, to the extent that it breaks away from the literary tradition, commits itself to extra-literary axioms and theories. It therefore makes sense to read these early texts also in terms of the linguistic theories of Saussure, Wittgenstein and Whorf, even if this does not fully capture their particular significance. The question of the relationship between sign and signified is initially developed only negatively in Die Angst des Tormanns. Bloch’s behaviour is not only conditioned by the power of the symbolic order of language, which becomes an obsession for the protagonist. His story also shows what happens when the individual tries to evade the binding signification of the symbolic order. Thus, in the case of Josef Bloch, sign theory and pathogram come to coincide. His behaviour appears as regression, his relations to his environment regress to the status of the imaginary. This becomes apparent in several respects. In general, it can be seen that Bloch’s reactions to others and his surroundings seem to follow a logic of their own; his relationship mania certainly bears pathological traits, for it produces unusual connections. Überhaupt kam alles ihm ähnlich vor; alle Gegenstände erinnerten ihn aneinander. Was war mit dem wiederholten Vorkommen des Blitzableiters gemeint? Was sollte er an dem Blitzableiter ablesen? ‚Blitzableiter’? Das war wohl wieder ein Wortspiel? Hieß es, dass ihm nichts passieren konnte? (T 98)

This reveals that the character’s perceptions and the narrator’s perspective are symmetrical in places. The narrative mode of hard and transitionless joins (Heintz 1970, 115) reflects the fact that Bloch’s perception is structurally characterized by a non-­ assignment of contexts and an assignment of what does not belong together (Rossbacher 1975, 97), which can be compared to the mode of a child’s perception of reality. But where Bloch deviates from this pattern of perception, it becomes apparent that he is fixated on linking and joining observed and reported contexts. What he himself constantly experiences, he recognizes when reading the newspaper as a break in the description of reality (Heintz 1970, 115). Dann, plötzlich, fand er sich dabei, wie er las. Ein Augenzeuge berichtete über einen Mord an einem Zuhälter, den man aus kurzer Entfernung ins Auge geschossen hatte. ‚Hinten aus seinem Kopf flog eine Fledermaus heraus und klatschte gegen die Tapete. Mein Herz übersprang einen Schlag.’ Als, ohne daß ein Absatz gemacht wurde, die Sätze unvermittelt von etwas ganz anderem, von einer andern Person, handelten, schrak er auf. ‚Da hätte man doch einen Absatz machen müssen!’ dachte Bloch, der nach dem kurzen Aufschrecken wütend geworden war. (T 17 f.)

Increasingly, it becomes clear that Bloch is apparently developing his own register for the interpretation of reality. While the resulting codings of perception can also prove violent - the story of the dead pupil and the account of the gypsy bear this out (Nägele/Voris 1978, 47) - what follows for Bloch from this is above all a thorough disorientation that can be described as a psychopathographic phenomenon (Heintz

38

2  Literary Self-Assertion and Experimentation with Form: The Narrative Beginnings

1970, 116). Bloch’s coded perception breaks down all observations into individual observations. Die Kellnerin ging hinter die Theke. Bloch legte die Hände auf den Tisch. Die Kellnerin bückte sich und öffnete die Flasche. Bloch schob den Aschenbecher weg. Die Kellnerin nahm im Vorbeigehen von einem anderen Tisch einen Bierdeckel. Bloch rückte mit dem Stuhl zurück. Die Kellnerin nahm das Glas von der Flasche, auf die sie es gestülpt hatte, legte den Bierdeckel auf den Tisch, stellte das Glas auf den Deckel, kippte die Flasche in das Glas, stellte die Flasche auf den Tisch und ging weg. Es fing schon wieder an! Bloch wußte nicht mehr, was er tun sollte. (T 33)

Similarly, in seeing and observing, Bloch loses sight of contexts that usually enter into perceptions. Instead of a dog, he observes a man towards whom this dog runs (T 86 f.). The fact that everything becomes an “Indiz” to him (Scharang ÜH 67) has as a prerequisite that his perspective on reality narrows and finally the perceptions begin to take on a life of their own for him. Such perspectival narrowing of the gaze becomes clear when Bloch visits a café (T 75). Im Café sah er links und rechts Ausschnitte der Wände, […]. Er erblickte einen anderen Ausschnitt mit der Musikbox, durch die langsam ein Lichtpunkt wanderte, der dann bei der gewählten Nummer stehenblieb, […]; dann wieder einen anderen Ausschnitt mit dem Wirt hinter der Theke, der für die Kellnerin, die danebenstand, eine Flasche öffnete, […]. Innerhalb der Ausschnitte sah er die Einzelheiten aufdringlich deutlich: als ob die Teile, die er sah, für das Ganze standen. Wieder kamen ihm die Einzelheiten wie Namensschilder vor. ‚Leuchtschriften’, dachte er. (T 75 f.)

Thus an asymmetrical mode of perception emerges from perspective vision. It leads, as in Die Hornissen and Der Hausierer, again to an ‘ordo inversus’; it is not the viewing subject who orders his perceptions, but the images impose themselves on him as an order that dominates the viewer. As Bloch walks cross-country to the aisle of no-man’s land on the border, weare told, ‘Die Landschaft, obwohl sie eben war, wölbte sich so nah an ihn heran, daß sie ihn zu verdrängen schien’ (T 43; Heintz 1970, 109). And on another walk into nature, of all things, the perceived images take on a life of their own, forming a system of signs that seems independent of consciousness. Buchstäblich war alles, was er sah, auffällig. Die Bilder kamen einem nicht natürlich vor, sondern so, als seien sie extra für einen gemacht worden. Sie dienten zu etwas. Wenn man sie ansah, sprangen sie einem buchstäblich in die Augen. ‚Wie Rufzeichen’, dachte Bloch. Wie Befehle! Wenn er die Augen zumachte und nach einiger Zeit wieder hinschaute, kam einem buchstäblich alles verändert vor. Die Ausschnitte, die man sah, schienen an den Rändern zu flimmern und zu zittern. (T 87)

This independence of the images, which corresponds to a detachment of the signs from the signified (Heintz 1970, 116) and which increasingly begins to determine Bloch’s perception and language, leads to a pervasive feeling of dissociation, but also to an alienation of Bloch from the others. The strangeness he already feels at the beginning of the plot towards an acquaintance he meets by chance (T 15; Heintz

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39

1970, 112) turns into self-alienation in the killing scene (Heintz 1970, 110). This turnover also follows a regressive pattern, for Bloch, the perpetrator, feels fear. This is the basis of his disturbedness, which is experienced as existential; because in this situation every sensual perception appears contradictory, the ego finally feels an almost creaturely fear (Scharang ÜH 68). Later, it is confirmed that this dissociation is perceived as a reversal of inside and outside, which eliminates the boundary between ego and outside world, the ego and the others. This gives rise to an uncontrollable bodily sensation that seems to determine consciousness and thought. Er nahm sich selber wahr, als sei er plötzlich ausgeartet. Er traf nicht mehr zu; war, mochte er auch noch so still liegen, ein einziges Getue und Gewürge; so überdeutlich und grell lag er da, daß er auf kein einziges Bild ausweichen konnte, mit dem er vergleichbar wäre. Er war, wie er da war, etwas Geiles, Obszönes, Unangebrachtes, durch und durch Anstoßerregendes; verscharren! dachte Bloch, verbieten, entfernen! Er glaubte sich selber unangenehm zu betasten, merkte dann aber, daß nur sein Bewußtsein von sich so heftig war, daß er es als Tastsinn auf der ganzen Körperoberfläche spürte; als ob das Bewußtsein, als ob die Gedanken handgreiflich, ausfällig, tätlich gegen ihn selber geworden seien. (T 70 f.)

Even before this, Bloch removes himself from his surroundings in a state of drunkenness. “Alle Gegenstände schienen außer seiner Reichweite zu sein. Er war so entfernt von den Vorgängen, dass er selber in dem, was er sah oder hörte, gar nicht mehr vorkam” (T 69). Bloch’s dissociation is also reflected at the level of grammar. The cutting of the relationship between sign and signified leads to a dominance of the chains of signifiers, which forces Bloch to assign each of his own observations to a system of description that he increasingly experiences as alien. This is evidenced by his unconscious compulsion to constantly make comparisons and to arrange all observations under the rubric of “as if” (TK4 46); this is also indicated by his play with meanings and the delusion of justification and relation that he has from the beginning, and which he finally wants to discard at least at the end of the text, “diese ‘so daß’, ‘weil’ und ‘damit’ waren wie Vorschriften; er beschloß, sie zu vermeiden” (T 109). This alienation, which Bloch finally wants to escape, is already evident beforehand in the example of the tax official, who no longer perceives and classifies objects, but solely their price, their commodity value (Mixner 1977, 136; T 53). Yet Bloch’s story is neither merely the pathogram of a disturbed perception, nor is it solely a narrated theory of perception. Its secret inscription, which relates it directly back to the preceding narrative texts and at the same time differentiates their problematics, shows more than the limiting and destructive power of the linguization of reality. Just as the alienation in the pathogram distorts and exaggerates the ‘normal’ linguization of the world and its effects on the ability to perceive and experience, so on the other hand it makes clear that all perceptions follow certain patterns, which Roland Barthes has determined as ‘Mythen des Alltags’ (Scharang ÜH 75 ff.). Moreover, it becomes clear that the distortions that arise from such patterns of perception not only have a distorting power, but sometimes also a

40

2  Literary Self-Assertion and Experimentation with Form: The Narrative Beginnings

productive one. These secondary myths of everyday life have always been based on a structuring of experience by the unconscious. Although the Tormann’s text adheres to a certain subject perspective, it shows that an end to asymmetrical perception is possible only when the subject perspective loses its significance. The power of images unfolds only if they are not obstructed from the outset by psychogenetically based phantasms or corrected by consciousness. Thus Bloch’s perceptions can be compared to those portrayed in Die Hornissen and Der Hausierer. In the highlighted scene, of all places, in which Bloch discovers the dead pupil, it is said, in obvious reference back to these texts, “sein ganzes Bewußtsein schien ein blinder Fleck zu sein” (T 62). And here, too, a perception significant for Bloch is characterized by the fact that he does not even offer physical resistance to the onrushing images. For this, too, there is a visual perception that points back to Die Hornissen: Die kleinen Vorgänge auf der Wasseroberfläche kamen einem so wichtig vor, daß man, wenn sie sich wiederholten, gleichzeitig ihnen dabei zuschaute und sich schon an sie erinnerte. Und die Blätter bewegten sich so langsam auf dem Wasser, daß man ohne Wimpernzucken zuschauen wollte, bis die Augen brannten, aus Angst, man könnte mit dem Wimpernzucken die Bewegung der Wimpern vielleicht mit der Bewegung der Blätter verwechseln. (T 62)

This narrated form of perception proves to be a pattern for Bloch’s further development. His dissociation dissolves to the extent that perceptions and perceptual signs coincide. It is noteworthy that this symmetry is developed at a point in the text where narrator and character perspectives come to coincide. This passage is at once a narrative theory of signs. The perceptions of Bloch looking out of the window are a looking and a reading at the same time, they can therefore be recorded in a hieroglyphic pictorial script (T 105); the mode of representation of the text and the theory of signs that justifies it fall into one. In Wittgenstein’s Tractatus, too, the hieroglyph is a language “without losing the essence of the image” (WTL 35/4.016). This fact is captured by the narrator’s telling, which reproduces Bloch’s reactive perception. Now the previous attempts at reading, which Bloch always undertook and which he only wanted to succeed in when going to the cinema and reading the newspaper, are redeemed. Comparable to the evidence of the pictorial writing is only the narrow sign area of the soccer field, which determines the perceptions and reactions of the goalkeeper. These, too, appear meaningless from the outside perspective, are not readily comprehensible to an observer who is only watching him and not the game. However, they become explicable and compelling by including their presuppositions and the surrounding context of meaning. Being a goalkeeper therefore still becomes for Bloch a concrete utopia of being with oneself, of a fixed order of signifiers and a clear assignment of signifiers and signifieds, while social life is precisely determined by an asymmetrical network of signifiers. The conclusion of Die Angst des Tormanns has very often been read as a model of successful communication, but it rather betrays the conditions and signature that govern modern subjectivity. The ego can only assert itself when it fits into a given

2.3  Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1969)

41

field of reference. All expressions of individuality that deviate from this are shattered by the social and cultural systems of inscription. In this respect, too, Josef Bloch has already internalized the result of Kaspar’s learning process. From this point of view, the conclusion of the story only repeats its contradictory structure. On the one hand, Handke wants to portray Bloch’s obsessive verbalization of reality as not pathological; on the other hand, a murder is needed to clarify Bloch’s further development (Scharang ÜH 77). Moreover, a contradiction appears in the content of the text. The held “penalty kick” could indicate that the scorer and the goalkeeper think analogously and, in the aporia of their different decision-­ making situations, rely equally on a passive solution, on shooting into the middle of the goal and on standing still. But here, too, an inversion occurs, for the same conclusions, which correspond to the conclusiveness of the prevailing signifying system, lead to different results. The goalkeeper does his job, the shooter fails. Thus, what appears to be an understanding is in fact a sign of a failure, an image of the fact that communication can only ever take place asymmetrically. This final image, which shows how different phantasms intersect within a logically developed model of communication, is given particular weight because it is placed in a passage of the text in which the narrative style fundamentally changes. At the end of the narrative, Bloch himself becomes the narrator (Dixon 1972, 38, 56). To the extent that he is able to develop and narrate the situation of the shooter and the goalkeeper theoretically, he communicates himself for the first time under the constraints of a particular system of expression. Identity is established, according to the dialectical figure of thought, through narration, but this is meaningful only under the norms of a system or a game. This constriction of theme, theory, and narrative not only makes it clear that the telling of a story and the drafting of a theory can become identical. It also shows that the order of literary discourse carries with it a moment of liberation. However, this is only mediated and punctual; here, too, it is necessary to walk over a thin layer of ice that can break in at any moment. For Bloch’s narrative theory of perception, behavior, and sign points to a fundamental aporia of narrative, which is itself a procedure of asymmetrical communication. In this still alone can the relationship between narrator and reader be grounded. It is undoubtedly one of the special achievements of this text that it allows the intensification of theory to flow into a procedure of theory-narrative that cancels out the abstractness of the early novels and frees them for narration again.

3

Experiment and Design: The Plays, Prose Works and Radio Plays Up to 1973

3.1  Publikumsbeschimpfung (1966) Bringing this play to the stage was difficult from the start. For contrary to what the title suggests, and in contrast to its prevailing performance practice, it is not solely a stage-effective “offense” but rather an essay on the laws of effect of the theatre and the expectations and reactions of an audience that has a “Mustervorstellung von der Welt des Theaters” (ST1 25) in mind. Consequently, the introductory sentence “Dieses Stück ist eine Vorrede” only points out that the play is meant to make aware of what is self-evident law of the theatre and what are the unacknowledged regulations of the theatre and culture business (ST1 19). The intended typification of these observations and descriptions leads to contradictory results in the course of the play. On the one hand, it classifies the laws of effect of the theatre, on the other hand it tries to destroy them. “Die Rampe ist keine Grenze” (ST1 22) is a sentence that on the one hand quotes the constellation of Aristotelian theatre, but on the other hand tries to abolish the boundary set there between spectator and stage and to eliminate any illusion. The phrase “Das ist kein Spiel” (ST1 20 f.) captures this state of affairs. It connects Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience) with the methodical approach of the early spoken plays, which as “Schauspiele ohne Bilder” are at the same time “Wortspiele” (ST1 21) that do not design or depict a plot. In a “Bemerkung” on his Sprechstücke, Handke states: Sie zeigen auf die Welt nicht in der Form von Bildern, sondern in der Form von Worten, und die Worte der Sprechstücke zeigen nicht auf die Welt als etwas außerhalb der Worte Liegendes, sondern auf die Welt in den Worten selber. […] Es kann in den Sprechstücken keine Handlung geben, weil jede Handlung auf der Bühne nur das Bild von einer anderen Handlung wäre: die Sprechstücke beschränken sich, indem sie ihrer naturgegebenen Form gehorchen, auf Worte und geben keine Bilder, auch nicht Bilder in der Form von Worten […] und keine natürlichen Äußerungen. (ST1 201)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_3

43

44

3  Experiment and Design: The Plays, Prose Works and Radio Plays Up to 1973

The play on words also determines the content and structure of the text Publikumsbeschimpfung, which has been regarded with good reason as the libretto for a performance rather than as a self-contained play (Durzak 1982, 92; ÜD 113). At the same time, the boundary between the only stage directions prefaced by the text, the actors’ speech text, and the self-commentaries interpolated into this text, fades in the latter (ST1 13–17). This is confirmed by the “Regeln für die Schauspieler” recorded before the text (ST1 13 f.). Paradoxically, Publikumsbeschimpfung comes closest to the methodological concept of spoken plays when it is read as a text. Only then does its playful character become evident, which develops situations and images from individual sentences that elude representability, and which unfold their peculiarity as a sequence of sentences, but not as a description of reality. The playfully and situationally staged sequences of sentences, the actors’ cascades of words, however, sometimes take on a life of their own. This goes so far that contradictory sentences are inserted into the text to describe one and the same situation: “Hier wird ihnen mitgespielt. Das ist ein Wortspiel” (ST1 21) – “Hier wird nicht gehandelt, hier werden sie behandelt. Das ist kein Wortspiel” (ST1 24). The characteristic feature of the supposedly contradictory sentences is that they follow a gesture of awareness. The traditional form of Aristotelian theatre is not only quoted and ironized (ST1 20), it is also repeatedly emphasized that conventional theatre plays “sense”, creates meanings, plays “time”, creates a played reality (ST1 38 f.). In ironic acceptance of the law of the unity of place, time and action, Publikumsbeschimpfung counters this with its own performance time alone, the speaking time of the actors, the staged presence of the audience and the communicative situation created by it. Therein lies at the same time the ambivalence of the concept of Publikumsbeschimpfung. For the first productions of the play in particular were so successful because they completely subordinated Handke’s anti-theatre to the law of theatrical effect; they not only performed a play about theatre, but were themselves theatre again in a conventional sense: a representation of situations, speeches and people. However, the audience’s enthusiasm for these performances also showed that the provocation against the theatre business had already been absorbed by it. The problem that this performance practice makes clear is of a fundamental nature. Every production of this play, if the provocation is already expected, must prepare the audience and critics for the expected event from the outset. It must become a performance and defuses the provocation by its performance. As a result, the actual offense of audience, which is the least of this play, becomes a mere gag that has forfeited its critical potential not only by balancing the insults in every direction, but already in principle and from the outset (ST1 44–47). Thus, in effect, a new theatre is founded out of the anti-theatre, which cannot really annul old traditions. The audience’s liberation from tradition remains absent because the play remains attached to that against which it rebels; the play against the dramatic means is at no point one without them, it nowhere fully eludes the presuppositions of the theatre (Pütz 1978, 4).

3.2  Sprechstücke (Spoken Pieces, 1969–1972)

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3.2  Sprechstücke (Spoken Pieces, 1969–1972) The remaining spoken plays, which were written in the years 1964–1971, consistently deal with only partial aspects of the problem areas that Publikumsbeschimpfung, Kaspar and finally the last play Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus (They are Dying Out) unfold as theatrical situations or as action. Throughout, they thematize the use of language and the role of speechless gestures within given communicative situations. Their innovative significance derives precisely from this reductive procedure. On the other hand, the self-imposed limits of this concept also become clear, because the spoken plays by definition refrain from conveying meanings. They do not treat language as a reality in itself that determines behaviour; rather, they limit themselves to presenting the peculiarity of linguistic utterances and making them conscious on stage; in this respect, the spoken plays also release a theatrical effect. They may only point “die Welt in den Worten selber”, but they are theatralisch insofern, als sie sich natürlicher Formen der Äußerung in der Wirklichkeit bedienen. Sie bedienen sich nur solcher Formen, die auch in der Wirklichkeit naturgemäß Äußerungen sein müssen, das heißt, sie bedienen sich der Sprachformen, die in der Wirklichkeit mündlich geäußert werden. Die Sprechstücke bedienen sich der natürlichen Äußerungsform der Beschimpfung, der Selbstbezichtigung, der Beichte, der Aussage, der Frage, der Rechtfertigung, der Ausrede, der Weissagung, der Hilferufe. (ST1 201)

With this claim, Weissagung (Divination), Selbstbezichtigung (Self-Accusation) and Hilferufe (Cries for Help) draw on the model developed in Publikumsbeschimpfung. But unlike these, they do not make us aware of the particular circumstances of the theatrical situation, performance practice and audience reactions, but of the role of language models. They are language plays in the strictest sense, and, like Weissagung, they have no other intention than to produce “einen größtmöglichen akustischen Reiz” (ST1 204); it is in this literal sense that Handke understands the words of the Russian symbolist Osip Mandelstam, which he prefaces his play with, “Kein Wort ist besser als das andre / die Erde dröhnt von Metaphern...” (ST1 51). According to Handke’s own interpretation, Weissagung is among the three Spoken Pieces das “rein formalistische” (ST1 204). The chain of tautologies it devises has no other aim than to introduce the procedure and the peculiarity of metaphor. However, this speech piece reveals a striking fracture. For the two sentences “Die Wirklichkeit wird Wirklichkeit werden” and “Die Wahrheit wird Wahrheit werden” (ST1 62) are not simple play sentences. Rather, these two apparent tautologies point to a difference between word and reality, from which the comparisons are first founded. They point to the protective and disguising function of language, which in Kaspar is inserted into a model of socialisation and becomes recognisable as a strategy of socialisation. In this way, they touch on a consideration that Handke put forward in his essay on Theater und Film: das Elend des Vergleichens (The Film and the Theatre: the Misery of Comparison): Es zeigt sich also, daß Vergleiche vor allem dazu dienen, den verglichenen Gegenstand mit einem Satz wegzureden: jede weitere Beschäftigung mit ihm erübrigt sich […]  – nichts

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3  Experiment and Design: The Plays, Prose Works and Radio Plays Up to 1973 mehr ist vergleichsunmöglich – nichts mehr bleibt außerhalb des Bewußtseins, nur weil es unverständlich, fremdartig, schwierig ist, gerade weil es unverständlich, fremdartig, schwierig ist, bleibt nichts anderes übrig, als zu vergleichen: das Vergleichen schützt vor der Beschäftigung mit dem Gegenstand. (E 66 f.)

Selbstbezichtigung is also “ein Stück ohne Fabel” (ST1 205); it is at the same time, as Handke elaborates, a story without an acting character. “Das ‚Ich’ der Selbstbezichtigung ist nicht das ‚Ich’ einer Erzählung, sondern nur das ‚Ich’ der Grammatik. Es ist kein persönliches Ich, sondern ein unpersönliches. Die Geschichte der Selbstbezichtigung zeigt nicht eine besondere Geschichte” (ST1 205). Through this grammatical reductionism, the play attempts to make clear that every individual utterance is changed by being subjected to the rules of grammar. The supposedly personal statement, put into the form of the Catholic confessional, actually says nothing about any particular person; it is the subject of the sentences alone that is to be presented on stage. Because the self-incrimination “nicht die eines bestimmten Wesens ist, geht sie bei jeder Aufführung neu vor sich, immer ist sie die Selbstbezichtigung derer, die gerade anwesend sind, wer diese auch als Einzelmenschen sein mögen. Das Stück ist kein mittelbares, vermitteltes, sondern unmittelbares Theater” (ST1 206). The claim to create an immediate impression on stage connects this play with Publikumsbeschimpfung, but it is incomparably easier to realize here, because neither the speech situation nor the speaker himself gain contour. Moreover, the problem of Kaspar is already foreshadowed. For Selbstbezichtigung is also the model description of a history of socialisation, but it does not thematise this only as a linguistic formation of the ego, as a taking up of the “gelernten Zeichen” (ST1 69). Rather, she shows that the linguistic adaptation of reality does not lead solely to the learning and internalization of social norms but can for its part preform and provoke norm violations. In a long enumeration, in which the speaking “I” admits to his transgressions, such violations are named; in the process, it turns out that they are consistently directed against prohibitions, commandments, and prevailing discourses of socialization. However, the significance of these sentences is leveled by the fact that they are of different scope. Some examples of this can be given. The sentence “Ich habe mit meiner Vernunft nicht die in das Weltall und in meine Natur gelegten Gesetze erkennen wollen. Ich bin schon in Bosheit empfangen worden. Ich bin schon in Bosheit gezeugt worden” (ST1 82 f.) is followed not much later by the confession “Ich bin bei Rotlicht über Kreuzungen gegangen. Ich bin auf Autobahnen gegangen. Ich bin auf dem Bahnkörper gegangen. Ich bin nicht auf dem Gehsteig gegangen” (ST1 86). But while in Kaspar the speaking protagonist cannot withstand the language of others and only knows how to assert himself through a willful destruction of the rehearsed and ruling discourses, the “I” of Selbstbezichtigung persists by declaring the game in which he is involved to be his own. The seemingly entrenched model of language turns out to be not only an attempt to play with the rules of language as with the dominant discourses. It is already, contrary to the original approach, a form of grammatical simulation of identity. It is first and foremost in speaking that the

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ego constitutes itself and lays claim to playfully mastering reality. “Ich bin ins Theater gegangen. Ich habe dieses Stück gehört. Ich habe dieses Stück gesprochen. Ich habe dieses Stück geschrieben” (ST1 88). In this way, this spoken play also already turns away from the purely formalistic design; within the framework of the language play, a reality that is at once imaginary and poetic is constituted out of the grammatical subject’s claim to disposal. In contrast, the play Hilferufe loses meaning through its exclusively experimental character. If his stage direction did not at the same time provide an interpretation, the audience would probably remain baffled: “die aufgabe der sprecher ist es, den weg über viele sätze und wörter zu dem gesuchten wort HILFE zu zeigen” (ST1 91). The sentences separated from one another by “Nein”, the first of which is taken from a papal encyclical, are eventually shortened in the course of the play to set pieces of news and formulaic reports, to then lead into a series of appeals, until finally “das wort HILFE in einem letzten ansturm gefunden ist: dann herrscht eitel freude und sonnenschein unter den sprechern” (ST1 91). It becomes apparent, however, that the stage direction, which could be misinterpreted as an existential interpretation of the play, is itself a language game that has no referential character whatsoever. The speakers

Handke had already presented the material for the play Das Mündel will Vormund sein (The Ward Wants To Be Warden), which premiered in 1969, in 1965  in Augenzeugenbericht (Eyewitness Report; BA 94 f.). There an eyewitness, who only after the deed has been done “indignantly puts a stop” to it, reports how a mentally challenged adolescent kills his guardian with a beet chopper. The distance from the event that characterizes the narrative style of the prose text, which describes the prehistory of a murder and the murder itself with pitiless accuracy, is achieved and repeated in the play through the speechlessness of the event. Its concentration on the gestural creates a chain of rituals in which the power of the guardian becomes clear without having to be spoken. Mostly scenes are performed in which the ward tries to imitate the actions of the guardian, but no doubt the ward also wants to take the initiative himself. Das Mündel: steht auf; steht da. Der Vormund läuft: das Mündel fängt zu gehen an. Der Vormund springt: das Mündel fängt … Der Vormund steigt auf einen Stuhl und steht jetzt auf dem Stuhl: das Mündel springt nicht, sondern bleibt stehen; steht. Der Vormund steigt auf den Tisch: das Mündel steigt auf den Stuhl. Der Vormund stellt sich den anderen Stuhl auf den Tisch und steigt auf den Stuhl auf dem Tisch: das Mündel, wie könnte es anders sein, steigt auf den Tisch.

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3  Experiment and Design: The Plays, Prose Works and Radio Plays Up to 1973 Der Vormund hängt sich an einen Strick in der Luft und hängt: das Mündel steigt auf den Stuhl auf dem Tisch. Der Vormund hängt still: wenig baumelnd, und das Mündel steht still hoch auf dem Stuhl, auch für sich. (ST2 23 f.)

Everything that happens is reported from the perspective of a spectator; the stage directions can be seen as a description of a play that has just been observed (Mixner 1977, 96). Some sentences already make this clear: “Wir sehen, daß das Mündel mit dem Rücken am Prospekt der Hauswand lehnt” (ST2 11); “Wir kennen die Geräusche” (ST2 26); “Wir erschrecken” (ST2 32), for example, the text says. Moreover, the form of the account itself has an alienating effect. Much of what it points to is subjective impression, not objectifiable form of performance. Thus one can read: “Das Mündel beißt in den Apfel, so, als ob niemand zuschauen würde. […] / Über dem ganzen Bild liegt etwas, was man, mit einem Bild, als tiefer Frieden bezeichnen könnte. […] /(Wenn wir zuschauen, werden Äpfel oft sehr affektiert gegessen.)” (ST2 11), or elsewhere: “Das Ansehen des Mündels durch den Vormund zieht sich hin” (ST2 13). In addition, some passages of the theatrical text are approximated in print to the forms of concrete poetry, appearing as a printed image what is to be created as a scenic impression on stage: K+M+B K+M+B K+M+B K+M+B . . . […] Sie sitzen, jeder für sich. „    „    „    „    „ „    „    „    „    „ „    „    „    „    „ „    „    „    „    „ (ST2 30f., 20; 28). Occasionally there are also echoes of the tautological puns of Weissagung: “Die Geräusche entstehen, die entstehen, wenn Wasser erhitzt wird” (ST2 28). But at the same time, this piece breaks the narrow circle of language and form games. With the passage “im Finstern beginnt jetzt eine neue Szene [...]” (ST2 14), a gradual involvement of the spectator prepares itself. Whereas until then the clear and precisely outlined stage sets and scenes are supposed to directly demonstrate what they mean, a scene in the dark stimulates the audience’s imagination through a breathing sound, but also through accompanying music (ST2 14 f.). Moreover, the

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situation presented on stage is compared to a film scene, which is supposed to make readers as well as spectators adjust to a murder story and finally imagine the murder of the guardian not presented on stage (ST2 36). In this way, this play uses a technique seemingly directed at the audience in Publikumsbeschimpfung to involve them in the play of the play. Their expectations are not treated as viewing habits that condition unbiased perception but appear as the basis of productive imagination. The play does not show a manipulation of the spectator by the theatre, but the grounding of the reality of the theatre by the spectator (cf. Mixner 1977, 100). Of the later spoken plays, Quodlibet is most likely to refer back both to the earlier language games and to this inclusion of the recipient in the theatrical event. This play, too, is not only a play with language, but at the same time a play with the listeners; it aims to make them aware of the fact that all acoustic perceptions of language are also already preformed by certain speech situations and discourses. The play shows “wie man im Theater sofort inhaltlich reagiert auf Formen” (Scharang ÜH 158; Mixner 1977, 100). Thus, at the same time, the role of the unconscious for the conscious perception of language becomes an issue. The emergence of metaphor, metonymy and comparison is not demonstrated but enacted. In this dramaturgical unfolding of meaning (Mixner 1977, 96), the “Figuren des Welttheaters” (ST2 41) speak partly arbitrary sentences, partly sentences “von denen die Zuschauer nur glauben, daß sie sie verstehen” (ST2 42). Corresponding to the staged productive misunderstanding of the spectators, which sets associations in motion, the actors communicate with each other, “sie gebrauchen ein falsches Wort für das richtige in der Annahme, daß sie einander schon richtig verstehen” (ST2 49). Jacques Lacan’s assumption that the unconscious is structured like a language can explain this form of communication; later, the notes on Ritt über den Bodensee (Ride across Lake Constance) will confirm that Handke is close to these considerations (Nägele/Voris 1978, 88). It is in this context that the instructions for “Aufführung von ‘Quodlibet’” acquire their significance. They are not only, like the stage directions of the other spoken pieces, also an interpretation of the performer, but at the same time they underline the staged character of the piece, which relates forms of speech and stage situations to each other at every point: Die Redefiguren, welche die Figuren bilden, bestimmen die Bewegungsfiguren, nicht umgekehrt. Es sollte also nicht von vornherein ein Ornament oder Arrangement auskalkuliert werden; vielmehr sollte in Zusammenarbeit zwischen Regisseur und Schauspielern erforscht werden, welches Bewegungs- oder Stand-Bild durch eine bestimmte Sprechsituation auch in der Wirklichkeit hervorgerufen wird […]. Es wäre die Arbeit der Schauspieler und des Regisseurs, zu den im Text des Stücks phasenhaft beschriebenen Sprechfiguren als Entsprechungen in der Wirklichkeit vorhandene optische Figuren aufzufinden und die jeweils sinnlichste optische Figur die jeweilige Sprechfigur verdeutlichen zu lassen, wodurch umgekehrt von selbst auch die optischen Figuren der Wirklichkeit deutlich würden. (ST2 157)

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This is the basis for the procedure of presenting typified figures of speech and geometrically arranged speech situations at the same time. In this way, this piece takes on the character of a model in a literal sense. What he himself attempts as a playwright, the author later finds redeemed as a moviegoer through the language and gestures of the great actors. For this he uses the term “writing”, which for him does not aim at a literary representation of reality, but at a transmedial strategy. A note in Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World) says of the actors: “ihre Schrift ist selbstverständlich (wie Henry Fondas Bewegungen, die mir als Lettern erschienen)” (GW 325). The connection to the plays Das Mündel will Vormund sein and the subsequent Der Ritt über den Bodensee (The Ride across Lake Constance) arises from the fact that “alle Figuren sich mehr und mehr mit sich selber beschäftigen” (ST2 52) and talk less and less about themselves and each other. The social convention of speech, which is built on understanding as well as misunderstanding, the quotation, the irritant word and the empty formula, is replaced by speechless gesticulation, which ultimately concentrates entirely on the obscene and in this way exposes what is mediated and concealed in cultural discourse. On the one hand, Ritt über den Bodensee follows the technique of pure language plays, on the other hand, it takes up the play of gestures as demonstrated in Das Mündel will Vormund sein. The fact that the characters of the play are at the same time its actors, that the characters sometimes play each other (ST2 94) and that the props are supposed to work in such a way “daß es schwer vorstellbar ist, sie woanders stehen zu sehen; sie könnten es nicht einmal ertragen, auch nur ein bißchen verrückt zu werden” (ST2 63) points to this. Language play and gesture are now presented even more explicitly than in the previous plays as rituals of social communication that determine human action precisely because they are no longer questioned at any point. “Man hat angefangen, miteinander zu verkehren, und es hat sich eingespielt […]: eine Ordnung ergab sich, und um weiter miteinander verkehren zu können, machte man diese Ordnung ausdrücklich: man formulierte sie. Und als man sie formuliert hatte, mußte man sich daran halten, weil man sie schließlich formuliert hatte!” (ST2 116). In the preface to Der Ritt über den Bodensee, in which Handke closely links Kaspar and Der Ritt über den Bodensee, he states that this is his point, die in dieser Gesellschaft vorherrschenden menschlichen Umgangsformen darzustellen durch genaues Beobachten 1) der anscheinend im freien Spiel der Kräfte formlos funktionierenden täglichen Lebensäußerungen bei Liebe, Arbeit, Kauf und Verkauf, und 2) ihrer üblichen Darstellungsformen im Theater. (ST2 57)

While Quodlibet and Mündel isolated the theatrical forms from the stories in such a way “daß die Formen zu POSEN wurden und identisch werden konnten mit Posen im täglichen Leben” (ST2 57), Der Ritt über den Bodensee aims at the “Darstellung der gesellschaftlichen Entsprechungen” of theatrical forms (ST2 58 f.). The preface leaves no doubt that this representational intention is influenced by authentic perceptions of the author, who becomes aware of the rehearsed and

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compulsive nature of his own life both in everyday actions, language actions and their interaction with gestures, but also as a reader of other texts (ST2 58). From the method of introspection, he develops forms of perception such as have also been attributed to Josef Bloch’s “disease picture”. It is precisely this that gives the reality depicted an ambivalent meaning. For the play aims to make us aware that the presupposition which forms the supposedly fixed system of linguistic and non-­linguistic signs is in fact abysmal (Pütz 1982, 26). In acting out, performing, and failing, ordinary communicative acts (ST2 117–125), sometimes staged as a play within a play (ST2 85 f., 94), a difference between language and experience becomes apparent; language is the thin ice sheet of culturalization over unconscious perceptions, desires, and behaviors. One scene also makes this apparent. Stroheim says to Elisabeth Bergner, “Hören Sie nicht auf zu sprechen, ich habe Angst, einzubrechen, wenn Sie aufhören zu reden. Im Augenblick ist meine Zärtlichkeit für Sie so heftig, daß ich Sie schlagen möchte” (ST2 131). However, the motto “Träumt ihr oder redet ihr?” does not suggest that the reality-orientation of speech is questioned. Nevertheless, the play sometimes appears as a “Traumspiel” (Mixner 1977, 106), in which it is not clear whether it depicts reality or merely constellations of the conscious as well as the unconscious. Already the first dialogue between Jannings and George gives an example of this (ST2 68); moreover, the stage lighting emphasizes the alternation of night and morning (ST2 63, 136). Frequently, these irritations of the actors are related to references to the dream theme; also, in the text corpus, stage directions and the actors’ speech text cannot always be clearly separated. The play appears as a “narrative” interspersed with monologues and dialogues (Mixner 1977, 106). The relationship of the preliminary work printed as notes on Der Ritt über den Bodensee to the piece itself confirms that the experimental nature of the text emerges from precise perceptions. They are inventories of observations that can be compared to those that Handke will later present in Das Gewicht der Welt, Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil), and Phantasien der Wiederholung (Phantasies of Repetition). Thus, the example of a dramatic text reveals early on a peculiarity of Handke’s writing that was originally hardly noticed: The stories that the texts present are at once model constructions and grids that design a context for authentic observations and reflections. If one focuses on the peculiarity of this transformation, it also becomes clear that Der Ritt is already working very decisively towards theatrical situations. A second note reads, “Eine Treppe, die den Gehrhythmus hemmt; eine Stapfe bricht ein” (ST2 161). In the play, this observation is transformed into a play scene that both makes sense of and questions the relationship between language and reality in the theatrical gag. As Henny Porten slowly descends the stairs on stage, George and Jannings count. When they reach “sieben”, Porten has only reached the sixth step, she “hält jetzt inne, als sollte sie abstürzen, läuft dann die Stufen zurück hinauf”. Walking down the second time, the two actors again count to “sieben”, irritating Henny. “Es gab aber noch eine achte Stufe, und Henny Porten, die auf ebener Erde weitergehen wollte, stürzt taumelnd ab, strauchelt in den Raum hinein, ringt um Luft und läuft schnell wieder die Treppe hinauf, als sei sie zurückgestoßen

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worden” (ST2 81). Finally, on the third attempt, Stroheim supports Porten, but George and Jannings now continue to count, knocking Stroheim and Porten off their feet again, “aber bei ‚neun’ steigen sie noch eine Stufe herunter, die es nicht mehr gibt. Sie prallen heftig auf, gehen in die Knie, torkeln” (ST2 82). Thus, the interaction of speech and action as well as the linguistic influence on the characters in the theatrical scene show that language can not only be a protective blanket over the unconscious, but often also its point of entry into conscious perception. The unconscious and language turn out to be symmetrical. Two notes on the play refer precisely to this dialectical interrelationship: “Jemand SPRICHT, und alles renkt sich wieder ein” (ST2 177) and: “Zwischen Bezeichnendem und Bezeichnetem setzt die Traumdeutung ein” (ST2 173).

3.3  Kaspar (1967) There is much to be said for the assumption that Handke’s Kaspar has as its premise the problematization of theatre, which Publikumsbeschimpfung and the other spoken pieces practically implement. In doing so, he again resorts to a traditional theatrical form. Kaspar, however, is a theatrical figure that is only built up in the course of the play (Pütz 1982, 18) and whose story presents the problem of social and linguistic education as a model. Therefore, the interaction between Kaspar and the “Einsager” who carry out his linguistic education takes the place of an awareness of the relationship between actor and audience. The content of the Kaspar play draws on a historically based event and at the same time has a parabolic structure (Mixner 1977, 57). In many motifs and details, it refers to Anselm von Feuerbach’s study on the historical Kaspar Hauser, to the authentic story of the Nuremberg foundling, which has given rise not only to political speculation, but above all to philosophical and linguistic considerations. Kaspar’s first sentence, with which he enters the stage, is an utterance of the historical Kaspar Hauser. “Ich möchte ein solcher werden, wie einmal ein anderer gewesen ist” stands at the beginning of an educational story, which the author, however, does not want to relate to the authenticity of the historical case, but as a paradigm for “was MÖGLICH IST mit jemandem […] wie jemand durch Sprechen zum Sprechen gebracht warden kann. Das Stück könnte auch ‚Sprechfolterung’ heißen’” (ST1 103). The action presented on stage consists first of all in Kaspar’s own and first sentence being exorcised by the “Einsager” before he learns to understand it. In addition, he is taught in general terms about the possibilities of sentences. This leads to the fact that although he tries to resist the sentences that are presented to him, he is no longer able to assert his own sentence. In the course of the seventeenth scene, in which this is “ausgetrieben” of him, Kaspar experiences at the same time the power of the “Einsager” as a power of order. In this, an ambivalence becomes clear. On the one hand, the forced speech seems to give him power of disposal over reality: “Seit ich sprechen kann, kann ich mich ordnungsgemäß nach dem Schuhband bücken. Seit ich sprechen kann, kann ich alles in Ordnung bringen” (ST1 126). On the other hand, the “Einsager” suppress Kaspar’s immediate stirrings through a summation of

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commands: “Stellen. Ordnen. Legen. Setzen. Legen. Stellen. Ordnen. Setzen” (ST1 120). The statements of the “Einsager” revolve exclusively around the concept of order (Pütz 1982, 21). Scenes 19 and 20 seem to confirm that the rebuilding of speech under the influence of the “Einsager” is nothing more than an adaptation that amounts to de-individualization. Seit du einen ordentlichen Satz sprechen kannst, beginnst du alles, was du wahrnimmst, mit diesem ordentlichen Satz zu vergleichen, so daß der Satz ein Beispiel wird. […] Du selber bist in Ordnung, wenn du von dir selber keine Geschichte mehr zu erzählen brauchst: du bist in Ordnung, wenn sich deine Geschichte von keiner andern Geschichte mehr unterscheidet: wenn kein Satz über dich mehr einen Gegensatz hervorruft. (ST1 127 f.)

The text suggests that the one who is made to speak becomes hopelessly entangled in speaking.

At the end of Kaspar’s linguistic socialisation, which familiarises him with many sentence and argumentation models, there is the terse statement “Du bist aufgeknackt” (ST1 154). And as if the final loss of individuality is witnessed by the learning of the language system  – different learned language materials underline this (Mixner 1977, 62) – it says: “Du mußt ein Bild von dir werden”, a semblance of yourself (Mixner 1977, 63). Subsequently, Kaspar even multiplies himself. Secondary Kaspars appear next to him; moreover, his voice becomes equal to that of the “Einsager” (ST1 176). The secondary Kaspars accompany Kaspar’s following “Ausbildung”, which consists in having experiences in the play that are physical and sensual: movements, pains, sounds, tones and outlooks are learned. This education leads to a first detailed self-representation of Kaspar, in which he shows himself to be educated and well-adjusted (ST1 164); later it is supplemented by a collection of precepts which the character announces after a recollection of his own earlier incapacity caused by speechlessness and lack of concepts (ST1 182). His utterance “Ich bin zum Sprechen gebracht. Ich bin in die Wirklichkeit übergeführt” (ST1 195), seems to confirm that language alone is seen as an element of conditioning (cf. Scharang ÜH 262 ff.). Moreover, the pause text generalizes what happens to Kaspar; it also subjects the spectators to speech torture. The emphasis on the problem of language has a formalistic aspect that brings Handke close to Wittgenstein. An utterance by the “Einsager” suggests this reference; it has the character of a quotation: “Ein Tisch ist ein wahrer Tisch, wenn das Bild vom Tisch mit dem Tisch übereinstimmt: er ist noch kein wahrer Tisch, wenn zwar das Bild vom Tisch allein mit dem Tisch übereinstimmt, aber das Bild von Tisch u n d Stuhl zusammen nicht mit Tisch und Stuhl übereinstimmt” (ST1 130).

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Indeed, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus logico-philosophicus develops a similar point of view in determining the connection between propositions and reality (Wittgenstein TL 33; cf. Savigny 1969, 15–40). For Wittgenstein, the simplest visible ontological entities are objects, for each of which a form determines with which other objects they can combine to form a “Sachverhalt”. The totality of these states of affairs is the world. The thought is a logical picture of a possible state of affairs, because it represents a possible structure of reality. It can be true (existent) or false (non-­ existent) picture. The totality of true thoughts is a picture of the world, which gets a sensual expression by punctuation marks. These punctuation marks can be sound waves, characters, or the like (Wittgenstein TL 20 f.). The proposition itself is nothing but the punctuation mark in mind together with the thought of the propositional sense. Because the thought represents the possible structure of reality, this is reflected in the proposition. The facts are represented by elementary propositions, which are in turn the names of objects, but the complex states of affairs are represented by logical connections of such (Wittgenstein TL 49–55, 59). A reading that disregards this external agreement, however, brings to light a crucial difference. Wittgenstein’s assumption that language is the totality of meaningful propositions is based on narrowly circumscribed premises. On the one hand, the philosopher refers his considerations only to natural science, but not to other sciences, certainly not to philosophy (Wittgenstein TL 41, 115). On the other hand, the “Einsager” ideologically sharpen Wittgenstein’s epistemological approach by presenting every perception of reality as dependent on the possible forms of linguistic mediation. Only for this reason can the “Einsager” call upon those “in Ordnung gebrachten” to search “nach für allen gültigen Sätzen […] „auch die andern sollen endlich wollen können, was sie selber jetzt wollen sollen können” (ST1 175  f.). Wittgenstein, on the other hand, says only: “Daß die Welt meine Welt ist, das zeigt sich darin, daß die Grenzen der Sprache (der Sprache, die allein ich verstehe) die Grenzen meiner Welt bedeuten” (Wittgenstein TL 90). Kaspar himself is the victim of an ideological narrowing. From the speeches of the Einsager, a phantasm of disposal is founded for him: […] und jeden Gegenstand der mir unheimlich ist bezeichne ich als mein damit er aufhört mir unheimlich zu sein. (ST1 166)

In another passage it succinctly says: “alles ist mir zu Willen” (ST1 180). But despite these fantasies, Kaspar begins to defend himself against language, the theory of language, and the Einsager’s claim to power. Admittedly, this does not happen explicitly, but rather in the course of a gradual process of awareness. Shortly before Kaspar is “aufgeknackt” by the sentences dictated to him by the “Einsager”, his development itself becomes problematic for him; he not only asks about “vorher” and “nachher”, he also seeks the conditional causalities of his life, but his search is confused. He realizes:

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Dadurch, daß ich bin, war ich gewesen. Dadurch, daß ich gewesen war, war ich. Ohne daß ich war, war ich gewesen. Ohne daß ich gewesen war, werde ich sein. Damit ich sein werde, war ich gewesen. Damit ich gewesen war, bin ich gewesen. Bevor ich gewesen bin, war ich gewesen. Bevor ich gewesen war, bin ich. (ST1 152)

Under the pressure of the insoluble question of his own origins and the conditions of his socialisation, Kaspar initially retreats to the sentence “Ich bin der ich bin”, repeated three times. But subsequently it becomes apparent that he is gaining more and more insights into his psychogenesis and socialization as he begins to remember. There is a reason that the “Einsager” try to disrupt this very remembering by making noises. This is because Kaspar’s memories of his past behavior allow him to analyze the linguistic socialization to which he has been subjected. He is now able to compare his experiences and perceptions with his linguistic reactions, and it becomes clear to him that there are central images in this mediation process. Not coincidentally, the fantasy of snow that now occurs also points to other texts by Handke; snow is overtly a text-structuring ‘métaphore obsédante’ (ST1 190; Mixner 1977, 70; FM 289, 428; Höller 2013, 164). In the course of this self-reflection, the affirmative sentence” Ich bin der ich bin” can now be compared to experiences and at the same time be called into doubt. The question of his own origins is finally resolved in two contradictory sentences: “ich habe mich selber noch erlebt: ich habe mich nie gesehen” (ST1 196 f.). Shortly before that, Kaspar realizes what has happened to him: “Schon mit meinem ersten Satz bin ich in die Falle gegangen” (ST1 194). This gets its meaning when one realizes that already the first sentence of the play “Ich möchte ein solcher werden, wie einmal ein anderer gewesen ist”, according to the template of the authentic Kaspar Hauser story, refers to Hauser’s father, of whom he only knows that he was a horseman. Thus, the linguistic order, familial and social relations are directly interconnected and related to each other on an unconscious level, as well as on the level of language and grammar. It is from here that Handke’s statement that he wanted to depict a “sprachlichen Mythos” in Kaspar takes on its meaning. Obviously, Kaspar’s speech torture as a model case is also a diagram of ontogenesis, a representation of the construction of the self. The “sprachliche Mythos” does not aim at a mystification of language. When it deals with the power of the attributed, it at the same time sketches a model that makes the becoming of language in man the signature of an ambivalent event of psychogenesis; it is a narrated scientific myth that can be compared to the scientific myth of psychoanalysis. This fact is significant for the evaluation of the Kaspar text. A distinction must be made between the passages in which Kaspar is taught the prevailing order and at the same time the laws of semantics, pragmatics and syntactics (Weiss 1975, 449) through speaking and learning to speak, for example in the sentences of scene 62, and Kaspar’s reminiscences in the same scene, which indicate that the constitution of the ego presupposes speaking on the one hand, and that it becomes problematic through it on the other, because in education through language the individuality of the educated can be destroyed (Pütz 1982, 24). Language alone draws boundaries,

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corrects the child’s pre-linguistic view of the world, which Kaspar remembers in retrospect: Das Lärmen und das Geschrei außen hielt ich für ein Sausen und Kollern i n n e n in meinen Gedärmen: ich mußte darunter leiden daß ich nichts unterscheiden konnte […]. (ST1 178)

At the same time, language preserves the need for what is lost, the unconscious desire that is crushed by sorrowful experiences. Ich kam zur Welt nicht nach der Uhr sondern weil die Schmerzen beim Fallen mir halfen einen Keil zwischen mich und die Gegenstände zu schieben und mein Lallen endlich auszumerzen: so hat das Wehtun mir die Verwechslungen schließlich ausgetrieben. Ich lernte alles was leer war mit Wörtern zu füllen und lernte wer wer war und alles was schrie mit Sätzen zu stillen kein leerer Topf verwirrt mehr meinen Kopf […]. (ST1 179 f.)

The linguistic myth of the Kaspar play tells of this connection between language and the unconscious. It makes clear that language can become not only an instrument of adaptation, but also the last residue of a resistance against the pressure of socialization to adapt, against the dominant discourses and the discourses of the dominant. This language of resistance resists the sentences of the “Einsager” from the very beginning; it brings itself to bear at three points in the text. Immediately after his affirmative turn, “Ich bin, der ich bin”, and just before Kaspar is “aufgeknackt”, he speaks the seemingly meaningless sentence: “Warum fliegen da lauter so schwarze Würmer herum?” (ST1 152). Kaspar’s reminiscent self-reflection becomes possible – or so it seems here – only after he has temporarily withdrawn from the influence of the “Einsager” and their commitment to purposeful language by uttering “jeder Satz ist für die Katz” (ST1 188; Mixner 1977, 70). Finally, at the end, he

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asserts himself as a solitary speaker with the alienating phrase “Ziegen und Affen” (ST1 197 f.); this formula replaces the conclusion of the earlier versions, “Ich bin: nur zufällig: Ich”. The first and the last of these counter-sentences of Kaspar belong to poetic language (Mixner 1977, 67); they are quotations from Horváth’s “Glaube Liebe Hoffnung” and from Shakespeare’s “Othello” (Durzak 1982, 104). That every sentence is “für die Katz” is, moreover, the poetic extension of an aphorism. Here as there, the poetic images that oppose conscious experiences as well as the attributed experiential sentences of the “Einsager” touch memories of a state that precedes cultural socialization and linguistic adaptation. The “sprachliche Mythos” is at the same time the dream of the lost unconscious, which is not only concealed and disguised in language, but also preserved and cited. It is precisely for this reason that the Kaspar text builds a bridge from the linguistic critique of Handke’s early spoken pieces to his later poetic drafts, which testify to and depict the “begriffsauflösende” power of the poetic, which Handke already deals with in his programmatic essays.

3.4  Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus (1973) The play Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus (They Are Dying Out), unlike the early spoken pieces, is again committed to a theatrical representation of reality. It deals with the story of Quitt, an entrepreneur who holds his own in business life because he does not comply with the cartel agreement of his competitors. However, despite outdoing them, he eventually commits suicide by running his head into a boulder several times. The clear plot drawing and the stage-effective intensification of the story tempt one to interpret the story of Quitt as a didactic play about the themes of capitalism and self-alienation in the capitalist economic system; the narrow circle of acting characters also certainly supports this. In addition to Quitt and his competitors, his wife, his servant Hans and the small shareholder Kilb appear. Moreover, the portrayal of the figure of Quitt stands in a literary tradition because it is not simply critically illuminated, but at the same time provides starting points for identification (Nägele/Voris 1978, 92). The sensitivity shown by the main character, but also his relationship to the servant figure, who despises the protagonist on the one hand and admires him on the other, are definitely in the tradition of classicist tragedy. Despite the thematic narrowness of the play, this ambivalent portrayal of the main character defuses the directly political statement. Handke’s self-expressions reveal that this is done quite consciously. In a conversation about the play he states: so wie früher in den Shakespeareschen Dramen die Tragödien aus der Verzweiflung der Helden über Verrat, aus gekränkter Liebe und aus Entmachtung usw. entstanden sind, könnte man das auch auf die Wirtschaft übertragen, wo eine Absprache gebrochen wird wie früher in diesen Dramen, wenn ein Verrat geschehen ist. (Durzak 1976, 320)

That Quitt’s story points to the representation of an exemplary case that transcends the social and historical framework that the play sketches is confirmed by an

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utterance by the protagonist, who describes to his servant a feeling that has a seemingly arbitrary trigger: Ich sah meine Frau im Morgenmantel und ihre lackierten Zehen und fühlte mich plötzlich einsam. Es war eine so sachliche Einsamkeit, daß ich jetzt ganz selbstverständlich davon reden kann. Sie erleichterte mich, ich verkrümelte, schmolz in ihr weg. Die Einsamkeit war objektiv, eine Eigenschaft der Welt, keine Eigenheit von mir. Alles stand von mir abgewendet, in einer sanften Harmonie. (U 7)

This coupling of a standardized everyday situation with the subjective perception of reality stages what is the precondition of the text itself. Also in the interview, Handke states: “Es würde mich nicht interessieren, etwas rein in der Außenwelt Beobachtetes in Poesie zu bringen, sondern irgendwie müssen meine eigenen Geschichten und Verschlingungen hinzu kommen, sonst wäre es etwas Plakatives” (Durzak 1976, 320; Mixner 1977, 90). This intensification of the given lends the text a fundamental ambiguity. It deals with a situation that is presented as real, and at the same time it reproduces an autobiographical constellation. There is something to be said for the fact that Quitt’s supposedly clearly defined life situation reflects the author’s attitude to life. A state of feeling is demonstrated and represented in his story, just as Quitt’s own feelings become clear to the extent that he sees himself confronted with a narrated poetic reality, the brief summary of content from Stifter’s Hagestolz, which his servant reads to him. First of all, the story of the entrepreneur depicts an alienation of needs, it shows constraints, social norms and dominant discourses, against which Quitt’s insistence on an individual attitude to life makes him appear as a fossil of another time; he pursues an ideal of self-realization, his actions are an emphatic emphasis on the self (Gabriel 1983, 159), which is opposed by the constraints of the cartel. This is not altered by the fact that both Hans, the servant, and the competitors admire him for this very reason (U 57). Ich werde mich nicht an die Absprache halten. Ich werde ihre Preise ruinieren und sie selber dazu. Ich werde mein altmodisches Ich-Gefühl als Produktivmittel einsetzen. Ich habe noch nichts von mir gehabt, Hans. Und sie werden sich mit kalten Händen die heißen Köpfe kühlen. Und dann werden auch die Köpfe kalt werden. Es wird eine Tragödie sein. Eine Tragödie aus dem Geschäftsleben, in der ich der Überlebende sein werde. (U 54)

Quitt’s attempt at self-realization is, of course, subject to the same law as Kaspar’s development of language. To the extent that he tries to become completely himself, he uses the laws and norms of the economic system. At the same time, he becomes aware that this form of self-realization strengthens the dominant system; only the refusal or anarchic violation of the prevailing norm can work against it (on this, Mixner 1977, 193). It is logical, therefore, that Quitt’s effort to achieve a “maximum of subjective autonomy” (Mixner 1977, 197) leads him to sympathize with the voiceless (Mixner 1977, 194) and that his suicide occurs in running up against a crag inscribed with the laws of the existing: “Unsere größte Sünde – Die Ungeduld der Begriffe” and “Das Schlimmste ist überstanden – Die letzte Hoffnung” (U 56).

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These inscriptions not only point to the mortification of desire in the course of socialization, they also show that language and concepts belong to a system that suppresses desire and, in the same move, protects against desire. In this respect, the play takes up the problematic developed in Der Ritt über den Bodensee, at the same time giving it a psychological contour. It ties it to the attitude towards life of a character who stands in a field of experience that can be compared to that of the protagonists in Der Kurze Brief (Short Letter, Long Farewell), it also sketches out the situation of alienation as later narrated in Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling). A scene that leads to the autobiographical inscription of the drama is paradigmatic for this blending of the experimental situation of Kaspar, the formalistic situation of the spoken plays, and finally the problematic content of the later novels. The scene delineates the problematic areas of earlier texts and at the same time continues them in a pointed manner. It begins with a gestural demonstration of alienation, in which all relationships between the characters are related to exchange relationships, to the exchange of money. Only one figure resists the rehearsed modes of behaviour that only sanction and reinforce the existing relations of domination. Quitt tries to give Hans a piece of money, but Hans always withdraws his outstretched hand before Quitt can give him the piece of money. This play situation points on the one hand to the well-rehearsed social mechanisms, and on the other hand to Quitt’s role existence. Even in his self-assertion, which his servant Hans calls poetic because unconditional (U 58), he knows that he is subject to social norms of action demanded by the ruling system. This gives rise not only to the impression of a constant repetition of the senseless, but also to the feeling of a natural self-alienation. Quitt himself becomes aware of this at a moment when he begins to play a “langsamen traurigen Blues” (U 62) and sings along with it: Manchmal wachte ich auf in der Nacht und alles was ich für den nächsten Tag wollte kam mir so lächerlich vor Wie lächerlich das Hemd zuzuknöpfen Wie lächerlich euch in die Augen zu schauen […] Manchmal lag ich wach und alles was ich mir vorstellte macht mir alles nur noch unvorstellbarer […] Bleibt alle weg von mir Es ist die Zeit nach meinem Tod und was ich mir gerade seufzend als Leben vorstellte sind nur jene Blasen auf meinem Körper welche seufzen wenn sie platzen. (U 62 f.)

In Der Kurze Brief, too, the blues is a narrative myth that relates individual and collective history and experience to one another, and at the same time designs a schema “within which there is room for improvisation” (Bartmann 1984, 88). In the drama, it marks a breaking point where Quitt’s individual desires come to the fore; but it is also an attempt to overcome the alienation he reports through imagination and

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fantasy. From the beginning, Quitt tries to regain his dreams of the past with the help of his “Bluesgefühl” (U 14). Unawares, the social drama of the capitalist entrepreneur becomes a psychodrama of the suppression of the imagination in the course of socialization. Es kommt die Zeit der Begriffsmaschinen, und es wird nichts Unbedachtes mehr geben. Auch die Fehlleistungen aus dem Unterbewußtsein sind ja schon eine Methode des Managements. Selbst die Träume träumen sich von vornherein so, daß sie auslegbar sind. Ich träume zum Beispiel überhaupt nichts Sprachloses mehr, und die Bilder dazu laufen so logisch ab wie ein Tageslauf nach dem Terminkalender. Am Morgen wache ich auf und kann mich nicht bewegen von all den Reden, die ich im Traum geführt habe. Es gibt kein ‚Und auf einmal’ mehr wie in den Träumen von früher. […] Oh schade… es ist die Zeit der Sachzwänge, der Prioritäten, der Dringlichkeitsstufen für die Bedürfnisse. (U 94)

The loss of imagination leads, as in other Handke texts, to a relapse into creaturely sensation: “Jetzt bin ich nur noch schwer und wund und plump von mir selber” (U 98). These sensations of the creaturely, up to Quitt’s “Todesgefühl” (U 44), his end-­ time feeling (U 93), also point to the secret story of the lost self that begins to contour itself ever more clearly in Handke’s plays and texts. As in Der Kurze Brief, the protagonist of Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus becomes aware of his own situation at the moment when he compares his own experience with another historical, but also literary one. In this respect, too, he resembles Kaspar, whose indeterminate desire for identity begins with his desire to become as another once was. This can be demonstrated at two points in the play, both of which take Stifter quotations as their point of departure. Thus Quitt’s sentence “Erst mit dem Erzählen fallen mir meine Erfahrungen ein” (U 95) takes on a double meaning. It refers not only to his own narration, which releases memories, but also to the narration of already literarily formed experiences, which serve as a contrast to his own experience of reality. In this way, the play Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus takes a turn that can be compared to the narrative style of Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams) and Der Kurze Brief. The literary patterns do not merely obscure the self and the personal; rather, it is precisely in the foreign that the self and the authentic become recognizable. Quitt’s apparent existence, the compulsion of role-existence, frees one for an experience of the imaginary that resists the existent. Quitt’s desire to be “pathetisch” is an attempt to reassure himself of the imaginative power of poetic language and the playful appropriation of reality as well as the playful coping with life situations. Yet at the same time, Quitt realizes the uncatchable and worn-out nature of his recourse to literary tradition. Already in Stifter’s text he recognizes the attempt to reconstruct a lost life situation. Damals, im 19. Jahrhundert, auch wenn man gar keine Weltgefühle mehr hatte, gab es doch wenigstens noch eine Erinnerung daran und eine Sehnsucht. Deswegen konnte man die nachspielen und spielte sie den andern vor, wie zum Beispiel in dieser Geschichte. Und weil man sie so ernst und geduldig und gewissenhaft wie ein Restaurateur, Stifter war ja ein Restaurateur, nachspielte, stellten sich die Gefühle auch wirklich ein, vielleicht. Immerhin glaubte man, daß es das gab, was man spielte, oder daß es möglich war. (U 53)

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But Quitt also becomes aware that he is trying to play something that no longer exists (U 54). The restoration of the past no longer succeeds. Kilb already recognizes that absent-mindedness can no longer lead to reconstructions, and he interprets Quitt’s absent-minded gaze into nature accordingly: “[…] Naturbetrachtungen [sind] nach meiner Erfahrung schon das erste Zeichen für ein Nachlassen des Wirklichkeitssinns” (U 15). This line is later followed by the entrepreneur v. Wullnow. He, who from the beginning conjures up a good old time without social problems and yet only ever transfigures the existing power relations (U 20, 34), speaks of how the “Wahrnehmung der Natur” made him self-confident, and he laments that the feeling of nature today is either dismissed as “Rückzug in die Kinderwelt” or can only be endured by means of the “Fata Morgana der Zivilisation” (U 72). In doing so, he quotes almost verbatim a passage from Stifter’s autobiographical sketch in “Nachgelassene Blätter”: Dunkle Flecken in mir als das einzig Undefinierte. Dann platzte die Blase, und die dunklen Flecken in mir entfalteten sich als die Wälder a u ß e r h a l b von mir. Da erst fing ich an, auch mich zu definieren: nicht die Zivilisation von Haus und Straße, sondern die Natur machte mich auf mich aufmerksam – indem sie mich auf sich aufmerksam machte. (U 71 f.; Stifter 1954, 601–605)

The recourse to Stifter is at the same time the reconstruction of an imaginary relationship to reality, which translates all sensations into spatial images but does not yet know any distinction between inside and outside. It traces an early stage of psychogenesis when it outlines the symbiotic state that determines the ego before it becomes the self by entering into the symbolic relation of language. Thus, Quitt’s literarily and poetically mediated regression leads back to the very point that Kaspar reaches. This regressing of consciousness is confirmed by the stage direction: Objects and snakes appear in the stage lights at the end of the play, ciphers for images of consciousness (Mixner 1977, 198). The muteness of the objects proves that the subjects want to erase themselves when the achieved self-consciousness makes them realize their alienation.

3.5  Begrüßung des Aufsichtsrats (1967) The early prose works, available in the anthology Die Begrüßung des Aufsichtsrats (Welcoming the Board of Directors), a revised version of which was supplemented by the 1967 story Der Einbruch eines Holzfällers in eine friedliche Familie (The Burglary of a Lumberjack into a Peaceful Family), read like preliminary exercises for the novels with which they are sometimes directly interlocked, such as the prose piece Die Überschwemmung (The Flood), which became part of Die Hornissen (The Hornets), or indirectly, such as the plays Der Hausierer (The Peddler) and Die Hornissen. In terms of content and form, these prose works appear to belong together through their attempt to depict specific and in each case precisely defined modes of speech, contexts of description, narrative situations, and states of consciousness,

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and to clarify how these are capable of achieving an objective description of reality, or to what extent they fail to do so. Even the first text, which gives the anthology its name, sketches out a situation and form of speech that arouses concrete expectations and associations; at the same time, it systematically destroys them. Not only does the sentence “[es] knisterte verdächtig im Gebälk” in fact prove to be a metaphor for the actual state of the society whose supervisory board of directors is to be welcomed (BA 9). The formulaic speech of the unknown speaker is, moreover, interspersed with remarks that point to an accident, to the fatal accident of a boy, as well as to an almost absurd scene: the members of the supervisory board meet in an almost dilapidated lonely house in the forest, which is unheated, has neither doors nor windows, and at the end apparently actually collapses, bringing the speaker’s speech to an end. What is implied in this story by a parallelism of narrated speech and action, whereby the collapse of the building must be presumed from the sudden end of speech alone, other stories achieve through a perspectivization of perceptions. In Der Einbruch eines Holzfällers in eine friedliche Familie (BA 118–124), the narrator, who is a child but nevertheless describes the murder of his family in long hypotactic flourishes, eventually becomes himself the ultimate victim of the woodcutter, whose furious goings-on against the family and the father he has evidently observed not without clandestine pleasure. So, too, the story ends here with the death of the reporter. In Sacramento, the Western Ride the High Country is told from the perspective of an invented character who, at the scene of the action, finally experiences the final show-down, pegged like a horse (BA 82 f.). In Die Hornissen, the hallucinatory inner monologue of a sick man, interspersed with memories of his father’s sexual violence, is inserted into the speech of a woman in the next room; in Die Überschwemmung, the first-person narrator describes to his apparently blind brother a situation behind which the latter, as well as the reader, must suspect a catastrophe, without anything reliable being reported about a real flood. Similarly, the reader remains uncertain about the veracity of what is reported in Über den Tod eines Fremden (About the Death of a Stranger). This is because the events are narrated in double perspective, as the first-person narrator of the story gradually begins to reflect on their veracity; his reflective digressions are rendered as italicized interpolations in the narrative text. The two first-person perspectives of the text Das Feuer (The Fire), which are inserted into one another, also provide no clue as to which of the situations depicted corresponds to reality and which is merely fantasized, nor does it become clear whether there is an event to be reported at all outside of what is narrated. Some of the texts in this anthology point to the difference between language and reality, legal formula and actual event, in a gesture of linguistic criticism and reflection. Prüfungsfragen, Der Augenzeugenbericht, but also the alienating Lebensbeschreibung (Description of the Life) of Jesus Christ and finally the text Das Standrecht (The Martial Law) provide examples of this. Handke dealt with the problematic nature of these narratives programmatically in his essay Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms (I am an Inhabitant of the Ivory Tower).

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Vor einigen Jahren fand ich in einem Strafgesetzbuch das Gesetz über das Standrecht. Darin wurde in der Form von Paragraphen festgesetzt, unter welchen Voraussetzungen das Standrecht über ein Gebiet zu verhängen sei, wie das Gericht sich zusammenzusetzen habe, wie es vorzugehen habe, welche Rechtsmittel dem Angeklagten zustünden, welche Strafe im Standrecht verhängt werde […]. Die abstrahierende Form der Darstellung eines ritualisierten Sterbens nahm mich gefangen. Die Folgerichtigkeit der Sätze, die im Grunde immer Bedingungssätze für eine konkrete zu denkende Wirklichkeit waren, das heißt, anzuwenden, wenn der in ihnen angegebene Tatbestand in der Wirklichkeit zutraf, erschien mir äußerst bedrohlich und beklemmend. Die abstrakten Sätze, die von keinem konkreten Sterben erzählten, zeigten mir trotzdem eine neue Möglichkeit, die Phänomene des Sterbens und des Todes zu sehen. Sie änderten meine früheren Denkgewohnheiten über die literarische Darstellung von Sterben und Tod, sie änderten überhaupt meine Denkgewohnheiten über Sterben und Tod. (E 22 f.)

Characteristic of this and other texts is also the tendency to deliberately blur the line between reality and non-reality, the narrated and the fantasized. In this way, the perspective of the characters creates an uncertainty in the reader’s decision about the truth of what is being told, which brings them closer to fantastic literature (Jacquemin 1975, 46). In the story Der Galgenbaum (The Gallows Tree), the Western The Hanging Tree with Gary Cooper is first retold, then the narrative moves away from the film’s plot. The story follows the pattern of a trivial plot scheme and seems to continue the original story, but the events are eventually distorted into something monstrous. This occurs not only in the description of Cooper’s multiple hangings by the angry crowd, but also in the fact that one character’s consciousness seems to mirror the film’s plotrules. The ringleader of the lynchers weist die am Wagen, die über die Schultern gierig den erschlaffenden Mann betrachten, an, den Wagen zurückzustoßen, ihn, obwohl er schon tot ist, noch einmal aufs Brett zu stellen und sogleich, mit dem wegzurammenden Wagen, noch einmal zu hängen; aus dem Drang, zwischen den Vorgängen eine Einheit und einen Einklang zu schaffen, ordnet er zuletzt an, den Strick von dem Ast zu lösen, den herabgeplumpsten Mann auf den Wagen zu laden und sodann den Mann samt dem Gefährt, den Strick dazu, die Böschung hinunter und über den Felskopf ins brennende Dorf zu befördern. Das geschieht auch. (BA 60)

With this turn of phrase, Handke’s narrative points to a seam between fiction and reality, as it also marks the “gleitende Paradox” (Neumann) of Kafka’s narrative. In the text Von den Gleichnissen (On Parables), Kafka shows how fiction can determine reality; this parallel between the states of consciousness, the fantasies of the imaginary and the laws of fiction are subsequently varied again and again in Handke’s texts. Whereas in Galgenbaum an invented person thinks as if his only task is to fulfil the narrative sequences of the film, the story Die Reden und Handlungen des Vaters im Maisfeld (The Speeches and Actions of the Father in the Cornfield) attempts to let the reader develop a fantasy of the real film plot from the narrated “Voranzeige eines Films”, in which image sequences, shots and the commentary of a speaker are strung together (BA 69–76).

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While in these texts the boundary between fiction and reality, but also between fiction and the fiction within fiction, is fading, in Das Umfallen der Kegel von einer bäuerlichen Kegelbahn the reality reported as authentic is itself fragile. At the end of this account of the excursion of two Austrians to East Berlin is a dream situation that could have come from a text by Kafka: Als die Straßenbahn gekommen war, waren sie, indem sie der Frau draußen noch einmal zuwinkten, schnell eingestiegen, um noch rechtzeitig den Bahnhof Friedrichstraße zu erreichen. Zu spät bemerkte der Student, daß sie gar nicht eingestiegen waren. (BA 137)

It makes sense that Handke retells Kafka’s novel of the same name in the story Der Prozess (für Franz K.). His text here not only points to how the retelling of a text shapes the consciousness of readers and writers, but alsoKafka’s narratively repeated story simultaneously portrays emotional experiences that are described again and again in Handke’s work (on this, Mixner 1977, 52). The text of the novel Die Hornissen shows that certain images are assigned to these sensations and perceptions in each case, the blindness, the snow, the dream, which repeatedly structure texts and narrated contexts. Moreover, the leitmotif of Die Hornissen proves to be a phantasm that is very closely related to the many threatening configurations of the father and male violence that pervade Handke’s work. The scene in which the narrator follows his father as he makes a trail through the hornets with his bare feet reveals itself as a life-defining fantasy of fatherly omnipotence that the narrator repeatedly seeks to overcome in his writing. It could be seen as a motto of the writing, at least it marks a trail that it follows: “die tiefen Spuren die er machte mit den tiefen Schuhen bis wir zu ihr kamen in dem Gebüsch die tiefen Spuren die er macht durch die wir gehen während wir schauen während wir jammern während ich in die Fußstapfen meines Vaters trete” (BA 27).

3.6  Wind und Meer. Vier Hörspiele (Wind and Sea. Four Radio Plays, 1970) Handke’s radio plays follow the gesture of the spoken pieces and fall back on the perspectivization of narrative situations that the early prose works design. In this context, the eleven-minute radio play Wind und Meer and Geräusch eines Geräuschs, inparticular, take their genre name literally: they are limited to a sequence of precisely defined noises and snatches of speech that have no discernible connection. This radicalism, which is of central importance to Handke, is incidentally connected with a language-experiment-oriented revival of the radio play genre towards the end of the sixties (Nägele/Voris 1978, 97). Geräusch eines Geräusches ist mir persönlich fast das liebste Hörspiel, weil es den Hörer ganz frei läßt, ihm überhaupt keine Bedeutung sagt, weil es wirklich nur ganz konstruktivistisch mit Elementen von Stimmung und Traum arbeitet und weil ich mich darin völlig von diesen Hörspielen mit Sprecherstimmen befreit habe, die mir eigentlich alle Hörspiele zuwider machen. (Mixner 1977, 93)

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However, what is true of some of the stage directions in the spoken pieces also proves true of the radio plays: what the text determines about the individual sounds to be transmitted can be represented acoustically, but probably not recognized audibly. In this respect, these radio plays are indeed listening games that release associations and trigger reflexes of consciousness that are free but by no means predictable. By contrast, Hörspiel demonstrates how an interrogation that suggests a deed about which the interviewee is being questioned turns into an interrogation game in the course of which the interviewee defends himself by disrupting the rehearsed pattern of speech. He alters the game of question and answer by seemingly incoherent utterances, by misunderstanding, and finally by simply repeating the questions put to him. In the end, he talks like the questioner himself. In this respect, this play does indeed culminate in “‘Herauskitzeln’, ‘Ausquetschen’, ‘Weichmachen’, ‘Leermachen’, finally in a ‘Zum-Schweigen-Bringen’” (Thuswaldner 1976, 14). By acting out a given and standardized communicative situation, it is simultaneously destroyed. However, the interrogation of the Hörspiel, which is closely related to the language experiment of Der Hausierer, is not limited, like the latter, to the presentation of predetermined forms of report and speech and the demonstration of the set pieces of question and answer in the interrogation play. His radical reduction of the forms of speech and answer to the acoustic approaches a technique that is brought to the stage in Quodlibet as a procedure of associative non-understanding. Hörspiel Nr. 2 practices something similar. It not only breaks down communication into a network of sentences, words and fragments of speech, it also describes a communicative situation in which the disintegration of the context seems plausible in terms of content. Hörspiel Nr. 2 reproduces the radio communication between a taxi control centre and its drivers and between the drivers themselves. This form of communication is perceived by a bystander who, without being the speaker or addressee of the radio messages, merely listens in. Here, too, the search for a criminal can be assumed behind the ritualized forms of the call, which is moreover quoted in the secularized form of the blues Hey Joe and the religious form of the Ave Maria (Nägele/Voris 1978, 98), as well as behind the ritualized forms of the answer. But it becomes clear that these speakers end up finding nothing but their own sentences. They respond only to communication signals and are quite actually “sprechblind” because their perceptions, remarks, and communications are not allowed to exceed the rules and requirements of radio speech (WM 60; Nägele/Voris 1978, 99). The speakers of this radio play do not communicate about facts, but only fulfil the requirements of a language game in a narrowly defined communicative situation. Above all, listening on speech and responses creates a sense of alienation because from the outset it leads only to imperfect understanding. The overhearer is outside the field of communication and its regulations, which is precisely why he becomes aware of the mediated character of the overheard communicative acts. The way they point out the content makes the radio plays an independent treatment of the language problem in Handke’s early work, one that conforms to the genre.

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3.7 Emergence of Postmodernism: Die offenen Geheimnisse der Technokratie (The Open Secrets of Technocracy, 1974) Among the texts presented in the anthology Als das Wünschen noch geholfen hat (When Wishing Still Helped), this description of an excursion to the housing estate La Défense, a high-rise city west of Paris, occupies a special position. Like the early poetry, it reconstructs a situation of alienation, but, like later Der große Fall (The Great Fall), it relates it directly to the conditions of the modern lifeworld (WÜ 31–54). This connection between the early and the late work opens up a literary-­ historical constellation that decisively questions the paradigm of modernity; at the same time, it links it to a life-historical perspective. The designation “Reise” for this short excursion, in anticipation of later journeys such as Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied, not only aims at a movement in space, it also opens up a view backwards: “Bis vor wenigen Jahren habe ich fast immer nur zu Boden geschaut. Wenn ich etwas lese, was ich ganz früh geschrieben habe, habe ich das Gefühl von einem Menschen mit gesenktem Blick, so viel auf der Erde Liegendes kommt darin vor und soviel Kleines” (WÜ 31). At the same time, the writer notes that even earlier he took insignificant objects on the ground “als Zeichen” of something he was unable to see directly. In retrospect, he interprets his lowered gaze as a reflex that made him “[zurückschrecken] vor der Übermacht der verbauten Welt” (WÜ 31). Only by looking up would he have been able to recognize “die monumentalere Fremdheit der menschlichen Lebensäußerungen” that expressed itself in his surroundings (WÜ 31). The text-image combination presented becomes proof of this. It traces the central role of visual perception and its medial mediation in Handke’s later work. Sixteen rather blurred images are inserted into the short text, most of which still bear a caption and show buildings shrouded in mist. The reference to the “Geheimnisse der Technokratie” on the one hand, and the designation of the excursion as a “Reise” on the other, lend a historical dimension to one’s own experience in Paris and already before that during a visit to the Märkisches Viertel zu Berlin. The signs of modern society and its organization mobilize the fantasy of a “verlorene[s]” desire. They recall an earlier social condition that contrasts with the signs of advanced civilization. In this respect, the formula “Reise nach La Défense” recalls a figure of thought that already determined Schiller’s Spaziergang (Ritter 1974, 159–162; Schiller NA-20, 395). The historical movement that leads man from nature to civilization is paid for with a loss of origin, a turning away from nature. In line with this, Handke’s text describes a “verbaute Natur”, it points to a divestment of the natural, which becomes clear precisely through the attempt at its artificial reconstruction. In the middle of the stone plateau of La Défense, all the grass varieties of Europe and Africa have been planted in small beds. The name tags assigned to them, however, make the natural signs exhibited in this way appear like objects of the world of commodities (WÜ 36). The perception of modern civilization and its signs thus becomes ambivalent for the viewer: it evokes empathy, sober contemplation and resistance at the same time.

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Already the visit to the “Märkische Viertel” draws the viewer’s attention to a behavior of the inhabitants that appears as a counter-reaction to a situation of alienation. Even then, the traveller notices anarchic scribbles in the elevators; he perceives a ritualization of behavior that makes all of the people’s movements and actions seem preordained. He holds the predominance of reason as planning, which organizes people’s living space, primarily responsible for this. Architecture, as its most visible sign, apparently intervenes in it ruthlessly. One example among others is that the fridge-freezers in the high-rise apartments of La Défense can only fit in such a way that they partially block the windows. The order of technical civilization leads to a domestication of human being. But this intervention of instrumental reason in the everyday practice of life also produces a countermovement. What seems striking to the writing observer is people’s need to have life played out for them, be it by theatre groups, be it by television. He interprets this as attempts at an unconscious abolition of the boundary between reality and its almost playful transformation. The search for the lost authenticity of one’s own expressions of life leads to a reconstruction of the immediate in the mediate of the media of art and information. Life is “inszeniert” and everyday behavior ritualized. This leads to an ambivalent experience. Although the viewer is repelled, he does not want to leave the place of openly revealed alienation; he even describes his spontaneous reaction as “obzöne Neugier”. His “Reise” follows yet another pattern of literary and cultural history: the search for the foreign, which made the bourgeois travellers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries repeatedly aware of their own beginnings. Handke’s journey into advanced civilization follows the pattern of these historical voyages of discovery. In the end, it too reveals a prehistory, but not in a temporal but in a psychological sense. The viewer’s reported ambivalence of feeling is grounded in the impression that his consciousness has found “endlich den äußeren Ort […], der ihm im Innern entsprach” (WÜ 35). In this way, the historical template is both taken up and inverted. The journey to the suburbs leads precisely to the point where his own alienation manifests itself most clearly. She does not seek the lost, melancholy is alien to her. Because there are no more unknown spaces, she instead makes the given and the present the ultimate reference point of life: “die Fremdheit der menschlichen Lebensäußerung” seems impossible for the viewer to escape. In this way, the text outlines a poetological stance that can be seen as one of the possible facets of postmodern writing (Renner 1988, 369 ff.). Of all things, alienation produces a perception that overcomes the limitations of its own conditions. In the midst of a repressive technical civilization, a conscious play with one’s own limits emerges. The historical and civilizational decentering of the subject and the fundamental questioning of its unity gives rise to a second-order aesthetic attitude, a staging that transforms compulsion into play and mediates experience, perception, and imagination with one another. The author Handke recalls that such experiences had previously only been possible to him through a momentary “Sinngebung” that allowed a “Weltzustand” to appear to him. He thus reflects on a writing process that reveals recourse to a

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Romantic mode of writing in Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling). It happens no differently here. The deserted city suddenly appears as the monumental image of an invisible order that exerts its secret fascination on the viewer precisely because it seems remote from humanity. It represents an order that is not dependent on man, but self-referential. The view of the uninvolved observer, directed from above onto the square in front of the houses, therefore marks an aesthetic perspective that draws a peculiar attraction from the alienation of man that it makes clear. The viewer is impressed by the power with which the planning design of the city asserts itself, which not only delimits living space, but at the same time designs a pattern for human behavior. The visitor to the suburb is fascinated by the fact that many people move across the squares as if in a secret order in order to disappear down a certain escalator shaft. He sees that the ornamental pattern of the masses produced by movement is not solely the result of human actions, but above all of the architectural plan that is made clear and enforced by means of the orders and signs of civilization. What becomes recognizable is a force of order that clings to power and at the same time produces a terror of the beautiful. This, too, taps into a figure of postmodernism: the viewer observes the disappearance of man in the mass with clammy delight. “Immer wieder näherten sich aus verschiedenen Richtungen diese Menschenzüge und verschwanden auf der Rolltreppe wie in einem Zeichentrickfilm” he remarks (WÜ 36). His perspective follows a fatalistic aesthetic that derives its appeal from the fact that, in his perception, all reality is reduced to game configurations. It is precisely this distanced attitude that takes only the act of looking seriously. But at the same time, the secret fascination of the travelling author also unfolds a critical insight. The clarity of judgement emerges from the aesthetic play. La Défense müßte eigentlich Sperrzone sein – weil da die Geheimnisse der technokratischen Welt sich ganz unverschämt verraten. Ein Stacheldraht gehört ringsherum und Schilder ‚Fotografieren verboten’. Aber die verantwortlichen Unmenschen in ihren menschenwürdigen Umgebungen sind sich schon zu sicher. Geil lassen sie auf den Tafeln vor den Hochhausunterschlupfen ihre Namen leuchten: Bank von Winterthur, Chase Manhattan Bank, Siemens, Esso... (WÜ 37 f.)

These names in particular make us aware that the visitor to La Défense has long been accustomed to reading the architecture of suburbia as an order of signs that corresponds to the overt signs of power. This, too, points back to the origin of thinking in the postmodern constellation, which first takes a look at the manifest signative order of cities to finally oppose it with a fundamentally different sign system. The architecture of the Parisian suburbs depicted in the photographs marks quite precisely the style from which postmodernism was later set apart. The architectural theorist Charles Jencks calls it “spätmodern”. The clarity of its geometricized formal language is coupled with elements that give the buildings a representative character and at the same time make them symbols of power and realizations of instrumental reason. At the end of his text, Handke aims at this connection between aesthetic order and power with his provocative question “Was ist ein Architekt?”

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Representative of other manifestations of social modernity, the architecture of La Défense shows how originally social orientations of urban planning turn into their opposite. The interaction between the power-based sign orders of late capitalist society and orientations of social modernity ultimately leads to a distortion of the original concept, which was both aesthetic and social planning. The critical gesture of Handke’s text, which takes this into account, cannot hide the fact, however, that this basic figure of civilization has long since become a second nature for the viewer himself, which determines his life. The notion of a second naturalness that Adorno develops in regard to the USA is applicable here; in Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied it plays a decisive role. There, the New World of America is perceived primarily as an order of signs of civilization that replace images of nature. In La Défense, however, a significant intensification of this constellation becomes apparent. The economic entities whose signets can be seen here have long since become cryptograms of domination. The signs of civilization and the insignia of power are one. An ideological blindness to the actual structures of power is no longer necessary in this state of the developmental of civilization, for it marks a place beyond ideology and social appearance. The signs not only have a clear social and political semantics that is so insistent that they sometimes appear like the things themselves; they also unfold a semiological game that is self-referential. Capturing this situation is a particular achievement of Handke’s writing at this time. The social and technical world becomes the inverted mirror image of his poetological designs. It determines human behaviour within the framework of sign orders that are no longer questioned. Action becomes first and foremost a reaction to signs; perception does not lead to a deciphering of the signifiers but is limited to the observation of the signified. The late text Der große Fall, in particular, will take up this historical constellation and make it the starting point for a counter-draft. It confirms the interconnectedness and superimposition of different orders of signs that are characteristic of Handke’s writing and that equally shape our experience.

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Rediscovery of Subjectivity: Lines of Development in Lyric Poetry

4.1  Leben ohne Poesie (1969–2007) Contrary to the programmatic title of the first volume of poetry, Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt (The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld), the texts collected there do not aim at the theme of lyrical subjectivity. Rather, they are almost entirely devoted to a language-experimental procedure that demonstratively presents certain grammatical models or ingrained ways of speaking and idioms. Prominent examples of this are Der Rand der Wörter 1 (The Words’ Edge 1, IAI 31), Der Rand der Wörter 2 (The Words’ Edge 2, IAI 104), Die verkehrte Welt (The inverted world, IAI 32–35), Abstraktion von dem Ball, der in den Fluß gefallen ist (Abstraction from the Ball that Fell into the River, IAI 40–42) or Veränderungen im Lauf des Tages (Changes in the Course of the Day, IAI 49–52), and finally the Wortfamilie (Word Families, IAI 99–103). This dominance of the experimental and formalistic, which leads one critic to remark that Handke “in seinen Texten einfach nicht vor[kommt]” (Scharang ÜH 60), points to the problem that the formulaic nature of language sometimes does not give sufficient space to the articulation of individuality. However, the lyrical texts, which, like the early spoken plays and early prose, repeatedly remind us that all literature has already become secondary literature (Scharang ÜH 61), not only reveal the rules and clichés mediated by language, but at the same time make them productive (Scharang ÜH 58). In doing so, they map out the scope of a poetic self. Handke’s poetry is to be placed in this field of tension, and it is from here that its uniqueness is determined. While some of the texts in the first volume of poetry merely depict the power of the existing, the given and the handed down, others show this as a force that challenges a creative countermovement. The poems that follow the procedure of the ‘objet trouvé’, the reproduction of an object found by chance, point solely to the given. Deutsche Gedichte (German Poems) exaggerate this by providing a collection of newspaper clippings as the content of blank pages glued together. But striking examples of this can also be found in Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_4

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Einsager, Die Aufstellung des 1. FC Nürnberg am 27 January 1968 (The line-up of the 1. FC Nürnberg of 27 January 1968, IAI 59) and Die japanische Hitparade am 25. Mai 1968 (The Japanese Hit-Parade of 25. May 1968, IAI 78–80). Whereas Lesen und Schreiben (Reading and Writing, IAI 48), Die Buchstabenformen (The Shapes of Characters, IAI 60–62) and Legenden (Legends, IAI 81–86) reinforce the moment of visualization by directly giving meaning to additional optical signals, the text Die Farbenlehre (The Lesson of colours, IAI 27–30) aims to point out the meaning and the peculiarity of sensual impressions and associations already through the printed image. On the other hand, there is a tendency within early poetry to bend back to traditional forms, with at least a rudimentary contouring of a traditional lyrical ego. Two texts in the first anthology in particular free themselves from the word and language games and methods of concrete poetry. They unfold associative meanings by making explicit a tension between immediate experience and the perception associated with it. The text Was ich nicht bin, nicht habe, nicht will, nicht möchte – und was ich möchte, was ich habe und was ich bin (IAI 23–26) bears the bracketed subtitle Satzbiographie (Sentence Biography) without reason. It demonstrates how, under the cover of ordinary sentences, names, and designations, the consciousness of being a distinctive self settles in. Following a chain of formulaic sentences that can be assigned to the sequence of an individual life, it succinctly states, “Was ich BIN: Ich bin’s!” (IAI 26). This sentence marks a crucial turning point. After overcoming the difficulty of saying “Ich” an ordering of perceptual images succeeds; it becomes possible to make subjective perspectives and perceptions narratable. The programmatic poem Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt (IAI 127–132) deals with this modeling of the ego, at the same time pointing to the peculiarity and special significance of the poetic design of reality. It initially describes situations and perceptions that produce specific and precisely nameable emotional states or can be assigned to them: Wir sind in Nashville in Tennessee: aber als wir das Hotelzimmer betreten und die Nummer des PLAYBOY mit dem zum Teil sichtbaren schimmernden Naseninnern der Ursula Andress angeschaut haben greift – statt der Ratlosigkeit darüber daß wir in Nashville sind – das Naseninnere der Ursula Andress um sich. (IAI 127) This linking of situations and sensations is finally shortened to a collection of associative images; it is nothing other than a staging of the lyrical process itself:

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Nennen wir also die Schuldlosigkeit Nagelschuh die Ratlosigkeit Hotelzimmer die Ausweglosigkeit neun Uhr die Unschlüssigkeit eine stehende Rolltreppe die Scham einen vollbesetzten Lift und die Geduld eine Platzanweiserin im Kino. (IAI 130) It is precisely here that it becomes apparent that the poetic design of reality already includes authentic experiences. The sometimes-surreal moments of fright point to the fear that Handke writes about in Eine Zwischenbemerkung über die Angst (An Incidental remark on Fear, WÜ 101  f.) and that is also named in the essay Die offenen Geheimnisse der Technokratie (The open secrets of technocracy), his “Journey to La Défense” (WÜ 35). Perception, recognition, and fright give rise to a topology of consciousness that can be compared to the spaces of everyday experience. Only through these experiences, which are at once sensual and psychic, do the inner world and outer world become symmetrical. Wir betreten unser Bewußtsein: wie in einem Märchen ist es dort früher Morgen auf einer Wiese im Frühsommer: wenn wir neugierig sind; wie in einem Western ist es dort Mittag mit einer großen ruhigen Hand auf der Theke: wenn wir gespannt sind; wie in einem Tatsachenbericht über einen Lustmord ist es dort früher Nachmittag in einem schwülen Spätsommer in einer Scheune: wenn wir ungeduldig sind; wie in einer Rundfunknachricht überschreiten dort gegen Abend fremde Truppen die Grenze: wenn wir verwirrt sind; und wie in der tiefen Nacht wenn ein Ausgehverbot verhängt ist breitet sich dort die Stille der Straßen aus wenn wir uns vor niemandem äußern können – (IAI 131) This poem, which makes reality and consciousness, reality and fantasy appear to be directly interlocked and symmetrical, at the same time points out that painfully

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felt irritations can also arise when both areas are touched. An image of this is provided by the description of an “ältliche Platzanweiserin” who, when it has become light, “voll Scham” has to offer for sale, of all things, the sweets that a young girl had previously offered on the screen. In later texts, this boundary between inside and outside will prove to be fundamentally permeable. Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming) draws on the spatial metaphor of the Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt and unfolds it in a narrative that allows the geographical spaces, the precincts of the unconscious and the spaces of the imagination to merge seamlessly. Only there is the image from Jean Paul’s Wutz redeemed, which Handke prefaces his first collection of poetry with as a motto: “... da allemal deine äußere und deine innere Welt sich wie zwei Muschelschalen aneinanderlöten und dich als ihr Schaltier einfassen …”. In this way, the novel continues a line that is first hinted at in the poem Die neuen Erfahrungen, then later continues in the lyrical texts of the second anthology Als das Wünschen noch geholfen hat (When Hope still Helped), and finally culminates in the programmatic description of Das Ende des Flanierens (Strolling Comes to an End, EF 93–97). In Die neuen Erfahrungen (The new Experiences, IAI 7–13), the moments and images described form a sequence of memories that is undoubtedly autobiographical. The motif of the first glance is assigned to different stages of life. However, in this text, the personal and the authentic as well as the existential states of experience are sometimes still crushed by the playfully used words and aperçus. There is a striking example of this: “Wann werde ich zum ersten Mal von jemandem hören, der einen Regenschirm mit in den Tod nehmen konnte?” (IAI 11). By contrast, the autobiographical retrospective Leben ohne Poesie (Live without Poetry, WÜ 9–23), which forms the entrance to the anthology Als das Wünschen noch geholfen hat (When Hope still Helped) has a clear center: all memories and impressions revolve around the question of writing; the language reflection of previous texts is now sharpened into the question of the possibilities of self-assertion through writing. First, the lyrical I remembers its threat from the ascribed language of others and the power of preformed concepts. He sees himself as part of a discourse controlled by power: Die Romane sollten “gewalttätig” sein und die Gedichte “Aktionen” Söldner hatten sich in die Sprache verirrt und hielten jedes Wort besetzt erpreßten sich untereinander indem sie die Begriffe als Losungsworte gebrauchten und ich wurde immer sprachloser. (WÜ 13) But because the fragmented memories combine to form the image of a development, they once again provide an impetus to write. By reporting on itself, the I releases its tensions, it becomes certain of itself:

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Dann mit der Schamlosigkeit des Sich-Ausdrückens ist das Vorausgedachte von Wort zu Wort gegenstandsloser geworden und wirklich mit einem Schlag wußte ich wieder was ich wollte und bekam eine Lust auf die Welt (Als Heranwachsender wenn sich ein Weltgefühl einstellte bekam ich nur Lust etwas zu SCHREIBEN jetzt stellt sich meist erst mit dem Schreiben eine poetische Lust auf die Welt ein). (WÜ 21) The last sentence of this poem is “wie stolz bin ich auf das Schreiben gewesen!” (W 23), it seems to prove that a new experience of reality is possible for the writer. To be sure, the text Blaues Gedicht (Blue Poem) (WÜ 55–69) initially resumes with a record of speechless anxiety in which the self is “analphabetisch von der Entsetzlichkeit” apart from it and loses memory as well as thoughts of the future (WÜ 56). Yet this text also sketches a turning point. The impressions in “der großen zierlichen Stadt” (WÜ 58) liberate for a short time not only to simply look, they also give hope to be “glücksfähig” and self-confident in selflessness (WÜ 60). However, this impression is initially contradicted by the dreams (WÜ 61). Of all things, they point out that everything thought as well as imagined must still assert itself against reality. For although the fantasies refrain from the “Peinlichkeit wahrer Geschichten” and bring into order “die unbeschreiblichen Einzelheiten der finsteren Neuzeit” in the obscenities and sexual expressions (WÜ 65), it is precisely the intimate experiencing and feeling that changes these contexts constructed solely by language: “beim Erleben erlebten wir die sexuellen Handlungen als Metaphern für etwas anderes” (WÜ 67). It is from here that the confusion of the words “Selbstgefühl” and “Selbstgewühl” reported by Leben ohne Poesie (WÜ 21) takes on its double meaning. The “wirklichen” images lull themselves into the “anderen”, and these are no longer produced by language alone, but fortified by experience and memory; they are wishful dreams rediscovered in one’s own past: und die “anderen” Bilder waren keine Allegorien sondern durch das Wohlgefühl befreite Augenblicke aus der Vergangenheit. (WÜ 67) Thus, the poem can point to what lies beyond it: Zu existieren fing an mir etwas zu bedeuten – (WÜ 68)

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It is part of the peculiarity of these lyrical texts that, although they depict a sequence of experiences that testify to a continuous line of development, they always begin anew and narrate tense contexts and processes in which loss of meaning and the giving of meaning, disintegration and reconstruction of the ego, are almost seamlessly joined together (cf. Bartmann 1984, 179, 186). The poem Die Sinnlosigkeit und das Glück (Nonsense and Happiness, WÜ 103–119) confirms this paradigmatically. It describes the absence of the “Rucks” repeatedly named here and subsequently, which could usher in the different and fulfilled time of which Blaues Gedicht is concerned and which is presented as a sense-giving event in Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling), in Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell), and Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil). The rediscovery of meaninglessness (WÜ 107) and the pretense of life from which the I of this text suffers (WÜ 109) thereby increase to surreal images. Die Finsternis, wo die Welt war, unterscheidet sich von der Finsternis des Undefinierbaren ringsum nur noch durch das frischere Schwarz, und jetzt strömen auch schon die Wirbel herein … (WÜ 112) Against the power of these images only dreams and the regression to childlike states of perception help. They prove to be a necessary force in the regained life. It is precisely the renunciation of the conscious will that makes possible a realization that is expressed in the lyrical text. Der Gegensatz zur Sinnlosigkeit ist nicht der Sinn – man braucht nur keinen Sinn mehr, sucht auch keinen philosophischen Sinn für den Unsinn: ausgezählte Wörter; die verboten gehörten, denkt man. (WÜ 115) This consideration finally frees one for the “vernünftige Zeit” in which “man träumen kann” (WÜ 118). This also gives rise to the desire “alt zu werden” and at the same time to be able to escape the patterns and constraints of adulthood, to behave like a child. Dreams and desires give hope for a state in which everyone can be a child again: […] und vor einem Kind, das einen anschaut, nachdem es ein Glas umgeworfen hat, denkt man, wenn das Kind einen nicht mehr so anschauen

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müßte das könnte das Wahre sein. (WÜ 118 f.) The reference to the autonomous world of children and the desire to behave like a child harkens back to the poem Leben ohne Poesie, in which the metaphors of being a child and the images of memory are directly coupled (WÜ 14). Here, as there, one finds hints of what the novels will later complete. Handke’s Tetralogie finally uses the example of the child Amina to place his own rediscovered childhood at the center of the author’s reflection and the narrated history of the emergence of authorship. A reflexive and life-historical solution to earlier problems also takes place in the sign of turning to the child, as evidenced by the late poem Das Ende des Flanierens (Strolling Comes to an End, EF 93–97). The series of images in this text, which also follows a city walk, does not differ from previous lyrical chains of images in its sharpness of observation. But now, being alone first appears as a state that has been overcome: Wir tun als ob das Alleinsein ein Problem sei Vielleicht ist es eine fixe Idee – wie die Angst im Sommer zu sterben wenn man schneller verwest. (EF 93) Throughout, the gazes now set fantasies free; they avoid the gloomy reflections. Even the recurring images of irritation (WÜ 94) dissolve in the observing imagination: Schöne Unbekannte mit dem breiten Gesicht die du drinnen im Restaurant an der Zigarette ziehst: Im Vorbeigehen auf der Straße erkenne ich dein Gesicht und es wird undeutlich – aufblühend in meiner Erinnerung. (EF 95) With the onset of fantasy, the obsessive ideas that still dominate earlier texts dissolve. When looking at a woman, it is said in clear allusion to the desire to kill, which still Die Sinnlosigkeit und das Glück records (WÜ 104), and the spontaneous murder reported by Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick): vorbei die Vorstellung der krachenden Guillotine in deinen Halswirbelknochen. (EF 93) Finally, stanza 10 reflexively overcomes a situation of alienation in the foreign discourse that Hörspiel Nr. 2 still attempts to enact. He du an der Straßenecke: die Geschichte von der Einsamkeit des modernen Menschen

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kennen wir ja inzwischen nun verschwinde auch du Nachts von den windigen Straßenecken. (EF 95) The poem agrees with the gesture of this radio play. It finally confirms the correctness of the formulation “begriffsauflösende Kraft des poetischen Denkens” (WÜ 76), which Handke used in his Büchner Prize speech in 1973. Without doubt, too, Ende des Flanierens transcends the constitution of I and I-perspective as it has begun to assert itself since Satzbiographie. For now, the awareness of one’s presuppositions also leads to the understanding of the text, which preserves memories, experiences, and fantasies, as a medium that is recorded in a Zwischenzeit. Pilger mit den schmerzblinden Augen Bevor du einschlägig bekanntgemacht bist von den uferwechselnden Flaneuren Gesammelt an der Schreibmaschine halte ich deine offiziell nicht bestätigte Zwischenzeit fest Unerschütterlich stehen meine Worte da für dich ohne mich. (EF 97) The lyrical attempt to capture “die flüchtigen Augenblicke” (EF 158) fosters the awareness that as a writer one is indebted to a “Volk der Leser”, as the Kafka Prize speech in 1979 self-confidently puts it (EF 158). In this way, the lyrical texts also steer towards the design of the “anderen” time, which in Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied and in Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung becomes for the first time a poetic and at the same time existential experience.

4.2  Gedicht an die Dauer (1986) With the Goethean formulation “Tage währts, Jahre dauerts” (“Things last days, things last years”), the poem Gedicht an die Dauer (To Duration, A Poem), written in 1986, directly follows this theme. The attempts to find another time and the fulfilled moment are now defined more closely in two ways: On the one hand, about one’s own life story, and on the other, in the context of literary tradition. Again concerning Goethe, it says “Die Dauer hat mit den Jahren zu tun, / mit den Jahrzehnten, mit unserer Lebenszeit; / die Dauer, sie ist das Lebensgefühl” (GD 12). Here, the meaning of one’s life is first opened up with very everyday references. The Fontaine Sainte-Marie and the Porte dʼAuteuil are mentioned (GD 9), as are the Griffener See (GD 52) and the stinkhorns in the garden thicket (GD 13). The memories of a sailing trip along the Turkish coast, however, steer these references back in a different direction. At first, it seems as if this trip reveals nothing but a series of fulfilled moments, but in the writer’s consciousness he and the other “Sommernomaden der Jetztzeit” are confronted with

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dissonant images. The “biblical” settings are juxtaposed with quite different signs of the times, a Lycian coffin that looks like a stone boat beached keel-up and “für uns Touristen hingeschlachtete[.] Lämmer” (GD 17). The writer is seized with melancholy and pain and succinctly concludes “zwar konnte ich den Augenblick festhalten, / doch ich hatte, selbst dann, / nicht das Recht auf ihn” (GD 19). At the same time, he realizes that the sudden desire to return to the garden at home, which the images of distance trigger, does not allow the experience of duration either. It is the anticipation of a figure of thought in the later work when, based on this consideration, the poem refers to the Goethe-oriented concept of ‘Geistesgegenwart’ (GD 24), which determines the perception of the individual as a superimposition of immediacy and reflexive over-forming. This reference already prefigures the particular form in which the theme of writing becomes the subject of Handke’s later texts. Duration is indeed “das Abenteuer des Jahraus – Jahrein”, but it is also decidedly “kein Abenteuer des Müßiggangs” (GD 22), but above all it requires “Festhalten[.] durch Schreiben” (GD 25). The poem Gedicht von der Dauer (To Duration, A Poem), which is described as “liebes Gedicht” (GD 27), thus determines as its actual object a particular form of perception of everyday things and relationships. It is not by chance that duration is described like a female lover whom the writer approaches, but explicitly this has nothing to do with “Geschlechterliebe”; rather, the experiences of duration can also be made in other situations, for instance in the encounter with a child. For their experience, the poem finds a “besonderes Zeitwort: / Sie bestirnen dich” (GD 31). This search for a temporal word that places duration in the image and avoids the substantival denotation is taken up again in later texts (VB 317; BV 265). Because the poem ties the experience of duration, which is obviously different for everyone, to images of the past for the writing self, it follows the autobiographical inscription of many of Handke’s texts. It sketches a basic figure of exploration of the self that is inscribed indiscriminately in all texts: “in der Stille an diesen Seen / weiß ich, was ich tue, / und in dem ich weiß, was ich tue, / erfahre ich, wer ich bin” (GD 38). A connection is explicitly drawn between the place of origin and that of the present life. The experience of duration is only possible when the past is remembered in the present and at the same time the ability to transform what is experienced is developed: “an die Stelle des Geredes in mir, / der Marter aus vielen Stimmen, / tritt die Nachdenklichkeit, / eine Art erlösenden Schweigens” (GD 45). It is the inner dialectic of this poem that the self-discovery that makes the “Ruck der Dauer” (GD 53) possible can only arise in a dialectical figure. The I that constitutes itself says of itself, “Von der Dauer beseelt, / bin ich auch jene anderen, / welche schon vor meiner Zeit an dem / Griffener See standen […]” (GD 52). This dissonant self-awareness has its counterpart in the dialectic of the writing process itself. On the one hand, it refers to the writing subject, who states that he is not “entrückt” by duration. Rather, it concludes, “Sie rückt mich zurecht” (GD 54). But independently of this, the writer notes at the end of the poem: “Rucke der Dauer: /

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Ihr seid nun gefügt / zum Gedicht” (GD 55). That this seemingly pathetic closing formulation is the abbreviation of Handke’s writing program, which applies not only to this poem, is revealed by the reference to the following quotation from Henri Bergson. It says that no image can replace the intuition of duration. Instead, it is possible that “viele verschiedene Bilder, entnommen den Ordnungen sehr unterschiedlicher Dinge” work together “in ihrer Bewegung […] und [lenken] das Bewusstsein genau an jene Stelle” where then “eine gewisse Intuition fassbar wird” (GD 57). The role of the orders of images in Handke’s writing is thus prefigured, as is the cross-textual network of meanings that they generate in his work.

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5.1 Search Movements: Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell, 1972) In a conversation about Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell, 1972), Handke expresses that America represents for him a world “die durch die Kenntnis ihrer Signale vorgegeben ist” (Scharang ÜH 86). This has a double meaning for him. On the one hand, he knows of no place that can trigger “die gleiche Entpersönlichung und Entfremdung” (Scharang ÜH 87); on the other hand, America is not only a foreign and entirely different country, it is also “eine Traumwelt, in der man sich selber ganz neu entdecken muß, in der man selbst ganz neu anfangen muß” (Scharang ÜH 87). The description of this new beginning, which is to take place on a journey across the American continent, does not proceed without presupposition, however, but requires references back. The text of the Brief takes up questions from previous texts, which it continues and specifies them. The description of the signs and signals of the New World directs our attention once again to the question of the influence of signs on the perception of reality; it designs an experimental situation and reflects on it. The Brief is not solely a description of one’s “Entwicklung” (or “development”), but a novel about the emergence of reality through signs (Nägele 1981, 390). Moreover, the world of signs in Der kurze Brief includes not only language but also perceived images (Schiwy 1973, 31–33). On the journey, the narrator recalls his first stay in America. At that time, he perceived above all a universe of new images that impinged on his “menschenleeres Bewußtsein” (KB 81). The second visit to America then already links all perceptions with emotional states; the traveller begins to give meaning to the signs through his imagination. Moreover, he encounters people whose life practice is determined by sign systems. The consciousness of the Americans with whom he comes into contact is oriented towards representable myths of everyday life; the child Bénédictine creates a self-referential world of signs for himself that is independent

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_5

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of the travel images he perceives. More resolutely than in previous texts, the sign systems narrated, therefore, appear not simply as fetters of perception, but as spaces of the imagination. They allow insights that do not arise from the mere perception of everyday reality. At the same time, the Brief openly cites literary tradition, whereas earlier texts systematically tried to negate it. The novel is linked to nineteenth-century literature by the theme of America and the motif of the journey, both of which are also related to the plot pattern of development. The recourse to the literary traditions of the psychological novel, the German “Entwicklungsroman”, a novel centered around the psychological development of its protagonist, and the European American novel have a common point of convergence: the journey through the New World becomes a journey into a “Bewußtseinsland” (Mixner 1977, 145). All external images correspond to internal images, all experiences refer to memories. For the narrator, this double movement leads to an awareness of his own preconditions, which undoubtedly also becomes a self-reflection on the part on the part ofof the author. The references to the literary tradition are numerous, but their meaning is not uniform; moreover, some exhaust themselves in mere quotation. Without question, the title of the novel refers to Chandler’s The Long Good- Bye, and indeed it is about the story of persecution linked to a chain of assassinations. The wife, Judith, travels after her husband, who is traveling with his girlfriend Claire and their child and makes several death threats against him. But this exhausts the recourse to Chandler. In contrast, the mottos from Karl Philipp Moritz’s Anton Reiser that precede the first and second parts, the constant recourse to Gottfried Keller’s Grünem Heinrich, and also the orientation towards Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby show that the reference to the psychological novel and the “Entwicklungsroman” carries greater weight. In terms of content, Der kurze Brief harkens back to this tradition with the motifs of the journey, the theater, and finally the educational conversation, the last conversation of the narrator and his wife Judith with the film director John Ford (Elm 1974, 354). At the same time, Handke thus revisits a theme that he had already ironically dealt with in the Begrüßung des Aufsichtsrats (Welcoming the Board of Directors) in the Halbschlafgeschichten and to which he goes back again and again conversationally (Durzak 1982, 106 f.). However, the return to tradition is broken; the concept of the “Entwicklungsroman” has become problematic for Handke. He therefore no longer attempts to depict a development, but only to describe the hope, “daß man sich so nach und nach entwickeln könnte”; the journey through America is “Fiktion eines Entwicklungsromans” (Scharang ÜH 88), the actions of the travelling, I have no vector, but only mark a chronological sequence (Zeller 1979, 120). Independently of this, this fiction uses the hope directed towards history that has always been associated with the land of America in the literary tradition. Among the stops on the journey, only some of whom Handke really knows, stand out the names that emerge in the course of Western colonization and bear witness to the hopes of Europeans. The journey, which begins in Boston, the place of arrival of the Pilgrim Fathers, leads via Providence, Phoenixville, Columbus, and Estacada finally to Bel

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Air, where it ends in a garden of John Ford, overgrown with orange trees and showing all the signs of the earthly paradise and the garden of America, which determine the European image of America in the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. Moreover, it is striking that in literary tradition the place name Columbus is both the symbol of a voyage to the New World and a station of American westward expansion on the continent. Charles Sealsfield’s Kajütenbuch, is one of the prominent names of hope. It is this novel, above  of all others, that the narrator remembers (KB 84; Weiss 1975, 444). There is some evidence that John Ford, the teacher and at the same time exponent of the American way of life, is modeled after the ‘Alcalde’ in Das Kajütenbuch, after a patriarch who proclaims the teachings of the New World. Moreover, the motif of setting out for America is enacted scenically in Der kurze Brief. Following a conversation with a pair of lovers in St. Louis, whose living together almost fulfills the legend of ‘“die Legende von El Dorado’” (KB 114) for the narrator, the narrator and his companions, who are on a Mississippi steamboater, hear its signal, and with one stroke the narrator becomes aware of the history of America (Nägele 1981, 395). So gewaltig war das Signal, daß ich, während es dröhnte, auseinanderschreckend sekundenlang einen Traum von einem Amerika empfand, von dem man mir bis jetzt nur erzählt hatte. Es war der Augenblick einer routiniert erzeugten Auferstehung, in dem alles ringsherum seine Beziehungslosigkeit verlor, in dem Leute und Landschaft, Lebendes und Totes an seinen Platz rückte und eine einzige, schmerzliche und theatralische Geschichte offenbarte. (KB 121 f.)

The passage points to the hopes associated with the journey through the other continent. This is a story of socialization that emerges from the encounter with the people of the New World and its order of signs. In this respect, the text fulfils at this point what the literary reference to Gottfried Keller’s Der Grüne Heinrich and Karl Philipp Moritz’ Anton Reiser promises. As in Karl Philipp Moritz’s psychological novel, which shows self-awareness not only as a path to the theatre, but always lets it emerge through the escape from the city out into nature, the experience of nature in Der Kurze Brief also depicts a change in the narrator’s consciousness on his journey through America. In his perception of nature, he becomes aware not only of social experiences, but above all of all life-historical experiences. But unlike for Anton Reiser, nature cannot simply be a space of escape for him; it does not mark the sharp contrast between inwardness and the public sphere that determines literary images of nature from Anton Reiser to Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther. Rather, it is part of a life-­historical link between the inner world and the outer world, the intensity of which the traveller only becomes aware of under the impression of new images and experiences. Therefore, the experience of nature does not simply mean for him a release from social constraint. In any case, the free nature in America that the narrator still perceives is repeatedly obscured by the images of civilization. The memory of childhood nature, on the other hand, is socially and historically mediated from the outset.

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It confirms the basic axiom of Dialektik der Aufklärung, that the domination of humans over nature and the domination of humans over humans are directly connected (Adorno GS-7, 173). Both images of nature are subject to their own law. While American nature always appears to the traveller only as a perspective from the space of civilisation, in the view from the window, from the car in driving through a landscape, the remembered nature of childhood is from the outset far from idyllic and already fraught with fear. Ich war auf dem Land aufgewachsen und konnte schwer verstehen, wie einen die Natur von etwas befreien sollte; mich hatte sie nur bedrückt, oder es war mir in ihr wenigstens unbehaglich gewesen […]. Weil das Kind sofort in die Natur gezwungen wurde, um darin zu arbeiten, entwickelte es auch nie einen Blick dafür, höchstens einen bloß kuriosen, auf Felsspalten, hohle Bäume und Erdlöcher, in denen man verschwinden konnte, überhaupt auf alle Arten von unterirdischen Höhlen […]. Wenn der Wind ein Weizenfeld bewegte, war es mir nur lästig, daß er mir die Haare in das Gesicht blies, obwohl ich mir ein Weizenfeld, das sich im Wind hin und her wälzte, später oft vorstellte, um mir auszureden, wie unbehaglich mir die Natur immer gewesen war, und doch eigentlich nur deswegen, weil ich mir in ihr nie etwas leisten konnte. (KB 50 f.)

That the child’s flight into the rocky canyons, trees, and holes in the earth are not spaces of security is confirmed by a scene in which the narrator, who is in a Jefferson Street snack bar, fantasizes a “tiefschwarzes Unterholz” and immediately associates this image with Judith’s possible death (KB 20; Durzak 1982, 114). Neither nature nor the images of civilization in the New World, but also not the escape into dreams, can therefore relieve the anxiety that dominates the narrator’s “leidende Erinnerung”. Even at the beginning, when he receives a message from his wife that he rightly interprets as a farewell, he flashes back to fears of his youth, to the threat of American bombers, to the fear of children in the forest at night searching for a missing person (KB 9). The fright of Claire’s child brings back his own fright when the plug was suddenly pulled out of the child bathing in the sink (KB 88; v. Hofe/Pfaff 1980, 75). Although on the one hand, the text attempts to distance these childhood patterns (Elm 1974, 360), on the other hand, it shows that the adult traveller repeatedly falls back manically into the fears of his childhood. His telephone call to Austria gives an example of this: In the New World, he imagines the images of the Old. The first futile call to his mother leads directly to the fantasy of an Austrian landscape with a “Marterl” (KB 32); in Tucson he recalls waking up next to his grandmother, who has just died (KB 157); from there he finally calls his mother again, and then reads the conclusion of Der Grüne Heinrich, who returns home to his mother, whom he finds dying, and whose wife returns from America. His reaction to this reading is “hysterisches Weinen” (KB 172). Where the childhood memories do not appear as images or scenes, they loom as dead signs of a time gone by in the experiences of the moment. When the narrator goes to visit his brother in the lumberjack village of Estacada, he finds there not only a pioneer monument and an authentic pioneer scene, but above all the memory

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of home again. The brother has remained as a lumberjack what he was in the Old World; the sign of this continuity is a calendar that the narrator remembers from his youth. The thought that the brother keeps having the new calendar with the new picture sent to America is so unbearable to him that he has to suppress it (KB 176). Because the images of the new remind us of the past, states of dissociation repeatedly occur (KB 163–165; Nägele 1981, 405). They pervade the entire text and only seem to be lifted in the final scene. These dissociations are unconsciously linked to memories of the mother, who is “ab und zu schwermütig” (KB 13) and who, in her second telephone conversation, communicates that she now walks around a lot and “vergesse dabei ganz auf die Zeit” (KB 170), a state that also frequently befalls the narrator. Comparable irritations determine the perception of civilization and nature. Objects can form themselves into a legible landscape, and landscapes appear as “zu Hieroglyphen verschlungen” (KB 144; Bartmann 1984, 170). The ambivalent psychological significance of such transformations is evidenced by a perception of nature from the window of the Holiday Inn in Indianapolis, in front of which the narrator sees a cypress tree standing on a hill. Ihre Zweige sahen in der Dämmerung noch fast kahl aus. Sie schwankte leicht hin und her, in einer Bewegung, die dem eigenen Atem glich, ich vergaß sie wieder, aber während ich dann auch mich selber vergaß und nur noch hinausstarrte, rückte die Zypresse sanft schwankend mit jedem Atemzug näher und drang mir schließlich bis in die Brust hinein. Ich stand regungslos, die Ader im Kopf hörte auf zu schlagen, das Herz setzte aus. Ich atmete nicht mehr, die Haut starb ab, und mit einem willenlosen Wohlgefühl spürte ich, wie die Bewegung der Zypresse die Funktion des Atemzentrums übernahm, mich in sich mitschwanken ließ, sich von mir befreite, wie ich aufhörte, ein Widerstand zu sein, und endlich als Überzähliger aus ihrem sanften Spiel ausschied. Dann löste sich auch meine mörderhafte Ruhe, und ich fiel aufs Bett, schwach und angenehm faul. Wo ich war und wann ich woanders sein würde, alles war mir recht, die Zeit verging schnell. (KB 95)

Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire) will later shed light on the fact that the cypress becomes a life-historical signifier in the author’s texts. It marks a psychological disposition that Handke can overcome solely through the capacity for aesthetic self-reflection. It is characteristic of the fragility of the images that mark a development in Der kurze Brief that even in John Ford’s orange grove there are cypresses as a sign of the worn-out. Der Kurze Brief provides an example of how aesthetic self-reflection emerges from a life-historical one and at the same time presupposes an engagement with literary tradition. It makes clear that the unmediated reference to nature can no longer exist, for the signs of nature and civilization have long since become intertwined in modernity. A dream of the narrator’s’s makes this obvious: “Zeichen im Sand, die ein dummer Gärtner wie Blumen begoß, Pflanzen, die Wörter bildeten […]” (KB 105; Nägele 1981, 411). Nature can become a system of signs, and the signs of civilization can turn into second nature. Under these conditions, all moments of liberation are merely momentary, they are sudden epiphanies (Bohrer 1981, 353; Durzak 1982, 115; Bartmann 1984, 169) that always only briefly make one forget the

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problematic self. But all of them already carry within them a possibility that finally unfolds: out of the “leidenden Erinnerung” emerges an active one. The mode of “tätige Erinnerung” acquires its full meaning in the scope of life-­ historical self-reflection. At the same time, the mode of an aesthetic view of reality is sketched out in this, which the author designs for himself. On the one hand, he describes how the aesthetic view emerges from subjective perceptions, and on the other hand, he points out that the concept of the subject, the possibility of self-­ awareness has changed in comparison to tradition. Auf einmal begriff ich, wie aus Verwechslungen und Sinnestäuschungen Metaphern entstanden. Die ganze Himmelsgegend, in der die Sonne gerade untergegangen war, blendete jetzt stärker als vorhin noch die unmittelbaren Sonnenstrahlen. Als ich zu Boden schaute, hüpften dort Irrlichter auf, und noch im Hotel griff ich in der Dunkelheit nach einigen Sachen daneben. ‚Mein ganzes Wesen verstummt und lauscht‘: so hatte man sich früher zu den Naturerscheinungen verhalten; ich aber spürte in diesen Augenblicken vor der Natur wieder unangenehm deutlich mich selber. (KB 79)

Thus, in place of the traditional gesture of inwardness, to which nature becomes the projection surface of the ego and which is outlined here in the reference to Hölderlin, comes the experience of an endangered ego that knows itself thrown back on itself and questions its own individuality (Hölderlin GSA3, 8). The fear of an unalterable individuality calls to mind that any notion of constraint-free identity has always been unrealizable utopia. This is made clear by the reference to one of the literary models mentioned shortly afterward in the text. In the conversation about Der grüne Heinrich, with whom the narrator repeatedly compares himself, it becomes clear that the protagonist Heinrich Lee attempted the utopia of an unbiased life and experience and behaved in such a way that the world became a “Bescherung” to him. By contrast, the narrator’s recourse to the wishful world of childhood initially throws him back to a state in which wishes, and fears are still directly coupled (KB 96). At the same time, he begins to reflect on why, even as a child, he was “in einen Taumel versetzt” by these dissonant ideas. While the memory of his childhood fears makes it clear to him that every childhood dream was in tension with orders that proved threatening in the context of socialization, Claire’s child manages to achieve from the outset what the narrator’s active memory cannot. It perceives the signs of civilization as a second nature and fantasizes a secret order into the images it sees, which is accessible only to it and cannot be grasped by adults. Therefore, a regrouping of the photos on the windshield makes the child cry out “panisch” (KB 88). The child of the New World and the New Time succeeds in doing what the adult of the Old Time and World cannot. Because for him the hope of new experiences is rendered illusory by memories of a past threatened by compulsion, he needs a liberation that knows neither past nor future. It is no coincidence that the foreboding of this condition occurs in Providence, of all places. Dieses kurze Aufleuchten der richtigen Zahl aber war so stark gewesen, daß ich es empfand, als ob die Zahl auch wirklich gekommen wäre, aber nicht jetzt, sondern ZU EINER ANDEREN ZEIT.

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Diese andere Zeit bedeutet nicht etwa die Zukunft oder die Vergangenheit, sie war ihrem Wesen nach eine ANDERE Zeit als die, in der ich sonst lebte und in der ich vor und zurück dachte. (KB 25)

This perspective is not altered by the fact that this experience is also anxiety-ridden. Later on this journey, in Indianapolis, the remembered epiphany of the other time proves to be threatened by a panic terror that points back to the painful childhood experiences. Und doch erschrak ich wieder vor diesem Schritt, als mir einfiel, wie notwendig aufgelöst und leer, ohne eigene Lebensform, ich mich in der anderen Welt bewegen würde; ich empfand heftig ein allgemeines paradiesisches Lebensgefühl, ohne Verkrampfung und Angst, in dem ich selber, wie in dem Spiel der Zypresse, gar nicht mehr vorkam, und es grauste mir so sehr vor dieser leeren Welt, daß ich in einer Schrecksekunde das ungeheure Entsetzen des Kindes nacherlebte, das an einer Stelle, wo es gerade noch etwas gesehen hatte, mit einem Mal nichts mehr sah. In diesem Augenblick verlor ich für immer die Sehnsucht, mich loszusein, und bei dem Gedanken an meine oft kindischen Ängste […] fühlte ich plötzlich einen Stolz, dem ein ganz selbstverständliches Wohlgefühl folgte. (KB 101 f.)

This passage reveals the contradictory relationship between Handke’s text and the tradition of the development novel, whose plot patterns, and themes he cites. With the literary tradition, the experiences on which it is based can be criticized at the same time. Only then can the consciousness of individuality emerge “auf dem Umweg vermittelter poetischer Erfahrung” (Mixner 1977, 151). But this is only one side. The ambivalence of the described experience of nature makes every literarily mediated experience problematic. The fact that the perception of nature in the Der kurze Brief is also portrayed as isolation (KB 95) makes it clear that individuality outside of fiction can usually only be preserved at the price of voluntary subordination to given constraints. This is indicated by the special role that the narrator assigns to the film actor Hans Moser because in all his films he is a typified minor character, a person who remains true to himself by expressing his individuality only within a limited sphere (KB 151). The conventional notion of a liberating perception of nature as a projection surface of feeling, which has been conveyed many times in the course of literary history, proves to be an empty utopia for the narrator of Der kurze Brief. It becomes clear to him that the immediate experience of nature -based solely on the subject would make as little sense as the free-floating utopia. The perception of nature in Der kurze Brief, precisely because it is always shown to be historically and socially mediated, cannot be reproduced at will; in by Bénédictine’s case, it is replaced by a fixation on the signs of civilization, which is experienced as a world of signs and second nature (KB 117; Nägele 1981, 396 f., 411). This second nature appears at the same time as ordered nature. Thus, in the modern text, the landscapes that narrate the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are replaced by a world of artificial signs and images of civilization with the same structure. Their coherence, however, is only grasped through the ordering view. In this fictional novel of travel and development, it becomes apparent that neither American images nor the experiences of Americans are transferable.

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The narrator’s itinerary and the woman’s chase do indeed culminate in an Arcadian idyll in John Ford’s garden (v. Hofe/Pfaff 1980, 74). But the stories of the Europeans and the narratives of the Americans prove to be inverse. Where Ford propagates the we-story, the shared story, the collective experiences that redeem the myth of the ‘American dream’ as much as the nineteenth-century notions of paradise, the two travelers make it clear that they cannot go back to that point. Where the director’s epic reason propagates cohabitation, they look for a way to diverge. While the latter takes its cue from the collective myth and ideology of Americanism, the travelers free themselves from the constraints of living together. They tell their previous lives as a story to be able to leave each other without hatred; at the same time, the narrator himself enters the story that is being told (KB 222). The utopian projections, which for Europeans can only be preserved as literary fictions, the American Ford naively tries to see as realized in his own society. In this respect, too, he is comparable to Sealsfield’s Alkalden, with which the European Charles Sealsfield transforms the hopes of the Old World into a story of new beginnings. In this context, the conversation about Don Carlos with the actors in St. Louis already makes it clear (KB 147–149) that the Europeans understand and experience from the outset as the history of consciousness what the Americans still experience as real history. Therefore, first of all, for the American, as Der Kurze Brief presents him, the experience of the role is positive, while for the European it only proves his alienation. As a private story, this is demonstrated by two lovers, who are undoubtedly the counterfactual of the story of the narrator and his wife Judith. In the case of the Europeans, the agreement that a failed relationship could at least be continued as a marriage game in which the characters move “wie in einer Choreographie aneinander vorbei” does not succeed. By contrast, the lovers can live together simply by seeing all their possessions as symbols of community. “In unseren Träumen werden mit der Zeit sogar unsere Haushaltsgeräte Haushaltsgeräte der Vereinigten Staaten sein” the lovers said. “Dann könnten wir auch endlich beide das gleiche träumen” (KB 120). The inverse plot models that stand at the end of the fictional development novel are nevertheless interlocked, but this is not in a substantive but in a structural sense. Whereas for the Americans the fictions of the film are merely a repetition of reality, for the Europeans their real history, treated in the telling like fiction, frees them for the reality of fantasy. This inverts the conventional scheme of the “Entwicklungsroman” (development novel), which seeks to lead back from the field of fantasy to reality. Aesthetic perception is not meant to refer back to practice, nor to have a revealing effect on it. Rather, it is an alternative to experience, which produces nothing other than possible ways of looking at reality. What in Anton Reiser still appears as a disturbance of the sense of reality and is sensibly regulated in Der Grüner Heinrich, here determine the forms of living together. The ‘‘story’’ and ‘‘plot’’ in Der kurze Brief emerge in the playing out of various experiences of reality, all of which are already anticipated as literarisedliteralized. Reality and fiction prove to be interchangeable, for the text subjects both to the law of the game, which relates them to one another. This opens the magical connection between time and the ‘other time’ that affects the narrator. Only in this

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way can he see the ideological misrecognition of reality to which the American falls prey as a productive way of looking at reality. It is precisely in the misperception of reality that the life-guiding interaction of perception and experience proves itself to him. Both the childish attempt to build up its own world of signs and American ideology make it clear to him that the forms of perception determine the experience of reality. From this insight follows for him the demand for mediation of memory, experience, and perception. It becomes possible through “systematische[s] Erleben” (KB 124). The emergence of metaphor from confusion, the transition from suffering to active memory are forms of perception that lead towards an aesthetic view of reality. However, the motif of the other time also makes it clear that these forms of perception can neither be convention, as literature has conveyed them until now nor can they remain utopia (KB 95 f., 102; Nägele 1981, 408). Because the narrator of Der kurze Brief becomes aware of the stringency of aesthetic contemplation, he must eliminate aesthetic and literary convention to regain free contemplation. The attempt to find one’s way back to immediate perception in the repulsion from the constraints of practice and at the same time from the predetermined literary experience constitutes the center of a new concept of “Innerlichkeit”/ inwardness. The narrator’s aesthetic perception of reality, though coupled with the many states of suddenness that pervade the novel (KB 194), is not an inexplicable epiphany. Rather, it is based on a reflexive reappraisal of his own life and past experiences. The aesthetic utopia that unfolds amidst the backward idyll of Ford’s garden grows out of life-historical learning that can only be reflected upon in America, the land of consciousness. The systematic experience that replaces the “leidende Erinnerung” like the panic-stricken horror of childhood (v. Hofe/Pfaff 1980, 77) shows itself to be conditioned by the experience of suffering pressure. It is precisely the oppressive system of rules of the boarding school, which almost completely cut the adolescent off from the outside world (KB 124; Schiwy 1973, 31–33), that later enables him not only to recognize and classify what he experiences but also to know which experiences he is still missing. From the remembered history of his suffering grows a history of desire that, which can preserve the aesthetic view. Thus, the new consciousness of the ego leads to a correction of the literary tradition in that it no longer allows for a hierarchy of fantasy and reality, but shows that the two are interchangeable, that the natural and artificial, fictional worlds are mirror images of each other. This also gives rise to a critique of one’s own previous writing (Durzak 1982, 109). It clearly suggests that one’s own life tends to imitate an invented one, while the invented life draws on familiar patterns of reality experience. A rather indeterminate feeling reminds the narrator of his earlier writing. Shortly before, the first phone call to Austria, in which the child tells the neighbor that her mother is arriving on the last bus (KB 32), had recalled the memory and fantasy-triggering situation of Die Hornissen (Hornets). A little later, the narrator begins to reflect on himself, stating that even then a “Mangel an Kenntnissen und Erlebnissen” had led him to deceive himself about this “darüber hinwegzutäuschen, indem [er] die wenigen Tätigkeiten, die […] möglich waren, im Beschreiben so zerlegte, als ob sie von großen Erfahrungen erzählten” (KB 35). Reflecting on the

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fantasy images in Gottfried Keller’s Grüner Heinrich, all of which testify to a lack of observation and real experience, the narrator then admits to himself: “Mir fiel wieder ein, daß auch ich lange Zeit nur einen verschrobenen Sinn für die Umwelt gehabt hatte: wenn ich etwas beschreiben sollte, wußte ich nie, wie es aussah, erinnerte mich höchstens an Absonderlichkeiten, und wenn es keine gab, erfand ich sie” (KB 65). In this way, the narrated recollection not only leads to an awareness of one’s own and of the foreign, but it also simultaneously marks out the contours of new writing. This already indicates that Handke’s texts are moving towards the outline of a comprehensive poetology.

5.2 The Power of Others: Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story, 1972) The narrative and novel of 1972, Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story) and Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell) can be seen as a turning point in Handke’s work. Turning away from the fixation on the language experiment produces a narrative that reveals a psychogenetic and autoanalytical trace, combining segments of memory with new poetic strategies. This also succeeds because these texts draw on the literary patterns of biography and the “Entwicklungsroman”/ developmental novel, which are suitable for recounting life-­ historical experiences. Der kurze Brief describes an authentic journey inscribed with the story of a changing relationship between three adults and a child. Because the journey takes place in the experiential space of the New World, it also gains meaning through the simultaneously mythical and utopian images associated with this realm of life. Wunschloses Unglück, on the other hand, describes a way back. Through the example of the story of the author’s mother, which he begins to write after her suicide and that could be read as an inverted “Entwicklungsroman”, the proletarian-peasant country Austria, which also determines the author’s past, comes into focus. Both texts have an autobiographical centering, so they lead in a different way to a psychological intensification of the question of the role of language in the representation and practical mastering of reality. Basically, like the preceding texts and plays, they are also characterized by the attempt to preserve, communicate or change individual experiences and personal feelings in language and at the same time in literary patterns. The beginning of Wunschloses Unglück already points to this constellation. It begins with the news of Handke’s mother’s death printed under the heading “Vermischtes” (miscellaneous) in the Carinthian Volkszeitung and then immediately reports on the “Bedürfnis über sie zu schreiben” triggered by her suicide (WU 7). The narrated story of the mother becomes the counter- text to the impersonal note. It is an attempt to visualize individual life, which threatens to be obscured by the formulaic language formula, and she therefore wants to do without the help of the

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“religiöse, individualpsychologische oder soziologische Traumdeutungstabelle” (WU 11). The personal consternation that writing produces reveals not only the language, but first and foremost the writing and the author’s writing experience as a problem. First of all, it becomes clear that it is difficult to capture an individual life that is already known as a “Fall” and whose idiosyncrasy threatens to be buried by the literary pattern of biography as much as by the formulaic newspaper note. Das Gefährliche bei diesen Abstraktionen und Formulierungen ist freilich, daß sie dazu neigen, sich selbständig zu machen. Sie vergessen dann die Person, von der sie ausgegangen sind  – eine Kettenreaktion von Wendungen und Sätzen wie Bilder im Traum, ein Literatur-Ritual, in dem ein individuelles Leben nur noch als Anlaß funktioniert. Diese zwei Gefahren  – einmal das bloße Nacherzählen, dann das schmerzlose Verschwinden einer Person in poetischen Sätzen – verlangsamen das Schreiben, weil ich fürchte, mit jedem Satz aus dem Gleichgewicht zu kommen. (WU 44 f.)

Here, too, the formative importance of memory is confirmed. In the same way, that narration creates connections by faking “die Ordentlichkeit eines üblichen Lebenslaufschemas” (WU 48) for reasons and dates, remembering creates an awareness of completed phases of life because it systematically covers up gaps or eliminates them through imaginary images and linguistic order. In this way, the power of language and memory, which is sometimes obscured by standardization, also gives rise to a productive force. About the reported conditions it is said: Indem ich sie beschreibe, fange ich schon an, mich an sie zu erinnern, als an eine abgeschlossene Periode meines Lebens, und die Anstrengung, mich zu erinnern und zu formulieren, beansprucht mich so, daß mir die kurzen Tagträume der letzten Wochen schon fremd geworden sind. (WU 10)

The demands of biography make clear, more than previous texts, the tension between the linguistic formula and the claim to immediate expression, which arises as an experience of the writer himself; it has not only a linguistic but above all a psychological reason. It is not only the result of a “Trauerarbeit” (Nägele 1983, 397), but above all the result of a process of displacement that gives rise to writing in the first place. The consternation over death also shapes the writing situation. The narrative begins with the fact that after the “Anfangsvorstellungen” have given way, “das Bewußtsein schmerzte, so leer war es darin auf einmal geworden” (WU 10). The writing therefore initially repeats the horror of death. At the same time, it preserves “Momente der äußersten Sprachlosigkeit und das Bedürfnis, sie zu formulieren” (WU 11). The account of the mother’s death is as much an attempt to get at something as it is a method of pushing it aside and coping. But this is precisely what proves to be increasingly difficult. The author, who is accustomed to removing himself “von Satz zu Satz mehr aus dem Innenleben der beschriebenen Gestalten”, does not achieve “die übliche […] abgeklärte […] Vogelperspektive” (WU 46), his mother does not become “zu einer beschwingten und in sich schwingenden, mehr und mehr heiteren

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Kunstfigur. Sie läßt sich nicht einkapseln, bleibt unfaßlich, die Sätze stürzen in etwas Dunklem ab und liegen durcheinander auf dem Papier” (WU 47). Above all, it becomes clear that the “Namenlose” and “die sprachlosen Schrecksekunden” (WU 47) do not belong to the narrated life story alone, but also to the past life of the narrator himself. In the communicated story, he discovers the traces of a forgotten one of his own; in the description of his mother’s life, he also remembers where he came from. This is the beginning of his “langsame Heimkehr”, of which both the novel of the same name and the entire Tetralogie (Tetralogy) later tell. What appears as a “Sozialgeschichte des Individuums” (Durzak 1982, 121; Mixner 1977, 185) thus not only shows the power of social instances and norms. Rather, not unlike the drama Kaspar, it first makes clear that these are reflected in language and that it is above all language with which they assert themselves. This results in a further connection between the biographer’s writing situation and his mother’s life situation; it too proves to be a double relationship. On the one hand, it determines the narrated and the biographer’s history of socialization, in which language acts as ideology and social sign practice (Nägele/Voris 1978, 58), and on the other hand, it points to the power of the literary formula to which the biographer and narrator are subject as soon as he begins to write. The disguising power of literary language patterns now appears symmetrical to the ideological violence of language and language games, which can be identified as decisive socialization patterns of the mother’s life and her own. The narrowness, the lack of perspective and the speechless suffering in the rural lifeworld, which the biographer makes clear right at the beginning in the family history of his mother, find their abbreviated summary in a nursery rhyme, which is told as an interpretative pattern: “Müde/Matt/Krank/Schwerkrank/Tot” (WU 17). Elsewhere, the children’s language game proves to be a socialization game that rehearses adaptation to social property relations by describing “das Gesellschaftssystem als Stufenleiter”: “‘Kaiser – König – Edelmann / Bürger – Bauer – Leinenweber / Tischler – Bettler – Totengräber’: ein Spiel, das im Übrigen nur in den kinderreichen Familien der Bauern, Tischler und Leinenweber vollständig nachgespielt werden konnte” (WU 24). In brief strokes, the biographer makes clear how this linguistic rehearsal of the existing, in which politic “als Merkwort oder, wenn bildhaft, dann als menschenloses Sinnbild eingetrichtert worden war” (WU 25), creates the conditions for the mother to begin to come alive in the “Gemeinschaftserlebnissen” (WU 23) that the National Socialists stage. Her new attitude towards life is, fatally enough, only strengthened by the departure for war; her first love happens to fall in this very period (WU 27). The mother returns to this area after the war, marriage, and big-city experience, and it becomes apparent that nothing has changed there. This can also be documented linguistically. Behind the “heimeligen” designations for the objects of rural life (WU 63 f.; Weiss 1975, 450), the contours of poor and oppressive conditions only become all the clearer. In an interpolated reflection on the word ‘Armut’, the narrator relates the ideological power of words simultaneously to social conditions

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and their literary reflection. He emphasizes that the have-nots, who according to the understanding of society at least have to be clean, spend “die fortschrittlich zu ihrer Sanierung bewilligten Mittel für ihre eigene Stubenreinheit” (WU 59), and he connects this observation with the literary-critical statement that there are “sinnliche Beschreibungen, von der Armut nur noch Sinnbilder” (WU 60), because “an der reinlichen, doch unverändert elenden Armut gibt es nichts zu beschreiben” (WU 61). In his own written memory of his mother, the word poverty does not remain a “niedlich-putziges Memoirensignal”, no “Erinnerungshäkeleien” succeed, but he now becomes free to see the actual conditions. Von Anfang an erpreßt, bei allem nur ja die Form zu wahren: schon in der Schule hieß für die Landkinder das Fach, das den Lehrern bei Mädchen das allerwichtigste war, ‚Äußere Form der schriftlichen Arbeiten‘; später wird es fortgesetzt in der Aufgabe der Frau, die Familie nach außen hin zusammenzuhalten; keine fröhliche Armut, sondern ein formvollendetes Elend; die täglich neue Anstrengung, sein Gesicht zu behalten, das dadurch allmählich seelenlos wurde. (WU 61 f.)

The power of society’s language regulations is demonstrated by the fact that the mother herself, in order not to attract attention, uses ingrained phrases that disguise her true nature. “Ein maskenhaftes Gesicht […] eine verstellte Stimme, die, ängstlich um Nicht-Auffallen bemüht, nicht nur den andern Dialekt, sondern auch die fremden Redensarten nachsprach […]” (WU 40). Thus, the mother’s slow return home abruptly brings her back to the coordinates of her youth, and again, she cannot stand up to them. About the rural conditions of childhood, the narrator expressed, “Als Frau in diese Umstände geboren zu werden, ist von vornherein schon tödlich gewesen” (WU 17). Now it is said much more fundamentally: Das persönliche Schicksal, wenn es sich überhaupt jemals als etwas Eigenes entwickelt hatte, wurde bis auf Traumreste entpersönlicht und ausgezehrt in den Riten der Religion, des Brauchtums und der guten Sitten, so daß von den Individuen kaum etwas Menschliches übrig blieb; ‚Individuum‘ war auch nur bekannt als ein Schimpfwort. (WU 51)

In Persönliche Bemerkungen zum Jubiläum der Republik, Handke explained how directly these recounted experiences affected not only his family, but himself, and how this “Zeit der Unfreiheit” continued even during his studies (EF 56 f.). The constriction of the lifes that are described and one’s own life not only points to similarities in the lives of mother and son, but at the same time exposes obsessions of the writer that determine the work; in Der kurze Brief, too, the memory of childhood experiences of nature is comparable to the remembered horror images of Wunschloses Unglück. But there, above all, the recognition of one’s own in the other, the process of growing closer to the mother in writing which is at the same time a memory of the conditions of one’s youth, acquires a dynamic that goes beyond the original approach to writing. From the very beginning, in the dream life, the narrator’s mother’s feelings become “so körperlich […], daß ich diese als Doppelgänger erlebe und mit ihnen identisch bin”, but at the same time, there are

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moments when “das äußerste Mitteilungsbedürfnis mit der äußersten Sprachlosigkeit zusammentrifft” (WU 48). Nevertheless, the memory of the mother becomes corporeal “bei dem Gedanken an die Idiotie ihres Lebens […] wurde fleischlich und lebendig, und ihr Zustand war so handgreiflich erfahrbar, daß ich in manchen Augenblicken ganz daran teilnahm” (WU 78). In this way, the writing designs a fantastic relationship with the mother that makes the boundary between her, and the writer disappear. Narration both preserves and repeats the process of inscribing the other into one’s own, which determines the stories of mother and son as well as their mutual relationship. A fearful memory of the violence of this inscription finds its appropriate image in the fantasies of the dissolving body. It is of particular importance that these are assigned to both the lived development of the mother and the written development of the author. At the beginning of her illness, the narrator finds his mother lying on the bed, and he fantasizes about her as a ruined body in which everything “Innen” has turned to “Außen”. “Wie in einem Zoo lag da die fleischgewordene animalische Verlassenheit. Es war eine Pein zu sehen, wie schamlos sie sich nach außen gestülpt hatte; alles an ihr war verrenkt, zersplittert, offen, entzündet, eine Gedärmeverschlingung” (WU 77). This image condenses the experience of a disturbed economy of inside and outside, which is a signature of maternal life from the beginning and has always made “Innenwelt” and “Außenwelt” merge in a dismaying way (Nägele 1983, 396 f.). “Regen – Sonne, draußen – drinnen: die weiblichen Gefühle wurden sehr wetterabhängig, weil ‚Draußen‘ fast immer nur der Hof sein durfte und ‚Drinnen‘ ausnahmslos das eigene Haus ohne eigenes Zimmer” (WU 19). It is no coincidence that these conditions of the history of maternal socialization already prove to be the suppression of one’s desires by the desires of others. “Selten wunschlos und irgendwie glücklich, meistens wunschlos und ein bißchen unglücklich” (WU 19). Thus, the title Wunschloses Unglück proves to be a literary negation of a common linguistic formula that can be attributed to profound social repression of desire that the author recalls. Wunschloses Unglück does not merely mean unhappiness without wishing; rather, it points to the inability to formulate or redeem one’s wishes. Death, towards which this wishless unhappiness runs, is nothing other than the end of all wishes and yet the only wish that the mother can fulfill for herself. But for the narrator, it is not only the memories of the “Zustände aus einer Gespenstergeschichte” (WU 47 f.) and these ghosts themselves, the “Revenants der Jugend” (Nägele 1983, 397), that return, but above all the fantasies of a bodily decomposition in writing. These summarize life-historical experiences and memories and at the same time reinforce them in repetition. Instead of creating distance, his writing preserves horror: Noch immer wache ich in der Nacht manchmal schlagartig auf, wie von innen her mit einem ganz leichten Anstupfen aus dem Schlaf gestoßen, und erlebe, wie ich bei angehaltenem Atem vor Grausen von einer Sekunde zur andern leibhaftig verfaule (WU 99)

Both the mother’s failure in life and the author’s difficulties in narrating (Bohn 1976, 376), however, also illustrate the trace of a development. The mother’s

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attempts at liberation, which ultimately lead from her peasant circumstances to marriage, fail from the outset. “Ein Naturschauspiel mit einem menschlichen Requisit, das dabei systematisch entmenscht wurde,”, takes place in the woman (WU 62). Elsewhere it is said of this period, “Sie wurde ein neutrales Wesen, veräußerte sich in den täglichen Kram” (WU 38); marriage itself proves to be a continuation of the earlier oppression, in which violence is shifted inside the home (WU 43). This initially renders the mother incapable of developing her initiatives; it has an impact even on the everyday life of the housewife. The possibility of “immer mehr Zeit für einen selber”, which the machines in the household open up, only reinforces deep helplessness, “man stand nur wie schrecksteif herum, schwindlig von dem langen Vorleben als bestes Stück und Heinzelmännchen” (WU 66). But there is a countermovement. Reading, especially reading literature, opens the possibility for the mother, who begins to compare her own life with what she has read, she learns “von sich zu reden; mit jedem Buch fiel ihr mehr dazu ein” (WU 67). Not only her speeches but especially her letters, which the text records in increasing volume, are evidence of a growing awareness. The mother develops her language (Durzak 1982, 122) and recognizes her situation as self-alienation (WU 88); at the same time, she sees the deep strangeness she feels towards her husband (WU 89). However, the awareness of this situation does not lead to the annulment of the condition that is responsible for it. The biography merely records the “Erwachen eines verkümmerten Ich” (Durzak 1982, 123), which is neither physically nor psychologically able to begin anew. The law of the shattering life (Weiss 1975, 448), only briefly interrupted by a four-week vacation in Yugoslavia (WU 84 f.), runs counter to the process of becoming conscious and certain of oneself. Moreover, the mother’s awareness from the beginning is aimed at change. Nor do her new behaviors fundamentally break through the habitual context of life; everything that begins as an emancipatory act ends in the old, at no point does an anarchic rebellion occur (Mixner 1977, 187). “Sie versuchte, unordentlich zu werden, aber dazu hatten sich die täglichen Handgriffe schon zu sehr verselbständigt” (WU 74). Thus, the awareness that reading creates only reinforces the certainty of the missed and uncatchable. The mother reads the books “nur als Geschichten aus der Vergangenheit, niemals als Zukunftsträume; sie fand darin alles Versäumte, das sie nie mehr einholen würde”; her “zweiter Frühling” is not a new beginning, but “nur eine Verklärung dessen, was man einmal mitgemacht hatte” (WU 68). Under these conditions, suicide appears as an act of self-determination and at the same time as a final confirmation of the lack of perspectives in this life. It demonstrates for the last time that becoming aware of the mother not only presupposes the experience of self-­alienation but also keeps it present. The description of this development without a goal nevertheless changes the writer, his distance from the life described increasingly diminishes. Finally, there is a turn in his narrative attitude. In the account of the mother’s life, he no longer uses the impersonal “man”, but feels urged to say “sie”. Under the constraints of the given, he discovers the rudiments of an emerging individuality and, at the same

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time, the foundations of his own self, neither of which can be expressed employing the distanced formulas of language. The grammatical change in the narrative perspective, which the recognition of this connection requires, corresponds to the fact that the narrator increasingly speaks of himself; the turn to the “sie” corresponds to a conspicuous emergence of the “ich”. Of all things, this underlines the fact that the narrator, who wants to keep his distance until the end, can now feel empathically like another. His writing becomes a dreaming into the experiences of his mother. At her funeral, his gaze from the grave to the immobile trees behind the cemetery wall repeats the feeling of life of the dead mother, at the same time solidifying the memories of his own youth that run through his mother’s story: erstmals erschien mir die Natur wirklich unbarmherzig. Das waren also die Tatsachen! Der Wald sprach für sich. Außer diesen unzähligen Baumgipfeln zählte nichts; davor ein episodisches Getümmel von Gestalten, die immer mehr aus dem Bild gerieten. Ich kam mir verhöhnt vor und wurde ganz hilflos. (WU 98)

This reliving of another’s experience, initiated and reinforced by the telling, changes the writer himself. As he walks up the stairs in the house in the evening, his transformation becomes apparent: Plötzlich übersprang ich ein paar Stufen mit einem Satz. Dabei kicherte ich kindisch, mit einer fremden Stimme, als würde ich bauchreden. Die letzten Stufen lief ich. Oben schlug ich mir übermütig die Faust auf die Brust und umarmte mich. Langsam, selbstbewußt wie jemand mit einem einzigartigen Geheimnis, ging ich dann die Treppe wieder hinunter. (WU 98)

The danger that the story “zu sehr sich selber erzählt” (WU 91) is avoided; instead, the narrator loses more and more control over what is reported, and at the same time the mother gains contour as a person. The writing does not remain a mere “Erinnerung an eine abgeschlossene Periode” of one’s life. Rather, it proves that what is remembered lives on, shattering the literary forms and formulas with the help of which the author was previously able to “ein bißchen lügen” and “verstellen” (WU 100). In this way, remembering in writing confirms a physical closeness between author and character that is repeated in writing, showing the latter as the effect of a writing body (Nägele 1983, 393). Because this fact also presses into the author’s consciousness, it demands that previous methods of writing be questioned. To the extent that the author’s self-consciousness is grounded in an experience of entanglement and distance simultaneously with others, the capacity for closed literary form diminishes. The unity of the biographical pattern is shattered at the moment when it begins to grasp the real unity of the reported life by the power of the remembered present and by the preserved experiences; it is transformed into a directory of fragments of memory that can no longer be connected. The last sentence, “Später werde ich über das alles Genaueres schreiben” (WU 105), therefore, does not so much point to an attempt to gain distance; rather, it is the program of future writing in which authentic experience, the power of memory, and poetic design are to be mediated to one another. The final sentence of the narrative points to a process that

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does not end; it is confirmation of a continuing significance of the autobiographical, which becomes the center of his  writing. This autobiographical turn back—the power of which the writing on the biography of the mother makes clear—will subsequently prove to be the inscription of a poetic procedure which, with good reason, takes its cue from Stifter and attempts to translate a life-historical experience into a poetic programme: the image of a new world is to emerge from the ruins of the old (Nägele 1983, 391).

5.3 The One and His Property: Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling, 1975) The motif of the other country, which determines the text Der kurze Brief, is also significant for Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling, 1975). This refers not only to the literary models Rilke, Kafka, and Sartre, but also repeatedly to Handke’s texts. Above all, the recourse to Die Angst des Tormanns (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) cannot be overlooked (Nägele/Voris 1978, 61–63). This narrative, too, initially poses the question of the possibilities of capturing reality through the linguistic formulas. In a press conference, the protagonist Gregor Keuschnig considers the relationship between language and reality and his experience determined by it: Hier wurde nichts gesagt, was nicht zum Mitschreiben bestimmt war; schon das war beruhigend! Keuschnig verstand nicht mehr, warum er so erleichtert gewesen war, als vor einigen Monaten, nach den Wahlen, statt der Wahlplakate wieder die vertrauten, lieben Reklamemotive an den Wänden erschienen. Hatten denn die Wahlplakate gedroht, daß etwas PASSIEREN würde? Warum hatte er damals die Wahlen als bloßen Spuk empfunden? Nun fühlte er sich seltsam behütet davon, daß für ihn Politik gemacht wurde. […] Ich bin definiert! dachte er – und das schmeichelte ihm. Definiert zu sein machte ihn endlich unauffällig, auch vor sich selber. (SWE 71 f.)

In this way, Keuschnig seems to consciously hand himself over to a situation that Kaspar still seeks to refuse. In the latter, the determinacy of the subject is undisguisedly expressed through language and not just only understood as a loss of one’s own identity. The assumption of a role, which is still described in Der kurze Brief using the example of the Americans, their theatre, and their pictures, and with a view to Hans Moser, is presented here as a state of experience of the character himself. Like the traveller in Der kurze Brief, Keuschnig constantly must deal with the influence of language and cultural signs on his perception; his task as press officer is to convey an image of Austria to the French by the guidelines of the Austrian Foreign Ministry. This leads to a comparison of one country with the other, which not only makes Keuschnig aware of the stereotypical nature of political language but also infects him with a disgust for the rituals of everyday life (Pütz 1982, 73 f.). This is reinforced by the fact that the text already reports at the beginning on the protagonist’s dream “ein Mörder geworden zu sein und sein

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gewohntes Leben nur der Form nach weiterzuführen” (SWE 7). Thus begins the story of a thoroughgoing change of consciousness. Keuschnig wants to consciously reinforce the situation to which he feels at the mercy of and which he has recognized as inevitable. Not only does he experience an alienation through language, but conversely, he attempts to make his immediate experience and perception arbitrary through linguization. This manic destruction of individual experience through language becomes the precondition of the search for an authentic situation and true sensation. Keuschnig opposes all attempts to transform reality into a postcard image through language with simple perceptions based on mere looking. The formulations and patterns of language and the rituals of everyday life appear to him as complementary realms; they enclose experiences and perceptions that he cannot yet express. His feeling of security during the press conference is based on a perception of what is opposed to him; self-confidence is based on the experience of the other. At the same time, the text makes us aware of the deceptive nature of self-­ assurance that is only mediated by language. The writer, who in some respects refers to Handke’s earlier literary approaches by describing rituals of repetition and systems of perception, later makes his fundamental doubt about the appropriateness of linguistic formulations clear at length: Ich wundere mich, wie man in den Sternen Bilder sehen kann. Mir gelingt es nicht, jeweils einzelne unter den Sternen als SternBILDER zusammenzunehmen. So habe ich auch keine Idee, wie ich all die einzelnen Erscheinungen zu ErscheinungsBILDERN zusammenfassen sollte. Ist euch aufgefallen, wie oft manche Philosophen die Wörter ‚versöhnen‘, ‚bergen‘ und ‚retten‘ verwenden? VERSÖHNT werden bei ihnen die BEGRIFFE; GERETTET werden die ERSCHEINUNGEN, und zwar von den BEGRIFFEN, und GEBORGEN sind die von den Begriffen geretteten Erscheinungen dann in den IDEEN. Ich kenne wohl die Ideen, aber ich fühle mich nicht in ihnen geborgen. Ich verachte nicht die Ideen, sondern diejenigen, die sich in ihnen geborgen fühlen – vor allem, weil sie dort vor mir in Sicherheit sind. Geht es dir ähnlich, Gregor? Wachst du nie auf, und es gibt den Zusammenhang nicht mehr? (SWE 92 f.)

For Keuschnig, on the other hand, the attempt to find security in language arises from the conscious intention to surrender oneself to a context perceived as desorienting. The desire to be with oneself in the other is evident, for example, in the description of a flower purchase (SWE 25 f.). Keuschnig takes pleasure in merely being “Bedient-Werden”, which is not a personal attitude at all, but only a business-­ like impersonal one. Consistent with this, all situations that establish familiarity or a close personal relationship through language, association, or habit seem alien to him: he refuses them on principle. The only person in the text who recognizes this is the writer, for whom simple observations suffice. He notices that Keuschnig, who had always changed in the past, now strives to “wie immer auszusehen”. Following on from this, he remarks: Du hast so beflissen gleich gewirkt, daß ich erschrocken bin wie vor jemandem, der gestorben ist und von dem man plötzlich auf der Straße das Ebenbild sieht. Du warst auf eine

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Weise gleich, daß ich dich nur an deinem Anzug wiedererkannte. Es hat übrigens keinen Sinn, wenn du mir jetzt extra in die Augen schaust: so kannst du mich nicht mehr täuschen. […] Du willst nichts für dich tun lassen, Gregor. Nicht einmal das Salzfäßchen darf man dir reichen – als hättest du Angst, man könnte dir, indem man etwas für dich tut, so nahe kommen, daß du durchschaut wirst. Was verschweigst du? (SWE 98)

The writer’s observation aptly describes Keuschnig’s behavior, which is already prepared at the beginning of the text, at dinner, and finally in the description of his coitus with his girlfriend. What the writer criticizes in Keuschnig is both conscious action and unconscious behavior. Thus, the description of his actions and perceptions follows a pathographic pattern. States of fragmentation of the self, a relationship delusion like that of Josef Bloch, immediate aggressiveness and sexual acts carried out without inner participation point to a psychological regression that can be compared to the initial depression described by Klaus Conrad (Durzak 1982, 130; Conrad 1966), without this being a description of a psychopathological case (Mixner 1977, 221). Handke’s self-expressions show that he consciously portrays Keuschnig’s behavior in this way. This is made clear not least by the similarity of the constellation described with the three poems from the volume Als das Wünschen noch geholfen hat (When Hope still Helped) (Bartmann 1984, 179). For Handke, the depiction of seemingly unmotivated actions and impersonal sexuality has a purpose: both demonstrate a condition that can be depicted but not systematically processed. It is dieses Lebensgefühl, daß es eben kein kontinuierliches Lebensgefühl mehr gibt, daß es keinen Zusammenhang geben kann, daß die Fiktionen: politische Ideologien, Religion oder Mystik usw. einem wenig Dauergefühl verleihen, und daß die Sexualität, diese aktionistische Sexualität, ein Akt dieser Verzweiflung, dieser Sinnlosigkeit ist. (TK4, 35)

However, this condition is illustrated by the example of the main character’s psychological disposition, which becomes clear after the conversation with the writer. Keuschnig undresses, jumps on the writer’s wife, and starts a fight with her. He experiences himself with “vollem Bewußtsein” as a “sich UNSTERBLICH BLAMIERENDE Kreatur”, as an in-between thing (SWE 99 f.). This experience is significant not only psychologically, but also in terms of narrative theory. For it corresponds to the second dream of Keuschnig’s, in which the subject-object relationship is reversed, the murderer becomes the murdered (SWE 109). And it is parallel to the dream of a general alienation (SWE 111–113), whose images and fragments of memory not only belong to an arbitrary consciousness but undoubtedly refer to Handke’s authentic memories, to Austria, the mother, the daughter, as well as to his own texts, above all again Die Hornissen. At the same time, it becomes apparent at this point that the narrated story itself knows intrusions and follows dream logic. The dream of estrangement seems to prefigure the real solution of all relationships. “So begann der Tag, an dem seine Frau von ihm wegging, an dem ihm sein Kind abhanden kam, an dem er zu leben aufhören wollte und an dem schließlich doch einiges anders wurde” (SWE 113). Similar conditions

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follow, shortly after which Keuschnig makes a linguistic blunder towards his wife. Instead of saying goodbye to her, he says, “Ich hoffe, daß du stirbst” (SWE 116); a little later we can read “und die Wurst, die das Kind im Bett aß, hieß sicher nicht zufällig Mortadella!” (SWE 118). These passages suggest that Keuschnig’s unconscious behavior frames his conscious actions. Comparably, his wife’s sentence “Erwarte nicht von mir, daß ich dir den Sinn deines Lebens liefere” (SWE 116) anticipates what he wanted to say to her. The slogan of the ‘Nouvelle Formule’, which he discovers by chance, describes his own desires. It becomes a metaphor for the desire to erase the acting subject, for the longing to return to a subjectless, pre-­ moral and pre-rational state. In this sense, the words of Horkheimer used as a motto “Sind Gewalt und Sinnlosigkeit nicht zuletzt ein und dasselbe?” can be understood. Keuschnig’s conscious program corresponds to the unconscious attempt to return to the creaturely state (Mixner 1977, 220); it is a fundamental protest against the process of culturalization and socialization and proves to be an intrusion of desire. However, the text makes it clear that this is also fixated on violence and sexuality. The texture of the dream with which the story begins is gradually completed by memories, but also by perceived objects; a second dream finally makes it clear that the dreamed murder was a lust murder (SWE 28, 34 f., 43, 45, 64; Kreis 1978, 168–170), which is also closely coupled with the mother and parent relationship. Indeed, he points to a “komplizierten Seelenbruch” (SWE 31), and he makes it clear that this narrated theory of perception also has to do with unconscious desires and the body. The moment of deconstruction that emerges from these dreams creates a ‘tabula rasa’ of consciousness and bodily sensations (SWE 42, 62), it frees Keuschnig for a second and different socialization (Bartmann 1984, 185). Moreover, the novel shares this scheme of deconstruction and reconstruction with the poems written at the same time in the volume Als das Wünschen noch geholfen hat (Bartmann 1984, 179). Keuschnig, freed from the pressures of social inscription systems, is the “OBJEKTIVE LEBENDIGE” of Blaues Gedicht (Blue Poem, v. Hofe/Pfaff 1980, 83). This is another reason why the writer’s statement, that Keuschnig knows is true, leads decisively beyond the realm of linguistic criticism in the text. For the main character, it represents a precise analysis of his own situation and state of consciousness. It leads to the realization that “Es wird nie wieder wie früher sein […] und er wollte das auch nicht mehr. Es war gar nie so gewesen!” (SWE 33). This makes it clear that Keuschnig is not looking for the salvaging language, but for that which has been repressed through socialization. He wants to have an authentic experience that is not absorbed in socially coded language formulations. It is precisely in his confrontation with the public language of the media and the culture industry that this comes to him; there he sees only “Geborgte Lebensgefühle; die der Organismus an diesem Tag sofort wieder abstieß” (SWE 66). This leads to the following conclusions: in dieser Woche lief etwa KEY LARGO: doch er wußte auch, daß er nach dem Film mit Bogart und seiner beunruhigend feuchten Unterlippe gerade noch die Treppe ein wenig gemeinsam hinaufgehen würde, aber spätestens nach den ersten Metern draußen auf der

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Straße schon wieder der Kumpan von niemand und nichts mehr wäre, und sich fragen müßte, wozu er überhaupt noch weitergehe und wohin denn? Er wollte sich nichts vormachen: für ihn war die Zeit der Reprisen vorbei; für seine neue Lage gab es kein Produkt, dessen er sich, gegen Bezahlung, je nach Stimmung bedienen könnte, und keine Produktforschung und kein System würden das, was er brauchte, bis zur Produktionsreife kriegen. Was brauchte er also? Nach was war ihm? Nach nichts, antwortete er: MIR IST NACH NICHTS. Und indem er das dachte, fühlte er sich auf einmal im Recht und wollte dieses Recht auch verteidigen, gegen jeden. (SWE 67)

The language that Keuschnig wants to overcome is the one that shows “wie man Leben vortäuscht”. He, on the other hand, seeks a new system of perception and description, a ‘‘nouvelle formule’’ that leads to the suspension of the individual in the same and precisely in this way releases the power of desire. In this respect, Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung refers to the dialectic of perception dealt with in Der kurze Brief that used the example of the experience of nature. Only the resolution to the levelling formula breaks with the automatism of mere repetition, which alone produces the appearance of the new. Only the breaking out of the given patterns of perception and description makes possible the effect of what the narrator calls Keuschnig’s “Erlebnis”. It is important to be aware, however, that the treatment of the narrated desire as an almost mystical experience represents what quite actually eludes conceptual grasp. The discourse of the text, despite all its intrusions, is subject to the mechanisms of self-censorship against which its protagonist defends himself. The rejection of cultural discourse remains a perspective of the character; it does not lead to a questioning of the discourse that the text itself uses (Nägele/ Voris 1978, 64). Thus, what the protagonist wants to overcome returns in the story that tells about him (Jurgensen 1979, 96). In this respect, the inscribed literary references and patterns remain model constructions. “Dann hatte er ein Erlebnis”, the text states succinctly to describe an event that magically prepares and occurs for the main character (SWE 62, 65, 77). The description of this experience begins with a psychologizing formulation that also denotes immersion in the daydream in other texts by Handke, such as Die Linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman): “und Keuschnig verlor sich” (SWE 81). The experience thus prepared is neither an action nor an event; it arises from mere looking: Im Sand zu seinen Füßen erblickte er drei Dinge: ein Kastanienblatt; ein Stück von einem Taschenspiegel; eine Kinderzopfspange. Sie hatten schon die ganze Zeit so dagelegen, doch auf einmal rückten diese Gegenstände zusammen zu Wunderdingen. – ‚Wer sagt denn, daß die Welt schon entdeckt ist?‘ – Sie war nur entdeckt, was die Geheimnistuereien betraf, mit denen die einen ihre Gewißheiten gegen andre verteidigten, und es gab jedenfalls keine künstlichen Geheimnisse mehr, mit denen er erpreßt werden konnte, weder ein Geheimnis der Heiligen Kommunion noch des Universums: jedes einzelne hohe Geheimnis war nichts andres als das Geheimnis der schwarzen Spinne, das Geheimnis des chinesischen Halstuchs – gemacht, zur Abschreckung. (SWE 81 f.)

Corresponding to this “Erlebnis”, which occurs during a chance perception of these remnants of nature and civilization, is what could be seen as the action of the text.

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Keuschnig is abandoned by his wife, and his child is eventually abducted by her. Both events are seemingly only incidental to his “Erlebnis” and yet are both its preconditions and its redemption. The facts of the story reiterate on the outside a state of liberation that Keuschnig can experience in his imagination. The threatening ambivalence of the “andere Zeit” which in Der kurze Brief still frightens and points to the abandonment of the subject and which in Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung increases to the experience of an “Elementarzeit” as an “außermenschliche[s] System” (SWE 46), now becomes a sign of hope (cf. Bartmann 1984, 184). At the sight of the three things, Keuschnig feels eine hilflose Zuneigung zu allen, aus der er sich aber auch nicht helfen lassen wollte, weil sie ihm jetzt als das Vernünftige erschien. Ich habe eine Zukunft! dachte er triumphierend. Das Kastanienblatt, die Spiegelscherbe und die Zopfspange schienen noch enger zusammenzurücken – und mit ihnen rückte auch das andere zusammen […] bis es nichts anderes mehr gab. Herbeigezauberte Nähe! ‚Ich kann mich ändern‘, sagte er laut. (SWE 82 f.)

After Keuschnig has lost his wife and child, a view becomes possible whose precondition was the liberation of the ego from the contexts that hitherto determined his life as well as his perception. The “gewohnten Anblicke” become natural “Erscheinungen”, and the key to a new and different view of known reality seems to have been found: “Jetzt erschien ihm die Idee, die ihm gekommen war beim Anblick der drei Dinge im Sand des Carré Marigny, anwendbar. Indem ihm die Welt geheimnisvoll wurde, öffnete sie sich und konnte zurückerobert werden” (SWE 152). However, this is not done conceptually or schematically. The “Ideen” can rather be compared to Kant’s regulative ideas; they do not show the things themselves, but a way to them (Pütz 1982, 83). Of course, the depiction of this form of inwardness points to a literary-historical tradition that can be inferred from the example of the “Erlebnis”: meaning is vouchsafed by an arbitrary sight, by the mere act of watching. This surrender to the random gaze and chance points back to aesthetic ideas of Romanticism. For Novalis, the chance is an element either of a metaphysically predetermined system of order or of one yet to be created by art (Mayer/Arnold 1971, 101, 126). For Hardenberg, it is not unfathomable, but regular, because it is the “Berührung eines höhern Wesens.” Chance, which shows itself in seemingly insignificant phenomena  “Sandkörner, Vogelflug und Figuren” - can nevertheless be used in an almost experimental way; the game is nothing other than an “Experiment mit dem Zufall” (Mayer/ Arnold 1971, 105). This is not only about a metaphysical fact, but above all about the role of the viewing subject, which with its perception of reality also opens the meaning of aesthetic viewing. Novalis states: Alle Zufälle unsers Lebens sind Materialien, aus denen wir machen können, was wir wollen. Wer viel Geist hat, macht viel aus seinem Leben. Jede Bekanntschaft, jeder Vorfall, wäre für den durchaus Geistigen erstes Glied einer unendlichen Reihe, Anfang eines unendlichen Romans. (Novalis, Blütenstaubfragment Nr. 66)

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Parallel to this Romantic conception, Handke’s text tells how looking at the three things in the sand frees a world that has become mysterious for reconquest. This looking is also a “Romantisieren” in the sense of Novalis, and as with him, the unconscious activity of the ego appears here as “produktive Einbildungskraft” and fantasy. On the other hand, the text turns away from its romantic models in one crucial respect. For Novalis, the insistence on chance does not only mean the “Gefühl, daß man von jedem Punkt aus zu Fuß nach Hause gehen konnte” (SWE 152). It also vouchsafes him a belief in an easily possible grounding of communication and social relations. Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen provides an example of this. There is nothing comparable for Handke’s Keuschnig. For him, instead - and this marks the historical difference between the two texts - reflection is not communicable, the awareness of one’s own identity can only be achieved and preserved at the price of a dissolution of the subject from all real and reflexive contexts. Keuschnig wants to return to a state in which the self is not yet obscured and controlled by the social norms of eternal “Reihenfolge” (SWE 64) or social acts (Pütz 1982, 74; Kreis 1978, 187). His frequent imaginings of being naked, the undressing scene in front of the writer and his girlfriend, put this desire into perspective. Keuschnig feels fully himself only where a communicative situation reminds him of the fundamental strangeness between the subject and others. This is how his relationship with his wife, his lover, and his child is determined. In the state of unconsciousness and the context of his childlike world of experience, the child represents to him the goal of his regression: it keeps “Geheimnisse” (SWE 144). But the “Gestalten” of the child’s world of experience are just as difficult to tell and communicate as Keuschnig’s “Erinnerungen” and “Ideen”. Accordingly, the loss of the child means to him only the confirmation of his hitherto unacknowledged strangeness to others, which he had unconsciously always aspired to. The end of the last social obligation finally detaches him from the constraint of all connections, even of everyday perception. In his new self-referential form of life, he not only alienates the words with which experiences can be described, he also eliminates all experiences that lead beyond the boundary of the self. In this respect, he restores the situation with which Kaspar’s story had begun. Until then, the text seems to run counter to Kaspar’s structure of argumentation. This becomes clear in the broad description of the regained immediacy and authenticity; at the same time, this situation awakens the idea that the subjectivity that has been found again can, as it were, refrain from itself, that the opposition of subject and object, individual and general is eliminated by a special experience. Keuschnig wollte nichts mehr für sich. Die gewohnten Anblicke flimmerten vor seinen Augen, als seien sie Erscheinungen – und zwar natürliche –, und jede einzelne davon zeigte ihm eine Fülle, die unerschöpflich war. Er, der nicht mehr zählte, war in die andern gefahren, die in selbstverlorener Energie kreuz und quer gingen, und er glaubte, sie müßten den Schritt wechseln bei dem Ruck, mit dem er das für ihn nutzlose Glück auf sie übertrug. Er lebte noch irgendwie  – mit ihnen. Dieser Zustand war keine Laune, keine Augenblicksstimmung mehr, die gleich wieder aufhörte, sondern eine, auch aus all den

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flüchtigen Augenblicksstimmungen!, gewonnene Überzeugung, mit der man arbeiten konnte. (SWE 151 f.)

The view that has become a daydream is serious about the abolition of these boundaries. In it, the writer, quoting Walter Benjamin (GB 18), can hide his “Ideen” in the “Erscheinungen” and dissuade Keuschnig from wanting to be “DAS EINE ZUVIEL” (SWE 157); at the same time, however, freedom from the social bond means that the viewing subject gets lost in itself and yet believes itself to be holding on to a practice in which it has long since ceased to participate. The statement “ich verändere mich gerade” points to this inner contradiction. Keuschnig, to whom everything seems “gereinigt”, has relied solely on the illusion that he could succeed in new experiences. He does not understand that he has withdrawn from practice into fantasy in apparent action and is passively submitting to the prevailing order. The text, through its account of Keuschnig’s interior perspective, assigns this apparent practice to the imagination: “Bei dem Anblick des von der Tageshitze noch weichen Pflasters zu seinen Füßen erlebte er sich plötzlich als der Held einer unbekannten Geschichte…” (SWE 166). But this unknown story does not exist. Hope for it exists only in the perspective of the character portrayed. Keuschnig, who at this point falls behind Kaspar’s level of reflection, remains a character in a text. In the final section of the novel, he no longer appears as a person whose story is being told, nor as legitimized by the invented story. The narrator himself points to the illusory nature of this new awareness of the character: his abandonment of the interior perspective makes it clear that it is no more than a phantasm. This is shattered to the extent that the text turns to the description. And Handke’s narrative ends as description: An einem lauen Sommerabend überquerte ein Mann die Place de lʼOpéra in Paris. Er hatte beide Hände seitlich in die Hosentaschen seines sichtlich noch neuen Anzugs gesteckt und ging zielbewußt auf das Café de la Paix zu. Der Anzug war hellblau; dazu trug er weiße Socken und gelbe Schuhe, und eine locker gebundene Krawatte schwang im schnellen Gehen hin und her… (SWE 167)

But it is not just this critique of the figure’s perspective that matters. Like the partially ironic description of the writer, whose consciousness for the narrator is now no longer different from Keuschnig’s, this conclusion, with the separation of character and narrator perspectives, also reveals an upheaval in Handke’s writing. Keuschnig, who decides to work, bears traits of Handke himself in many respects; his entry into a new story points to new forms of literary production envisioned by his inventor. Thus, the text that tells of him forms as a whole a poetic new beginning. Not coincidentally, Keuschnig is described at the end as one who seeks his equilibrium. This could be a new and approving reading of the passage from Brecht’s Arbeitsjournal (work diary) quoted in Handke’s Büchner Prize speech, in which he writes about the “Augenblicke der Verstörung” and ends succinctly with the formula: “gesundheit besteht aus gleichgewicht” (W 79; Jurgensen 1979, 93).

5.4  A Path to the Soul: Die linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman, 1976)

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Keuschnig’s story prepares the attempt to arrive at the abolition of the tension between the outside world and the inside world described by the author earlier, as it still determines traditional notions of inwardness. The program outlined narratively at the end of Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung attempts to redeem the narrative in Die Linkshändige Frau from the outset.

5.4 A Path to the Soul: Die linkshändige Frau (The Left-­Handed Woman, 1976) The plot pattern of Die Linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman) suggests the story of emancipation, and part of its success is probably because it was read that way. The question of the transformation of experience through a change in the perception of reality is dealt with in the realm of an impersonal suburban world and the narrow social field of reference of a bourgeois nuclear family. Bruno, returning home from a business trip, stages a game of seduction and love with his wife Marianne, determined by male desires. He demands that his wife put on the “Kleid mit dem Ausschnitt” (LF 18), visits a restaurant with her, and orders a room in the hotel that belongs to it because, as he explains to the waiter, he and his wife want to make love “sofort” (LF 20). When they return home the next morning, his wife tells him that she has had an “Art Erleuchtung” and wants Bruno to leave her and move in with their mutual friend Franziska, whose teacher colleague has just left her (LF 23 f.). There is no doubt that Bruno’s behaviour, while not necessarily male chauvinist as the opening scene might suggest, is nevertheless highly role bound (Pütz 1982, 95 f.); just as he stages love, he also consciously adopts certain attitudes in his professional life. In his office, he even demonstrates to his wife and child how he tries to intimidate people (LF 62 f.). On the other hand, the sparse descriptions of women’s lives in the suburban bungalow settlement also suggest role fixation. Both would motivate breaking out of a rigid and fixed life. But it becomes clear that the text fundamentally steers clear of such schematic patterns. At no point does the narrator make use of the possibilities of the authorial narrative style; rather, he describes all the events as well as the woman’s behaviour, which reflect psychological processes, from a distanced external perspective, or he inserts parallel stories into the text. Two episodes show that these inserted texts repeat the formal law of the encompassing narrative. In one scene, the woman, who resists her friend’s constant explanations, tells of an interview on television “wo der Interviewer zu einem sagte: ‚Erzählen Sie doch eine Geschichte von der Einsamkeit!‘, und wie der andre dann nur stumm dasaß” (LF 44). Later, the publisher describes to her how he broke up with a girl because he suddenly had the idea, on seeing a young man from a car, that the girlfriend was disgusted with him (LF 53  f.). Both stories describe wordless reactions, tell of the influence of the unconscious on the conscious and of the fact that speeches mostly miss the facts. They do not explain, and they do not give

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reasons, insofar as they point not only to the woman’s attitude but also to the narrator’s telling. The text, which tells of the woman, describes neither the emergence nor the development of conflicts; and what can be seen as an attempt at a solution always starts again at the status quo. Whether this is rightly so or possibly only springs from a false view of reality remains unclear. The development of the central relationship between the two is portrayed scenically, pictorially, and peculiarly from the outside. The narrative proceeds phenomenologically, it simulates a cinematic sequence, and in this way, it altogether parallels the procedure of segmentation that also determines the screenplay of Falsche Bewegung (Wrong Move, Durzak 1982, 141). Formally, it follows the law of metonymy, which already begins to be hinted at in Der kurze Brief as a principle of representation (Zeller 1979, 125; Bartmann 1984, 224 f.). Instead of referencing the images to each other, the text relies on the possibility of connotative sensory development (Bartmann 1984, 224). The opinion that everything is entirely external seems to stand still as an intense image becomes the principle of representation (Schober 1977, 177 ff.). In this way, Handke attempts to redeem an aesthetic program that he develops elsewhere and to which the motto from Die Linkshändige Frau that follows Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften also refers. Gestern las ich den Satz (von Goethe): ‚Auf ihrem höchsten Gipfel wird die Poesie ganz äußerlich sein‘ – und der war wie die freundschaftliche Erleuchtung einer Schreibhaltung, die auch mir für das, was ich schreibe, als Herrlichkeit auf Erden vorschwebt. Um diese allumfassende Äußerlichkeit zu erreichen, muß der jeweilige Schriftsteller oder Poet aber ohne Markierungsrest innerlich geworden sein – das heißt, er muß die künstliche, politisch oder religiös organisierte Solidarität aufgeben und sich selber ohne Erbarmen erforschen – als ob er noch nichts über sich selbst wüßte und auch niemand anderer ihm sagen könnte, wer er sei. Ohne Ausreden innerlich geworden, wird seine Poesie ganz herzhaft äußerlich werden können, selbstverständlich, offen, solidarisch ohne Vorverständigung. (PW 45)

The text approaches the above mentioned principle “des äußerlichen Schreibens” in several steps and on different levels. First, the processes in the consciousness of the “Frau”, as Marianne is always called in the text, are outlined either through images or through other texts. It thereby becomes clear that the initial situation of the separation is not determined by certain desires, but only by an unconscious rejection of what exists. On the one hand, the text shows this by demonstrating a structural similarity between conscious perception and the daydream world, almost exaggerating it in the depiction of a feast in the woman’s house. On the other hand, he allows Marianne’s wishing to find its explanatory metaphors in her child’s wishing text. There the state of a life free of tension in every respect is fantasized, which knows neither external nor social conditions. In the “schöneren Leben” it is “weder kalt noch heiß” (LF 8) and of all friends there are “jeweils vier, und die Leute, die man nicht kennt, verschwinden” (LF 9), but moreover, one would live “auf Inseln” (LF 9). The overall complex of these images, but especially the last motif, in conjunction with the book’s “title song” of the Lefthanded Woman, identified as a country song by Jimmy Reed (Durzak 1982, 145), proves to be a utopian notion that is placeless

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in the full sense of the word. It comes close to the desire “niemand zu sein” articulated in the spatial fantasies that follow in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire) and Langsamen Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming,) (LSV 25; LH 200; Bartmann 1984, 225). As little as the woman’s desires are purposeful, so little are the images that oppose them. Nevertheless, the text is characterized by contrasting metaphors, which give the impression of opposites that seem indissoluble. It is tempting to follow a hint of Handke’s on the film version of the book and take it as “mythisch” (Mixner 1977, 231). The series of metaphors of light and luminescence, often associated with the woman’s eyes (LF 21, 42, 72), points to a mysterious happening that defies description as well as explanation (Pütz 1982, 90); indeed, the images seem to take on a mythical aura to which the story itself loses significance (Bartmann 1984, 219). In any case, however, it becomes clear that the woman’s being-for-her-­ self is only possible in opposition to others (Nägele/Voris 1978, 70). While Bruno, to be able to hold his own in professional life, has practised “das Starren” and others from Marianne’s counter-world follow him in this, the woman is depicted not only in calm and static images, but also frequently in a state of “völliger Versunkenheit”. The fact that she can be “[sich] verschauen” is a sign that she can be “ganz bei sich” and yet “ganz außer sich”. The monotony of her perceptions, which again, as in Der kurze Brief, all arise from gazes into nature, points to this state of the main character. For her, too, gazing at nature prepares the attempt to arrive at an image of herself. In this process, the views of nature described in the text again mark a movement that ranges from the deconstruction of what is perceived to the construction of a new perspective. In the beginning, a rigid, unmoving world appears to the woman looking out the window, evoking associations of death and strangeness. The day after she hears the song from the Lefthanded Woman, she takes a hike up the mountain with the child (LF 102–105). Once they reach the top, the woman is not the only one to enjoy a transfiguring panoramic view, a spatial fantasy with flashes of light, perceptions comparable to those in Der kurze Brief and Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung. For the child, too, his lowering of himself as he looks down reveals memories of his life. His motionless gaze is both an external and an internal view. Finally, at the end of the text, rigid nature is transformed into a moving nature for the woman, and the viewer herself is included in an image of moving nature. She sits on the terrace, and the “Fichtenkronen bewegten sich hinter ihr in der spiegelnden Fensterscheibe. Sie begann zu schaukeln; hob die Arme” (LF 131). At the same time, the glimpses outside show the limits of these experiences. It becomes clear that the projections of the inner world onto the outer world can be flawed. Even the desired image and the child’s play world, which seemed to be reconciled as concrete utopias, do not simply turn out to be congruent. The very child who becomes the mother’s role model reflects the self-centeredness of her condition, for she conspicuously resolutely resists the mother’s’s attempts at caring appropriation. The text also points to this. Alongside the glimpses of nature are the glimpses of the woman in the mirror. They demonstrate her difficulty in orienting herself, and they make clear the contradictory nature of all attempts at self-­liberation,

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because these are modelled by a narcissistic trace. The desire for self-realization and the need for understanding become contradictory in the image of those who look at themselves. It becomes apparent that for them it can be neither about a change of role nor about discursive self-reflection. This becomes clear in two respects. On the one hand, the woman does not formulate her wishes herself, but she quotes texts that can be used as interpretative patterns for her behaviour. In the book she is supposed to translate, she finds the passage: “Au pays de l’idéal: J’attends d’un homme qu’il m’aime pour ce que je suis et pour ce que je deviendrai” (LF 56). And at a later date, again at night, she reads a corresponding scene in a book to be translated: “’,Und niemand hilft Ihnen?’ fragte der Besucher. – ’Nein‘, ‘antwortete sie. ‚Der Mann, von dem ich träume, das wird der sein, der in mir die Frau liebt, die nicht mehr von ihm abhängig ist.‘– ‚Und was werden Sie an ihm lieben?‘– ‚Diese Art Liebe‘“(LF 73). On the other hand, the woman’s attitude towards the people who want to explain her behaviour and then only use well-known and always inaccurate stories becomes clear. “Meint, was ihr wollt. Je mehr ihr glaubt, über mich sagen zu können, desto freier werde ich von euch” (LF 37). The false claim of interpretation is represented above all by Franziska, the teacher, who wants to capture all actions in concepts, and always has a ready explanation for “Beziehungsprobleme” with prevailing patterns. The wife’s rejection of her idea of community reiterates an attitude expressed by the narrator of Der kurze Brief and his wife to John Ford. It has been quite rightly pointed out that Franziska is a counter-figure through whom emancipatory ideas and attitudes are dismissed. On the other hand, her statements also respond to a conventional readerly expectation. Moreover, her speech recalls a mode of writing from which Handke resolutely wishes to distance himself. His vehement attack on Karin Struck’s novel “Mutter” makes this clear (EF 49–55). Because in the woman’s story real experiences and psychological processes are presented in juxtaposed images, any search for the reasons of the story proves to be wrong. Only the view that mediates dreamlike reality (in the situation of separation), utopian illusion (in the encounter with the child), and external reality with each other remain right. This is the basis of the structure of the text and is at the same time all that it wants to show. Thus, first of all, it depicts perceptions and fantasies that point beyond the situations to which they are assigned in the narrative. Narrated, viewed, and imagined reality playfully merge. This establishes a new aesthetic design that needs the real object as little as the narrated individuality. That is why “Schauspielen” is the metaphor for the new state that the woman is supposed to achieve and represent, and why the man who “nicht spielen kann” (LF 118) and the actor who does not want to “aufs Spiel setzen” form her “Gegenwelt”. In contrast to them, the woman asserts herself through a different attitude towards reality, which can only be represented as a state, but not in the way of action. The woman succeeds in putting herself on the line, which becomes a reality game and invalidates interpretive rationality. The text leaves no doubt that it is not only about the character it focuses on, but fundamentally about the possible play with the reality that is the goal of the writing.

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At first, it may seem strange that this play sometimes threatens to be destroyed by aggressiveness that is directed against the child (LF 71 f.). But just from here, a crucial point becomes clear. The woman’s unconditional attitude is based on a radical withdrawal from the forms of socialization, which falls behind the stage of culturalization. Her behavior is reckless in the literal sense, for any attempt to go back behind the orders of socialization and culturalization is a reality game that also releases an uncontrollable force, such as is unacknowledgedly inherent in aesthetic images and usually concealed by their surface. For the aesthetic also lives from that which is opposed to ratio; it shares this law of form with myth and its dark primal ground. If anything, in this respect, the external narrative and the gesture of remythification coincide in the narrative. The narrative corresponds to the replacement of language games by a reality game that points directly to psychogenesis and the forms of socialization. The sentence “Du hast dich nicht verraten”, which the woman says to herself in the mirror after her party (LF 130), not only makes it clear that she keeps away from all ties, explanations, and excuses, it also points to writing that deliberately restricts itself to depiction and does not make use of the possibilities of authorial narration, thus also resolutely renouncing any psychologisation. In this way, Die Linkshändige Frau not only makes clear, like Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung, that the boundary between the inner world and the outer world is unstable. In its narrative, it also draws the consequence from the fact that both are complementary. What could be narrated as a state of inwardness, he depicts in images from the outside. It is precisely this reversal that trusts in the power of poetry and the catchiness of its images. The interweaving of inside and outside, interiority and external perception, finally the imaginative power of the subject’s perspective are again not discursively executed but represented in a narrated image. This image is image, montage, and self-quotation at the same time. After her party, the woman is alone in the night, shaking a dice cup - no doubt signaling entry into another state, just as the dice in Providence had once shown the traveler in Der kurze Brief “die andere Zeit “(KB 25). The woman, however, begins to draw. As if she were reenacting Ernst Mach’s Self-Portrait, her picture shows first her own feet, then the room beyond, then the window, and finally a view out the window showing “den sich im Lauf der Nacht verändernden Sternenhimmel” (LF 131). This drawing takes her hours to complete; it seems that she is drawing not only “jeden Gegenstand in allen Einzelheiten” but also an epitome, and that her drawing expresses above all an inner movement. The topicality of the picture makes it clear that the outward and inward gazes are intertwined, one emerges from the other. The view over one’s own feet to the outside and at the same time to the inside can be compared with an image Handke uses in his Büchner Prize speech. There he reports on his memory of a concentration camp photograph in which, for him, the photographed person has already “[sich in] einem austauschbaren Symbol verflüchtigt” (AW 76). Suddenly, however, he perceives his feet pointing at each other, and his feelings and imagination are set in motion. What he perceives on the outside not only affects the inside, but also changes subsequent perceptions. It creates an imagination from which a poetic transformation emerges.

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It is precisely this that points to the narrative technique of Die linkshändige Frau, which for the first time places the role of the image as the trigger of a poetic perception of reality, which gains central importance in Handke’s later work, at the center of a self-awareness. Jedenfalls belebt der Anblick dieser aufeinander zeigenden Füße über die Jahre hinweg meinen Abscheu und meine Wut bis in die Träume hinein und aus den Träumen wieder heraus und macht mich auch zu Wahrnehmungen fähig, für die ich durch die üblichen Begriffe, die immer die Welt der Erscheinungen auf einen Endpunkt bringen wollen, blind geblieben wäre. Ich bin überzeugt von der begriffsauflösenden und damit zukunftsmächtigen Kraft des poetischen Denkens. (WÜ 76).

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6.1 Spaces of Experience: Langsame Heimkehr (1979) In March 1977, Handke’s journal Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World) notes as its program: “Die naturalistischen Formen zerdenken, bis sich die didaktischen, zeigenden (Brecht) ergeben; die didaktischen Formen zerdenken, bis sich mythische ergeben (mein Schreiben)” (GW 321). It has become clear so far that Handke’s writing changes even before the open form of this journal, which at times expresses a state of profound dissociation, even if a single and consistent new mode of writing is initially replaced by different drafts, all of which tell stories of the threat to the self. Two patterns in particular emerge. The first demonstrates Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling), in which the narrated I Keuschnig is threatened in its identity. While there the character alone still imaginatively assures himself of his identity as the hero of an imagined and unknown story, in the course of the narrative his presuppositions are called into question. Causal action is replaced by chance as a force that creates meaning, purposeful action by dreams and daydreams, conscious creation by the mere depiction of perceptions. At every point, the protagonist’s narrated loss of orientation thus corresponds to an elimination of narratable meaning. The character’s perceptions and experiences refer to an untold story; in any case, Gregor Keuschnig’s fears, dissociations and disturbances give rise to the suspicion that he is a borderline patient (Moser 1981, 1136–1160; Jurgensen 1979, 89 ff.). The second narrative pattern develops Die Linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman); there all inner processes are translated into images of the outside world; the endangered ego shows only its surface. The Journal Das Gewicht der Welt draws the consequence from these one-sided constellations that determine all texts. It exhorts us to overcome the stories of endangerment and formulates the goal of translating “die fixen Ideen einzelner” into “[den] Mythos vieler” (GW 277  f.); a different language and new stories are to accomplish this. The following Tetralogie (Tetralogy) fulfills this programme and at the same time leads approaches of the preceding work to a provisional goal. The © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_6

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texts of Langsame Heimkehr (The Long Way Around), Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire), Kindergeschichte (Children’s Story), and the dramatic poem Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Village) thereby specify the concept of myth by relating it to the biography of its author in terms of life history and psychogenetics, and at the same time describe it as a general law of psychism. It is significant that a line of development in the history of education and a line of development in the history of life intertwine with one another; each return to the self corresponds to a return to tradition. This is also why Die Lehre der Sainte-­ Victoire, in telling the story of the genesis of Langsame Heimkehr, is not merely a documentation of the history of the work. Rather, both texts are intertwined through spatial images and narrated fantasy spaces, which in turn open autobiographical vistas; this, too, links both texts to Stifter (Gabriel 1983, 214). For this reason alone, Sorger’s planned work Über Räume will have to leave “die Übereinkünfte seiner Wissenschaft […] sie konnten ihm höchstens manchmal weiterhelfen, indem sie seine Phantasie strukturierten” (LH 107). Again, a note from Das Gewicht der Welt can attest to the fact that Langsame Heimkehr leads simultaneously to Europe and to one’s own consciousness, which preserves and reworks life-historical memories. In Das Gewicht der Welt, Handke notes: Als ich heute abend zurückkam, von Österreich und Deutschland, fühlte ich mich an der finsteren ‚Porte de la Muette’ am Rand des Bois de Boulogne auf einmal als jemand, dessen Existenz gleichzeitig noch, als eine Art zweiter, verborgener Lebensgeschichte, in dem kleinen Heimatort in Südkärnten vor sich ging, ganz körperhaft, vor den Augen aller Dorfbewohner, und mein Körper erstreckte sich in diesem Moment auf eine schmerzhafte und zugleich fast tröstliche Weise durch Europa, in das ich mich der Länge und Breite nach verlor als Flächenmaß. (GW 27)

The sleeping Sorger, too, experiences “nachts immer noch die Entfernung von Europa und ‘den Vorfahren’: nicht nur als die unvorstellbare Wegstrecke zwischen sich und einem anderen Punkt, sondern auch sich selber als einen entfernten (wobei allein der Tatbestand der Entfernung schon Schuld war)” (LH 40). Thus, in the course of the spatial fantasies, Langsame Heimkehr develops a moment of deconstruction of the self, which is again followed by a reconstruction. It thus repeats once again a pattern that other texts have sketched out before. The task is to overcome the dead and threatening nature that preserves memories of an early history in Europe. In addition, Valentin Sorger, the geologist from Langsame Heimkehr, who first works in Alaska and then returns to Europe via the west coast of the USA, as a figure is at the same time a reminiscence of an artistic confrontation between Peter Handke and Cézanne; he is his “Homme aux bras croisés” (LSV 36). In addition, his name establishes a relationship to Heidegger, who in Sein und Zeit defines “die Sorge” as an existential place of “Unzuhause”; moreover, central concepts from Heidegger’s work, such as “Anwesenheit,” “Offenheit,” and “Räumlichkeit,” are varied in this “rein philosophische[r] Erzählung” (GB 163; Laemmle 1981, 427). In his treatise “Über Räume” Sorger is also said to describe “eine sogenannte Landschaft Am kalten Feld in der Bundesrepublik” (LSV 92 f.). This ‘Kalte Feld’ is

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not only a geological formation, but also a life-historical signifier of the author. On the one hand, it points to violence in Germany (LSV 91 f.), on the other hand to the author’s socialization into his family. The significance of these images of violence, which are repeated almost obsessively in later texts, is underlined by Falsche Bewegung (Wrong Move), in which a parallel passage can be found (Durzak 1982, 147). There the landlord remarks about Germany: “Die Angst gilt hier als Eitelkeit oder Schande. Deswegen ist die Einsamkeit in Deutschland maskiert mit all diesen verräterisch entseelten Gesichtern, die durch die Supermärkte, Naherholungsgebiete, Fußgängerzonen und Fitnesszentren geistern. Die toten Seelen von Deutschland…” (FB 45). Sorger’s research, which is always coupled with memories, at the same time leads directly to the “Flurzeichen der Kinderzeit” (LH 109). The connection of the threatening spaces with socialization into the family is also confirmed by Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. The ‘Kalte Feld’ in Germany is linked to a memory of the stepfather, whose configurations run through almost all of Handke’s texts and condense the images of childhood into a complex that appears threatening. It is important to bear this link in mind when describing the mythicizing mode of writing in these texts by Handke. Even where it supposedly leads far away from the author, it is autobiographically centered and provides the secret inscription for an individual’s story. It is part of the peculiarity of Handke’s writing that it decisively encodes this reference. First, the tetralogy approaches the “Mythos vieler” through the reconstruction of a historical situation and in the procedure of a conventional description. The decisive factor here is that the images of nature that occur selectively in earlier texts, especially Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell), are centered and summarized by landscape descriptions. In this respect, what originally gave rise to the emergence of literary landscape descriptions seems to continue to have an effect in the modern text. The design and narration of landscapes make us aware of the preconditions and the basic law of modern society. Because for it the divisiveness with nature and the domination over it is a precondition of its emancipation, the aesthetic reconstruction and visualization of nature as landscape “die Aufgabe, den Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der ‘umruhenden’ Natur offen zu halten und ihm Sprache und Sichtbarkeit zu verleihen” (Ritter 1974, 161). That nature as landscape is “Frucht und Erzeugnis des theoretischen Geistes” (Ritter 1974, 146) also applies to Handke’s aesthetic representation of landscape. There, too, nature becomes landscape because all perceptions are centered by an ordering imagination. It is not by chance that Sorger, like the protagonist of Falsche Bewegung, takes refuge in nature. But where in the latter the journey into the solitude of the mountain Zugspitze intensifies his sense of placelessness, which can be overcome only in the “Erinnerungsvorgang” of writing (FB 77), for Sorger gazing at the Alaskan landscape not only repeatedly leads to moments of ephiphany comparable to earlier glimpses of nature. Sorger also recognizes the patterns of an intertwining of civilization and nature that makes the former appear as nature and the latter as landscape. On the one hand, his fictional view from an airplane captures the geometry and “Ruppigkeit der Urlandschaft”; on the other, the viewer imagines a settlement laid

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out in nature as an “ideale[n] Ort, zivilisiert und zugleich elementar” (LH 44). From the outset, Langsame Heimkehr thus tells of an attitude to life that the Wilhelm of Falsche Bewegung first sets out to write (FB 77, 81); from the outset, all description already proves to be a shaping through which conscious and unconscious observations, theoretical patterns of explanation and aesthetic images come to coincide. On the one hand, this leads to a remythification of perception that determines the figure’s view of the landscape. This becomes clear in the orderly geographical description of the earth explorer Sorger. When comparing the Indian landscape names with those of civilization, the latter recalls the nature mythology of antiquity, which is directly linked to naming. From here he draws mythical images that ultimately also overform his scientific observations. Pferdehufseen, Quelltöpfe, Trogtäler, Lavafladen oder Gletschermilch aus Gletschergärten: hier über ‘seiner’ Landschaft verstand er solch übliche Formenbezeichnungen, welche ihm doch so oft als unzulässige Verkindlichungen erschienen waren. […] er hatte nun Lust, den Gattungsbezeichnungen jedes einzelnen Gebildes noch einen freundlichen Eigennamen beizugeben  – denn die wenigen Namen auf der Landkarte stammten entweder aus der kurzen Goldsuchergeschichte der Region […] oder es gab bloße Zahlen als Namen, […] Wie Vorbilder waren da die paar indianischen Ortsbezeichnungen: die ‘großen Verrückten Berge’ im Norden der ‘Kleinen verrückten Berge’, oder der ‘Große Unbekannte Bach’, der die ‘Kleine Windige Schlucht’ durchlief und in einem namenlosen Sumpf verlorenging. (LH 72)

On the other hand, the text of Langsame Heimkehr as a whole reconstructs a traditional literary mode of writing that proves to be a defining pattern. His descriptions of landscape can be related to a guiding principle Schiller establishes for the landscape poet in his review of Matthisson’s poems. “Es gibt zweierlei Wege, auf denen die unbeseelte Natur ein Symbol der menschlichen werden kann: entweder als Darstellung von Empfindungen, oder als Darstellung von Ideen” (Schiller NA-22, 271). Since sensations cannot be represented according to their content, but only according to their form, this implies a further requirement: “insofern also die Landschaftsmalerei oder Landschaftspoesie musikalisch wirkt, ist sie Darstellung des Empfindungsvermögens, mithin Nachahmung menschlicher Natur” (Schiller NA-22, 271 f.). The novel of the geologist Sorger fulfills these requirements. The sequence of landscape images in Alaska appears as a deliberate composition in which all images are centered and assigned to each other by a perspective figure. Moreover, the described change of landscape forms follows Cézanne’s law of modulation, when all earth forms begin to circle around the viewer and change in the process (Cézanne 1980, 91, 130 f.). Cézanne’s modulation through color is replaced here by one through forms; it remains to be remembered that Schiller already makes use of this metaphor and speaks of “Harmonie”, “Ton”, and “Modulation” in reference to the colors in landscape painting and landscape poetry (Schiller NA-22, 272). All of Sorger’s perceptions, sensations and desires are related to the contemplation of these landscapes. These are not only triggers of sensations, but at the same time patterns for a self-reflection based on them, because from the beginning his perceptions are anthropomorphic, following a note in Das Gewicht der Welt: “Als

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ob das Sehen anthropomorph würde vom langen Aufenthalt an einem einzigen Ort – und dieser anthropomorphe Blick […] wäre eine andere mögliche Wirklichkeit […]” (GW 100). When looking at the images of nature, unconscious desires and conscious reflection become one for Sorger. Each of his views into space is at the same time one into the mythical prehistory of the world. The Alaskan landscape offers all the prerequisites for this. It appears to Sorger as historyless, determined solely by the change of the earth’s forms, and as remote from civilization, in the first stage of man’s confrontation with nature. The view of this untouched nature evokes fantasies of unification, and in an external sense Sorger too is transformed in the same way as his colleague Lauffer, who gradually becomes one of the local “Landschaftsfiguren” through his clothing alone (LH 59). The landscape of the North, moreover, not only enables unconscious identification and scientific distance at the same time; it also appears as an arsenal of signs that allow a conscious “Lesen” as well as an unconsciously imaginative deciphering. This is related to the formation of the self because it allows nature outside to coincide with the images of one’s own consciousness. From the imagined spatial distance of an airplane, Sorger not only sees the different patterns that nature and civilization depict on the ground (LH 43 f.), he also fantasizes a plane flown over “als einen vielgliedrigen Körper mit einem unverwechselbaren, einmaligen, ihm sich jetzt zuneigenden Gesicht. Dieses Gesicht erschien reich, unheimlich und überraschend: reich nicht bloß in der Vielheit der Formen, sondern auch in deren Eindruck von Unerschöpflichkeit; unheimlich in der Beinah-­ Namenlosigkeit der unzählbaren, immer seltsam an eine Menschenwelt erinnernden (oder sie vorwegnehmenden) und wie nach Namen schreienden Einzelformen” (LH 71). This attributes to Sorger, the earth scientist, a way of seeing that was already beginning to assert itself in nineteenth-century painting. In Courbet and Runge, the signs of the natural and human worlds become interchangeable. Courbet’s Atelier and his parallel pictorial studies Ursprung der Welt and Grotte on the one hand, Runge’s Landschaft auf der Flucht and his Zyklus der Zeiten on the other can attest to this. This linking of unconscious perception and artistic way of seeing characterizes Handke’s text in a significant way; it also, strikingly enough, blurs the boundary between images and reality. In New York, a pictorial experience of the museum visitor Sorger passes directly into a perception of the city. Noch von den Werken bestärkt, vor denen er sich, als vor strengen (und auch frech knisternden) Beispielen, allmählich aufgerichtet hatte, stand er oben auf der monumentalen steinernen Innentreppe und erfaßte, gleichsam in einem einzigen machtvollen Herzsprung, die von den unten Kopf an Kopf drängenden Leuten schwärzliche Halle, und mit den Leuten drinnen zugleich, durch die haushohen Glastore, die gesamte Tiefe der auf das Gebäude (das am Parksaum lag) zuführenden felsengrauen 82. Straße, und ganz am Ende der von mehreren dicht befahrenen Avenuen geschnittenen Straße einen graublauen Schimmer von dem die Insel Manhattan begrenzenden schmalen Meeresarm, der East River heißt, und über dem Wasserstreifen einen stetig hin und her flatternden weißlichen Vogelschwarm, der jeweils im Moment des Umkehrens durchsichtig wurde. (LH 196 f.)

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Conversely, the forms of nature point beyond themselves, they imagine a mythical primordial state and at the same time provide Sorger with the images of an utopian world history, of which it is said that in it there is “nichts Gewaltsames oder auch nur Jähes” (LH 52). These forms can be discovered because Sorger begins to draw. The particular place that makes this discovery possible, and which Sorger draws every day, “bildete sich erst heraus mit der andauernden Mühe des Zeichnens, und wurde dadurch beschreibbar” (LH 52). This connects to the second consideration Schiller develops in his discussion of Matthisson’s poems. The representation of landscape can be drawn into the circle of humanity insofar as it becomes the expression of ideas that emerge from the “symbolisierenden Einbildungskraft” (Schiller NA-22, 273). Both the fantasies of union and the imagery of the non-violent direct the novel’s character to the capacity of his own imagination. The conscious perception of reality and unconscious desiring are thus related to each other. The fact that the explorer’s spatial fantasies are often coupled with erotic fantasies only underscores this. Sorger, who in the elation of his euphoria of recognition brought about by drawing, approaches two women, and becomes intimate with them so quickly and effortlessly that it seems like a dream to him afterwards, in turn experiences this encounter as an experience of space: “Die Kälte ihrer Fingernägel. Die Klarheit ihres Leibesinnern! Er sah sich in der warmen Nacht durch die Kontinente gestreckt und die Frauen, die sich um ihn kümmerten, als das letzte Mal für unabsehbare Zeit” (LH 114). It is precisely in this way that Sorger also grasps the formal law of images together with his own life-determining fantasies. He finds the “Leitformen” he seeks in the visual forms of pre-rational natural science, the “Formerforschungen der Maler” and the “Musik des Sängers” (LH 121). The meaning of these guiding forms is prefigured by the many geometric patterns of circle, arcade, and dome that structure Sorger’s perception from the beginning (Gabriel 1983, 217 ff.; Bartmann 1984, 230). The protagonist’s self-reflection can therefore be sketched in terms of a chain of images. In this way, the author approaches the model of Stifter, of whom Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire speaks at the beginning. The latter provides the “daily script”, which is read not only as a text, but as a revelation of aesthetic ways of seeing. Sorger, like Lauffer, faces the very task that Stifter also describes in his Nachkommenschaften: they attempt to depict an infinite nature. But while Lauffer threatens to fail because, like Stifter’s painter Roderer, he wants to bring everything into the picture, Sorger follows the path of Stifter, who stopped being a painter and narrated spaces like landscapes (Stifter HKA-3.2, 72 f., 92). In the course of a fantasy in which Sorger perceives a pattern in the dried mud and dreams again, as before, of being absorbed into nature, he is able to speak the sentence: “Ich bin es, der bestimmt” (LH 69). Thus, still the desire for union shows the violence of a projection, as it is the precondition of all utopian images. From here, the utopian as well as the idyllic perspectives on the village of the Innuit become questionable. It becomes clear why Sorger, when the Indian woman is made up to meet the expectations of Europeans at dinner, suddenly appears like a “dunkle, gefährliche Maschine in strahlender Menschengestalt” (LH 77). At every point, the wishful images evoke their counter-images; any balance the main character achieves

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is, as in previous texts, unstable and short-term. And yet, even after Sorger’s return to civilization, the memory of the instructive images of nature and the desire for the experience of a wholeness that can transcend the boundaries of the ego persists. The constant blending of authentic and fantasized images explains why Sorger’s nature images of Alaska never congeal into the theoretically grounded landscape images already known to the eighteenth century, nor why they are landscapes of movement in which the contemplating ego loses itself as in the Romantic models. The description of landscapes rather quotes memories of a prehistory of the human soul and at the same time releases fantasies of another history. Memories as well as fantasies refer first and foremost to the describing self. Thinking back to Alaska, which Sorger still manages to do in the university town on the Pacific, simultaneously preserves the images of his desire. Remembering and wishing establish the capacity of the imagination to design a second reality from perceptions, in which the constitution of the self is central. “Jeder einzelne Augenblick meines Lebens geht mit jedem anderen zusammen  – ohne Hilfsglieder. Es existiert eine Verbindung; ich muß sie nur frei phantasieren” (LH 112 f.). The loss of the immediate perception of nature, as it is possible in Alaska, is indeed experienced by Sorger on the West Coast as a mythical law of the “Raumverbot” (LH 132), because the return to civilization is for him at the same time a way back into a history marked by violence and guilt. But still in the world of urban civilization, the power of memory sustains the capacity of imagination to rediscover reality as a space of experience. Now it is said of Sorger, “er, der die großen Räume verloren hatte, vertiefte sich gelehrig in die kleinsten” (LH 137). In the limited circle of the friend’s family, imagination emerges directly from observation, memory makes even mere looking productive. The whimsical El Dorado of the lovers from Der kurze Brief thus receives its counter-image, which makes the community appear at once as a space of security and as a free space of imagination (LH 136, 139). The face of his friend’s wife is transformed into a landscape for Sorger; at the same time, this fantasy already becomes the center of another. The woman’s face, which has become a landscape, finally appears to him as the “Menschheitsgesicht” (LH 139). Nowhere, however, is it clearer than here that the closed world of inwardness and memory must be transcended again for the very reason that it establishes a merely imaginary order. “Deine Räume gibt es nicht. Es ist aus mit dir” (LH 133) Sorger hears as a warning. Therefore, his imagination proceeds to design ideas that the text calls “Leitformen” (LH 120). In this respect, the experience of the character recreates that of its inventor; here, too, it becomes evident that in Handke’s work, problems of life of the invented characters and problems of representation of the texts are often symmetrical (Bohn 1976, 368). For both it is true that “Anschauung” and interpretation coincide in a perception that traces every relation of similarity back to factual identities and can thus be called mythical (CB 45; Elm 1974, 376). Both are committed to a “wildes Denken” (Elm 1974, 373; Lévi-Strauss 1977, 11–48) that is opposed to the domesticated one. The very experience of the “Raumverbot” suggests that Sorger’s landscape paintings sketch a “mythische Geographie” (Hoffmann 1978, 35, 203; Cassirer 1975, 27; Cassirer 1925, 110, 118, 125). The mythic

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perception that determines the modern text is directly related to the unconscious (Hoffmann 1978, 199, 266 f.); it represents a covert structure of human consciousness (Eliade 1973, 9 f., 153 f.). It maps intrapsychic constellations as spatiotemporal ones, with spatial images taking precedence (CB 42). Sorger’s changing notes over time, which he rereads on the West Coast, attest to this: in das Interesse an den langzeitlichen Naturräumen hatte sich eine Betroffenheit durch Raum-Formen eingemischt, die gleichwo (nicht allein in der Natur) sich bloß episodisch bildeten, in dem ‘ich, Sorger’ sozusagen ‘ihr Augenblick’ wurde, der sie zugleich zu Zeit-­ Erscheinungen machte. (LH 189)

Thus, mythical consciousness in the modern author already proves to be a secondary one that serves to overcome intellectually unsolvable difficulties through an affective sense-making. For Sorger, the wilderness in Alaska becomes “[ein] höchstpersönliche[r] Raum” (LH 11); his attempts at “synopsis” are at the same time glimpses of himself. “Es beschäftigte ihn ja schon seit langem, dass offenbar das Bewusstsein selber mit der Zeit in jeder Landschaft sich seine eigenen kleinen Räume erzeugte, auch da, wo es bis zum Horizont hin keine Abgrenzungsmöglichkeiten zu geben schien” (LH 107). The mythical space is not only related to the aesthetic space in its innermost being (Cassirer 1975, 29), mythical thinking and aesthetic fantasy also converge in that they are related to a life-historical process. As forms of thought that emerge from the unconscious, they at the same time reconstruct stages of experience of the perceiving ego that lie far back in time; they also touch on a “Kindheitsgeographie” (Bartmann 1984, 231) that is the place that gives rise to the phantasms of origin. Sorgers’ homecoming aims “not only to a certain region, but back to the house where he was born” (LH 140). This fact is confirmed in detail by the text of Langsame Heimkehr. At every point, the fantasies repeat Sorgers memories, which refer to images, sounds and perceptions of his earliest youth (LH 143 f.). Das Gewicht der Welt in two sections on noises (GW 42, 187) confirms how closely precisely the images of noises are linked to childhood memories; one should recall that Die Hornissen (Hornets) also narrates such audiograms. In these and other reconstructions, the particular character of the relationship between mythical thought and the faculty of productive imagination is demonstrated. The life-historical timeline they follow is transformed by both into a sequence of images. In this way, they preserve wishing as well as the memory of the first and imaginary constitution of the self; explicitly, the text states “Sorger hatte die Gewalt zu wünschen […]” (LH 184  f.). The researcher fantasizes the image of a woman in the snow, which seems so real to himself that it excites him (LH 158). The exit of Sorger’s fantasies from decisive time markers of psychogenesis is also described by the end of a long dream shortly before the return flight across the Atlantic. Not only is the explorer already dreaming himself back to Europe, but when he wakes up, he remembers the images of his own origin, which point to the history of his body.

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Das Kopfpolster berührte ihn wie die nackte Fußsohle eines Säuglings, und im Aufwachen wirkte ein Kind in ihm, das dann still, ohne Wimpernzucken, mit dem eigenen Atem spielend, zum Fenster hinausschaute. Alles, was er sich organisch wünschte, war organisch; und alles Anorganische anorganisch. ‘Das bin ich!’ (LH 192 f.)

The ability to look backwards in this way establishes both the perception and the imagination of reality in the text. Dream and daydream are prerequisites for Sorger, whom the narrator allows to observe a landscape panorama that is as precise as it is atmospheric, to declare an imagined perception to be an authentic one. Thus the reconstruction of life-historical images leads directly to a doubling of the self that makes writing possible. und Sorger stand in Gedanken unten am See und schaute zu dem Turmzimmer hinauf, wo er gerade stand und die dünne, kräftigende Luft einatmete. Über alle Dächer ging der Rauch wie ein Mann, und aus allen Parkbäumen staubte ein unablässiger Baumschneefall. ‘Das ist jetzt!’ (LH 194)

The experience of a fulfilled now, which Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung develops, is condensed here; the doubling of the self, however, now has a liberation through language as its prerequisite. This creates the distance Sorger later feels towards the life story of the stranger who tells about and plays his misfortune for him (LH 175, 178). Sorger, who threatens to sink back into the violent imagery of his own history, liberates himself by overcoming reality with a mythical formula: “Ich habe keinen Vater mehr” (LH 100). The imagined doubling and the speaking of one’s own freedom from the father’s world, which is determined by violence, is symmetrical to the experience of the “gesetzgebenden Augenblicks” (LH 168), which seems like a mythical experience. It, too, emerges from Sorger’s memories and guides his fantasies when, in a coffee shop, he thinks he is seeing geological formations of the earth in the images of civilization (LH 170 f.). Already at this point he recognizes what later becomes a certainty to him; the experience of the law-giving moment becomes the “law” of one’s own life only by being written down (LH 169), the path to one’s own style presupposes a return (LH 199). Only in this way does it become clear that history is not violence, but a “von jedermann […] fortsetzbare friedensstiftende Form” (LH 168). The preservation through writing contributes to fulfilling a hitherto hidden law; even before, it succinctly states: “ […] ich bin nur, was mir gelungen ist, euch zu sagen” (LH 140). In this way, Langsame Heimkehr openly states a fact that in the final image of Falsche Bewegung only flashes up in an image that mirrors the signs of nature and of civilization and culture in each other. “Eine weiße Schneewächte gegen den grauen Himmel, lange. Das Sturmgeräusch. Ein Schreibmaschinengeräusch dazwischen, das immer stärker wird” (FB 81).

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6.2 The Way into the Image: Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire, 1980) Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire deals more precisely with the mode of “Sagen” that the Langsame Heimkehr strives for, and with its preconditions. In it, Sorger, a scientist searching for his own style, finally reveals himself as its inventor. Already in Langsame Heimkehr, the narrator addresses the character Sorger as ‘du’ and attributes to him an experience that is his own. On his “ersten wirklichen” journey he learns “was der eigene Stil ist” (LH 199). In Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, this style is found; at the same time, the narrator can say, “der Geologe hat sich noch vor dem europäischen Boden in mich zurückverwandelt […]” (LSV 93). It is apparent that this geologist, who has turned into the narrator, continues to have an effect in “vielen Blicken” (LSV 102). In this way, the mythical recoding of the preconditions of storytelling acquires an autobiographical authenticity. The naming and giving of names, which the text deals with and which can be attributed to myth as much as to the child’s imagination, refers to a real history of socialization. In the reconstruction of his own artistic development, the years in France are combined with memories of childhood and youth; the narrator’s whos journey to the Montagne Sainte-Victoire connect images from his stay in Paris with memory images of Berlin, reminiscences of a holiday in Yugoslavia and finally with the fantasies and perceptions of the child in Carinthia. From this emerges the continuity of a “mythe personnel” (Mauron 1962, 32, 34). In it, autobiographical memories, unconscious fantasies and mimetic design are related to each other. Das Gewicht der Welt confirms even before this biographical inscription of the narrated myths and the mythical over-forming of autobiographical memories: “Immer wieder das Bedürfnis, als Schriftsteller Mythen zu erfinden, zu finden, die mit den alten abendländischen Mythen gar nichts mehr zu tun haben: als bräuchte ich neue Mythen, unschuldige, aus meinem täglichen Leben gewonnene: mit denen ich mich neu anfangen kann” (GW 181). Moreover, the images of primary familial and secondary artistic socialization are so closely linked that they resolve a state of disjointedness that is still presented in Das Gewicht der Welt as an indissoluble contradiction of ego and world, and which Handke describes in an interview as “eine Art Disharmonie von Anfang an zwischen dem Ich und der Welt, einen ontologischen Riss zwischen manchen Figuren und deren Geschichte” (Schäble 1980, 427; GW 118). Therefore, the autobiographical I of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire outlines the role of the “lebendigen Ich” that seeks to assert itself in relation to the social inscription systems. It also marks interfaces between this inscription and the primordial inscription of the unconscious. They point to the emergence of the unconscious through the law of the symbolic and language (Kreis 1978, 29). Yet it is characteristic of the life- and work-historical location of the narrated ‘mythe personnel’ of the artist’s autobiography that it is already built on regressive de-differentiations of psychic conflicts and sketches a “lebensgeschichtlichen Neubeginn” (Loch 1976, 238, 247). The author of the journal becomes aware of this entanglement in the myth of Narcissus, of all things. In doing so, he approaches a conception of the

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transformations of narcissism into a creative force that has gained importance in psychoanalysis for quite some time. Der Mythos von Narziß: Ob nicht vielleicht gerade das lange, forschende Anschauen des eigenen Spiegelbilds (und im weiteren Sinn: der von einem verfertigten Sachen) die Kraft und Offenheit zu langem, unverwandtem, sich vertiefendem Anschauen andrer geben kann? (GW 239)

For this reason, the unconscious, the truth of the human being repressed in the fictional text as well as in the cultural discourse, no longer appears here as the destroyer of conventional language and culturalized speeches (Kreis 1978, 68). The personality myth that Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire sketches does not refer solely to an “Frühgeschehen aus der Ontogenese der Seele” (Loch 1976, 90), which, following the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, allows the “Versöhnungswunsch” to emerge from the “Begehren des Begehrens des anderen” (LSV 25; Lacan Seminar I, 226 f.). Rather, it also provides a scheme of conflict resolution; it is part of the reconstruction of a personality. The superposition (Mauron 1962, 23) of Handke’s texts confirms that Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire can be considered in this sense as a summary and overcoming of psychic conflicts presented earlier. It is significant that the text of the poet’s apprenticeship foregrounds, the images of secondary socialization over those of primary socialization; it is the former that constitute a poet’s life. The search for a “Lehrmeister” (LSV 33) leads to Cézanne and at the same time becomes a comprehensive examination of landscape painting; it points to a tradition that extends from Ruisdael (LSV 119) through Courbet (LSV 31–33) to Edward Hopper (LSV 19 f.) (Fig. 6.1). It is striking that the descriptions of images in this text focus less on historical differences than on what connects them, on a surface of images that serves the narrator as a “Sehtafel” that mostly maps a “wiederkehrendes Phantasie- und Lebensbild” (LSV 18). In a study of the painter Pongratz, Handke had already pointed out that “die Schemata fürs Schreiben und Malen” are comparable (EF 14; Mixner 1977, 172). In retrospect, it becomes clear that a close connection between image and text was established early in the author’s work. The “Judenfriedhof” on the ascent path of mother and child Die Linkshändige Frau may therefore, to give an example, be a reminiscence by the author of Ruisdael’s painting of the same name (LF 103). In contrast, his narrative description of Cézanne’s paintings does not follow a historical line; rather, it aims at the same time at a philosophically grounded epistemology. His interpretation of the painter opens a parallel to a short text by Heidegger on him. Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire undertakes precisely the “Eindringen in die Gefahr der äußersten Beziehung zu den einfachen Dingen” (Laemmle 1981, 428) that the philosopher discovers in the painter. The realization of the connection that is to be “frei phantasiert” (LH 113) in Langsame Heimkehr now becomes a “Freiphantasieren” (LSV 100); it is an unconcealing rather than a presuppositionless inventing. In this way, writing is aboveall brought into a proximity to Cézanne’s painting, about which Heidegger states:

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Fig. 6.1  Paul Cézanne (1839–1906): La Montagne de Sainte-Victoire vue de Bibémus, 1897 (Baltimore Museum of Art, © Heritage Art/Heritage Images/picture alliance)

Im Spätwerk des Malers ist die Zwiefalt von Anwesendem und Anwesenheit einfältig geworden, ‚realisiert‘ und verwunden zugleich, verwandelt in eine geheimnisvolle Identität. Zeigt sich hier ein Pfad, der in ein Zusammengehören des Dichtens und des Denkens führt? (Heidegger EF 13; 223) Through this turn, the regressive mythical images that predominate in Langsame Heimkehr in the sections “Vorzeitformen” and “Raumverbot” are transformed, not unlike the myth of Narcissus, into productive myths that have a text-constituting power; they simultaneously tap into a philosophical and a psychological truth. By simultaneously exposing the autobiographical inscription of Handke’s texts, they prove to be part of the design of an ideal biography, precisely thereby also grounded in the unconscious. The childlike orientation towards the imaginary is reconstructed through these myths and repeated as a productive capacity that transforms all phantasms into fantasy and relates all fantasies back to what exists. In this way, this text also mediates the order of things, the order of the symbolic, and the language of the unconscious with one another (Loch 1976, 32, 91 f.; Freud 1969, 193).

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This mediation is made possible by viewing landscapes as sign systems, as in Langsame Heimkehr. Now they can even be read like writing. Starting from Cézanne’s Rochers près des grottes au-dessus de Château Noir (LSV 76), Handke discovers that the painter’s pictures are “Ding-Bild-Schrift in einem” (LSV 78). In doing so, he takes up a tradition that had already begun to take hold in nineteenth-­century contemplation of images. Since that time, philosophical and literary commentaries have treated landscapes not as images, but as systems of signs and ciphers for what is not visible. Painters themselves take up the idea of reading landscapes. A review by Schiller on the poems of Matthisson states “der tote Buchstabe der Natur wird zu einer lebendigen Geistersprache, und das äußere und das innere Auge lesen dieselbe Schrift der Erscheinungen auf ganz verschiedene Weise” (Schiller NA-22, 273). The painter Runge not only emphasizes the necessity of “charakteristische Zeichen” to represent nature, but he also sees that arabesque and hieroglyph transform into landscape, and in this process everything gains “Bedeutung und Sprache” (Runge 1938, 25, 38, 91). In modernism, Adorno continues this thought when he uses the example of painting and music to clarify the emergence of the character of writing, of ecriture in art (Adorno GS-16, 634). This leads to the relationship between texts and images that Handke envisages. However, a difference persists. While the images become image and writing at the same time, a double writing emerges in the texts. Image and text, however, converge through designing spatial images and image complexes that both depict the unconscious and base simultaneously on historical experience (Cassirer 1975, 22; Hoffmann 1978, 200). Moreover, both not only point to a rupture between sign and signified and to the independence of sign systems, they also manically re-enact this transformation again and again. The painter Courbet and the poetpainter Stifter provide examples of this process. The narrated personality myth of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire presupposes a successful formation of the self and attempts to overwrite it with a myth of authorship. Precisely for this reason, its orientation towards role models also requires a biographical narrowing. In Cézanne’s development, the artist-narrator recognizes the decisive turning point that coincides with a new working technique, painting “auf dem Motiv” (Cézanne 1980, 118). The gloomy, fantastic landscapes that disturb the narrator as much as the dream-threatening landscapes of other painters, and the frightening images, such as Versuchung des Heiligen Antonius, all of which aim at the relentless exposure of libidinal passions, disappear from Cézanne’s work. They are replaced by the representation of the “reinen, schuldlosen Irdischen: des Apfels, des Felsens, eines menschlichen Gesichts” (LSV 21). The narrator parallels this turn with his own development, which is significant in terms of life history and is also attested to by aesthetic imagery. He makes it clear that in his fantasies, as in his texts, the cypresses, the trees of the dead of antiquity, which in Der kurze Brief, for example, still point to alienation and depersonalization (Elm 1974, 363; Mixner 1977, 154), are replaced by the “pins parasol” as new images of security and homeliness (LSV 23). Accompanying this turn, as in Langsame Heimkehr, is a geometric symbol of self-insurance. The “Große Bogen”, the heading of the first chapter, refers not only to the arch of homecoming that Langsame Heimkehr begins, but to also the archway formed by “le grand pin” that frames Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. This turn is at the same time an attempt to transform in writing originally

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transcendent images that are independent of consciousness back into transcendental ones in Kant’s sense. A development of writing thereby becomes visible, for Der kurze Brief and Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung are still determined by a contrary movement (Elm 1974, 363). For this, too, the narrator finds his model in Cézanne, who develops his procedure of “réalisation” in accordance with Kant’s epistemology (Cézanne 1980, 12 f.); this is also connected to the fact that Handke already makes use of “Kants fundamentale Anschauungsformen […]: des Raumes (in Alaska und in Kalifornien) und der Zeit (in Manhattan)” (Pütz 1982, 111) for self-reflection in Langsame Heimkehr. In the “Kontakt der Maleraugen mit der Natur” an interpreted reality emerges from sensations (Cézanne 1980, 94, 83), from Cézanne’s creative power, his “Temperament” (Cézanne 1980, 81). It is no accident that Cézanne sees this representational technique as a theory in the literal sense of Greek natural philosophy. It is precisely through this technique that it is removed from the sole disposal of reason. “Alles ist, besonders in der Kunst, Theorie, entwickelt und angewandt im Kontakt mit der Natur” is what Gasquet’s conversations with Cézanne say (Cézanne 1980, 93). In this way, Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire draws on an approach developed by Langsame Heimkehr in its recourse to Lucretius (LH 148; PW 74; Gabriel 1983, 218) and continued by Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across) in its orientation to Virgil’s Georgika. While Cézanne emphasizes the role of sensations and perceptions (Cézanne 1980, 45, 83) and names colors and their modulation as their medium, the reflections of the autobiographical poet-artist find further reinforcement in the concept of imagination as developed by the philosopher Vauvenargues, also mentioned in the text. “J’appelle imagination le don de concevoir les choses, d’une manière figurée, et de rendre ses pensées par des images. Ainsi l’imagination parle toujours à nos sens” (Vauvenargues 1981, 64). But where the painter can realize a landscape by means of hues (Cézanne 1980, 12, 15, 73, 94), the narrator is left only with the order of metaphors and the ability to give names to reality. Thus, the text reports a naming from which it itself emerges; it creates the myth of its origin. The narrator calls a landscape formation “Ebene des Philosophen”, he calls a place where he encounters a menacing dog, “Saut du loup” (LSV 62). The episode with the rabid animal thereby provides a pattern for the capacity of aesthetic imagination to confront terror and fear of death just as decisively as Handke’s consignee Lucretius does in De rerum natura. The mountaineer’s fear of the animal gives way through a “Phantasiebild” he imagines of the dog (LSV 59), it fades away completely through a dream in which the dog turns into a pig (LSV 61 f.), and it finally leads to a play scene in which the narrator himself turns into a wolf and, like a child, ascribes to himself what he originally feared. Thus the unity of “Regel des Spiels und Spiel der Regel” is confirmed, which dissolves the boundary between images and immediate experience of reality (LSV 52). The productive procedure of confusion, already presented early on, which befalls the narrator before the “Omniprix” (LSV 64 f.) and naming, both of which also recall the child’s magical order of the world, lend a double meaning to the seeing of images and landscapes. Both establish a unity between the narrator’s “älteste[r] Vergangenheit und der Gegenwart” (LSV 11).

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They also enable a glimpse of the secret “Ding der Verborgenheit” that pervades the narrator’s memories of youth as a central image and promote its reconstruction through productive imagination (LSV 68). This juxtaposes the mysterious thing, it is the “Holzstoß” of Alexius whose legend the child learns, as a guiding mythic image and central phantasm of youth directly with the real dog in Puyloubier as the incarnation of the unconscious will to evil (LSV 58–61). In view of this relationship, it is not surprising that the image of the pictures, the holy of holies in the church, once also appeared to the child as an “Allerwirklichstes” (LSV 83). The simultaneously productive and life-sustaining power of regressive fantasies is based on such transformations: the mythical reconstructions are rewritten into a fantastic family history of the narrator. In his imagination, the story of the saint “Alexius unter der Stiege” is linked to that of the Georgian painter Pirosmani, who spent the last period of his life in a wooden hovel which, according to the child’s imagination, was also “unter einer Stiege”. The child imagines this staircase in the house of his grandparents and ascribes to himself an origin in Georgia. This unconscious conflation of different phantasy images places the narrator in the kinship of Pirosmani and creates the condition for the “Wunschbild” of himself “als dem Schriftsteller” (LSV 70); a mythical genealogy of the narrator is founded directly on the child’s fantasies, which creates a life-determining phantasy of authorship. It becomes apparent that this fantasy, on the one hand, grows out of life, and yet on the other hand, only frees it for the undisguised memories. Memories and fantasies are triggered, as is often the case, by impressions of colour and prove to be symmetrical. The “rötlichen Fruchtsaftflecken im hellen Wegstaub” recall the “Saftrot der Maulbeeren vom Sommer 1971 in Jugoslawien”; the “Augenblick der Phantasie” not only unites “die eigenen Lebensbruchstücke in Unschuld”, but also acts as an “unbestimmte Liebe, mit der Lust, diese, in einer treuestiftenden Form!, weiterzugeben” an das “verborgene Volk” of the readers (LSV 72 f.). The mulberry path, which opens in perspective to memory by simultaneously releasing the aesthetic imagination, and from which the narrator derives the “right” to write a Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, is a “Pfad” that leads, in Heidegger’s sense, “in ein Zusammengehören des Dichtens und Denkens” (Heidegger EF 223); from here the meaning of the motto at the beginning of Langsame Heimkehr proves itself: “Dann, als ich kopfüber den Pfad hinunterstolperte, war da plötzlich eine Form…”. The reference to Alexius, who seeks to deny his identity as a saint and lives unrecognized in his father’s house at the end of his life, allows the narrator to see a “sanftes Gesetz” in nature and history at once. This is in explicit contrast to the catastrophes into which he sees Stifter’s narratives “fast regelmäßig ausarten”; the images of nature and history appear to him as irrevocable, but at least legible as “verschlungene Schriftzeichen” (LSV 74, 78). Just as the painter’s “Strich” can convey thing, image, and writing to one another (LSV 79), so the narrator ascribes to himself another story and at the same time recognizes his real one. The relationship between Cézanne’s “Homme aux bras croisés” and the novel character Sorger provides an example of the significance of such transformations and rewritings (LSV 36  f.). The special connection between reinterpretation and

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interpretation explains why the narrator can deepen himself, “im Bedürfnis nach Dauer, willentlich in die alltäglichen, gemachten Dinge” (LSV 82). The mythical reconstruction of a life-historical development and the fantastic family history simultaneously sketch out a story of the emergence of artistic productivity by referring the imagination to memory. The productive designs emerge directly from the memory of the images of security that derive from an ontogenetic primordial state (LSV 22–25). Moreover, the autobiographical I can also take its cue here from Vauvenargues. “La mémoire conserve le précieux dépôt de l’imagination et de la réflexion” (Vauvenargues 1981, 64). A memory that preserves the images of fantasy and imagination has at the same time a protective function. Before the memory-­ preserved faculty of imagination, the immediate confrontation with the past, the narrator’s problematic re-encounter with his father (LSV 96 f.), loses significance. While Sorger in Langsame Heimkehr still fantasizes the sentence “Ich habe keinen Vater mehr” (LH 100), the narrator of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire has overcome this hatred. There it is confidently said: “Der Verstand vergißt; die Phantasie vergißt nie” (LSV 99). Only what belongs to the imagination is remembered here. This becomes particularly clear in the views of Germany. The image of “Kaltes Feld” and the fantasies of violence and “Zweckformen” (LSV 91) emanating from it change in the course of a free fantasizing that exposes, beneath the urban landscape of Berlin, the geological formation of a “Urstromtal[.]” to which the signs of civilization still conform (LSV 94 f.). Just as the terror of the dog in Puyloubier can be removed in a dreamlike and playful way, and the originally threatening father in turn appears to the son “wie jemandes Sohn” (LSV 97), the narrator is also able to see “ein anderes Deutschland”: “[…] es lag, Ausdruck von Hermann Lenz gleich ‘nebendraußen’; es schwieg humorvoll und hieß Mittelsinn; es war ‘das schweigende Leben der regelmäßigen Formen in der Stille’; es war ‘schöne Mitte’ und ‘Atemwende’; es war ein Rätsel; es kehrte wieder und war wirklich” (LSV 98). The life-historical significance of this fantasy corresponds to its aesthetic significance. Moreover, the connection between imagination, réflexion and mémoire developed by Vauvenargues explains why free fantasizing in the autobiographical narrator, as in Cézanne, is not called inventing, but “Realisieren”. Just as for Vauvenargues himself philosophical truth is based on a retrieval and linking of the evidential. The narrator’s gaze, like that of the painter, is directed towards a hidden, yet evidential line. This, too, is made evident in the text. The narrated ascent of the Sainte-Victoire massif follows a geological formation that the narrator first discovers in Cézanne’s paintings of the massif before recognizing it in nature (LSV 109, 114). His account reconstructs what precedes painterly realization in Cézanne. In the latter, he can read, “Um eine Landschaft richtig zu malen, muß ich auch zuerst die geologische Schichtung erkennen” (Cézanne 1980, 16). The narrator feels the same way. The “Pas de l’Escalette” becomes for him the secret pivot of all nature perceptions in the mountains and at the same time the center of his aesthetic fantasies. Moreover, the boundary between the images of nature and those of socialization fades; from the circles of memory that reach back to his own childhood, the phantasms of primeval earth forms finally emerge, they correspond to the authentic

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landscapes of Langsame Heimkehr. At the same time, the narrator sees the “Reich der Wörter” opening to him, along with the “Großen Geist der Form”; he no longer thinks of a “Leser” (LSV 115). Around this rediscovered center, his imagination groups objects, and forms, but above all the circles of memory (LSV 87) on which Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire is based. In the process, educational and life-historical experiences once again intermingle. In Berlin, the narrator can freely fantasize the natural landscape covered by city buildings after perceiving the “Zweckformen” of the “Kaltes Feld” (LSV 94–96); following the experience on the Sainte-Victoire, he succeeds in a comparable perception in the “Morzger Wäldchen” near Salzburg. It is precisely this that draws on the memory of an image. There is a parallel for this as well. Stifter leads his painter Roderer in Nachkommenschaften from nature, which he cannot transform into a picture, in front of the very painting that Handke also describes. And for the latter, too, the contemplation of the picture becomes the precondition of a realization. In the reminiscent comparison of the image of nature and experienced nature, the little forest of his childhood appears to him both as a natural primeval landscape and as the primeval landscape of his own childhood fantasies. It should be remembered that in the play Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus (They Are Dying Out), Handke already attempts to derive a connection between the perception of nature and the observation of the self from the imaginary perception of the “Flecken in mir” and the “Wälder außerhalb von mir” that Stifter speaks of. Even more clearly than there, imagination and memory now unite geographical spaces of experience, images of ontogenetic development, and memory markers of one’s youth, right down to the color test chart at muster. Ayers Rock, the mountain of the aborigines of Australia, the Roman roads of Provence (LSV 130 f.), the Bois de Boulogne and childish play worlds in the little woods merge with each other; fantasies arising from memories, immediate perception and narrative realization become one. The psychological significance of this process is attested to in a note by the author: “Ich sah im Traum die Landschaft, die ich beschrieben, in ihre Folge gebracht und neu zugänglich gemacht hatte, als mein sonniges Wappenschild in der sie umgebenden Finsternis liegen, und ich hob das Schild auf und hielt es mir vor die schmerzende Brust (den großen Wald)” (GB 214) (Fig. 6.2). Thus, at the end of the text, there is a sequence of images that reflects stages of familial and cultural socialization into one another and forms the myth of the birth of authorship from them. Its signifier is the woodpile, which connects with the memory of the legend of Alexius as well as with childhood memories of the “Morzger Wäldchen”, without blurring the contours of authentic biography (LSV 69, 139). In addition, there is a further point. Even now, the myth of authorship is linked to the image of the threshold; this is likely to allude to Trakl’s Ein Winterabend and at the same time to Heidegger’s interpretation of this poem; moreover, it foreshadows the text Der Chinese des Schmerzes, in which it gains central significance (LSV 127; Trakl 1969, 102; Heidegger UN 26–28). Thus, the fantasy of the middle ground finds its equivalent here, for in Heidegger’s interpretation the threshold carries the “Zwischen”, it “hält die Mitte, in der die Zwei, das Draußen und das Drinnen, einander durchgehen, aus” (Heidegger UN 26).

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Fig. 6.2 Jacob van Ruisdael (1628/29–1682): Der große Wald (c. 1655/60) (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, © picture alliance / Heritage Images | Fine Art Images)

The existential meaning that aesthetic experience acquires in this threshold situation is at the same time developed as a social one in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. In this, the pair of eyes that the narrator fantasizes at the end of the text (LSV 139) proves to be a ‘métaphore obsédante’ (Mauron 1962, 30). It makes clear that the artist-autobiography draws its formative patterns from childhood experiences and at the same time finds its parallel text in the real story of the autobiographical narrator with his child.

6.3 Signs of the Other World: Kindergeschichte (Children’s Story 1981) It is only logical that Handke, with the text Kindergeschichte that follows, reaches back behind the metaphorics of being a child and of childlike gazes to an authentic story. It provides biographical evidence for a condition that Langsame Heimkehr as invented plot and Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire as narrative theory only reconstruct; it is precisely the authentic that now vouches for the coherence of the ‘mythe personnel’. A note in Das Gewicht der Welt makes it clear that the depiction of his

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daughter Amina’s childhood gives Handke the opportunity to condense a central theme of his writing and, in doing so, not to speak of himself alone. Nachdem ich, schon in der Kindheit, einmal mich erlebt hatte, ereignishaft und gespenstisch in der zeichenlosen Alltäglichkeit, wußte ich, daß ich für das ganze Leben eine Beschäftigung hätte (die auch das ganze Leben erfordern würde: nie würde ich mich für immer durchdacht haben). (GW 322)

Without a doubt, the daughter’s story is also presented as a story of the father from the very beginning. Through the example of the child’s experiences, the author recalls phases of his own life and desires and fantasies that determine his life and work. At the same time, Kindergeschichte is the portrayal of a special relationship between father and child. It has a high degree of concreteness and at the same time opens up an aesthetic reflection. In this respect, it resumes and at the same time modifies the earlier “Immunisierung” of childhood (Durzak 1982, 164) that can be observed in Der kurze Brief and Die Linkshändige Frau. The opposition between the world of desire and the real world, which originally determined the work, is now no longer related solely to the fantasy space of the child and the fantasies of his author-father; rather, the shared fantasies sketch out a space of experience open to both, which, after being influenced by different phases of mutual dependence, finally has all the signs of a counter-foundation. “Hatte sich nicht, auch durch den unauflösbaren Zwiespalt zwischen der Arbeit und dem Kind, allmählich die Sicherheit eingestellt, endlich frei von dem Lügenleben der ‚modernen Zeit‘ zu zweit eine Art über den Zeitläuften stehendes Mittelalter fortzusetzen […]” (KG 86). This experiential space receives its authentic model in the reported real withdrawal of father and child from the “Zwangszukunft” of the new communities (KG 21; Gabriel 1983, 228 f.) and the world of the “Realitäts-Tümler” (KG 86) into a closed common world. The sentences pointing to a “Damals” that tie the child’s story at every point to verifiable dates and places in the narrator’s life (KG 24 f.) confirm this entanglement. They make it clear that the narrator relates the child’s story to his own in two ways: It is presented and conceived as a memory of his experiences as well as a fantasy of a possible story. The crossfading of the authentic and the desired story thereby repeats the circling of spaces that accompanies Sorger’s search for his own self in Langsame Heimkehr. Already there, depicted spaces and landscapes are not determined solely geologically or geographically, but according to their psychological representation. Kindergeschichte continues this line and at the same time draws it out more clearly; it describes the significance of living spaces for the formation of the self and the socialisation of the child. Because here, too, it is not only a matter of geographically identifiable spaces and landscapes, but first and foremost of linguistic and cultural spaces and institutes of culturalization, of residential communities, kindergardens and schools, the depiction of the child’s secondary socialization initially dominates its narrative history. It seems, however, that it is precisely in it that authentic experiences of the narrator-father are reconstructed.

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The description of this socialization is marked by a polemical demarcation against others, which can be placed alongside the author Handke’s opposition to the culture industry. Many of his reflections, originally related to the field of the aesthetic, are now repeated in a different context, while at the same time constituting an attack on prevailing opinions. About a “kindloses Leutepaar” it is said that “noch nie hatten in erstarrten Gesichtern solch unbarmherzige Augen gestanden und sich solch gnadenlose Lidschläge ereignet” (KG 40); again and again it becomes apparent that precise observations turn into a fundamental polemic. About the convinced childless it says: In der Regel hatten sie einen scharfen Blick und wußten auch, selber in furchtbarer Schuldlosigkeit dahinlebend, im Expertisendeutsch zu sagen, was an einem Erwachsenen-­ Kind-­Verhältnis falsch war; manche von ihnen übten solchen Scharfsinn sogar als ihren Beruf aus. In die eigene Kindheit vernarrt und in das eigene fortgesetzte Kindsein, entpuppten sie sich in der Nähe als ausgewachsene Monstren. (KG 41 f.)

From here it is not far to a fundamental commentary on the representatives of the prevailing opinions: Wenn man sich auf diese geborenen Staatsanwälte einließ, zeigte sich übrigens, daß sie mit ihrer Zählweise der Welten – die “dritte” und die “vierte” waren dabei die “relevantesten” – in der Regel eine geheime Schuld übertönten, ja oft sogar einen unsühnbaren Verrat: sie hatten allesamt schon viel Böses getan. (Seltsam dann die Tränen dieser Larven!) Solche “Wirklichkeitler” oder “Wustmenschen”  – es wimmelte wohl seit jeher von ihnen  – erschienen dem Mann als die Sinnlosen Existenzen: fern von der Schöpfung, schon lange tot, machten sie so gesund wie böse weiter, hinterließen nichts, woran man sich halten konnte, und taugten nur noch für den Krieg. (KG 87)

Against the normative claims of pedagogical discourses and the demands of socialization institutes, therefore, a counter-foundation arises in which the narrator hopes to find himself as father and author at the same time. His cohabitation with the child, which takes place in hermetic seclusion, proves to be an attempt to establish an utopian community that gives itself its own law; it derives solely from desire. But before the text tells of this, it shows the danger of a relationship in which paternal desire is above all the determining factor. It makes clear that this threatens to destroy the foundations of the symbiotic community. For the sentences referring to a “Damals” that describe this relationship not only reconstruct shared memories, but also the inscription of paternal experiences in the child’s life. The shared “Mittelalter” experienced by father and child emerges from a claim of disposition on the part of the adult. The abstract paternal desire to have a child, with whom the child’s story, like the narrative, begins, is its foundation. “Ein Zukunftsgedanke des Heranwachsenden war es, später mit einem Kind zu leben. Dazu gehörte die Vorstellung von einer wortlosen Gemeinschaftlichkeit […] von Nähe und Weite in glücklicher Einheit” (KG 7). The father’s claim towards the child still determines the first phase of their common history. The sentence “Das Wünschen wird möglich” (KG 30), with which the father first describes his relationship to the child, is attributed to the child, who is still speechless and incapable of walking, and who, although

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already recognized as another, is still purely a projection surface of paternal wishes. This origin of Kindergeschichte brings out the tensions that become evident as soon as the child himself becomes a speaker and language determines their relationship to each other and to their environment (KG 59, 115). Still the incidents of the “Tag[.] der Schuld,” the aggressive paternal outburst of violence against the child during a limited domestic misfortune, are explicitly traced back to the originally imaginary character of the community of father and child, in which there was not yet a common language, but only wishes and projections of the father. “Es war die Unwirklichkeit; und Unwirklichkeit heißt: Es gibt kein Du” (KG 52). With such admissions, the narrative gains an autoanalytical poignancy like never before; it makes clear that the “Tag der Schuld” is a crucial turning point in the father’s relationship with the child. The father’s guilt-ridden speeches, as he crouches to his child like a “Verdammter” after his outburst of physical violence (KG 53) and addresses him “in den bisher unaussprechlichen, auch undenkbaren ältesten Formen der Menschheit” (KG 54), are answered by an Augenpaar, gleichsam erhöht über dem Umweltdunst, und selten hat es für einen elenden Sterblichen einen flammenderen Trost gegeben […] mit solcher Aufmerksamkeit tritt das Kind erstmals in seiner Geschichte als jemand Handelnder auf; und sein Eingriff, wie auch all die künftigen, zu verschiedenen Anlässen, ist leichthin wie eine Berührung Stirn an Stirn und zugleich so vollkommen lakonisch wie das ‚Weiterspielen’-Zeichen eines erfahrenen Schiedsrichters. (KG 54)

On the one hand, unlike comparable exceptional states in earlier texts, this moment of epiphany can be traced back to causes that the narrator considers self-critically. “Nur in der Trauer – über ein Versäumnis oder über eine Schuld –, wo die Augen umfassend magnetisch werden, weitet sich mein Leben ins Epische” (KG 56). On the other hand, it is precisely from the current endangerment of this ideal community that its remythification in narrative emerges; the experience of misery directly produces the aesthetic design. The authentic relationship becomes a pattern on which the narrator, as father as well as author, orientates himself. The childlike “Weltvergessen” (KG 133), which refers to Stifter’s sentence “[…] Kinder revolutionieren nicht und Mütter auch nicht […]” (STW 17; 324), marks a world of its own laws that becomes a model for the adult. It suspends all prevailing norms and behaviors so thoroughly that the father notes with wonder how his daughter herself always greets her childish tormentors as members of her own world, as “gute Boten” (KG 60). This mythical modelling of a real relationship has different consequences. On the one hand, it heightens the authentic experiences into images of a historical as well as a developmental contradiction from which there seems to be no escape. The history of the child corresponds to that of the eternal people. “In dem anderen Land nun wurde die Geschichte des Kindes, ohne besondere Ereignisse, zu einem kleinen Beispiel der Völker-Geschichte, auch der Völker-Kunde; und es selber wurde, ohne irgendein eigenes Zutun, der Held erschreckender, erhabener, lächerlicher und insgesamt wahrscheinlich alltäglich-ewiger Geschehnisse” (KG 75). The violence of the process of socialization corresponds to real historical violence in the linking of the child’s history with that of the Jewish people. The eyes of the children

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who transmit “den ewigen Geist” are confronted with the image of the Bethlehemite infanticide (KG 126). The unknown pair of father and child that the narrator observes on a ship (KG 129) provides him, on the one hand, with the image of an “archaische[.] Weltzugehörigkeit” (Bürger 1983, 500), already surrounded by the aura of “Zielzeit” (KG 129). On the other hand, it still recalls an irresolvable contradiction. In clear reference to Ingeborg Bachmann’s Fall Franza, the place name “Gallizien”, which the narrator fantasizes about father and child, becomes a life-historical signifier that associatively makes the history of childhood, the hometown in southern Carinthia, and the history of violence, the place of the expulsion of the Jews, one (KG 129; Bachmann 1984, 24 ff.). The originally precisely marked life-historical and temporal boundaries of the father’s ideal communion with the child are also eliminated by a comparable remythification. An infinite repeatability and timelessness are attributed to their relationship; there is neither a new time, nor an end time for the one who enters it, “[…] mit jedem neuen Bewußtsein begannen die immer gleichen Möglichkeiten, und die Augen der Kinder im Gedränge […] überlieferten den ewigen Geist” (KG 126). The abolition of time, which renders the authentic relationship of father and child historyless, creates the precondition for a cognition that is already called “nunc stans” in the Sainte-Victoire’s art doctrine, using a term of Schopenhauer’s. This standing now (LSV 9 f.) also includes the fulfilled moments spoken of in Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung. The experience of an eternal now is repeated in a landscape show on the Grand Ballon. Here it becomes apparent that the establishment of a mythical ego and the images of the aesthetic imagination are mutually dependent. The standstill of time, the mythical ego and the mythical community require an infinite expansion of the imaginative space, as it is prefigured in the children’s oblivion of the world. Thus the mythical view is already transformed into an aesthetic experience. In it, the timelessness and namelessness of the mythical places are overcome. The specific place of the Grand Ballon corresponds to the place where the narrator first perceives the “Inbild” of the child, whereby he recognizes behind its “babyhaften Zügen das erleuchtete allwissende Antlitz”. Shortly before, we are told that the “Square des Batignolles wurde im Lauf der Nachmittage ein Ortsname, der, allein als Name, dem Erwachsenen für einen ewigen Moment mit dem Kind steht” (KG 28; Bürger 1983, 501). The narrator also calls this form of perception of reality, in which fantasy and real experience, image and epitome come into congruence, myth, because it has to do with narration and is a form of representation in which the I confronts itself. This is also evident on the Grand Ballon. There the narrator believes he sees his wife, the child and himself at the same time. It is a doubling to be placed alongside that already reported in Langsame Heimkehr. “Es war der einzige mystische Augenblick, da der Mann sich je in der Mehrzahl sah; und nur ein solcher enthält den Mythos: die ewige Erzählung” (KG 91). Because the narrator does not perceive himself, the child, and the woman as a “Familie” but as a “Dreiheit, die dort in einen unnahbaren Stoff gehüllt ist” (KG 91), it becomes clear that he is simultaneously fantasizing a situation that predates the psychic emergence of the self. Remythization and myth

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prove at the same time to be acts of a productive imagination that substitutes stories for a ciphering of the formation of the self. In this way, fantasy reveals itself as a power that enables both the regressive de-differentiation of the development of this self and a re-building of the personality. This fantasizing back, which can also be called remythizing, designs a form of communication that no longer requires language. The relationship to the child, which is already prepared in other texts by the ‘métaphore obsédante’ of the child’s eyes, describes in the authentic story an understanding through glances. The narrator has to learn to read the eyes of the children and their gazes so that he can enter the mythical space and the aesthetic experience. This new form of communication is prepared by regressing into an older layer of language. The biblical language in which a strange father berates his child, and which apparently corresponds to the father’s self-accusation on the “Tag der Schuld” seems appropriate to this re-­ mythification; it is precisely by it that the child is affected (KG 133 f.). The next step is a regression into the forms of speechless communication. Faced with the swastika-­ covered birdhouses of her native environment, the father suggests covering the symbols with paint: The discursive confrontation with a world marked by violence and threat is replaced by the speechless gesture (KG 135 f.; Pütz 1982, 115). Erasing and painting over these signs of a historical order of violence require no concepts or justifications. In the turning away from the conventionalized sign and from communicative language, the secret order of the children reaffirms itself as a faculty of the imagination. In contrast to earlier representations, it now gives rise to another form of communication, a private language that is also accessible to the father. In this way, the gestures that determine the communication between father and child oppose the “Hundenamen” of general conversation and the drone language of the “Blechernen Zeitalters” (KG 64). In the same move, the fantasized epitome of the family is set against a union of the father with his wife that has long since ended. The seemingly history-less togetherness of father and child asserts itself against the claims of the “Seins-Nichte” who needs history for her life, like the Jew who threatens the child with death and dismemberment (KG 92 f.). Thus, the new community designs an exit from history thatas Der kurze Brief had still considered impossible. The speechless gesture that the father desires as a form of communication in his relationship with the child and in the child scenes that he begins to perceive more and more consciously leads to another form of communication that still uses conventional language but is in fact already a new language. It simultaneously preserves the memory of an earlier moment of epiphany in which the observing father becomes an “Augenzeuge” to a “mystischen Augenblick[.]” and in which, as the sun sets, not only is the sky unreal in its illumination but also the shore bushes blow “in einer wunderbaren Übereinstimmung mit dem kurzen Kinder-Haar im Vordergrund” (KG 33). Even then, the narrator is aware of the difficulties of communicating this experience and “die Formenfolge eines solchen Augenblicks freizudenken”, just as he had to freely imagine the connections in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. Years later, and in the midst of a sphere of life where the signs of violence still remain, a comparable moment of epiphany occurs. But now the picture becomes three-dimensional:

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In dem Buschwerk öffnen und entfalten sich tiefe, schwarze Zwischenräume, in Übereinstimmung mit den im Vordergrund fliegenden Haaren, wie vor fast einem Jahrzehnt bei dem Alleingang an den fremdländischen Fluß (die Haare sind nur länger geworden, mit dunkleren Strähnen dazwischen); und durch diese Räume geht es jetzt, in einem allgemeinen wilden Wehen, bis an das Ende der Welt. (KG 136)

The deep black spaces in the row of bushes surrounding the courtyard of the apartment building now mark spatial and temporal vistas at the same time; they also point to the mode of a narrative that, in depicting, has to convey images, epitomes (KG 28) and past images to one another. “Nie durften solche Augenblicke vergehen, oder vergessen werden; sie verlangten einen Zusatz, in dem sie weiter schwingen könnten; eine Weise; den GESANG” (KG 136). The closing motto of the text, taken from Pindar’s sixth Olympian ode, bespeaks this song. The word of the father “Komm hierher mein Kind und geh ins allgastliche Land hin, folgend meiner Stimme Rufen!” (Pindar o. J., 46 f.) belongs to the story of Iamos, who receives the gift of sight from his father Apollo. This reference is significant. It reshapes the authentic story between father and child into the mythical wishful story of an initiation in which spiritual and bodily fatherhood become one and at the same time their roles are reversed. The story of the father with the child not only condenses earlier configurations of childhood. It also shows how the father receives instruction from the child at the very moment when he wants to begin raising it. So blieb der Meister immer noch das andere, indem es ihn lehrte, mehr Zeit für die Farben draußen zu haben; genauer die Formen zu sehen; und in der Folge tiefer – nicht bloß in Stimmungen – den Ablauf der Jahreszeiten an einem sich entrollenden Farn, einem zunehmend ledrigen Baumblatt oder den wachsenden Ringen eines Schneckenhauses zu empfinden. Von ihm erfuhr er auch das Eigentliche über das Wesen der Schönheit: ‘Das Schöne sieht man so schlecht’ (KG 131 f.)

Only as author, but not as biological father, can the narrator guide this child. His narrated myth of initiation therefore builds on the very myth of authorship, the particular ‘mythe personnel’ that the story of Alexius and Pirosmani establishes in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. Only a history of paternal succession that is at once mythical and aesthetically fortified in this way no longer knows the horror of what is awarded in the process of socialization, no longer thematizes desiring as violence. Rather, it transforms the inscription of paternal desires into the life of the child into an offer of participation in a common life. This is the point of Handke’s statement that Kindergeschichte is written in response to the word “Cantilene”, taken from Goethe’s Maximen und Reflexionen (GB 246; Goethe HA12, 474, n. 773). The secret writing of promise perceived on the children’s school folders, which constitutes the center of this initiation, requires a mythical chant; the dramatic poem Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Village) introduces it. There the father becomes definitively a speaker of another language that no longer has anything to do with cultural systems of inscription. Rather, the dramatic Poem reports on experiences, desires, and fantasies which, although they produce and condition the language of

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culturalization, are suppressed by it at every point. In this respect, this text rightly stands at the end of the aesthetic as well as the concealed authentic autobiography that the tetralogy outlines.

6.4 Construction of Origin: Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Village, 1981) Langsame Heimkehr describes a return to the origins of the self and is a turn towards psychogenesis. Its description of reality aims at the mapping of psychic representations. Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire turns this prehistory of socialization into a myth of the birth of the artist; it presents the formation of the self and the emergence of authorship as one and the same process. Kindergeschichte provides the authentic evidence of the connection between psyche and imagination that makes this congruence possible. When one remembers one’s story with a child, one’s own childhood is reconstructed. In this, of course, a process of projection still prevails, which proves spiritual paternity to bodily paternity and vice versa. The dramatic poem Über die Dörfer formulates a call based on these premises that conjures up a second homecoming: “Über die Dörfer” the author thinks himself back to his real home and transforms it once again into an “Inbild” (cf. EF 61). The main character, Gregor, returns home from a foreign land to settle the distribution of the inheritance with his siblings after the death of his mother. In the course of this confrontation, he not only unconsciously puts himself in the situation of the siblings living in the country, he also falls back into perceptions of his own childhood. This reference back, caused by an external occasion, is neither nostalgia nor regression, but rather a form of critique; this in turn has a time-critical and an autoanalytical approach. The first links Über die Dörfer to a tendency in contemporary literature to take up the theme of home and to describe the importance of origins for socialization. A note from Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil) shows that Handke makes this turn consciously and that he sees it as arising from a life-historical experience. “Was ist heutzutage das Drama? Dass es weder Volk noch Heimat gibt. Doch es bleibt einem auf die Dauer nichts übrig, als das eigene Land und das eigene Volk, jedenfalls in der Idee, zu lieben – das aber habe ich erst durch die Jahre in den fremden Ländern gelernt” (GB 171). Uncovering what has been buried directs one’s gaze not only to the starting point of one’s own development, but also to its law and peculiarity. The author recognizes that in his work, as in his life, memory, imagination, and fantasy are shaped by a life-historical development and are related to each other. This context and the description of the way back are made communicable by the fact that they are mirrored in a form of representation that simultaneously specifies and generalizes the memory of actual biographical experiences. Through configuration, dialogue, narrative, lyrical and song-like passages, the text participates in all three main literary genres (Pütz 1982, 118). Its characters are stylized, “keiner darf ein Charakter [sein]” and yet “keine Person austauschbar” (GB 245). The settings of large construction site and village point not only to the realms of work, life, and

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death, but above all to a fundamental tension between salvation and hopelessness, condemnation, and transfiguration, which determines the text and sets an antithetics of almost mythical quality in the place of dramatic tectonics (Pütz 1982, 119). The play acquires the status of a poem about humanity and an epic about the family (GB 140) through the mysterious commentator on the events, who is called Nova. She represents the law of the new time, which is always referred to in other Handke texts under the name of the “anderen Zeit”. Nova speaks in a poetically exaggerated language that is interspersed with literary allusions; moreover, she sometimes seems to take on the commentary function of the chorus in Greek drama. The “Tropfen Blut im Schnee” (ÜD 11) are reminiscent of the medieval Parzival, the formula of the “Wanderer ohne Schatten” as well as the great final words about art are reminiscent of Nietzsche, from whose Ecce homo one of the mottoes is taken (ÜD 98). The core of the plot is a drama of the relationship between the siblings. But the current conflict that the dramatic poem deals with, the inheritance issue that brings the relatives back together, is only an occasion to make manifest a latent, yet fundamental conflict. It transcends the conditions of the authentic constellation behind which Handke’s own story can be discerned. This transformation is also evidenced by a note from Die Geschichte des Bleistifts. “Soll das dramatische Gedicht die Geschichte von mir und meinen Geschwistern sein? – Nein, gemessen an dem, was ich mit meinen Geschwistern erlebt habe (und sie mit mir), soll es eine Große Erfindung sein” (GB 231). The such exaggerated conflict that the play depicts, however, is related to the preceding stories of the Tetralogie in three ways. First, the dramatic poem points to the beginning of a real history of socialization; Sorger’s recollections of Europe, all of which outline the autobiographical scheme of the Tetralogie, and Kindergeschichte, which repeats and reflects its own history of socialization in the story of the child, prepare this. Secondly, all experiences and perceptions are traced back to epitomes that spring directly from the phantasms of childhood and are akin to the aesthetic imagination. Here, too, the increasing autobiographical stringency leads to a direct link between primary familial and secondary artistic socialization. Third, and finally, the dramatic poem builds from the outset on the power of naming and inventing, which Die Lehre der Sainte-­Victoire deals with. In this, it is shown that the main locus of all dreams is in the child’s home, and that his later fantasies are not free-floating, but at every point tied back into the ontogenetic process. The threefold reference of the dramatic poem to the overall context of the Tetralogie makes the remythization of one’s own experience in the train of an autobiographical recollection at once concise and revealing. It confirms the importance of the phrase “Sich deutlich halten durch Wiederholen” (GB 187) for the author’s writing. At the same time, it enables the returning Gregor to think and fantasize freely, pointing even more clearly than in Langsame Heimkehr and in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire not only to historical and topographical archetypes, but in advance to what is already there. Die Geschichte des Bleistifts makes it clear that such recollection as remythization is at the same time a form of fantasy; it records this insight as a quotation: “Die Phantasie ist kein Schaffen. Die Phantasie ist ein Erwärmen

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dessen, was schon da ist. Es gibt kein Schaffen” (GB 185). At the centre of this disarming reference back, therefore, stands the life-historically significant rivalry with his brother (ÜD 27 f.), the changing feelings of affection and distance towards him (ÜD 54), and finally the depiction of the sister’s particular life situation, her world of experience and work (ÜD 56; Pütz 1982, 117). It is in keeping with the principles of narrative enunciated in the Journal entitled Das Gewicht der Welt that the precision of this referencing is put into the form of a conceptless visualization. It seems that only the transposition of the depicted conflicts into a sequence of images gains persuasive power (cf. Batt 1975, 611); the form of the dramatic poem uses the stringency of the images of the dream and presupposes the renunciation of the general concepts that the preceding texts of the Tetralogie thematize and present. The appropriate imagery for this state of affairs, which determines both the perception of reality and the law of its aesthetic transformation, is formulated in the speech of the brother. “Und wehe dir, du sagst, wer er ist! Und wehe dir, du wagst zu schließen, wer wir sind! Ein Deutungswort – das Fest ist aus. Die Festlichkeit besteht darin, das Rätsel zu erfinden” (ÜD 37). Feast and festivity aim at a mythical realization and are at the same time drafts of the imagination. In the latter, “das natürliche mythische Denken” (GB 203) occurs when it intertwines with myth through preserving memory. “Erst, wenn das, was war, in die Phantasie gehoben, noch einmal kommt, wird es mir wirklich: Phantasie als die auslegende Wiederkehr” (GB 202). The dramatic poem is the highest heightening of this fantastic remythification of authentic experience. It takes up the mirrored interpretations of perceived and imaginative reality that the preceding texts describe. Far from the discursive concept, however, to use the enigma without being an author succeeds only for the unknown and nameless, for whom the “Volk” of the carpenters stands in as mythical image and real appearance at the same time. Das Gewicht der Welt shows that the dramatic poem aims from the outset at such a representation of the people, and that it ascribes to them a meaning at once mythical and allegorical. “Im dramatischen Gedicht muß das Volk zum Vorschein kommen. Und es müßte alles darauf hinauslaufen, sagen zu können: ‘Hör. Ich liebe dich.’” (GB 244). Of the others, however, it is said succinctly: “Die Mächtigen sind heute die Entzauberten” (ÜD 41). The powerful are at the same time those on whom the law of socialization is painfully inscribed. Those who have devoted themselves solely to reality pay with alienation from the fantasies of their childhood and the phantasms related to them. Whoever takes this step is helped neither by festival nor myth nor aesthetic play. “Sie spielen und spielen, doch kein Spiel macht sie wieder zu Kindern” (ÜD 41). The mythic recoding of the authentic and biographical that rises up against it is powerfully represented in the dramatic poem. It preserves the conciseness of inner imagery for those who can discern the meaning of their own childhood story. The imagery that springs from it aims at imagining a balance between desire and reality. Therefore, the destroyed idyll of which an old woman speaks not only points to the destruction of the habitat that defines the author’s childhood (ÜD 68 f.), but it also

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points to a threat to the space of imagination that is symmetrical to this world of childhood experience. Du bist in einem falschen Land, mein Lieber. Du bist in einem Land, das so klein ist wie bösartig; voll von Gefangenen, die in ihren Zellen vergessen werden, und noch voller von den vergeßlichen Kerkermeistern, die nach jeder Schandtat dicker im Amt sind, mit Stimmen, die tönen, als hätte man ihnen Todeslautverstärker in die Kehlen eingesetzt, mit den Arm- und Beinbewegungen von vergifteten Enterhaken, mit Augen, aus denen mit jedem Blick die Stechwespen ausschlüpfen. (ÜD 74)

It also becomes clear that Gregor’s conflict with his siblings, shortened and intensified in the dramatic poem, reflects, and repeats the early tension between the world of desire and the experience of reality. It already shapes the development of the writing I before the latter discovers his real primal history. His desire to preserve this discovery is evidenced by the dream formula “Ich habe ein Stück Land gerettet” (ÜD 61), which responds to a contemplation of nature that has been dominated, destroyed, and alienated from the self. Here, too, the text makes it clear that dream, unconscious fantasy and aesthetic reconstruction of reality are structurally identical, and that aesthetic perception also derives from conscious regression. It is from this that the character Gregor and his inventor derive their imaginative power. Thus, here too, the authentic conflict acquires a life-historical meaning by being assigned to a ‘mythe personnel’. The sentence “Kehr heim in die Fremde. Nur dort bist du hier” (ÜD 74) reminds us of the necessary return to the space of familial socialization and recalls the horror from which wishing and longing for the primordial state emerged. The old woman’s teichoscopy shows this terror, against which productive fantasies rise, projecting it into the landscape. “Endlich wird es ernst – endlich bilden diese Hügel, die Schluchten, die Felsköpfe und die Lichtungen wieder jene Landschaftsordnung, für die sie bestimmt sind: das Gelände für den Krieg” (ÜD 75). As a countermovement to this threatening remythification, Nova immediately creates a myth of the faculty of authorship. Her injunction to “Erzählt einander die Lebensbilder” (ÜD 100) takes up a fantasy Gregor has just before, when, looking at the fallen leaves in the park, he recalls the “Blattmasken” (ÜD 84) that were carved in his homeland. “Und während ich mich langsam da durchbewegte, stiegen aus dem Laub die Gesichter und die Geschichten von uns allen auf: es war ein Gesicht und eine Geschichte, und dieses eine Gesicht und die eine Geschichte, das weiß ich seitdem, muß das Ziel der Arbeit sein, nicht nur meiner Arbeit, sondern unser aller Arbeit” (ÜD 85). Nova’s “Apotheose der Kunst” (GB 231), which is in truth one of authorship, at the same time evokes the power of the images of the unconscious that precede all thinking: “[…] ohne das Bild eines Wegs gibt es kein Weiterdenken” (ÜD 100). Therefore, in the dramatic poem, images from the repressed natural history of man himself eventually take the place of nature. The question “Wildnis, wo bist du?” (ÜD 26) is directed at this origin of ontogenesis and is anything but a nostalgic lament about the destruction of the rural world; it points to the necessity of the search for a wilderness, of which Nietzsche already speaks. The request “[...] werdet so selber die Form” (ÜD 97) becomes the guiding formula of an imaginative memory that aims at these connections; at the same time, it

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already outlines the law of form of the dramatic poem itself. Both preserve, through imagination, memory, and form, the “Eine Rätsel […] als das wir jeden Morgen erwachen” (ÜD 100). Because art can reconstruct a myth of personality along with authentic experience and preserve both in memory, Nova attributes to it a life-­ sustaining power. “Eure Kunst ist für die Gesunden, und die Künstler sind die Lebensfähigen – sie bilden das Volk. Übergeht die kindfernen Zweifler” (ÜD 98). The feast and the enigma that everyone celebrates by recalling the law of their origins, but the poet by describing it and repeating it in writing, are metaphors for this reconstruction. Thus the dramatic poem sets familial and cultural socialization at one and preserves its designs through mythic recoding. The transformation of the remembered authentic story into the dramatic poem and the transformation of the author into a figure of it and its organizer at the same time conjure up and repeat the productive power of imagination and memory. They make the ‘mythe personnel’ at once a myth of authorship. Its capacity is reinforced by the fact that different levels of language and memory appear and are treated as the same in the text. Colloquial language, cultural quotations, and self-quotations by Handke are transformed into the telling of the one story. In the mythical design, fiction and reality coincide (Sebald 1975, 158). On the one hand, the free thinking of the existing turns into its transformation: “kann nicht auch der Bau hier bald ein Teil dieses Erdkellersystems sein? Kann nicht der Beton zurück zu Urgestein gedacht werden? Im Bauschutt sind Quellen, und sie werden im Hang frische Seitentäler bilden” (ÜD 23 f.). Finally, however, on the other hand, there is an exaggeration of the power of aesthetic view, which is supposed to assert itself against the historical process as against the “Tatsachensklaven” (ÜD 25): “Das Bergblau ist – das Braun der Pistolentasche ist nicht” (ÜD 97). Nova, who speaks of the violence of the imagination and at the same time of the law of form, thus provides a transfiguration of authorship that calls for mythical images. At the same time, she makes clear that these images, apart from their reference to the psychogenesis of the author, can also be related in a general sense to the formation of the self. The realization “Ich bin es” (ÜD 10) requires this double reading. The main sentence of the new faith, “Du kannst dich liebhaben” (ÜD 103), leads beyond the original state of dissociation as well as beyond the later punctual coincidence of I and history, of which the author of Das Gewicht der Welt still deals. In the myth of authorship, which is at the same time a general myth of the formation of the self, the inventor of dramatic figures ascribes to himself his own history and relates the formation of the imagination to that of the self. This is the basis for the significance of the entry into the other and the new time that Handke’s characters so often attempt. This is art itself, and its basic formula, which is also based on the ability to reconstruct the autobiographical, is a psychic law at the same time. Thus, by virtue of imagination, the text turns to life. In place of the previously celebrated moment and the fantasies of the standing now, there is the hope of a movement that points further by leading back and that is to be fixed in the dramatic poem: “Geht ewig entgegen. Geht über die Dörfer!” (ÜD 106). It is no coincidence that Handke refers at length to the dramatic poem Über die Dörfer in his 2019 Nobel Prize speech. In a situation of sharp and very personal

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attacks on him as the laureate, he unflinchingly marks the inner core of both his origins and his writing. In doing so, in a characteristic double movement, his radical recollection draws on texts  – he also mentions Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story) – and authentic memories of childhood, family and home in equal measure. At the same time, his memory links cultural signs, references to the text of Parzival, and the signs of nature. These, which are also the starting point of the writing, are determined as guiding life. “Die Natur ist das […] einzig stichhaltige Versprechen” Nova formulates when she speaks of the design of her world (ÜD 97). It is ironic that the pathos of this figure in 2019 becomes the necessary and last possible counter-discourse to a public discussion that once again carries war into language without listening to its promise.

7

Re-founding the Narrative in the Reconnection to Tradition

7.1 The Double Home: Der Chinese des Schmerzes (1983) The plot in Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across) follows a pattern familiar from the author’s earlier texts: a character’s perception and consciousness change in the wake of an act of violence. Loser, the narrator of the story, who as a teacher at a secondary school is involved in ancient excavations in his spare time and is a specialist in finding thresholds, spontaneously slays a man whom he surprises spraying swastikas along a mountain path. However, this text also has a parabolic structure that goes beyond previous approaches. The protagonist, who’s changing behaviour is described in the sections “Der Betrachter wird abgelenkt”, “Der Betrachter greift ein” and “Der Betrachter sucht einen Zeugen” is more than an acting figure. He does not tell his story alone, but from the very beginning of the storytelling itself. In doing so, he reflects on the difficulties of beginning and realizes that his telling is not presuppositionless. This draws his attention to himself and results in a fundamental change in his perception. A situation arises like the one narrated in Die Angst des Tormanns (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) and Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling). It opens a psychological constellation and a philosophically influenced self-reflection at the same time. Both merge into each other and are not separated by any sharp boundary. The text becomes the expression of a wish that is also formulated in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil): “Zu jeder Wahrnehmung müsste noch der Gegenwartsruck treten” (GB 142). This is the basis of the narrator’s desire to fill his emptiness and to begin narrating and describing. In doing so, he does not only search for images that express his own inner self, but rather the task also falls to him to let appear that which he himself is not in the simple saying. Therefore, his search for thresholds and houses does not only have the psychological meaning of a search for a lost origin. Nor do his descriptions of the landscape show nature alone, and his view of “Phänomene” is not limited to the sentimental reconstruction of nature. Rather, his perception

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_7

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deciphers an entanglement of nature and civilization that reveals the spaces under consideration as realms of ‘Wohnen’, as Heidegger describes them. In these, intuition, a way of life and a way of thinking fall into one. This too is explained by the references to archaeology. Loser can develop ground plans from the thresholds of ancient buildings and at the same time reconstruct the places of living and building, “mit ihnen als den Grenzlinien deutet sich die ursprüngliche Anordnung eines Baus oder auch eines ganzen Dorfes an” (CS 25). But at first, the conditions of his life and existence deny the narrator access to this primal realm. Der Chinese des Schmerzes tells of how Loser experiences this split and how he learns to deal with it. In doing so, the text directly juxtaposes the unconscious images of desire and the conscious attempts to overcome alienation. The wish condenses into the signifier of the arcade that dominates the work, that Phantasien der Wiederholung (Fantasies of Repetition) had already outlined (PW 55), and that foreshadows the “Himmelsschrei” of an altered consciousness of perception in Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Villages) (ÜD 100). A psychological development and an ontological dimension of fundamental importance coincide in this image. The text thus acquires a double structure; an ontological inscription appears alongside the psychological one. Fundamentally, the conscious experience of alienation shapes the text of Der Chinese des Schmerzes. Writing emerges from it and depicts it; at the same time, it becomes an attempt to overcome it. The author Handke wants to grasp this psychologically and ontologically interpreted alienation by means of a theory in the full sense of the word; he aims at a view of reality such as was last possible in ancient natural philosophy. However, he is also aware that this is only possible by reconstructing what has been lost. Schiller’s figure of thought, the man who has gone into civilization and tries to regain nature, is transformed by the text into an image. The “Sternenfreunde” in Salzburg have to seek out places further and further away from the city in order to be able to see the full starry sky, the contrasts of which are increasingly obscured by the lights of civilization (CS 71). Handke’s Journale (Journals) already name the loss of immediate perception of nature and attempt to return to the simple description of nature (GB 169). The preconditions of writing that they highlight unfold as a literary-historical reflection. Goethe’s self-evident description of nature is contrasted with Hölderlin’s attempt to reconstruct this perception of nature (GB 169). But while the Journale still strive for a mere absorption in nature, Der Chinese des Schmerzes shows that the process of civilization is inescapable (GB 110). For this reason, he foregrounds the psychological borderline situation, whose signifier is the threshold (GB 40), and at the same time makes it the starting point of the attempt to aesthetically rediscover what has been lost. At the site of a disappeared threshold, the archaeologist Loser sees the Greek word “Galene” carved into the clay. In Epicurus it not only denotes a quietly shining and quietly moving sea surface, but it is also a metaphor for human existence (CS 28). In this way it redeems a consideration from Phantasien der Wiederholung, where it is said, “Warum suche ich auf den Schwellen immer die Schrift oder das Bild? Die Schwelle selbst ist ja Schrift und Bild” (PW 78). Fundamentally, this life-historical signifier of the threshold (ÜD 22) differs from the

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simple signs of civilization, the tablets and waymarks that disturb Loser, like his inventor, in landscapes made accessible and opened by footpaths (GB 6, 22). However, the transformation of landscape does not succeed by means of writing, but only through mere perception, to which it is necessary to return. This can happen in two ways: As a fantasy of transformation, or as a mere internalization, in which the outside world becomes a mirror of the inside world. The first happens by the landscape having a musical effect on the viewer, as already demanded by Schiller in his review of Matthisson’s poems. The sounds from a jukebox suddenly transform an Austrian landscape into the West Bank (CS 57). The notes of Die Geschichte des Bleistifts confirm that such transformations triggered by music are always a form of mythologization for Handke. This, too, points to a main theme portrayed in Der Chinese des Schmerzes: “Musik ist an sich schon Mythologisierung; sie stellt vorschnelle Harmonien her” (GB 10). Comparable spatial fantasies become more prominent as the plot progresses. Loser’s view of the landscapes also allows fantasies of transformation to emerge from a mereinternalization, fantasies that consume the perceiving subject. Increasingly, the images of nature and civilization create a connection that can be understood as a world in the philosophical sense. However, the threshold does not point solely to a split in this world; it is also a sign of a dissociation of the narrator himself: There is no question that now the task of writing has become different. Under the conditions of a turning to the things of nature attempted in writing, the threshold becomes an image for the architectonics of the world in Heidegger’s philosophical understanding, for the entrance of things into an overall context. At the same time, it opens up the medium of this entry: it also becomes the sign of writing. The multiply coded signifier of the threshold makes it clear that this also opens an archaeological dimension in addition to the architectural one. Just as the threshold becomes a sign from which the historical past can be reconstructed, so writing allows us to refer from the present of civilization to the primordiality of nature. This narrative turn to nature, however, presupposes at every point a literary recoding that opens a philosophical reflection. As a narrator, Handke must follow in the footsteps of another who is also an observer of nature. In doing so, he follows a central consideration of Phantasien der Wiederholung that gave them their name. For there, writing proves to be not only an internalization, in which the signs of language re-enact the images of nature; rather, it is necessarily also a repetition of what has been given in cultural tradition, a return to an already existing mode of writing, which at the same time opens the philosophical dimension of the text. Thus, it is that the narrator takes up Vergil’s formula “leichte Linde” (CS 70), which in the notes of its inventor takes its place alongside mythical naming (PW 98). The latter calls his reiteration, which is no doubt an attempt to return to Vergil’s writing, a “Wiederfindung” (CS 70). The turn to Vergil’s “hellem Tagwerk” (PW 91) attests to the attempt to rank among the “Meister der Wiederholung” (GB 20). The story Der Chinese des Schmerzes thus clearly traces out two directions at once. It deals with the impetus for writing and with its philosophical justification. The emptiness that Loser feels at the beginning of the text is an image that Handke’s notes also create for his own writing situation. The experience of a “wallende Leere”

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as a precondition of writing is now understood as an existential situation. Although it proceeds from the perception of the individual, it already aims at a self-suspension of subjectivity. In this way, too, writing meets the philosophical pattern of interpretation prefigured in Heidegger. Threshold and bridge, which are already mentioned in a prominent place in the first part of the novel, are reminiscent of considerations from a Trakl interpretation by Heidegger; they can be related to his essay on Bauen Wohnen Denken, which is cited three times in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (GB 107 f.). The path to Heidegger’s philosophy is coupled with a remembering “an lang Verschollenes”, as Loser later provokes in the circle of his tarot players through the narratives of the threshold stories (CS 129). Therefore, from the outset, the remembering that leads to the telling is more than mere memory; it is an act of imagination. This is not free from immediate experience, but already its transformation. However, this simultaneously opens up another aspect of Heidegger’s thought that also determines the situation of the protagonist in Der Chinese des Schmerzes. The narrator’s initial emptiness points to the figure of thought developed in Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) of man’s being held out into nothingness, which is a basic condition of existence. Already in Heidegger’s inaugural lecture Was ist Metaphysik (What is Metaphysics), it becomes clear that this standing out into nothingness leads Dasein out of its everyday essence of anxious interaction and thus opens a new dimension for it, namely that of being as such and as a whole. This dimension of being, however, is not at the disposal of man, but gains its original power from the negating power of nothingness, which for Heidegger here is only another name for a basic feature of being. This is what opens a parallel to Handke’s later work. There, the realm of Being becomes the actual starting point not only of perception and narration, but also of the protagonists’ actions; with this, a decisive turn comparable to Heidegger’s occurs in Handke’s conception of the subject’s position. It determines the understanding of a history that has long since withdrawn from the power of disposal of the individual. The role of the narrator and the situation of the protagonists in the invented reality of Handke’s text derive from the formula unfolded in Heidegger’s later work, which determines a “Hören” and “Entsprechen” as the task of the human being, because there Being has finally become the actual subject. The aesthetic design of reality is also based on this conception. For the philosopher, the obligation of the poet as well as of the thinker consists solely in corresponding to Being in a representative and leading way for others. The endurance of emptiness becomes a sign of the powerlessness of the subject and for the emergence of Being as the actual power. Under these conditions, Loser’s search for love (CS 165 f.) does not arise solely from a feeling, but also from the desire to go into the interior of language, of which Handke’s notes are repeatedly concerned. Before Loser as an individual can enter a proper relationship with another human being, he must first allow himself to be addressed in the appropriate way by Being. Not without reason is his name etymologically derived as “Lauscher”. He enters a relationship with a sentence from Hölderlin’s Hyperion, which has repeatedly pervaded Handke’s work and autobiographical notes since Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell). “Mein ganzes Wesen

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verstummt und lauscht”, one can read there, and in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts it says: “Das verstummende Wesen hat tatsächlich mit ‘Lauschen’ zu tun, nicht mit ‘Schauen’. Und das Farbensehen (besser noch das Lichtsehen) entspricht dem Lauschen” (GB 234). Thus, the word “Galene” becomes the signifier of this phantasized entanglement of I and world in speaking and listening. It points to Heidegger’s sentence, “Der Mensch spricht, insofern er der Sprache entspricht. Das Entsprechen ist Hören” (Heidegger UN 33). This chain of signifiers, which the first part of the novel sets up and develops simultaneously psychologically and theoretically, gives the impression that philosophical and psychological patterns of argumentation stand symmetrically side by side. The second part of the novel, however, shows that the autobiographical inscription of Handke’s writing sketches out a concept of the past that is primarily psychological and, in this respect, falls short of the ontological determination of the past. This is evidenced by the turning point of the narrative story. The narrator, who climbs the Mönchsberg on his way to his tarot game, enters a primordial landscape that he fantasizes while wandering (CS 86); the images of space and landscape that he perceives refer to intrapsychic processes, the mountain climb appears at the same time as a fall back into his own past. Here, too, the deciphering of a geological archetype from the perceived landscape, the fantasies of beginning and end are comparable to the psychologically motivated free fantasizing of the moraine landscape under Berlin, of which Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire) reports. And here, as there, these fantasies are directly related to autobiographical experiences. This is precisely what explains Loser’s reaction to the swastika sprayer, which immediately reminds him of his fascist father’s world and makes the swastika appear as “das Unbild der Ursache all meiner Schwermut  – all der Schwermut und des Unmuts hierzuland” (CS 97). Under these conditions, the spontaneous murder of the sprayer is an attempt to make the “Vergangenheit völlig vergessen” (GW 85) and thus to lose the other memory, which for the author Handke is also connected with the history of violence, because it alone preserves horrible memories without being able to transform them aesthetically. Therefore, the spontaneous murder is in the sign of a fantastic transformation of nature, which can be explained by this psychic constellation. On the one hand, the sky suddenly becomes starless (CS 104), on the other hand, the lights of the plain build “zusammen mit den schnabelähnlich geöffneten Schalen der leeren Bucheneckern […] die entsprechende Weltstadt” (CS 105). Because the border between outside and inside, real, and not real, is now blurred in the view of nature, the narrator initially feels dissociated: he believes himself to be expelled from and open to the world at the same time. The scenario of the fantastic landscape provides him with images of both endangerment and the gathering of the self. This ambivalence is significant because Loser’s relapse into his own past and into the unconscious also proves to be a prerequisite for the psychological reconstruction of his self. The experience of guilt in the aftermath of the crime leads him to an awareness of his own self and, precisely in this way, allows him to recognize his togetherness with others. One’s own history not only creates challenges, but also provides orientation in the looming reflection on collective guilt. “Meine

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Geschichte ist mein Halt” (CS 106 f.) he can now say. Precisely because he knows himself to belong to the “Volk der Täter”, he also arrives in a philosophical sense in the world and in guilt at the same time. This once again reveals the complex significance that the image of the threshold has in the text. As a signifier in the narrator’s autobiographically centered story, it points to an uninterrupted history of violence and demands a psychological interpretation; his own supposedly distinctive story turns out to be merely the prehistory of another. In conversation with a priest, Loser realizes the ultimate meaning of the threshold; it becomes clear to him what story is really to be told. The threshold, which stands as a part for the whole (CS 125), is in psychological terms a realm in itself, “[…] ein eigener Ort, der Prüfung oder des Schutzes” (CS 125 f.). In philosophical respect, however, the treshold “ermittelt […] als die Mitte erst Welt und Dinge zu ihrem Wesen” (Heidegger UN 25). This, too, confirms Handke’s recourse to Heidegger, for the latter the threshold is “der Grundbalken, der das Tor im ganzen trägt. Er hält die Mitte, in der die zwei, das Draußen und das Drinnen, einander durchgehen, aus. Die Schwelle trägt das Zwischen” (Heidegger UN 26). Because, in accordance with this, the threshold also acquires a philosophical meaning in Handke’s text, the pain it evokes as a site of trial is the expression of an ontological condition. It is the pain that Loser endures, and that distorts his face into that of a Chinese: “sein Reißen ist als das versammelnde Scheiden zugleich jenes Ziehen […] Der Schmerz ist die Fuge des Risses” (Heidegger UN 27). For the writer, however, who experiences pain, it is at the same time the precondition of a poetic transformation of Being that gains central importance. “Es gibt kein anderes ‘Sein’ als das ‘Auf-der-Schwelle-Sein’; nein, als das ‘Schwelle-Sein’” it says in Am Felsfenster morgens (At the Mountain Window in the Morning) (AF 91). Thus, in the narrator’s telling, both pain and threshold take on a double meaning. They refer to a tension in the text that exists between the psychological prehistory on the one hand and an ontologically oriented narrative on the other. The threshold of which the narrator tells, and his friends report not only points to the last remaining threshold between madness and dreams, conscious and unconscious, from which the culture of reason as well as conventionalized art are founded; it also becomes the signifier of an existential experience with things themselves. In accordance with this, Die Geschichte des Bleistifts names the boundary as the equivalent of the threshold and describes its peculiarity, also with recourse to Heidegger: “Die Grenze ist nicht das, wobei etwas aufhört, sondern jenes, woher etwas sein Wesen beginnt” (GB 108; Heidegger VO-2, 29). In a later note of Phantasien der Wiederholung, the psychological and the ontological constellation that equally characterize the text of Der Chinese des Schmerzes are immediately summarized and at the same time autoanalytically sharpened: “Es gibt keine Fähigkeit zur Verwandlung, sie ist das allerschmerzhafteste Muß”, the Journal notes (PW 76). Psychic compulsion and what things themselves command fall into one. Thus, the signifier of the threshold occupies a central place in Loser’s narrated story and, following a philosophical terminology of Heidegger, points to history in the sense of an event of the world itself. Loser’s experience of alienation is grounded

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in the historical character of contemporary civilization. It refers to nature as a lost past and to a promised future in Heidegger’s sense. Its occurrence is to be prepared first and foremost by the word of the poet. In this respect, the threshold is not only a place of memory, but also one of imagination; its metaphor is the spatial wave that the narrator perceives when passing from the center of the city to the moorland (CS 149). This also opens a parallel to Heidegger’s thinking. This assumes that in the present age of the “Gestell”, the thinker has the task of preparing a “Wohnen” of the human being in the “Geviert” through a different kind of thinking. Because for the philosopher an increasing oblivion of being is revealed in the present essence of technology, poets and thinkers have a special significance. They have the task of giving language to what is, of making what has been lost tangible again, and of preparing what is to come. Because in the “Geviert” thing and world are to return to their own, art in particular makes language the site of future being “indem sie das Geheißene, Ding-Welt und Welt-Ding, in das Zwischen des Unter-Schiedes kommen heißt” (Heidegger UN 28). Just as Heidegger departs from the notion that poets and thinkers invent words, Handke’s notion of imagination also transcends the subject’s realm of disposal. It is not without reason that his text says: “Es ist ein Ziehen, und ich sehe in der Landschaft den Großen Zug” (GB 141). Unlike the philosopher, however, in Handke’s text this ontological dimension, which is at the same time a poetological one, is prepared at every point by a psychological one. The narrative not only unfolds its meaning around the signifier of the threshold; for the narrator himself, it leads to a crossing of boundaries and acquires life-historical significance for him, because it allows immediate perception and the unconscious to enter a relationship with one another. For this reason, in particular, Loser’s journey home from the tarot game resembles a retransformation. He imagines the mountain of his name, which he saw on his hike, and recognizes in it points of entry and new views (CS 164 f.). But before he can face the experience of the threshold as a narrator, a sensual experience is needed, the turning to a body. Thus, narrative transforms into a story a double desire that is also directed at writing itself. A note of the Die Geschichte des Bleistifts reads: “Wenn die Schrift wie ein Zucken des Körpers wird, wird sie natürlich […]” (GB 118). The fantasies of repetition that pervade the text of Der Chinese des Schmerzes thus simultaneously lead to the fusion of signs and bodies. Life-historical, imagined and fantasized experiences are inscribed in a network of signifiers that completely closes itself off to the depictive reference to reality and at the same time determines the space of experience by marking the place for an arrival that must first be understood as something entirely different. The third part of the novel is both a summary and a continuation; even more clearly than in the first, the narrative and the reflection on it merge. In the seemingly realistic description, he designs a system of signs in which the difference between the human and the non-human, nature, and civilization, is still there, but is no longer understood as an opposition. The crossing of the threshold is now precisely not understood as a borderline deception, like the architectural illusion of the opera house, in which concrete and natural stone seem to merge indistinguishably into one

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another (CS 144), but rather it has the consequence that both sides of this difference are left in their own right. At the same time, this third part of the novel summarizes the previous two and takes them even further. Images of an ontogenetic process and images of the imagination now intertwine directly; the opposing movement of deconstruction and reconstruction that also characterizes other texts by Handke is repeated. The returnee initially experiences a situation of alienation; he feels like a “Hülle ohne Mensch” (CS 171), he hears sounds “sozusagen um die Ecke, hinterrücks, überfallartig, ohne die dazu gehörigen Körperbilder” (CS 172), he loses his spatial orientation (CS 172) and has the feeling of living “in der Verdammnis” (CS 174). This state is described with a metaphor that can be resolved both aesthetically and ontologically: Loser loses his “Mitte” and perspective. In the center of his field of vision he either sees nothing or else the center of his field of perception becomes for him an “Ort der schwindelerregenden Sinnestäuschung” (CS 175). What he fantasizes immediately appears to him as the law of reality; the natural “Mitte-Punkte” of the steeples, on the other hand, show themselves to him as “Fälschungen” (CS 176); he is thereby reminded of Lucretius’s conception of the black hole of the infinite (CS 177). When Loser can no longer think himself into the landscapes he perceives, he follows an experience also reported by the author Handke: “Früher habe ich mir die leeren Gegenden mit weißen Städten voll gewünscht; jetzt möchte ich, wünsche ich, will ich erreichen, daß die leeren Orte ewig so leer bleiben, beispielhaft, energisch, kräftigend leer, beispielleer” (PW 61). For Loser, however, such deserted spaces refer primarily to a deficit. He recognizes what he lacks as “etwas Leibliches: Ein Sinnesorgan” (CS 178). He understands that he lacks a special “Art des Schauens”, namely the “Einheit von Gewahrwerden und Vorstellungskraft, die das griechische Wort ‘leukein’ meint” (CS 179). In this context, the Christian metaphors that also pervade the text are dissolved. The idea of resurrection undergoes a remythification in the reference to Easter customs, which unfold aesthetic images: The fresh fleshy white of horseradish dug from the ground appears to the viewer as “eine einleuchtende Lebens-Farbe” (CS 180). The images and colors of this aesthetic recoding correspond to signifiers for a psychogenesis that is fantasized anew. The aesthetic synopsis conceals the dark primordial ground of a dream of violence and murderous dismemberment (CS 181 ff.). Only after this does the awakening perceive a colour and then a hibiscus blossom (CS 184). And upon the fantasy of dismemberment, the images of which depict nothing other than the shattering of the first imaginary constitution of the ego, which is the basis for the formation of the self, there follows a reconstruction, which is again described as a fantasy of the body. In showering, “wuchs der Körper allmählich aus zu sich selbst. Standbein und Spielbein bildeten sich” (CS 185). This psychologically readable double figure of dismemberment and reconstruction simultaneously underscores the ontological contour of Handke’s text. It reminds us that the “Los” of dying, in Heidegger’s conception as a condition of human existence, also requires the “Teil”: the realization of one’s own destiny, which must be fulfilled and is the prerequisite for the attainment of self-consciousness (CS 189). As is well known, for Heidegger, human beings perform their actual being as

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“Sterbliche”. This designation, taken from Hölderlin, is taken up and developed in the essays Bauen Wohnen Denken and Das Ding. There, dying takes on a very different meaning for Heidegger than its usual one. “Die Sterblichen nennen wir jetzt die Sterblichen – nicht, weil ihr irdisches Leben endet, sondern weil sie den Tod als Tod vermögen” (Heidegger VO-2, 51) one reads in that essay. This ontological determination of the philosopher is inserted by Handke into the dialogical pattern that his text designs. The narrated foundation of self-consciousness requires for him another, a “Zeugen”. The threshold of one’s own life only becomes clear in the telling that addresses a listener. From here, the woodpile of the Easter fire, signifier of Loser’s central change, can also be seen as signifier of a myth of authorship, as already developed by Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. It guides the narrator toward his destiny and enables him to arrive in a space that bears signs of “Wohnen”, as Heidegger describes it. The Austrian landscape and the city within it, the fantasized Mayan city of Yucatan and the space of Heraclitus of which the latter says “auch hier sind Götter”, bear the signature of that “Geviert” which the philosopher defines, which Nova describes as a geometric pattern in Über die Dörfer and which Die Geschichte des Bleistifts cites approvingly (GB 107; Heidegger VO-2, 24). “Im Retten der Erde, im Empfangen des Himmels, im Erwarten der Göttlichen, im Geleiten der Sterblichen ereignet sich das Wohnen als das vierfältige Schonen des Gevierts” (AR 107; Heidegger VO-2, 25). The specificity of this “Wohnen”, which Heidegger determines as a “Schonen”, lies in the fact that man no longer powerfully and calculatingly attempts to be master over things, but rather to leave them in their essence. However, Handke’s narration also requires psychological preparation. The third part of Der Chinese des Schmerzes tells of this above all. Suddenly, for Loser, the perceived sounds combine into tones, even into a melody (CS 195), comparable to the signal of the aliens in the movie “Begegnung der dritten Art” (CS 195). On the morning of Easter Day, he gets up, catches sight of the colours of the Moosebene and the mountain Staufen, and wanders out, dressed in summer clothes, into the colours that are also signs of self-assurance for the author Handke. They join with other images that also point to a chain of ‘métaphores obsédantes’ that defines the author. The image of the woodpile from Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire and the planks of Nova from Über die Dörfer continues in the planks of the railway sleepers (CS 200). On his way to the airport, Loser passes through a railway tunnel; the idea of rebirth associated with it points at the same time to a fantasy in Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World): “Sterben in einem Autotunnel (gespürt, wie der Körper ganz weit wurde)” (GW 74). The image of death and rebirth immediately gives rise to a spatial fantasy, “der Gegendausschnitt am Ausgang erschien durchwirkt von einem gleichsam transkontinentalen Licht […] und die Tankstellen, die Lagerhäuser und der Hangar bekommen so etwas von einer Ansiedlung in Übersee: ‘Feuerland’ oder ‘Montana’” (CS 203). This text-constituting interweaving of immediate perception, unconscious desires and metaphors shaped by life history is condensed in the scene at the airport. Andreas Loser writes “Tilia Levis” on the registration form as the name of the unknown woman he is expecting: What he first conceives as a fantasy of nature and

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an aesthetic image, he now tries to experience. The phrase “Schweb ein, leichte Linde”, based on a wishful fantasy, becomes an anticipation of a conscious action on Loser’s part: in memory of Virgil, he wants to ascribe the attribute light lime tree to the stranger (CS 70, 206). In this way, the writing of the text reproduces the twitching of the body, the desires of the body are directly inscribed in the language. Without question, the encounter with the woman desired and fantasized into life, who is first there as an aesthetic image before she can become a body, bears the signature of Handke’s life-historical obsession. The union of man and woman, carried out as if in a dream and almost without speech, not only becomes the image of a dissolution of the boundary between nature and aesthetic image, because the woman appears to the lover as a landscape and a stone figure at the same time. Nor is it merely the transformation of aesthetic language into bodily fantasies; beyond that, it fulfils a sexual fantasy that already prefigures Das Gewicht der Welt (GW 37, 41), and which is also represented in Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung by the spontaneous and wordless act of love with the embassy employee. But the encounter and union with the stranger do not simply lead Loser into a new story, they also lead him back to his childhood under different conditions, and this in a double sense. Loser visits his mother, who lives in a home, he sees a woman who lives on the border of delusion and reality, and at the same time, at the sight of her, the obsessions of the threatening father befall him. They are linked here, not unlike in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire and in clear autobiographical reference to the author, to the image of cold Germany, to the “Nichts” that cannot be barred (CS 219–221). Only after this journey back to his own past, to his father’s and mother’s world, does Loser become free for a reconstruction of his self; his own remembered history allows him to find a new life that draws its character and strength from the afterlife of a role model. His journey to the birthplace of Virgil is therefore also one to the origin of the narrator Loser. At the same time, in the mythical recoding of his own life on the journey to the birthplace of the role model, the latter becomes aware of his loneliness. Now, after passing through remembered, different images of socialization, he can experience them as the true signs of the form of life appropriate to him. What he recognizes for himself has already been succinctly noted by his inventor: “Meine Größe: das Alleinsein” it says in Das Gewicht der Welt (GW 61). It is only because Loser knows that he can be alone that he is able to participate in a scene of happy concord in his family home and under the sign of the laurel tree; it is only because of this that he is able to assert himself as a narrator, reporting his own story to his son. His capacity for narration, like the awareness of loneliness, arises from the resolution to a life-historically significant succession, which is the precondition for the loneliness that characterizes above all the writer. Die Geschichte des Bleistifts confirms that this idea of succession, which Loser realizes, is also a precondition of aesthetic production for its inventor; Loser also becomes what his inventor calls himself, a master of repetition. Handke’s Journal succinctly notes that in writing there are “wohl gar keine Pioniere, nur die Wiederholer” and that these must be regarded as “die einsamsten Menschen auf der Welt” (GB 128).

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However, the mythical recoding of Loser’s story, which is at the same time an aesthetic one, is not only developed from the psychological process of ontogenesis but is in turn interpreted ontologically. The origin and formation of the self thereby form the center of an aesthetic fantasy. The narrator recognizes himself in his son, retraces in his mind his own development, and thus fantasizes another life. As a teacher, he finally talks about the meaning of the Greek word “Lalein”, which as a designation of inarticulate speech is a reference to the origin of man, but at the same time etymologically related to the poetic word “Lalle”, for the description of a natural object (CS 231). This linkage depicted in the word points back to Heidegger’s philosophical design. For the latter’s definition of “Wohnen im Geviert”, following Hölderlin, sketches the task of the poet and the special significance of poetic language. “Das Dichten bringt den Menschen erst auf die Erde […]” (Heidegger VO-2, 66). Something comparable is repeated at the end of the text. There is much to suggest that the epilogue of the novel is not a final word, but merely depicts what the protagonist and his author as narrator are trying to achieve. It is not without reason that a bridge is again at the center of the image Loser describes, that the scenes narrated depict situations of coming home that appear at once as arrivals and homecomings. “Jenseits der Brücke sind die Passanten sozusagen schon angekommen in ihrem Heimbereich […]” (CS 250). The narrator, to whom the signifiers of the bridge planks point, is transformed into a bridge-steward who is only an observer, and at the same time speaks the language of a philosopher. “Ich warte” and “ich bin” are the phrases he can say about himself. It is not surprising that he finds an “ungebräuchliches Wort für die Tätigkeit des Wassers, der Bäume, des Winds, der Brücke: […] sie walten” (CS 252). These are precisely the words Heidegger finds for the presencing of Being; for it is not man who is the actual governing power on this earth, but Being, which first points man into his “Wesen”. The saga of the poet and the thinker are preparations for an abrupt retreat required by Being. The interface between the narrated story and the epilogue marks such a sudden transition directly in Handke’s text. Thus, the epilogue is not merely the conclusion of the novel and not only a description of the narrative, but also the idea of the only possible narrative itself. This requires a stepping back behind things that allows the canal to exude “Ruhe, Verschmitztheit, Verschwiegenheit, Feierlichkeit, Langsamkeit und Geduld” (CS 255). At the end of the story, centered by an action, is the image of a narrator who is “die Schwelle” itself (CS 242) and therefore does not want to describe the beginning or the end or the developments of stories, but only to depict and repeat an “Innewerden” (PW 40). However, this is only possible through the experience of pain. The man who seems to smile and yet only suppresses his pain is the hero of this story. The Chinese des Schmerzes is the narrator himself: “Endlich ein chinesisches Gesicht unter all den Einheimischen” (CS 218). The apotheosis of the narrator, like his ability to go into “das Innere der Sprache”, presupposes a story that must be experienced without it still being significant as an object of narration (CB 182).

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This narrowing of poetry and thought, which in Handke’s work leads to a narrative poetology, has another side, however. For Heidegger, the question of man’s responsibility can only be seen against the background of the fact that thinking is the actual action of humans. But if thinking consists primarily in conforming to what “the Being” sends, the question of the individual’s responsibility for what is right or wrong in the particular life situation no longer has any place. This opens another parallel to Handke’s writing, whose models of action often, as in Der Chinese des Schmerzes in particular, deal with an act of violence, but do not evaluate it, seeing it solely as necessary for the developmental history of an individual. Thus, in Handke’s work, despite the liberating aesthetic design, there is also a renewed determinism that can undoubtedly borrow from his philosophical model on which he orients himself.. At the same time, the assumption of this antecedent imprint proves to be a perpetuation of a psychic disposition that the earlier texts deal with, showing an ego that is unable to overcome the rift of the world. It is precisely in this way that Handke’s writing expresses a sense of life that stands beyond the orientations of modernity. The predecessor of being in the reflections of the philosopher Heidegger corresponds in Handke’s writing not only to the obligation to predetermined patterns of description and perception, but also to the predecessor of language itself. It is associated with the image of a history that eludes the active grasp of the individual. From the very beginning, the process of becoming oneself bears the traces of a threat to the authentic self present in consciousness, and individual life sees itself threatened by the course of history. Later texts, especially Der Große Fall (The Great Fall), Die Morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night), and Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos) will portray this, as will the plays and texts that revolve around the Serbian War. Alongside the fantasy of liberation through the aesthetic is the view that “[die] Geschichte […] ein Teufel [ist]” (Kümmel 2019). The aesthetic text, of all things, thus contributes to the fortification of a way of thinking that renders the speaking of the individual under the power of the attributed speech a mere re-speaking. It makes clear that the critical and at the same time aesthetically productive countermovement against the claim of instrumental reason is at every point in danger of losing sight of the traditional determinations of the free subject. However, both Heidegger and Handke still make this decentering recognizable as such; in Handke’s case, moreover, the suffering from it is thematized incessantly and with autoanalytical acuity. This is what fundamentally distinguishes his narrated approaches to the given in the sense of a self-giving or self-refusing from the theorists of a subject-transcendent discourse, who want to enjoy the experience of alienation solely in the aesthetic play of their words and concepts.

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7.2 Rediscovery in the Urtext of Poetry: Die Wiederholung (Repetition, 1986) The text Die Wiederholung (Repetition), published in 1986, appears in retrospect as an important connecting text between Handke’s early language-experimental texts and the poetologically readable texts that found a provisional center in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, through which at the same time the relationship between text and image, which is intensified above all in the later texts, was decisively brought to the fore. The subsequent texts take up this theme and transform it into a fundamental reflection on the possibilities and modalities of narrative. This occurs especially after Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay), which redefines the autoreflexive trace in Handke’s writing. While the earlier texts can be related to the structuralism of Saussure and the linguistic hypotheses of Sapir and Whorf, on the one hand, and to the various linguistic philosophical as well as epistemological approaches of Wittgenstein, on the other, the later ones open up an entirely new dimension, because they can be read from the perspective of Heidegger’s reflection on art and language (Heidegger VO-2, 61–78; UN 31–33), as the look at Der Chinese des Schmerzes has shown. This change in the basic orientation of Handke’s thinking and writing about the conditions of narrative can also be classified in terms of literary history. It points to the end of literary modernism and the entry into a postmodern constellation. An early essay by Michael Hays already unfolds this perspective paradigmatically (Hays 1981). Like others before him, this critic draws on Richard Gilman’s assessment of Peter Handke (Gilman 1973), emphasizing that Handke’s plays, through their principle of construction, negate any natural reality outside the one they design. In particular, he emphasizes that the linguistic theoretical implications of Handke’s writing belong less to Wittgenstein than to Saussure and Roland Barthes (Hays 1981, 349). Subsequently, it has also been associated with Raymond Federman’s notion of ‘surfiction’ (Klinkowitz 1978). Especially in Der kurze Brief and in his images of America, one recognized a tendency of narrative towards ‘metafiction’ (Klinkowitz 1978, 419). However, these attempts to subject Handke’s texts to a deconstructivist reading oriented towards Derrida miss a crucial aspect of Handke’s writing. Even in the first phase of his work, it is evident that the language-experimental pieces and narratives already had an existential imprint. This is even more true for the texts since the late eighties. As in Heidegger’s conception of language, their language is not merely a medium of communication or the mimetic representation of reality, but rather a sign of existential configurations. From a literary-historical perspective, Handke’s writing thus acquires a special role. On the one hand, his texts re-enact the transition from modernism to postmodernism; on the other, after passing through a phase of deconstruction of outmoded narrative patterns and linguistic forms, they turn again to a re-establishment of traditional modes of writing, which, however, is inconceivable without the preceding deconstruction of a solely mimetic language. This can be seen particularly clearly in the writing programme of the so-called Tetralogie, in Langsame Heimkehr (The

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Long Way Round), Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, Kindergeschichte (Children’s Story) and the play Über die Dörfer. The latter unfolds a gesture of reconstruction from its recourse to literary and aesthetic tradition. It brings together the intertextual and psychological levels that Handke’s texts have always opened up in two ways: on the one hand, through the psychologically based draft of an ideal biography of Handke himself as author and artist, and on the other hand, through the development of a doctrine of art, a poetology, which Handke writes in confrontation with tradition. The Tetralogie’s overall intent then is to recreate primary socialization, the emergence of the self through language and education, and secondary socialization, the formation of the artist in different aesthetic configurations. Langsame Heimkehr describes a return to the origins of the self, its description of external reality aims in its core at a mapping of psychic representations. Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire turns this prehistory of socialization into a myth of the birth of the artist; it presents the formation of the self and the emergence of authorship as one and the same process. Kindergeschichte provides the authentic evidence of the connection between the laws of psychism and imagination that makes this congruence possible. In the memory of the story with the child, one’s own childhood is reconstructed. The dramatic poem Über die Dörfer finally formulates a call based on these premises that conjures up a second homecoming: via the villages, the author thinks himself back to his real home and transforms it into a psychic as well as aesthetic epitome. The narrative texts that follow, Der Chinese des Schmerzes and Die Wiederholung, combine this autobiographically centered return of the author to his own origins with a renewed return to literary tradition. Both texts show that Handke returns to a mimetically oriented way of writing under changed conditions. His texts are not only determined by Heidegger’s ontological figure of the thought of an antecedent language. Like this philosopher, they also face up to the special demands that modernity – in Heidegger’s diction the technical world – places on poetic language. Under these conditions, their recourse to tradition is certainly critical. However, although the principle of mimetic representation is made conscious by Handke as a problem, he turns away from both the self-reflection of modern literature and now from experimental writing. In place of a mere mimesis of reality, he attempts to introduce new ways of seeing that, while no longer bound to the narrative context of a text, are nevertheless suitable for reassigning it a representational function in the free play of narrative. Therefore, Der Chinese des Schmerzes is not only about a narrator who is the acting figure, but at the same time about the narration of narration itself, which will primarily determine Handke’s later texts. This double layeredness unfolds on the one hand a psychological constellation, and on the other hand a philosophically founded self-reflection that takes on an ontological character. Both merge into each other and are not separated by any sharp boundary. With the archaeological reconstruction of an earlier dwelling, which aims at nothing other than an ontological reconstruction of the “Wohnen” in “Sein”, Der Chinese des Schmerzes tells of the psychological situation of a distance from the origin and at the same time describes the attempts to overcome this condition. The threshold is not only the sign of a lost

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past in the historical as well as existential-ontological sense, but it also marks the possibility of entering another order. The text Die Wiederholung departs from this figure of thought. It aims at a rediscovery that creates the preconditions for a liberating narrative on a detour via childhood. The fact that it follows the trail of an autobiographical inscription even more clearly than previous texts, because this “Reise ins Neunte Land” also leads into the author’s childhood space, also ties in with the ontological imprint that determines Handke’s narrative here, as in Der Chinese des Schmerzes. This refers, without explicit reference, to a critical consideration about civilization of the philosopher: “Denn es bedarf der Besinnung, ob und wie im Zeitalter der technisierten gleichförmigen Weltzivilisation noch Heimat sein kann” (Heidegger EF, 243). One of the special features of Handke’s writing is that this fantasy of home is connected both with the idea of going into language and very directly with a reconstruction of the space of one’s own socialisation, but especially the space of childhood. Slovenia, which is depicted in the “Neunte Land”, becomes a metaphor for home; this also includes the places and persons of family history, which later texts begin to structure more and more decisively and which in Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still) experience a psychologically revealing condensation. Die Wiederholung thus proves to be a crucial interface for the work that follows. It shows that for Handke’s narrative the connection between ontological and biographical recoding is inescapable. In doing so, the text follows the scheme of a tripartite division, which allows the finding again to be understood as the fulfilment of a promise. The concept of “Wiederholung” chosen as a title, which is first mentioned in Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit (Heidegger SuZ 385; UN 131), can be understood in Handke’s text in three ways. First, it relates to Handke’s previous writing itself: The text proves to be a rewriting and piecing together of previously defining themes. More stringently and more seamlessly than in Der Chinese des Schmerzes, the piecing together now takes place without a violent turn in the protagonist’s story, for the free space of narrative for which Handke is always searching is here given its central image by the fantasized space in the “Savanne der Freiheit”, in the “Neunten Land”. Secondly, “Wiederholung” means that this text also follows the autobiographical trace that characterises Handke’s previous narratives. As in Die Lehre der Sainte-­ Victoire and Der Chinese des Schmerzes, the narrative again presupposes a return to childhood. Defining phases of one’s own socialization are inscribed in the text in the mode of a repetition. In the process, the experience described with the sought-after brother seems to reach back even further than in Langsame Heimkehr: down to individual motifs, the text of Die Wiederholung now also draws on the images and situations of a child’s socialisation, which already form the fabric of memory and design in Die Hornissen (The Hornets). The first part of the novel, “Das blinde Fenster”, recalls a significant scene in the early text, in which the narrator perceives his brother through a window that is not quite clean, and for him his own image and his brother’s image are reflected one above the other. Still in Die Hornissen, this visual configuration is largely one of displacement. In Die Wiederholung, on the other hand, it is above all the desire that is brought to bear in the image of repression

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that is thematized. Just as the thought of a woman is not expressed as “desire or longing, but only as the desired image of the beautiful opposite” (W 15), the viewer of the blind window immerses himself in the possible images of others with whom he would like to enter a relationship: doch die Umrisse betrachtete ich durch ein in den Glaswänden gespiegeltes Gesicht, das mein eigenes war. Mithilfe des Abbilds, das mich nicht im besonderen zeigte – nur Stirn, Augenhöhlen, Lippen –, konnte ich von den Silhouetten träumen, nicht allein der Passagiere, sondern auch der Hochhausbewohner, wie sie sich durch die Zimmer bewegten oder hier und da auf den Balkonen saßen. (W 17)

But already this view of others, inscribed in one’s own reflection, demands writing and language. The still insecure I that stumbles (W 45), that knows the world only within the confines of the boarding school, that stays on the edge of the place “hinter den Gärten” (W 49), experiences early on in its encounter with a script painter a meaning of writing that it perceives as magical. “Wenn ich ihm zuschaute […] erblickte ich in der entstehenden Schrift die Insignien eines verborgenen, unbenennbaren, dafür umso prächtigeren und vor allem grenzenlosen Weltreichs” (W 50). Going into writing is at the same time connected with the colour blue (W 52), which appears as a sign of entering life and time. The stations and the places of a youth that was largely under the law of a language ban, because after the disappearance of the eldest son the Slovene sounds are forbidden in the house (W 71), give rise to the desire for a name-giving and singing (W 75), which the mother exercises. Both are basic patterns of the aesthetic in Handke’s immanent poetology. This leads to the third point of view implied by ‘Wiederholung’ in this text: It points to the necessity that every step into life leads first into language and is an appropriation of what is given, a “Hören” and “Entsprechen” that takes place in the “Gleichzeitigkeit von Anwesendem und Abwesendem” (W 257), which makes possible a “Wohnen” and “Entbergen” (W 262–277) that follow an existential understanding of the world. The very first part of the novel therefore turns the act of ‘Wiederholung’ into an attempt to enter language, to come to a speaking and listening that can be understood as “Entsprechen” in Heidegger’s sense. At the same time, the prohibition of language in the first part motivates a turning to a presuppositionless perception that can emerge from memory alone. This, too, takes up a theme from Handke’s earlier work. The section “Die leeren Viehsteige” describes nothing other than an appropriation of language grounded in remembering. The empty ‘bruissement’ of what is remembered and what has been can return in the medium of memory and become a narrative. Thus it can “immer wieder übergehen […] ins offene Erzählen, ins größere Leben, in die Erfindung” (W 102). Here, however, this path into language does not lead to a writing in Derrida’s understanding, not to an antecedent order that alone vouches for the eccentricity of the speaking and writing subject, but rather it points the narrator Handke to the things themselves. It is characteristic of his narrative that landscape images and the description of writing repeatedly fade over one another; landscape image and writing image are conceived as identical, they both appear as natural signs that can be freed from the

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“Erdenschwere” by means of an act of “Entzifferung”, by inserting them into a “Luftschrift” (W 115). In mich aufgenommen hatte ich die Einzelheiten des Tals auch zuvor, nun aber erschienen sie mir in ihrer Buchstäblichkeit, eine im nachhinein, mit dem grasrupfenden Pferd als dem Anfangsbuchstaben, sich aneinanderfügende Letternreihe, als Zusammenhang, Schrift. Und diese Landschaft vor mir, diese Horizontale, mit ihren, ob sie lagen, standen oder lehnten, daraus aufragenden Gegenständen, diese beschreibliche Erde, die begriff ich jetzt als “die Welt”; und diese Landschaft, ohne daß ich damit das Tal der Save oder Jugoslawien meinte, konnte ich anreden als “mein Land!”; und solches Erscheinen der Welt war zugleich die einzige Vorstellung von einem Gott, welche mir über die Jahre geglückt ist. (W 114)

At the same time, the appearance of the world follows a phonetic transcription whose E-O-A-E as a sound image allows one to associate a perceptual image without subjecting it to the concept (W 116). Perception is set free by the renunciation of the claim of representation as well as of descriptive categories, which implies the subordination to the foreign language of Slovenian. Thus, an existential turning point is also marked. This is already captured in a poetic formulation in Der Chinese des Schmerzes. Hölderlin’s phrase “Mein ganzes Wesen verstummte”, which here, in contrast to Der kurze Brief, is supplemented by the words “und las” (W 136), initially leads into a situation of fear; it depicts the existential figure that Heidegger describes as being held out into nothingness (Heidegger SuZ 168). Going into the language here means at the same time facing temporality; it requires accepting one’s own death. This concern for one’s own finitude transforms the repetition of childhood perceptions as well as the decline into the Slovenian land of the brother and one’s own lost childhood into an existential situation of thrownness. It is completed in the Karst landscape, into which the German speaker enters as a stranger who lacks everything that distinguishes the long-established (W 141, 149). Because he cannot simply speak the language of this region but must himself first learn the language he has rediscovered, he has a contradictory experience. Language is for him a medium of liberation and limitation at the same time. On the one hand, it preserves the “Phantasien der Wiederholung”, the epitomes of childhood to which the adult fantasizes himself back. The writing hand, which in the darkness allows “Strich um Strich, Stift und Finger” to grow together and make recording possible, brings about self-discovery (W 161). On the other hand, writing is also a medium of temporality and limitation through its ability to preserve what is experienced. It refers to a prior order of being and binds the individual back into the formations of a socialization that is not free of violence and that still draws a line between dictionary and wisdom book (W 206 f.). While the protagonist in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire has yet to become an author, Loser in Der Chinese des Schmerzes already has his experiences of liberation as a narrator, the main character in Die Wiederholung turns completely away from writing and first opens up the free space of language: he goes back to a mythical order of the pre-scriptural age. This begins with a gesture that already characterizes Handke’s earlier texts: By turning back to the fairy tale without plot, to the “Ein-Wort-Märchen, mit der Kraft von Weltbildern” (W 205). It is an attempt to find

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the point where words and things are still identical and where the linguistic representation of reality is not yet questioned. The decisive turn in Die Wiederholung, meanwhile, is the realization that this freedom of origin is only possible beyond history, in the experience of posthistoire. At the same time, this end of history, which alone can bring about a new beginning, is conceived as a catastrophe. The savannah of freedom is the place where the last inscription of the Mayas is found; it points at the same time to the downfall of this people, which begins with the replacement of public worship by private devotion. Because writing preserves the experience of violence on the one hand, and the absence of writing seals the downfall on the other, the author’s writing is only possible as a tracing of a mythical speech. In this way, Die Wiederholung aims at a writing that largely withdraws from the subject’s sphere of disposal and follows the linguistic signs of nature. Letter um Letter, Wort für Wort, soll auf dem Blatt die Inschrift erscheinen, in den Stein gemeißelt seit altersher, doch erkennbar und weitergegeben erst durch mein leichtes Schraffieren. Ja, meine weiche Bleistiftspur soll sich verbinden mit dem Harten, dem Lapidaren, nach dem Vorbild der Sprache meiner Vorfahren, wo der Ausdruck für den “eintönigen Finkenlaut” abgeleitet ist von dem Wort für einen einzigen “Buchstaben”. Denn ohne die Wortwinkel ist die Erde, die schwarze, die rote, die begrünte, eine einzige Wüste, und kein Drama, kein Geschichts-Drama will ich mehr gelten lassen als das von den Dingen und Wörtern der lieben Welt. (W 219 f.)

The third part, entitled “Die Savanne der Freiheit und das neunte Land”, takes the narrator to the original landscape of a karst mountain range. The image of the tunnel, hitherto a metaphor of redemption throughout, is replaced by the motif of the jerk, also resumed, which in Handke’s earlier work is described as a “Gegenwartsruck” and here is understood at the same time as a struggle (W 234). The path into the Karst also redeems the meaning of the name Kobal, which points to a borderline nature; it is precisely this man’s marginal existence that makes him an orientation figure. It leads him, representative of many, to a border that is already alluded to in Der Chinese des Schmerzes and that can be related to Heidegger’s notion of the border as the between of a difference. The path through the Karst mountains, which is marked by a first dream of redemption, reminiscent of the wandering outcast with the duffel bag in Die Hornissen (W 238), becomes the site of an existential test that makes the protagonist of Die Wiederholung relive scenes from Die Hornissen. Hearing the young man driving the coach points again and in a very different way to the “Gleichzeitigkeit von Anwesendem und Abwesendem” (W 257). It leads not only into a renewed experience of ego loss, expressed through the desperate dream images of the doppelgänger, through the dual of Slovenian written language (W 261), but also into the fantasy of war (W 264). This passage through the images of violence and loss of self alone makes a new beginning possible. It is grounded in the memory of one’s own birth (W 274), in a gesture of naming (W 275), in becoming aware of the primordial images of nature (W 277), and finally in mythic storytelling. In the sequence of these images and described states, Die Wiederholung repeats and compresses turning points of Handke’s earlier texts. The aimless wandering in the Karst refers to a situation in Das Gewicht der Welt (W 283), the retrospective of

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Pindar echoes the Kindergeschichte and Über die Dörfer (W 288), the narrator’s field hut recalls the narrator’s birthplace in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (W 289), the “Orgie des Einander-Erkennens” invokes the key sexual scene in Der Chinese des Schmerzes. Moreover, sexual fantasies and spatial fantasies are combined through the memory of the region of Orga, called the Land of Demeter and the Land of Fruit. At the center of this return to the origin, therefore, is once again a fusion of bodily signs and spatial signs: From a Karst Indian woman from a village called Lippa, roughly ‘lind’ in German, “erfuhr der junge Mensch, herzbewegend, das Vertrauen auf den ersten Blick” (W 301). The continued psychic shocks not only recall the self-assurance in the other that the young man once achieved through the countenance of his wife, but also recall an approachthat determined both I and You. The memory also makes clear that such images can only be perceived and gained in the moment of danger. Jene Nacht in dem Eisenbahnschacht hatte mich gelehrt, dass ein Ort oft erst Inbild wird durch den Nebenort  – der Foltertunnel durch den Pioniertunnel –, und so mied ich jetzt eigens die in den Bruderbriefen erwähnten Karstdörfer, im Glauben, diese klarer umreißen zu können durch das Erforschen all ihrer Nachbarschaften. (W 312)

At the same time, the passage through danger makes clear the true goal of the search for the brother: the narrator did not intend to find him, “sondern von ihm zu erzählen” (W 317). He himself reaches the ninth land, of which the brother has so often told him, through a writing which, on the one hand, is marked by the existential experience of fear, and which, on the other, has at its center the relationship with another. Writing from the memory of another establishes a poetic speech that, beyond the “Traum von der Zeitlosigkeit”, allows for a homecoming, a renunciation of the enemies that still surround him as a survivor of the history of violence. Like the protagonist in Der Chinese des Schmerzes, the main character in Die Wiederholung is now able to experience the grand sweep of the narrative. His journey home through the deserted plain into the village, which makes him seem magnetized, becomes at the same time a going back into the narrative; this narrative itself, however, must no longer congeal into writing, but must go on. Der Chinese des Schmerzes ends after the experience of an existential situation with a re-establishment of the narrator. In Die Wiederholung, the narrator not only finds his way back to a narrative that is free of the violence of the scriptural order, but at the same time he calls for narration as the only way to be able to forget the universal history of violence by not only repeating his own history, but at the same time rediscovering its own nature and meaning. While Kindergeschichte still ends with a call to mythical song, Die Wiederholung precisely practices the presuppositionless, it refrains from the exaggerated claim of a mythical narrative mode, because the passage through history not only preserves the experience of posthistoire, but at the same time can discover a non-violent trace in the writing of nature. This is perhaps one of the most striking turning points of Handke’s writing. The author establishes a writing that adopts and embraces the experiences of posthistoire and which is obviously also aware of the presuppositions of poststructuralist

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linguistic theory that questions mimetic narrative. Nevertheless, knowing these presuppositions, it takes up anew an existential ontological pattern of interpretation. This very first takes back the figure of thought of deconstruction, which determines many texts of the postmodern constellation, without falling back behind the knowledge of modernity into a conceptless thinking and writing. A new narrative is founded on this reflexive double movement. Paradigmatically, Handke’s writing shows that the various aesthetic and discursive designs of the postmodern constellation in literature must be attributed to a comprehensive figure of thought characterized by contradiction. They engage in a movement of thinking and writing that does not know fixed questions and answers, but rather designs constellations of solutions alone. They derive their evidence solely from the aesthetic play of the constantly renewed design that narrative preserves. A notation in Am Felsfenster morgens states succinctly: “Die Wiederholung: Ich erzähle, unterschwellig, das Erzählen” (AF 330).

7.3 Forms of Poetic Initiation: Die Abwesenheit. Ein Märchen (Absence, 1987) The text from 1987, which was turned into a film in 1992, marks the transition to a new form of epic narrative that is explicitly oriented towards the traditional genre pattern of the fairy tale. Alongside the visually perceptible reality, which corresponds to the laws of reality, and alongside the plot patterns typical of epic storytelling, an autonomous order establishes itself. As a simple rupture of reality, it reaches into the district of the fairy-tale; as a strategy of rectifying disorder, on the other hand, it follows the laws of fantastic narrative (Jacquemin 1975, 46). Both lead to the fact that the acting persons are merely standardized as types and have neither psychology nor depth of field. This representational strategy is underscored by the fact that the narrative is not focussed at the beginning of the text, subject to the identifiable perspective of a single narrator. Instead, juxtaposed and overlapping images are presented, emerging from glimpses at eye level and showing a landscape for the reader without naming a viewing subject (A 8). The basic figure of this visualization technique is evident in the image that concludes the first paragraph. It is an empty wall in a room onto which the reflection of the sky outside falls, a visual configuration reminiscent of Edward Hopper’s Sun in an Empty Room (Renner 1990, 77). Like the American artist’s painting, it marks an interrelation between the outside and the inside that seems to take place without the participation of a perceiving subject: at this point, the text operates like Proust’s magic lantern (Proust Pl I, 9 f.). Only then does it direct the reader’s gaze to an object in this pictorial space that at first seems to be without meaning, but in the subsequent story, not unlike in a fairy tale, this empty sign becomes one that determines the action. It is a small tear-off calendar that will play a role among the other systems of notation that the text mentions. The following image also appears peculiarly autonomous in the text and independent of individual perception. It is a depiction of a building lit from within, with

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individual windows open, behind which one can at best make out the motionless and sightless silhouettes of the inhabitants. The magical effect that emanates from this interior illumination of the house reconstructs the impression of the uncanny that Magritte’s Empire des Lumières II also opens up with a comparable construction (Renner 1990, 43, 90). In exact contrast to this is the description of the façade of the house, probably a home for the elderly, whose attention to detail is reminiscent of Fontane’s depiction of the Briests’ country estate, which Fassbinder’s film adaptation makes the starting point for his visual adaptation of narrative strategies (Renner 2019, 558). This image-led and distanced description is combined with a psychologizing one. The line of vision it stages appears like the zoom in a film, which is finally directed towards a single room and within it towards a notebook, which now takes the place of the tear-off calendar. Its role remains undetermined at first, but it undoubtedly already points to the central theme of the formation of signs through image and writing, which also determines this text, before it is openly thematized later in Der Bildverlust. This notebook is filled with two different vertical rows; on the one hand, there are signs reminiscent of pictorial writing, on the other hand, they are linguistic formulas recorded in a childlike handwriting and sometimes marked with an exclamation mark. They appear like translations of calligraphic signs into writing, at the same time marking a linguistic level that points into the field of poetic language. The gaze that determines the reader at the beginning continues afterwards with a description that depicts an old man’s gaze into a room. Its function is twofold: on the one hand, it delays the time of perception, and on the other, it aims to decipher natural signs. This is evident, for example, in his observation of a lime spur, which resembles the spinning motion of a parachutist as it falls, before landing in the old man’s open palm. This observation is recorded: A written image emerges in the old man’s book, but it reflects nothing “von dem augenblicklich Gesehenen”; moreover, these signs are in turn supplemented by a column of words. This old man is not an observer in the traditional sense, nor does he respond to sounds coming from outside. Rather, he seems to listen “immer inständiger von den Ereignissen weg”; instead of the noise of civilization, he perceives the sounds of nature and seems to weigh himself into them (A 18 f.). The second protagonist is also introduced and characterized through images. On the walls of the room there is a series of photographs showing a woman in different stages of her life, always with an expression of “Ausgesetztheit und Verlassenheit”, but at the same time with an “unbesiegbare[n] Selbstgefühl” (A 21). This young woman proclaims a program of complete self-restraint. She wants to stay entirely with herself and not change (A 59), she wants to see pictures only “zufällig […] ohne Absicht” and she also rejects “Wissensbücher” (A 60). She has no interest in travel and does not believe in “das Wunder auswärts” (A 61). At the same time, she maintains a conspicuous distance from others; she is characterized by an “Unwillen” to engage with others. With her, the reproach goes, “sei keine Beständigkeit, und damit kein Alltag möglich” (A 25). This woman also does not accept vernacular

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coordinates for her perception. For her, the geographical designation south means only sun and sea, while north or west do not interest her anyway (A 25). The third person, the soldier, is also portrayed, not through images, but from the outside, through the gaze of another: In the address by his mother, who characterizes him as an absentee, as someone who is “nirgends vorhanden” (A 30 f.). She even interprets his absence as a weapon he uses against others (A 32). The next person is also captured through gaze control. The text describes the waiting room that has become empty, the parents and the soldier have disappeared. In an abrupt pan, it then describes the interior of a gambling hall and there a gambler, the fourth protagonist in this tale.

The Departure As the player leaves the pub, the narrator’s gaze follows him. The narrator describes how he walks home across the railway tracks and begins to speak incoherently at first (A 43). In the process, he self-critically describes himself as the “Punkt, in dem sich die Lieblosigkeit bündelt” (A 45 f.), characterizes himself as a misanthrope and a sinister person, and finally decides to start a new life. When he begins to write, because meaningful to him alone is what becomes writing (A 48), nature seems to revive, a movement passes through the stalks of the field that comes “nicht nur vom Blasen des Winds” (A 49). This prefigures the central theme of the text, which is later developed further in the example of the old man. His writing, moreover, is also characterized as a deciphering. He first directs his attention to a Roman inscription and the notation, which he subsequently includes in his book and explicitly describes as legible, is again a coupling of sign and word (A 52). His activity of deciphering mobilizes an ability lost in the course of socialization. This explains why the old man recognizes himself in a crowd of childish and “halbwüchsiger Idioten” of all things: “Er und die Schar gehören zusammen; an ihr begegnet ihm unversehens etwas, von dessen Existenz er bisher nicht einmal geahnt hat” (A 53), we are told, before he “den Seinigen nachgeht” (A 54). The soldier is also led by others to set off. He first follows a procession, as can be noticed above all in the clothing of the young women, and finally he crosses a pedestrian tunnel and arrives “in eine andere Erdgegend (A 58)”. The player’s place of departure, on the other hand, is a wasteland of steppe grass, it is a place where there are decayed signs of an earlier civilization, at the same time it is a natural place, on a pole formed by branches there is a nest with a peregrine falcon (A 67). He boards a train in the middle of the city, which looks like a special train. In one of its compartments, the four protagonists meet for the first time and then continue their journey together, without any explicit agreement having been made about it. This, too, is a fairy-tale arrangement. Logic or causality of narrative do not apply; the characters find themselves in a scene, in an image that seems to be their only field of reference. They either tell of something that alienates them from the rest of the world or they set an alternative image against it. For the ordinary world they are

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indeed absent; there is much to suggest that their spatial distance is also associated with a temporal one. Undoubtedly, they enter a fairy-tale space that is beyond time. Reasonlessly, too, these persons begin to narrate when they have come together.

Narrative and Life Game The woman tells of her wandering (A 73), which eventually led to her being admitted to an asylum and presented to the students in the lecture hall as a mental patient. What appeared to outsiders as a clinical picture is precisely what those gathered there would miss. The woman opens their eyes “für etwas ihnen bis dahin unbekanntes” (A 75), she awakens “Wanderlust” in her listeners, becomes a heroine for them. When she has finished her story, the train pulls up, looking out of the window at a high-rise building with the inscription HOTEL EUROPA (A 77). The old man introduces himself by a striking singsong in which he tells about the time when, in the “Kindheit der Völker”, everything that people did not know was given names of an imaginary geography. The sources of the Nile in the south, the Caucasus in the east, the legendary Atlantis in the west and Ultima Thule in the north. At the same time, it marks the historical place for the emergence of poetic language. For while mythical names disappear as the world is explored and places are given new names in scientific topology, the old designations are shifted to the epics, which assign them new meaning; the landing of Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat provides an example. Following a traditional notion, filial naming and the mythical names from humanity’s childhood equally unfold the coordinates for the experience of the real: “der Name ist der Gast der Wirklichkeit!” it is said succinctly (A 81; Lacan Schrr I, 61–70). The old man’s speech, however, makes it clear that this time is irretrievably lost, there is no repeatability, but now, unlike before, the old man trusts in “die Kraft der Orte. Ich glaube an die Orte, nicht die großen, sondern die kleinen”. It is the design of a utopia because the power of places is fed by the fact that “[…] dort nichts mehr und noch nichts geschieht. Ich glaube an die Oasen der Leere, nicht abseits, sondern inmitten der Fülle hier” (A 82). The places that are visited are possibilities for a “transformation of things” that is possible precisely on the “foundations of emptiness” (A 83).

The Way to the Other Country In the mode of fairy-tale narration, some typical strategies and orientations of Handke’s poetology are even more sharply contoured than in his other texts. This applies in particular to the alternation between descriptive narration and the presentation of places and scenes that seem to be removed from reality. At the same time, some leitmotifs can certainly be read twice, because beyond mere denotation they also hint at a philosophical meaning that is related to similar constellations in Handke’s texts. The wanderers of the fairy tale also arrive “vor einer Art Grenze” (A

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86) in a clearing, and it is no coincidence that this is the site of a transformation. On the one hand, this scene is ontologically encoded in Heidegger’s sense, because it seems to visualize the word of ‘Entdeckung’ in the clearing of Being, which the latter uses as a metaphor, in the telling (GA 21, 133; Huber 2005, 351). On the other hand, it acquires fairy-tale traits precisely by resorting to a modern visual strategy in the process. When the four are shown at the table, as if detached by a film camera after finishing their meal, the scene transforms as if following a cinematic morphing. The clearing “[…] hat jetzt im Umkreis die Gestalt eines Gartens, wo keine Zeit mehr zählt. Keine Geräusche werden vernehmlich als die des Gartens hier” (A 93). It is significant for Handke’s narrative that, comparable to the fairy tale as well as the epic ‘adventiure’, it rarely lends duration to such moments. They do not last because they are created solely by the movement of narration and perception. As soon as this medial focalization ends, they collapse. This is also what happens here. What appears as an idyll, an utopian moment or a fairy-tale scene is destroyed by the intrusion of remnants of historical time into fairy-tale time. Objects of civilization, remains and rubbish become visible, as does a collapsed high seat, and the clouds are linked by vapour trails of the same colour; in the end, all signs of the four wanderers’ whereabouts seem to have been erased (A 97 f.). For the old man, life has anyway “immer nur als kleine Weile gegeben, nie als eine große” (A 96). This is precisely the poetological principle that this text follows. It is an account of a series of fulfilled moments, and the text as a whole is an attempt to give them duration in the act of narration. But all that can be achieved is a “Dauer im Wechsel” in Goethe’s sense. It marks precisely the seam that makes epic narrative and the fairy tale comparable in Goethe as well. Moreover, the way there is determined by retarding elements, which are given by the rhythm of the narrative. A completely different functionalization of the fairy-tale scenario determines the scene in which it becomes clear that the player was one of the audience members in the medical amphitheatre, where he had already fallen in love with the woman presented as ill because her “Ausweglosigkeit” fascinated him. He describes his peculiarly ambivalent relationship with her, whose psychogrammatic imprint is disturbing because it unites completely different sensibilities. He saw, he reports, “in ihrem Gesicht, so weit weg wie ich saß, keinen Unterschied mehr zwischen dem Antlitz des äußersten Jammers, der Maske unberührbarer weiblicher Seligkeit und der Fratze der höchsten Geilheit. Damals an jenem Tag haben wir einander vor aller Augen geliebt, ich Sie in Ihrer reinen Verlorenheit, Sie mich in meiner reinen Teilnahme” (A 108 f.). This scene seems like the counterfactual of a central scene in Goethe’s Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities), which represents the literary phantasm of a child conceived in the mind (Goethe HA6, 321). Here, too, the characters are portrayed at an extreme distance, in the mode of an external focalization (Genette) and assigned to one another like a game configuration. There are no reasons or causalities for either their actions or their emotions. The narrator’s gaze control alone makes places appear as if by chance and brings paths together. Conscious perception and unconscious behaviour overlap. A world of its own laws emerges beyond the rules of socialization and civilization. A

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fairy-tale world modeled in this way deciphers the suppressed desires of the civilized world; at the same time, it radicalizes desire and disempowers the subjects. It is not accidental that the text here allows even simple denotative sentences to become ambiguous. “Am Morgen ist es dann Sommer geworden” can allude both to the weather and to a change of time (A 110). In any case, the three wanderers find themselves in a special situation; they seem to be spatially separated, but at the same time also temporally distant from their surroundings, was jenseits der Umfriedung ist, lockt jetzt nicht mehr, es schreckt; dort kann nur wieder die übliche Zeit herrschen, das Tagesgeschehen, die Historie, die böse Unendlichkeit, der fortgesetzte große und kleine Weltkrieg. Dort hinter dem Horizont wird es todernst, die Baumspitzen bezeichnen eine Grenze, jenseits deren die Lippen der gerade Gestorbenen im Versuch noch eines Atemzugs zuckten, Scharen von Männern und Frauen sich, nach außen hin unter Koseworten, innerlich vollkommen stumm, miteinander vereinigen, alle Arten von Glaubensbekennern, vor denen es kein Entrinnen gibt […]. (A 113 f.)

In this way, too, the text follows a narrative figure typical of Handke, the contrasting of “Eigenwelt”, “Eigenzeit” and historical time, which as a rule preludes or accompanies the reflection on the “Eigensinn des Ästhetischen” (Adorno). The poetological resolution of this tension occurs here, as in other texts, through movement. Here, the movement of the characters in space follows the rhythm of the narrative; as in other Handke texts, this results in new perceptions and experiences (Carstensen 2013, 189; Honold 2017, 11, 492). “Nur durch das Gehen lässt sich etwas davon wiederholen. Nur im Gehen öffnen sich die Räume und tanzen die Zwischenräume! Nur im Gehen drehe ich mich mit den Äpfeln im Baum” the text notes (A 116), and a little later it says, “Das Gehen ist das freieste Spiel. Auf jetzt. Weg hier. Der Segen des Orts gilt nur für die Reise. Der Segen des Orts ist ein Gehsegen” (A 116 f.). It is not by chance that after this formula, the narrative perspective fundamentally changes. Whereas previously everything that happened was described without focalization, the text now suddenly reports from the perspective of a “Wir”. Not only is everything now perceived from the point of view of the characters, but the narrator now also makes himself a fellow wanderer and thus simultaneously controls the reader’s perception (A 119; Röhnert 2014, 5). This change of narrative perspective is accompanied by a transformation of the plot space, which increasingly takes on fantastic features. The wandering again leads to archetypal places, it bears signs of the fairy tale as well as of utopia and is compared to the “Tafelbilder aus dem Mittelalter” (A 123). This change of action space also provides an ironically grounded explanation for the title of the narrative, which is fundamentally ambiguous, as becomes apparent in the course of the wanderers’ movement through space. When they reach a military cemetery, they see that above the names of the buried there is the formula ANWESEND (A 124). Subsequently, you reach a highland that appears to be “eigener Kontinent oberhalb unseres Kontinents” and that is shaped like an oval in which the trees are in the form of ruins. This is the area to which the old man wanted to lead his fellow travellers.

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The highlands are at the same time a district that enables a different form of absence. For the ‘absence’ in the title of the tale marks in one word both the distance from the reality hitherto experienced and the enabling of a new form of perception that becomes possible for the travellers in a realm that is at once fairy-tale and utopian. As in the romantic art fairy tale of Peter Schlemihl by Adalbert v. Chamisso, the travellers are led by the old man to a point where the signs of nature and civilisation intertwine (Chamisso 1910, 10 f.; Renner 219, 47 f.). On a stone the guide recognizes the carved dial of a sundial, and with scraps of paper which he has previously chewed he makes his companions read the abbreviation D. I. M., which is translated as “Deo invicto Mithrae” (A 137). Already before, he had pointed out that one was now in a place beyond ordinary perception, the clarity of which was an “Augentrug” (A 132), but which, on the other hand, allowed one to read simultaneously in the books as “in deren Begleitschrift namens NATUR” (A 133). Here it becomes possible “in all dem Leblosen, Wirren zusammenhängende atmende Zeichen [zu] entziffern” (A 133). At the same time, a central formula of the text is anticipated by Der Bildverlust when the correspondence between the signs of nature and writing is linked to the interplay of inner and outer images: The travellers see their “inneren Bilder zugleich draußen im Raum vorschweben, in Gestalt eines Worts, im Rhythmus eines Gesangs, in der Vor-Form einer Geschichte” (A 134). This enables them to move about playfully, the boundaries between the different media disappear, the act of writing opens “Augen für die anderen Lebenszeichen der Einöde” (A 137). The old man’s guidance is thereby both transformation and enlightenment (Chamisso 1910, 10 f.). He lets his companions see things they had not perceived before; it is a visually unambiguous “Entbergen” (A 140) that disguises a philosophical figure of thought in a fairy-tale way: The discovery of writing appears as a conjuring “an den Dingen” (A 141). This enlightenment of the old man makes the fairy-tale narrative comparable to a dream report. Not only the movement in space, but also the landscape, which appears to be moving, correspond “mit dem Takt des Schreibwerkzeugs” (A 143). The travellers seem to become one with nature; likewise, as in a dream, cause, and consequence, inside and outside can no longer be separated. Not coincidentally, the Old Man suddenly disappears in an arc of light at the end of an avenue before they all then reunite inside an inn, a former bunker (A 152). In this inner district, the Old Man now appears like a “greise[r] Patron[..]” the news received from outside over a radio seeming to refer to a catastrophe that has occurred there, reminiscent of Chernobyl (A 157). But in the encounter with the old man, real time no longer has any meaning; it seems to him that many days have passed in a single day.

The Place of Initiation It is also a strategy often practiced by Handke that at the end of his texts, the different and contradictory experiences of his protagonists are condensed before they become able, as in a fairy tale, to escape these dissonances. In the mode of this text,

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this happens by way of an initiation that is only belatedly recognized by the participants. Not infrequently, such initiations require a reflection on one’s own, which is already invested in the past. This is also the case here. The travellers are first led into their memories before they become speakers again. The player remembers his father and mother in images, “Gedächtnisbilder” of both overlaying his present perception (A 161). Melancholically, he first recalls a landscape of his youth, which he describes as a window view. At the same time, his memory images document a historical and civilizational change. The almost empty plain has become a city; only in his father’s panel paintings can the former empty landscape be seen, for he was able to reconstruct the former vastness from the spaces between the houses. Therefore, for the soldier, the orientation towards his father’s pictures means a reclamation of memory. A typical fairy tale configuration corresponds to the self-deceptions that make the participants misjudge their own situations. In the case of the woman, they lead to a verbal attack on the old man. She calls him a false guide, a mere alleged scriptural scholar. “Dein Lesen, Entziffern und Deuten geschah nie aus einer Erleuchtung, sondern war bloßer Zwang; die Stimme, die zu dir Nimm und lies! sagte, hast du erfunden; du hast nur, seit du sehen kannst, in einem fort zwanghaft die Augen verdreht nach deinem geschriebenen Wort, deinem Buchstaben, deinem Zeichen” (A 169). For the woman, the signs that the old man re-enacts have long since lost their meaning, their “Zusammenhang ist gerissen”; there is, she explains, “schon gar nicht die Wiederkehr” (A 170). This doubt, which follows the arrangement of the fairy tale, points decidedly beyond the text. It formulates a covert self-criticism on the part of the author, articulated in a refracted way in the medium of a historical narrative form. It is, however, part of the peculiarity of Handke’s writing that he simultaneously assigns a contrary message to this genre. The “wir”, into which the text transitions, not only mobilizes a covert narrator, but also leads the reader into the same uncertainty experienced by the perspective figures of the text. The distancing by means of the historical narrative form creates a modern form of self-reflection that certainly bears autofictional traits. This is reflected in the text in two ways, firstly in the woman’s opposition to the old man and secondly in his critical view of his own writing. The woman who attacks him opposes any aesthetic transformation of the real: “auch hierzulande ist leer leer geworden, tot tot, das Vergangene unwiderruflich, und zu überliefern ist nichts mehr” (A 171). Instead, she opposes the lost signs of the past with names that mark the surface of consumptive civilization: “Vanity Fair! Vogue! Amica! Harperʼs Bazaar!” (A 172). The old man, who towards the end of the text wanders into a silent landscape and intones a song that transfigures “Stille” as a precondition of experience (A 175 f.), also ends up criticizing his own writing in a way that can be compared to that articulated by the woman. When he opposes perpetual reading, he recalls that the “große Grundgesetz, das ich in der Natur las” was only ever transmissible in writing and only ever in solitude. This is precisely responsible for the fact that his longing is now lost. A last attempt to write gradually turns into drawing; it looks as if the old man is erasing his previous medium of writing (A 181).

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For the travellers, this man remains gone. Thinking that he has left them his map to follow him, they move through different landscapes, their perception thereby heightened to an “Innewerden” (A 185), their onward movement seems like a “beständiges, unablässiges Ankommen”. In fact they arrive in a garden, the situation in the earlier clearing seems to repeat itself (A 186). The city they now reach was apparently largely destroyed by an earthquake. There is much to suggest that this took place while they were away in the Oval of Plains, and that they are actually arriving in the future. At this final stop, the dissonant experiences they had earlier in their trek are revisited. Their memory of the Old Man begins to fade, appearing at the end like a mere dream-image in which they think they perceive themselves at a distance (A 206 f.). The Old man now appears to them in an “bösen Abwesenheit” (A 209), suddenly there is “das Zerwürfnis” (A 210) between them, they feel “wie dahin verschlagen” (A 212) in the place of their arrival and feel a “Schuldgefühl” (A 213). It seems to them like a punishment “daß wir die Geschichte, die eigene wie die große, loswerden hatten wollen und aufgebrochen waren in die sogenannte ‘Geographie’?” A succinct description of this state of affairs now reads: “Wir waren furchtbar auseinandergefallen und es gab nichts, was uns neu hätte umgreifen können” (A 214). The soldier speaks out what the others think: Their leader was “[ein] falscher Fürst”, he turned their heads, he tore them from their “Sphäre”, he confronted them with nothingness. His “Zeichenzauber” led them deeper and deeper into a “Labyrinth” (A 217). This is precisely the turning point to an insight that was not available before. As in a fairy tale, what has happened before is interpreted differently under the perspective of a new experience, a realization arises from self-­ deception that can be related to an earlier encounter with the old man. In a dream, the soldier sees a child he was carrying hidden in a hollowed-out folio and hears the reproach, “Wie schnell habt ihr eure Kindheit verraten! Jener alte Mann war doch kein Böswilliger, sondern der ewige Kindskopf. Es darf nicht sein, dass der Stoff der Kindheit verbraucht wird!” (A 218). It is precisely at this point that it becomes clear that the travellers did not need the Old Man as a guide to a final destination, but that the latter made them “Entziffern” the world and nature in search of him. The formula that the journey is the destination becomes here the basic figure of a fairy tale that only gradually makes the participants realize what they were supposed to have learned. The text makes this clear by describing this sharpening of perception (A 221 f.), and as in the fairy tale, the wanderers then hear the voice of a child when they have understood what it is actually all about. Now they remember their own childhood, in which they had often hidden from others only to be sought out by them. At this point, the text switches from describing nature to articulating a message that is formulated only metaphorically. The wind that now rises is described as “der Wind der Poesie, der Wind der Phantasie, der Wind der Ankunft in einer ganz anderen Abwesenheit” (A 224). In this way, the fairy-tale contradiction of the text names a tension that underlies all writing. The absence of the Old leads the protagonists of the text to the experience of the other absence, which means a state through which the forgotten can be made present again in order to understand the present. It

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is the basic figure of poetry that intertwines with memory and ends up inscribing itself not only in the text and its characters, but also in the reading subject.

7.4 The Language Development of the World: In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus (On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House, 1997) In 1974, Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay) already foreshadows how narrative, poetological reflection, and autofictional designs are interconnected in Handke’s later texts (Röhnert 2014). At the same time, thematic orientations and narrative patterns are developed there that are repeated and elaborated in the later texts. The linking of reflection on narrative with visual observation, which emerges from a close observation of details, proves to be decisive. This can be directed equally to images of nature and to the technical world. An example of concentrated observation of nature is given by an observation of raindrops falling on dry ground; it is a scene that is taken up again in later narratives with almost the same structure (IN 78). In contrast, the orientation of the searching protagonist to the electricity meters of the town houses (IN 209) provides evidence of the alienating representation of the technical world. Moreover, Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht has already developed two overarching narrative patterns that continue in the sequel. One is the schema of a circular movement from a starting point back to it, which later gains significance above all in Die Morawische Nacht. In the text of In einer dunklen Nacht, too, the protagonist, an apothecary, first goes into the surrounding forest, then into the inner district of a second forest, before wandering across the adjacent steppe. In the process, his path touches imaginary and real places at the same time. A decisive role after the passage through the steppe is played by the real Zaragoza, from where he undertakes a bus trip through Europe in the company of the woman who had originally attacked him (IN 104), before returning to Taxham under changed circumstances. On the other hand, it is also evident here, as in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, that movement in space determines both the rhythm of the narrative and the segmentation of its perception, as will be the case later in Der Bildverlust and Die Morawische Nacht (Honold 2017, 517; BV 305). Moreover, the protagonist’s movement through space follows the scheme of the aventiure: shaped by the experience of different places and times, the protagonist returns to his home village as an Other. This reference to the scheme of the medieval epic is, however, ironically broken. Before his journey, hardly anyone in his own sphere of life knew the apothecary; greetings in the stern settlement where he lives were solely for his bicycle, which people associated with his wife (IN 33). Thus, he was already in an “Abwesenheit” at home; the text succinctly notes, “einer ist immer abwesend” (IN 35). The only thing he asks for after his return – when he is perceived for the first time as the apothecary of Taxham (IN 289) – is that his story should be written, because this is the only way it can last. It is not at all possible to determine whether the protagonist’s change is based on his experience or his actions,

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or whether it has occurred without his intervention during his absence. The tense game between absence and presence, which Handke already presents in the text of Die Abwesenheit, also takes place here.

Literary, Fantastic, and Real Landscape The seemingly schematic course of the journey also follows an openly named intertextual reference. The protagonist reads Chrétien de Troyes’ epic of Lancelot before embarking on a round trip, first touching fantastic places and then finally arriving in the real Zaragoza. This topography also follows the narrative principle of the aventiure. In particular, the steppe that the protagonist crosses is a district in which real-­ appearing images and phantasmagorical perceptions overlap, as in the chronotopia of the courtly novel or in Cervantes’ Don Quixote, which later also becomes determinative for Handke in Der Bildverlust (Carstensen 2013, 281 f., 286). In the sequence of the different settings of Taxham, forest, inner forest, and steppe, the apothecary and his companions enter an area beforehand that is made recognizable as a place of transition. As the only one among the many others, the city of Santa Fe gains reality; moreover, it subjects the travellers to its own law. Starting from a peculiarly dilapidated inn, the protagonist sets out there in search of the woman he has come to call the Victress (IN 188). This search takes place under peculiar conditions. The seasons in the village change irregularly (IN 195), near and far are often indistinguishable (IN 193), the seeker moves without fear, but his gaze is usually fixed on the ground, where he keeps finding mushrooms (IN 197). His two traveling companions also seem to be on the lookout (IN 200 f.). The change he undergoes during this search is visualized by the fact that he seems to double himself. In an image created by framing and zooming, as in a film, he sees the old pharmacist of the village as a silhouette against the steppe, which is deserted behind him into the distance, giving the pharmacist the impression that he sees “sein Selbstbildnis von später” (IN 203). Such configurations, which combine the literary reference back to the epic with a media-driven visual perception, not only open up Handke’s poetology of epic storytelling (Pichler 2006, 70), they simultaneously model the images of civilization, which in this as in other texts are precise, yet without specific contours. Nevertheless, visual schemata emerge from the coupling of the fantastic and the real world; the images of nature and the images of civilization that depict the technical world in its final stage are sharply contrasted as a result (Gruber 2000, 296; Luckscheiter 2012, 178–212). The text explicitly relates the tension between these images to the narrative order of the medieval epic, in which immediately after the depiction of the “herrlichsten Aue der Welt”, the respective hero must expect to encounter an image of terror (IN 72). That this often seems to take place in another time is also evident here. The apothecary’s wandering is prepared by a leap in time; his story does not take place in “Zeitungszeit” (IN 75).

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As a modern tracing of this constellation, the text first describes the pharmacist’s sphere of life as an enclave between different signs of technical civilization. It is a “Zwickelwelt” (IN 12) comparable to the realm in which Handke’s Chaville of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht is located. In contrast, the fantastic realm of the steppe traces out a “seltsame Kombination von Jugoslawien und Spanien” (IN 38) which models the fantastic topology in Die Morawische Nacht and Der Bildverlust; of course, it also opens up a relationship to the fantasy of Europe in Kali (KA 43 f.).

Relationship and Transformation The change in the apothecary that takes place during his journey is not based on autonomous action but resembles an initiation that occurs in two stages. The search for the lost language takes place in several stages, initially in the company of two strange companions known as “desperados” (IN 98). They are a famous winter sportsman and skier and a formerly famous poet, a refugee and foreigner (IN 91). Intertwined with this is the relationship game with a woman, which plays out all possible variations. Without being psychologically motivated, it encompasses aggression and violence as well as loving intimacy. The fact that this relationship leads to an initiation in a fairytale-like way becomes clear at the end in a speech by the woman, which can be read as the scopus of the plot. For the apothecary it is important, according to the woman, to leave his “Stummsein”, which threatens to destroy his “sämtliches Erleben von früher, selbst das noch so zeichenhafte – bis in die Kindheit”. He must stop “das Lebende zu suchen unter den Toten” and instead go back to people and language (IN 266). The way there is visualized by two motifs that in utopias like fairy tales mark the entry into a new realm of experience. The common journey is introduced by the car ride through a tunnel (IN 95), then the poet decides that the journey should be across the border, there he knows a woman and has an illegitimate child he has never seen. Topographically, the place where this woman lives is on a particular line; it is the watershed between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean (IN 102). Comparable dividing lines mark the entrance into a fantastic world in the text. When passing through the last tunnel road, whose entrance and exit are clearly marked, the travellers hallucinate, the tunnel resembles a “böse Passage” as it is repeatedly described in the epics. Beyond it, all assignments become arbitrary, the place-name signs are only “Verheißungstafel[n]” (IN 137) whose promise is not fulfilled, it is a dreamscape populated by the most diverse people speaking in different languages (IN 142 f.). In this construction, however, the “wirkliche Wirklichkeit” (Stifter HKA 13-2, 233) is by no means excluded; rather, it structures Handke’s text in very different ways. On the one hand, through images of socialization and relationships that have a reference to lifeworld conditions and autofictionally encoded experiences. On the other hand, their representation can be fantastic, realistic or ironic. Among the guiding themes, the first to be mentioned is the theme of guilt, which is here linked to the story of the son. It is of central importance in all the author’s

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texts, in which the relationship of father and son is often presented in different inversions. Here, the emphasis is once on the fact that the father has rejected the son (IN 28), then again, the recovered son disappears together with his bride in a scene which the text captures with the fairy-tale formula: “dann war sein Kind verschwunden, und sie würden einander endgültig nimmerwiedersehen” (IN 264). Significant for the counterworld are also the images of violence that abruptly appear in all places. As if in passing, it is reported that the apothecary is threatened by a hunter during his wandering through the steppe, who already has his rifle trained on him, but when at the same moment a double of the apothecary appears in a fairy-tale manner in the hollow way, the double is immediately shot down (IN 262, 263). Physical violence is also evident in the city of Santa Fe, where the wanderer has the impression that violent people are taking over the public places and showing themselves ready to use violence (IN 217). They have their own language, keep to themselves, and are ready for a “gewaltsamen Umsturz” (IN 218). Outwardly so deformed that it is often impossible to distinguish whether they are men or women, they can form a hit squad unawares (IN 219). Violence also dominates – this is another leitmotif of Handke’s narrative – the relationship between man and woman. The shared story between the protagonist and the woman begins with her violent attack on the man. Later, the poet-­companion delivers a misogynistic speech about the enmity between man and woman (IN 159–161), the tenor of which is depressing: “So viel Schmutz und Verschmutzung zwischen den Geschlechtern wie heutzutage war noch nie. Und die nicht schmutzig sind, das sind die Dummen. Vielleicht war das immer schon so. Aber wenn, dann sicher noch nie so arg und so nackt” (IN 161). This scene is counterfactured by the description of a scene in which two women in the church bend over the almost lifelike body of Christ and kiss it from head to toe. It is a scene that undoubtedly has sexual connotations, for the two would not be at all surprised, if “bei noch so einem Darüberstreichen, ihr angeblich toter Gott sich unter ihren Händen unversehens aufbäumen [würde]” (IN 158). In his journal Gestern unterwegs (Travelling Yesterday), Handke has handed down this very scene as a real observation in Jaén (GU 376). Alongside such exaggerated passages are distanced descriptions that combine irony with self-irony. On modern traffic routes, tunnels overcome almost all borders (IN 121), but secondary as well as main roads are organized by ubiquitous roundabouts, they are the rond-points of France. Ironic self-criticism is expressed when the accompanying poet hears a radio rebuke with a scathing assessment of his work (IN 108 f.), and resolutely the pathos of Handke’s text-immanent poetology of slowness is broken when the pharmacist is attested a tachyphobia (IN 124). Nothing else happens with the guiding vocabulary of “Hören” that pervades Handke’s work. In a wanderer through the steppe, both the pharmacist and his narrator recognize their common old teacher Andreas Loser, who has since gone deaf. And the comment is ironic enough: “So war demnach von uns dreien gerade der, der sich ein Weiterkommen vor allem durch Lauschen und Hören versprochen hatte, taub geworden […]. Und das gerade in einem Landstrich, der ‘Sabana de la Sonora’ hieß?” (IN 238).

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The Narrative Game The steppe that the apothecary has to overcome is not only an extraordinary realm of experience, but also a challenge for the narrator of the story as a “schwer zu erzählende” (IN 253), because it resists images (IN 253). As before in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht and later in Der Bildverlust, the experience of nature and narrative are directly intertwined, precisely in this way the longed-for unity of self and world is instigated (Carstensen 2013, 291): “Innen und Außen durchdrangen einander, wurden, eins am anderen, ganz. Erzählen und Steppe wurden eins und so war man am Platz” (IN 246). Thus, the apothecary’s steppe wandering becomes a narrative and perceptual experiment at the same time, comparable to the little fable of the Esche von München (Carstensen 2013, 291). What is a challenge for the narrator means a fundamental change in his experience for the pharmacist? For him, a new time sets in (IN 78), and after he receives a blow to the head, he can no longer take a step without “das Bewusstsein dieses neuen Zustands” (IN 81). Despite the distancing external focalization of the narrative, it turns out that the text is part of an overarching narrative game in which several people are involved and during which the dividing line between the author and the narrator is systematically crossed again and again. Moreover, the narrative is organized in sections as a dialogue: The narrator is at the same time a listener, telling his own and other stories; this strategy, too, will prove determinative in later texts by Handke (IN 294; DJ 24; MJN 1050 f.). Moreover, the narrator is assigned a dual role. In the first part of the narrative, he is an observer who follows the apothecary of Taxham with glances. In doing so, he initially remains at a distance, which is textually established by a cinematic strategy. His observation produces individual images that repeatedly show him in different situations in a rapid sequence of cuts (IN 51). In the second part, the narrator retells what the apothecary tells him, interrupting his narrative with questions, only to become an observer again at the end of the text. This preludes not only the complex narrative structure of Der Bildverlust and Die Morawische Nacht, but also the cross-textual narrative pattern of an interweaving of perception and narration. However, the relationship between the narrator and the protagonist is both complex and precarious. It is complex because the narrator must combine distance and closeness, for he is supposed to be only a recorder for the apothecary, “nicht der Herr [s]einer Geschichte” (IN 81). This relationship is precarious because the apothecary’s wandering, due to the blow he receives on the head, begins not only with a loss of memory but also a loss of speech. His movement in space, which initially leads him through speechless visual worlds, thus also becomes a search for lost language (IN 86). The loss of language is answered by an indeterminate “Begehren” (IN 87). The traditional narrative scheme is thus inscribed with a modern story that directly re-enacts the constitution of the ego through language and the related object constitutions, as described by Jacques Lacan (Lacan Schrr I, 61–70). Therefore, Handke’s recourse to the medieval epic and the fairy tale is not an escapism, but a procedure to sharpen the view of the present; the memory of the old textual models and the present perception condense through superimposition. This

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is confirmed by a short dialogue between the narrator and the apothecary. The latter states: “Aber an den dort dargestellten Sommerlandschaften erkenne ich auch die jetzige, heutige Sommerwelt, tritt sie mir klarer vor Augen, und als etwas, was inzwischen Tatsache geworden ist, und nicht mehr bloß Zauber- und Märchentrick” (IN 47). In the end, the pharmacist himself becomes a narrator. His march, which always goes straight ahead even through impassability, not only sharpened his senses, but also awakened in him the need to narrate what he experiences (IN 245). In the interplay between thinking about what needs to be told and direct experience, his ability to perceive the present increases; the apothecary perceives “das Umland noch schärfer […] als in und nach der Gefahr” (IN 245). The constellation of Orion, which appears to him in changing phases and with varying brightness, becomes an image for this gain in perceptual accuracy (IN 248 f.). The relationship with the woman is also determined by narration. The bus trip that the pharmacist takes with her on the annual feast of the patron saint of Zaragoza (IN 274) is only possible because he tells her his story when she asks him to. He feels his transformation into a narrator in two ways. First, he realizes a physical change in himself. A sweat other than the sweat of death, according to the text, now breaks out on him. Secondly, he has the impression that his heart is bleeding. The metaphorical formula of the medieval epic is transformed for him into the sign of a psychic change. He not only becomes capable of narration but can also love again. Both happen in the episode. The apothecary tells the woman his life in abbreviated sentences; this account of the past makes him able to go back home. The woman experiences something comparable, also telling her life story, which was marked by the fact that she wanted to escape “falsch lieben”, which the epics already treat as a motif (IN 283). After this mutual narration, the two become capable of traveling together and, in the end, of continuing their own path in a self-determined manner; it is precisely from their commonality that the possibility of separation follows in the end. This is the basic dialectical figure that characterizes Handke’s recourse to epic poetry. The narrative patterns and imagery of the epic are used, but at the same time the author’s narrative eludes the laws that the epics prescribe. Because the protagonist, whose path initially follows the stations and situations of an ‘adventiure’, in the end becomes a narrator who interacts with the narrator of his story, his movement in space proves to be a metaphor of an emancipation beyond the predefined stories. His self-creation gains contour precisely because at other points in this text “die Geschichte” appears as an autonomous order from which none of the acting characters, not even the pharmacist himself, can escape. When the narrator asks him to write his story, he remarks: “Ich sehe sie geschrieben. Und die Geschichte selber will es so” (IN 303). Even before this, the travellers believe they are “eine Geschichte zu erleben, noch dazu eine gemeinsame” (IN 144). And when the apothecary is asked whether the girl’s mother has died, he answers succinctly: “in meiner Geschichte wird nicht gestorben” (IN 165). It is only logical that at the end of this description of the journey, in the course of which the protagonist has passed through another world and at the same time

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another narrative world, there is a reflection not only on narrative but also on language. The mediating area of this double reflection is the steppe, which is both a space of experience and a symbolic place. The steppe has a special significance for the apothecary because its designation is one of those words which cannot be replaced, and which preserve even “ihre Schreibform […] durch die Jahrtausende”. As a geographical place, it is the dominant element of the Spanish landscape (IN 312 f.). As a symbolic place, it gives the possibility of evading what seems predetermined. Therefore, the narrator of the apothecary’s story is supposed to “Lust auf die Steppe machen” (IN 313). This formula certainly has double connotations, for it aims at a psychological as well as a physical experience. The place of experience outside of time, of which the ‘aventiure’ is about, opens up a self-experience that is also brought to bear as a physical reaction. Returning to his house, where the book containing the story of Ivain the Lion Knight still lies open, the apothecary begins to read and starts to tremble (IN 293). Fragmentarily, the text now cites another reading of its author, which once made the metaphorization of a great narrative context seem possible (LSV 78). From the beginning, the steppe, like the deserted highlands in Abwesenheit (Absence) (A 132 f.), was also a place of pause, marking at the same time an interface between the epic fable world and the real world. In the epilogue, this reflection is taken up in a conversation between apothecary and narrator. The narrator is to write only love and adventure stories, and only about pausing, because this is a prerequisite for “Eingreifen, ins Geschehen, ins blinde Geschehen, ins blinde Weltgeschehen, in die Flucht der Erscheinungen, in das Gerede, auch das eigene, innere, und gut gegen das Herzrasen, Ohrensausen, Magendrücken und noch vieles andere mehr” (IN 315). But it is precisely at this point that the story turns back to the fairy tale and thus becomes an apologia of storytelling itself. Although the end of the text speaks of “uns beiden”, it cannot be clearly deciphered whether the epilogue is actually the dialogue between two people, for the phrase “Jemand ging” does not cause a door to fall shut. On the other hand, reality seems to emerge from the pause, as from the language, in a fairy-tale way. As if they were using a magic formula, the two make it snow through their language alone. It is a central motif of new beginnings in Handke’s writing (FM 289, 428; Höller 2013, 164). In the end, they both believe that their language can intervene in nature. The fairy tale of the immediacy of language in the world has become reality.

7.5 On the Eros of Storytelling: Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst) (Don Juan (His Own Novel)) (2004) “Ich kann es bezeugen: Don Juan ist ein anderer” (DJ 157), declares the narrator of Handke’s text about Don Juan. Handke turns the hero of love himself into a narrator who retrospectively reconstructs his experiences with women, and whose story he has the narrator of his book retell. The immediacy of experience vouchsafed by the masculine allegory of seduction is thus both broken and countered. The statement

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that Don Juan is “ein anderer” and his account of his relationships with seven women on seven different days deconstruct the traditional literary discourse on love as well as the feminine and masculine projections associated with it. Of the Don Juans on television, opera, theater, and in real life, he notes, “durch das, was mein Don Juan mir von sich selber erzählte, habe ich erfahren: Das waren allesamt die falschen Don Juans – auch der von Molière; auch der von Mozart” (DJ 157). This distancing from traditional lore connects Handke’s text with a current cinematic adaptation of the Don Juan material; it is Jarmusch’s film Broken Flowers, in which an aged Don Juan also reconstructs his earlier experiences with women. He too does not conform to the traditional image of the seducer; he too is no longer an actor, but rather a man on the run. When his wife informs him that she is leaving him, Bill Murray, who plays him, sits motionless on the couch in his ‘living room’, watching on television the 1934 black-and-white film about Don Juan entitled The Private Life of Don Juan (Korda 1934), in which the ailing and aged Douglas Fairbanks makes his final appearance. It is an end-time tale of love: after Don Juan’s death, his former lovers argue to which of them had his true love belonged. And even before that, his Leporello Melville Cooper admonished him, “Sie müssen aufhören, solange die Leute Sie noch so in Erinnerung haben, wie Sie vor zehn Jahren waren” (Korda 1:10:12). Handke as a narrator and Jarmusch as a filmmaker both show a way of dealing with traditional material that is typical of modernity; both develop self-reflexive representations from the historical context of the motifs. The immediacy of love is broken in both by time and memory at the same time. In addition, the media of book and film develop their own strategies of distancing. Handke invents a narrator to whom Don Juan tells his stories in the monastery garden of Port Royal; in Jarmusch’s work, a neighbour gifted with detective ambitions leads the protagonist to seek out his former lovers. What Handke’s Don Juan undertakes alone as a narrator, Jarmusch’s Don Juan stages as a traveller. A further demarcation from tradition for both protagonists also results from the fact that, as representatives of unconditional and consequence-free love, they are confronted with the experience of fatherhood. As is well known, precisely this possibility is completely omitted from the tradition. Handke’s stories of Don Juan revolve around the obviously traumatic memory of a dead child, who is for him “[der] ihm nächste[.] Mensch[.]” (DJ 47). Jarmusch’s adaptation of Don Juan is centered by the announcement of the existence of a son born of one of the love affairs. The search for this unknown son replaces the scheme of aimless repetition that characterizes the traditional seduction story with a final linearity. In the same move, other narrative traditions are subverted: Broken Flowers is also a road movie without clearly defined locations and at the same time a detective quest. The fact that the encounter with Handke’s Don Juan takes place in the monastery garden of Port Royal directly links the narrative deconstruction with the history of modern discourse, which assigns Don Juan its place in the history of mentalities. Like Ulysses and Faust, he is not only one of the most prominent literary themes in European literature; the transformation and reception of the material also mark a mental paradigm shift. At the time of the Counter-Reformation, the story of Don

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Juan was intended to warn against immorality and thus stabilize the early modern moral code. But the reception of the theme reaches its peak at a time when the established order of discourse and signs is already beginning to disintegrate. In 1787, shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution, da Ponte’s and Mozart’s Don Giovanni has its first performance in Prague, and in the auditorium is the real Casanova: the literary myth and the reality of the libertine are already running side by side. By far the most German Don Juan adaptations were written during the German Empire. They document a new parallelism between cultural discourse and individual life plans; at the same time, Don Juan is used by psychoanalysis for the “Klassifizierung und Deutung […] promiskuitiver Verhaltensweisen” (Rank 1942, 142–196). Corresponding to the scientific verdict is a judgment that determines the history of mentality and is internalized. For Don Juan’s liberation from the prevailing morality has its price even later. Divine punishment and the torment of hell are now replaced by the boredom that the libertine experiences as a consequence of his unhindered satisfaction of drives in the eternal return of the same. Already in the nineteenth century Don Juan therefore becomes a melancholic, this is how Nikolaus Lenau presents him, this is how Max Frisch’s Liebhaber der Geometrie shows him, whose state of mind is playfully continued in Jarmusch’s Don Juan. Handke’s and Jarmusch’s deconstruction of the motif, however, is not directed at the discourse-historical approach but immediately at the strategies of historical deliverance, which both the author and the filmmaker subvert: Jarmusch, by following a basic figure of postmodernism, allows Don Juan’s love adventures to appear only in the course of a detective-like search story of his protagonist; Handke, on the other hand, reconstructs Don Juan’s love life solely in narrative. Finally, an intermedial convergence between the author and the filmmaker is opened by the fact that they both understand Liebe als Passion, following a formula of Niklas Luhmann, as nothing other than a regulation by given signs, which, however, they both also invert in text and image (Luhmann 1999). In Jarmusch’s case, this occurs on the one hand by giving the story of fleeting relationships a fundamentally different dimension through the reference to the uniqueness of procreation. On the other hand, by making us aware of the impossibility of repeating immediate experiences of love. Finally, the story of this Don Juan ends with him appearing incapable of action in a world in which the unambiguity of the world of signs has dwindled. The comparison with Jarmusch’s film is illuminating because this medium uses strategies that also determine Handke’s text. In the narrative, Don Juan comes to rest in the monastery garden, his movement through the world of women is halted. In the film, the same thing happens in a suggestive way. Often the protagonist does not move, only the camera circles around him. This is prepared for a long time in the film. The film consistently dispenses with the suggestion of speed; even the car journeys show outdoor spaces only as a backdrop for the interior of the car, which always seems the same, as if static. The repeated presentation of an “Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt” replaces movement by a sequence of slow shots separated by long black fade-ins, as in a slide show. The presence of Don Juan’s

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immediate experience is countered by the irrevocable past, not only of life but also of images of fantasy and love. Like this film, Handke’s text also leads to a formal depotency of the Don Juan material. Firstly, because the story of Don Juan now takes on fairy-tale features; secondly, because the love theme is increasingly stripped of its sexual references; thirdly, and finally, because the story of Don Juan ends up as a reflection on storytelling. Don Juan’s intrusion into the narrator’s garden is triggered by his escape from a couple he was watching perform a sexual act. This was not out of sexual interest at all, but rather because he was waiting to see if something different, something new, would reveal itself in this relationship (DJ 33). This hope did not come true. Don Juan sees an ordinary sexual act and, disappointed, begins to count the minutes of its duration (DJ 37). Because he is discovered by the lovers and mistaken for a voyeur, they pursue him to the wall of the garden, behind which he can become the narrator, safe from his pursuers. This transformation of the lover into a narrator is biblically coded; it takes place between the Ascension and Pentecost. At the same time, it appears not only as a miracle of language, but also as a fairy-tale-like natural event: “Heerscharen verschiedenartiger und -farbiger Schmetterlinge” surround Don Juan like “ein einziges, miniaturhaftes Fähnchen-, Wimpel- und Standartenschwenken” (DJ 24). Like the legendary Saint Francis, the animals approach him trustingly and without shyness. Moreover, the paradisiacal image is linked to the fantasy of a natural fertilization that makes one forget the pain of the lost child. In the sign of the poplar seeds assigned to Don Juan’s narration (DJ 129, 131, 140, 156), the fantasy that narration itself could become a “Zeugen im Geist”, as Thomas Mann once fantasized as a reader of Plato (Reed 1984, 103), appears fulfilling. At the same time, however, the text places speech and narration in a historical and discourse-historical context. The encounter between Don Juan and the narrator takes place in the garden of Port Royal. From this monastery, the Jansenists attempted to replace the rule of the Roman official church with a discursive counter-­ design of morality, reflection, and logic, which was designed for internalization. It is not without reason that the reflections of Pascal and Descartes orbit Port Royal; for Foucault, it is here that the power-based ‘order of discourse’ emerges, which he describes in Die Ordnung der Dinge (Order of Things). Otto Rank’s psychoanalytic interpretation captures this dialectic of discursive freedom and control when it points out that the Don Juan material is not aimed at the “Darstellung des ungebundenen Sexualstrebens” but stems from a repression linked to unconsciously perceived guilt and punishment (Rank 1942, 35). It is in this context that Don Juan’s language in Handke’s text seeks to establish a new order. It repeatedly attempts to capture the immediacy of the moment instead of reconstructible causalities. This explains why the account of the seven love episodes seems peculiarly haphazard and scattered, why the course of the narrative finds its counterpart in Don Juan’s flight, during which he goes backwards for long stretches, thus breaking through the linearity of time and the logic of sequences. Linked to this in Handke’s text is the distinction between the immediacy of the gaze and the medial forms of mediation of language and writing. Again and again, it

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becomes clear that the love enacted by Don Juan initially takes place in a beyond of language, in the immediacy of seeing. For the narrator, Don Juan’s seeing is recognition in the full sense of the biblical word. The seductive power of this lover lies not in his speeches, certainly not in his sexual potency, but in the power of his gaze alone. “Don Juans Macht kam von seinen Augen,” it is said succinctly (DJ 74). Precisely from this arises the demand on the narrator. His task is to preserve this openness and to stage it again and again. Narration is meant to preserve the memory of immediacy, while the writing into which the narration flows threaten to erase this experience. The narrator recognizes that Don Juan’s self-realization is only completed beyond the play of love. Only when the latter finds his way to a narrative that goes beyond the mere recording of erotic episodes can he grasp the eros of language itself. For this reason alone, Don Juan’s narrative play, which supersedes and transforms his love play, so fascinates the reporter that he strives to continue it. The book’s concluding sentence, “Don Juans Geschichte kann kein Ende haben, und das ist, sage und schreibe, die endgültige und wahre Geschichte Don Juans” (DJ 159) is anything but an indication of a possible continuation of this or any other man’s series of erotic experiences. It is a decided invitation to abandon the conventional love stories that keep promising eternity, but all have only one ending. That the mere continuation of erotic adventures would be nothing short of a disaster is confirmed by the narrator’s account. He describes that Don Juan, having finished recounting the series of his seductions, falls into a manic compulsion to count. Not only to himself but also to his listener, the former lovers now gathered outside the monastery walls appear only as numbers. To the rhetorical question of what he is looking for, “Zahl oder Schrift?” his listener would like to answer, “Schrift” (DJ 156). Corresponding to this opposition is first the juxtaposition of counting time and fulfilled time, narrated time and narrative time. Coupled with it in turn is the motif of spontaneous seeing, of the blink of an eye (“Augen-blick”). The fact that Don Juan’s real power lies in his gaze shows a capacity for contemplation that corresponds to the immediacy of the image, which narrative seeks to preserve through progression. At the same time, the power that lies in the gaze (DJ 73 f.) is a sign of a desire that a philosopher is said to have described as “unwiderstehlich und gar als ‘sieghaft’” (DJ 75). With this reference, reminiscent of Juan de la Cruz Llama de Amor viva and Nietzsche at the same time, Handke first recalls images from his earlier texts. The spontaneous access to women provided by the gaze opens up “jenes andere Zeitsystem” (DJ 77) for his Don Juan, whose stories with seven women never happen in “[der] gewohnten Zeit”, but in truth “in keiner Zeit” (DJ 102 f.). There, it is true, all amorous adventures take place in precisely defined spaces and under precisely defined social relations. But crucially, they give women the ability to experience themselves, to become the focus of these spaces. The same happens to her lover: for him, it is not solely about erotic experiences, but about becoming “Herr seiner Zeit” (DJ 54) and being able to transcend his own possibilities. This is indicated by the fact that Don Juan loses his ‘ambidexterity’ again at the end of his stories (DJ 139).

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The space of love stories therefore belongs not only to reality but also to fantasy. The landscapes that Don Juan sketches are striking not for their strangeness but for their comparability: “An jedem neuen Tag betrat er ein neues, oft fernes Land, und die Landschaft, in welcher sich die Ereignisse des Tages abspielten, war oder wurde jedes Mal wieder im großen und ganzen die gleiche” (DJ 57). This peculiar placelessness and timelessness marks the fundamental difference of Don Juan’s relationships in comparison to the love relationships of other men: “sie, die Frauen, wegbringen, von hier, hier und hier” is his task (DJ 74). Don Juan experiences “Gleichzeitigkeit” together with the women; with them he has a “vollkommen übereinstimmenden Zeitsinn” (DJ 89), he experiences “jenes andere Zeitsystem” (DJ 77). The time of the narrative lends duration to the moment again and again, the erotic experience, on the other hand, only creates an “Abschiedsparadies” (DJ 83), whose abandonment the protagonist then experiences shockingly at the end of his narrative as an entry into ordinary time: “Die Zeit war nicht mehr sein Element” […], it is then said, “die Augenblicke sprangen um in Sekunden” (DJ 54). Now he experiences a “Verlust der Abstände und Zwischenräume” (DJ 142) and a “jäh hervorgebrochene Taktlosigkeit” (DJ 145). However, Handke’s text does not stop at this opposition of narrated and fulfilled time, of counting time and narrative time. In previous texts, such as Der Chinese des Schmerzes, he countered the denotation of writing with the power of images alone. Now, together with the concept of writing, he unfolds the phantasm of a coincidence of the immediacy of experience with the signs of writing. Don Juan’s narration shows him the way. The narrator notes that “Don Juan die Lippen bewegt wie jemand, der buchstabiert” (DJ 156). This “Buchstabieren” becomes a metaphor for writing avant la lettre before the discursive fixations and orders of socialization. Using it, Don Juan appears as another. “Vollkommen ruhig blickt er um sich, mit der Ruhe eines Wilden” (DJ 157), it is the image that Baudelaire also uses to make the savage and the courtesan cross the order of reason (Baudelaire Pl-2, 720). The spelling is completed in Don Juan’s narration. The text therefore becomes a meta-discourse on narration, in which it is not the subject of love that counts, but only the love of narration, which is experienced as in an epiphany. The reporter of Don Juan’s narration has the impression that the conqueror of women looks past him or through him during his narration until the one moment when “etwas wie sein Talisman aus der Hand fiel und zu zerbrechen drohte, wobei ihm ein Name entfuhr”. And the text explicitly says that the name “nicht der einer Frau war” (DJ 158). The mystery remains unsolved, but there is every indication that the name, which cannot be understood, thematizes the capacity of the narrative itself. The talisman that allows a name to be conjured marks a mode of signifying that is fundamentally different from the deciphering signs of an encyclopaedic cartography of the world as established by the Enlightenment. In this way, Handke’s narrative approaches a reflection on the philosophy of language that Adorno unfolds in Ästhetische Theorie (Adorno GS-7, 86). The meaning of number in Handke’s text corresponds to Adorno’s “meinende Sprache” (Adorno GS-16, 650), in which every terminological fixation means domination and loss of immediacy at the same time. This is evidenced by “Zählzwang” (DJ 140)

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and “Zeitnot” (DJ 141) that afflict Don Juan after he has finished his narrative. At the same time, Don Juan’s narration corresponds to Adorno’s mimetic. Just as the mimetic in the philosopher not only arises from contemplation and immediacy but is at the same time linked to the denotative power of writing, Don Juan’s narrative arises from a dialectical entanglement of immediate experience with the order of writing. Telling of love, Don Juan “buchstabiert” women. This “Buchstabieren” creates a system of signs that becomes a metaphor for love and narration at the same time; it marks a naming that leaves what is named in its own right. In this way Handke translates a philosophical figure of thought developed in Kritische Theorie into the metaphor of fulfilled love: the language and the narrated scenes of love for women transform the critical gesture into a mimetic one. Thought becomes desire, Eros is in the word, the narrated images of desire unfold a “Lust am Text” that promises duration (Barthes 1973). Even before this, Don Juan’s narrative made it clear that he was never out to be the seducer in his relationship with women. He always wanted to experience only “Frauenzeit” that gave him “[das] große Innehalten” (DJ 125). However, the utopia of fulfilled experience and fulfilled love does not belong to life but to narrative alone, and only if this retains its openness and does not shorten itself to a mere reproduction of erotic stories. Therefore, Don Juan’s experience with women must not be limited to erotic experience. From the beginning, “Zählen” (DJ 125) of women and adventures had to be overcome by “Buchstabieren”. While erotic experience eventually relegates all women to ‘Namenlosigkeit’ (DJ 134) and blurs them into a single “Tatsache Frau” (DJ 65), narrative can endow names. It appears like a procreation, which in Handke’s text is condensed into a sign through the “Pappelblütenflaum” (DJ 88) that surrounds Don Juan as narrator. This erotic apotheosis of narration in Handke’s text finds its counterfactual in the story of the servant who relives the misery of the traditional Don Juan, his libertinism, which results in nothing other than the inability to establish lasting social relationships. It is said of the latter that with the women “versuchte er auf der Stelle ein Abenteuer; von Liebe dabei keine Rede” (DJ 86). This caricatured doppelgänger of the literary Don Juan, however, desires nothing more than to be a poet. His master, on the other hand, has long since consigned his story of erotic adventure to myth. He has overcome libertinage and the monotony of repetition through his storytelling, which relies on permanence and becomes autoreferential. It will continue in the narration of his listener, who will also be a ‘inseminator’ in the spirit. In this respect, Don Juan doppelgänger returns to Plato’s eroticism and at the same time makes clear the modern difference to it. As a narrator, Don Juan overcomes the traumatic experience of his child’s death by acquiring the ability to witness in the word. But this witnessing in the word can never end in the seclusion of a book. Even the book that tells Don Juan’s story is only part of an infinite text that is meant to preserve the longing for immediacy without giving it a completed story. Thus, the text and the film about Don Juan stand in an inverse relationship that at the same time marks their inner connection. Handke’s narrative recourse to the philosophy of language and discourse analysis is dominated by a longing for the image, which is expressed in the exuberant descriptions of nature and in Don

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Juan’s mimetic narration. At the same time, he can never escape the reflection mediated by language. The narrative interplay of interior and exterior space, imaginative space and perceptual space therefore shapes him throughout. In contrast, Jarmusch’s film finds a visual conciseness that, in the beyond of language, preserves the authenticity of the moment as a matter of course. Besides, he uses cinematic means to unfold schemes of narration that he has borrowed from texts to structure the conceptless images and make them comprehensible. Thus, in the convergence of these different medial treatments of the Don Juan theme, the same tense relationship between word and image, writing and image, which becomes thematic in Handke’s and Wenders’s Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) and which Handke reflects on again and again in his text on Der Bildverlust (BV 746; Wenders 1992, 197), is repeated.

7.6 Image, Writing and Narration: Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos (2002) Not unlike in the text of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, which repeatedly crosses the boundary between autobiography and autofiction, in Der Bildverlust both individual images and entire narrative passages can be read in multiple ways, because they can be assigned to different contexts that overlap. The narrated story, which at first glance seems to follow a linear order, is repeatedly interrupted by interpolated narratives, foreshadowing or back-referencing. At their points of contact, complex metonymic entanglements occur, whose proximity to Proust’s metonymic metaphor is unmistakable (Keller 1991, 248). Even at the simplest level of the narrative, which seems to realistically depict the geographical space of the Sierra de Gredos, southwest of Madrid, verifiable references to place are mixed with fantastic names such as “Nuevo Bazar”, or those that intertwine proximity and distance, the familiar and the foreign, such as Spain, Serbia, and Alaska (Luckscheiter 2012, 143). Moreover, the text, which is set in a near future, is linked from the outset with images of the present as much as with memories of the past. The time of Charles the Fifth gains importance, but so do foreshadowing’s of a near future. And without question, the text repeatedly refers to another novel, Cervantes’ Don Quixote. This is shown on the one hand by its complex narrative structure (Pichler 2013, 3), and on the other hand by the reminiscences of Cervantes’ landscape descriptions (MJN 925). In addition, however, the author Handke also makes fictitious references to Cervantes (Pichler 2013, 4). That the actual relationship to Cervantes is more fundamental, however, beyond the quotations and formal similarities, is evidenced by the conclusion of the text. Shortly before the protagonist arrives at the end of her journey in the Mancha village where she intends to tell her story to the fictional author, she fantasizes a handwriting with a steel quill. This image refers to the “Traum-Autor” Cervantes, whom the author she has commissioned only emulates, considering his own role: “und ich, der Gegenwartsautor im Manchadorf? Was war ich im Vergleich zu ihm anderes als eine Art Notbehelf?” (BV 709). However, it is by no means clear whether the

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woman really has this dream or whether it is attributed to her by the author commissioned through her. For she does notice how her author-audience “[sich] zunehmend ihrer, der Geschichte, bemächtigte” or “sich einverleibte” (BV 741), that the story drove into him like a demon. This not only raises the fundamental question of who is presently narrating in this novel, but now, alongside the reflection on the medium of the image, which dominates large sections of the text, there is also one on the medium of writing. With the central question of how reality can be rendered through the signs of language, the modern author, like his predecessor, finds himself referred to the necessity of playing “mit den Zeichen und den Ähnlichkeiten” (Foucault 1978, 82; Pichler 2013, 5). The mere narration of the real thus recedes to the extent that a separate reality of narration begins to establish itself. This reality creates images and stories that break away from the paradigm of representation. Narrative realities or narrative worlds emerge that can be recognized as elements of a metatext that repeatedly speaks of the subject of narrative itself. The plot of this journey through the Sierra is brought back at the end to the central theme of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. It becomes clear that this theme inserts Handke’s fictional and autofictional designs into a transtextual frame of reference that is at every point autoreflexive. It is certainly no coincidence that the interweaving of these different narrative segments and realities, which determines his text, is also graphically underlined by the text formatting, which divides all narrative sections into paragraphs in such a way that they can also be read as individual observations or spontaneous reflections that do not require the linearity of narration. The blank lines invite the reader to make connections, to read the text twice, or to place it in a system of references that transcends the text. Formally, the text is structured like a drama set in different stations, with specific places marked within the linear structure of the mountain crossing. They are a town in the north, where the woman comes from, and then Nuevo Bazar, Polvereda, Pedrada, Hondareda in the mountains, and at the end La Mancha. These places are also turning points within the story. In each of them something happens that is expressed during a meal, through conversation or through wordless signs. At the same time, these places are developmental stations in a double sense. They mark the change in the traveller, on whom the text focuses, but at the same time they are turning points in the narrative itself, for in describing them different narrative instances interact in each case. In addition to the woman, who wants to be told about herself and at the same time always talks about herself, there is the narrator, who is commissioned to write down the journey and who adds his own reflections to his report, which he already has at hand at the end when he meets his client in La Mancha. In addition, outside observers come into play again and again, such as a reporter or such persons who tell of themselves. This complex narrative situation, in which the narrative instances constantly vary the perspective and the style of narration, stages an oscillating perception of reality that repeatedly produces double images. Almost all descriptions, both of natural phenomena and of people, can be read as images of a story that purports to depict reality. At the same time, however, they correspond to psychological projections of either the fictional narrator or the character, so that external and internal perceptions

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overlap at every point. In this way, the novel not only adopts a narrative style that also determines Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, but it also shows itself to be intertwined with this text in that it assigns all perceptions to a psychogram, which can be recognized as a precondition of the narrative itself. In Der Bildverlust, however, the double images, in clear foreshadowing of the situation described in Der Große Fall, make the woman’s fellow travellers see “im Frieden den Krieg”; these double images, too, are compared to Don Quixote’s phantasmagorical perceptions (BV 351). Often even descriptions of nature become ambiguous in that they are related to a guiding image in Handke’s other texts. An example of this is the motif of the threshold, which at the beginning of the journey is a formation of nature on which the traveller strides (BV 76 f.), but undoubtedly also refers to Handke’s texts in which, as paradigmatically in Langsame Heimkehr, thresholds mark the transition between different realms of perception and a transformation of the perceiver himself. This double coding of perceptions of nature is repeated in the view of technical images. When an airplane shows itself in the sky, it is said: “– es war eine Epoche der schwarzen Kondensstreifen –, noch um einen Schwarzgrund schwärzer dann bei deren Passieren der Sonne, wobei es augenblicksweise fühlbar noch kälter wurde, wie im Moment einer totalen Sonnenfinsternis” (BV 182). In accordance with this, the protagonist’s path through Spain not only corresponds to a change of mental states, but it also follows their unstable order. There is much to suggest that the abrupt and often inexplicable change in the images narrated corresponds to a perception that, with its exaggeration of gratifying and terrifying elements, recreates the psychoimages of a manic depression that, in the alternation of grandiosity and depression, constantly designs new approaches to reality. It is important to realize that this psychic coding of perception, which the text of Durch die Sierra de Gredos favors, also determines the poetological design of the reality of narration. It transforms the narrative of the journey into a reflection on narrative and in doing so unfolds its own order of narrative. This, moreover, also allows the life-determining power of narration to become clear for the narrator himself. There is much to suggest that the scenes appearing like epiphanies in this and other texts by Handke, which have often been described in criticism as an inappropriate ‘Erzähltheologie’, actually mark the goal and end of the psychological working through of an ambivalent experience of the self. The fact that this psychic process independently makes use of a stock of religious signs has a twofold cause. On the one hand, the Christian references in Handke’s texts are indeed based on certain biblical images to which he attributes symbolic quality in an exemplary manner. This writing technique and the associated reflection on symbols is extensively prefigured in the “Aufzeichnungen” of Gestern unterwegs (Travelling Yesterday), for instance when describing the depiction of the “Wurzel Jesse” (Root of Jesse) in the St. Michael’s church in Hildesheim, a “Hauptbild” in Der Bildverlust (GU 84). On the other hand, the subjective charge of this visual access to doubly read images confirms that they re-enact a psychic

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dissociation that allows the details of the real to emerge sharpness precisely in the moment of confusion. As a result, the journey through the countryside is therefore initially linked to the representation of an inner psychological process that the author inscribes both on his fictional narrator, his protagonist, and on the images and situations of the text, for all of which the boundary between reality and dream seems repeatedly to disappear (cf. GU 70). Finally, the arrival of the protagonist at her narrator’s home in La Mancha unites the narrative play about the journey with the psycho-story that structures it. In the process, the two levels of depicting the real and tracing the psychic are reconciled in a fantasy of the immediacy of physical encounter. In the end, two stories are concluded in a scene that unites the fantasies of writing with fantasies of physical immediacy. The question posed at the beginning by both the protagonist and the narrator about the role of writing thus finds its answer: writing is necessary to make life visible, but at the same time it is extinguished as soon as it has led to its immediate experience.

The Story On the surface, then, the novel simultaneously describes an episode in the life of a woman, the narration of her fictional narrator, and the momentum of memory linked to both. The telling of the traveling woman’s story is a commissioned work; it is meant to reconstruct a phase in the life history of the woman who commissioned it, because her memories of what she experienced are beginning to fade. However, since these do not only refer to real events and experiences, but at the same time to fantasies connected with them, the fictional author is also confronted with the question of how to relate facts and fantasy in his narrative. This is difficult in two respects. On the one hand, he is expressly forbidden to give decipherable names and places; only the places of fantasy may be the subject of his narrative. But at the same time, the protagonist’s fantasies enter the narrator’s narration and mobilize “Phantasien des Erzählens” that arise in the fictional narrator himself – he is also described by the woman “Erfinder”. Moreover, his narration reconstructs not only what the latter reports to him, but also what she has previously heard from others who tell her. Therefore, his text oscillates between the account of the woman’s journey, her perceptions, and his different perceptions and images. Often these different elements of the narrative are linked together as if in a patchwork, but they are not always compatible with each other. The narrative therefore does not always appear purposeful, rather it combines different levels of reality. Associated with this are forwards and backwards as well as the reconstruction of different narrator positions and narrative perspectives. This is already apparent when the writing assignment is given. The woman tells the author about her life and obviously does not want a mere reproduction of her report, but “ein richtiges Buch über sich”. It is not without reason that she explicitly insists on a “mehr oder weniger zünftigen Schriftsteller[.]; einem Erzähler; meinetwegen einem Erfinder, was ja nicht heißen mußte, daß der die Fakten verbog

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oder fälschte –” (BV 15). The special relationship between her and the author also results from the fact that she used to be one of his readers (BV 16). What is striking about the first encounter between the two is the strangeness that prevails between them, which cannot be broken and apparently should not be broken either. Nevertheless, it is important for both of them to preserve the appearance of originality. This gives rise to the author’s leading question as to whether orality or writing is more important to the client. For himself, the author says, the writtenness is “der wesentliche Zusatz der Erzählung, […] deren Bereicherung  – die Bereicherung” (BV 20). A further complication for the narrator arises from the fact that the story of the woman’s journey is also intended to tell the story of her brother, who was in prison as a violent offender and from whom another violent act is to be feared. The differences between the woman’s account, her memories and the narration of the fictional narrator are already clearly marked at the beginning: While the spontaneously emerging images create something like a present time, the story to be told is to take place in a “Zwischenzeit”, in a time in which surprises are still possible (BV 27). What is necessary for this is not only that the fictional author – a clear reference to Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht – can relate his perspective back to the “Ränderlandschaft” of suburbia, which exudes “einen atmenden Frieden” (BV 36). His detailed perception and description of nature also aim to capture a rhythm of life that can be related to the phenomenon of long duration (BV 49). Basically, his text conveys different experiences of time, each of which acquires its own meaning only when interwoven with one another. The journey of the wanderer thus takes place in space and time at the same time. The narrative traces these different experiences of time, and it is precisely through this that it unfolds its “Eigenzeit”: stories, history and the time of the narrative determine the narrator’s perspective in equal measure, but with different consequences.

The Way to the Sierra: A Way in Time and Space The story of the wanderers takes place in a near future that is repeatedly characterized by references to political or technical orientation data; at the same time, it becomes clear that the path through the Sierra de Gredos also opens another time. The initial data is given by an alienated present, in the background of which are the current events of the Balkan war. The poetic programme of the narrative, which sometimes seems detached and timeless, is formed against the backdrop of the political, which opens a present as well as a future perspective. Thus, the image of the near future is bathed in the “Dunkel einer Vorkriegszeit”, which the narrator describes as a “Vorkrieg, wie es ihn vielleicht noch nie zuvor gegeben hatte”. On the one hand, the word “Frieden” is dominant in public discourse. On the other hand, the war was already going on: “sowohl der alte der Völker untereinander als auch ein neuer, eines jeden gegen jeden, der zweite rücksichtsloser noch auf Vernichtung bedacht als der erste” (BV 106). This dystopia is characterized by the flare-up of old enmities between peoples, the formerly united

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breaks apart, the reference to the situation during the Balkan War is clear. The moment the borders are lifted, the old prejudices reappear, the friendships between nations apply “höchstens offiziell, und eine bloße Zeit lang, nicht auf lange Dauer” (BV 108). The representatives of the people become “Wortkriegsführer”; worse still, “[unter den] aktuell Führenden erstand alle über alle der einstige, zu Knochenstaub und -splitter gewordene, von den Überlieferungen möglicherweise überbewertete Pöbel der früheren Länder als Wiedergänger” (BV 109). The violence prevailing everywhere is ideologically dressed up, as at the same time all borders of decency fall, and it comes about “daß mehr und mehr Führende, eingeladen ins je andere Land, dort ärger als je eine Pöbelmasse das Urgesetz der Gastfreundschaft missachteten” (BV 111). The following allusions also to Joschka Fischer and George Bush read like clear-sighted sketches of the era of Donald Trump (BV 111 f.). But when the woman returns, it becomes apparent that she had been living in a parallel time during her trek through the Sierra, as if in a romantic fairy tale. Outside, meanwhile, the future has begun: The first spaceship has landed on Mars, and the signs on the highways now display the hours, minutes, and seconds in luminous numerals. The political scene has also changed radically. The final communiqué of a world president is about everyone speaking “eine einzige Sprache”, Belgrade has once again been conquered by the Turks, a politician, unmistakably the then German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, stands in a jogging suit at the mouth of the Sava into the Danube, “wedelte mit einem Geldpaket und pißte zugleich in den Zusammenfluß. Aquilea war die Hauptstadt Italiens geworden. Die altgriechische Sprache war in den Schulen von Alaska bis Feuerland wieder Pflichtfach” (BV 736 f.). During her hike through the “gebenedeit-verdammte Sierra de Gredos”, the woman has the experience “[der] jäh umspringenden Welt”, and at the same time she sees “das tägliche morgendliche Stelldichein der Bilder aus der Sierra […], der, versteht sich, friedlichen  – Bild und Frieden sind zuerst und zuletzt ein und dasselbe –: Bilder, wie sie sich mir aus den anderen Gegenden […] nicht annähernd so häufig […] einstellten” (BV 370). Therefore, for the woman, the formula of “Bild–Werden”, which is linked to the central theme of ‘Bildverlust’, initially acquires an individual meaning. In the Sierra, she perceives that “die Welt steht. Sie ist nicht untergegangen […]” (BV 370). At the same time, the Sierra opens two different perceptions of time: the experience of another time and the entry “in so eine Zeit (die zwischendurch in Vergessenheit geraten, in Sagenhaftigkeit entrückt war)” (BV 84). For the woman, this external change of time corresponds to an internal one. In it, historical time and life-long experienced time intersect, for in her ‘Auszeit’ in the Sierra she also manages to look back. The report she conveys to the narrator is also composed of a series of memories. These lead the woman first to a reliving of earlier misadventures or “nicht selten lebensbedrohende[r] Alleingänge[.]”, but then also to a working through of earlier experiences in a psychological sense. In this respect, the Sierra is a space of promise and danger at the same time. For from the beginning, the woman is also threatened by “der große Fall” (BV 372), because the images that

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are playfully visualized are sometimes incalculable. According to the woman, they represent “eine grundverschiedene Gegenwart […] als meine persönliche”, they take place in “[einer] unpersönliche[.] Gegenwart […] in einer Zeit und in einer Zeit-Form, für welche beide es weder ein Beiwort noch überhaupt einen Namen gibt” (BV 373). This ambivalence, which is accompanied by an overlapping of different levels of perception and description, already determines the woman’s departure for her journey. There, an image of nature is directly connected with a fantasy that at the same time points to the future. The night before her departure, the woman experiences a destructive hurricane that uproots trees and thereby creates a new landscape. The earth torn open by the natural disaster triggers in her a disorientation in space and time at the same time: “Wo bin ich? Wann spielte das? Und war das jetzt? Und jetzt ist wann?” (BV 67). This introduces a configuration typical of Handke’s texts. The woman experiences an epiphany, the natural disaster creates a new experience. It is explicitly stated after the hurricane that it has uncovered “Vergangenheitsschichten” (BV 78). The woman imagines “das größere Jetzt” and “[die] größere Zeit” (BV 72), and wonders when “[das] Gehege der größeren Zeit […] endlich herrschen [wird]” (BV 73). Comparable experiences also determine the woman’s subsequent journey. Again and again, she experiences leaps in time. She thinks of the Wendish village of her childhood, a thousand miles away, of its stories of death, dying and violence; at the same time, she regards this village as the origin of all her professional “Geldgeschichten”, directly connected with the motto “Wirtschaften” (BV 202–205), which determines her later life. It is precisely because these memories afflict her as “Bilderblitze”, “Bildmeteore” or “Zwischenbilder” that she wants to pre-tell the story she will later share with the fictional narrator. The telling and the subsequent writing down are meant to vouch for duration (BV 209). Elsewhere, the leaps in time mobilize images of history as starting points for the narrative. This is evidenced by an association that immediately follows the description of raindrops in the dust of the path. The traveller has the impression of stepping onto a ship, wonders where she first saw the plank, she thinks she is walking across, recalls the Madrid Maritime Museum, finally the sailors of the Spanish-Austrian Empire, and suddenly the text states: Wann war was jetzt? Im sechzehnten Jahrhundert, um 1556 genau, kurz nach der Abdankung des Emperadors, des Kaisers Karls des Fünften, und zur Zeit seiner Überquerung, in einer Sänfte, wegen seiner Gicht, der Sierra de Gredos, auf dem Weg in sein Ruhekloster (San) Juste an deren Südausläufern. Und wo war das jetzt? In dem damals größten spanischen Überseehafen, dem von San Lucar de Barrameda, auch halb so ein Flußhafen, am río Guadalquivír, unterhalb von Sevilla, Ablegestelle für das Einheimsen des fernen indianischen Golds. (BV 97)

Such doublings of time are repeated and condensed at different stages of the woman’s journey. Again and again, she encounters one person in particular, who at first awakens a historical memory. It is an actor who travels through the countryside with

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his extras dressed as Charles the Fifth, but who actually has his home in Hondareda. It is in Pedrada that she first encounters him during a banquet (BV 392) where people gather to tell each other their stories. This scene is also prefigured in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (MJN 1050 f.). All the narrators of this meeting turn a vessel with the same “Hagebuttengewinde”, which is supposed to protect against black vision or to protect against snow blindness (BV 394). The thoroughly alienating situation thereby gives rise to the idea that they all are sitting wie an einer Zeitgrenze, einerseits klar in der Jetztzeit, und andererseits, im nächsten Augenblick und Atemzug womöglich noch klarer und schärfer in einer hinter einem rucks aufgezogenen Vorhang befindlichen zweiten Epoche, keiner vergangenen, keiner historischen, [sondern] […] einer zu der jetzigen noch zusätzlichen, diese nach Möglichkeit erweiternden und umso realeren oder faßbareren Gegenwart. (BV 395)

The example of the emperor and his extras makes it clear that this carrying over of images of the past into the present makes “das jetzige Jetzt grauer als gleichwelche angeblich graue Vorzeit” (BV 398). The only one who appears at the evening table as “nichts als von heute” is a photographer (BV 398). Later, there is another encounter with the emperor, who appears to be dead. The woman lies down beside him and, as in Poe’s fantastic narrative The Oval Portrait, the life that has left the emperor seems to pass into her body and swell it (BV 441). This fantastic encounter is described, strikingly enough, as if it were a film image (BV 402), and the situation is compared to a “Wahrträumen” (BV 444). In subsequent situations, too, film images are repeatedly described, condensing the plot. Dream images, film images and psychic dissociations are not only linked narratively, but they also seem to be mutually dependent. The protagonist’s last encounter with the emperor’s actor transposes all previous encounters into the pure present: when the latter takes in the woman, he no longer appears as the king of history, like the one in the monastery of San Juste, but as the actor who will die in Hondareda. For him, only his dying day makes an experience of identity possible, “sein König-Sein oder -Spielen zählte nicht mehr. Aus der Traum und damit die Gespaltenheit. Er war allein der, der er hier während seiner Zeit in Hondareda gewesen war: der Archivar, nicht in Simancas oder sonstwo in der historischen Welt, sondern der für die neue Siedlung hier […] ein einziger Gedächtnisraum dessen, was Hondareda gewesen sein würde” (BV 678). Spatial constructions are connected with the narration of such transgressions of temporal boundaries through images. Often personal relationships are first unfolded from a distance before they are shown in immediacy and closeness. An example of this is given by the woman’s encounter with a strange man, which is surprisingly enough portrayed with the biblical formula of the recognition of man and woman, describing an intimacy that is not possible among strangers. The imperative phrase of the man whom the woman met even before she left, “Sie müssen mich lieben. Sie werden mich lieben” (BV 52), leads to a spontaneous intimate encounter that transcends all social registers and turns directly to the body and undisguised sexuality.

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 ravel Stops and Narrative Situations: Nuevo Bazar, Polvereda, T Pedrada, Hondareda “[Das] Karussell der Orte und Schauplätze” (BV 709), which the woman imagines walking at the end, is preceded by her wandering through various settings, which follows both a real and a simulated topography. These places, too, prove to be points of intersection of space and time, their inhabitants living according to a set of rules specific to each place and at the same time seeming to represent different historical forms of life. Nuevo Bazar as “eine Art weiße[r] Fleck”, a “Nirgendwo”, a “Nicht-­ Name[.]”, i.e. an utopia in the literal sense of the word (BV 228), isolates contemporary forms of life, while the village appears as an image of modernity as well as an asylum from it. Polvereda, after passing through the surrounding plain dominated by war and violence, bears traits of a social utopia, but also produces double images in utopia. At a time when “[es] das Wort ‘Rasse’ schon lange nicht mehr [gab]”, the people of the Plaza Mayor speak in different languages, they wear different “Stammes- oder Volks-Trachten”, and the narrator remarks that “auch Wörter wie ‘Stamm’ und ‘Volk’ längst ungebräuchlich geworden [seien], wenn nicht anrüchig und verpönt […]” (BV 344). The inhabitants of Pedrada are defined by “Erinnerung als weiterwütende Gegenwart” (BV 454), which has inflicted on them “Überlebensnarben” that they all “offen und wie stolz vor sich hertrugen” (BV 465). Hondareda, on the other hand, becomes a rallying point for those who have come from afar and suffered a loss of image. The “transkontinentale Beobachter” who reports here in stretches describes this model of society as a relapse into “längst überwunden geglaubte Zivilisationsformen”. The inhabitants are cut off from information or do without it, they know no cashless payments, of course no banking, their economy is based on barter (BV 478). The same observer describes their behavior with the image of “Kaubewegungen im Leeren” with which people try to cope with a traumatic experience (BV 486). At the core of all Pedradan behaviour is the trauma of the experience of violence. For the description of Hondareda, there are two completely different versions anyway, that of the narrator and the woman’s perceptions. Finally, the Hondaredans’ loss of image is also assessed in a comment by the fictional narrator, who projects his own situation onto the inhabitants (BV 598). Complementing this, the narrator recounts how attempts were made to “in die helle Bilderwelt zurückzunavigieren” through the use of modern media (BV 570). But even the film images failed because the inhabitants have become completely “bildresistent” (BV 572). They therefore not only resist the apparatuses of visual media, but pass them by indifferently, claiming that they have not suffered a loss of images, but have sworn off images of their own volition (BV 573). In this, too, they go even further behind the past to which the inhabitants of Pedrada had committed themselves. Even more than the latter, they appear as “aus der Gegenwart verabschiedet”. According to the reporter “ein Rückfall  [ist  ]eingetreten, nicht bloß um Jahrzehnte zurück, sondern in die überwundene Längstvergangenheit, um Jahrhunderte, Jahrtausende zurück, eben ein ‘Atavismus eines Atavismus’” (BV 527).

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Moreover, the description of these different places is based on perceptions and judgments that not only revolve around the theme of ‘image loss’ and its consequences, but at the same time develop presuppositions and conditions of narrative itself, by which the fictional narrator also knows himself to be affected. The depiction of the woman’s journey and her observations playfully vary the strategy of a narrative that is composed of dreams and fantasies, imaginings, and perceptions, images, and reflections, and presents itself at every point as a paraphrase of what would be a mere depiction of the real. From this perspective, the divergent descriptions of places by the woman, other reporters, and finally the fictional narrator also portray not simply different perceptions but divergent possibilities and strategies of narration. In this way, the immanent poetology of the text is transformed into a narrative play, the narration becomes a representation of what narration can achieve.

The Double Gaze and the Perception of the Other Again and again, in describing the journey, individual people and social ways of life are dissected as precisely as they are pitilessly. Thus, in the narratively staged double vision of the woman, the different reporters and the author, human and social contradictions are revealed at the same time. The historian of the Nuevo Bazar zone reports that the phenomenon of long duration (longue durée) has led to the fact that “nur noch die schlechten Eigenschaften”, only those that “um sich schlagenden” are preserved in the inhabitants (BV 245). Moreover, these people live in a state of alienation. Mobile phones, which have to be dragged behind them when walking, become a sign of this. Their owners are also obliged, in the event of a call, to put on a special helmet “welcher das Gesicht, samt Mienenspiel, des Sprechers oder Hörers den Blicken der Mitpassanten entzog und seine Stimme dämpfte und zugleich ins Unverständliche verzerrte” (BV 246). Against the background of a war that the inhabitants of the place do not want to perceive, many of them speak “eine neue Sprache, in der es keine Eigenschafts  – und insbesondere auch keine Zeitwörter, sondern nur mehr Hauptwörter gibt; und diese ausschließlich in Abkürzungen […]” (BV 265). This is one of the reasons why each of those who arrive there is his “höchsteigener Held” (BV 249). The word ‘Liebe’ has also long since disappeared among the inhabitants; everyone lets his personal time rule and tyrannizes the others with his own time; the new technical apparatuses in particular reinforce this attitude (BV 250). Only the natives, who call themselves “Die alte Schule”, cultivate other forms of social interaction. The observations of the woman support this impression of the reporter. For one thing, she witnesses a murder. Her friend’s rampage makes it suddenly clear to her that the litter of sawdust, which she had noticed from the beginning, serves to absorb the blood spilled in the zone (BV 277). Obviously, the zone creates “Zustände und zwinge sie nach außen, zum Tat-Werden, welche es vorher in einem nie gegeben habe, auch nicht verheimlicht, und auch nicht unbewusst” (BV 275). On the other hand, in the ‘Zwischenräumen’ behind the world of goods of Nuevo Bazar, the traveller sees only decay and images in which lost children or terrorists are sought.

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The images of this contradictory world handed down through narrative, which can be compared to the dissonant images of modernity in Apollinaire’s Zone, correspond in some respects to the descriptions of the real world of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (Apollinaire 1913/2013). There is much to suggest that in this Zone the role of “Zwischenräume”, which can become the starting point of aesthetic imagination, is inverted. The reference to proper time and proper life in Nuevo Bazar also seems like an inversion of Handke’s productive writing fantasies. In the text of Der Bildverlust, the description of this place therefore marks the point of departure for the subsequent social counter-models that the woman encounters on her journey. It is probably no coincidence that the “Möchtegern-Archivar” of all people asks the question “ob nicht gerade der Zustand der Zone fruchtbar werden mußte für die Sehnsucht nach einer anderen Welt, einer ganz anderen Möglichkeit, oder überhaupt einer Möglichkeit” (BV 252). In the “Zone” itself, this is confirmed by the fact that the woman is enabled by the alienation she experiences in this place to recount that which burdens her most: It is the memories of her missing daughter and of her brother, now released from prison. It seems that the view of the traveller’s further journey to the fictional author she has commissioned already reveals an alternative to the world of Nuevo Bazar. It is no coincidence that the daughter’s rediscovery is linked to the symbolism of Easter. The woman now feels that she is a member of a new community, but one that is also marked by pain and guilt, the experience of a “geheime Schuld” (BV 289). Under these conditions, the journey through the dusty plain before Polvereda also marks the transition into a new register of perception and experience. Before that, however, the woman sees herself transported into completely ambivalent visual worlds. On the one hand, war is ever-present during her bus ride, the “ewige[.] Kriegsschauplatz” (BV 327) is overflown by bombers. Moreover, a hawk pursued by an army of ravens makes even nature appear as a realm of violence, where birds turn into a “gigantenhafte, geballtschwarze Mordmaschine” (BV 329). On the other hand, the plain in front of Polvereda is a “Halluzinationserzeugerin” (BV 328), it opens “immer neue[.] Horizonte[.] oder Seh-Rahmen” (BV 326), and the woman experiences that in the bus everyone, like her, lives in an “eigene Zeit” (BV 323). Not coincidentally, this new experience is prepared in two ways. On the one hand, the woman’s perceptions, like those of the other bus passengers, resemble dream images, that they are all in a mood characterized by “sentimiento und ilusión” at the same time in the shelter of the bus that transports them (BV 309). On the other hand, dissociating perceptions arise in this situation, which can be compared to poetic descriptions of nature and thus open a different textual strategy (BV 313). Therefore, it does not seem unusual that the end of the fantastic bus journey leads to a writing assignment for the traveller: “Was dagegen ich gerade so wahrnahm, war nicht ein Bild von uns Busreisenden auf der Rast in der Ruine, vielmehr Schrift, Zeilen, die genauso von links nach rechts wie von rechts nach links liefen” (BV 318). At other points it can be observed that the narrated double images interweave imaginary and unconscious perceptions, phantasmagorias, and dream images in

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such a way that a text emerges that repeatedly crosses the border into the fantastic. The traveller is mistaken in her assessment of the inhabitants of Pedrada. She is initially met aggressively there, but when she moves towards those who are hostile to her, the situation changes, and they turn towards her. “Was in ihren Gesichtern nach Haß und Wut ausgesehen hatte, war in Wahrheit das Mißtrauen gewesen, und zudem eine nicht bloß aktuelle – eine wie für immer geltende, auf die ganze übrige Welt bezogene Enttäuschung” (BV 470). Her fellow travellers fare similarly. They all see “im Frieden den Krieg”; this double perception is compared to Don Quixote’s phantasmagorical perceptions (BV 351). The place of Pedrada, where the traveller sees “anstelle der üblichen Sternbilder ganz ungewohnte Konstellationen” (BV 378), is transformed (BV 450). Moreover, the woman had found an irritating interior there at the Hotel El Milano Real II, where guns and gas masks were not lacking (BV 387). Leaving Pedrada, even the tents in which one had spent the night seem changed. Even fellow travellers who had seemed like residents the previous day resume their former roles; the hostel father, for example, transforms back into a bus driver (BV 452). As in a dream, the traveller also has the impression of seeing in each inhabitant a double from her former life. In the wandering stonemason she believes she recognizes her brother; the conversation with him seems like a dream sequence (BV 413  ff.). Such encounters consistently lead to a disturbing self-­ questioning; in her thoughts, the traveller now even turns to her dead parents “Vater, Mutter – sagt mir: wer bin ich?” (BV 466).

Memory as a Prerequisite for Storytelling Pedrada is already a place of memories of one’s own past. The woman’s encounter with another traveller, whom she had already accompanied as a journalist, turns into a self-encounter (BV 383 f.). Moreover, in the blue of the sky, the traveller repeatedly sees spaces in between that open up a temporal perspective. She associates images of her brother with her perception of colours, and the blue of the Sierra is suddenly superimposed on the memories of her youth, determined by the colour blue, of a hike through nature, during which she herself becomes an “Obstdiebin” (BV 519 f.). It is precisely this attribute that Handke later uses as a metaphor for a radical otherness. Against the backdrop of these memories, what had determined the woman’s life up to that point recedes: Achievements in the full literal sense, property and ownership lose their meaning, “Eigentum bildete keine Idee mehr” (BV 513). Because she now also rejects the banking game, which is described as destructive (BV 404, 405), her journey to the Sierra aims at recovering what she has lost (BV 407). She now wants to found a new kind of bank, “eine Bilderbank, eine erdumspannende, zum Austausch, zum Verwerten, und zum Fruchtbarmachen all meiner, deiner und unserer Bilder” (BV 447). From the very beginning, the theme of memory is linked to that of the image in the narrative of the walk. Every vision opens visual and temporal perspectives at the same time, which can point both to the past and to the future. Thus, the “Nachbild

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bei offenen Augen” is already the “Vorausbild von etwas, das noch hinter den sieben Horizonten lag” (BV 190), and the images of nature that accompany the woman on her ascent to Candeleda mobilize memories of loss and separation, for instance of previous futile attempts to make contact with her own child. This connection between images, memories and images of the future is first established through movement: The text about the hike to the Sierra assigns a special significance to walking; the inner movement of thought and imagination is correlated with the outer movement of the travellers. In this way, too, the novel tells of a writing fantasy that is of fundamental importance for the author Handke (Huber 2005, 333; Pelz 2007, 166; Honold 2017, 11, 492). Thus, the protagonist of the novel perceives her walking as an act of healing, she believes she is protecting the brother by trying to sort out her memories, past images and her present. It is said that not only does she walk with everything “was ihr begegnete und unterkam”, but above all she walked mit den Bildern, den sie aus der Ferne der Zeiten und der Räume in ihrem gleichmäßigen Bergangehen anfliegenden Bildern, welche für noch ganz andere Schutz  – und Sicherheitszonen und Zukunftsperspektiven sorgten als die Erinnerungen, Gedanken, Gefühle und Sinneswahrnehmungen. (BV 503)

At the same time, central to the text is that the woman’s walking, which connects with memory, present and future, also releases new forms of perception. Leaving Hondareda, the traveller can experience the rhythm of the Sierra, everything she does now acquires its own sense, “Zeit haben” becomes formative for her. Under these conditions, the descent to Candelada becomes an awakening experience of the rhythmic not only externally. This image is also closely connected to the design of the epic narrative, which the wandering in a sense prefigures. Therefore, the woman’s locomotion appears like a “magisches Gehen” (BV 504), it combines different sensory perceptions with each other (BV 507). Imagination and fantasy appear alongside memories, and there is no doubt that the woman’s fantasies prefigure and model those of the commissioned fictional narrator. This representation of walking also connects the Wanderer’s story to Handke as author. The “Autor”, as he is quite ambiguously called here, recalls that from his youth on he aimed at “das Epische”, while for him all drama “zeitlebens, als ein von dem wirklichen Geschehen ablenkendes Magnetsystem, gegen den Strich, den seinen, gegangen war” (BV 694). It is no accident that the dramatic passages that the fictional narrator devises for the story he records are discarded.

Unique Time, “Eigenzeit” of the Aesthetic At this interface between the telling of a story and the telling of the telling, a text-­ constituting fantasy of the aesthetic unfolds. The hint that the woman’s wandering can also be perceived as a retracing of a life journey is therefore doubly connoted from the outset. The wanderer believes she feels a “Ruck durch die Geschichte”

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(BV 348); she has the impression that the other travellers have met before in a mysterious way: “ihre Lebenslinien hatten sich einmal überschnitten” (BV 349). In this way, the text aims to represent the unique time and stubbornness of the aesthetic. The motif of this other time is there from the beginning of the novel, among the inhabitants of Pedrada, during the woman’s bus ride, and finally in the town of Hondareda. However, it is the peculiarity of Handke’s text that comparable images are not only repeated, but that they are also constantly recoded. The crucial requirement of reading is to follow the ductus of the narrative in deciphering it and to observe the order of its constellation: Meanings unfold in this form of narrative not concretely and certainly not unambiguously, but solely situationally and ambiguously. The text itself gives an indication of this most clearly in its depiction of the place of Hondareda, which is described quite differently by the “Berichterstatter” than by the woman. What the latter criticises and describes as both backward and threatening is for the woman the starting point for a new and different form of perception. Although the social order of Hondareda is at odds with everything known to the traveller and her fictional author, it enables a new form of perception for both. The “Atavismus” of the inhabitants opens up a “Zweitzeit” (BV 529); this is the great project of the Hondaredans. It is a motif that already characterizes the Don Juan narrative. This “andere Universalzeit” is supposed to make possible a “Freisein vom Zählzwang” (BV 641); all perceptions of time are oriented here on the phenomena of nature (BV 643). Hondareda’s promise of being able to be a child of time again is at the same time an attempt to go back behind history as history and to preserve the enthusiasm that its observer Jakob Lebel has long since lost (BV 647). The inhabitants of the hollow, on the other hand, live “die Zeit als das Leben des Lebens” and turn against “[die] Zeit-Weise” of the observers and outsiders (BV 637). The woman also perceives a “Zeitzauber” that differs from “[der] chronometrisierten Normalzeit” (BV 538), because in Hondareda completely arbitrary parameters are used to calculate time. What happens there, removed from the rest of the world, may seem bizarre, but can be read not only as a sketch of the other order of the aesthetic, but also as the result of life-historical experience. For the woman the inhabitants of this place are “Überlebende”, who have crossed “ein jeder allein und auf seine Weise das Tal des Todes” (BV 543). They, of all people, have experienced what is yet to come for the woman. They have lost not only ideas and ideals, but at the same time “[die] ersten und die letzten Bilder”: the people of Hondareda have suffered the “Bildverlust” (BV 531). In the course of their life together in the enclave, even their sensual, tactile perceptions have changed; they suffer from a “panischen Hören” that causes fear, their vision is “allzu sehr aus den Augenwinkeln”, their sense of smell is mixed with the stench of decay, their sense of touch or skin has almost completely atrophied (BV 549). But each loss is balanced by another ability. The Hondaredans have an amazing sense of taste (BV 550), and meals play a central role in their lives (BV 555). Perceived by a reporter as dwellers in a “Finsterlichtung”, of all things, they can draw portraits in the air, “großartige Nachgestalten”, who have a magical effect, affecting reality in such a way that it even causes animals to pause. Their deliberate

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separation from others, not coincidentally by barriers, beams, and thresholds, leads them to use not the usual words to describe things, but ones that resemble poetic names (BV 582). Finally, the Hondaredans have developed a fundamentally new economic system that reigns alone in their enclave. It is dew science combined with an accompanying cosmogony (BV 589), which seeks to produce everything from the celestial dew and sets up its own distribution system for it. For the bank woman this is precisely a model that could have brought about a new “Wirtschaftswelt statt des Frontenmechanismus zwischen finsterem Gewinner- und kläglichem Verlierertum”, a social “Ausgeglichenheit” (BV 633). In the context of Hondareda, of all places, there now also occurs a fantasy of socialization that anticipates the later relationship between the woman and her fictional author. It is precisely “[der] transkontinentale Beobachter” who begins to covet the woman who was previously hostile to him. His wish is to be “rein nichts als ein paar Augen und ein zweites Paar Augen, und so unter vier Augen […] sprechen, wie er noch nie unter vier Augen mit jemandem gesprochen haben wird” (BV 534 f.). Despite his continuing aggression towards the woman, he feels a “Sprung oder Versöhnungsruck” at the sight of her (BV 535).

The Image Loss A comparable overlapping can be observed in the central motto of ‘Bildverlust’, which provides the scopus for the entire text. This deals with the theme of the image in a two-fold way. On the one hand, it talks about the images that determine the individual, his perception, and psychological reactions; these are remembered images, fantasy, or dream images. On the other hand, the novel also fundamentally determines the role of the image in modern society. As a precondition of the individual loss of image, he describes the long development of a collective loss of image in the media age. It destroys the connection between individual image projection and the culturally or socially mediated images that are disseminated via the technical image media. Vor allem im noch nicht so lang vergangenen Jahrhundert wurde ein Raubbau an den Bildergründen und -schichten betrieben, welcher zuletzt mörderisch war. Der Naturschatz ist aufgebraucht, und man zappelt als Anhängsel an den gemachten, serienmäßig fabrizierten, künstlichen Bildern, welche die mit dem Bildverlust verlorenen Wirklichkeiten ersetzen, sie vortäuschen und den falschen Eindruck sogar noch steigern wie Drogen, als Drogen. (BV 744)

At the same time, the text also draws attention to the intermedial connection between word and image, which is not touched by this historical and social development. Very early on, the traveller remarks about her memories and the narrator’s narrative project: “Auch einzelne Wörter können aus der Zeit- und Raumferne als Bilder ankommen. Und vielleicht kein durchschlagenderes und innigeres Bild als so ein reines Wortbild” (BV 213). The description of the journey through the Sierra takes place in the tension between these two media registers.

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Images in this text also mark points of turnover, both between different time levels and life-historical memories, as well as those that can be discerned during the hike through the Sierra. For example, as a night-time reader, the bank woman has an image “von dem Bett, dem sie auflag, als von der Weltkarte”, while this image overlaps with the visual memory of an old wooden sculpture in a Wendish village church (BV 175). This is an example of how obviously all images point beyond themselves. Moments of “Bild-Werdens” (BV 176) are not only assigned to different perceptions that were perceived as pleasurable, but at the same time they allow for delimiting notions such as that of the “Gehege der größeren Zeit” that characterizes a recurring aesthetic fantasy of the author Handke. It is no coincidence that the painting’s leitmotif also determines the everyday perceptions described in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. In the novel Der Bildverlust, the images are initially determined as a prerequisite for the life and survival of the individual. The narration of the story of her journey, a task which the woman turns over to the narrator, has become necessary because the memories in the form of images came to her in her dreams “nicht mehr von selber”. They had to be “vorsätzlich herbei[ge]rufen” (BV 8). Because she drew “ihr stärkstes Daseinsgefühl” from the images (BV 21), this led her into a crisis. These images are neither arbitrary nor involuntary, but rather they come blitzartig oder meteoritenhaft […]. Wollte man sie stoppen und in Ruhe betrachten, so waren sie längst zerstoben, und mit solchem Eingriff zerstörte man sich im nachhinein auch noch die Wirkung des so jäh verschwundenen wie jäh erschienenen und einen durchkreuzenden Bruchsekundenbildes. (BV 21)

At the same time, the images also open up very personal things, they are about “eine Art Liebe”, but fundamentally: “das Bild als Bild, war universell. Es ging über ihn, sie, es hinaus” (BV 23). As an element of a survival strategy, the images also enable individual to territorially demarcate their own from others by allowing present experiences to be projected back onto earlier situations. This becomes clear when an attacker approaches the woman and, remembering a mountain trail in the Rocky Mountains, she can determine her own territory in this situation. “Nie mehr würde der namenlose Nachbar gegen sie handgreiflich werden. Zuletzt, vor dem beiderseitigen Entschwinden, lachten sie sogar” (BV 58). Such images of memory are joined by the so-called “Zielbilder”, they are perceptions, on which the woman focuses and which also help her to assert herself in the social context: “Mit meinen Zielbildern verteidige ich mich, ohne mich zu verteidigen – greife ich an, ohne anzugreifen – führe ich Krieg, ohne Krieg führen zu müssen” (BV 64). Elsewhere it says: “Mit den Bildern hielt sie sich die Angreifer nicht bloß vom Leibe. Sie schlug sie damit zurück. Das jeweilige Bild diente ihr ebenso als Rüstung wie auch, sooft es um mehr ging als um friedliches Entwaffnen, als Waffe” (BV 102). This reflection on the image is paralleled with the trek through the Sierra. It is only with Der Bildverlust that occurs at its end that a new strategy for life and survival opens up. It is the fantasy of the replacement of images by

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narrative, the secret final goal of the novel Der Bildverlust (BV 715), a central consideration that also determines Handke’s collaboration with Wim Wenders. However, even this utopian perspective does not ignore the immediate social criticism of the developed media age that increasingly determines Handke’s later texts and which reaches a temporary climax in Der Große Fall (GF 235). Rather, this critique also gives contour to the story of the Wanderer through the Sierra. In her narration to the author in Mancha Village, reflections on individual and collective loss of image are once again condensed and focused on the experiences of the woman herself. Instead of talking about the world of business, which would be of particular interest to her fictional narrator, she converses with him primarily about image loss, which affected the author earlier than it affected her. In the process, it turns out that loss of image by no means implies that images are no longer perceived, but rather that the images, memory images, and internalized images that guide one’s life have no longer an effect, because they are in danger of losing their power under the influence of the “gemachten und gelenkten und nach Belieben lenkbaren Bilder, und deren Wirkung” that come from outside (BV 743). It is striking, however, that the mediation between individual experience and general social development can still be achieved through a technical image, of all things, which can connect the unconscious and the conscious, individual and collective experience. Again and again, the text describes film images that are particularly suited to interweaving the imaginary and the real. A reflection at the end of the text points to this: “Im Bild erschienen Außen und Innen fusioniert zu etwas Drittem, etwas Größerem und Beständigem. Die Bilder stellten den Wert der Werte dar. Sie waren unser scheinbar sicherstes Kapital. Der letzte Schatz der Menschheit” (BV, 745; GU 85). This interplay of external and internal images also marks the end of the trek through the Sierra. The woman, who changes from an “Asendereada”, one who has lost her way, to an “Aventurera”, an adventurer, becomes, as she walks through a fern forest, more and more rapidly “von den aufeinanderfolgenden Welt-­ Schauplätzen durchquert” (BV 713); only then does she experience the final loss of images. The story that the fictional narrator is to tell was designed from the outset for this loss of image, and it is from here that the special task of the “heutigen Autors” is determined at the same time. For the woman experiences the loss of image while it “bereits die Allgemeinheit erfaßt und betroffen hatte, noch, bis zu dem gerade erzählten Augenblick […]”. Previously it was said of her that she “im Bild war, mit den Bildern und aus den Bildern lebte”. This constellation is crucial for determining the role of the author, who wonders “ob für die Geschichte des Bildverlust nicht ausnahmsweise ich, der heutige Autor, der richtigere bin als ihr Miguel (de Cervantes y Saavedra, oder wie er hieß), für den das seinerzeit noch kein Thema, oder Problem, gewesen wäre?” (BV 715 f.). The consequences of a fall that results in the woman’s “brüsken Bildverlust” are explained in the epilogue in a conversation with the author. What happens to her is not solely physical; rather, she is “gefällt von dem auf die vorangegangenen, heillos durcheinanderzuckenden Bilderblitze gefolgten Löschblitz des Bildverlust,

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verhängt über sie und die Welt, ging sie gleichsam (ohne ‘gleichsam’) durch den Tod. So wollte es die Geschichte” (BV 717). The woman’s loss of image thus takes place within and without: “Ihr Fall […] war ein kleiner Fall von außen, und ein großer Fall im Innern. Ja, zuerst war der Bildverlust, und dann erst verhaspelte sich ihr Gang, kippte sie seitwärts, stürzte und überschlug sich […]” (BV 716). In trying to accept this situation, the fictional narrator recognizes a proximity to Cervantes. Like his hero, the woman seeks adventures even where there are none, “keine äußeren, sichtbaren, zu bestehen”; Cervantes’ adventure stories, too, were nothing more than attempts to “[sich] Heraus[zu]wirtschaften” of the loss of an image (BV 718). From this double experience arises the transition to a new seeing. This is also initiated by perceptions and not coincidentally timed by a looking that is comparable to quickly following film cuts and pans. The woman believes she is perceiving a film about herself that allows her to understand her relationship with her former lover. It becomes clear to her that he was never “vollkommen gleichzeitig” with her; rather, it can be said that “die volle Liebe, oder anders gesagt, die Liebesfülle” only set in with him when she was absent (BV 722). The catastrophe of the loss of the image thus leads to an intensification of memories. This is directed above all towards the relationship between man and woman, it circles around desire, and it makes a new experience of the body and corporeality possible. Therefore, the story with the man that the woman experiences is also the experience of a loss and of finding oneself again (BV 723). In this way, the loss of image opens a new view of oneself; it makes possible a “merkwürdiges Kindschaftsgefühl” (BV 724), which in turn gives rise to dreams. By no means does it lead to a loss of the dream images that could replace the images in the “klarsten Wachen, die morgendlichen” (BV 724). Finally, the woman realizes that her story can only continue if she also tells of her guilt. To a stranger, a soldier lying next to her, she confesses that during her first crossing of the Sierra she had “dem Kind unter ihrem Herzen den Tod gewünscht” (BV 725). At the same time, she had associated this death wish against her own child with her determination to succeed and become a person of power; she wanted to participate in the “Weltbedeutungsspiel” (BV 726). It is significant that the conversation about the loss of the image that takes place at the end of the text connects the client and the author; they each speak against the background of their own experience, and it is no coincidence that in the process the different positions of speech are no longer identifiable. After a statement highlighted by quotation marks, it is explicitly stated: “Dreimal raten, wer von den beiden das sagte” (BV 745). “[Das] Zwiegespräch der Abenteurerin des Bildverlusts und ihres Autors” was nothing other than “jeweils das Selbstgespräch der oder des einen hervorgerufen von dem Mitsichselberreden des oder der anderen” (BV 743). At the end of this dialogue, the view of the individual also leads to a view of society: “‘Der Verlust der Bilder ist der schmerzlichste der Verluste.”  – “Es bedeutet den Weltverlust. Es bedeutet: es gibt keine Anschauung mehr. Es bedeutet: Die Wahrnehmung gleitet ab von jeder möglichen Konstellation. Es bedeutet: Es gibt keine Konstellation mehr’” (BV 746).

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The pessimistic formula “Wir werden vorderhand ohne das Bild leben müssen”, however, is now integrated into a dialectical figure of thought. The media critique does not simply remain a speech about loss; rather, the media-driven experience of the loss of the image clears the way for the role of writing. And so it goes on to say: “‘Vorderhand. Aber ist andererseits nicht gerade solch ein Verlust begleitet von Energie, auch wenn diese, vorderhand, blind ist?” – “Cuerpo del mundo. Körper der Welt. Wir, die Verbannten, voll Leidenschaft’” (BV 746).

Development of Perception Directly linked to the text’s defining theme of ‘Bildverlust’ is the theme of perception, which revolves around the concept of “Anschauung”. Referring to Goethe’s quotation “Zum Schauen geboren, zum Sehen bestellt” (BV 573), the rapporteur defines perception as an exercise that is tested on simple objects. There is a cross-­ reference to the author Handke in his speech when he takes the “Baumschatten an den Felswänden” (BV 574) as an example. It is also this rapporteur who contrasts the “Raubbau der Bilder” with learning to look, using a central motto of the author Handke: “Bildsamkeit” (BV 575). What he reflects takes place in the woman’s story. Already in Hondareda and in relation to those affected by the loss of images, she becomes increasingly capable of a new form of perception. This is metaphorically described in the text as being able to grasp the “Schrift” and the “Rhythmus” of appearances (BV 593). In particular, when the woman’s gaze is directed towards nature and the landscape, her description seems like a narrative game, the words take on a life of their own during the description, German, Spanish and Arabic vocabulary become determinant, and every sight of a place mobilizes the memory of other places. The smoke in the settlement smells “wie in Tiflis, in Stavanger und in Montana, und neben dem Almanzor spiegelte sich in dem Bergwasser jetzt auch die Front meines Bürohauses am Zusammenfluß der zwei Flüsse in meiner Flußhafenstadt” (BV 594). Finally, her look back at Hondareda makes “die Ortschaft wie eine Millionenstadt aussehen, wie Shanghai oder São Paulo, fotografiert von einem Satelliten auf halber Strecke zwischen der Erde und dem Mond” (BV 666). At the same time, this view connects the present and the past, it sharpens the judgement of one’s own past life, of which it is now only dismissively said that everyone has “seinen Wahnsinn in sich” (BV 595). One morning the woman observes a quince tree on which several fruits can be seen, and spontaneously she connects memories of her youth with present perceptions in Hondareda. Her gaze now appears to herself “als Eingreifen, Mitwirken und Anstoß”; it is an example of properly looking (BV 609). This form of perception, which opposes the images transmitted by another observer (BV 613), is more than mere perceiving; it is bringing something forth in thinking. Unmistakably, the text makes it clear that this is precisely the hallmark of the mode of storytelling, as the fictional narrator is requested by the woman. It will be his task to repeat again and again the traveller’s “Begeisterung […] mit oder ohne den Begleitschmerz” (BV 616).

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This determines the demands on the narrator of the woman’s story. It is probably no coincidence that a narrator’s comment is switched on at this point, which obviously also points to the immanent poetics of the author Handke that underpin the novel, for the memories of the fictional narrator correspond to the images that the narrator communicates in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. The narrator also speaks – this is also a clear reference to the ambivalent perceptions communicated there  – of his “oft verdammt verqueren und manchmal verflucht nichtswürdigen Leben”, in which like in a flash he nevertheless sees “neu staunend und neustaunend eine ungeheure, eine gewaltige, eine unumstößlich friedliche Welt” (BV 598). He is aware that this amazement never appeared “in Gestalt etwa der Sonne oder des reinen Lichts” but often in the example of the “Unscheinbarkeit der Unscheinbarkeiten,” as the “Randstein einst auf dem Peloponnes; als der Schatten des Kindes in Oklahoma; als der Bootsplanken in Kappadozien” (BV 599). In this, he has a fear that he himself is also threatened by the loss of image, that he may already be affected by it. In an ironically alienated form, this concentration on detail becomes part of the woman’s story when she finds her scarf, lost the previous year, again in the Sierra (BV 700 f.). The new form of perception is thus founded as a counter-design to the loss of images produced by the media in contemporary society, which for a long time also threatened our own guiding images. The fact that the wanderer’s path leads from the loss of images to a new form of perception that enables the “Herumtreiberin” to perceive a “jungfräuliche Welt” indicates the possibilities that narrative can still have, however, even in the time of the loss of images. This is especially true when the defining new perception combines temporal and bodily experience in a way that is as intense as it is peculiar. The woman recalls that in her youth, while driving home from her college town through a tunnel, she often had the dreamy fantasy of being in the “Einbaum der größeren Zeit”. At the same time, this transformation, which had undisguised sexual connotations, seemed to her like a dissolution of boundaries: “Und: Im Tunnel kam einer über sie. Einer? Einer als alle” (BV 602).

The Power of Storytelling and the Experience of the Body Reflection on the role of narrative is linked to the visual medium of film at many points in this text. It is striking that the woman frequently remembers film images and films during the hike, especially in the face of her impending loss of images, and that re-enacted film images repeatedly intersect the narrative. Obviously, they play a mediating role between the subjectively perceived images and the narrative, which in the end opposes the loss of images. At the same time, film images and dream images often prove to be interchangeable: The level of the imaginary that connects the two immunizes them against the media-staged annihilation of individual images in everyday reality. Not infrequently, the woman remembers films in which she used to act. As a result, she also perceives ordinary situations as film experiences; the boundary between dream and film disappears for her. It is precisely the feeling of being in a film that makes her life easier: “indem sie eine Schlafende

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darstellte, schlief sie ‘wirklichwahr’ (wie die Kinder seinerzeit in dem wendischen Dorf gesagt hatten), und auch tiefer und friedlicher als sonst irgendwann” (BV 123). Especially towards the end, after the loss of the image and when the woman begins to narrate together with the author, the references to film images become stronger. For example: “In einem Film hätte das den Anschein von Flucht gegeben” (BV 752). And elsewhere: unversehens ging sie mir dann rückwärts, auf den Fugger-Speicher mit dem Glastor zu. In einem Film hätte das “Angst” signalisiert, geradezu, als habe sie sich auf einmal vor ihrer Hinrichtungsstelle gefunden. Doch jetzt, schon auf der Türschwelle, stürzte sie von neuem voran. […] Eine Filmeinstellung hätte allein ihre nächtlichen Augen gezeigt. (BV 753)

Alongside this reference of the narrative to another medium, the life-historical preconditions that model different reactions to the immediate experience gain importance. It is true that there is a connection between the fictional narrator and the woman from the very beginning, which predestines both to a particular perception. Both are united by their origins in a village and a parentless childhood that enables them to make their gifts “Leuchten” (BV 356). But when the traveller tells the man about her borderline situation between life and death during her first crossing of the Sierra – she was pregnant with her daughter and abandoned by her husband at the time – he shows little empathy (BV 361): the woman notices his waning interest during her narration. External events, she accuses him, are of importance to him only then, indem du dank dessen, was dir von außen zustößt, von dir selber überrascht wirst […] und so ein Problem entdeckst […] überhaupt ein Lebensproblem, im Zusammenhang natürlich mit dem äußeren Abenteuer, wobei Äußeres und Inneres nun aber so wirklich wie wörtlich Hand in Hand gehen. (BV 365)

It is the attitude of the author Handke himself, who as a narrator wants to find the drama not in the reported events but in the narration itself. Undoubtedly, this implicit reference also involves a critical self-questioning. Nevertheless, this autoreflexive passage culminates not unlike the narrated story of Der Bildverlust in an apotheosis of narration, towards which the text runs from the beginning. This is prepared for by the fact that the woman appears several times as a narrator to others and encounters other narrators before she has her final conversation with the author and communicates the end of her narrative. In the crisis of the looming loss of image, she needs the narrator to hold her. His writing is a “Umschreiben” of her story, which he suspects represents “eine Art von Entsühnung” for her (BV 24). But for the narrator as for his inventor, it is also about “(Er-)öffnen eines Schreibraums” (Wagner 2010, 129). Therefore, already at the beginning of the journey there is a dialogue with the author about which beginning should be narrated (BV 94 f.). Finally, the narrator’s telling is complicated by the fact that different narrative stations and narrators precede the woman’s final telling of her story to him in the Mancha village. Especially in view of the last place the woman visits, the narrator she chooses has to compete against other narrators. His telling is retelling

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and telling anew at the same time. The very fact that his story already has a tradition motivates him to write. In contrast, the requirement of originality associated with the equation of author and originator explicitly plays no role for him. In this, too, he agrees with a central consideration of the author Handke, who’s writing also sees itself as a “Wiederholung” of tradition (BV 621). The coherent reconstruction of his own history, which he admires in the inhabitants of Hondareda, becomes a model for his own writing: From it emerges what he calls “freischwingend Wahres” (BV 620). For the woman herself, being told about is just as significant as the feeling of being filmed. In addition, at the turning points of the narrative, spontaneous memories also arise, which are transformed into fantasy images. These are either related to a historical past, such as the memory of queen Juana The Mad (BV 146), or they have life-historical connotations to one’s own experience. Thus, the man to whom she had refused a loan as a bank wife reappears during her hike and mobilizes the memory of her earlier behaviour (BV 137). Such situations of proximity, which at the same time make the past conscious, allow the woman to become a narrator at a very early stage, who influences the story that the fictional narrator is to write about her. Her account of the first crossing of the Sierra de Gredos is of particular significance here, because it is reported in individual narrative segments and ultimately leads to a borderline experience that, although expressed as a perceptual disturbance, nevertheless corresponds precisely with that which also characterizes the aesthetic imagination. It is an inverted tilting image, as it often occurs in Handke’s texts. The woman from the bank finds herself in an image alien to the world. “Alles gerade noch Vertraute war aus diesem herausgekippt, und ich selber dazu. […] Die ganze Welt, ich eingeschlossen, stand verdreht und verschoben, vollkommen seitenverkehrt, ohne eine Korrekturmöglichkeit im Hirn […] und kopf gestanden hat auch der Himmel” (BV 154). The alienation that emanates from an oil painting of Juana the Mad also proves to be the core of an aesthetic perception, for under the impression of this painting the wanderer can live in the “Augenblick des Staunens und Anstaunens” (BV 158). This concentration on a particular form of perception relates to another aspect. During a meal in the castle, a guest draws the woman’s attention to the fact that she is only able to complete a task in the presence of a third party. Not only the narration, but also the communicative situation created by it is a prerequisite for her self-­ awareness. The author of her account of her life will, in his later narration in the Manchadorf, draw attention precisely to this, and will have added – as a text passage written in future perfect suggests – “der ganze Mensch muß erzählen!” (BV 162). Under these conditions, the woman’s encounter with her fictional narrator in the Mancha village leads to the interaction of two narrators who together reconstruct a story. This socially mediated narration is prepared by the woman’s encounter with her would-be lover from the river port city and the man in whom she believes she sees her brother at the end, or rather the one “welcher sich ihr als ihr überlebender Bruder zeigte” (BV 681). In both cases, the two characters only come close to each other through the telling of a story. It is no coincidence that the one “aus welchem

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sie ihren Bruder heraushörte” (BV 684) tells a story of redemption and revival; the telling of the story seems capable of erasing all guilt. From the beginning, it can also be noted that the narrator’s narration becomes more intense as the woman herself becomes a narrator. When listening to the brother’s story, for example, the brother’s inner perspective is mixed with the “Albträume des alternden Autors” (BV 170). Very early on, too, the fictional author of the travel story reveals himself during the concerted narration as an actor who is increasingly determined by feelings: his gaze on the woman from the bank sharpens in such a way that he perceives “[das] unbeschreibliche[.] Schwarz” of her eyes (BV 214). Conversely, her memory images appear to the narrating woman from the bank as “Kapital”, for the more intensively she talks about the time of the images, the more clearly, she suspects that a time without them would come afterwards (BV 219). At this point, her author’s fantasies connect directly with the woman’s flashes of memory. The author’s description becomes more and more a fantastic conglomeration of memory fragments that have nothing directly to do with each other. In contrast, something else entirely takes on meaning. The narrative approach to the woman leads to a union with her fantasized by the author already at the beginning of the joint narrative experiment: “Sie umschließt mich mit den Beinen und holt mich heim in sich. Dort krümme ich mich selig. Es duftet nach Lilien” (BV 224). This continues when the narrated story ends up in the presence of the mutual narration of the woman and the author. After both have come to an understanding about the power of images, the woman learns of the return of her daughter, she feels that she is “von ihrem Kind freigesprochen: einmal davon, daß dieses lebte und guter Dinge war; und dann schon von der puren Tatsache Kind, davon, daß sie ein Kind hatte. Nie wieder eigens etwas für dieses tun wollen. Bloß mit ihm sein. Das Tun würde sich so von selber ergeben” (BV 750). Now the woman can even sing a nursery rhyme that deals with closeness and the loss of closeness, but also with guilt towards the child, making clear: “die Schuld wurde geheilt” (BV 755). The remembered past can only be narrated by the song. It is of crucial importance for the overall design of the novel that this experience is at the same time connected with a turn in the linear narrative order of the text. It is precisely here that the narrator even temporarily leaves the reader free to decide how the woman’s story, how her self-liberation has continued; he even offers different “Erzählvarianten” for it (BV 726). These are familiar narrative patterns: the admission of guilt, the articulation of the voice, the declaration of love, the capacity for “Verwechslung” (BV 727), the power of vision or the tensing of the body alone. However, this only becomes possible through an act of transformation. In the case of the woman, this is the fall into a pit, which initially results in a loss of control over her body as well. She crawls on the ground like a beetle, she jumps “in der Hocke, mit schiefem Mund, aus dem ihr die Zunge hing wie nur je einer Idiotin”, she says, she moves backwards, it is a state of confusion that makes her appear as one deprived of her senses (BV 728 f.). Only when the woman approaches the author’s Mancha village, the place of shared narration, does she return “in die Normalzeit” from her fairy tale and dream time, as evidenced by references to what has happened in the world in the

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meantime. This, too, is significant for the role of narration, for after the loss of the image, the woman no longer knows any duration-generating “Und”; only the story itself now guarantees a connection. Nevertheless, the woman’s meeting with the author is difficult at first, they do not recognize each other, eventually she makes her way to the storehouse where he lives. She is still barefoot, has dinner with him, and only now does she begin to tell him the story of crossing the Sierra de Gredos and losing her image. This is precisely what marks the moment of a page-turner, for it also gives rise to a physical encounter between the author and the woman. Both go to the house, but the story is by no means over; rather, it leads directly to desire, to physical closeness and a new immediacy beyond images, via fantastic images that once again recall Cervantes. This moment of finding oneself, “das große Bluten hin zum andern” (BV 758), is at the same time a finding of language. The woman remembers a dream and decides to rename Hondareda “La Nueva Numancia”, the almost forgotten and destroyed city that becomes for her, as for its inventor, the starting point of the fantasy of another world. Thus, the story ends in an encounter between the wanderer and the author, which is undoubtedly physical, without a physical act now having to be explicitly described. The ending shows a state of suspension in which there is no clear separation between the story, the actions of the characters and the narrative itself, and in which time and space no longer play a role. The image for the continued action of the narrative beyond these coordinates becomes a vehicle, a carriage, which stops but still wavers as it stands. This movement “wird nicht sobald aufgehört haben”. It is the metaphor of the narrative itself, which is the sole subject of this text (BV 759).

8

Self-Reflection and Poetological Sketches: The Journals, Sketches, and Notes

The texts, which are mostly subsumed under the heading Journale (Journals), each bring together a sequence of self-reflections and observations by the author Handke, spanning the period from 1975 to the year 2015. Because they are marked with precise dates, they can be assigned to a chronological sequence, regardless of their actual date of publication. Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World) to the years 1975–1977, Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil) to 1976–1980, Phantasien der Wiederholung (Fantasies of Repetition) record notations to 1981–1982, Am Felsfenster morgens (At the Mountain Window in the Morning) to 1982–1987, Gestern unterwegs (Travelling Yesterday) to 1987–1990, and Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts (In Front of the Walls of Tree Shadows at Night) to 2007–2015. A special role in a double sense is played by the Notizbuch, a preliminary form of the Journale and the fictional texts, whose records are limited to the year 1978, furthermore the writing Noch einmal für Thukydides (Once Again for Thucydides), which gathers miniatures comparable to the records of the other Journale and appeared in the years 1987–1989. Also playing a special role is Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen (A Year spoken from the Night) of 2010, a collection of notations that refers to that year alone but is limited to dream images.

8.1 Poetological Notations: Das Gewicht der Welt. Ein Journal (November 1975–März 1977) (1977), Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (1982) and Phantasien der Wiederholung (1983) The notes, the first of which is subtitled “Ein Journal (November 1975–März 1977)”, are not simply preliminary pieces for the later work. Although Das Gewicht der Welt was originally intended to fulfil this task, this text and even more so the subsequent Die Geschichte des Bleistifts and Phantasien der Wiederholung confirm something that is already implied in Das Gewicht der Welt. The journals are comparable to the texts in terms of structure and content; they are linked to the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_8

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observational form of travelling and strolling, describe an aimlessness of the acting subject (Bartmann 1984, 111), and, like the narrative texts, oscillate between the observer’s attempt to break off all relations to the world and yet to find himself again in states of epiphany (GW 51; 177; 265; 324; Bartmann 1984, 117). Finally, these Journale repeatedly emphasize that the threshold between privacy and communication, inner world, and outer world, is not sharp, but is a transitional area in which “die fixen Ideen einzelner” can be transformed into a “Mythos vieler” (GW 278). Without doubt, the Journale also depict a progressive self-reflection not unlike the fictional texts. Already Das Gewicht der Welt has been placed alongside the non-­ narrative form of Handke’s stories and novels with good reasons, pointing out that the blank spaces between the notes are the deleted form of “Erzählen” (Bartmann 1984, 113). Moreover, it becomes apparent that Phantasien der Wiederholung, through their idea of creative repetition, simultaneously complete a poetological reflection already hinted at in the preceding Journale. Together, they justify the conspicuous reference of Handke’s late narrative texts to the literary and philosophical tradition. This can be underlined if one realizes that Das Gewicht der Welt, whose title refers to Sartre’s Das Sein und das Nichts, should be called “Phantasie durch Ziellosigkeit” according to the preface to the abridged paperback edition (GW 267; Tb/st 500, 8). In Sartre, the formula of the ‘Gewicht der Welt’ refers to the question of human freedom and responsibility. Because humanity is “verurteilt […], frei zu sein”, he carries “das ganze Gewicht der Welt auf seinen Schultern […]: er ist, was seine Seinsweise betrifft, verantwortlich für die Welt und für sich selbst” (Sartre 1962, 696). Some other notes make clear, that Handke follows this existentialist ontology. Like Sartre, he understands already the fact of birth, as a “Geworfenheit”, a “Verantwortlichkeit” that points to the “Eigentümlichkeit der menschlichen Realität […], daß sie ohne Entschuldigungsgrund ist” (Sartre 1962, 698). These notes show that writing and the activity of the imagination are attempts to make this condition forgotten, if not to overcome it. Das Gewicht der Welt (GW 138) is already about the intention of a liberation from history, as is the fact that the view of landscapes is always a view of history (GW 218). In Die Geschichte des Bleistifts, this becomes clear as the ontological dimension of writing: “Schreibend reinige ich mich, meine Vorfahren, mein Volk, durch die Form; und meine Vorfahren sind nur wenige, meine Nachkommen aber sind alle!” (GB 149). Apart from this simultaneously psychological and philosophical foundation of writing, Das Gewicht der Welt, whose emergence from immediate perception is delineated in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts, describes the conditions and the procedure of writing as a gradual condensation of observations, quotations, memories, dreams, and fantasies into independent text segments. Finally, Phantasien der Wiederholung not only provide set pieces of a poetology that is completed by recourse to tradition, but they also reveal a greater concentration and emphasis; the formless form is now apparently employed more deliberately. At the same time, the Journale do not necessarily aim at an analytical deciphering of the writing process; rather, they limit themselves to more sharply outlining the author’s perceptions and experiences as well as his auto-analytical insights.

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From the very beginning, the Journale also aim at a destruction of given literary forms, which determines the author’s texts at least up to Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied; they represent an open form that can neither be clearly assigned to the diary nor to autobiography. Like all Handke’s other texts, however, they are tempted to substitute a new aesthetic context for the eliminated traditional forms (Pütz 1982, 102). It can be seen that Das Gewicht der Welt is certainly subject to shaping; its overall structure exhibits precisely circled temporal arcs and is determined by the representational principles of parallelism and opposition (Pütz 1982, 106  f.). Moreover, the beginning, a scene of bending down in autumn, and the end, a raising of the head in the spring in the consciousness of having himself “freigedacht” (GW 9, 325), indicate that here a context is attributed to the notes that is not arbitrary: the notes of the Journal describe an origin story of the poetic imagination that is continued in the following Journale. Die Geschichte des Bleistifts and Phantasien der Wiederholung, however, dispense with a comparable temporal structuring. The end of Phantasien makes it clear that the Journale depict sections of a development that is not completed. This text ends neither, as in Das Gewicht der Welt, with an allegorically readable scene, nor, as in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts, with an infinite wish (GB 250), but with an open perspective: “Ich werde mich entschlossen verirren” (PW 99). The Journale therefore derive their significance from their particular form; even more than the other texts, they can be compared to the mode of representation that determines Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse (Chronicle of Current Events). No less clearly than the screenplay, which mirrors personal perceptions and public images in one another, Journale attempt to record the processes of experience and consciousness in an unselected, unedited state (Pütz 1982, 102). The notes appear as a “Reportage des Bewußtseins” (Pütz 1982, 9), in which the ego is both the “Summe aller Impressionen” and an observing instance (Pütz 1982, 10). As a result, the Journal acts as an empty inscription surface (Bartmann 1984, 112), documenting utterances without intentional form. At the same time, the text of the notes becomes a “Reportage der Sprachreflexe”, an attempt to capture “Augenblicke der Sprache” as the preliminary note to Das Gewicht der Welt puts it (GW 6). “Immer wieder auf die paar Momente am Tag hindenken, wo die schmerzhaft sprachlose, stammelnde Welt spruchreif wird” (GW 194). Thus, as in Handke’s other texts, undisguised perceptions of the subject, writing itself, and the claim to communicate are directly linked. But while Das Gewicht der Welt self-consciously aims at overcoming “die ewige Entzweitheit zwischen einem und der Welt” (GW 118) by transforming one’s own “fixe Ideen” into “die Mythen mehrerer” (GW 277), thus relying on the capacity of writing and imagination, Die Phantasien der Wiederholung do not connect this very transformation with an attempt at self-assertion but derive it from a succession. In Das Gewicht der Welt, “sich selber anschauen” becomes the precondition of “nachdenken” (GW 17); the feeling for others derives from a “Ich-Gefühl” (GW 51; Jurgensen 1979, 179), from a radical self-reference that proves inwardness to be the “Methode der exoterischen Rede des Journals” (Bartmann 1084, 117). Moreover, the relationship between the ego and the world is presented in an almost mechanistic image. The ego is an

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“unzuverlässige Maschine zum In-Gang-Setzen der Welt: als ob gleichsam erst das Ich sich einschalten muß (wie ein Kraftwerk), damit die Welt beleuchtet wird (sich erleuchtet)” (GW 20). This image is later complemented by the notion of an anthropomorphic seeing. It is clear that under these conditions the often cited myth of Narcissus, certainly aware of the accusations that critics repeatedly levelled against the author, undergoes a new evaluation. “Der Mythos von Narziß: Ob nicht vielleicht gerade das lange, forschende Anschauen des eigenen Spiegelbilds (und im weiteren Sinn: der von einem verfertigten Sachen) die Kraft und Offenheit zu langem, unverwandtem, sich vertiefendem Anschauen andrer geben kann?” (GW 239). In Phantasien der Wiederholung, on the other hand, the Journal recorder writes primarily about the models against which he measures himself. His “Freude des Wiederholens” (PW 42) is directed towards the literary tradition; his own writing is oriented towards the classics, towards his contemporary Ludwig Hohl, but also towards ancient authors, such as Virgil. Durch Mich-Vergleichen erst finde ich mich: und nur mit den Klassikern kann ich mich, Satz für Satz, vergleichen, mich unterscheiden und so mich finden – die meisten wollen lesend, schauend, usw. unmittelbar sich finden: so verlieren sie sich (z. B. an die Musik). Ich kann nur geduldig vergleichend etwas von mir herausfinden (Pont-de-Ruan, Balzacs Landschaft). (PW 53)

Like Phantasien der Wiederholung, Die Geschichte des Bleistifts already records that one’s own ability to write derives from the capacity for repetition. “Ich nehme erst richtig wahr in der Wiederholung” (GB 98) is said there, “Sich deutlich halten durch Wiederholung” (GB 187) is formulated as a principle, and although the idea arises that repetition should only refer to the everyday (GB 157), it appears as a principle that captures the untimeliness of one’s own writing. This provokes precisely because it reaches back. At the same time, this results in an evaluation of the author’s own writing: Bei meinen früheren Arbeiten habe ich mich noch im Schutz der anderen, der Pioniere, erlebt. Bei der jetzigen Arbeit aber bin ich ganz auf mich allein gestellt (ohne doch Pionier zu sein). Aber es gibt beim Schreiben wohl gar keine Pioniere, nur die Wiederholer. Und die Wiederholer sind die einsamsten Menschen auf der Welt; das Wiederholen ist die allereinsamste Tätigkeit. (GB 128)

Finally, repeating is equated with remembering; the poetic imagination itself is not a presuppositionless draft, but a way of reaching back. This is what couples the set pieces of a poetology with an autoanalysis. The method of connection here points directly to the development portrayed in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire). “Erst, wenn das, was war, in die Phantasie gehoben, noch einmal kommt, wird es mir wirklich: Phantasie als die auslegende Wiederkehr” (GB 202). Das Gewicht der Welt still wants to record presuppositionless subjective experiences and regards them as a “Möglichkeitsfeld für alle”, as the motto “Für den, den’s angeht” indicates. At the same time, it again allows the I to appear as a ‘shifter’ (Bartmann 1984, 114), as early fictional texts foreshadow and as it is often the case

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in the late texts. For this very reason, this Journal still requires a description of sudden transformations, as Handke’s fictional texts also recount. One note presents them as a dream image in which “die Wörter wie auf Zehntelsekundenzeigern oder auf umspringenden Flugzeuganzeigetafeln [sich] immerfort umbildeten und die Dinge sich ebenso rasend veränderten, bis schließlich kein Wort und kein Ding mehr wahrnehmbar war, nur die unaufhörliche Verwandlung aller Wörter und Dinge” (GW 172; Bartmann 1984, 114). Die Geschichte des Bleistifts gives this ego an individual contour determining it as a writing ego and referring to the writing of others. Writing is understood as a method of self-assurance, which through the intended procedure of repetition at the same time approaches the narrative mode of myth; writing is “Arbeit am Mythos” (Blumenberg) in a double sense. The increasing verbatim quotations of literary and philosophical authorities, among whom Vergil, Goethe and Heidegger are particularly worth mentioning, show that the myth of authorship, which begins to assert itself in the Journale as well as in the texts, develops out of a myth of succession and thereby acquires life-historical significance. The notion of one’s own representation is also ultimately grounded in this (Bartmann 1984, 118). The author of Die Geschichte des Bleistifts, who at first doubts the possibility of mastery in literature (GB 145), finally notes, following reflections aimed at his own writing, “[…] Vielleicht gibt es in der Literatur also doch Meister: die Meister der Wiederholung. Und vielleicht gibt es doch eine Art Sieg: etwas festgestellt, etwas behauptet zu haben […]” (GB 209). It is precisely this engagement with tradition that reinforces the almost mythical quality of writing, which has a psychological grounding. From the ‘mythe personnel’ (Mauron 1962, 284, 286) of authorship grows the utopia of an understanding. The “mythologischen Bilder” of consciousness and of one’s own existence, which are regarded as “Zwischendinger” between “Sachen und Bildern”, are to become through writing “vorstellungs- und sprachfest […] and […] “etwas still strahlende[s] Neue[s]”, […] in dem das Alte, das ursprüngliche Erlebnis, aber geahnt ist, wie die Raupe im Schmetterling!” (GW 31 f.). These reflections on the transformation of the images of one’s own consciousness again point to the defining structure of Journale. On the one hand, these are backward-looking, in that they repeatedly take up the political and literary-­ theoretical polemics that pervade the theoretical essays from Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms (I Am an Inhabitant of the Ivory Tower) to the speech on Kafka; on the other hand, the Journale not only reflect on the presuppositions and idiosyncrasies of one’s own narrative, but already sketch out set pieces of future texts. It is striking that these are primarily descriptions of nature, whose scope and intensity increase (GB 20–24; 42 f.; 52 f.; 229; 233; 240 f.) and which also feature the life-­ historical signifiers of the mulberry tree, the cypress, and the sunken path, which also recur at central points in the fictional texts (GB 42 f.; 158). These descriptions are at the same time exercises in learning to merely look at things, they follow a desire of Das Gewicht der Welt: “Das Betrachten so lange aushalten, das Meinen so lange aufschieben, bis sich die Schwerkraft eines Lebensgefühls ergibt” (GW 324).

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On the one hand, nature and landscape prove to be projection surfaces of the unconscious, as can be demonstrated by the fantasies of merging with the landscape (GB 42 f.; 45). The “Urerlebnisse” are to be hidden in the “Naturbeschreibung” (GB 82) and one’s own problems are to be taken into nature (GB 175); the feeling of loneliness arises from the missing “Vermählung mit der Natur” (GB 110). On the other hand, the attempt to find a “Heraus aus der Sprache”, to reach the epitome and to write in pictures – which is what the reflection on “Innewerden” (PW 40) and “ins Innere der Sprache gehen” means, where “Welt und Ich eins in der Sprache [werden]” (GB 182) – refers precisely to the surface of nature itself. This is a system of signs; it is from its depiction, not from the unbound imagination, that the faculty of writing is founded. “Wenn ich ganz ruhig versunken bin, nehme ich wahr eine Art ewiger Schrift (besser: ewiger stiller Rede); wenn ich ganz ruhig aufmerksam bin, nehme ich wahr eine Art ewiger Bilderfolge: das bewußte Schreiben aber hieße, daß beides in eins geschieht: RIDET ACANTHUS (Vergil)” (GB 49 f.). The forms of nature point to the formal law of writing and to the laws of the imagination itself; they prevent “[das] die Dinge verratende[.] Sprachdenken[.]” (GB 212) and make it possible to remain with things, to “lauschen” (GB 234), as is stated in reference to the Hyperion quotation that finds its poetological interpretation in Loser’s story in Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across). Only in this way is the self-assurance possible for the author of Journale, which he experiences again and again through writing, in a “nachsprechen” of the world (GB 155). And only in this way does his contemplative fantasy gain the status of objectivity, does the fantasy image of the “nunc stans” at the same time prove to be the moment of objectivity (GB 198). Now the view of the “persönliche[.] Epos” of the notebooks (GW 315) can evoke the desire to write only “Vom Schnee in den Rocky Mountains” (GW 321). This connection between feeling and contemplation fulfils the law of “Realisation”, which is also at the centre of the poetology that develops Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (GB 200). In sharp contrast to this reassurance about one’s own psychology and the method of one’s own writing are the polemical passages of the notes. Among them, it is noticeable that the I, who strives in writing towards the myth of the many, strives first of all in acting and thinking to distance himself from the opinions of the many. The writer of Journale not only recognizes self-critically that he is bent on argument and controversy (PW 63); by contrasting “das Gerede-Ich” with “dem ruhige[n] Ich” and fantasizing thinking (PW 84), he also already demarcates the “Gemeinschafts-Erlebnis” of writing (PW 31) from the prevailing opinions: “jede Art Gruppe ist mein Feind” is said very emotionally in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (GB 152); in Phantasien der Wiederholung, this becomes a political principle. “Wenn einer einmal ein Weltbild hat, wird er erbarmungslos; und die Gruppe mit einem gemeinsamen Weltbild wird mörderisch” (PW 92). Here the autobiographical notes turn back to a literary-theoretical controversy, at the centre of which, for their author, are not only contemporary authors, but it is above all Brecht, who initiates the “Zerstörung […] der freien Literatur”, thus at the same time calling into question the attitude with which Handke wants to assert himself at the end of the sixties (GW 110). The self-reflexive basis for the great political controversy over

8.2  Writing, Seeing, Drawing: Das Notizbuch, 31. August 1978–18. Oktober 1978…

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Serbia, which determines Handke’s plays and whose traces are also continued in the late texts since Die Morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night), is already marked out here.

8.2 Writing, Seeing, Drawing: Das Notizbuch, 31. August 1978–18. Oktober 1978 (2015) The Notizbuch published in 2015 (Fig.  8.1), which describes the period from 31 August 1978 to 18 October 1978, i.e. during the period in which Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming) was written, provides an insight into the relationship of the notebooks in the narrower sense, to the autoreflexive notes of the Journale from Das Gewicht der Welt to Am Felsfenster morgens. While the latter form an intermediate stage between autoreflexive notations and those committed to observation, in which many of the central ideas of the fictional texts are sketched out, the notebooks in the narrower sense are actually reportages. It must be added, however, that what is published as Notizbuch represents only a decided and far-reaching selection, the principle of which has yet to be (Fellinger, NB 55). For what has now been brought to print as a text of these notes, it is true, as has been shown, that there are both direct correspondences between these notes and the fictional text (LH 47; NB 58), as well as recognizable rearrangements and

Fig. 8.1  Peter Handke: drawing from Notizbuch, 2015, 14–15. (German Literature Archive Marbach; with the kind permission of Peter Handke)

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omissions. Handke himself points to both when he speaks of having “verwendet” the notations in writing (AF 59; NB 58 f.). This results in a double significance of this Notizbuch for the narrative in the fictional texts. On the one hand, it contours very sharply the central opposition of nature and civilization, which is a guiding principle not only in Langsame Heimkehr. The recorder feels himself to be a “Zivilisationsdämon[.]” (NB 35); on the other hand, nature and landscape therefore acquire a special function for him. They mark an area of protection which is not coincidentally linked to the image of a shell (NB 34). This absorption in nature is given a further attribute by the deliberate renunciation of one’s own name, thus with regard to the figure of Sorger (NB 46, 33), and the alienation of one’s own to become part of a wanted poster (NB 36), because in the cities the recorder feels himself to be “unter Schurken meinesgleichen” (NB 42). From this collection and demarcation at the same time, the idea of grasping an antecedent context in nature is founded, which is not thought of as a context of meaning, but initially means a natural relationship of things and signs. Since this is not directly accessible to the immediate gaze, it must first be deciphered in what is perceived. In anticipation of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, which appeared three years later, the text calls this a “Freiphantasieren” (LH 111  ff., LSV 18) and, in Heidegger’s diction, a “Verwandlung und Bergung der Dinge in Gefahr”. It is not a solely intellectual act but arises from a creative access to the world beyond writing: from drawing (LH 45 f.). In this, lines are opened up that at the same time determine perception as well as the perceived image (LSV 66). It is a momentous epistemological and apperceptive turn, the significance of which is also emphasized later in an autoreflexive passage of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay) (MJN 376 f.). In connection with this, the notion of writing and the signs of nature, which is perpetuated in later texts, is elaborated, which, for example, allows Sorger to “lesen” the landscapes (NB 39) and nature in Langsame Heimkehr (NB 55). Here, too, the creative element is underlined, as the author emphasizes the need to overcome the “Systematik des Sehens” and achieve a “phantasierendes Sehen” (NB 44). It is central to the context of his own written worlds and pictorial orders that he sees this very thing prefigured in landscape painting. The significance of the recourse of his texts to images of landscape painting is explained from here. Notizbuch also outlines an interplay of spatial and temporal categories, as it proves to be determinative in the texts of the so-called Tetralogie. A notation unmistakably notes: “HORIZONT als Zeitmaß in der G[[eschichte]]” (NB 49). A comparable change of categories determines perception, but in an ambivalent way. Concentration on the obvious and immediately visible can also lead to fantastic disorientations; thus, the discovery of earth forms is repeatedly associated with the distance illusion (NB 48). This interplay of spatial and temporal categories of perception simultaneously opens up the meaning of the autobiographical traces of narration, which are presented in a congruent image. The recorder is guided by the idea that he can pass through time, “‘durch die Jahre’, wie durch Fluchten von Räumen, die im Durchgehenkönnen erst schön werden” (NB 50). This notion proves its

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psychological significance in that it aims at an autoanalysis that is directly linked to the formation of the self and its reflexive precipitation in narrative. The writer’s aim is “Ablagerungen weg[zu]räumen, die sich um ihn gebildet haben” and, more specifically, with his particular role in family history, as it will be explicitly addressed later in Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still). He is already preoccupied with “Herkunftsträume[n]” and the fact that his sister had a diary, “wo er als der einzig Verlorene in der Familie aufgeführt war” (NB 45). This is the basis not only for the psychological insight that “der Hintergrund des Bildes […] schon einer andern Wirklichkeit anzugehören [schien], dem Traum” (NB 51). The picture is also a visualization of a development of the self, which in the end can only come about through a modeling from the outside, in the orientation towards a form. It allows the psychological working throughout the self, the shaping of the self, to become the pattern of an aesthetic processing of reality. In addition to the linking of spatial and temporal, an overlapping of psychological and aesthetic categories occurs in the Notizbuch. Die meiste Zeit bewegte sich seine bloß heimatlose Hülle ohne Verstärkung und Gewicht durch ein Selbst […] selten gelang es […], diese Hülse heimzuholen, zu erden und in der Erde dann selbstbewußt und anonym aufgehen zu lassen, […] Durchdringenkönnen der ‚Tiefe der Jahre‘*?, als Ergebnis des Selbsteinstellerlebnisses in einer Form. (NB 52)

8.3 Seeing by Night and by Day: Am Felsfenster morgens. Und andere Ortszeiten 1982–1987 (1998) The text of Am Felsfenster morgens (und andere Ortszeiten 1982–1987) (At the Mountain Window in the Morning: And Other Local Times 1982– 1987) is a book of notes that closely links visual perceptions and reflections. Handke himself points to this double play when he refers to his notations merely as “Reflexe, unwillkürliche, gleichwohl bedachtsame” (AF 7). He explicitly rejects the designation diary and speaks of a book that is characterized by the “Einheit zwischen Reflex, Reflexion und Gegenstand”, that is, from the outset wants to mediate seeing and thinking with one another (AF 94). It is no coincidence that the cover of the first edition combines an ornamental configuration with an arrow and can thus be related to a definition of literature that sketches an interrelationship between the visual and the reflexive, between image and word: “Literatur: Es genügt nicht das Bild – es muß jenes eine (1) Wort dazukommen, welches das Bild erst zum Bild-Pfeil macht” (AF 431); it is a formula that seems like a paraphrase of Roland Barthes’ definition of the “punctum” in the photographic theory of La chambre claire. For the reader, therefore, it is a matter of opening up the central visual point of the collection of notations, which is precisely marked for the “ortsbedürftig[en]” author (AF 20), both spatially and in terms of the history of his work and psychology. The dominant visual axis is initially provided by Salzburg, where Handke found his accommodation at the top of the Mönchsberg, in a house built right up to the steep slope at the back. There is his ‘rock window’, which allows views of

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nature, in which the pyramid mountain of the Staufen massif appears again and again as the dominant form (AF 241), which at the end is superimposed by the image of Mont Salvage from Parzival (AF 419). In terms of the history of the work, the notes from the last five of the eight years Handke spent in Salzburg accompany four major novels and stories, Der Chinese des Schmerzes, Die Wiederholung, Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers (Afternoon of a Writer) and Die Abwesenheit (Absence). They also attest to a poetological reorientation in which the focus is no longer on stories but on describing the act of writing itself. Programmatically, it says of Die Wiederholung (Repetition), “Ich erzähle, unterschwellig, das Erzählen” (AF 330). In a narrative, it is not a matter of showing “Ursachen, Wirkungen, Aufeinanderwirkungen” (AF 46), nor of “Beschreibung von Aktionen, Reflexionen, Reflexen” (AF 229). Rather, the narrator’s stepping back behind things is intended to trigger an effect-aesthetic dynamic between text and author. The recorder understands the “In-der-Ruhe-Lassen des einen gegenüber dem anderen” as a “Sein-Lassen”, that builds “in mir dafür das Zusammenwirken” (AF 46). Only if the text confines itself to leaving everything it records in its own, can it achieve the “Evokation einer so unerhörten wie einleuchtenden Dingfolge”, it presents an “einmaligen Zusammenhang […], der durch das Evozieren ein für allemal gilt” (AF 229). This turn had begun with Langsame Heimkehr. Its concentration on looking at and describing nature, which becomes autonomous in relation to the plot, continues in Am Felsfenster morgens with an abundance of descriptions of nature in the form of small miniatures, which in some places expand into descriptions of walks that foreshadow the paths described in Die Abwesenheit and Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos) (AF 534, 450, 473; Klettenhammer 2004, 325–338). Accompanying many of these observations are references to Lucius Iunius Columella’s horticultural book, which takes on a similar function in the notes as Filip Kobal’s orchard book does in Die Wiederholung; it becomes a text that both guides and orders perception (Columella 1983). It is only consistent that, in addition, not a few notations already circle around the theme of the image and visual perception, which gains central importance in Der Bildverlust. Within the period under review, the references to the text Die Wiederholung, are of particular importance. Its protagonist Kobal is not only frequently sketched and addressed as if he were a real person, but the descriptions concerning him are also at the same time connected with obviously authentic memories of the person reporting. Psychologically, the notes reflect a fixation, both conscious and unconscious, on the theme of origins, as already indicated in Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Village) at the end of the Tetralogie. It is a line that finds its clearest expression to date in Immer noch Sturm, but equally determines texts such as Die Morawische Nacht. This turn back is expressed in a striking way, first of all, by the fact that the “Felsfenster” is also a window of time, allowing vistas into quite different “Ortszeiten”. Undoubtedly the most important of these is the time of childhood. It is explicitly stated that the place at the rock window in the morning is “eine Wiederkehr oder Wiederholung des Platzes auf der blaubemalten Truhe in der hölzernen Galerie oben außen damals in der Kindheit am Großvaterhaus” (AF 412). It

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is a double view of the present and the past, as will later be staged in Versuch über den Stillen Ort (Essay on the Quite Place) (VO 74). At the end of the notes, it becomes clear that a future writing programme is also outlined in this way. In front of a niche of his home church, the author of the notes considers the “heiter-­ beschwingte, musikalische Glaubensgewißheit” of the twelfth century and connects this thought with a view of nature outside. This is immediately followed by a notation in which he believes he sees a comparable situation in the “Obstgarten der Vorfahren”. Succinctly, he concludes, “Nein, mit diesem Garten bin ich noch nicht am Ende, und auch nicht mit den Vorfahren” (AF 540). At this point, the notes mark with reference to Die Wiederholung, that their recourse to the past is resolutely aimed at a working through in the psychological sense: “sich von den Vorfahren befreien; aufhören, sich für ihren Gefangenen zu halten, oder auch für ihren glücklichen Erben; ohne sie dabei aber zu verraten” (AF 231) is what is said in the look back. It becomes clear that this staged look points to the innermost core of the writer himself. “Ich mache, was ich bin: = Schreiben” (AF 189) he notes succinctly. This psychological configuration, which at the same time provides the pattern for a poetological strategy in which the present, the past, and the remembered past are directly linked with one another, is moreover condensed in the context of the records in two quite different registers. The first points directly to the connection between memory and the medial transformation of perception, which also determines Proust’s Recherche and of which the laterna magica becomes a sign (Proust Pl I, 9 f.; Deleuze 1997, vol. 2, 58 f.). In Handke’s work, a corresponding situation is recorded in which a view to the outside, which connects the present and the past, is depicted like a medial staging. “Gestern, beim Lesen am Felsfenster morgens, fühlte ich mich in einem Licht- und Farbenraum, der das ganze verzweigte Haus, bis in die hintersten Kammern und Nischen, erschloß, und ich, lesend, war die diesem Raum entsprechende Farben- und Licht-Komplementärfigur, eine Form festen Lichts bis in die innersten Gehirnwindungen (10. Mai 1986)” (AF 360). The second condensation of this psychological configuration is revealed in reference to a series of dream recordings. Quite different from Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen, where Handke exclusively notes his dreams during a year, the dream images reported in Am Felsfenster morgens are obviously designed to be contextualized. At their center, some do indeed sketch intricate fantasies of a child. In these, memories of one’s own childhood and youth are obviously superimposed in coded form, especially those related to images of the mother, and of one’s own fatherhood in the company of the daughter Amina – after all, the stay in Salzburg accompanies her school years (AF 359). The child in the dream appears throughout like a miniaturized fairy-tale figure, and the situations depicted, in which father and child appear at the same time, prove to be fantastic configurations that mirror phantasmatic states. At the same time, the often unnatural proportions only reinforce an unconscious fear of one’s own failure: “Mein Kind war gestern nacht eine riesenhafte Totemsäule, mich, mit mehreren farbigen Maskenschädeln übereinander, weit überragend. In Wirklichkeit aber steckte es drinnen in der Säule, kleinwinzig, und redete leise da heraus, auf meiner Brusthöhe” (AF 473).

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In addition, the sensations of care, defense, and strangeness overlap in these dreams in such a way that they cannot be clearly distinguished from one another. The only thing that seems certain is that they depict a situation of ‘double-bind’. “Ich hatte mein Kind in der Hand, eingeschlossen in einen Eisklumpen, und wärmte es, das sehr über Kopfschmerz klagte, unter meinem Rock, am Herzen, ins Leben zurück. So klein war das Kind, in dem Eis fast gar nicht mehr da” (AF 359). Fantasies of closeness and loss are also usually directly linked. An empathic attitude is described by a casual remark: “Wann ich, gleichwo, ein Kind panisch-angstvoll nach seinem Vater rufen hören, fühle ich mich gerufen, von gleichwelchem Kind” (AF 522). This is contrasted with an almost traumatic fantasy of loss: “Ein Kind sprang von der Haustür ein paar Stufen hinab, dem Kindermädchen in die Arme, traf aber stattdessen daneben auf dem Boden auf und war verschwunden. Das Mädchen erklärte sogar, da sei nie ein Kind gesprungen (1. November)” (AF 536). These fantasies are made even more radical by their association with a basic familial figure. A phantasmatic dream of the grandfather is combined with a fantasy of naked infants in one’s own house, described as “Probesäuglinge für die erst noch zu gebärenden” (AF 264); elsewhere, two “nackte kleine Gliederpuppen” turn out to be “winzige Kinder, mit Beinstümpfen.” The dreamer learns that they come from a now separated relationship and feels, the “Winzlinge in der Armbeuge […] die Tragik der Eltern, von Eltern überhaupt” (AF 265). Following the laws of dream logic, there are also repeated duplications, interchanges, and condensations of the images. Their common guideline is obviously the fantasy of a primordial situation, which is depicted in the context of the family, but which decidedly precedes the psychogenetic familial differentiation. This is made clear by the fact that the relationship of father, mother and child appears in the dreams as reversible. The guiding principle that writing is nothing more than a “entzifferndes Wiederfinden der Kindheit” (AF 267) or the “[H]inerzählen, auf ein Kind” (AF 321) thereby condenses into inverted father-child configurations. “Die Vaterschaft der Kindheit ist vielleicht die wirklichste oder wirksamste: das Kindsein als Vater und Mutter” (AF 371). This consideration culminates in comparable reflections on the relationship of father and son that permeate the late work ever more densely: “Der Vater braucht den Sohn, mehr als der Sohn den Vater (ich wiederhole mich)” (AF 488) notes the Journal. Strikingly enough, in addition to this psychogenetic inversion, doubling also occurs at times, reminiscent of Kafka’s texts, because it makes the separation of dream world and reality unstable. In a dream in which the grandfather and the child are dying in different bedchambers and the recorder saves the child by freeing him from the “Mitteln des Arztes […] um den Kopf gewickelten Karten” and getting him his desired food, he finds both bedchambers empty upon his return. Immediately afterwards, the image switches around: “Dann mein eigenes Kind, das am Morgen heimkam und mir, in meine Bettkammer, hinaufrief, dass die Träume alle nie stimmen” (AF 522). At times these dreams are contrasted with the other images in the notes of the day. At one point, for example, the writer notes: “Ruhe: ein Bildstock auf dem Land, zwischen weitschwingenden Weizenfeldern, und die Mutter und ich dort auf einer

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Holzbank” (AF 493). A subsequent dream, however, makes it clear that apparently even this idyllic image is broken at its core. He unfolds an intricate image of the relationship with the mother by relating it to the subject of the writing. The consideration recorded elsewhere by the author that his writing distanced him from his relatives and also from his mother when he was still young, a situation from which sprang a sense of guilt, is condensed in the recorded dream into an image that obsessively links his mother’s body and death with the theme of writing and the idea of a book: Ich hatte wieder einmal meine tote, von mir getötete?, Mutter bei mir, diesmal in Form eines langen flachen Pakets, das ein Buch war. Ich wollte diese tote Mutter loswerden und suchte nachtlang nach einem Platz, wo sie niemand fände, wo vor allem der Gestank mich nicht verriete. […] Noch konnte niemand wissen, daß das eingewickelte Buch auf meiner Schulter die tote Mutter war. Was tun? (AF 468 f.)

The text directly connects the fantasies of childhood, which are presented as the basis of the writing, with memories of the author’s own authentic childhood. The psychogenesis of the reporter and the genesis of the author thus become one and the same story. In terms of actual childhood history, it is said: Meine Kindheit bestand fast nur aus dem Warten auf das Ereignis; auf das Erscheinen der endlich wirklichen Welt hinter der Scheinwelt. Und der Ort für dieses Warten und für das endliche Erscheinen konnte nur zuhause, die Heimat, sein. Daher das Grauen, ja, des Heimwehs, als ich in das Internat kam: Es war dort nichts mehr zu erwarten (21. November). (AF 420)

From this a gesture of writing develops that seeks to transform the non-lived and unfolds the aesthetic imagination from the memory of childhood. “Eine ‘glückliche Kindheit’ verbringe ich erst in der glückenden Erinnerung (18. Januar)” (AF 441), the notes observe that “Wo die Schwelle beseitigt ist, oder nicht mehr ist, muß ich einsetzen, das Ich, das Kind” (AF 122), it continues, and “Ein guter Satz geht immer in die Kindheit zurück; findet etwas aus der Kindheit wieder […]” (AF 123). Franz Kafka, whose increasing esteem pervades Am Felsfenster morgens, becomes the model for this interweaving of the world of childhood experience and literary writing. This reference is given particular weight by the fact that it is also inscribed in a dream image: “Im Traum las ich einen Text Kafkas, den es gar nicht gibt. Er erschütterte mich so, dass ich aufweinte. Der Text handelte davon, daß alle glücklichen Vergleiche Vergleiche mit der Kindheit sind. ‘Der Blick auf die Kindheit ist der Blick auf Alles’” (AF 222). It can be seen that looking back to childhood is always also a memory of Slovenia. Scenes, songs (AF 168) and words in Slovenian are recorded (AF 295), while at the same time, for the observer, the signs of a new Yugoslavia loom, repulsively like Vienna (AF 510 f.). And his question as to whether it was not a “Stärke der Slowenen […] keinen Staat zu bilden, kein Staatsvolk sein zu wollen (DW; 8. Oktober)” (AF 114) appears like a foreshadowing of the later dispute over Serbia. Like the memory of the mother, the fantasies of a child, one’s own or even only imagined, experience a phantasmatic refraction that is closely connected to the

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reflection on one’s own fatherhood. That this also connects with the motif of the book indicates that a phantasm of the author’s life-history is being perpetuated here. “Ich spielte mit meinem Kind, indem ich es in einem dicken Buch, foliantdick, mit mir herumtrug, damit tanzte und sang. Aber als ich das Buch dann öffnete, war das Kind nicht mehr drin. Dabei hatte ich es doch gerade da hineingetan (31. Dezember 1986)” (AF 431). The poetological turn towards a new writing (Lüdke 1998) that accompanies these psychic inscriptions and that will determine the subsequent texts is evidenced in the notes of Am Felsfenster morgens, on the one hand, by the fact that they can be referred back to these dreams in terms of motifs, but on the other hand also by a way of writing that is independent of them. In doing so, they follow two orientations whose contours can be discerned side by side in the notations. One is a reflection on the role of seeing in the immediate and physical sense; it is the view that seeing must be learned. “Wie schwer ist das Sehen. Und es gibt keine Schule dafür; jeder kann es nur selbst lernen, Tag für Tag neu. Aber dann, in der Betrachtung, hat selbst das Schwarz der toten Blätter jetzt ein Leuchten” (AF 539). Derived from this, on the other hand, is a reflection on the capacity of contemplation, which lends visual perception a psychological dimension, most clearly when Handke mentions in reference to Spinoza “anschauendes Wissen” (AF 37). This means a stepping back behind things, which is subject to a psychogrammatic imprint. “Noch einmal ‘Anschauung’: so lange in ihr verharren, bis sie mir schmerzlich wird und ich so durchlässig werde, in der Schmerzhaftigkeit  – bis das Angeschaute und ich schmerzlich-durchlässig-einander-durchdringend werden” (AF 531). Corresponding to this is a consistent psychologizing of the sentences that opened up a philosophical reference in the Tetralogie as in Der Chinese des Schmerzes. “Hören, lauschen: als eine Art, von sich abzusehen (3. Mai)” (AF 53) is said at one point, and a little later, with reference to Hölderlin, “Schauend sich zurücknehmen” (AF 57). More clearly than the fictional texts, however, this Journal shows that in Handke there is no self-design without decisive and sometimes aggressive demarcations; it also becomes apparent that the subsequent project of a trip around the world has a reason in that the narrower circle of life is felt to be unbearable. “Das inländische ‘Gerede’ ist mit den Jahren angewachsen zum ‘Geschnatter’; und dieser Umwelt muss (will) ich bald endgültig entkommen” notes the Journal (AF 516). What is new is that this now becomes an epochal signature; not coincidentally, two questions are raised that directly inform the novel’s concept of Der Bildverlust. “Die Bilder gelten nicht mehr: Ist das nur ein Problem des (meinen) Alterns? Oder das Problem einer Epoche? Eines Zeitalters? (“Der Bildverlust”)” the author asks himself self-critically (AF 530), only to answer immediately with a formula of hope: “Aber werden nicht gerade im wehen Entschwinden die Bilder vielleicht noch einmal möglich, in der Geste des sie-nicht-mehr-Fassenkönnens?” (AF 531). The fundamental dialectic that the text in Der Bildverlust will unfold is thus already prefigured. Apart from this turn of events, which has both life-historical and poetological consequences, quite different strategies can be discerned in the notes of Am

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Felsfenster morgens. One leads to a self-stylization of the author, who insists on his special ability to see and perceive; in doing so, his self-image intertwines with the portrayal of the protagonist Loser in Langsame Heimkehr (CS 48) as well as with the image of the Indian in later fictional texts. “Die Welt wird vielleicht untergehen. Aber dort und dort an den Rändern wird ein Lauscher geboren. (Und das muß nicht ein Indio oder ein Turkmene sein.) Und so lebe ich, leben wir zwei, weiter (30. April)” (AF 470). Finally, this interweaving of seeing and perception prepares the definition of image and epitome that is central to the text of Der Bildverlust: “Durchs Phantasieren, das strukturierende, rückt zugleich die Gegenwart, wie zum Beispiel jetzt morgendlich vor dem Felsfenster, vor Augen, als Bild, und Inbild” (AF 436). The other strategy is more and more directed against the political public, the author is increasingly at pains to distinguish himself clearly from the published opinion of the newspapers. The gesture of his later confrontation with the media at the time of the Serbian War is already being prepared here. Both strategies of demarcation are combined in these notes with a fundamental defense of Austria, which also determines his own writing situation. “Es ist wohl nicht zu ändern: Hier in der Heimat, in Ö., erscheinen mir die Zwischenräume, die die Natur so schön läßt, allzu oft verstopft und verklebt und vernichtet durch eine darin lauernde, hassende, böse Bevölkerung […]” (AF 472), he notes, only to become irreconcilably fundamentalist afterwards. “Die Österreicher, ein vaterloses Volk!” (AF 480), he notes, and even in the face of the “Musterhaftigkeit der Natur” he wonders, “Warum sind wir Österreicher nur solche Arschlöcher?” (AF 477). In doing so, he converses in his mind with Walker Percy, who admonishes him, with good reason, to remain “in der Mitte”: “You know, for an Austrian writer writing means BORDERLINE” (AF 478). However, this defense of others is accompanied by a decisive self-questioning; it makes clear that the frequently stated outsider role is based on a psychological disposition in which self-doubt, aggression, but also the claim to a special role are combined. In retrospect, the writer sees himself as a “furchtbare[n] Einzelgänger” and asks the rather rhetorical question whether he is in the end “furchtbar auch für [s]ich selber” (AF 385), explicitly naming his failure as a father (AF 488) and finally his “Liebesunfähigkeit” (AF 507). However, this very term is a euphemism for the irritating lability in relation to women recorded in many texts, which does not seem to be simply a narrative pattern, but in fact also a pattern of life, always drawn with striking meticulousness (MJN 189; IN 106, 159; Carstensen 2014, 59–61). The fascination with women he encounters by chance (GW 121, 183, 196), with the “Augenpaar” perceived, certainly narcissistically, as well (MN 374; Carstensen 2013, 366), with radiant female appearances (TO 22), with the need for beauty in the form of a woman (GU 427), is often juxtaposed with, and sometimes directly linked to, physical aggression. It is striking in its abruptness and intensity. In Am Felsfenster morgens, this attitude condenses into a dream-image whose massive directness gains its full significance only when it is classified as a dreamlike displaced abbreviation of preceding and following representations of male aggression toward women. “Aus dem Halbschlaf heraus, im Innersten gepeinigt von ihrem Gerede, versetzte er ihr, aus der Tiefe der Tiefen heraus, eine gewaltige Ohrfeige, und von ihr kam dann das erste wahre Geräusch, das er je von ihr gehört hatte: ein

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wunderbares Seufzen, worauf sie aus dem Raum lief, in die Nacht hinaus, worauf in den Raum und in die Nacht endlich der Friede einzog” (AF 186 f.). The narcissistic trace that also characterizes this dream notation at the same time pervades the self-critical reflections. The very fact that one’s own self is obviously not yet stable is seen as a prerequisite for writing and its openness: “Ich habe kein Bild von mir, nicht einmal eine Meinung. Zum Glück weiß ich immer noch nicht, wer ich bin. – Und hier wiederhole ich mich nicht nur gerne, sondern auch selbstbewußt” (AF 505). Thus, the sharply drawn psychogram grounds the task of writing, intertwining self-control, self-discovery, and a striking self-assurance: “Die Erinnerung an meine verschiedenen, allesamt schrecklichen Einsamkeiten ist zugleich meine Rechtfertigung; und sie macht mich unangreifbar (22. April)” (AF 288). This idea of establishing oneself precisely at the moment of crisis is linked to another reflection on writing, which now, however, in contrast to earlier statements, must be read in a thoroughly psychologizing way. It explicitly states: “Mein verworrenes Inneres verlangt und drängt nach der Klarheit des Schriftlichen” (AF 310). This sentence corresponds to an equally psychologizing link between perception and the act of writing: “Wahrnehmer der Leere, das war ich von Anfang an; und im Wahrnehmen der Leere wurde ich zum Schreiber. Die Dinge zeigen sich mir erst mit der Zeit, und nur selten, ereignishaft” (AF 112). This expresses the basic figure of the poetology running through Am Felsfenster morgens. In reflection and dream notation at the same time, an “Übertritt aus dem eindimensionalen begrifflichen Leben, mit seinen gar zu seltenen Einsprengseln von Ahnung, in das geistige, stetige, reine der Bilder” is circled (AF 411). But only the text can achieve it. It is characteristic of this Journal that it repeatedly circles around these dreamlike condensations of poetology and self-reflection, thus also providing them with psychological evidence. A significant example of this is provided by the double exposition of the theme of reading juxtaposed with that of writing. “Lesen, das Erlebnis meiner selbst” (AF 77) the author notes at first in a distanced manner, then towards the end of his notes he speaks of reading using the example of a fantastic dream image. “Heute Nacht las ich ein Buch, dessen Text, dessen Lettern allmählich übergingen in leuchtendweiße Eisschollen, von Seite zu Seite mehr Fläche einnehmend, zuerst noch mit mannigfaltigen Rissen und Zwischenräumen, bis am Ende des Buchs, auf der letzten Seite, nur noch das glatt zugewachsene, wolkige Schneeweiß herrschte, mit großem Glanz, eine herrliche Lektüre” (AF 495). The intellectual act of reading is transformed into a fantastic configuration reminiscent of Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym’s journey into the white world of the North and his own unconscious. Not unlike this dream text, the notes of Journal touch the boundary between the conscious and the unconscious, only to cross it again and again: Precisely in this they are akin to the fictional texts whose conditions, genesis, and idiosyncrasies they encircle and which they at the same time assign to a life-historical context. It is noteworthy that the author of Am Felsfenster morgens fends off psychoanalysis by calling it a “Sündenfall” (“Fall of Man”) like the Tower of Babel, “nur in der Gegenrichtung, in die Tiefe statt in die Höhe” (AF 152), but at the same time refers

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to dreams, whose psychological significance he must be aware of, and which all depend on archaeological decipherment. They follow a timeline because they too reveal the earlier in the later. From this point of view, it becomes clear that one of the surviving fantastic dream images condenses exactly this construction law of the Journale and also this basic figure of the fictional texts into a single fantastic image. It is a ship whose entire contour only slowly becomes discernible: Simply being hoisted up by its passengers, it begins to lift itself out of the sea from deck to deck, so that ever new levels come to light (AF 204 f.). This is undoubtedly a metaphor for the discovery of the past, for the basic archaeological figure that fundamentally determines Handke’s writing. That it follows the law of psychogenesis is evident not least in the notation that immediately follows. There, the recorder remembers the beginning of his writing, which has its origin in a place not perceived at first; it becomes possible not on the visible surface, but in a deeper layer, in the “unterirdischen ehemaligen Bunker[n]” (AF 205).

8.4 Visual and Reflexive Miniatures: Noch einmal für Thukydides (1990) This collection of texts, the first edition of which appeared as early as 1990 and was supplemented by a total of six additional texts in 1995 and 1997, can be seen as a paradigm for the writing process of the Journale. The small sketches usually contain precise descriptions of natural scenes, based on details such as falling raindrops, formations of butterflies and birds, or phenomena such as a weather glow or a cloud formation. They are arranged chronologically and are assigned to different locations in Austria, Yugoslavia, and Spain. Here the reference to the writing of Thucydides is appropriate, at least in one respect, because the sequence of scenes in the last edition follows a chronology divided by the naming of the seasons. On the other hand, the expectation raised by the name Thucydides of an account of historical events or historical sequences is thoroughly refuted. The inner core of the texts is rather their attempt to write a very different history, one based solely on contemplation. It is a history of images that does not generate causalities. It systematically thwarts the law of general history and of events occurring in its context. Thucydides thus becomes the model as a narrator, not as a historiographer. In the same move, space and time also acquire a different valence. The specificity of the scenes is not based on the distinctiveness of places and events, but on capturing the moment of the blick-of-an eye, in which precisely their instantaneity is fascinating. There is also no room here for narrative in the traditional sense. Quite deliberately, the concept of epopoeia is associated with small-scale, almost banal situations (THU 27, 33, 55, 103). In place of an interaction between the viewer and the object he or she has chosen, there is nothing more than a stretching of the instant, particularly evident when a gaze suddenly perceives a constellation of signs (THU 75). These acquire their meaning, on the one hand, by meticulously tracing the chosen object, and, on the other, by making perception itself the object. In the process, the identity of the perceiving subject is largely repressed, as is his or her individual

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perspective. As if following the technical law of photographic reproduction, perception appears like a reflection of reality in words. The person reporting behaves neutrally like the lens of a camera, language functions like the film on which the incoming images are fixed. This is also expressed by the narrative perspective. Although the observer sometimes speaks in the first person (THU 11, 75, 81), he sometimes disappears behind what is reported (THU 7, 19, 87–89), and sometimes he alone is reported in an authorial narrative (THU 23, 29, 41, 45). However, there are moments when suddenly something else flashes up. That the real story remains ever present in the background is evident in the programmatic Versuch des Exorzismus der einen Geschichte durch eine andere, when the reporter at the Hotel Terminus in Lyon suddenly believes he hears the voices of the “Kinder von Izieu” crying out to heaven “fast ein halbes Jahrhundert nach ihrem Abtransport, jetzt erst recht” (THU 89). In addition, there is another matter. Overall, the arrangement of the texts in the last edition has a scopus formed by the two texts of Kleine Fabel der Esche von München (THU 91) and Epopöe vom Verschwinden der Wege oder Eine andere Lehre der Sainte-Victoire – again already by its title in demarcation from traditional forms of storytelling (THU 103). When the narrator in Kleine Fabel der Esche von München talks about the place of narration, he is at the same time outlining his own procedure, in which he points out that the ash tree itself turned from image into “Geschehen”. This transformation is nothing other than a result of looking at and contemplating. The narrator’s perception is initially focused on the weather side of the tree. Not only does he have the impression of being transported into a wilderness, but for the first time he also gets an idea of the points of the compass in the city. His “Erzählen des Baums” creates an imaginary topography (THU 94 f.) that opens up in the midst of the cityscape. The crucial turning point is that in the second gaze “[das] selbstlose Schauen” becomes “absichtlich[.]” and “übereifrig [.]”. The second world, which the narrator now perceives beyond the mere gaze, appears in that his gaze loses its innocence, as it were, and he himself has the impression that he is violating the “Erscheinungen” (THU 96). It is significant that it is precisely in this way that a mode of perception is expressed which otherwise determines Handke’s narrative, but also his Journale. It is the charging of immediate perception with remembered and fantasized images at the same time. Now it is precisely this procedure that he resists; the narrator tries to shake off the comparative image. The doubling of the gaze seems to him to be a “verdächtiges Bildergeprunke”, which he has perceived at a distance in authors such as Ernst Jünger or Julien Green. This is precisely why he first leaves the tree, only to return the next morning. Only then does the unbiased view that the narrator had always striven for seem to succeed. The ash tree embodies for him “nichts als die Gegenwart, keine Mittelachse des Gartens mehr, keinen Blickfang, geschweige denn den ‘Weltbaum’” (THU 100 f.). Not even the memory of the dead succeeds on this All-Souls’ Day of 2 November 1989. Only the word “Niemandsrose” presents itself, while the author endeavors to perceive only the “Grauen”, “Blauen”, and “Grünen” of the tree’s bark. He aims at the withdrawal of a sign and the individual story at the same time. Instead of the arrow that is depicted on the cover of the journal Am Felsfenster morgens, the narrator now uses the signs of nature itself, “lange

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nackte[.] Blattstengel[.]” as arrows and throws them against the trunk, on which a rusted nail, a remnant of the target from that time, reminds us of another story, the story of life beyond the images of nature (THU 101 f.). If one considers that this fable of the ash tree at the same time makes the new writing program of a narrative of direct perception its theme, then the last text of this collection, Epopöe vom Verschwinden der Wege oder Eine andere Lehre der Sainte-­ Victoire takes on a special significance. In many respects, it seems to fundamentally refute the writing program guiding Handke at that time, which, while also based on perception, always linked perception with an act of sense-making. This was also beyond the control of the subject, as Handke’s principled recourse to Heidegger’s word about “Hören auf den Zuspruch des Seins” (“Listening to the promise of being”) (Heidegger UN 33) in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire points out, but it was as little limited to mere contemplation as Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire itself, which is a narratable event. This is precisely what is deconstructed in the narrative Epopöe vom Verschwinden der Wege oder Eine andere Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, and it is no coincidence that the author has this experience in the same place, the Montagne Sainte-Victoire. Due to a forest fire, not only have the old paths disappeared, but also the “Weltlandschaftsbilder[.]” (THU 107). Even more disturbing, in this landscape of death that has taken hold of plants and animals alike, even the experience of the present is no longer possible. This disorientation manifests itself visually, aurally, and mentally at the same time (THU 108). It is at this point that the mobilization of his own experiences occurs for the first time. The narrator realizes that with the loss of the path in the massif of the Sainte-Victoire, he has at the same time lost the orientations of his former life in a double sense. On the one hand, it is the poetic paths that seemed to connect different life experiences in a meaningful way. On the other hand, the pessimism of this image of a literally scorched earth touches on a phantasm that, in terms of life history, had always helped to determine the writing, the phantasm of a path trodden by two. Yet it is striking that the narrator describes this experience “mit einem Zusatz von Einverständnis” (THU 110). In this way, this small text provides a counter-draft to the work-determining fantasies of initiation and production that orbit other texts. In the interplay with the text Kleine Fabel der Esche von München the psychic play between grandiosity and depression becomes the staging of a poetic program.

8.5 Fragments of Authorship: Gestern unterwegs. Aufzeichnungen November 1987 bis Juli 1990 (2005) The Journal entitled Gestern unterwegs collects notes from November 1987 to July 1990. The constant change of location that took place during this time has the consequence that in this text, too, the pure “Mit-Schreiben” is sometimes replaced in favor of a “nachträgliches, leicht zeitversetztes Notieren” (GU 5). In general, this Journal is dominated by longer sections of observations depicting images of nature and civilization; only in some places is the text interspersed with reflective passages and some dream notations.

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A basic figure here is also the interplay between memory and the present, which establishes a reflection on one’s own productive activity with a view to youth history. On 24 December 1987, the author notes, as he has elsewhere, “im Internat bin ich vernichtet worden” (GU 57). Later he will note that the evil experiences there still dry up his eyes at times (GU 326). For him his “Ausgesetztwerden” to boarding school was like a “Skalpiertwerden” (GU 208). But shortly before, in another notation, he had also sketched the counter-image that became a guiding figure of his own productive activity: The former life in antiquity, which was “voll klarer Zwischenräume” (GU 56). This dialectical configuration determines the order of his records as well as the late fictional texts. Comparable considerations apply to the recorder himself. Like the narrator of Der Bildverlust and Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, he is a “Chronist im Zwiespalt” between participation and report (GU 235). On the one hand, this is expressed in the experience that “Wiederholung” is actually the “Geheimnis des Lebens” (GU 45), documented externally, for example, in the correspondence between the views from the rock window in Salzburg and from a hotel window in London (GU 242). On the other hand, it becomes apparent that the notes depict a new principle of life that determines the author’s journey after the long years in Salzburg and the “Zeit [s]einer Sesshaftigkeit dort” (GU 230): “Fragmentarisch leben – um nicht fragmentarisch phantasieren-schreiben zu können” (GU 122). The Journal von Gestern unterwegs is also a document of new orientations, among which that of Romanesque art takes on particular weight. The arches of Romanesque churches, which Handke had already admired at length in the cathedral of Santo Domingo in Soria, become a sign that runs through the text like Hogarth’s ‘Line of Beauty’, for example when the marble table pattern of a Coimbra café seems to reflect the Alaskan sky “mit seinen weit geschweiften haarfeinen Wolken” (GU 140). More fundamentally, the author is struck by “die Ruhe der Ruhe” that emanates from the Romanesque figures (GU 502). Finally, the description of the Romanesque arches of Santo Domingo becomes the starting point for a description of the author’s own narrative, which dissolves the previous sweeping characteristic of the “Epischen” in a series of metaphorical associations. The Romanesque arches are “Erzählvorbild: Bögen/Übergänge/Statuarik/ Ereignislosigkeit/Ereignisse-Dinge-Waagrechtes/und zuletzt das pure Dastehen, Zusammenstehen mehrerer” (GU 504). Romanesque provides further cues for a characterization of his own writing in terms of ‘Bildverlust’, a designation under which both Der Bildverlust and Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht are concealed in this Journal. The notes speak explicitly of the “Abenteuer der Varianten in der Wiederholung” (GU 167), which is indeed a recurrent writing principle of Handke’s, and they evaluate this writing attitude as a recourse to tradition, as the author fundamentally attempts to do: “Romanik: die klassische Antike, (wieder?) kindlich geworden” (GU 297). What is striking is an obviously extensive preoccupation with the Gospels of the New Testament. In the process, the spiritual-historical reference is contextualized in terms of life history. At first, the notations concentrate on common images of

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religious painting, the Visitation of Mary, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, the Deposition from the Cross. The notes highlight details in these images that make them the starting point for an interpretation that deviates from the common exegesis of the biblical texts. It becomes apparent that these pictorial analyses also represent a covert commentary on the process of one’s own writing. This happens through a precise and structurally proceeding description of the picture, which in the end clears the way for a reading of the biblical text that leads to a radical secularization not only of the content of the picture, but above all also of the figure of the biblical Christ. In the double reference to the Gospel of Matthew and to one’s own life story, this parallel guidance of biblical exegesis and interpretation based on everyday life is brought into. “Er ist nicht der Gott der Toten, sondern der Lebenden”, the writer quotes Matthew 22:32, and then continues: “und das lesend, sah ich mein Kind (27. Januar)” (GU 514, underlining by the author). This suggests an ambivalent role of biblical texts for Handke’s writing, which is reflected in different forms of recourse to religious experience. First, it becomes apparent that his reading of the Gospels follows quite closely a correct theological reading. There is also no doubt that he does indeed see these texts as a challenge to himself. In doing so, the journal Gestern unterwegs juxtaposes the often aestheticizing presentations of religious experience that his texts display, such as in their depiction of the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper, with a radically demythologizing variant. “Wenn Gottes Sein im Werden ist, dann ist auch uns mehr möglich”, he approvingly quotes the theologian Eberhard Jüngel (GU 464). On the other hand, the author of this Journal marks the resistance that the biblical texts put up against him. It becomes clear that for him they need reshaping and that this can only take place in writing. “Und doch: die Evangelien werden mir immer wieder unheimlich, weil ich ihnen im Leben kaum folgen kann – sie werden mir so zum Abgrund –, während die Kunst mich auffängt, in irdischer Heiligkeit, und ich ihr folgen kann, urbe et orbe” (GU 524). And quite ambiguously he later notes that the “Christliche”, which is testified by Christ and the Gospels, becomes visible only “durch die Schrift” (GU 390). A crucial role in this secularizing transformation is played by the retelling of images from religious painting. The central place occupied by the interpretation of Poussin’s LʼÉté ou Ruth et Booz in Die Obstdiebin (The Fruit Thief) (OD 466) is prefigured here. This act of ekphrasis, which in Handke becomes a narrative translation, can be compared to principles of homiletics. On the one hand, it aims at an elaboration of psychologically interpretable pictorial elements; on the other hand, the images become visualizations of aesthetic procedures that concern the mode of one’s own writing. This is related to the elaboration of a psychogram developed with a view of Jesus, which bears autoanalytical traits. Thus, it is not surprising that Jesus is given strikingly human features and that his role in salvation history is also decisively psychologized. It is no coincidence that the relationship between father and son, which Handke’s texts repeatedly revolve around, comes into play here. The following is said succinctly about Jesus: “‘sich vom Vater befreien’? War es nicht im Gegenteil sein Problem gewesen, daß es keinen Vater gab, von dem er sich hätte befreien können?” (GU 419).

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If the author of the Journal is interested in Jesus’ story because of his “Entdeckung des Göttlichen in sich  – die wiederum zum Menschendrama an sich führt” (GU 245), he is by no means aiming at a theological commentary. Rather, another passage proves that he thus ascribes to Jesus a human psychogram. He emphasizes that he repeatedly takes the disciples aside, dominates them, and then abruptly sets off (GU 536). In any case, he has always shown outbursts against everyone and everything, wants to put everyone down because they do not want him to be their king. The Journal comments on this as follows: “ist dieser Wahn (?) nicht in jedem von uns, für plötzliche Momente? ‘Erkennt, ihr Dreckskerle, dass ich derjenige welcher bin!’?” (GU 537). Thus, the textual reading, which is directed at Jesus, tips over at the end into a description of a fantasy of grandeur in which the author can obviously imagine himself. It does not seem coincidental that he then reports a dream in which he sees his house for the first time but presents this sight as a fantastic image that expresses the exaltation of his own self through a spatial fantasy. He, describes how the house in the dream “sich von Raum zu Raum erweiterte und unterirdische, geheime Räume, alle still ausgeleuchtet, bekam, und wie alle Leute aus der Gegend sich in meinem Garten versammelten, unter der himmelhohen Zeder (3. April)” (GU 538). A comparable psychologization of biblical themes is also evident when looking at the central themes of religious painting. Paradigmatic for this is a reflection by the author on the scene from Luke 1:39–40, which is apostrophized in the pictorial tradition as “Heimsuchung der Maria”. It is the visit of Mary to Elizabeth, who, herself pregnant with John, will greet Mary as the mother of Jesus. The author explicitly notes that he only became aware of the dialectic of this constellation late in life: “Was ich (auch) nicht wußte: der englische Gruß, das Ave Maria, ist zusammengefügt aus dem des Engels und dem Aufschrei der Elisabeth, der vor der schwangeren Maria das eigene Kind im Leib aufhüpft: ‘Du bist gebenedeit unter den Weibern, und gebenedeit ist die Frucht deines Leibes’” (GU 523). Here, too, the author’s interest is directed towards the interweaving of the biblical, the salvation-historical and the psychological context. In doing so, he repeats a double reading of the biblical texts, as Goethe has outlined in a comparable way in his Wanderjahre and also with regard to the scene of the “Heimsuchung” (Goethe HA8, 21, 23; Renner 2019, 130). This fundamentally confirms that many passages of the Journal spring from the description and interpretation of images, and that, in addition to the images of Handke’s own life, those of religious painting and biblical texts are given special significance. It is important for Handke’s writing that he not only allows a biblical and a secular scheme of interpretation to run side by side, but that he intertwines both at the same time. On a Maundy Thursday, it seems remarkable to him that he is fascinated by a scene on a stone capital of the cathedral in Lubo, which inscribes human feelings of an aesthetic figure. He notes that the disciple John lies “Bogen beschreibend in den Armen des ihn tröstenden Herrn beim Letzten Abendmahl”. Emanating from the “schmerzerfüllte[n] Tröster über ihm” he remarks “Kummer und zugleich Geborgenheit” (GU 157). The reference to Poussin’s copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper is also brought into focus by a psychologizing judgement: “mehr

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Nacht kann rings um Menschen nicht sein” the author comments on the picture (GU 263). Following this interpretive approach, a description of Tintoretto’s Deposition from the Cross in Caen directs the viewer’s attention first to the colors of the vestments and the shadows in the faces, and then to the “helle leere Ferne” that reminds the viewer of Beckmann’s exile paintings from Holland and thus refers unexpectedly to a completely different story (GU 281 f.). Such double views are condensed as if casually in a reference to the ladder of the Deposition from the Cross, which the author sees on a sixteenth-century enamel in Limoges and considers with the thoroughly ambiguous remark “überall lehnt sie noch” (GU 285). This gesture of unfolding a double meaning of supposedly unambiguous images continues in a consideration of Poussin’s Entry of Jesus in Jerusalem of 1642, where the author draws attention to a change in the common content of the image that shifts the center. Where many pictorial representations of this scene since the Middle Ages have a man sitting atop the crown of a tree or palm tree, Poussin’s has no one. His painting associates this recess with a different direction of gaze because the light falls less on Jesus than on those who greet him (GU 481). In the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar the author later remembers that with the many representations of the “Entry” just the detail left out by Poussin had interested him. Obviously under the impression of Jacques Callot’s engraving of Jesus’ Entry in Jerusalem he is impressed in Colmar by a man in the tree who “immer wieder als die Verkörperung des Baums selber” welcomes Jesus (GU 510; Callot 1635). This view of religious representations finds its psychological culmination in the contemplation of the sculpture of the almost naked Christo de la Buena Morte in Jaén, which young women in a side chapel caress and kiss while smiling at each other. Very accurately, the author describing this scene captures the latent sexuality inherent in it, and conspicuously enough he is struck by a certain horror “auch beim Zuschauen, über die Frauenwelt” (GU 376). His commentary follows the insight that what is decisive about the image is not what it shows, but what reactions it evokes. Undoubtedly, these comments on religious images and sculptures capture an essential aspect that determines the role of images in Handke’s texts in a very fundamental way. “Schreiben: Anhand des gegenwärtigen, augenfälligen Bilds das Andere Bild sich vergegenwärtigen, das Andere Bild bedenken” (GU 377) is programmatically stated there. At the same time, this reflection connects the view of Cézanne presented by Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire with the theme of the image as unfolded by Der Bildverlust. In Cézanne, the author recognizes “[das] Prozeßhafte, das Dramatische seiner Bilder” and in doing so, it becomes clear to him that this attempt “[sich einer] Ruhe zu nähern” means nothing other than a “Vermählung des Ich mit den Dingen” (GU 251); a little later, in correspondence to this, he will consider the role of the picture for himself: “im Bild sein” means for him “dasein, mitsein, mitdenken” (GU 256). The records of this Journal, which extend into June 1990, seem peculiarly sealed off from real developments in political reality. All perceptions are consigned to the question of the possibilities of a poetic transformation of reality, even when the longing for Yugoslavia is given a melancholy political contextualization (GU 443).

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For instance, when the author regards his Yugoslavia as a homeland district that forms a counter-design to the Germany described by Hofmannsthal in Briefe des Zurückgekehrten, “wo kein Ding mehr wirklich war” (GU 462  f.; Hofmannsthal SWKA XXXI, 151–174). He explicitly remarks that he is glad “nichts zu erzählen zu haben vom Krieg” (GU 553); moreover, he melancholically notes the formula “Mein Weltbild ist erschöpft” as a possible opening sentence for Der Bildverlust (GU 455). Again and again, moreover, the question of the transformation of reality in writing comes to the fore. Following the concept of ‘metanoein’ in Johannes Baptist, the recorder formulates: “das Prinzip der Dichtung, gegenüber den Tatsachen: diese umdenken” (GU 530). Consequently, in a radical departure from a concentration on the merely factual and with a view to the planned text of Der Bildverlust, he says: “die Historie, den Krieg und den Frieden, werde ich erfinden” (GU 525). An appropriate language for the political does not seem to be present in this Journal. With Meng Dou and Xu Guoming (GU 428), two names of young men executed in connection with the Tianmen Square riots are mentioned. The film of Die Abwesenheit will also mention them, but these names are abruptly inserted into the records, no register is present with which to classify or evaluate the event. In contrast, the dream also appears in these records as a second reality in which the author’s perceptions and experiences are condensed in such a way that the dream notations form a network that organizes this Journal. Explicitly, the dream is declared to be “die greifbare, bildhafte, sich selbst erzählende Mystik” (GU 527), a necessary complementary experience that makes one’s own more explicit than rational discourse. “Immer noch erlebe ich im Traum die Gefühle so rein, wie ich sie im Wachen kaum habe: die Ehrfurcht, das Erbarmen, auch den Haß, den Zorn (zurück in Soria, 10. Dez.)” (GU 496). Thematically, the dreams oscillate between images of violence, dissociation, and fantasies of a wordless consent between man and woman that is only hinted at. The attribute “manisch-depressiv”, which the Journal wants to ascribe to the daily routine of the “Einzelmenschen” as well as to “Historie” (GU 521), turns into disparate images. The author dreams of rubber dolls “die übereinander herfielen und einander aufschlitzten” (GU 451), or of his failure in the attempted rescue of a drowning child (GU 548). Scenes of a complete loss of orientation (GU 519) or fantasies of death (GU 518 f.) are juxtaposed with these images of horror. On the other hand, the Journal also records images of wordless agreement, such as when the dreamer strokes an ox that a beautiful woman had entrusted to him, and it is succinctly said: “über das Tier erwachten wir zur Liebe füreinander (15. April)” (GU 540). In a striking way, the dreams revolve around the relationship of the ego to others, in that they allow the instances of ego and non-ego, whose differentiation is a prerequisite for the formation of the ego, to interact with each other in images. An example is given by the dream of a giantess and the “Liebe zu ihr auf den ersten Blick”. At first, the dreamer succeeds in “sie zu überzeugen, daß ich es sei”. But precisely this does not last, “vor ihrem Begehren, das weit inniger und göttlicher war als das meine […] (23. Januar)” (GU 513). In retrospect, this dream proves to be a transformation of a psychic tension that is also expressed in a scene previously

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confided to the Journal. Under the date of the preceding June 28, the author notes, “Gestern Abend der Schmerz, als ich im Erzählen von ‘uns beiden’ WIR sagen wollte und es dann aber verschweigen mußte zum ICH” (GU 415). It is precisely this constellation that gives the end of the printed Journal its particular weight. This finally condenses the psychic tensions that become apparent in the dreams into a story that seems like the retelling of a manic-depressive experience. It is not without reason that this short narrative follows an authorial narrative style that juxtaposes describing and judging. Starting from a situation in which the “Er” of the protagonist of this scene believes that the “Lichtmensch” in him is disappearing and that “Todesschweiß” is breaking out in him, scenes and images are also presented that can be read as moments of a difficult history of socialization. They refer not only to the formation of the ego in a social context, but also to the genesis of authorship. An early state of “Sprachlosigkeit” and life in a “Kathedrale des Stummwerdens” are followed first by mourning and then by a fantastic and Kafkaesque dissociation. Alongside the fantasy of a “coming home”, symbolically vouched for by the fact that in in the evening the dreamer puts his bag next to hers (GU 551), a deformation of reality arises. All of the protagonist’s belongings disappear in the course of time; only one shoe remains to him. What is remarkable, however, is that this dissociation enables him to perceive in a different way, in which the phantasmatic can no longer be distinguished from the image of fantasy. At certain moments he sees “den Zweiten Planeten namens Erde, fremd, geheimnisvoll heraustreten aus dem Ersten Planeten Erde, als den im Grunde ersten” (GU 552). Precisely in this way, the concluding narrative that the Journal records also becomes an apotheosis of authorship and a wishful fantasy that attempts to abolish all the contradictions of socialization in a fairy-tale design. It follows a program that has been explicitly formulated before: “Die höchste Kunst: die Märchen, an die man glauben kann” (GU 401). It is not surprising that a phantasm of writing then emerges directly from the images of dissociation. That we are dealing here with the wishful fantasy of an author who not only rewrites his perceptions and experiences, but also wants to create a life for himself by assembling dissonant fragments of a lived life in a fairy-tale sketch free of tension is shown by the fact that the fantasy of authorship is closely linked to that of a successful relationship between a man and a woman. The dissociating imagery is decisively countered by an intimate scene of love. “Nachtlang, ohne irgendein Zutun, herzten ihrer beider Leiber einander” (GU 552), the text notes, without naming them. At the same time, the “Unverständnis” in which the protagonist finds himself becomes the starting point of a new perception. It bears fairy-tale traits, but in truth it aims solely at enabling the view of “das Märchen der Tage, der Jahreszeiten, der Jahre im Frieden” (GU 552). It is nothing other than the world of everyday images that are made to appear and left in their own right. Only at this point does the little narrative reveal the focus to which it has always been directed. The experience of love awakens the desire “lesen zu gehen” in a book, and in the sign of the poetic the protagonist becomes “handlungsfähig, in seinem Bereich”, but this is nothing other than writing (GU 552). As indicated earlier in the notes, writing is deliberately related to the writing of the Gospels, where

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language is pervaded “vom Göttlichen”. The dream of necessary art is thereby conspicuously exaggerated, for it is quite ambiguously linked to the phrase “Heilige Schrift”. At this moment, the author enters his house for the first time; it becomes clear that the little sketch was nothing other than an initiation story from the very beginning, which allows the text of the wishful fantasy, like the Journal itself, to flow into the real life-world of the author Handke. A spatial fantasy becomes the image for this. It is the “prachtvolle Leere” of the house in Chaville that makes reading as well as writing possible. Now the protagonist of the recorded story, who has become one with his author, sees with alert attention not only a letter with words of love, but also the nature surrounding the house (GU 553). Thus, the final image of the Journal is nothing other than the phantasm of the reconciliation of lifeworld experience and authorship, transformed into a narrative.

8.6 Semi-somnolent Images: Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen (A Year Spoken from the Night, 2010) As has already become clear, the recording of dreams characterizes Handke’s Journale in different ways. For the most part, they are interspersed with the other notations in such a way that no inner connection between them can be discerned and the immediacy of the dream scenes appears autonomous. On the other hand, there are recurring motifs and problem areas that can often be read as a subtext or counterfactual of the other notes. In the later journals, at least since Am Felsfenster morgens, their inclusion from the notebooks into the journal text seems to follow more and more clearly an intention of pointing. This is different in Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen (A Year spoken from the Night), where the author records only sentences and scenes that are directly attributed to sleep. In a conversation he remarks about these notes: “Irgendwie habe ich innerlich aufgehorcht, ich wurde wach, manchmal mitten in der Nacht, manchmal am frühen Morgen. Ich habe mir die Sätze, die Bilder durch den Kopf gehen lassen und sie dann aufgeschrieben” (Greiner 2010). However, the assumption that these notations might provide an unbiased view of the author is disappointed. Many of them are scenes and images in which the traces of editing are clearly visible. They are dream narratives in the literal sense. What psychoanalysis calls the processing of the dream in memory and narrative communication, the transformation of the latent dream content into the manifest dream, is also familiar to Handke; every dream seems to him already designed for communication and narrative. In the journal Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts, he covertly addressed this interaction between dream and dream narrative. “Träume, ihr zeigt mir, wie ich ‘im Grunde’ bin: schwach, abhängig, untertänig(st), unterwürfig. Aber ich will nicht wissen, wie ich im Grunde bin. Denn ich kann auch ganz anders sein. Träume, zeigt mir, wie ich anders bin!” (VB 155). In keeping with this program, the Journal of those dream records contains a wide variety of text types that obviously reflect different degrees of editing. Thus,

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alongside dream scenes in the narrower sense, such as the one that combines the memory of a painting by Cézanne with the fantasy of a child (EJN 154), there are miniatures that seem Kafkaesque, as they are only possible in dreams: “Er hat die Hand in den Fluß der Träume gesteckt und sie trocken wieder herausgezogen” (EJN 74). By contrast, many notes seem like paraphrases of aphorisms: “In der Stunde der Auferstehung suche dein Heil” (EJN 130) or “Ein jeder, der rätselt, ist willkommen” (EJN 132). Some notations could also come from a collection of aphorisms: “Finden dauert länger als Suchen” (EJN 181), “Die Menschen verschwinden, und die T-Shirts bleichen aus” (EJN 44), “Merkwürdig, daß die besten Schwimmer immer die sind, die das am meisten brauchen” (EJN 90). Sometimes they also experience a satirical exaggeration: “Das Verhalten der Männer hat sich stark verändert, außer wenn sie lieben” (EJN 65). Only occasionally can one find references directed to the author himself. In two places he appears under the abbreviation “P.  H.”. These phrases are interesting because they can be related to Handke’s work as well as to his self-representation. The first notation explicitly addresses not only the text of Die Wiederholung, but also Handke’s associated connection to Slovenia. It appears here peculiarly fractured. “‘P. H. Im Neunten Land ?’ – ‘Neunmal kennt er das Land nicht’” (EJN 30). Later, in a brief reported scene that can be related both to the earlier work and to the author’s role in public discourse about Serbia, “‘Und als letzter wird sprechen P. H., der Rebell.’ – ‘I am not a rebel’” (EJN 177). The certainty and rigor of public judgment is thus countered by an unconscious self-doubt. Accordingly, alongside the aspirational phrase, “Niemand will was von mir. Die Kultur muss sich ändern!” (EJN 24), the uncertainty about one’s own ability as an author also finds expression: “Es kann zur Schrift kommen, aber es kann auch zu nichts kommen” (EJN 162). In striking contrast, some dream sequences reveal a secret tendency to deliberately put the rules of personal and social relationships at risk. This is most evident in a dream scene which, when translated into reality, could well have disastrous consequences. “Ich habe mir diese Frau extra für die Nacht ins Haus gebracht, Gemahlin. Und jetzt beleidigst du sie” (EJN 76): it is one of the few examples in this Journal in which the latent dream content has apparently been left unprocessed. From this perspective, the collection of these notes can be seen as a bridging text that differs from the other Journale in places through a different mode of processing dreams but does not fundamentally depart from their mode of representation.

8.7 Completely Different Mirror Images: Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts. Zeichen und Anflüge von der Peripherie 2007–2015 (2016) Compared to the program and the condensed reflections on life and work in Gestern unterwegs, the collection of notations in the most recent Journal appears much less structured. Moreover, it is a sequence of very different text forms and segmented texts. In accordance with his motto “das Denken ist nicht in den Haupt-, sondern in den Zeitwörtern” (VB 317), the author repeatedly searches for verbal paraphrases of

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nouns, such as verbs for love (VB 367) or for poetry (VB 257). Alongside these are aphorisms by the author, verses from various speeches, and quotations from other authors. It becomes apparent that many of them are intended to be interpreted or reinterpreted. An example of this is the reference to Adorno: “‘Es gibt kein wahres Leben im falschen’? – Blödsinn: Es gibt keine wahren Sätze inmitten von falschen” (VB 276). Handke proceeds in a similar way in a reference to the Sermon on the Mount: “Wenn ich meine Nächsten erlebe, liebe ich mich selbst” (VB 110). Handke connects short quotations and references to what he has read and reflections by himself. There, among others, the authors John Cheever (VB 87), Giacomo Leopardi (VB 286), Ernst Jünger (VB 127) and Hölderlin (VB 316), but of course also musicians such as Johnny Cash (VB 90) and van Morrison gain importance (VB 322). Apart from this, the theme of writing and reading in this text opens up some work-historical perspectives, for example on Über die Dörfer (VB 296), Immer noch Sturm (VB 22, 68, 74, 194), Versuch über den stillen Ort (VB 167, 168), Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez) (VB 144, 148, 151), Die Obstdiebin (VB 75, 221), and Der Große Fall (VB 78, 117), but also references back to Die Hornissen (The Hornets) (VB 289) or the principle of “Freiphantasieren” in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (VB 281 f.). Apart from this, in this Journal one’s own writing is repeatedly related to Goethe. In a letter to Duke Carl August, Goethe proposes the guideline “in meinem beschränkten Kreise das Herkömmliche lebendig zu erhalten” (VB 6). Goethe’s role model function is expressly emphasized and one’s own is sought in the writing of the other: “So wie Goethe seinerzeit streng-mild an seine Freunde schreibend: So schreibt er auch an mich, in der Jetztzeit” (VB 348). The author approvingly follows Goethe’s deliberate separation of poetry and history, which, as the latter states in a letter to Niebuhr, should be left in their respective own (VB 384). This is immediately followed by Handke’s consideration of the melodiousness of the “überdauernde[n] Epik” (VB 129) and the search for the other time: “Nicht die Geschichte – das Geschehen!” he calls for, meaning an attention directed towards nature (VB 141). Obviously, he does not only follow Goethe’s judgement on the historian, who is “nicht Vertreter der Lüge, aber der Verbreiter; nicht der Dieb, aber der Hehler”, but what is decisive for him is that history delivers “keine Geschichte […] keine Erzählung, geschweige denn ein Märchen” (VB 317). Corresponding with Goethe’s remarks to Carlyle that poetry is the “glückliche Asyl der Menschheit” (VB 332), he likewise relies with some pathos on the “zarte Universalnetz des Poeten” to oppose the “Höllennetz” of Al-Qaeda, CIA, and others (VB 22). More generally, writing is characterized as a “Suchbewegung” (VB 114) and named as its precondition an imagination that is also another form of cognition. “Phantasie, sich strukturierend und erweiternd zur Fiktion, Erfindung (ohne Gewolltheit): das wahre Denken. In der Fiktion bin ich der Wahrheit, der Wahrhaftigkeit am nächsten” (VB 272). It is a determination that can be compared to Adorno’s concept of exact imagination (Adorno GS-1, 342). A fundamental difference to the other Journale is that Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts, like the unpublished and the published Notizbuch, is interspersed with a series of drawings. There is much to suggest that this, too, goes back to an

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orientation towards Goethe. It does not seem coincidental that the latter’s phrase from a letter to Kästner of January 1773, “Ich bin jetzt ganz Zeichner” (VB 338), is quite deliberately included as an element of self-stylization that also characterizes this Journal. In this context, the pictures do not explain the text, but rather, in their incoherent sequence, they recreate a form of perception that the author Handke suggests to his readers with a quotation from Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre: “Man suche nur nichts hinter den Phänomenen, sie selber sind die Lehre” (Goethe HA-8, 304; VB 366). The fact that this is a passage from the aphorism collection called Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer suggests that Handke, moreover, has taken Goethe’s technique of self-evidently combining narrative and aphorism as a model in his Journal. Indeed, even the Journal itself still exhibits a substructure; it is interspersed with a series of short aphorisms, each with the attribute “eins der 11 Gebote”. In content and form, they follow Goethe’s Betrachtungen im Sinne der Wanderer (HA-8, 283–309) and the notations Aus Makariens Archiv (Goethe HA-8, 460–486) in Die Wanderjahre. Alongside general statements about poetry, “Dichterisch denke der Mensch” as a variation on Hölderlin’s poem and Heidegger’s interpretation (HVO 61–78; Hölderlin GSA2.1, 372 ff.; VB 316), are psychological self-encouragements, “Du sollst deinen Dämonen mobilisieren!” (VB 117), “Wie du gewürfelt bist worden, so bleib nicht liegen!” (VB 135), “Jeder sein eigener persönlicher Wegmacher” (VB 380). By no means does the author escape here the temptation of age-wise utterances which acquire the character of aphorisms. “Das Sinnlose (s. o., nicht das ‘Unsinnige’) mit Ernst, mit ‘vollem Ernst’, verrichten: Ideal” (VB 187), “Du sollst einmal am Tag etwas, wonach dir der Sinn stand – ein Ding, einen Ort, einen Blick –, entschlossen versäumen!” (VB 229) or, “Du sollst schauen, wo du schon immer geschaut hast!” (415). In addition, the reference back to Goethe, which becomes clearer from 2015 onwards, has a double function. On the one hand, it marks principles of his own writing; this becomes clear, for example, in the fact that Handke links his own idea of “Zwischenraum” with Goethe’s guiding attribute “heiter” (VB 327, 134). On the other hand, it can be observed that he aligns his attitude towards social and political reality with Goethe’s habitus. With obvious approval he quotes Goethe’s statement about the wretchedness of humanity “en masse” (VB 324; Goethe Gesprr. 10; 1821) and again and again the reference to this author circles around the theme of fatherhood and sonship, which relates to the idea of one’s own former illegitimacy, which is reintroduced at the former theatre of war of the Vexin plateau (VB 150). The meaning of the opening formula “Der Vaterlose fühlt sich immer im Blickpunkt, im Guten wie im Bösen” (VB 7) proves to be self-stylization in a double sense. It gains its full significance from the fact that Goethe also appears to the author “als eine Art Vaterloser, hochfahrend-hoffärtig” (VB 404). At a later point, the fatherless is even compared to Lucifer, as the one who is the “sich in jedem Sinn Überhebende”, and the question is asked whether he is perhaps “sich überhebend gegen den Gott in sich selber, das Göttliche in sich selbst?” (VB 419). That this is a psychologization is suggested by the strikingly sober reference to Goethe’s distanced reaction to the death of his son.

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In this way, a central theme of one’s own writing is deciphered as a repetition of an existing constellation; the radicality of one’s own self-design is simultaneously legitimized and contoured by the reference to another. But that is not all. This constellation also opens the central phantasm of one’s own life, which is called “Mein” myth; it is a striking identification with Christ as Son. It follows a reinterpretation of the Isaac story when it states with reference to the Son of God: “Der aber wird nicht geopfert – er opfert sich” (VB 172). This stylization is underscored by one of the inserted drawings, which, with reference to Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, shows the expressive image of the Crucified from a thirteenth-century chapel, his arms and nailed hands unnaturally enlarged (VB 383). Overall, the reference back to Christ as the Son of God, who already determines Gestern unterwegs (GU 390, 514), is thus continued. A point of articulation is the reference to Matthew 23:9: “Auch sollt ihr niemand auf Erden euren Vater nennen”, which the author comments laconically: “dazu war ich Vaterloser kein Mal versucht” (VB 202). The majority of the inserted images, however, operate in contrast to this constellation. They obtain their meaning not only as images but also because they contour the mode of a writing that sees itself as a mere re-enactment of the immediacy of perception. The formula “Was einen doch alles in Anbetracht der Baumschatten anweht…” (VB 404) marks this; it can be linked to the conception of music recorded in the Journal, which is freed “vom Denkzwang, der Denkerei”, but still demands “(be)denken” (VB 280). The starting point remains the immediate and situational perception, for which the play of light becomes a prerequisite. It happens without conscious action on the part of the observing subject. The moonlight “enträumlicht, statt Raum […] zu schaffen; es konturiert und entwirklicht zugleich das Konturierte” (VB 412). The “Baumschattenspiel in der Nacht” produced in this way corresponds to the “Sonnenfleckenspiel am Morgen”; both together redeem for the author of the Journal his understanding of the formula “Ut pictura, ut poesis” (VB 298). Under these conditions, the images inserted into the text unfold a dynamic of their own. This is made clear by the two sketches entitled “Baumschattenwand” (Fig. 8.2) (VB 409, 411), which relate directly to the title of the Journal. They refer to another sketch entitled Nächtliche Fassade Versailles St. Louis an der Traumschwelle (VB 309). In the context of the other paintings, these three make it clear that what seems to stem from immediate perception simultaneously taps into a transitional realm between conscious and unconscious perception. The three images resemble semi-somnolent images. The projected shadows are obviously superimposed by psychically generated images. They thus unfold an effect that eludes the conscious grasp of the writer and drawer. Not infrequently, too, they appear, such as the images of rain or snowflakes on a window, as ornamental visual panels that stage an interplay of conscious and unconscious perception (VB 52 f.). The subtitle of the Journal, “Zeichen und Anflüge von der Peripherie” paraphrases this. It leaves open whether the designation “Peripherie” points to a place in space or the mode of psychophysical perception. At the same time, both the “Zeichen” and the “Anflüge” depend on interpretation. The interaction of text and image is therefore an essential element of this text. That writing is described as “Umträumen”

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Fig. 8.2  Peter Handke: Drawing from Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts. Zeichen und Anflüge von der Peripherie 2007–2005 (VB 409). (German Literature Archive Marbach; with kind permission of Sophie Semin)

confirms this interconnectedness of image and textual realm (VB 17), expressed in the formulaic phrase “‘Und’: Lektüre des Buches und Lektüre des Selbst” (VB 194). What gains significance here is that the term self is directly related to the environment of familial socialization, which the Journal repeatedly allows to become conspicuous. A drawing with the designation “Mein Kind” (VB 177) and another showing the brother Hans attest to this (VB 97). The author remembers his dying grandfather (VB 238) and twice, with alienating formulas, his mother. Once it is “Kein Paradox: die leibhaft(ig)e Seele. (So erschien mir, zeitweise, meine Mutter)” (VB 235). Then again, the shock that this woman’s suicide, of which the author feels guilty, had once caused, returns. Again, it is a perception in which reality and dream-fantasy become indistinguishably intertwined in a night scene. “Mondlicht die ganze Nacht, und meine Mutter liegt tot (20. November 1971–20. November 2013)” the text records (VB 275). Finally, familial reminiscences overlap in a configuration that collapses the image of family as well as of one’s own fatherhood in dreamlike compression. The author, searching for a verb for love, insists that it goes

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“durch und durch”, noting, “wie letzte Nacht im Traum im Umarmen des Kindes – das zugleich auch mein toter Bruder war –, und das ausrief: ‘Mein Vater!’” (VB 367). This is connected with another attempt to determine what constitutes one’s self. It is the result of an intense self-questioning, which makes it clear that the writer is aware that, despite his resolute self-establishment, he is still dependent on the judgment of others. A dream notation expresses this: “Wieder einmal wurde über mich abgestimmt, und ich band mir die Augen zu, um nicht zu sehen, wer für mich und wer gegen mich stimmte” (VB 240). That a fundamental psychogrammatic fixation comes into play here confirms the lifelong phantasm, also recorded in this Journal, of the fundamental difference between men and women (VB 151). It is taken up in the substructure of “[die] elf Gebote” with the phrase “[das] Begehren des Begehrens des anderen”, which follows the psychoanalytic approach of Jacques Lacan. For the author of the Journal, the fundamental question that determines his own socialization derives from here: “Wer oder was ist ‘der andere’?” (VB 421). From this ending, all Journals can be read as a game of questions that circles the conditions of one’s own life in ever new approaches.

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9.1 The Narrator’s Double History: Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. Ein Märchen aus den neuen Zeiten (1994) The text, written in 1994, forms a central mediating link between Handke’s fictional texts and the author’s authentic notes. It is linked to both in multiple and complex ways. On the one hand, the text autobiographically reconstructs a phase of the author’s life and at the same time, it opens perspectives on the fictional work: It provides clues to the genesis of some of the texts and explicitly incorporates not just a few of their guiding words. Second, by the fact that the I who speaks in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay) bears traits of both the author and his characters. The I speaking there can be compared to the first-person narrator of Proust’s Á la Recherche du temps perdu, who is also intertwined with his author. Proust paraphrases this fact with the words: “qui dit je mais que je ne suis pas toujours” (Proust 1963, 61; Keller 1991, 207  f.). However, because Handke’s first-­ person narrator Keuschnig bears the name of the character in another text, the relationship between fiction and reality, author and character, takes on a further dimension; it points into the author’s work history and intertwines a biographical and an intellectual phase of development so closely that one has spoken of “Erzählen in Echtzeit” (Honold 2017, 400). This work-historical contouring gives the narrative concept of autofiction, the deliberate interweaving of factual and fictional narration that characterizes this text, its particularity (Wagner-Egelhaaf 2006, 358). The demarcation between Handke the narrator, the author in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, and the figures of Handke’s work, who appear in altered form in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, is playfully transgressed again and again in the narrative. The figure of the doppelgänger, with which Handke inscribes himself in his texts, has therefore been deciphered with good reason as a central configuration of all his texts (Müller 2017). The reporter in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht even shares the central experience of an epiphany with the novel character Keuschnig (MJN 252). This © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_9

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distinguishes him from other characters, such as the reporter’s son, who bears the name of another of Handke’s novel characters. Valentin has always represented one side of his author in Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming), but now he is given a different story that relates him to his real inventor in a new way in the mode of fiction. Thus, at every point in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, life story, work story, and fiction are intricately intertwined. For the reading of the text, it follows that the reconstruction of the authentic from the fictional cannot be valid unless, at the same time, the fictional is seen as an element that models the author’s real experience. What is presented as the author’s search, his movement in space, and the places where he lives is never solely a reflection of reality but is always at the same time the result of writing attempts, writing movements, and imaginary constructions of space. In retrospect, it becomes clear that, precisely in this respect, Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht is not merely a preliminary sketch of the poetology of narrative unfolded in Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos) but can also be read as a parallel text to this fictional sketch. The central theme of the narrative, which it connects to the later text, is presented from the perspective of a biographical constellation and a personal requirement at the same time. Therefore, the text, which is presented in the form of a self-discovery and self-determination, is not only linked to an exact date, the year 1994, which corresponds to its actual appearance, but also to the description of a writing crisis of the author.

The Autobiographical Inscription The text describes a process of self-alienation by the protagonist at the age of 56, which comes over the narrator as a traumatic experience of transformation (MJN 11). This becomes the signature of an epoch of life characterized by a daily to and from between “Ausweglosigkeit und seelenruhigem Weitermachen” (MJN 12), a falling-out-of-time (MJN 17). It makes the narrator, who is gripped by fear of failure, wait for a second, a “neue Verwandlung” (MJN 13) that will enable him to write again. The motto from the Letter of James 1:22, which precedes the text, aims at this: “werdet aber Täter des Wortes und nicht bloß Hörer”. Unlike the later text on Der Bildverlust, however, this no longer requires movement in space. The intervention “in meine Zeit” (MJN 22) does not require a journey here, travelling has been used up in this phase, a clear correspondence to Handke’s life-historical situation at this time. It certainly corresponds to the return to Europe described in Langsame Heimkehr. In contrast to the return to the precepts of tradition narrated there, however, the narrator of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, not unlike his inventor, consciously wants to place himself spatially in an offside position that allows him an alienating view of social reality and intellectual discourse. He searches for a “Niemandsland” (MJN 27), which he finally finds, like Handke himself, in Chaville, in a small town outside Paris. In any case, he is fascinated by the outside of the suburbs, drawn “hinaus in diese Nichtigkeit” (MJN 272), fully after a trip to the center of Paris, the

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“Weltstadt-Dinge” cease to be important to him. Because life there is experienced as a “Ortsschwund, oder Raumentzug” (MJN 291) and as “Entdinglichung” (MJN 291), the decision for a life in the suburbs represents an almost existential counter-­ design. Moreover, the perception of social and political reality challenges a poetic counter-concept. This demarcation also shows itself externally. The house chosen is quite different from what everyone else wants (MJN 295). Similarly, entering the outskirts of the city opens a new sphere that is defining for the narrator because he alone can subject it to his perspective. This is all the more necessary because the external reality of France opposes his individual life plan, which he names quite aggressively: Nichts verständlicher, als endgültig aufzugeben, mit der Feststellung, in diesem Land, gelichtet von der Aufklärung, zusammengestutzt von der Vernunft, durchgeplant und vereinheitlicht von der Grammatik, sei kein Platz für einen Wald; die unveränderten Geräusche der Zivilisation, der Autos, der Eisenbahnen, der Hubschrauber in dem Restwald scheinen das zu bestätigen. (MJN 326)

Against this backdrop, the contours of the poetic counter-draft that is to make writing possible again become clear. It is related to the corresponding reflections that are outsourced to the stories of the friends and to those of the son. The reporter searches for that which has been buried by the modern world; above all, he wants to construct his own pictorial worlds from it. It is no coincidence that the keyword ‘Bildverlust’ is mentioned for the first time shortly before this, but at this point it only describes one of the aspects that the later text – Handke explicitly opposes the designation as a novel – will carry out with this title (Schwagerle/Kastberger 2009, 30). The ‘Bildverlust’ that accompanies the journey into the ‘Niemandsbucht’ is the loss of an idea, an image of the other that one carries within oneself. The fact that this can lead to a profound alienation, especially between partners, is demonstrated by the relationship described between the reporter and the ‘Katalanin’, the woman Ana. The way to the no man’s land is also the conscious rejection of too much closeness in relationships with her. A conscious distance from others also determines the relationship to the son Valentin. The narrator describes the geographical coordinates of this place for his new self-foundation spatially as a “Bucht” (MJN 78) in which the “Nacht des Erzählens” (MJN 80) can occur. In it, individual elements of reality are assembled into a whole without the need for overview. On the one hand, the principle “Fragmentarisch erleben, ganzheitlich erzählen” (MJN 73) applies; on the other hand, it is the imagination that makes a holistic perception possible. The way into the bay is at the same time the attempt to get back into narration, a life program that can only be realized as a writing program. Even beyond this, the text gives life-historical data of the narrator Keuschnig that coincide with those of his inventor Handke. Like the latter, he has returned to Europe and the images of the foreign disappear, overlaid by present experiences, the encounter with a minister (MJN 128) as the representative of the “schimärischen Welt” (MJN 134), with a teacher, and finally with Filip Kobal, who appears at the same time as a character in the novel (MJN 148). Moreover, the statement on Serbia

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demanded by current politics makes one aware of a double alienation: towards one’s own people, caused by the long absence from the land of his birth, and towards the “Volk der Leser”, which is also based on the development of one’s own writing. The narrator of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht understands that he has written himself into an outsider position at this time (MJN 158). An essential prerequisite for his new project of writing is that it is not only controlled by present perceptions, but also by memories that relate to the narrator’s origins. They make images appear that characterize the author Handke and that the fictional author will also name in Der Bildverlust. Often these memory images appear as “Durchblicke”/ “vistas”, into civilization or nature described in the text. An example of this is given when, in a description of nature in the Bay of No Man, in particular the hanging gardens, the narrator describes a visit to church in a Russian chapel, which immediately reminds him of the Slovenian Rinkolach, the neighbouring village of Griffen. The liturgical chants in this chapel do not simply bring back his childhood (MJN 967) but make him feel human and in a community with others (MJN 968). The mass promises him peace before he mingles again with “die Heiden” outside, “von denen ich dann […] bald wieder selber einer war” (MJN 969). Finally, the reference to the apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians makes the narrator perceive the chapel as a “Haus” that gives him security. The associated memories of the Slovenian of his youth move him again and again to “pick up freedom” in the chapel (MJN 968). It is characteristic of Handke’s writing that the description of this religious experience, which is to be taken quite seriously, plays over into another register. A reflection by the narrator on the act of consecration at mass makes this clear. He points out that in the Orthodox Church this is initialized by the priest’s words of invocation, whereas the Catholic rite relies on a “Verwandeln allein durch Erzählen” (MJN 970). This very formula can be read in two ways. Not only can it be applied to the religious rite, but it is also a central idea that determines all of Handke’s reflections on the capacity of narration. At the same time, it is a counter-design to the experience of the political world. The doubly connoted experience of transformation responds to the life-historical experience of many changes of place, which correspond to different areas of life and social realities (MJN 979 f.). Above all, however, it opposes the contemporary world determined by war and violence. Its contours are described by the figure of the reader, who in some respects becomes an alter ego of the narrator in the text and who bears the name Wilhelm in a double reference to Handke and to literary tradition. He is confronted with the “Binnenblitzkrieg” (MJN 928) in Germany, but he, like the narrator, is also able to experience a different order of things by finding his way back to simply looking and observing (MJN 927). The prerequisite for this is that Germany is freed from the opinion-makers’ “Hirnschwellensprache” and that the former enemy did not find any more “Gaffer” for his “Wortspektakel” (MJN 929). Not unlike Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire), this desire aims for a different Germany (LSV 98). Like the narrator, the reader finds his security in the fact that in his encounter with books an understanding of himself and of the reality of his life sets in, and that what seemed lost returns: the literary

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tradition, Goethe, Grimm, Novalis, Mörike, August Sander. The power of these texts produces a “Dazwischenfunken” that enables the experience of a “Zwischenzeit” (MJN 931). Not coincidentally, this account combines images that are at once religious and poetic in connotation: palm fronds, an apple tree, and the pond of Wilhelm’s “Jugendgewässer” (MJN 932). In a conversation with the publisher, the autofictional inscription of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht is addressed, for the publisher, despite his misgivings, and he expresses hope that the book might find readers because, according to the author, “ich es sei”. However, the critical interlocutor also points out that the narrator is still not “fertig mit [sich] selber” (MJN 982). This very fact seems to confirm his writing style as characterized in the text. This does not itself create linear connections but subordinates itself to the “Zeitschwellen” according to which the passing of the year changes nature (MJN 435, 983 f.; Honold 2017, 580). At one point, moreover, the narrator speaks of wanting to take the present with the palms (MJN 985). Because all perceived images also mark moments in time, however, there are “ständige Doppelbilder auf [seiner] Netzhaut” that correspond to the superimposition of palm fans (MJN 986). The narrative, which derives its power from perception, provides security, but it never constitutes the ego as a stable entity, but must create it anew each time; it is not by chance that the metaphor of getting lost becomes central (MJN 990). This situation also characterizes the narrator’s storytelling in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht as a whole. The stringency of the autobiographical inscription is broken throughout, the narrative is interspersed with flashbacks and diegetic reflections, while at the same time it sketches out different tableaus that are not always coherently connected. Moreover, the narrator’s perspective is influenced by the fact that other narrators appear, and their stories are linked only selectively, namely at the last joint meeting and telling.

The Mode of Narration In the passages of the text that refer to the presuppositions, conditions, and idiosyncrasies of narrative, the text of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht combines autofictional with intertextual literary references to other texts by Handke. It is not by chance that he chooses as an example that the language of the fictional text can also be seen as a closed autoreferential system like the language of law. In doing so, he aligns himself with ideas of the early author Handke (MJN 212). This conception of language as an order-creating element in the chaos of things sketches out what literary language must develop (MJN 217). It is necessary, as the author notes: “umschreibend, in Distanz zu der Sache, mit einem eingeschränkten Bestand von Begriffen [zu arbeiten], so daß die Wörtermyriaden, die zuvor vielleicht am meisten zu meiner Sprachenverwirrung beigetragen hatten, gar nicht erst in Betracht kamen” (MJN 212). The second prerequisite of this narrative program is intense visual perception, which can be combined with other sensory experiences. An example of this is a cherry tree in an enclosed garden (MJN 282), which does not alone evoke the

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memory of another, publicly accessible cherry tree in the village of Rinkolach, the place back home. The narrator also climbs it and then repeats what he also experienced as a child. Because he now picks the cherries with his lips, as he had done in his childhood, his visual perception is combined with tactile and olfactory sensations that occur and are remembered at the same time (MJN 285). With good reasons, one can compare this synesthetic perception with the madeleine episode with which the narrative of Proust’s Marcel begins (Proust PL1, 46 f.). This notion is later extended. In a crisis moment of his perception, when even the peacefulness of the phenomena only causes him to choke (MJN 397), the narrator achieves renewed self-control by not seeing his text as a fragment, but as a whole whose coherence can be established by his gaze alone: “Es war mein Blick, der bewirkte, dass es so war”, only in this way an image of the world can emerge that opposes the chimera (MJN 399). Unlike Proust’s Marcel, however, for whom narrative is grounded in a sensory experience that opens memories, Handke’s narrator has a nameable experience beyond that, which occurs like an awakening experience. Faced with the challenge of turning the filled notebooks into a text (MJN 376), the writer is confronted with something that he himself finds difficult to classify. He calls it “[das] Vorhandene” but “Unantastbare” in himself, which is then described by others, here no doubt responding to literary criticism focusing on the author Handke’s writing, as an “erzählendes Gebet” and he agrees with this term without understanding it literally, as his “Religion” (MJN 377). In the foreground of this reflection on narrative is the controlled use of language, which, however, can be related more to the earlier texts of the author Handke. Writing establishes for him a “Vertrauen, ein ganz unerhörtes, wie noch kein Mal, in die Wörter, in mich, in die Welt”. Once he has begun, he looks forward to the “Einmannexpedition” that follows (MJN 377). The enterprise of writing is now vividly before him; it is about nothing other than the “Erzählen von Vorgängen, friedlichen, die schon das Ganze und insgesamt am Ende vielleicht das Ereignis wären” (MJN 380). It wants to perform a representation of the “Fülle der Welt” (MJN 380) that he has already experienced in the suburb. Therefore, he does not consider the reaction of possible readers and for this very reason feels a “neuartige Freiheit” (MJN 382). Instead of his forgotten body he perceives “eine Sinnlichkeit mir lieb, indem sie da war, ohne irgendwo hinzuwollen” (MJN 383). This writing fantasy is linked to an intermedial fantasy not unlike later in Der Bildverlust. The narrator sees a cinema screen on which letters appear in letters; the next morning he begins to write. What he does is reassuring primarily because it is visually perceptible, because it appears as a “Schrift-Bild” (MJN 392). The author, speaking of himself in the words of the narrator at this point, concentrates on looking at nature and hopes that this image of the world will never again change into a “Schimäre” (MJN 399). At the same time, he is aware that critics will not readily accept this very depiction, which is similar to Handke’s presentation of antediluvian forms in Langsame Heimkehr; in any case, they have already asked the cynical question “ob auf die Knie zu fallen […] eine geeignete Haltung zum Denken sei” (MJN 405).

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But for the narrator, as for Handke himself, all narration begins, at first, completely without any specific expectations, with mere watching. This is the “einzig mir mögliche Tat” in opposition to the world of events, of war, and it is possible only from a constructed distance. It is not by chance that the windowsill in the Hotel des voyageurs now reminds him of the one in the house in Rinkolach (MJN 692). It is precisely in this way that writing arises solely from an “Augenmerk für die Außenwelt”; it can take the playful and light form of mere notetaking and need not produce precisely a Paris, America, or Arctic book. For this reason, in particular, the narrator recalls an old formula, “Greif ein mit deinem Zuschauen!!” (MJN 693 f.). It is a writing programme of self-restraint that follows Handke’s immanent poetology in its basic features. In it, the only thing that matters is to achieve originality; it is the formula for writing down, which in the end becomes a narrative. For its success, neither discursive or scientific knowledge nor an “Augenblickswunder” (MJN 696) is necessary. However, this program of recording that Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht develops needs a reference to the life of the narrator himself. It demands that the writer, if he does not want to fail, “wechselweise selber hineinspiel[t]” in order to give his cause “[die] nötige Blöße” (MJN 699). This decision, which results in an autofictional characterization of the writing, is a conscious counter-draft to the texts that require wars, odysseys, or other catastrophes as an occasion for writing, because the writing has used itself up and can no longer create a context out of itself. The narrator does not want to go down this path. He succinctly formulates: “ich will es anders” (MJN 700). At the same time, he self-critically remarks that, even in the place of the No Man’s Bay he has temporarily forgotten that his real faculty is imagination, but that he has shifted back to judging and assessing (MJN 701). He is all the more conscious of the requirement that his writing now necessitates a decisive “Zurück zu der ersten Idee des reinen Augenzeuge-Seins [das] ““Vergnügen des Wahrnehmens” must again be possible. Faced with the difficulty of unfolding a narrative from immediacy that is free from the “Erzählzwang”, to report stories (MJN 702), the author does initially feel that he is “badly imitating” (“nachstümpert”) (MJN 704). But then he realizes that his first transformation, which made him fundamentally doubt his ability to write, had its reason in the fact that he doubted the possibility of being able to discover a new story every time he writes something down. Now he wants to come to achieve a narration which is “erfinderisch […] ohne ein spezielles Erfinden” (MJN 705). This outlines the writing program that predominates in later texts and that is implemented in Der Bildverlust as the novel of narration. The project can succeed in describing perceptions that arise during walks through nature. For this very reason, Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht is both the place of a self-chosen distance and alienation from the rest of the world and the ideal place where writing can re-­ establish itself according to its own law.

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The “Niemandsbucht” as a Space for Storytelling The perception of the landscape surroundings as a bay relates to the program of the reduction of place and time, as well as the restriction to a limited section of reality. In this, small natural spaces open up, whose description is reminiscent of Paul Klee’s Garden pictures (Fig. 9.1) (MJN 712). The retreat into nature and landscape corresponds to a retreat into the realm of the secret, into the house, which is increasingly perceived as a space that must be kept free of everything else. This increasingly applies even to social relationships; quite deliberately, the narrator also socially plays a “Spiel des Verlorengehens” (MJN 729). World history remains resolutely excluded; the author does not succeed in transforming it into images through writing. At best, this is possible in dreams, when the time of the action is a “jeweils […] vergangene, beinah schon legendäre” one (MJN 735) into which the narrator fantasizes (MJN 736). This demarcation corresponds to a spatial one. The bay is perceived as a district with boundaries; one of the most obvious boundaries in relation to other spaces is the point where two roads leading from Paris to Versailles meet; it is a place that is also officially called “Pointe”. A writing fantasy emerges directly from this spatial

Fig. 9.1  Paul Klee (1879–1940): Erinnerung an einen Garten, 1914. (Düsseldorf, Art Collection of North Rhine-Westphalia, © akg-images/picture alliance)

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fantasy. To the extent that the writer thinks of changing places as belonging to the bay, his “Schreibfeld” (MJN 750) also changes. He has an image of the area in mind, which, however, can also “umspringen” at any time. It is in the alternation of these spatial images, experienced during wanderings, that the fantasies that produce and model the writing emerge. At the same time, the life circle of the bay refers to childhood memories, which, unlike images remembered later, were never directed towards exotic places, succinctly saying: “Die Weiße Stadt ist nichts für mich” (MJN 770). At the same time, the emergence of fantasy is described like a spatial perception. Only the “Zwischenraumstaffeln” allow images of childhood to emerge (MJN 771). emphasized by the buildings of this area. The different houses of the Parisian suburbs, for which the term pavilion has been introduced (MJN 774), remind the author of his homeland; he has the impression that the people who live in them are “Kleinhäusler”, or, here he falls back directly on his memories of youth, “Keuschler” (MJN 776). Like the remembered ones, however, the presently perceived images are threatened. The fratricidal wars of the present begin, in which even birth brothers fight each other, and the “1997” wars in Germany, the disputes about the Balkans (MJN 782 f.). Already before this outbreak of violence in the immediate neighbourhood has been indicated. Not only does an alienation from the neighbours set in, but they also appear aggressive through the noise they produce with their machines and the intensity with which they begin to close the spaces between them through construction measures, blocking the free vistas with “Abräume[n]” (MJN 804). The protest against this, presented somewhat curiously by the narrator holding up a pencil as his tool to the noisy machines of the neighbours, remains ineffective (MJN 810). Against this background of aggression, violence and war, the narrator’s observations of animals and nature take on a special significance. They are counter-images to the violence outside and at the same time attempts to perceive the supposedly self-evident in a new way. It is precisely at this point that the narrator Keuschnig adopts the perspective of the earlier novel character Keuschnig. Like the latter, he asks himself the question, “Wer sagt denn, dass die Welt schon entdeckt ist?” (MJN 816) and attempts to connect new perceptions and writing attitudes in each newly determined writing location, but always amidst the presently present nature of his ‘Niemandsbucht’. However, the restriction to a few writing locations and immediate perception also opens a tension between external and internal perceptions. A “Durcheinanderschöpfung” occurs, which allows the “panische Welt” to emerge “hinter der üblichen, der brüchigen, schimärischen” (MJN 828). This panic-stricken world leads to a slowing down of perception (MJN 828) in which the details stand out. It is possible only if the narrator keeps away from the actual life in the ‘no man’s bay’ during his writing. His self-chosen no man’s bay in nature that allows this therefore appears as an asylum (MJN 848). His new perception of details is directed to objects of civilization and art at the same time, to the urinal at the Pont Mirabeau as well as to the severed head of the apostle John, on which the narrator believes he perceives the whole planet (MJN 852). Obviously, his self-restraint enables him to think in images (MJN 856), which also allows glimpses into time. The narrator perceives his Catalan wife Ana in different contexts

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while making references to his own life story, such as the staircase in his brother’s village house. Of course, this is at once a reminiscence of Handke’s text of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (LSV 70) and a foreshadowing of the citation of the Alexius legend in Die Morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night) and Die Obstdiebin (The Fruit Thief). In this way, too, a fantasy of origin is mobilized that is linked to the theme of writing. Even the child-writing of Valentin is repeated in his own writing and connects with the theme of the stammering narrator who subscribes to a “Lalein” that alone puts into law the things of nature and not his own; it is an absorption of the immanent poetology of Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across) (MJN 863; CS 231). The narrator’s mushroom-hunting, which bears no resemblance to the searching techniques of search parties, thus takes on its special significance (MJN 865–892). The descriptions of nature associated with it also point beyond detailed description to the metaphorical complex that surrounds the purpose of writing. For they require the particular gaze which loses “Ferne” (MJN 886) and which stands out alongside everything that happens: “Abseits zu suchen war auch: im Abseits der Zeit” (MJN 890).

The Stories of Storytelling: Friends and Storytellers From the beginning, the narrator’s attempt to “sich bildsam zu halten” (MJN 894) is supplemented by perceptions that arise from errors and deceptions of the eye. The significance of the stories communicated to him is that they recount these fallacies repeatedly. The motif of the telescope, which the narrator uses to point to the distant vision made possible for him by the communication of others (MJN 909), therefore takes on yet another meaning. It can also be understood in reverse in the sense of psychic “telescoping”, which makes possible a particular form of indirect narration. The narrator’s narrative only becomes a whole story through the overlapping of his own socialization story and the stories of his friends, thus creating a new story. An example of this is the story of Helena, whom the narrator met in Greece. This interplay of individual and collective narration foreshadows what is also a prerequisite of narration in Der Bildverlust: social interaction based on listening, communal narration, and a conversation that is fundamentally different from public discourse. In Der Bildverlust, the fictional narrator explicitly contrasts “[das] inständigste Zwiegespräch” with the word dialogue, which he evaluates as merely another name for a publicly conducted monologue (BV 139). As in this later text, the various other narrators in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht are not characters who possess individual psychologies; rather, their typification leads them to act only as schemata of characters who make different narrative designs recognizable. The totality of the stories constructed in this way, which are attributed as in a patchwork to a singer, a painter, a reader, a friend, an architect and carpenter, and finally a priest, repeats and specifies the experiences of the fictional narrator and at the same time reveals the contours of his narrative program. The story of the son assigned to these narratives furthermore unfolds life-historical references in recourse

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to the story of the narrator and father. In this way, characteristics of the narrator and his inventor are undoubtedly revealed at the same time. What is also significant here, as in the later novel Der Bildverlust, is that validity can obviously only be attained by what is told in the form of a story; the different perceptions and descriptions are not named but traced in the course of a movement. The singer’s story, which is the first to be communicated, circles Handke’s central notion of the moment of particular perception as a precondition for narration. For the singer, this arises from his “Sterbensoffenheit” (MJN 441), which enables him, for example, to see a “Zehntelsekunde der so genannten Vorzeit” at a gravesite (MJN 445). Moreover, as he walks through Scotland, present and remembered images overlap; he compares his bus journey to the boat voyage of Plato’s Critias; he recalls Hitchcock’s film The 39 Steps (MJN 455; Hitchcock 1935) or other places such as the bus station in Cairo. He also thinks of song lyrics he himself sang when he “so wie ein andrer im Bild, im Lied war” (MJN 457). His melancholy remark that no one needs his song anymore, no doubt a self-critical reflection of its inventor, in the end refers him only to himself. From this, too, follows a remark that goes beyond his story: “Alles, was ich bisher getan habe und noch tun werde, gehört mir und niemandem” (MJN 461). In addition, the Singer’s story identifies two other areas of significance in his inventor’s writing: The constant recollection of his own origins in a limited rural area, which occurs in small scenes (MJN 467), and the willingness to engage in a game of “Verlorengehen” (MJN 471) during his wanderings. It is precisely from this overlapping of authentic memory, present perception, fantasy, and dream that the self-assurance that finds expression in the formula “Ich bin mit meinem Lied” emerges (MJN 472). The reader’s story also tells of a journey; he undertakes it in order to find himself, because his whole life up to now has been determined by “Aussichtslosigkeit” (MJN 478). In the course of the journey, like the protagonist of Langsame Heimkehr, he repeatedly perceives geological formations that evoke fantasy images in him; in a simple pond, for example, he sees an open world in his country for the first time (MJN 479). Such vistas open up peculiar doublings. There are reminiscences of literary texts that the reader imagines in the landscape. In the snow, memories of Nibelungenlied, Parzival, Der Grüne Heinrich, Der Nachsommer, but also Die Wahlverwandtschaften and Wilhelm Meister arise. As in Handke’s work and in clear reference to Langsame Heimkehr, the “Epos von morgen” is to emerge from the memory of these texts. This aims at a cultural referencing and makes it possible to refrain from a “gewissen Deutschland” and entschieden so tun, als gäbe es dieses gar nicht, dagegen das Geschehen nicht mehr ansiedeln in einem einzelgängerisch ausgedachten Idealland, sondern eben in jenem weltweiten Deutschland, unter Verwendung von noch und noch deutschen Sachen und Ortsnamen, den wenigen unschuldig gebliebenen gleichwie den belasteten, gerade diesen! (MJN 483)

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In this reflection, which arises during his tour of Germany, the memory of the reader’s character is combined with biographical references to the author Handke. There is talk of being half-German, of renouncing his father, of wanting to keep away from his fatherland (MJN 486). The perspective figures of the narrator Keuschnig and the reader recognizably reproduce the ambivalent attitude of the author Handke towards his father, which is later retold in Die Morawische Nacht. Here it initially opens up two different perspectives. The reader reproaches the narrator for not being able to produce a “Umschwungbuch”, an undertaking that even Hölderlin had not succeeded in (MJN 487), after his life-historical experiences. But while he follows the reader’s journey through Germany in his thoughts, he nevertheless feels “herausgehoben in eine unschuldigere, rein augenblickshafte Gegenwart” (MJN 490), although the Germans practice “ihr heiliges Töten, am Vater Rhein oder auf den Elysischen Gefilden” and feel themselves to be “[die] legitimen neuen Hellenen” (MJN 488). The agreement between the two goes so far that the narrator is convinced that the reader can also understand his earlier murder plan against his father, which explicitly does not have its reason in his involvement in German history. Rather, the narrator exculpates his father, who may have been one of the perpetrators “seiner Rolle nach [aber dabei]” “nicht anders unernst gewesen sein [konnte] als bei allem sonst” (MJN 496). Thus, the narrator’s unreservedly intense orientation towards his father, who is the closest to his heart. His “Hinauf-Denken von tief unten, wie es einzig von einem Sohn, einem des Vaters bedürftigen, hat kommen können” (MJN 498), is combined with the attempt to discover another Germany in reading. In a symbolic scene, he reads Cervantes’ Novelas ejemplares together with a policewoman during a football match, and this erotically charged reading scene awakens in him the idea that there is still a Germany that can be kissed awake. Lapidary it says finally: “Der Gedanke war so sehr Bild, daß er an ihn glaubte” (MJN 506). The painter’s subsequent story, which describes a journey through Spain, is based on the leitmotif of “Ferne” (MJN 510), which links different visual perceptions, external and internal, oppressive, and reassuring. From the interplay of these images arises the task of painting: the “Verwandlung” or the “Wiedergabe durch die Verwandlung” (MJN 514), this is also directed towards “[die] Geschichten der Schwärze im äußersten Hintergrund”. Their movement seemed to come “von ihm höchstselbst” (MJN 512). From this perspective, the word “Fernesehen” becomes a metaphor for the poeticizing gaze attributed to this artist (MJN 517). In this, the latter is as capable of a “Wiedergabe durch die Verwandlung [und] schwungvolle[.] Entstellungen” (MJN 514 f.) as he is of self-restraint. Paul Klee’s dictum “Die Ferne und ich sind eins, ich bin Maler” (MJN 514) becomes his guiding formula, and it is no coincidence that Klee’s Garden pictures, which show only a limited space but suggest a wider view beyond the garden walls and their doors, obviously provide a model for the painterly union of distance and proximity (MJN 516; Klee 1914). It is no coincidence that this painter also approaches the medium of film, whose functional law as a cool media requires an interaction between the viewer and his object in order to produce an imaginary, in the diction of the text a “Entrückung” (MJN 517). The painter’s paintings, all with the same title “La vega negra”, the

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black floodplain, are meant to enact a movement of the gaze that makes the beholders capable of “Betrachten” (MJN 519). From the movement of the gaze, which unites proximity and distance, a new wholeness finally emerges: “Da ruht die Welt!” (MJN 518), the painter comments on this totalizing effect. The painter’s path to film, which leads him to film William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (MJN 524), results in two further changes in his perception. They, too, are attributable to the design of the poetic gaze toward which all interpolated narratives converge. Confronted with the medium of film, also referred to as “Lichtspiel” in a German analytic text (Münsterberg 1916), the painter becomes attentive to light, especially of the light of the “Gegend hinter dem Spiegel”, as the film’s is titled (MJN 526). Because of the failure of his film, he also suffers a “Verlust der Ferne” (MJN 531), which he perceives as a loss of image: “ohne jenes Gespür der Ferne [konnte er] nicht mehr malen – seine Farbe nirgendwohin auf den Weg schicken” (MJN 533). This already decisively foreshadows a constellation of Der Bildverlust which the very disappearance of familiar images gives rise to a construction of new visual worlds. Narrative worlds they are in the later text, but here they are other visual worlds that emerge from a concentration on detail. But they do not lead to designs such as those produced by Cézanne’s intense contemplation of the Sainte-­ Victoire, which Handke describes in detail in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. The new painting, to which the painter alone can now aspire, adapts itself to nature itself, becomes a “Felsmalerei” that no longer knows “weggesperrte Bilder” (MJN 537). Thus, the painter’s artistic development goes back behind tradition. It aims at an originality that is founded solely on the contemplation of nature; it is not by chance that at the end of this story of the painter there is the view into a “Scheinfenster” (MJN 540). In some respects, “Geschichte meiner Freundin” seems to exemplify the origin fantasy that the painter reflexively develops. In her case, this begins with her already outwardly disposing of all the “Schätze” she has variously come to own, usually natural objects such as a branch or a wooden mallet. Characterized as the “einzige Sorglose” (MJN 544), she at the same time never insists on what is her own. Moreover, the former beauty queen of Yugoslavia presents herself in a deliberately unprepossessing manner. On her journey, she repeatedly assumes new roles, sometimes appearing like a free-army woman, sometimes like a charcoal-burner’s wife, or “die dahinverirrte Vorhut des versprengten ‘Zirkus Morgenland’” (MJN 564). Her interest is directed solely to the unchanging and recurring. Among her “Fundstücke” is a stone inscribed with a fragment of Heraclitus: “Das Wesen eines jeden Tages [sei] ein und dasselbe” (MJN 542). In this way, she finds a special perception. Nothing in the world has “einen besonderen oder Eigen-Namen” for her anymore (MJN 546); however, she tries to rename everything she sees, using only names she invented herself “in der Form von Umschreibungen oder Bildern” (MJN 547). Her use of language refuses to be unambiguously denotative, which she sees as the unsettling thing that all writing produces (MJN 549). It is no accident that the narrator refers to the philosophical nominalist controversy in this context. For the friend, recorded writing is replaced by a visually perceived “Schrift der Erscheinungen”. This reveals itself to her, as it

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did to Friedrich Schiller, when she looks at landscapes, but also when she perceives the roofs of a city (Schiller NA-22, 273). Generic designations never count for her, but only subjective ones based on her own perception and experience. It is not “das Meer” that fascinates her, but the Turkish sea, which, through her own intense experience, becomes for her the paradigm for the word sea, “das Original” (MJN 551). Returning to her native city, the friend sketches “Karten imaginärer Landschaften” in an attic; even before that, on her journey, each place became a dot on a special “Weltkarte”, on which she leaves traces in her imagination. Therefore, according to her imagination, she was not allowed to make a misstep, lest she erase her “Zeichenschrift,” or violate her “Spurenziehen” (MJN 567). Through this deconstruction of space in the interplay of real and imaginary perception, a new experience of time is in turn established. “Eigenzeit” overlays numerical time and gives rise to a “Beispiel der reinen Gegenwart” (MJN 569) that is exclusively visually grounded. The present of perception becomes a guiding fantasy and a paradigm of poetic narrative itself, appearing in images that interrupt the linear unfolding of the narrative. Changing images and transitional images, comparable to cinematic cuts, establish scenes of pausing and observing. In doing so, the text shies away neither from the alienating nor the fairytale-like image. This charging of the everyday with meaning, which goes to the very limit of what can be written, connects the friend with the narrator and both with their inventor. When the woman squats down to do her needy business, in an instant moth have occupied the urine stain without a gap and watered themselves on it (MJN 574). In the end, she sees the sarcophagi of a sunken cemetery of antiquity, or petrified boats (MJN 576) in a cove under the water and a whole squadron of parachutists descending in the sky, while nearby she perceives wings of linden blossoms, “umzackt inzwischen von Fledermausschwärmen”. For the woman her happy day (MJN 577) is completed in this way, connected as it is in Der Bildverlust with the return home of the daughter she thought lost. At the same time, it provides the model of an aesthetic borderline experience, as Handke’s texts repeatedly represent (DJ 24). The story of the architect and carpenter also tells of a wandering through space, this time it is Japan. It can also lead to self-awareness, because the traveler is prepared “[sich] fruchtbar zu verirren” (MJN 579) and in this way to learn from himself (MJN 581). In this respect, the many conversations he has on his wanderings are of less importance than the unfinished houses he builds on an inherited plot of land (MJN 583) and the other constructions he places, unnoticed by others, in “versteckten Niemandsländern aller Erdteile”, only to camouflage them, following a memory of his Karst childhood, under heaps of rubble and soot (MJN 585). He himself describes his activity, which earns him nothing, as “Leerbauen”, “Erinnerungsbauen” and “Aufmerk-Bauen” (MJN 586). This results in a peculiar inversion of the central narrative constellation of Der Chinese des Schmerzes. The architect and carpenter construct his houses in backdrop-­like fragmentarity, while the protagonist of Der Chinese des Schmerzes strives to reconstruct the original houses from the contemplation of the thresholds. What both have in common, however, is that they move in the realm of imaginary constructions that open space for their imagination. Both activities simultaneously

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revolve around a fundamental ontological consideration of the philosopher Heidegger, because their imagination is directed towards places of dwelling and building that are suitable for being able to consider one’s own origin (Heidegger VO-2, 25). On the one hand, the architect and carpenter remembers a landscape of his birth above San Pelagio near Aurisina, close to the Yugoslavian border, and recognizes that this place has marked out a kind of ground plan for his life as well as for his profession (MJN 605). On the other hand, his buildings, created in the memory of the place of origin, refer to Roman architecture, the importance of which he will affirm for himself only later and back in Italy with the formula “Die Antike und ich sind eins” (MJN 609). His earlier idea of leaving behind “ein Tarn-Bauwerk nach seiner Art” in a Japanese no-man’s land (MJN 590) shows that neither the completion nor the functionality of his buildings is important to him, but only that they can evoke memories and fantasies at the same time. This creative handling of memories is countered by the experiences of places of security and the experiences of origin triggered by individual travel images. On the one hand, there is the description of a toilet hut, which traces the security in the privy of the parental farm and becomes the subject of a letter to the narrator, who here becomes recognizable as the author of Versuch über den stillen Ort (Essay on the Quite Place) (MJN 595). Second, the relationship with a woman with Mongolian face acquires significance. She develops from a speechless encounter and under her influence the architect now also begins to perceive the foreign world of the Japanese differently (MJN 603). The encounter with the Buddha of Kamakura, where he experiences a common weeping among the visitors, forms a momentous turning point (MJN 600). In terms of life history, however, one image now gains significance. It is the mask in a No-play that seems to show the architect “ein Selbstporträt”. It is, according to the corresponding legend, the face of a man who finds himself in an “Augenblickstraum” of his whole life and at the same time notices that conversely this whole life is itself such a dream (MJN 611). The text leaves no doubt that this epitome is so powerful precisely because it operates in the imaginary. In the architect, it first triggers a fantasy of wholeness that gives him the impression that “seine vielen Stimmen sich zusammengeschlossen [haben]”. Now he comes to believe that it is time for his building (MJN 612). While the wandering at the end only gives the sense of having been “noch überhaupt nirgendwo” (MJN 612), it is the imagination, not direct experience, that makes it possible “einzugreifen”. This figure of thought corresponds with a central writing fantasy of the author Handke (CS 25). The priest’s subsequent story is also centered by the theme of image and image loss. This wanderer’s reflection on Christian and secular imagery leads him to a concern for the relationship between scripture and image, biblical text, and visual religious symbolism. These reflections are juxtaposed with a clear and explicit examination of the Catholic official church, whose treatment of victims of rape and the behavior of individual priests are sharply criticized (MJN 616). Against this, the priest mobilizes spiritual experiences. They proceed from his memory of the frescoes and woodcarvings of an altar, which make him aware that

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he believes “vorbehaltlos und heiter” in the images of the Bible and that in them “life has appeared” to him. A “Bildverlust” is impossible for him (MJN 623). However, the question has always arisen for him in which relation the image stands to the word; he thinks here of the imageless neighboring village church, which had Job as its patron. In terms of life history, an experience is determining that is directly linked to a language that he equates with the biblical “Wort”. He remembers that his marriage to a woman seemed impossible to him because, on the occasion of his decision to become a farmer, the meaning of the word “Berufung” became clear to him for the first time. But he subsequently decides to become a priest, like many others, only finally in a second “Erscheinen” (MJN 627). Alongside this spiritual experience through the word, there is the effect of a picture of equal rank, which the priest now does not perceive in terms of what is depicted there, however, but on which he decodes a field of signs that acquires meaning for him alone. It is a secular, not a religious picture, namely Breughel’s Der dunkle Tag (The Dark Day), its correct title being Der düstere Tag (Fig. 9.2). It is one of the painter’s so-called “Weltlandschaften”. This in particular acquires significance not only for the story of the priest, but also for the other narratives of the wandering friends. For the world landscape is a composite landscape, it combines in one picture different motifs and scenes which do not necessarily belong to the same scenario depicted. It is an exact counterpart to the landscapes that Handke has

Fig. 9.2  Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30–1569): Der düstere Tag, 1565; from the series of six paintings of the Seasons. (Vienna, Museum of Art History, © akg-images/picture alliance)

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narrated and that he himself narrates again and again. In these, too, different pictorial worlds constantly overlap. For the priest’s experience of Breughel’s painting another point of view is of importance. He resolves the contrasts that the picture shows – ships wrecked in a storm, an inaccessible high mountain range and the area of peaceful village coexistence – into a field of signs to which he inscribes a symbolic connotation. Against the dark background of threatening nature and catastrophic events, he focuses his gaze on the only bright spot in the picture. It is a knife edge flashing in the gloom against the bright wall of a house still under construction. Threat and reassurance, the knife, and the house promising security stand directly next to each other, and it is precisely this tension that gives rise to an imagination in the priest that transcends the picture. He, searches the brightness of today’s dark day, which appears to him “jetzt in dem Rund eines Apfels […] jetzt im Oval eines Maiskolben” (MJN 629). It is striking that in this scene the priest orients himself exclusively to visual signals, while otherwise he overlooks many things. The immediacy of his visual perception is combined in his story with another holistic experience that he makes possible for his students. He moves from reading the text of the Bible to letting them read it for themselves. They then, he notes, no longer need the text “zusammenzubuchstabieren”, but can “gleich geläufig heraus[bringen]”, as if nothing about it were foreign to them; they find out “Satz für Satz den Nerv des Ganzen” (MJN 632). Against this background, the references to political events lose weight: the memory of the referendum of 1920, which is linked to a trip to Slovenia in the area north of the Drava, and the reference to the systematic eradication of Slavic, which can be observed in the cemetery (MJN 636). Instead, the priest’s narrative ends with an expressive description of a sermon in the church of Rinkolach, describing not only the preacher but also the pulpit, whose visible wooden structure makes it seem like a construction site in the midst of advanced civilization. Afterwards, as the preacher sits with his neighbors on their courtyard bench, he recalls not only his childhood in the night wind, but also a new German translation of the Bible that substitutes the word “Zuversicht” for the word “Hoffnung”. Not unlike the preceding narratives of the Wanderer, his story tells of the necessity of new worlds of images and language in order to be able to give the present a perspective. However, this is only conceivable as a process: In the night hour, the priest feels a “Morgenwerden” that at the same time terrifies him, for it is not simply a looming fulfillment but the return of a longing. At the end the question arises for him whether he needs a third “Erscheinen” (MJN 647). The story of the son, which follows the narratives of the friends, intensifies the relationship between the narrative of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht and the interpolated accounts in two ways. On the one hand, the view of the son, who bears the name of a character in Handke’s work, opens up a biographical line that points to the author Handke himself. Second, the text uses the example of the son to show the connection between poetic practice and aesthetic reflection that is characteristic of the author Handke. Linked to this is a motif that also determines the text of Der Bildverlust, the strangeness between parents and child. In Mein Jahr in der

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Niemandsbucht, the relationship between father and son is determined by the father’s strangeness and indifference towards the son. Conversely, the son’s life appears as an antithesis to that of the father. Basically, he differs from the latter in that he does not suffer from Austria or Germany (MJN 665). During his journey, it is also noticeable that he keeps away from everything Slavic (MJN 655), he perceives the Balkans as foreign (MJN 671), the immersion in this world as a loss of orientation, combined with the loss of any control of the outer appearance, it is a deliberately staged “Verkommen” (MJN 675). The son becomes free only when he leaves his father’s Yugoslavia (MJN 678) and crosses the border into Greece. In the church of Nikolaos Orfanos, he finally sees a fresco of which his father had already told him. The latter’s attention had been attracted by the fact that a certain moment of Christ’s resurrection is shown here, an episode in between the Entombment and the Annunciation. The first-person narrator of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht interprets this image as a new beginning for the world. But the son contradicts his perception, seeing above all “[den] weltraumschwarze[n] Himmel” (MJN 682) that defines the image. Following this impression, he interprets his journey as moving to a “Nirgendwo”, he feels he has had neither father, nor mother, nor really friendship, and he learns that he is “verloren, seit jeher” (MJN 683). The narrator-father realizes in the account of this image interpretation of the son, “dass von all meinen Leuten der, von dem ich am wenigsten wußte, mein Sohn war; ich wußte gar nichts von ihm” (MJN 683). On the other hand, there are similarities between the two. They relate equally to the theme of seeing; for example, the son enlightens the father that an afterimage of an object is only possible if it is not fixed (MJN 657). But here, too, there are crucial differences. Unlike for the father, no view of nature as landscape counts for the son; his “grundandere Anschauung” does not aim at the appearance itself, but beyond it at “deren Gesetzlichkeit” (MJN 660). Undoubtedly, this Sorger, not unlike the novel character of Valentin Sorger, is also an observer of “Schwellen” (MJN 661). A point of convergence between the father and son stories is then the son’s journey through Slovenia. The place of Piran takes on a special significance here (MJN 668), for it is there that the son becomes able to experience what happened to his father. He experiences a “Umschwung” of perception (MJN 672), which finally frees him from his “Ortsfremdheit” (MJN 673) and allows him to process everything he has seen by writing: In Ohrid, he begins to write his text on the varying greyness of winter trees, which is later awarded a prize (MJN 677). Thus, in the course of this story, in the interplay between the narrator’s account and the son’s perspective, not only is his mental disposition revealed, but experiences and perceptions are also communicated, as it were in counterpoint, which reveal facets of the first-person narrator that can at the same time be attributed to his inventor. As in Der Bildverlust, here too the author writes of himself by attributing a story to others.

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The Reconstruction of Identity The son’s story thus repeats in some respects the father’s and at the same time becomes its counterfactual. It parallels the father’s journey through the world, which ultimately leads to the bay in which his transformation becomes possible. At the same time, the son’s story concludes the reported stories of the friends, and only then does the actual story of the year in No Man’s Bay follow in Chapter IV.  It begins first with a sketch entitled “das Jahrzehnt” and then proceeds in descending line to the chapters “das Jahr” and “der Tag”. In this way, she adds a temporal sketch to the spatial pattern of returning home to the narrow and circumscribed; fundamentally, the narrative moves from the comprehensive and overarching to the detailed. In the end, space and time are shortened to the representation of the moment of narration. The interweaving of life story and work history, which is characteristic of Handke’s writing and occurs in the course of overt or fictional concealed self-­ reflection, characterizes Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht by opening up a view back to the beginnings of Handke’s authorship. “In den Büchern, die ich seit der Aufgabe meines Juristenberufes geschrieben habe, bin der Held mehr oder weniger ich selber. Wenn ich damit durchkam, dann gelang mir das nur, weil ich die Gestalt eines Buchs war”, the narrator expresses programmatically at the very beginning (MJN 42). His existence as a figure in a book is contrasted with the act of writing in reality. In writing alone, says the narrator, “konnte ich anders handeln, vor allem stetiger”. There I found my “Gleichmaß” (MJN 43). In life, on the other hand, “ist der mir gemäße Platz der eines Zuschauers, und im Schreiben will ich mich weniger als früher in Aktion setzen und vordringlich Chronist [sein]” (MJN 44). Nevertheless, this spectatorship is valued as a form of action, the decisive factor being that it opens a “Blick hinter mich” (MJN 46). Comparable looks to other contemporary and past fictional works pervade the entire novel of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire and Langsame Heimkehr are constantly present, while at the same time the contours of the text are sketched out by Der Bildverlust. Throughout, different time levels merge into one another. At the end, everything culminates in a scene of pure presence; it is the moment of the common narrative in which all the stories are linked together, and which is not coincidentally set off from the other plot and narrative strands under the heading “Der Tag” (MJN 991 ff.). Therefore, this scene can be seen as a narrated image of a basic figure of Handke’s poetic program: It is again the entry into another time. The fact that the motif of telling and listening together will also play a central role in Der Bildverlust attests to the significance of this constellation. The meeting with the friends takes place between Christmas and the New Year. It is modeled on an original situation in which, for a moment, for the moment “der Namen ledig” (MJN 994), the moment of creation arises and it follows after passages that describe how the narrator remains with himself and in the house in extreme concentration, with nothing leading him outside. Instead, glimpses into his garden repeatedly open individual spaces of memory for him; the reporting and

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describing seem like a journey through places and times, in which “[der] Gedanke [s]einer Herkunft” (MJN 1011) always plays a central role. At the end of the text, narration appears as a way of allowing prehistory and history, auto fictional construction and fictional narration to merge. To the extent that these levels of reference come to coincide, the narrator feels a new “Bereitschaft zur Schriftlichkeit” (MJN 1021). His “Durcheinanderdenken” is described as a standing aside that makes him a “Leser” who wants to read a book “welches die Welt neuweht” (MJN 1032). This reading does not rely solely on seeing and perceiving; it also requires a willingness to transform, the ability to maintain oneself “bildsam”; to borrow a word from Goethe. Any persistence must be avoided, because: “Die Nichtverwandelten sind an sich selbst zu Grunde gegangen” (MJN 1034). The last scene takes place in the dining room of the “Auberge des Echelles” in Porchefontaine, it is rather a non-place, surrounded by signs of civilization and in the midst of noise. Nevertheless, this place is detached from everyday life, from “[den] seltsamen Kriegen” of hikers against all cyclists, smokers against drinkers, letter writers against telephone operators, pig-fighters and war criminals (MJN 1050 f.). The friends gather for the hour of narration. They tell their different stories, but in the story of the cook, called “[der] kleinliche Prophet” (MJN 1058) a central prophecy is mentioned, which he once misunderstood (MJN 1060). He interpreted the voice from the thorn bush as a call to action on the one hand and to enter history on the other. But in truth, he now realizes, what matters is a re-creation of the world that makes the historical a fairy tale again. “Aus den beiden entzweiten Geschichten soll eine dritte werden” (MJN 1062). The redemption of humanity is only possible through oblivion and the only vision that has meaning is “die Versöhnung” (MJN 1063), it alone makes an end possible (MJN 1066). It is no coincidence that the singer who is now missing could begin his last song here (MJN 1067).

9.2 Reconstruction of Life: Die Morawische Nacht. Erzählung (2009) The text from 2009 responds to Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht from 1994 and Der Bildverlust from 2002. Both the concept of an autofiction in the first text, which derives from a close interplay between factual and fictional narrative, autobiographical and fictional textual elements, and the narrative-theoretical reflection from the second text are now brought together and linked in a new and almost playful way. In the process, it is striking that the conclusion of the narrative makes everything that was told before, the long journey through Europe and the friends’ banquet on a ship on the banks of the Morava, seem like a phantasmatic configuration that emerges not from the depiction of reality but solely from a fantasy vouched for by the narrative. A passage can be read as a foreshadowing of the conclusion of the text, in which the coordinates of space and time dissolve, in which the narrator informs us that the journey of the earlier author took place “in keiner Zeit” and adds by way of explanation that what actually counts in this travel story are “alle Zeiten […] miteinander,

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durcheinander, gegeneinander – parallele, gegenläufige, einander zuwiderlaufende, durchkreuzende” (MN 45). This description is complemented by a reflection on narrative itself. The poetological concept of “Erzählzeit”/“narrative time” is juxtaposed with the concepts of “Zählzeit”/“clock time” and “Erzählzwangzeit”/“time of compulsing narration”, which are also negotiated in Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst) and belong to Handke’s own poetology: They circumscribe different strategies for reproducing and linking life-historical sequences in such a way that they explain or correct each other. The fact that the end of the narrative seems to erase what the narrative had previously constructed consistently reflects the central problematic that the text as a whole encircles. Not unlike preceding and following texts, the narrative of Die Morawische Nacht is also centered by the theme of identity; at the same time, it makes clear that this identity, as a distinctive wholeness, can no longer be represented by an undisguised recollection or narration. Rather, it can only be reconstructed through a complex narrative play that responds to the fact that the traditional notion of distinctive identity is confronted at every point by the modern experience of the diffusion of identity. Thus, the text denies any unambiguity. The narrative arrangement alone makes this clear. On the one hand, not least by having several characters narrate together with the narrator, it circles around the identity of a character who is referred to as “[der] frühere Autor”, and at the same time it reveals that, as in a cinematic ‘morphing’, this is superimposed on the contours of another identity, that of the real author. However, because this never becomes recognizable, but only appears in different segments, the reader must first assemble it in a constructive and reconstructive manner (Müller 2017). In this way, the reader becomes a co-actor in a narrative game, whose role can be compared to that of a film viewer who, stimulated by the image sequences that the cuts of a film string together, mentally construct a coherence that the film itself never executes in detail. This demand on the reader intended by the text becomes clear in an almost incidental episode. At first glance, this episode describes a love affair, and yet at the same time it is a fantasy of the author’s work and writing, inscribed in the text, who designs not only his text but also his reader. The “frühere Autor” tells of how he found an “anderes Zeitmaß” with the woman who followed him from his journey to the boat, that they got “Augen füreinander” simultaneously. Thus, they finally became able to pass into “ein anderes System, […] von der einen Welt in eine zweite”. This happens at the moment when he thinks he perceives the woman as a reader of a book, as he had “immer erträumt […] in der Hand eines erträumten Lesers”. The significance of this image is linked to the reference to a cinematic presentation technique: The moment of this perception is focused with the fisheye lens of a film camera (MN 264 f.). In this text, however, the complexity of the described narrative strategy is also combined with a countervailing principle that reveals a decisive shift in emphasis compared to the author’s previous texts. The construction of narrative, to which the individual episodes as well as the entire text of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht are committed, is contrasted in Die Morawische Nacht with a reconstruction of life that

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is much more massive and detailed than in this text, not only because it reaches further back in terms of life history, but above all because it presents hitherto only hinted at or deliberately ciphered themes that structure Handke’s oeuvre, either in the form of undisguised reports and reflections by the narrator or in the mode of aesthetic transformation into an invented story. Following the narrative pattern of a round trip through Europe, touching the place of first writing, the father’s place of origin, the last place of residence of the mother and finally the villages of one’s own childhood, the text unfolds an examination of the father’s and mother’s world, it reconstructs the development of the former narrator into an author and the orientations associated with it. In addition, he gives an unsparing account of the author’s assessment by literary critics and public opinion, which presents itself in the mode of a barely coded self-criticism. Not least in the context of this account, the theme of the “Balkan” plays a special role because it is negotiated on several levels. It not only points to a controversial political discourse that Handke conducts explicitly as a public intellectual and covertly as an author, but at the same time it marks different strategies of a poetic transformation of the “bloß Wirklichen”, the factual and the political in Handke’s writing.

The Balkans as Theme and Metaphor: The Double Balkans The public discourse on Handke’s attitude towards Serbia and the Balkan war focused on a political question and almost completely obscured the fact that the author’s attack on the discourse conveyed by the media was not based solely on a political judgement, but also touched on a central life-historical foundation of Handke’s poetic strategies. The insight that the unbiased view of things that he claims as an author is in fact based on an imprint in the world of the child obviously takes on even more significance during the public debate than in his earlier texts. Therefore, even his politically readable statements are implicitly based on a defense of childhood and his own poetic design of the world at the same time. The increasingly formulaic use of the term “Balkan” is transformed into a metaphor that can have completely different fields of reference. On the one hand, it is associated with the memory of a childhood experience, which preserves names and images and at the same time produces the fantasies and very personal images that accompany the author throughout his life. On the other hand, the word ‘Balkan’ unfolds a political fantasy that makes the former multi-ethnic state of Yugoslavia a model for a tension-­ free coexistence of different ethnic groups, a backward-looking utopia that collapses in the Balkan War at the latest (Honold 2017, 394). The text Die Morawische Nacht, which already refers to the Balkans through its title alone, unfolds these two fields of reference in equal measure, but differently than previous texts. Decidedly different above all from Der Bildverlust, it separates the two levels of reference by clear boundary markers. In this way he puts the poetic and the political discourse equally in their place. At the same time, the boundaries between fiction, autofiction and poetic reflection are more clearly discernible in this text than in others. In addition to the task of construction, the reader is given the

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opportunity to decode the different text fields. This means that the reading must rely less on a linear reading than on a segmental deciphering. At the same time, the theme of the “Balkans” is directly linked to that of writing, for the narrative situation not only reveals references to other texts by Handke, but also reconstructs the place and conditions of writing. It is no coincidence that the boat, which bears the name Die Morawische Nacht, is referred to as a “Fluchtort”; it thus plays a role similar to that of the house in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht or the place in La Mancha in Der Bildverlust. At the same time, this place is associated with two names that recur as guiding metaphors and memory images in Handke’s late texts whenever there is talk of writing and the poetic imagination. One is Samarkand, the name for a place beyond history, and the other is the city of Numantia, the last stronghold of the Celtiberians against the Roman Empire. This narrative space is also a place of escape in both a historical and a political sense because it brings together people from Porodin and the neighbouring villages, inhabitants of an enclave that will be described in detail later. Moreover, the boat named Die Morawische Nacht bears the oversized flag of a long-sunken country, and by its inhabitants it is seen as the site of an “autoproklamierte Exterritorialität” (MN 35). In it, the narrator, the former author, calls listeners together to tell them his story, but often he gives the floor to one of their own, because some of them were themselves actors in the story being told (MN 31). This self-chosen exterritoriality is counteracted by the intensity of the images that the former author, accompanied by others, perceives on his first travel stop. His bus journey takes him not only to Porodin, but also beyond this place to an area where the villagers bury their surviving relatives after the space inside the village was no longer sufficient. Upon arriving at this burial site, his perception condenses into a flashing realization of the historical moment, for the graves of those who fled to the enclave and were buried there have been destroyed (MN 57). The text thus presents one of Handke’s typical reversals between external and internal perception (MN 77). Their peculiarity is that they are not only disruptive, but that they connect present perception with memories, thereby contouring them in terms of life history. The traveler becomes aware that the fellow travelers are displaced persons from this village who have travelled to the memory of the dead and mourn not only them but also the lost time when there was still an “Ein-Volk-Dorf” (MN 87). All they are left with is the silent encounter of those who once lived together, who now seem strangers to one another, though not immediately hostile. A single child from the “Feindvolk” reacts to the former acquaintances with a concealed wave (MN 94), but as they continue their journey through the enclave’s environs, the first attacks occur, the children throwing stones in an area where the old place names have been erased and replaced by new names in Cyrillic characters (MN 100). The outburst of anger with which the bus driver responds to this situation can undoubtedly be read as a meta-discourse by the author Handke that is inscribed in the text. He first names the underlying political situation, the detachment from the original state by an ethnic group who are aiming for autonomy. Furthermore, he evaluates this new order as an example of “de[n] moderne[n] Staat, den

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neumoderne[n]”, which is founded on a hatred that is inherited from generation to generation (MN 104). There is something to be said for the fact that the political stance this speaker claims for himself is in line with the political views of the author Handke, all the more because he refers to “Staatenlosigkeit” as his ideal and calls himself an Apache who, far from the world, is proud of his reservation (MN 106). It is an image that Kafka’s Amerika novel names in the figure of the “Negro” and that Ernst Jünger takes up with his leading figure of the “Waldgänger” (Neumann 1985, 61; Politzer 1965, 230; Jünger SW-7, 317, 349). Influenced by this attitude of fundamental distance, which the view from extraterritoriality makes possible, the traveler perceives the different borders he has to cross on the way to Belgrade. At the same time, his alienation from the political world releases poetic images and fantasies: political reflection and the precision of the aesthetic interfere. The earlier narrator’s farewell to a beautiful stranger is marked by a linden tree; he hears a woman singing a song from the deep Balkans (MN 112). At the same time, he has a wish to move away from the Balkan of border towns, “der tausend unsichtbaren, allesamt bösen und bitterfeindlichen Grenzen von Tal zu Tal, von Dorf zu Dorf, von Bach zu Bach, von Misthaufen zum Misthaufen” (MN 113 f.). He wishes to return to his houseboat on the Morava and to the “anderen Balkan” of his youthful memories. In doing so, he imagines a bridge as a point of possible return, transforming his perception into a fantasy beyond the now: “Die Inka sind nicht ausgestorben. Sursum corda!” (MN 116). But Handke’s text by no means stops at such transformations. Rather, the Balkan theme is taken up again and with a different intensity in the tenth section. While the political attitude of the real author Handke is problematized there in the fictional context, the text turns into a satire in places, for example when the narrator describes the strange deaths and fatal accidents of the last adherents of the idea of a large and cohesive Balkan country in another Europe. The few survivors of the old order meet in changing and secret places for so-called conferences. The last conference location, to which the wanderer also finally sets out, is in a sinkhole, the Delana Dolina above Trieste, in a karst from which the karst mountains in Yucatan and Minas Gerais also take their name. The conference takes place at a time when, in the author’s opinion, a new political conception of order, namely “Mitteleuropa” has gained importance. He himself, however, is of the opinion that in the name of this new concept of order everything Balkan, even the memory of it, is erased (MN 512 f.). After many of the supporters of the now apparently outdated Balkan idea have also died in the train of violent clashes, only three remain with the former author, besides him a former minister of justice of a very large country, who is no longer taken seriously by anyone (MN 517), and a former motorcycle racer from Japan, now a professor of Slavic literatures, who travels the Balkans every year after the death of her Yugoslav lover. They gather under a tree from which hung a rusty ship’s bell inscribed in both Latin and Cyrillic (MN 521). This satirical culmination is paralleled with the former author’s return to his ship as well as with his mental farewell to what he calls that Balkan “der diesen Namen verdiente”. It is – here previous poetic images of the text are cited – an area where

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memories and images of other areas, experiences and times come together. They form an ensemble of “Einsprengsel […]” “in der Zeit und in den Räumen” at the same time (MN 524). This idea of the Balkans corresponds to the memories emanating from the space and time island of the ship Die Morawische Nacht, while the place of Porodin, which the wanderer visits at the beginning and end of his journey, is a district bearing the signature of history. In any case, it is the fictionalization of the authentic Porodin, which the author Handke reports twice (WR 75; UT 60). The former narrator becomes free of history only through the movement in space, which enables him to direct his gaze solely to plants and animals. In the course of the journey and hiking, it becomes possible for him to counter his political judgment on the collapse of the old Balkans with a poetic image that eludes political concepts by substituting the immediacy of a bodily experience for reflection: “das alte junge Europa erwachte […] in seinem dahingehenden Körper, in dessen Zwischenräumen, und weniger die Länder als diese und jene Winkel, und die Winkel verbanden sich, als andere Gelenke, ohne Grenzen, ohne eine Grenze” (MN 529). However, this perception does not last. The signature of violence that marked Porodin’s first visit is repeated in a distorted form during the former author’s second stay, when he finds the place “desenklaviert”. No Cyrillic letters are to be seen any more, weaponless but well-guarded, the place presents itself without visible signs of war. It has been transformed into a recreational landscape, yet the returnee describes it with biting irony. He hears the constant shrill of an alarm from the parked brand-­ new cars and remarks: “Fehlten nur noch Fußgängerzonen und das Lächeln tibetanischer Mönche. Fehlten sie?” (MN 545). The new residents appear to him as mere “Stellungshalter” (MN 546), the idyll as rather threatening. Behind the beautiful façade, he sees the abandoned houses and the signs of the emigrants; the long years of earlier encirclement have preserved in him a sense of danger that he cannot shake even now. But that is not all. To get back to his boat, he must cross the bomb craters from World War II, which only commemorate the first of three bombings the country suffered in the twentieth century (MN 550). His path experiences an interruption at the last of the craters; it results from a bomb from the last war so far, dropped aimlessly after the attack on Varvarin Bridge and the people celebrating on it (MN 552). His circular tour through Europe begins to close at a point where a cycle of history marked by violence becomes visible. The war, which is the premise of this narrative, not only marks a unique catastrophe, but at the same time becomes a world-­ historical signature, which the author later describes in Der Große Fall (The Great Fall) and against which he tries to defend himself in Die Morawische Nacht with political reflection and aesthetic strategies at the same time.

The Recovery of One’s Own Past The tension between the political and the poetic, which is condensed in the reflection on the theme of the “Balkans”, and which is assigned contrasting images

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through the two stays in Porodin on the one hand and the description of the way there on the other, is narratively unfolded in two further episodes, with which the boundary between autofiction, fiction and satire is playfully crossed at the same time. On the one hand, there is the description of the continuation of the former author’s journey in Austria and, on the other, the report on his participation in a world congress of Jew’s harp players, a fairy-tale episode that can also be read as satire. His migration from Vienna airport to the city proves to be a mirror image of the journey to his father in Germany. Both stories have an auto fictional inscription but set different accents. The journey to Germany primarily emphasizes a life-historical line, while the journey to Austria circles around the conditions of authorship. This is already announced on the flight to Vienna, which psychologically breaks the linearity of the narrative. It not only appears as an exit and subsequent re-entry into time, but it also stages an interplay of remembrance and commemoration. Landing in Vienna, the former author decides to continue his European wanderings by walking from the airport to the city of Vienna, which he calls the “Zentrum seines Irregehens” (MN 316) because he regularly got lost in its inner district. Undoubtedly, this metaphorically readable anecdote reflects the real author’s earlier attitude towards Austria. But just like the image of Germany, the view of Austria has now changed decisively: “Von dem einst großen Reich war nur das Labyrinth in seinem Zentrum geblieben? Nein, mit dem, wie sagte man?, neugeordneten Europa schien etwas davon zurückgekehrt, zumindest bei manchen Landsleuten, vor allem den jüngeren” (MN 318). The “altbekannte Maulheldentum” seems to have disappeared, “Blicke waren kein ‘Geschau’ mehr, durften ‘Blicke’ oder ‘Schauen’ heißen, und vor allem waren es, wenn überhaupt welche laut wurden, die Stimmen, die – hörte er da aber recht?  – Selbstverständlichkeit zusammen mit Ruhe ausstrahlten” (MN 319). It seems as if a European utopia, which according to the self-assessment of the former author had always been the center of his books, has now been completed. The new political constellation also opens a new language and makes perceptions possible that were previously reserved for the fictional text. This change is described by reference to a different medium. The migration to the city unfolds film images, while at the same time such intense memories of images of places and landscapes of the Balkans arise that in the end the wanderer is surprised to hear only the Austrian dialect in the countryside, while he himself already begins to refer to the Danube as Dunav (MN 331). Parallel to this acquisition of a new perception is an episode that attests to the former narrator’s creativity in an unexpected way. It, too, bears both poetic and satirical traits and relates the poetic and the political imagination to one another. The wanderer arrives at the “Gasthaus der Namenlosen”, a building more farmhouse than inn (MN 337 f.) whose occupants he takes at first glance for inmates of a refugee camp before realizing that they are participants in a world congress of Jew’s harp players. It is an area that seems like an opposite world to Porodin, which is dominated by war and displacement. The participants in the congress are all individualists who come from everywhere, but at the same time, as the narrator

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metaphorically puts it, “aus keiner Herren Land” (MN 347). And although at first he only feels “Wut” (MN 348) because he considers many of the songs played to be affirmative, he eventually takes part in the contest himself, as reported by another participant for the first time on the ship Die Morawische Nacht, and succeeds in finding a peculiar tone, a “Traumton, […] aus der Scheidelinie zwischen Schlaf und Erwachen, ein[en] Schwellenton” (MN 351). This tone opens up precisely what is the motto of this world congress: “Mittelwelt” (MN 352). Thus, the congress becomes a poetic image of a union of peoples, social classes, and individuals that stands in sharp contrast to the horror documented by the cemetery of the nameless adjacent to the inn and preserved by the memory of the war-torn Balkans.

Inscription of the Real: The Theme of Guilt More clearly than other texts by Handke, Die Morawische Nacht unfolds an autofictional and auto-analytical line in the course of a journey by the former author, which reassesses his own psychological disposition as well as familial constellations. In the account of his journey, the former author recounts a guilt related on the one hand to writing itself and on the other to his family. Thus, life-historical experiences and conditioning of the author Handke are inscribed into his story. The formula that the former author is determined by the “Gefühl einer Schuld, einer unbestimmten, einer insofern unheilbaren” (MN 222), opens for him as for his inventor a constellation that directly and sometimes fatally links writing and life. Three fields of reference prove decisive here: first, the early relationship with a young woman on the island, which becomes the site of his first attempts at writing; second, his mother’s life story; and third, his lifelong confrontation with his absent father. By visiting the places that determined these relationships, the former narrator simultaneously undertakes a journey back in time to his own past. Memory and auto-analysis are thus directly related to each other in the text. The time marker that the traveler passes through on his way back to the places of youth is complemented by a spatial marker that is suitable for enciphering a psychic boundary. It is an image that recurs in many texts. Like the protagonist in Der Bildverlust, who fantasizes herself into the “Einbaum der größeren Zeit” (BV 602), the traveler must pass through a tunnel at the end of which the father world can begin, associated with the fantasies of youth. This, too, makes it clear that the double story of the earlier author and his inventor, which tells of three quite different relationships, is centered by the representation of a psychic disposition (MN 274). It is a fundamental experience of alienation that is repeated in writing and at the same time is its precondition. This tension results in a dissociative self-awareness. A companion, who at first continues the story of the earlier author (MN 225), observes how the latter begins to stroke first in the air and then on the glass of the train compartment (MN 227). Later, he observes the author in a funeral procession (MN 230), as he keeps looking over his shoulder there to sharpen his spatial vision; he also notices him in a seaside market hall (MN 233). Sometimes the author appears as his own double, his

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appearance seems like a “Spiel mit sich selber, mit der eigenen Einbildung” (MN 237). But at the same time, a completely different side of him becomes apparent. In the semi-darkness of a gambling den, his face appears distorted and full of “Ungeduld mit sich selber, mit der Welt, mit dem Raum, mit der Zeit, mit der Nacht” (MN 238). The observer wonders if this is the true face of the former author, his “wahres Ich” or just some other or even a duplication of himself. And indeed: there is another side, about which the former author himself begins to speak. He first reports the failure of his relationships with women, he realizes that he as a writer has no right to be together with a woman at the same time (MN 242). Writing for him means being a third, and not part of a couple (MN 243). Therefore, he feels guilty about his “Schreiberleben”, which demanded “bei Seelentodesstrafe”, a life “jenseits der Geschlechterliebe” (MN 243). He gives a detailed account of his struggle with a woman, undisguisedly describing an act of violence against her and revealing the deadly fantasies of violence that additionally accompanied it (MN 248). His story, which touches on that of the real author, reveals a psycho-­grammatic structure that he himself recognizes (MJN 189; IN 106, 159; Carstensen 2014, 59–61). His self-representation and self-image as a writer are explained by the fact that he was “entschlossen ein Niemand geworden […] grundanders als der und der Autor” (MN 249 f.). When, during his journey he begins to forget the ship Die Morawische Nacht and his wanderings are directed “weg vom vermaledeiten Balkan” to the island of his writing beginnings (MN 123), however, he is confronted with a completely different guilt. He now becomes open to memories; the journey in space becomes a mental journey in time. It leads him beyond the place of his beginning, of course it is Handke’s island of Krk, as an author also into the earlier spheres of life of his father and mother, which at the same time mark, in the case of the girl and the father a concealed, in the case of the mother an open crossing point of life and work history. First, he returns to the place where his writing began. He thinks of the guilt he has incurred by destroying his relationship with the young woman from the island. This becomes clear to him when he recognizes Antje, the island girl from the summer of his first book, in a beggar woman at the church gate. Following her, he first wants to reassure himself in the memory of the earlier time by adopting the distance of an observer and affirming it formulaically: “Sich nirgends einmischen. Geschehen lassen. Sein lassen: Das war Teil seines Gesetzes geworden. Und doch. Und doch” (MN 151). But the attitude from Der Chinese des Schmerzes (CS 252), quoted here, now appears only as an outworn law that, with the phrase “und doch”, undergoes a decisive life-historical questioning. Text and life are related to each other and are supposed to mutually justify each other, but at this point life refutes the images of fiction that the earlier narrator wanted to preserve of that time. He learns that the girl was expecting a child from him, and she accuses him of killing it and, figuratively, her (MN 152). The reaction of the earlier author is a sense of danger that is transmitted to his audience; it is the basic dialectical figure that increasingly determines Handke’s perception of social relations and conditions. This dialectic also determines the memory of father and mother. First, the journey on the traces of family history leads into the district of the father, Handke’s

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biological father. It is explicitly stated that the goal of this journey into the past is not so much the father’s grave as the attempt to get to know the “Vaterlandschaft” and to transmit everything seen to the stranger in the form of “Seh- und Hörbilder” (MN 286). For the first time, the wanderer realizes that although his mother never told him about his father in the past, he was a “Kind der Liebe” (MN 288). This realization makes him open to perceptions, frees him from the threatening obsession with the father that had pervaded his life and work like that of its inventor. Consciously, he now perceives “Zonen”, between west and east, island mountains and landscape. Finally, his landscape perceptions expand into a conception of Germany that is quite different from the one the author Handke used to remember with hatred: “Ein friedlicheres Land als dieses sollte er nicht durchwandert haben, weder vorher noch nachher” (MN 291). He also sees a Germany in which there are books and in which people read: The author finds his own book, albeit in the bulky waste, on the street. Moreover, in this Germany he discovers the interstices that open up through reading (MN 292). It is an image that Handke’s texts repeatedly assign to an “andere” form of perception, and it is a central metaphor with which the author also circumscribes his own poetic access to reality. In this perceptual space of Germany, the view of the individual succeeds. It is characteristic of an author who already “in seiner Schreiberzeit nachgesagt worden war: er sei eher ein Zeichner von Einzelnem, Dingen wie Menschen” (MN 294). The wanderer feels secure in this region of the Harz, which reminds him of his father. He does not feel threatened by “gleich welchem deutschen Volk”, rather he and time […] are for once in sync, the “zitternde Sekunde” is absent, he does not need a guardian angel in this Germany (MN 295 f.). Only temporarily does this state seem endangered when the wanderer observes the pupils of a boarding school, certainly a reminiscence of the authentic Tanzenberg of Handke’s youth, and, looking at the building from the outside, imagines its interior. Alone now, in the linking of this image of Germany with one’s own memories, the “zitternde Sekunde” could take place (MN 299), but the earlier dominant association of a strange and punishing father does not return. The mental and physical return to the familial past now makes not the father but the son a culprit. The earlier author realizes that he has “kein Bild von dem Vater”, that he can no longer speak to him, and that he has failed to ask the mother about him. These never articulated questions generate in him a “bitterliches Schuldgefühl” (MN 301 f.) and bring forth anger at himself, “Ah, meine verdammte Vaterlosigkeit! Ohne Vater: außerhalb des Rechts” (MN 302; see VB 150, 419). This scene, too, is given a haunting psychic contour by the fantasy of an old woman who berates the fatherless man and prophesies his death as an enemy of man (MN 303–305). The life-historical significance of the confrontation with the mother, which also takes place in the progress of the journey, is shown not least by the way in which the memory of her is staged textually. For it is said that she not only appears to the earlier author in a dream, but that the latter also perceives her face at least once as an apparition that is completely different from a dream, for it appears suddenly, acts like a “Bildeinschuss mitten ins Herz” and then disappears again, but burns in an afterimage (MN 499  f.). On the one hand, the text traces the intensity of this

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apparition by describing the image like a cinematic close-up, the wanderer sees: “Einzig das Gesicht der Mutter, vom Dunkel umgeben”. On the other hand, he psychologizes this perception by focusing – following the cinematic technique of shot and counter-shot – on the mother’s gaze and only paraphrasing the son’s counter-­ gaze: The mother’s eyes are “schlichtweg gegen ihn, wie er war, oder wie er gewesen war [und] das aber mit all dem Feuer, das von den sonst sanften Augen der Mutter ausgehen konnte, und noch einem Feuer, darüber hinaus” (MN 500). Towards this mother, the former narrator, whom a stranger had previously insulted as “Muttersohn” (MN 273), continues to feel guilty (MN 431); he is convinced that he has abandoned her, that her death was ultimately caused by “wie einverstanden[.] Geschehenlassen”. That she appears in his dreams repeatedly arouses his “Grundschuldbewusstsein […], worin dann regelmäßig der Tod bevorstand; worin sie jedes Mal neu wieder im Sterben lag” (MN 431). His feelings of guilt are also responsible for the fact that no empathetic reliving of his own childhood is possible for him at the place of his childhood; rather, the former author has the impression of a crash in the dream, from which, however, he is called back by the maternal voice. In the dream, the mother declares her son innocent, criticizing his false assumptions, especially the opinion that he could not tolerate a woman at his side. Falsely, she says, he attributed to her an unhappy life, accused her of loving only his father and not his brother, and of not telling the truth when she wrote to him that she was quite happy to die. She contradicts all this, concluding, “Zwar fürchtete ich dein wie deines Bruders Verlorengehen: Aber das deine konnte ich mir nie so recht vorstellen” (MN 501 f.). She insists that she has had a happy life and declares: “genug der Schuld und genug der Schuldsuche. Genug der Selbstmarter und des Marterns der andern, die jedoch jeweils die deinigen waren, die deinigen sind” (MN 502).

Fantasies of Authorship The strategy of a poetic transformation of the world, which is connected to the preceding episode at the World Congress of Jew’s Harp Players, is not coincidentally thematized in Die Morawische Nacht at the moment of a crisis, namely when the former author sets off for the island, which is the place of his first writing attempts and at the same time a place of guilt. This corresponds to a double play that can be identified as a constant figure in Handke’s texts. Disturbing irritations, here triggered by encounters with his own past and his family environment, are answered by an attempt to assert himself as an author aiming at a transformation of immediate perception and experience. The text here follows two different paths, which differentiate in the course of the work before finally becoming not infrequently synchronized. The design of his own writing style and the pointing out of his own perception unfold alongside the conscious recourse to literary tradition. In this way, the narrative repeats a basic figure that had already diverged in Handke’s earlier work. Alongside the radical subjectivity of Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling), a recourse to literary tradition emerges, which is introduced with

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Langsame Heimkehr. In the story of Die Morawische Nacht, both possibilities of poetic self-projection are traced out and at the same time inserted into a life-­ historical dialectic. The first model is traced out during the earlier author’s journey to the island of his writing beginnings. The traveler no longer uses the former place names, or he allows the places he passes through to be nameless. The island he visits is therefore called Cordura in his memory of a Wild West film; those he encounters also bear no names except Kobal and Keuschnig (MN 124). There is no doubt that this movement in space, whose description does not follow any topographical accuracy, is above all a self-discovery in the psychological sense. It connects memory and the present, external perception, and self-perception. On the way to his birthplace, it appears to him like a “Fata Morgana, eine Luftspiegelung in seinem Inneren, aus einer sehr fernen Zeit?” (MN 403). And even before that, the wanderer has the impression as if he stepped more and more “in seine Fußstapfen von ehedem, in Fußstapfen aus Luft, füllte mit dem Körper von jetzt Schritt um Schritt den luftigen Umriss seines Körpers von einst aus, und das ergäbe einen einzigen Körper, jenseits von einst und jetzt, einen Körper so fest wie nur je einen” (MN 128). This image, at once physical and psychological, follows a conscious and intellectual perception. The former author realizes that in the end writing alone can preserve the new and different state he apostrophizes as his “Selbstvergessenheit” (MN 134). By aiming at a book, the latter establishes a “Gesetz” that comes into effect with its very beginning (MN 135). The earlier author is, this too corresponds to a basic figure of Handke’s writing, a “Nachbild-Maler” who attempts to narrate “[das] Innen des Außen” (MN 390). This self-assurance about one’s own mode of writing and its meaning is formulated in even greater detail near the place of childhood. The former author meets Filip Kobal there, who has since become a filmmaker, and recites to him his conception of the meaning of writing, for he is convinced that “das Geheimnis der Zeit […] nicht verfilmt werden [kann]” (MN 421). Against the images of the new medium, he mobilizes the imagination in literature alone: “Franz Kafka war nicht tot. Franz Grillparzer und Adalbert Stifter lebten, mitten unter uns im Nebenraum. Samarkand war nicht weniger sagenhaft und wirklich als früher, war sogar näher gerückt, diesseits der Grenze, wenn auch zum Dorf geschrumpft, zum Nachbardorf […]” (MN 420). In the imagination of the former author, a spiritual genealogy emerges; it is later supplemented by the encounter with a boy who can succeed him as an author. In him he recognizes an osmosis “an Leib und Seele [, denn] der abgedankte Autor, [hatte] den zukünftigen erkannt” (MN 540). This insight is supplemented by a consideration that places visual perception in a psychological and developmental context. Decidedly superior to the images of film, according to the earlier author, is the “Blitzmoment” that can be awakened in a child and that apparently passes by without leaving a trace, but would remain “zeitlebens, eingebrannt” (MN 422). Undoubtedly, this reflection is an autofictional insertion. It can be directly related to the perception of the mother’s face that the former author describes on his return migration to Austria (MN 499).

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In the encounter with Kobal and the subsequent reflection of the former author, therefore, a basic figure of Handke’s later narrative condenses. It is the superimposition of authentic memory and fictional episodes that are overwritten by the factual, and finally the mobilization of fantasies that are founded on precisely this interplay of fiction and factuality. It is no coincidence that Gregor Keuschnig now appears alongside Kobal, namely the Gregor Keuschnig of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. The text visualizes this narrative configuration in an image: the villages of the former author, Gregor Keuschnig, and Filip Kobal together form a very pointed triangle (MN 424). The constellation familiar from Der Bildverlust and Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, in which an earlier figure in Handke’s work reappears, also takes on special significance here. When this Keuschnig turns and looks at the earlier author, he relives encounters of his own life. In the early light of day, he encounters his ancestors (MN 429) on the Old Road, even those he knew only by name. Alone, he is glad of this, he does not meet his mother. Such references back to the past, however, not infrequently open up an inner dialectic. In the text Die Morawische Nacht, this is evident in two ways: first, when the former author attempts to place himself in the tradition of Austrian literature on his return to the sites of his former life, and second, when he is confronted by his critics. The report on the “Symposium über Lärm und Geräusche” can be read as a satirical parallel piece to this productive unfolding of the self, which also provides the poetic reflection with an autofictional inscription, for there participants are described for whom, not unlike for the author Handke, sounds are not merely acoustic perceptions. Rather, they mark events and experiences that cause an obsessive reaction. The resulting noise sickness causes “eine Art Raumverlust”, a disorientation for which “[die] Weltgeräusche” are ultimately responsible, which increasingly cause the natural sounds, “das Rieseln des Wassers, das Rauschen des Windes und des Regens, das Knistern des fallenden Schnees in den Winterbüschen” to disappear (MN 172). Like the author Handke, the former author also associates crises of experience with perceptions of sound. Like him, he remembers “Urgeräusche […] Nachklänge, die für immer im Ohr bleiben würden” (MN 180), and thus a time “des verwandelnden Hörens” (MN 181). It is a fantasy of origin and a poetic fantasy at the same time, linked to Handke’s parallel fantasies of the “anderen Zeit” or another state of perception, which are triggers or concomitant phenomena of the writing. Not coincidentally, this fantasy arises during a general departure from Numancia, which the circuit traveler begins with a local poet whom he refers to as Juan Lagunas that night on the Morava (MN 183). The story the latter tells undoubtedly corresponds to that of the former author, to whom Handke attributes his own experiences. It is a story of the loss not only of the fatherland and the villages, but also of the names that signified them and that were “Namen für jeden Moment im Leben […] auch für die Momente, die sich wiederholten” (MN 191). The fact that this poet, to describe his own experiences, also appropriates quotations that the author Handke has named before, “sein ganzes Wesen verstummte und lauschte” (MN 196; KB 79; GB 234),

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and that he conversationally traces a reflection of the author Handke on the subject of epic storytelling, completes the auto fictional trace that determines this episode. The journey to Austria not only leads to a confrontation with the world of the father, the world of the mother and one’s own childhood and youth, but it is also an encounter with the author Ferdinand Raimund. The search for his own language is followed by a return to the tradition of storytelling, but this attempt, of all things, also opens up an inner dialectic. The former author sets out for Gutenstein, the last place of Ferdinand Raimund’s life, because he sees himself as part of a tradition that is not exhausted in historical references but vouches for something that points beyond history. It is a “Jetzt [und] von der Kalenderzeit nicht zu zerstören”; he has the impression that he has been forever in a space with all the other writers, which at the same time seems like a fold intime. The word “morada” stands in for this, whose etymology recalls a dwelling in space and time. It designates the cell that Teresa of Avila apostrophized as the “Schloß der Seele” (correctly: Castillo Interior) (MN 365). But at the same time, Raimund’s sphere, into which the wanderer enters, opens an irresolvable tension between the transformation of the world into a theatrical play and a fatal dissociation that determines the life of this author. Distorted into the monumental, the traveler here perceives his own psychic disposition, and it is not by chance that he feels as if he keeps postponing his way home (MN 369). At the same time, he has a disturbing fairy-tale experience in the mountains. After a fall, a chamois accosts him and insults him as a traitor, demanding that he return “in die Sphäre der Lebenden, der Heutigen, der Augenpaare” because his false ecstasies were leading him into nothing but in snow blindness (MN 374).

Autoreflection and Fictional Self-Criticism What the former narrator learns on his way back from Gutenstein corresponds to the image that others create of him. The stranger who accompanies him for a while and to whom he feels close turns out to be not only a connoisseur of his work, but at the same time its sharpest critic. Moreover, his criticism captures not only the work but also the psychological disposition of the former author. This bears traits of the author Handke, who here, in the mode of fiction, presents a resolute self-critique in the words of another, taking up the discourse of others, especially that of established literary criticism. The text leaves open whether this fictionalization of the real is to be taken seriously or is already another diminishment in force. However, there is much to suggest that Handke’s self-criticism and his insistence on his own, which is still self-consciously represented, are mixed in the words of the stranger. The stranger whom the wanderer encounters has in some respects traits of the latter himself; only later does the former author realize that he bears the biblical name Melchior and is a colored man. The story of his life, which he tells, centers on his troubled relationship with a father who himself wanted to use his son’s death as the occasion for a poem (MN 412). The obsession with which the stranger communicates this story opens perspectives on the hidden obsession with the father, which

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also determines Handke’s earlier memories of his biological father. Not coincidentally, it appears to him – the allusion to Kafka’s Urteil is clear – that the stranger carries “den Vater auf dem Rücken”, and not coincidentally, he refers to him as “[d]er andere, ‘ich’” (MN 414). This difference of ‘Ich’ and ‘Er’ is also undoubtedly linked to the relation to Kafka (Honold 2017, 426). In a striking way, the image of this wanderer corresponds with the contradictory and dissociating perceptions of the earlier author, especially when it comes to the blanket assessment of other wanderers, other people. Moreover, images of his past return for the wanderer in the company of the stranger, even if this is only in the mode of a film whose director is Filip Kobal (MN 418 f.). The two travelers are also related in that Melchior’s criticism of the earlier author is directly connected to the latter’s self-criticism, for in the course of his journey through Spain and Portugal back to Austria, the latter becomes aware of his “Entrücktheit” (MN 218), which breaks out from time to time. This emanates from small perceptions, excerpts of perceived reality. Its promise, but at the same time its danger, is that it leads him to represent the world as a totality, perhaps even as the “beste[.] aller möglichen Welten”. The author thus appears “zwar enthoben der Last des eigenen Ich”, but at the same time this state is a threat that becomes dangerous above all in the period of his “Schreiberlebens”, because it leads to the loss of an adequate reference to reality (MN 219). Later, the brother will reinforce this self-­ analysis when he points out that the former author not only hindered domestic life with his attempts at writing, confused, if not broke up, and possibly even destroyed the family (MN 497); he explicitly speaks of the brother’s “Schreibtyrannei” (MN 498). Melchior’s criticism ties in with this psychological observation when it describes the peculiar special path that the former author took in his writing., He offensively proclaims to him the end of “Dichterliteratur” and poetic language (MN 437), he opposes the dream of the writer as author, speaks of the time of writing arrangers, who ultimately use a newspaper language and compose texts that can be learned at any writing school. He proposes that the book about the European journey the former author is presently writing should be submitted by himself (MN 438). Undoubtedly, this criticism is backwards, for it takes up what Handke himself uses to distinguish his texts from others, especially when he resolutely insists that those who write today act as “Alleininhaber der Worte und Sätze” because the language of books has become the language of newspapers (MN 441). Melchior, who becomes the critic of the former author, finds the “edlen Seelen” still alone among the illiterate, and those who call themselves poets are for him nothing but “Desperados, auf verlorenem Boden” (MN 440). The critic Melchior, who calls himself “das Monstrum, das jubiliert” (MN 442), boasts that he does not want to take the simple people from the former author’s region of origin seriously. He sharply criticizes the former author for his love of the Balkans, which seems to him to be “nur noch Abweichlertum”, an attitude that would consign him to the “Müllhaufen der Geschichte” (MN 439). Unmistakably, this criticism is directed in a fundamental way at any claim of authorship. Polemically, he finally remarks that the former author himself is “bloß noch eine

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Romanfigur” (MN 443). He is a ghost, a revenant in the literal sense of the word, because he trusts in the creative power that is founded first and foremost in speechlessness, while he has long since lived in a time in which all words and sentences “von vorneherein zur Verfügung [stehen], gleichsam als Fertigteile” (MN 444). This fundamental criticism is brought to the culmination point when the former author later reads an essay that Melchior has written about him. There he is accused of having “fled from himself”, of having only pursued “das Abseitige”, of having closed his eyes to reality, quite unlike other authors. He had omitted, the accusation goes, all topics of public discourse and never shown a heart for his contemporaries (MN 536). His enthusiasm for simple natural phenomena is ridiculed, as is his attitude towards religion, which is judged to be a relapse into animism (MN 537). These reflections follow a realization that the author also makes on his way to the island of his first writing attempts. Writing things down, which he had practiced for years, does not now appear to him simply as an attempt to avoid “[die] vermaledeite Mündlichkeit” (MN 133); he realizes that in this way he was trying to get rid of his “höchstpersönliche Mündlichkeit”, even more than that, of his own voice (MN 133).

9.3 The Dialectic of History and the Journey into the Utopia of the Aesthetic Despite the clear thematic lines that Handke’s narrative reveals, it too follows the mode of linear narration only to a limited extent. Rather, it is characterized, not unlike Der Bildverlust, by a constant alternation of dissonant images that visualize a central dialectic: It is the tension between the depiction of reality configured in individual experiences and its poetic transformation. Part of the dramaturgy of Handke’s narrative is that the succession of these contradictory images has different speeds. As in film, slow shots alternate with fast sequences of cuts in Die Morawische Nacht. At the same time, the change of images accelerates in the surroundings of all things familiar, in the proximity to the places of childhood and shortly before the return to the boat on the banks of the Morava. Especially at the end of the narrative, this leads to a contouring of contrasts. The dialectic of history and the promise of fantasy meet here precisely. In the process, even names that were previously unambiguous in the context of Handke’s writing prove to be recontextualized. When the former author feels disoriented during his return journey and believes himself to be among people from the Orient in Samarkand, his poetic place of longing, he focuses his gaze on details and random objects lying on the ground, often the beginning of an experience of rapture (MN 457). But now he suddenly feels threatened, the idyll thwarted by a fantasy of violence. The Muslim man he observes praying gives him the impression that he would draw “eine Maschinenpistole oder, nein, eher einen Säbel […] und damit auf die so frevelhaft gleichgültige Menge losgehen” (MN 460). A comparably contradictory experience is repeated when, on his way back to his hometown, he passes through its suburbs. Although the village now has a different name, its vowels match the old name; for a moment this seems to him that a

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homecoming is possible after all (MN 462). More and more he glimpses familiar details that remind him of his youth. As he passes through the gate of the cemetery, he hears the voice of the muezzin from afar; for him, the gate takes on an oriental name, blown from Samarkand; as it were; he has the impression “daß es wirklich wahr hier war” (MN 465). But immediately ambivalent impressions return. In places, everything seems to rise hostily against the person entering, at the same time he almost fell in the course of an earthquake, but immediately afterwards he experiences a double “Entrückung”. At first, he perceives all things magnified as through a magnifying glass, until he returns to his normal vision. Nevertheless, the hour of madness that has seized the returning wanderer is not over. The encounter with his ancestors in the cemetery confuses him, noises assail him before he stands at his mother’s grave. After being guided by an old woman, he feels longing for the woman of his life and indeed she appears to him in the company of his critic Melchior, but immediately his longing turns to aggression: He hurls a hazel stick sharpened into a skewer at her (MN 474). As this dream image of his “Wahnsinnsstunde” (MN 475) fades, he leaves the cemetery, climbs over the wall of an orchard. He realizes that all his life he has been “ein Obstdieb” and has confessed to it (MN 477 f.). But now the orchard is inhabited by homeless people, among whom is an Asian. The latter sits in a hollow that the wanderer recognizes as the bomb crater in the former orchard (MN 480), the paradise of childhood has also been crisscrossed by the signs of violence from the beginning. Undoubtedly, this dialectic also shapes the conclusion of the text, for the return of the former narrator to the place of narration does not open a new sphere of life. In truth, it leads nowhere, it opens nothing other than a utopia in the full sense of the word. The woman whom the author had received during the night disappeared in the morning; she “gehörte nicht ihm” (MN 555). The listeners and participants in the evening conversation are also no longer there, although they still speak for the reader and outside the text. Now, however, they disappear into the narrative story like the figures of a romantic dream. The same is true of the river and the ship itself, which first shrinks to a dugout canoe and then sinks as the Morava dries up. The poetic journey in the dugout canoe that the author had taken earlier to his land of longing also seems to end here. Fundamental doubt afflicts him, directed not only at his devotion to the “Verlorenen auf dem Balkan” but also at himself. He asks himself the cutting question whether the lost one was not in the end he, the author himself, and his enterprise of the night nothing more than a “Griff in den Staub”. The only appeasement an angel can give him is a characterizing formula “To je to. I to je to”, that is that and that is that (MN 557). In the end, only a “Geographie der Träume” remains, which the author wishes may be determinative now and at the hour of his death (MN 557). It turns out that the disappearance of the boat called “Morawische Nacht” corresponds to the nightly dream of the book that the author wrote and finished each night, only to find the next morning that it is no longer there. All that remains to him is a page that, with his eyes closed, did show itself as “Handschrift”, but the author never managed to decipher it, not a word, at most individual letters (MN 558).

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However, the text does not end in melancholy self-doubt, but with a promise, which, however, withdraws any exaggerated expectation. At the end of the narrative is a fantasy of productivity that does not materialize, but nevertheless creates an effect. For the narrator, however, who insists that something remained of the night, it is no more than a taste or foretaste. He names it with a word from his Arabic time: “samara” and it means to spend the night in conversation. With this word the narrator associates the names “Stara Vas” and “Samarkand”, these point to the place of origin of the real author and to the mythically charged name that accompanies many of his narrative sketches. It seems to the earlier author that the triple “a” connecting these words gives them sound beyond any meaning (MN 559). The basic poetological figure of Die Morawische Nacht appears here in a formulaically abbreviated form. At its center is the fantasy of a writing that can limit itself to the reproduction of an immediate perception of limited things. It follows a conscious withdrawal of the claim to tell a whole and completed story. What counts here is the renewed persistence in the moment of perception, which is captured in ciphers. It is precisely the concentration on this moment that results in an effect that points beyond itself. Like the secondary dream that shapes the memory of an entire dream night, the poetic moment has the same effect: “Ein schräges Leuchten aus den Wolken, schau, das war manchmal das Leben” (MN 560). This sentence captures the text in an image, and precisely because it does not judge, it assigns it a role that cannot be conclusively clarified. At the end, there is an open text and an open conclusion; the open space of the imagination takes the place of a closed story. This is all narration can achieve.

The Experiment of Recollective Description

10

The text type of Versuche (Essays), produced between 1989 and 2013, cannot be clearly classified. The second, Versuch über die Jukebox (Essay about the Jukebox), still bears the subtitle of a narrative in the first edition, and the last, Versuch über den Pilznarren (Essay on The Mushroom Jester) is initially described as Eine Geschichte für sich. The only thing that is clear is that they take up, vary, and continue considerations that are already prefigured in Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers (Afternoon of a Writer). It therefore makes sense to develop the presentation of the Versuche starting from this text. Even before Handke tells the double story of his life and writing in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay), some of his Versuche present a connection between autoreflection, autoanalysis, and fictional design. Together with Versuch über die Jukebox, already the first of them, Versuch über die Müdigkeit (Essay About Fatigue), shows a basic pattern that the five Versuche as a whole follow and that determines their role in the context of Handke’s work. All of them practice a form of inauthentic speech in which they develop immediate descriptions and build on them through associative reflections. In doing so, they combine current reflections with remembered stories and, through this linkage, open up different reflexive and emotional fields of reference. There is much to suggest that the jukebox, which is the subject of the second text, is not only a nostalgically viewed object of the history of civilization, but that it also represents the guiding metaphor for the law of construction of Versuche as a whole. It is nothing other than an archive of medially transformed memories whose songs provide the leitmotifs for experiences in the past and their mobilization in states of mind in the present. In his film version of Die Schönen Tage von Aranjuez (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez), Wim Wenders used the jukebox in precisely this way in his sequence of images. It is no coincidence that the interaction of image and music staged in his work repeats the interaction of song and narrative text that also characterizes Handke’s texts and that shows itself characteristically in the five Versuchen, especially, of course, in Versuch über die Jukebox. Other medially mediated memories are added to this intermedial configuration: namely remembered film sequences gain significance, especially in the © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_10

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last of the Versuche, by referring to Henry Ford’s Two Rode Together with James Stewart and Richard Widmark.

10.1 On the Way to Writing: Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers (1987) The fact that the protagonist’s short walk through town in Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers leads to a pub known as a “Kaschemme”/“dive bar”, in the back room of which there is a jukebox (NS 60), is not the only connection of this narrative to the later Versuche and subsequent fictional texts. This text also traces, on the one hand, their basic figure, a walk that leads back to the starting point at the end, and, on the other hand, their central theme, the question of the right way to get into writing and its significance for the author. That it is about the author himself becomes clear from the fact that, as in Die Morawische Nacht (Moravian Night) and later texts, this walk begins in the writer’s garden and leads back to it. As in other texts, the description of the path replaces the description of a plot. At the same time, Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers presents elements that structure the writer’s later narrative, and in particular his Versuche, undisguised and without the ciphering of later texts. This is true both for the account of the role of writing and the narrator’s current psychological disposition as well as for the characteristics of the writing program he unfolds in the narrative. This creates the contour of a psychogram that simultaneously reflects and reveals the author’s social role. Its starting point is the memory of the threat of a loss of language, which reconstructs Handke’s own experience. It initiates a sequence of images and situations in which the narrative reconstruction of precise images is combined with the construction of metaphorically readable contexts. These are places and situations that also structure the author’s Versuche and later texts. As a rule, they are standardized images showing the transition from natural to urban landscape, the passing through “Unorte”/“non-places” (NS 21 f.), the motif of the bridge (NS 29), the overlay of the current with a remembered cityscape (NS 31). The depiction of a summer landscape (NS 39) is just as much a part of this as the fantasy of the appearance of a strange woman whose presence changes everything (NS 68) and, finally, the image of falling snow, which marks the psychological disposition of a new beginning and is always closely associated with writing in Handke’s work (NS 54; FM 289, 428; Höller 2013, 164). It becomes clearer than in later texts that the writing is based on a memory of childhood perception and takes up childhood fantasies. The writer’s behaviour, in particular his fixation on only limited writing goals and their provisionality, is also related to his childhood and adolescence. As a result, the movement in space appears like a journey through time, bringing back “[das] erlösende[.] Gefühl der Kindlichkeit” through the impression of nature (NS 19). This is connected with the reconstruction of a current psychological disposition of the writer. Threatened by the loss of language, he is at the same time determined by the fact that his writing places him in a social role that burdens him and to which

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he does not want to conform (NS 15). The text visualizes this gradually emerging insight through spatial images. The writer’s wanderings lead first through natural spaces and then into an urban landscape that seems peculiarly abstract, like a labyrinth of spaces. First, he walks through a sequence of backyards, then the enclosed courtyards widen into a succession of open squares (NS 25 f.). At the same time, it becomes apparent that this spatial movement triggers a dissociation in the writer, which he himself relates to his writing: “War es nicht auffällig, dass fast nur die Zeiten des Schreibens ihm seinen Wohnort derart entgrenzen konnten?” (NS 26). Corresponding to this spatial dissociation is a psychological one. In the course of the walk to the city, conscious and unconscious perception overlap to such an extent that the wanderer is apparently unable to separate them. Moreover, the entry into a space populated by others occurs in a situation in which the writer has consciously withdrawn from the public sphere in order to gain a different view of reality. In the newspapers, whose headlines seem to assault the reader, the social world by itself shows itself to him as threatening. He skims the newspaper articles and falls into a “seltsamen Zustand von Raserei und Erstarrung in einem” (NS 33). The contrast between the text of the newspapers, which makes him lose his “circle of vision” (NS 38), and the longing for his own book, represented ironically enough by the fact that the wanderer first sees one of his own books in the window of a bookshop (NS 41), could not be greater. For him, authorship does not mean insertion into a social context; rather, it confronts it critically and is first and foremost the fulfillment of a youthful dream directed towards literature, “das freieste aller Länder” (NS 35). But this fantasy of the book and the free land of literature is decidedly opposed to the situation in which the now well-known author finds himself and in which he tries to define his relationship to others. He explicitly assessed his writing not only as a segregation from other people, but even as his “Niederlage als Gesellschaftsmensch” (NS 73). This tension between social role and individual fantasy of self-realization reiterates the central psychic dissociation that many of Handke’s texts describe and orbit. Thus Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers also becomes an autoanalytic text. This line also unfolds in the course of describing a movement. On the one hand, as he walks into the world of others, the writer sometimes perceives “[den] Blick eines Lesers”; on the other hand, as he walks through an alley, he feels exposed to the common “bösen Blick” of people (NS 42 f.), which he believes he perceives as if in a film sequence. Under the pressure of this psychological challenge, the hatred that seems to be shown to him by others leads him to perceive only individual images that threaten him. The text conveys the impression that a film image in which the protagonist believes himself to be is torn and that he alone can still hear “die auf den Schriftsteller zielenden Stimmen und Geräusche”; it is a dissociation that has paranoid features (NS 45 f.). As in subsequent stories of Handke’s wanderings and travels, this dissociation is determined not only as a psychic, but also as a spatial tipping point. This time it is a place where the street widens into an arterial road and where two crucified men can be seen “Rücken an Rücken […], der eine stadteinwärts, der andere zur Peripherie gerichtet” (NS 50); it is an image that projects outwards the fantasy of an ego split. It is characteristic of Handke’s narrative that at this psychological and spatial

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turning point, a completely different theme, again that of writing, finally takes on significance. In the essay Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers, however, this does not happen by way of an initiation; rather, the change of perspective is slowly prepared. On the one hand, through the episode of an accident victim who begins to tell fragments of her life story in a reduced language – as if with “Kindheitslauten” – which the writer can less decipher than suspect (NS 53 f.). Corresponding to this is the description of a listener in the inn who looks at the others at the table with a “wortlos mitfühlenden Rhythmus” and maintains a distance that leads the writer to ask: “War er nicht der ideale Erzähler?” (NS 75). What is meant by this is revealed in the third parallel story, the writer’s encounter with his translator. The translator tells the story of his life, referring to the time when he himself was an author. That his story corresponds to that of the writer and, in the final analysis, to that of the author, is made clear both by the choice of words and the development of his writing as described. At first, he loses the writing that seems self-evident, which follows the illusion that the only thing that matters is to describe the images he perceives “eines nach dem anderen”. After the disappearance of the images, he tries to develop his writing out of a “Horchen” that is based on the assumption that there is something like an “Urtext”/original text to be found in himself, which is even more effective than the individually formed “Inbilder”/guiding images (NS 79). But this intention, which traces Handke’s earlier attitudes towards writing, the individual-psychological as well as the existential-ontological coding of his writing, proves in the end to be a construction that relies too much on a claim to control by the author-subject. The attempt to force a coherence now appears to him as a “Sündenfall”/original sin. For this reason, the translator now follows the maxim “Nichts Eigenes mehr”, he turns from author to translator and finds the metaphor “mitspielen” for this activity (NS 80, 81). With this metaphor, the narrative already sketches out the concept of writing that Handke will later further specify in Versuch über den geglückten Tag (Essay about the Successful Day) (NS 81, VT 66). This prefigures the stepping back behind things that writing is supposed to follow, in an intermedial configuration that sharply distinguishes between the recording through writing and visual perception. In a “dive bar”, the writer tries to reconstruct an episode of his life story while reading a postcard, but while the image on the front is stable, all that remains of the writing on the back are strokes, similar to a cuneiform script. Nonetheless, these marks appear to him as “eine Bedrohung, ein den Adressaten anspringendes Omen des Todes und des Endes” (NS 59). Contrasting with this experience is the view into a traffic mirror on the street, in which everything seems transformed by the optical refraction of perspective, as if looking at it all together, one steps out into a clearing (NS 60). Later, it becomes clear that this visual perception is nothing other than the double gaze of the imagination, which can unite very different images, the view through the windows of the “Kaschemme” onto the road at night and the view through the window of the writing room at home into the nature of a summer’s day (NS 66). In accordance with this, the activity of the later translator makes it clear in an exemplary manner that writing should be concerned solely with preserving what is

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found in perception. The story of Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers is nothing other than the narrative dissection of this figure of thought. It describes the overcoming of an earlier form of writing by a new writing formula: “Weitertun. Sein lassen. Gelten lassen. Darstellen. Überliefern” (NS 90). It is no coincidence that a motto from Goethe’s Torquato Tasso concludes the text of the narrative; it proves to be a continuation of the new formula that has opened it up: “…es ist alles da, und ich bin nichts” (NS 93).

10.2 The Narration of the “Inbilder”/Guiding Images: Versuch über die Müdigkeit (Essay About Fatigue, 1989) The theme or object that the Versuche foreground in their title is always only the trigger for a narrative that constantly changes the object and at the same time makes itself autonomous. Nothing that is described allows for a unilinear reading, constantly transgressing the theme that the title of each of the Versuche sets. Apart from the fact that these texts repeatedly sketch out parallel stories, they have a complex linkage of quotations that appears on the surface of the text and at the same time gives it a substructure. Already the first two Versuche show this paradigmatically. In them, the theme of fatigue, just like the search for the jukebox and its description, becomes on the one hand the starting point for further reflection, which is also directed at political circumstances, and on the other hand it appears as an indicator of different psychological dispositions. Fundamentally, the political and the private are intertwined. In this context, fatigue marks a current state as well as an articulated desire, a longing for something else. At the same time, a functional interrelation between the Versuche is already evident here: the continuation of Versuch über die Müdigkeit by Versuch über die Jukebox is already addressed at the end of the text (VM 78). Because authorial reflection and criticism are thereby closely linked in a speaking a propos at every point, the subject of fatigue can simultaneously report on different life-historical experiences and a change of emotions. In this regard, the narrator himself characterizes his narrative stance as “Herzlosigkeit”/heartlessness. With this metaphor, he denotes a gesture of exploration and an attitude of detachment that aims to pursue, without exaggerated emotion, “den Bildern nachzugehen, die ich habe von meinem Problem, mich dann jeweils, wörtlich, ins Bild zu setzen und dieses mit der Sprache, samt seinen Schwingungen und Windungen, zu umzirkeln” (VM 23). In this way, Versuch über die Müdigkeit aims to narrate mental states that relate to general social and historical configurations as well as to the narrator’s individual experiences. The text plays these out in a fictional alternating speech. In it, childhood memories combine with the reconstruction of the path to writing, both together revealing the pattern of socialization that determines the narrator’s self. In order to make this clear, the narrator evaluates different forms of fatigue; he reports equally on “schlimme” and “schönere und schönste Müdigkeiten” (VM 22 f.).

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This is already apparent in the memory of his own life story. Alongside the alienating experience of university (VM 10 f.) and shift work during studies, in which the outsider position of those who begin writing at an early age already becomes apparent (VM 40–42), there is a transfiguration of the past that is quite consciously directed towards one’s own origins and family, and which is also described as a form of weariness. Explicitly excluded from the “Müdigkeiten zum Fürchten” (VM 24) are the memories of early childhood and work in the fields, which record not only the toil of child labor but also images of a unity of generations and family (VM 24–28). Programmatically it is said: “Wenn die Vergangenheit so war, daß sie es schafft, zu verklären, so soll sie mir recht sein, und ich glaube solcher Verklärung. Ich weiß, dass diese Zeit eine heilige war” (VM 28). Undoubtedly, the recourse to the importance of family history in Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still) is prefigured here. Also corresponding to a line drawn out in the later work is the memory of craftsmen, especially carpenters (VM 33–40), who are nostalgically set against the modernity of “[die] Automatenbediener” (VM 29). Alongside these are forms of experience that appear dissonant. First, there is the relationship with women, which generally does not follow a stable register. In the relationship between man and woman, fatigue becomes above all a metaphor for change, for the emergence of “entzweiende Müdigkeit” (VM 15, 16, 20, 46–48). By contrast, the view of Austria’s recent history is directly linked to the theme of violence (VM 17). Here, the collective state of a nation is discussed by using the keyword “fatigue”, which describes social relations, which will also be portrayed in Der Große Fall (The Great Fall) as a state of the world. These passages set out the fundamentally pessimistic view of history that will later determine Handke’s political reflections on Serbia and, more fundamentally, on history and politics. The theme of history as a “Teufel” is already negotiated here in nuce (Kümmel 2019). Almost in the manner of Thomas Bernhard, the viewer sees “Übeltäter” around him and a “wimmelnde[n] Haufen fortgesetzter Gewalttäter und Handlanger” (VM 31), in order to conclude succinctly with the statement: “Das Weltgericht gibt es nicht” (VM 32). A decisive counter-draft to this is provided by the image of humanity “in kosmischer Müdigkeit” (VM 78), which has not yet been fulfilled in the course of history, but which is the task of the narrative. This leads to the core of this Versuch and the other ones as well. Their focus on individual images and states aims at the unfolding of a poetology that traces the emergence of literary imagination and narrative back to visual perception as much as to “Inbildern”/guiding images that center writing. That no narrative emerges without perception and no text without orientation to the image becomes a basic poetological rule. It is no coincidence that the narrator now quotes one of his poetic leitmotifs, the raindrops in the summer dust, and not without self-irony he speaks of his “ersten, sich immer neu wiederholenlassenden Bild”, which in Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers is indeed deciphered as a memory of the earliest childhood (VM 72, NS 76). Thus, starting from the metaphor of fatigue, the text deals with a narrative that aims to capture “[das] reine Bild”. Fatigue marks a state in which gazes are focused and from which seeing finally emerges not only images, but above all narrative. The

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goal, it is openly stated at the end of the text, is the “sich selbst erzählende Welt als sich selbst erzählende Menschengeschichte, so, wie sie sein könnte” (VM 57). Thus fatigue becomes the central formula for the relationship “[des] Sprach-Ich[s] zur Welt”, which finally only gradually emerges in various forms. The first stage is mute, painfully excluded from the events; in the second, the babble of voices, the talk from outside, passes over to his interior; in the third, life comes into him, in that it begins to narrate there involuntarily, sentence by sentence, a directed storythat always seeks an object. Only in the fourth phase of a “klaräugige Müdigkeit” does the world narrate itself “unter Schweigen, vollkommen wortlos, sich selber, mir wie dem grauhaarigen Zuschauernachbarn da und dem vorbeiwippenden Prachtweib dort” (VM 56). Only then does the fulfilled moment occur, which is both a standstill and a turning point: “Die Bilder der flüchtigen Welt rasteten ein, eins und das andere, und nahmen Gestalt an” (VM 57). There is much to suggest that this poetological reflection is also influenced by painted images, by Poussin’s depiction of The Seven Sacraments in the Edinburgh Museum, which the narrator recounts (VM 58). It is significant that in a small study of these paintings he comes to speak of another leitmotif that also runs through his texts again and again. It is the consecration at mass, which he certainly takes seriously in its religious context, as evidenced by many episodes also in the later texts, but which he at the same time recontextualizes poetologically (Wagner-Egelhaaf 1989, 270  ff.). This gains significance because Handke sees in Poussin what impresses the author Goethe when he looks at the painter Claude Lorrain. His formula that Claude’s landscapes show “die höchste Wahrheit ohne eine Spur von Wirklichkeit” (Goethe A-24. 2; 355), the reference to a conspicuous autonomization of the painterly signs, corresponds to Handke’s view, repeated not only in his fictional texts, that the transformation can also be seen quite generally as the transmutation of a sign into the “Allerwirklichste”, that it thus directly connects sensual and religious perception (MJN 979 f.; PW 29; LSV 66). Transposed into the author’s internal poetology it means  – and this precisely centers the view of Poussin’s Sacraments – that such signs can always point at the same time to an “ANDERE Geschichte” (Handke, blau 2018). This notion of the imagination based on signs, which transcends the merely real in order to reach an “Allerwirklichstes”, is followed by Versuch über die Müdigkeit as well as the later Versuche.

10.3 Signs of Technology and Signs of the Landscape: Versuch über die Jukebox (Essay About the Jukebox, 1990) In contrast to Versuch über die Müdigkeit, which describes further reflections starting from emotional constellations that arise in different social registers, Versuch über die Jukebox starts from a single object, which it seeks and wants to show in different lifeworld situations. In this way, he presents with particular clarity the principle guiding all Versuche of a restriction and concentration of perception on a precisely determined and delimited area in which, comparable to Apollinaire’s

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modernist concept of the “zone”, different images and temporal levels overlap (Apollinaire 1913/2013). In this way, the images and patterns of everyday reality are alienated and become the trigger for associations that transcend mere experience and present perception. In doing so, the view of oneself is in turn combined with that of the surroundings. The jukebox is an object that, on the one hand, is closely connected to Handke’s memories of America; on the other hand, the intermedial perspective it opens up fundamentally points back to his socialization history, for it plays music from the sixties and seventies in this text (Honold 2017, 317). Again and again, there are references to pieces that Handke’s other texts also tell us about: The songs of the Beatles and the Stones, which “[ihn] gehoben [haben]” (AF 274), but also Credence Clearwater Revival and the songs of Van Morrison (AF 465). The fact that the jukebox is initially searched for in Spain, of all places, and that the signs of the New World and the Old World are closely connected, shows the increasing importance that the textual superposition of different images, places, cultures and times acquires for Handke’s narrative. The search for the jukebox, another basic autoreferential figure in Handke’s narrative, is at the same time a paradigm for the recurring difficulty of getting into writing. Even now, the narrator, conveying the author’s perspective, feels “angesichts des bevorstehenden Schreibens Beklommenheit” (VJ 9). The city of Soria, where his quest begins, reinforces the sense of being in a special situation. As the place where the poet Antonio Machado lived, it marks, on the one hand, the beginning of a journey towards the author’s own self. On the other hand, this city, which for a long time has stood “fast außerhalb der Geschichte”, also gives us cause to reflect on a previous past. Located on its edge was Numantia – first ancient Iberian and then Roman –, which in the author’s texts becomes the signature of a catastrophic history that he repeatedly inscribes in his texts. Now, however, the focus is the life-historical significance of the jukebox sign. The Versuch is to clarify “die Bedeutung dieses Dings in den verschiedenen Phasen seines nun schon lange nicht mehr jungen Lebens” (VJ 11). Not unlike Filip Kobal, the traveller of Versuch über die Jukebox also takes his cue from a book; here it is a handbook on Wurlitzer jukeboxes that opens up not only technical but also historical and social contexts (Botts 1984). When jukeboxes, according to the searcher’s book reference, were first set up in the “Hintertürwirtshäusern”, or “speakeasies”, during the Prohibition era of the twenties, they marked a gathering place for people of colour after their work in the jute fields. At the “jute points” these listened to the music of Billie Holiday, Jelly Roll Morton, and Louis Armstrong, which was not played by the white-owned radio stations. In addition to this social field of reference, the handbook also reveals a historical upheaval: the heyday of jukeboxes after the repeal of Prohibition ended with the Second World War, when the materials plastic and steel were rationed and companies like Wurlitzer also began to build electromechanical parts for airplanes. In this way, the jukeboxes in the text become a sign of historical change, which, however, does not affect the astonishing constancy of their external aesthetics (VJ 14 f.). The significance of their aesthetic iconicity is visualized in Wenders’s filming of Die Schönen Tage von Aranjuez, where the narrator writing in the background of

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the summer dialogue draws the outline of a jukebox that corresponds to the contours of the frame in which the man and woman of this play appear. Wenders thus provides a work-historical reference to Handke’s original idea of bringing a dialogue about this object onto the stage. In an autoreflexive passage, one of the guiding ideas for this Versuch is sketched out, an “unverbundenes Miteinander vieler verschiedener Schreibformen” and a connection of “Augenblicksbildern” and “weit ausholenden, dann jäh abbrechenden Erzählläufen” (VJ 68). The extent to which image and text are supposed to influence each other is made clear by the consideration that a connection with fragmentary film scenes is also conceivable (VJ 69). Given the historical references of the object of the jukebox – the last one is only hinted at in a coded way by linking the Bee Gees’ 1977 soundtrack Saturday Night Fever to an “Ende des Krieges”, this time it is the Vietnam War (VJ 27) – the narrator himself sees his journey as escapist. It marks his exit from history, especially as he refuses to participate in the historical event of the fall of the German Wall in 1989. This is all the more astonishing since he himself compares this very peaceful revolution to a liberation of peoples, which seems like a “sich selbst erzählendes Märchen, das wirklichste und wirksamste, das himmlischste sowie das irdischste” (VJ 26). Yet the narrator also explicitly assumes the observer position of an outsider in this historical moment. In Spain, removed from the rest of Europe, he undertakes a survey of foreign places, and enters a social alienation by consciously dealing with the jukebox as a thing “für Weltflüchtlinge”. His attention to an object in the history of civilization goes decidedly beyond his immediate fascination with this lifeworldly object. For one thing, the narrator views the technical object as if it were a social-historical document. When looking at the different programs, he is particularly interested in the confusion and the partially unknown pieces when they are only labeled in handwriting (VJ 108 f.); he is even more impressed when the program signs are completely blank and the pieces played can only be heard directly (VJ 136). Additionally, the jukeboxes become the signature of a radical concentration on the self, because the seeker takes them seriously together with their respective environment solely as a projection surface of himself. The places where he searches for jukeboxes end up creating a phantasmatic network of relations that organizes his perceptions and autonomizes himself in the process (VJ 52 f.). Finally, in Soria, the experience of a “lange Zeit” (VJ 128) emerges from the pleasure of “[der] Variante dieser so gleichförmig erscheinenden Orte” (VJ 134). Moreover, the seeker knows that the jukeboxes he searches for in all cities can only be found in certain places. They are “Zwischenbereiche” of a barracks, a train station, a gas station, or a canal behind freight tracks. He also finds such a “Jukebox-Parade-Ort”, for example, in Casarsa in the Friulian lowlands (VJ 55). In his search, different life-historical memories present themselves and connect with the present. The jukeboxes in the Ebro Valley are reminiscent of the field huts at home; in his memory their “Haus- oder Örtlichkeitszauber” has passed to the jukeboxes (VJ 78). In this, the image of a child in front of a box playing Madonna’s

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Like a Prayer (VJ 80) occurs alongside the memory of a broken jukebox in Nikko, Japan (VJ 80 f.). The recollector realizes that in his youth he not only heard a different music in the “Bauchklang” (VJ 83) of the jukebox than on the radio at home, the so-called “amerikanischen Schlager”, he also perceived it almost physically and lived in its lyrics. He felt in himself the mysterious “Schöner Fremder Mann” or believed himself transported to the “Route Sixty-Six” (VJ 84). Initiated by the music of the jukebox, the intensely experienced foreign world connects with the remembered places of his youth. The linking of the technical object with images of youth allows these to become psychologically powerful images (VJ 112 f.); a jukebox in Yugoslavia is given special significance here (VJ 114). But political events are also reflected in this way, foreshadowing the focus on history during the time of the Serbian War; it is no coincidence that allusions are made to the Carinthian referendum after the Saint-­ Germain Peace Treaty and the later “Anschluss” of Austria to Germany. The jukebox in an espresso parlor on the thoroughfare is located first in “[der] Stadt der Volksabstimmung von 1920” and then in “[der] Stadt der Volkserhebung von 1938” (VJ 84). Later events in history also become background images for the narrator’s search and writing. He reads of the execution of the Ceausescu couple “mit altem, frisch erwachtem Grauen vor der Geschichte”; he mentions the American military action in Panama (VJ 123); at the same time, Theophrast’s characters provide him with images for his view of man’s role in history (VJ 124). The memories triggered by the jukebox are both physical and psychological. Already from his student days he remembers his unique experience of “levitation” through the musical experience with the jukebox in changing places, which appears to him like a “Entgrenzung” or “Weltwerdung” (VJ 88). This is followed by experiences abroad (VJ 91), and the encounter with a Native American woman in Alaska, which is also marked by a jukebox, naturally a reference to Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming), takes on special significance. Here the technical object becomes a reminder of a drastic psychological turning point. For this encounter is felt as a submission to a “von jemand anderem vorgestellte Entscheidung” (VJ 93), in a strongly emotional way it is described as a “Aufgeben seines Namens, seiner Art Arbeit, jeder einzelnen seiner Gewohnheiten”; it is a situation felt as existential, in which the seeker compares himself to Parzival (VJ 94). Increasingly evident now is the parallelization of the musical experience evoked by the jukebox with strategies and sensations otherwise associated with writing alone. It is no coincidence that the reference to the spatial “Zwischenbereichen” where the jukeboxes can be found takes up an image that also determines Handke’s poetological self-reflection as a metaphor. The movement in space associated with the search for the jukebox therefore visualizes, as already indicated at the beginning, at the same time the path to writing; moreover, it traces out a central basic figure of the later Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos). In the depths of his nocturnal dreams, which take up the images seen during the day, the traveller is shown not only the foreign and certainly not the merely real, but only “sein Gesetz als Bild, Bild um Bild” (VJ 28). He assigns these images to a world-spanning epic of war and peace in which children alone are to be the main characters. As a spectator and

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listener to his own dreams, he now has experiences that he never had being awake “die Ehrfurcht vor einem bloßen Menschenantlitz, oder die Verzückung, vor dem Traumblau eines Berges, oder sogar die Gläubigkeit” (VJ 29). In view of this radical concentration on one’s own perception, which takes the place of attention to the real, Picasso’s motto that pictures are made like princes make their children with shepherdesses and not with an eye to the Pantheon also loses meaning (VJ 31). The narrator also doubts whether the jukebox, which does not even appear in Pop Art and is only mentioned in a song by Van Morrisson, could be a suitable subject for a book at all. But here the reference to Edward Hopper’s paintings, especially Nighthawks, provides a crucial clue: there is no jukebox depicted there, but it can be fantasized into this painter’s nocturnal bar, and the jukebox’s locations are repeated as sites of fantasy (Renner 1990, 77–80). This provides another perspective on Versuch über die Jukebox. The fantasy spaces that the jukebox opens up (VJ 33) connect the experience with a technical object of modernity in the text with a traditional aesthetic: in Soria, the sight of the Romanesque cathedral of Santo Domingo leads to an experience that is connected with the already familiar image for an initiation (Fig. 10.1), with a “Ruck” that the narrator feels (Carstensen 2013, 25 f., 160; VJ 121). It is a word whose peculiarity he is well aware of, but on which he nevertheless insists (VgT 88). As with the musical experience in front of the jukebox, a bodily experience occurs in front of the cathedral. The traveller feels the proportions of the building “in den Schultern, den Hüften, den Sohlen, wie seinen eigentlichen, verborgenen

Fig. 10.1  Cathedral of Santo Domingo in Soria: Romanesque tympanum of the main portal. (© Yvan Travert/akg-images/picture alliance)

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Körper” (VJ 38). Moreover, this configuration of a superimposition of modern and ancient worlds again follows the double images in Apollinaire’s Zone (Apollinaire 1913/2013). It is precisely in this way that it becomes apparent to the narrator what he wants to be about on the occasion of Jukebox. It is the law of a new writing that he is looking for, and Versuch über die Jukebox is nothing otherthan its reconstruction in the context of lifeworld images. Again, a story about something precisely designated is first and foremost a concealed narrative about the writer himself. In the end, the search for the jukebox leads to a place of writing in Soria, which is accepted, although the seeker circles around the realization with nursery rhymes “dass es ihm nirgends recht war” (VJ 65). Remarkably, this superimposition of past and modern can also work with the coincidence of a geometric figure. The round arch that the writer draws in the film Die Schönen Tagen von Aranjuez also corresponds to the arch dominant in Romanesque architecture. It thus represents at the same time a “Line of Beauty”, which will be discussed in Versuch über den geglückten Tag (VT 8). The fact that the search represented by Versuch über die Jukebox at the same time opens up one of Handke’s guiding poetological basic figures is again revealed in a two-fold way, namely as a gesture of defense and as a reorientation. Because the epic forms of the past epochs and their “vielwisserischer wie ahnungsloser Totalitätsanspruch –, in heutigen Büchern praktiziert” have come to seem to him like “ein bloßes Getue” (VJ 70), he first sought, following his previous writing orientation, a unifying experience with objects that should “den Abstand wahren; umkreisen; umreißen; umspielen [und der Sache]” “von den Rändern her den Begleitschutz geben” (VJ 70). Now, however, the search for the jukeboxes traces out a new form of representation in which, following the rhythm of this journey, the writer’s imagination is articulated in such a way that “in ihren Bildern der Ort und die Örtlichkeit, wo er die Erzählung aufschreiben würde, miterschienen” (VJ 73). When, in order to be able to write, he goes near a jukebox, the seeker compares himself to a “recogido” characterized by tense attention in the sense of Theresa of Avila (VJ 99). Through his capacity for concentration initiated by the technical object, present-tense moments can occur in the past tense, and without circumlocution, unlike in dreams, “als bloße Hauptsätze, so kurz und einfältig wie jeweils der Augenblick” (VJ 71). This reciprocal interweaving of past and present images becomes central for writing. “Längst leblos gewordene Bilder kamen in Schwung und Schwebe, brauchten so nur noch niedergeschrieben zu werden” (VJ 100). In juxtaposition to a jukebox, “zusammen mit dem Dahinphantasieren, ohne das ihm so zuwidere Beobachten, oft zu einem Sich-Verstärken, oder eben Gegenwärtigwerden, auch der anderen Anblicke” (VJ 102). The narrator concludes succinctly: The present had its joints inserted (VJ 103). Because this also involves the “alleserwärmende Phantasie” in the rhythm of the narrative (VJ 72), the writing repeats what the search for the jukebox had foreshadowed. Just as in the musical experience made possible by the jukebox, different images of one’s own life story overlap in the writing, for example, “a birch tree moves from Cologne to Indianapolis as a cypress tree” (VJ 73). The guiding textual features of Der Bildverlust that emerged two years later are thus formulated.

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It is only logical that, under these conditions, writing and describing should first of all aim to open up the present: Soria is to occur solely as Soria and be “as much the subject of the narrative as the jukebox” (VJ 73). This is, for the narrator, above all “ein Ding der Ruhe, oder etwas zum Ruhigwerden, zum Stillesitzen, in ziemlicher Reg- und fast Atemlosigkeit” (VJ 85). It marks the starting point and premises of writing. “festhalten und gelten lassen, was ein Ding einem bedeuten und, vor allem, was von einem bloßen Ding ausgehen konnte” (VJ 110 f.). This is accompanied by a new perception that allows for a reciprocal intertwining of image and text, for the search for the jukebox not only leads to the cities, but also makes the narrator aware of the surrounding nature. That he thereby uses the metaphor of reading for his perception of the Spanish landscape opens up a central connection between preceding texts such as Langsame Heimkehr and subsequent ones such as be as much the subject of Der Bildverlust or Die Morawische Nacht. This attitude results in an orientation towards the perception of geography and landscapes, which the writer finds “erdend” because, he realizes, in Spain “geography has always been a servant of history, of conquests and demarcations, and only now is more attention being paid to ‛Botschaften der Orte’” (VJ 126). This combination of steering and distraction of perception makes clear what the search for the jukebox also staged: It was not only about a search for the known and the lost, but always also about a construction of strangeness, out of which the other and new view becomes possible. The search for a known object in space becomes an initiation story, the constellative configuration of technical world, culture and landscape outlines the preconditions of writing. At the end of the text, like a miniature, it is joined by another image that also visualizes the transformation of the world into signs. The narrator observes a young girl drawing Chinese characters in a notebook at the next table, “in einer Schrift viel regelmäßiger als die seine in diesen Wochen” (VJ 139). It is precisely from this that a decisive impulse emanates on the seeker, who was first looking for the jukebox, but in truth has always been looking for a new beginning for himself as a writer. Looking at the foreign writing, “he felt with astonishment that he had only now really set out from where he had come” (VJ 139).

10.4 Writing Attempts: Versuch über den geglückten Tag (Essay on the Successful Day 1991) The basic principle of the Versuche to treat the respective theme both literally and as an idea is already formulated in this text at the beginning (VT 8). Throughout, the etymologies and linguistic considerations that connect the formula of the happy day with the happy moment as well as the happy eternal and unique life can be read at the same time as fragments of possible life plans and as memories of lived life (VT 22). In doing so, the narrator reminds us that the dangerous thing is the day itself (VT 29); he speaks of how difficult it is to be able to live what he desires. He describes his inability to adequately perceive the light of morning and refers to himself as a “Verräter an meinem Tag” (VT 68 f.). His oscillation between hope and

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failure reproduces an ambivalent psychological disposition that is not unique to this text. Its two sides are formally presented in the Versuch über den geglückten Tag in a dialogical form that seems like a soliloquy. Like the search for the jukebox, the reflection on the successful day follows different descriptive registers. However, these do not constantly run in parallel, nor do they unfold in continuous lines. Rather, in this Versuch, more clearly than in the other four, narrative itself becomes an experimental procedure, directly reenacting the problems of writing and emphasizing the need for “Immer-wieder-Neuansetzen” or even “Durcheinanderwerfen[s]” (VT 54). The guiding metaphor is that of sawing through a tree trunk, which is easy at first, but becomes difficult as it approaches the heartwood, sometimes even having to be broken off in order to start again (VT 46–48). At the same time, the narrator’s “trotziger Tagtraum” (VT 14) is deliberately directed at a small period of time that resists the spirit of the epoch; it becomes clear that the search for the successful day also springs from a suffering under the present that is to be overcome. It is expressly said of it that it is oriented towards the future and towards action (VT 24). This life-historical constellation undergoes a philosophical transcription in Versuch, which takes up considerations from Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil), Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World) (PW 40; GW 94, 114) and Phantasien der Wiederholung (Fantasies of Repetition) (GB 49  f.) and thus combines the reflection on narrative with an existential philosophical consideration. The word “heiß[en]”, which in the text also means to signify, but above all to promise (VT 10; Heidegger UN 28), and the formula “zeitigen” (VT 70), finally the attitude of “Innewerdens” (VT 35), which is necessary for an experience of the successful day and which is connected with “Hören”, point to Heidegger’s proposition, which becomes decisive for the narrator, that man can experience the “Zuspruch des Seins”/“address of being” in language (Heidegger UN 33). Yet it is characteristic of Handke’s writing that this philosophical reference also allows for a multiple reading in this text, because it also undergoes a psychological and an intermedial encoding. First of all, the only hinted at view of one’s own history releases an imagination that relates the present to a perception that undoubtedly reaches into the unconscious and seems like a fantastic intrusion into ordinary reality. Almost disturbingly, at one point in the text it is said, “so streiften seine Stirn seine Toten” (VT 52). It is a configuration that will be staged in Immer noch Sturm like a fantastic dream. A comparable psychological line is opened elsewhere by the interaction of dream and visual perception. Some of the dreams are pushed aside, but on the other hand those are preserved “die ein den Tageslauf verlangsamendes, im Weltgeschehen haltendes Gewicht wären” (VT 31). The perception based on this intertwines real and fantastic elements, for it sees “die verschiedenen Erdteile” growing together. In this way, this image is also psychologized, “[das] Fremdlicht des Nachmittags [ist] enthext” and appears to the writer like a phantasm, a “Fata Morgana” mirrored to you out of yourself (VT 31). This psychological constellation combines with an intermedial formation. On the one hand, it corresponds to reflections on the relationship between word and

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image that Handke develops together with Wim Wenders on the occasion of the film Der Himmel über Berlin. On the other hand, the text points ahead to the central theme of Der Bildverlust, which redefines the interrelationship between the media of writing and image. During the film work, however, Handke tends to give preference to the image, while Wenders insists precisely on the specificity of the word and states programmatically: “Das Wort wird bleiben” (Wenders 1977, 197). In Versuch über den geglückten Tag, Handke attempts to establish a balance between the image and the word, seeing and writing, as he also develops in Am Felsfenster morgens (At the Mountain Window in the Morning), where he finally determines word and image as an inseparable correlate: “Am Anfang war das Wort? Am Anfang war das Bild? Das Bild gibt das Wort” (FF 439), he says there. Consistent with this, Versuch über den geglückten Tag also oscillates between the double fascination through the word and through the image. It is contoured by the reference to the “Urtext” of the Bible (VT 90), which follows a poetic rewriting of some phrases from the letters of the Apostle Paul. These are not necessarily used correctly in terms of exegesis but correspond to the biblical grounding of Wender’s statements on the relationship between word and image. They also follow a poeticizing translation of the Greek text of the New Testament by Handke. This applies to the reference to the Greek “anagignoskein” (VT 10) as well as to the formulas of the “Wurf des Auges” (1 Cor. 15:52; VT 36, 64, 75) and “das klingende Wort”, a poetic reformulation of the biblical term for proclamation (2 Tim. 4:2; Barth 1998, 130–132). Also, the motto prefixed to the text, “Der den Tag denkt, denkt dem Herrn”, decontextualizes a Pauline formula from Romans, which is about the salvation-historical promise of God’s acceptance of every human being. The text’s reference to Hogarth’s The Painter and his Pug, already initiated at the beginning, shows (Fig. 10.2) that this fixation on the word is part of an intermedial configuration that determines the text as a whole. In the narrator’s imagination, the shape of Hogarth’s “Line of Beauty”, seen on a palette of the self-portrait, connects with natural formations in two ways, first with a sedimentary line in a stone, then with lines he perceives in the landscape (VT 7, 8). Moreover, Versuch über den geglückten Tag twice overtly recreates Hogarth’s basic aesthetic idea developed in the work on The Analysis of Beauty, which can also be seen in a self-portrait from 1745 (Bexte 1995, 212–228). Once when the narrator describes walking with his cat in a long curved diagonal in the garden, obviously an allusion to Hogarth’s geometrical figure of the serpentina (VT 51), finally then when, remembering two songs by Marilyn Monroe and observing falling sycamore leaves, he has the impression that Hogarth’s Line of Beauty is not dug into the palette, but rather stretched over it “wie ein geschweiftes Seil oder eine Peitschenschnur” (VT 85). This image, which refers to the fact that the inscription on the palette of Hogarth’s self-portrait appears as if three-dimensional, becomes a metaphor for the process of Handke’s writing, which works with a comparable superimposition, i.e., with the overwriting of images by language. In this way, the text very accurately captures the art-historically remarkable fact that Hogarth wants to overcome the strict separation between the linearity of writing and the iconicity of the image (Bexte 1995, 212–228). Moreover, the narrated images are vision boards that operate in a double

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Fig. 10.2 ‘Gulielmus Hogarth’ (1697–1764): Self-portrait, 1745. (© The Print Collector/Heritage Images/picture alliance)

way. Next to the narrator’s view of himself, they place the view of nature, which is transformed into a landscape in the act of looking at it. The special effect of this interrelationship results from the fact that it is not only unfolded in writing, but at the same time produces images that can be followed by writing. The fact that seeing and writing enter into a relationship and cannot do without each other is condensed in the formula that also determines the collaboration with Wenders: “Schauen und weiterschauen mit den Augen des richtigen Worts” (VT 83). The goal becomes “Im-Wort-Sein” (VT 59), and this is not simply developed theoretically, but demonstrated in narrative. Following this constellation, the text stages a series of attempted new beginnings that are supposed to open up the successful day. These are text segments that either begin with precise descriptions of nature or combine these with images of civilization. But they always fail, in different ways, because the series of perceived images cannot be interwoven(VT 56–59). There is, in clear allusion to Hogarth, a lack of “Schwung” that could create a connection, so in the end only “Sprachlosigkeiten” sets in (VT 58). A change only emerges when, on a suburban train in Paris, the narrator focuses more decisively on the idea of the happy day, transforming it from a “Lebens- in eine Schreibidee” (VT 63). After this focus on writing alone, the final task is to find the basic figure according to which this can follow immediate perception. During the train journey through a long sweeping S-curve, which reminds the narrator of Hogarth’s ‘Line of Beauty’, this is spontaneously achieved. The narrator now not only associates a connection of this line to the sediment of the pebble, but also relates it to his pencil, the instrument of writing.

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This link suggests a writing gesture that the narrator apostrophizes with the keyword “Mit”. This points to a form of writing that merely records what is perceived, without subjecting it to a fixed rule that wants to conform things (VT 66). This principle is followed by a synaesthetic description of the successful day (VT 72–75), which not only connects hearing and seeing, but also places an “Und” next to the leading vocabulary of “Mit”. It is the paratactic narrative principle that fascinates Handke in the medieval epic, and again and again in Parzival (AF 414). He calls it “ideale Erzählereinfalt”. This narrative writing utopia becomes a fantasy of authorship that, in reference to Ungaretti, combines the religious with a poetic metaphor of light (VT 77). It aims not at a transforming or appropriating, but “gewährenlassen” (VT 74). Once again, it is a matter of “Innewerden” the forms of nature (PW 40; GB 94, 114), for these open up the formal law of writing as well as the laws of the imagination; they prevent “[das] die Dinge verratende […] Sprachdenken […]” (GB 212). At the same time, this writing program has psychological connotations: On the successful day, the writer will have been “rein sein Medium” (VT 74), and in this way alone will he succeed in the glorious “Vergessen der Historie” (VT 87). The wish “Heim zum Buch, zum Schreiben, zum Lesen”, which follows a playful series of very different images from film and reality (VT 89  f.), is therefore understood as the redemption of a dream. But this is not one that the narrator has “gehabt”, but rather one that he has “in diesem Versuch hier, gemacht”, one that he is in the process of writing (VT 90 f.). Thus, this Versuch also ends in an autoreferential figure. He himself first creates what he is about, but in doing so he stages a “Verwandlung” that is supposed to last as the guiding fantasy of writing (VT 91).

10.5 The World Circle of Narrative: Versuch über den Stillen Ort (2012) The Versuch über den Stillen Ort (Essay on the Quite Place) falls back on the narrative scheme that already determines the Versuch über die Jukebox. It is based on a coupling of places where “Stille Orte”/quiet places can be found with memories of youthful history and later travels. In this context, the chain of memories, which extends from the earliest childhood in the countryside and the village of Stara Vas (VO 13), through the boarding school years (VO 16), to the university years (VO 52), also reveals stations in a history of socialization, which altogether promote an initiation to writing. This begins with the traumatic experience of incontinence in the boarding school dining hall, which results in early exclusion. This scene finds its counter-image in the memory of an overnight stay in a toilet, the description of which unfolds parallels to the situation of the protagonist in Die Hornissen (Hornets) and to a scene in Die Wiederholung (Repetition), and which at the same time refers to the author himself. At the end of the text, the dialectical figure of exclusion, flight from the world and reintegration, which determines the memoir, is no longer narrated as a general figure of life, but is presented as the socialization of an author. This is apostrophized as a path from “Geschlagensein mit Stummheit” to a “Wiederkehr der Sprache und des Sprechens” (VO 107). It is no coincidence that

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the songs quoted in Versuch über die Jukebox now correspond to references to literature, to William Faulkner (VO 46) and Thomas Wolfe (VO 48), which are linked to memories of youth. In this way, the quiet places mark the turning points of a socialization history that leads back to the others through speaking and writing. The depiction of their sequence leads to a completely emotional image. “Einsilbig geworden durch die Worte wie Wörter der anderen” (VO 107), the narrator experiences that in the quiet place he finds his way back to language and becomes powerful in speech again. This seems like a revival experience, for in him “hebt es zu reden an” and this also happens “im Psalmenton, mit Feuerzungen, in Ausrufen” (VO 108). The “neuen Wörter” he finds also transform the sounds he hears outside. “[Das] Grölen, Gellen, Toben und Kreischen” becomes “Volksgemurmel und Weltgeräusch”, which motivates the narrator to return to the others “voll von der Redelust” (VO 109). From the perspective of this conclusion, the narrator’s repeatedly described and self-chosen marginal position, which he himself at times regards as a consequence of “Gesellschaftswiderwillen”, even as an “antisoziale[n] Akt” (VO 75), receives its subsequent legitimation. From the beginning, it sought a space that allowed fantasies and wishful thinking to form. In this regard, the quiet place of the toilet houses initially provides, on the face of it, an opportunity for contemplation and reflection on all that is outside. But it is crucial that this space of refuge becomes from the very beginning at the same time “etwas Grundandere[s]” (VSO 49), that the area of the supposed “Asylort” (VO 21) is in fact transformed into the space of a very personal utopia. In the narrator’s self-reflection, the place’s fundamental other leads to the silent place accompanying him “über das Ding und den Platz hinaus” also as an “idea” (VSO 69). Even before this, the quiet place – and this makes it comparable to the places of jukeboxes – becomes in a very simple sense the realm of a special perception. The outside noises are perceived there “statt entrückt oder gar gegenstandslos” even “haut- oder trommelfellnah” (VO 37), in the toilets of the boarding school water noises can be heard constantly (VO 20), while the Quiet Places in Japan are characterized by a silence that makes them spaces of memory and meditation at the same time. The temple garden toilet of Nara in Japan gives the example for this (VO 65–67). There, the special situation in the quiet place is also determined as a prerequisite for writing. Beyond its real condition, this place becomes a figure of thought, a “Vorwurf”, following the literal sense of the Greek ‘problema’. It marks “etwas zu Umfahrendes, zu Umkurvendes” and there is no doubt that the medium of this circumnavigation is a language, “die des umkreisenden oder umreißenden Erzählens” (VO 69 f.). In this way, the topography and description of the quiet places become a metaphore, not unlike the search for the jukeboxes and their description, for the path from a self-chosen demarcation to the transformation of the outsider position into a productive attitude that leads to imagination and writing. It is explicitly stated that the quiet places can also be created “allein aus sich selber heraus […], von Fall zu Fall, […] inmitten von dem zeitweise noch ungleich stärker geisttötenden Gerede” (VO 46). The fact that this simultaneously leads to a new self-perception, which

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bears all the signs of a new psychological beginning, is also captured in an image in the text. In the antechamber to the faculty toilet, where the narrator washes his hair, he first sees one of his professors, who had previously met him with rejection. His preparation for a rendezvous, which takes place at the washstand, now seems to establish a secret understanding between him and the former student that henceforth changes their relationship (VO 56). In a second, parallel scene, the narrator sees his double, also at the washstand in front of a toilet, and is challenged to an analytical look at himself that revolves around the question “wer war ich” (VO 60). As in Versuch über die Jukebox, such social and psychological configurations are repeatedly joined by aesthetic perceptions. This begins with a boarding school student’s stay in the infirmary, where through the large windows he sees for the first time in a different way the nature around the school building, which is imperceptible from the other rooms. In doing so, his perception follows the romantic window view of painting, for it leads to an aesthetic transformation. The “altvertraute” landscape is transformed into one that is “zugleich neu”; moreover, the boundary between it and the sickroom disappears, both triggered by the fact that the perceiver’s gaze led in a “grundandere Richtung” from the very beginning (VO 25). It is at once a psychological coding of perception, repeated in a scene in Nara where the gaze through a knothole in the plank floor of the privy becomes a double gaze. The gazer looks down at clay, pebbles, grains of sand, and pine needles, and remembers another gaze directed at the chicken yard six decades earlier from the privy of the grandfather’s mansion through the board cracks (VO 74). This makes it clear that the quiet places not only structure a register of memories, but that they also refer to a very private archive of images. The media memories mobilized by the series of jukeboxes are joined by visual memories in the series of restrooms. What connects both archives is that they simultaneously record everyday forms to which the narrator lends aesthetic quality. On his journey through the Quiet Places, he not only discovers the explicit aesthetics with which Friedensreich Hundertwasser designed a toilet in Kawakawa, New Zealand, but also the pattern-like burn marks on toilet installations caused incidentally by cigarettes. The concentrated geometry (VO 82, 83) of the Quiet Places, which is based on their location and form as well as their furnishings and which is certainly comparable to the aesthetics of the jukebox, also reveals itself to him. It is only inside the Quiet Places that their geometric shape, circle, oval, cylinder, cone, ellipse, pyramid, truncated pyramid, truncated cone, rectangle, tangent, segment, trapezium becomes apparent to the viewer (VO 81). Even if the observeris certainly influenced by the gaze of ethnographers, which he learns about in books, and by volumes of photographs of the world’s toilets, in the end only his own perception proves decisive, which is captured with a disposable camera (VO 87). Their images, like the author’s texts, open up a sequence of images that seems to extend over the entire world and which, in the end, makes the geometry of the “petit coin” a pattern for the geometry of the entire circle of the earth, an idea that the narrator refers to the Greek “Aeï ho theós geométrei” (VO 82). This entanglement of the double vision of narrowness and expanse, the dressing of which the narrator ironically marks with the name “Ideal Standard” familiar from

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plumbing fixtures (VO 90), leads to a fixation on geometric forms. These in turn mark a point of articulation between Versuche and the rest of Handke’s work. The consistency with which it determines the observation of geological formations in later texts is evidenced, among others, by Langsame Heimkehr and the texts in the Niemandsbucht sequence. Thus, the peculiarity of Versuch über den Stillen Ort is that, like Versuch über die Jukebox, it ultimately turns decisively outward and transcends the originally chosen object. It opens up the preconditions for a new view of landscape and nature (VO 100 f.) by developing a fundamental parallelism (VO 104) between the perceptions of the outside world and the Quiet Places. The fantasy of the closed geometric circle of the world is nothing other than the guiding metaphor for a writing strategy that relates all of the author’s texts to one another.

10.6 Searching for One’s Own in the Other: Versuch über den Pilznarren (Essay on the Mushroom Hunter, 2013) The fifth and last text of Versuche also creates a ‘Selberlebensbeschreibung’ of the author Handke with a parallel story. The story of the mushroom hunter is actually that of a double, reflecting his memories of his own origins and development, partly in playful irony but also with indirect references. It begins in childhood, in a rural setting, it refers to Slovenia, and in the end the mushroom jester has become a criminal lawyer at an international court, marginalia that undoubtedly allude to Handke’s Serbian texts. An anecdote in the text becomes an image for this narrative camouflage, describing how, during the Second World War, partisans disguised themselves as mushroom hunters and the mushroom hunter “einmal umgekehrt für den Wald als Partisan verkleidet” in order to find what he was after (VP 209). As in other texts by the author that feature a double, this narrative scheme allows for self-representation, self-reflection, and self-criticism at the same time. Undoubtedly, the foolishness of this mushroom friend who changes his bourgeois life (VP 54 f.) becomes a metaphor for the special role that the narrator ascribes to himself and that determines how others view him. As is often the case in Handke’s texts, this central configuration is reinforced by an intermedial reference. Alongside the reference to Thomas Hardy’s novel Far from the Madding Crowd is the cinematic memory of John Ford’s western Two Rode Together, in which James Stewart and Richard Widmark act together. This doubling of the protagonists is developed in the film from a visual configuration that Handke takes up and which makes a single perspective binding. It is the image of Widmark’s legs stretched out on the railing of the Front Porch in boots (VP 8 f.) comparable to those also worn by the narrator in his house (Fig. 10.3). This ironizes the double play of narration on the one hand, and on the other links it to a perception that Handke repeats several times in his texts: it is an image of Ernst Mach that is meant to visualize that the perception of one’s own body connects with that of the surrounding reality. As a view from the eye of the beholder, it shows the beholder’s body and legs together with a room and a window view outside (Mach 1870, 1886; Bloch 1965, 224).

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Fig. 10.3  Still from John Ford: Two Rode Together, 02:30

In addition, the doubling of character that determines this particular Versuch enables a distance that alienates the self, but at the same time takes it seriously. This is why, despite the narrator’s distance from himself as a person, the texts of his inventor are always present; this Versuch could well be seen as an abbreviated “Leitfaden durch Peter Handkes Werk” (Rosenfelder 2013). There is explicit mention of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (VP 59) and of Die Wiederholung (VP 72); there is also mention of Taxham’s apothecary from Die Abwesenheit (Absence) (VP 188). Finally, reference is made to the Versuche to which the text itself belongs (VP 208). The fact that money is at the centre of the story of the friend’s search for mushrooms can at the same time be read as an ironic reference to the role of money in Der Bildverlust. Moreover, in the economy of covertly narrated self-reflection, the mushroom-seeking youthful companion embodies the psychological conditioning of the narrator, whose inclination for a literature based on imagination, narration, and invention sets him apart from the literature of knowledge to which the friend turns (VP 35). However, this story does not provide a representation of coherent psychologies of characters, it merely unfolds a narrative model that can be used like a “Sehtafel”/ visual board for the perception of self and other. Nor is it in any way about a juxtaposition of two different attitudes to reality. Rather, the mushroom-picking of the friend becomes the starting point of an indirect self-description of the author, which is combined with a paraphrasing and metaphorization of his literary strategies. An example of this is given by the reference to the “Säume, Ränder und die Lichtungen” (VP 40), which are leitmotifs in Handke’s work. This is why the parallel stories of

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the narrator, and the friend are also intertwined; only together do they reveal the self-image of their inventor, who plays with two stories at once and links them aleatorically. The traits of a self-stylization are clear here, which are oriented towards the author’s leitmotifs. When he describes his young friend as a treasure hunter and compares him to a chosen one (VP 20), or when he tells us that he moved from “Schauen und Hören” to “Sinnen […], wobei er sich weit mehr am Platz fühlte als bei gleichwelchem Denken” (VP 21), he unfolds fragments of a poetology. It corresponds to his own recourse to the role of the childlike imagination, which is reflected in his friend’s belief that he has magic powers at his disposal (VP 24). Sometimes, however, this self-stylization in the other is also peculiarly broken. The self-aggrandizement in the gesture of grandiosity is juxtaposed with the nightmares of a mentally retarded girl, whose obsessions seem like a retelling of the fantasies of Paul Schreber, who let the images of her own election emerge from a delusional obsession (VP 32; Freud 1973, 203). In the interplay of the two stories, a form of self-criticism is thus also articulated. In looking at himself through the example of the Mushroom hunter, the author first critically recognizes his tendency to exaggerate his own view of the world and to transfigure it utopianly. However, in the background of his depiction of the foolishness of the mushroom picker there is also the utopia of a successful biography, which for the car at least proves that he has found his own way, which allows him to preserve the memory of childhood and at the same time to find something completely different. This indirect biographical reference is foreshadowed in Versuch über die Müdigkeit, in which a boy from the village “at home also goes mushrooming”; Versuch über den Stillen Ort presents a comparable doppelganger story in retrospect of childhood and youth (Müller 2013). The preservation of one’s own and the foreign in one’s own turn out to be inextricably linked, but obviously the tension between the two cannot be resolved in a single and linear story of socialization. This is suggested by the turning point of the text, described as a fairy-tale scene, which depicts “[das] Verschollengehen” of the Mushroom hunter and his “Verschwinden von der Erdoberfläche”. This event also marks a change of register in the narrative. It takes place suddenly, tracing a narrative of the prophet Habakkuk (VP 192 f.). It is not until a year later that the mushroom seeker reappears with the narrator, who in the meantime is writing his story. The starting point of this openly narrated description of the friend’s life was an initiation story, which underscores the parallelism between the friend’s story, that of the narrator, and that of their inventor. The decisive turning point in the friend’s life is an “Alltäglichkeit[.]” (VP 62) that is nonetheless experienced as an initiation, as in many of Handke’s texts. While crossing a “lichte Weite” (VP 64), the friend sees a porcini mushroom for the first time and has the impression of experiencing a moment of “Jetzt” (VP 68). His perception of the mushroom makes it seem like a fairy tale, especially since it is linked to images that come from legends. This episode can be compared to the perception of the first fig tree, which is a turning point in the real author’s story and in his text on Wiederholung (VP 72).

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In Versuch über den Pilznarren, this event also leads to a fundamental change in perception. About the friend it says: “Er kam ins Hören, so wie man ins Gehen kommt, ins Sinnen, ins Denken, oder auch ins Stocken” (VP 75). At the same time, there is a noise overload, he hears all the sounds of civilization, perceives them as a threat, while the mushroom is a “Glückspilz” for him (VP 76 f.). This perception is also associated with childhood memories, images of the present and childhood overlap (VP 80) and nothing is allowed to disturb this unique experience (VP 84 f.). This gives rise to parallels with the author’s poetological concept and self-­ reflection, quite apart from the fact that the friend, like the latter, repeatedly describes bomb craters as signs of history during his nature walks (VP 134 f.) and that the friend’s fascination with mushrooms is described as “interesseloses Wohlgefallen” in an ironic allusion to Kant’s Kritik der Urteilskraft (VP 48; Kant KdU § 2). Of fundamental importance for the internal poetology of the text is that the described mushroom hunt requires an “Unnatur des Blicks”, a particular form of perception that both alienates and deciphers (VP 125). The movement of the mushroom hunter in search steps, which are subsequently also referred to as ‘epic’ steps, thus opens up a parallel to the poetological notion of a writing that is based on observing and seeing and that occurs while walking (VP 128–130). This is a prerequisite for a creative alternation of “Geistesgegenwart und auf einmal Abwesenheit, völliger Abwesenheit und auf einmal vollkommener Geistesgegenwart” (VP 52). His existence becomes a “ständiges Spiel zwischen Wissenslust!, Geselligkeit und Geheimnis” (VP 54), which also determines his relationships with women, in which only at last he experienced “den ersehnten Ruck” (VP 59). The fanaticism of the mushroom hunter puts him on an “Auslug-Sitz zu seinen Zeitgenossen” (VP 107), in his imagination paths and places link up with life memories, he walks on a “Vorgeburtsweg” or uses the “Völkerwanderungsweg” (VP 108). At the same time, he becomes as capable of “lebendige[s] Verweilen” (VP 109) and participation. As an observer, he finds himself in a “Gleichgewicht mit ihnen allen, Schatzsucher und zugleich Alltagsmensch” (VP 115). In this way, poetological and life-historical patterns combine. The mushroom hunter distances himself from the normal world of life, he lives in a “Zwischenraum”, a literal self-quotation of the author (VP 90). Even in the film, he begins to run out of time (VP 96 f.), concentrating on a searching vision, on “Ausfindigmachen oder Ansichtigwerden aller gleichsam aus der Reihe tanzenden Erscheinungen” (VP 101). Towards the end, his planned mushroom book was to shift more and more emphasis, from mushroom-hunting to walking (VP 137), which means above all walking alone (VP 138). This stylization of the mushroom hunter taps into an existential situation: he is an adventurer and simultaneouslya last as well as a first man (VP 143). In this reading, the mushroom becomes a metaphor for what lies beyond the frontier, which still exists neither in Alaska nor in the Himalayas; it is a sign of the Last Wilderness (VP 144). It is no longer the epistemologically determinable space, but the “bestirnte[.] Himmel[.] der Phantasie” (VP 149). As is often the case in Handke’s texts, a rapid succession of dissonant experiences occurs towards the end of the Versuch. Situations of orientation and reorientation, of loss and rediscovery alternate in ever shorter sections. And, as in other texts

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by the author, it is apparent that this dissonance is resolved at the end in favor of a liberating perspective that completes a textual three-step of initiation, crash, and restitution. This basic figure of fictional texts is pointedly taken up by Versuch über den Pilznarren. Its subtitle, Eine Geschichte für sich, can be read as an indication that while it presents an individual story, it also seeks to repeat a schema underlying the narrative. After the story of initiation, therefore, there is a surprising turn in the text. After the friend has come to a point where his passion for mushrooms had increased to the monstrous, his perception changes fundamentally. Suddenly, nature seems threatening to him; even “[das] geliebte Rauschen und Rascheln der Bäume” he perceives as a “gegen ihn gerichtetes Tuscheln, als ein Gemauschel, als ein unheilverkündendes Geraune, als ein böses Orakel” (VP 182). Spontaneously, he recalls that the great rangers of centuries past, Walt Whitman or Henry Thoreau, nowhere mentioned mushrooms, and that for the Indian and Arab peoples, mushrooms grew “nur in der Nähe von Scheißhäusern” (VP 184). The mushroom hunter begins to hate and insult the mushrooms (VP 185) and even feels persecuted and hunted by them (Apel 2013). In this way, the text describes a change of perception that almost scholastically follows the psychogrammatic figure of a transition from grandiosity to depression and visualizes it impressively. This scene is comparable to the change in the perception of nature, which in Goethe’s Werther depicts a fundamental psychological change in the protagonist. And as in Goethe’s text, this also results in a loss of familiar space. From the mushroom seeker’s inner perspective, it is “aus mit dem Raumgefühl” (VP 175). He suffers a fundamental disorientation. Space and time, which seemed to correspond to Kantian categories in texts such as Langsame Heimkehr, lose their ordering power. This turnaround has a longer history. The observation that an evil mushroom nation destroys the other mushrooms (VP 140) thereby foreshadows, as an image of nature, the progressive alienation of the mushroom picker from his social field of reference, which can be subjected to a metaphorical double reading (VP 153). He notices that he begins to forget his wife in favour of his passion for collecting. In the midst of his professional life, he uses the free hours to escape into the woods; it becomes apparent that “alles Sonstige für ihn mehr und mehr zur Nebensache wurde” (VP 157). Eventually he develops a fundamental dislike for other people, increasingly rejecting his profession and despising those around him (VP 160). This alienation finds its sign in a scene in which, during a judge’s ruling, he puts a mighty umbrella mushroom on his head instead of a beret (VP 162). As a self-appointed lord of the woods (VP 164), he tolerates no one, least of all the “Querwaldeinradler” (VP 165); eventually his wife and child abandon him. Freed from all social ties, he begins to write his mushroom book, which, by the way, will never be finished (VP 122). He even finds like-minded people, though it turns out that they were “allesamt eher Verlorene”, yet “jeder für sich allein”. Thus, he reaches a state in which “Hochmuth und Hoffart” have disappeared (VP 173), but his distance to others is irrevocable: “Seinesgleichen gab es nicht” (VP 172), it says succinctly.

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This changes only after the disappearance of the friend. His return and his visit to the narrator of his story presuppose a self-healing, which is subsequently confirmed in the joint hike of the two. The images that emerge in the course of this continue what the story of the mushroom hunter had ended with before his disappearance: an almost fairytale-like depiction of nature occurs in the course of the hike to an inn, which not coincidentally bears the name ‘LʼAuberge du Saint Graal’. The clearest reference of this Versuch to the author’s work is thus not in the direct quotation, but in its orientation towards the fairy tale and the courtly epic of the Middle Ages (VP 60, 216). When the mushroom hunter returns, the narrator already seems to be waiting for him (VP 195), narrative time and narrated time now merge, and the alter ego shows himself for a moment like the “Verlorene Sohn” (VP 197). He has not changed outwardly, but in the narrator’s imagination he throws his mushroom book into the fireplace; on another evening he even indicates his intention to write an “Antipilzbuch, ja ein Antiwaldbuch” (VP 200). Instead, he now persists in observation: by drawing the narrator’s attention to the debris in the garden, the landscape formations of Langsame Heimkehr become present (VP 201). This different, non-obsessive view of nature connects the two friends on subsequent walks. The cinematic image that defines the beginning of the story is resumed, but now the narrator fantasizes himself as Richard Widmark’s partner in Two Rode Together. The parallel narrative that the text practiced comes to its end; friend and narrator no longer differ, they have comparable goals and focus on “unser beiden [sic] Abenteuer” (VP 207). It is the second initiation in this story. It takes back the earlier loss of orientation in a “panisch werdende[n] Außenwelt” in which the mushroom hunter belonged “zu den […] durcheinanderspielenden Räumen und Zeiten” (VP 177). Upon his return and in the presence of the narrator, this disorientation ends in explicit reference to the category of time. The other time becomes a metaphor for the psychic and social restitution of the mushroom hunter, the guiding formula for the poetic rediscovery of the world: “Wir sind in der Zeit, endlich!” he and the narrator state (VP 211). But this is what is meant in this text: Both have arrived in the world of fantasy at the same time. The nags turn into riding horses and both of them go into a great forest that is nothing but a poetic fantasy of the narrator: “Von mir. Gedacht. Getagträumt. Vorgesehen. Solch eine Vorsehung: Es gab sie” (VP 212). It is only logical that this continued erasure of the real, which determines the path of friend and narrator, transforms the text of this Versuch into a fairy tale. He describes an encounter with the tall figure of a woman (VP 215), the trio share a meal together, and this fairy-tale scene, of all things, is now described as “das Allerwirklichste, das Notwendige”. The narrator characterizes this extension of the narrative world beyond the description of the actual. “Luft, Wasser, Erde und Feuer als die vier Elemente, und der Märchenmoment als das fünfte, das Zusatz-Element” (VP 217). At the same time, he marks the fairy tale as the necessary design of a counterworld. On the one hand, it is the only way to resist the “täglichen Giftgeschwätz, den sommer- und herbstlichen Giftregentagen, den Anrufen jahraus, jahrein bei den Internationalen Giftzentralen” (VP 217). Now it becomes clear that

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the fanaticism of the mushroom hunter originated from a “Kranken an der Zeit” (VP 179). Under these conditions, the fairy tale the narrator tells alone can redeem what was the guiding idea of the mushroom hunter’s never-written mushroom book, that a society continues to have a future after all: “Es wird einmal. Es wird wieder” (VP 143). The fairy-tale ending of this Versuch not only unites the mushroom hunter and the narrator in a jointly created counter-world to the existing one. It also resolutely draws attention to the author and his ability to play with different forms of representation in his writing and to retell the world. An episode at the end draws attention to this. It is peculiarly said of the advanced hour when the mushroom hunter, the narrator and the woman found themselves in the inn trying to guess the time: “Wir irrten uns alle vier. Aber wer sich am stärksten irrte und am gewaltigsten verschätzte, das war er” (VP 217). For the first time in the story, the author is now present in it himself; he is the fourth, the person who embraces all, just as the tale, “das fünfte, das Zusatz-Element”, unites all perceptions, speeches, and registers.

The Fundamental Other of Poetry: Handke’s Double Discourse on Serbia

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When Handke published the text Gerechtigkeit für Serbien. Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina (A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia), a title chosen by the editors, in the weekend supplement of the Süddeutsche Zeitung on January 5/6 and 13/14, 1996, there was a public debate about the author in Germany as well as in other Western countries that was not limited to the feuilleton and was unusually sharp. It seemed as if a basic figure of Handke’s role as a writer was being repeated in public discourse. As in Princeton in 1966, the author found himself abruptly at odds with the opinion and orientation of other writers, but above all with public opinion and the dominant discourse of bourgeois intellectuals (Döring 2018). In the process, the signs had not reversed, but they had shifted in a peculiar way. While the German authors in Princeton were faced with the question of whether they should publicly oppose the Vietnam War, and Handke represented the position of a supposedly apolitical author who wanted to direct all attention solely to language and the laws of writing, because for him even committed literature could only be a special case of “Beschreibungsimpotenz”, he now unfolded a political critique employing an aesthetic text that went to the heart of the prevailing opinion that the German feuilleton had decided to adopt, as had German politics. When it comes to the subject of Handke and Serbia, therefore, in addition to the author’s personal view of developments in the former Yugoslavia, as prefigured in many of his aesthetic texts, two further points of view gain significance. On the one hand, the opinion about the appropriate attitude of the West towards Serbia that prevailed after 1996 was only possible on the basis of a change of discourse that was to be completed in the consciousness of German literati and intellectuals only with the year 1989, but whose genesis and peculiarity reached back to the immediate post-war period, to the reorientation of the young authors of the time. Only this made possible the conspicuous alliance between politics and the feuilleton, which also accompanied Germany’s participation in the NATO air strikes on Yugoslavia that began in 1994 and culminated in the Kosovo war of 1999.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_11

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Secondly, it should be considered that the formation of public discourse in the developed media society had undergone a further differentiation. It was directly related to the digital dissemination of public opinion and an increase in image-­ driven information that could react to and evaluate political events in real time, as it were. The fact that the warring parties also employed media agencies such as Ruder Finn Public Affairs to publicize their views exacerbated this situation (Wagner 2010, 265; Lengauer 1998, 353–370). In the entrance to Winterliche Reise, Handke not only addresses these developments, but he also connects them to a critical reflection that relates to the truth content of information in the media age: What does anyone know, when with all the networking and on-line connections one only seems to know something without any actual knowledge that can only arise through learning, seeing, and learning. What does someone know who instead of the issues only sees its images or, as in the television reports, just has the abbreviation of an image or, as on the internet, only the abbreviation of an abbreviation? (WR 56)

11.1 The Context of ‘Post-War Literature’ and the ‘End of the Post-War Period’ There is much to suggest that the reaction of the German feuilleton and German intellectuals to the author’s Serbian text in particular must be interpreted from the perspective of specifically German experiences. The Austrian author Handke is also affected by this discourse, for the prevailing registers of German and then international literary criticism are initially applied to him as well. As in Princeton in 1966, different national contexts led to strongly held judgments. For the Germans in particular, the link between literature and historical experience was decisive even where it was not openly addressed. According to an assessment by Peter Sloterdijk, the so-called ‘post-war period’ ended not only for them but also for their European neighbours only with 1989, the year the Wall came down. Until this historical turning point, the main concern was to control and overcome the consequences of war mentally, politically, and ideologically (Sloterdijk 2008, 9). For German authors, critics and intellectuals, the fixation on the disastrous legacy of the war and the confrontation with the question of German guilt were of central importance during this phase. They shaped, not least under the influence of the ‘Frankfurt School’ of Adorno and Horkheimer, all intellectual discourse after 1945 and, moreover, were an element of the political and ideological self-image of the ‘Bundesrepublik Deutschland’. A special feature of this situation was that above all the discourse of guilt was supported by a broad political spectrum of post-war German society, ranging from the committed left to the conservative media of the Federal Republic. Here even the TAZ and the Springer press agreed. In contrast, other European nations had not taken a comparably critical look at their own past. Indeed, German literature is the only one among European literatures to know the term ‘post-war literature’. It understands the year 1945 as a radical rupture and continues the disconnection from European modernity that had taken place after 1933 under new conditions. The international marginalization of German literature

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during this period and the frequently associated accusation of a conspicuous “Erfahrungsverlust”/”loss of experience” are directly related to this development (Rutschky 2008). At the same time, it can be noted that the radical break with tradition in 1945 also shaped subsequent literary developments in Germany, which almost always led to aesthetic and political polarizations. The year 1989, which, in addition to the unification of the two Germanys, resulted in the merging of their highly divergent literatures, marks the beginning of newer tendencies in German literature, but a closer look reveals that this new beginning, like that of 1945, was not merely a replacement, but in part only a reformulation of preceding problems. In particular, the turning points of 1945 and 1968, the year of the so-called ‘student revolution’ and a thoroughgoing politicization of literature, appeared in a new light after reunification and were reassessed. In the years from 1945 to 1989, therefore, patterns developed to which German authors and public intellectuals still refer at present, even if they do not openly name them. Within this framework, the texts of all German-language authors are simultaneously read and negotiated in the feuilleton. This occurs regardless of the fact that at the literary, historical and political turning points of 1968 and 1989, not only did new authors with alternative writing concepts speak out, but that many of the authors of the first hour after 1945, in the West Günter Grass, Martin Walser and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, in the East above all Christa Wolf, continued their work beyond this turning point, but gave it a new direction. Of particular significance in the present context is the fact that German literature after 1945 and after 1968 was characterized by a striking convergence of aesthetic and political discourse, each under a different sign, while after 1989 the political and aesthetic positions were reformed. The example of Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass, both of whom also found other ways of writing after 1989, made it clear that even the Nobel Prize Committee followed the German coupling of political reflection and literary production. Heinrich Böll received the Nobel Prize after years of taking a critical position towards the German government’s confrontation with the extra-parliamentary opposition. Günter Grass was awarded the prize after he had repeatedly spoken out firmly against German reunification, putting forward ideas that were also shared by many of Germany’s European neighbours. Under these conditions, Peter Handke’s work and its reception in Germany stand in the context of three different aspects that developed after 1945 and continued at least until 1989. At the same time, the public discussion of Handke’s Serbian texts shows that, even after the fall of communism, the contemporary political and ideological disputes continued to draw on a long-established formulaic stock of interpretations and judgments in order to depoliticize and de-ideologize literature and criticism. The first of the postwar patterns is a style of writing that seeks to unite aesthetics and morality, circling around German history and German guilt in history. It culminates in a German literary controversy, first about the role of the avant-garde and then about the moral responsibility of authors in the former GDR, and finally in the ‘Paulskirchen Debate’ about the literary and intellectual treatment of the subject of the Holocaust and German guilt (Jaspers 1946; Anz 1995, 9, 80; Schirrmacher 1999; Brumlik 2000).

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Secondly, there is a politically committed literature in the wake of Sartre, which prepares the aesthetic and political turn of 1968 and is radicalized by it at the same time. This can be traced through the development of the work of Peter Weiss and Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It extends from Weiss’s first treatment of the theme of Auschwitz to Enzensberger’s subversive reading of German history in Untergang der Titanic (The Sinking of the Titanic), where the dated locations of Havana in 1968 and Berlin in 1977 mark the changes and disappointments of the German left. Thirdly and finally, a literature of aesthetic experimentation emerges from the deliberate break with tradition in 1945. It begins with Peter Handke’s turn against the “Beschreibungsimpotenz” of Group 47 and is taken up by Helmut Heißenbüttel and Günter Eich. In Handke’s case it leads, among other things, to the concept of a literature of so-called “Neue Innerlichkeit”/new inwardness in the Romantic tradition, to which there is no international equivalent. That this innovation comes from an Austrian author is significant. In the year of the Princeton congress, it is not only Handke who formulates his reservations about the hitherto dominant Group 47, from which almost the entire critique of the German feuilleton has also emerged. At the same time, the authors find themselves confronted with new social questions. On the one hand, Allen Ginsberg comments on the current “explosion of happiness” in the United States, which is said to take place with the popular drug LSD and is impressed by the new pop and kitsch civilization. On the other hand, writers such as Enzensberger, Lettau, and Weiss participate in a teach-in against American intervention in Vietnam, at which Susan Sontag also spoke. They and others eventually push for a politicization of literature, which by 1968 destroys the group consensus (Zimmer 1966, 17 f.). Thus, before 1989, the year 1968 already proved to be a decisive turning point in contemporary German literature. However, it is part of the dialectic of this specifically German development that the reflective and critical progress of the time was linked to an aesthetic regression. It was precisely under the influence of the literature around 1968 that not only the ideal of political tolerance was formulated, but at the same time also massive intolerance of innovative literary concepts. In particular, postmodern literature, which had already become established in the USA in the 1950s, was rejected by the 68ers, as was the concept of ‘realismo magico’ in South American literature. German critics were also slow to embrace these internationally relevant currents.

11.2 The Discourse Rule of Media Society What had been foreshadowed in the public debate on the various phases of the Balkan war finally emerges even more clearly in 2001 on the occasion of journalistic and media processing of the terrorist attack of 9/11. It becomes clearer than before that the change in the public discourse rule is directly related to the interrelation between the print and the visual media. It is now even clearer that the power of images takes on a dynamic of its own, delegitimizing rational judgment just as much as direct observation. This touches on a central theme of Handke’s text Der

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Bildverlust, which has always determined his writing, the image gained from contemplation constitutes the central element of the poetic process. Now, the author is confronted with the fact that public discourse, in addition to morality, repeatedly relies on the supposed irrefutability of images to contour its political positions. This takes on particular significance when it comes to the question of how crises triggered by political or cultural factors can be managed. Even if one assumes that moral discourse is in any case more prone to conflict because it tends not only to polarize positions but also to set them in absolute terms, it was a peculiarity of the image-driven discourse on Serbia in Germany that in the end even those speaking in the name of enlightened reason became bellicose. Handke explicitly addresses this with reference to Jürgen Habermas, but precisely in this he also shows bias, because he equates the philosopher’s opinion with that of the media he rejects (GT 18; Wagner 2010, 262). Through such statements, as well as through his oral statements in general, Handke certainly contributed to a polarization of public discourse that was detrimental to the factually justified core of his media criticism (Wagner 2010, 267). In this context, the theoretical media discourse certainly corresponds with Handke’s critique of the political and social reality of contemporary societies, such as Der Große Fall (The Great Fall). While Noam Chomsky in 2001, like many Europeans, follows the guiding idea of a consensual solvability of political as well as cultural differences (Chomsky 2003, 18), without considering their inner dialectic, the commitment to rational discourse, human rights, and their possible enforcement through a “just war”, a reflection by the author Paul Auster leads decidedly further. For him, the new cultural confrontation expressed in the mode of asymmetric war, this applies to the Yugoslav war as much as to the terrorist attack of 9/11, is a sign of the beginning of the twenty-first century. The historical date, therefore, no longer marks a temporal stage in history; rather, it is a sign of the new globalized world order, which is characterized by a fundamental incompatibility of different worlds of social experience (Auster 2001, 13–15; Schami 2004, 17). Handke has this perspective of globalization in mind when he also culturally codes the confrontation of the more or less American-dominated “West” with Serbia in the case of conflict (UT 44). In the discussion about the Balkan war, as in that about 9/11 before it, the German, European and American discussions use a metaphorical stock of formulae that unfolded contradictorily in the global media society in the interplay of image and public discourse. The ‘delegitimation’ of the “grands récits” deciphered by François Lyotard was a direct precondition for this. In the “neutralization of values” brought about by them, Baudrillard simultaneously recognizes a medial delegitimization of reality itself (Baudrillard, 2001, 51). At the end of Unter Tränen fragend (Asking through the Tears), Handke quotes the statement of a spokesperson for the media agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which proves exactly this. “[Das] Zeitalter der Information ist vorbei”, he proclaims. “Wir treten ein in das Zeitalter der Idee: Das heißt, wir brauchen einen Kontext, welcher der Information einen Sinn gibt” (UT 157; Wagner 2010, 265). Not least because of comparable attitudes, a neutralization of values resulted in public discourse which, in the final analysis, also delegitimized

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the discourse of the ‘public intellectuals’, whose claim to explanation failed in the face of political and social reality. The resulting gap in understanding was filled by the new power of images, which at the same time became the basis of a manipulation of new proportions. In this context, Niklas Luhmann has pointed to the increasingly decisive media construction of reality. At the same time, he has made it clear that ‘truth’ and ‘information’ have a different valence in the mass media. For the media, it is not a matter of true or false, but solely of information or non-information (Luhmann 1996, 36, 44). Truth in the mass media is merely a supplement to information (Luhmann 1996, 64 f.). The parallel triumph of images has long been the subject of media-historical analysis. The fact that it progressively counteracted the subversive power of the aesthetic also had political consequences, which first Theodor Adorno and then Vilém Flusser pointed out (Adorno GS-7, 158  f.). Media, it was recognized, not only make people aware that they no longer really talk to each other, but also that in the end the ‘spectacle’ and hyperreality of media, even when intertwined, even take the place of “wirkliche[r] gesellschaftliche[r] Tätigkeit” (Debord 1978, 7). They deform the functional law of social systems (Luhmann 1990, 269). The image not only replaces discursive formations, it also becomes a commodity, it achieves effect through its exchange value, not through its adequate reproduction of real states. This gains particular significance in an intercultural communication in which even alterity becomes a medial construct. Arjun Appadurai emphasizes that real, traditional, political, moral and cultural orders are dissolving in the global community. They are replaced by images that produce only imagined communities and worlds. The media, therefore, do not lead to a new experience of reality or a correction of inadequate assessments. Rather, they make it possible for different groups living in a global diaspora to base everything solely on their own imaginations. For Arjun Appadurai, imagination itself thus becomes “a social fact and the central element of the new global order” (Appadurai 1996, 31). Under the influence of the media, “ethnoscapes”, “mediascapes”, and “ideoscapes”, constructions of a virtual identity based on ethnic or self-imposed stereotypes disseminated through the mass media, emerge, and this too is significant for the assessment of the situation in the former Yugoslavia. They create new formative patterns that quote the original orientations but fundamentally vary and transform them. The awareness of this new situation also no longer took place solely through rational discourse but was predominantly achieved through the medium of the image. Yet neither the neoconservative assumption of a ‘clash of cultures’, and thus also of a conflict between progress and reaction in the field of politics, nor the postcolonial interpretation of military or terrorist conflicts took account of this media modelling of political contrasts and their consequences (Habermas/Derrida 2004). This omission is responsible for the fact that outdated patterns of discourse, no longer appropriate to the current historical situation, were also applied to new conflicts. As a rule, these discourse patterns are historical back-projections intended to simulate that an enlightened society will never again repeat an injustice once committed in the course of history. In the case of the Balkan war, memories of the

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Second World War, the German concentration camps and the Holocaust are therefore mobilized. In contrast, in 2001, in the confrontation between the West and the Islamic world, a morally based acceptance of alterity was called for as a necessary response to the guilt of the European colonial powers and, in the case of Germany, to the historical guilt of fascism. In the discussion about this, the Germans in particular forgot that the change in their attitude towards the Balkan War and the change in the prevailing political discourse had also resulted from manipulation by a media production. In view of the images of Serbian camps presented on television, their foreign minister at the time, Joschka Fischer, had replaced the hitherto valid guiding formula of German foreign policy, “Nie wieder Krieg“/”never again war”, with the slogan “Niemals wieder Konzentrationslager“/”never again concentration camps”, in order to legitimize Germany’s military intervention in the war in the Balkans. Parallel to this, since 1999 ideas have been circulating among the military leadership about an ethnic cleansing planned by Serbia, the so-called “Hufeisenplan”/“Operation Horseshoe” (Feldhoff/Steinhoff 2000). It should be noted that the historical recodings customary in political discourse may have moral integrity, but at the same time they are also problematic because in a medially constituted society the signs of politics, literature and the world of commodities can no longer be distinguished from one another, because even information has become a commodity. Apart from the fact that media-mediated seeing produces a different reaction from the viewer than direct experience (Habermas/ Derrida 2004, 52 f.), the audience’s judgment often results not from the event itself, but from the specific form of its communicative mediation (Borradori 2004, 75). Jacques Derrida has linked a sign-theoretical consideration to this. He makes clear that language can lose its immediate referential function when it seeks to name what cannot be adequately expressed linguistically. The assumption of a genocide in the middle of Europe that guides the discourse on Serbia is undoubtedly one of these (Habermas/Derrida 2004, 368). Under these conditions, the mere deictic naming can already point to the traumatizing effect of an event for which there is no “horizon of anticipation, knowledge, naming “that would enable its “identification, determination and interpretation” (Habermas/Derrida 2004, 123). For this very reason, Baudrillard insists that death alone can escape the social law of exchange that is the basis of contemporary society. Following this line of thought, he places at the center of his media theory the concept of the so-called “simulacrum” (Baudrillard 1994, 1–43, 87–95). This is a visually mediated basic figure for “the absolute and irrevocable event”, which in the course of its medial mediation eludes any historical classification, if only because it is comparable to the infinite fictions of cinema, thus also to events that never really took place (Derrida 2002, 56 f.). It is primarily through this connection with the fiction of the media that an event of violence can unfold the symbolic power that constitutes its actual effect (Derrida 2002, 74). The images, metaphors and collective memories used by both journalistic and scientific discourse are therefore responsible for the fact that catastrophic events are often removed from a distanced and rational judgement. Baudrillard as well as Slavoj Žižek also link the symbolic effect of such events to unconscious processes.

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Violent acts mediated by the media mobilize in viewers an unacknowledged “profound [...] complicity” (Derrida 2002, 23); the “perception of images” reveals nothing other than “our primal scene” (Derrida 2002, 72). It is quite fatal to imagine that this can affect all participants in a public discourse equally. Baudrillard’s and Žižek’s psychological interpretation can be traced back no differently than Derrida’s semiotic argumentation to a consideration of the philosopher Kant, which is suitable to explain the vehemence of the reactions to the Yugoslav war. For the philosopher, as he concludes with regard to the French Revolution, for example, an event becomes a “historical sign” primarily through the way in which it is perceived. In addition to its referentiality as a “signum demonstrativum”, it unfolds a double temporal structure. As a “signum demonstrativum” it reminds us of the past; as a “signum prognosticon” it simultaneously points to the future (Kant KA-7, 86).

11.3 The Media Discourse on Handke and Serbia It all began with a picture. On August 5, 1992, the British agency ITN published a picture, de facto from the Trnopolje camp, showing emaciated men behind barbed wire with the Bosnian Alič Fikret in the middle. The picture, whose authenticity was not questioned at first – after all, the reporter Gutmann received the Pulitzer Prize for it  – was published three days later by the Daily Mirror under the headline “Belsen 92” and in the Berliner tageszeitung next to the headline “Militärischer Einsatz rückt näher” (Deichmann 1999, 229). The double story to the picture had been found, the rationale for German entry into the NATO war effort and the reference to German concentration camps. The latter seemed so obvious that in the print media’s effort to put the image into a historical context, the journalistic discourse took on a life of its own and subsequently continued in the discourse of German intellectuals. There was a conspicuous voluntary conformity of most of the media, which was not self-critically considered until very late, when it became clear that this was not about the alleged concentration camp Omarska and that the photograph could by no means be taken as evidence of a fenced-in camp but was a fake. The research to this effect could not be refuted (Deichmann 1999, 228–258). It became apparent that Handke’s objections to the prevailing reporting on Serbia had a factual basis, for they did not question facts, but rightly objected to truncated representations and premature judgments, which were not infrequently underpinned with inappropriate visual material. This was also about a staging that, if one follows Agamben’s thinking, made the victims of real violence victims once again through the violence of the medium (Agamben 2002). Handke explicitly refers to this ostensible camp image in Die Fahrt im Einbaum (Voyage by Dugout) (FE 98), and the WDR-radio station, which investigates the genesis of this and other images, places its documentary on the first German war mission after 1945 under the heading “It began with a lie” (Angerer/Werth 2001). In view of the predominantly approving attitude, especially in the German print media, towards German participation in NATO’s intervention from 1994 to the

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so-called Kosovo war of 1999, Handke’s opinion could only meet with resolute rejection. It may well have played a role here that the author at the same time justified his criticism of the media in moral terms. Presumably, his arguments also aroused the self-doubt of precisely those who had previously rejected any warlike action by Germany on moral grounds, but who had now decided, as one critic cynically put it, to bomb away their own past (Gritsch 2012; Gritsch 2003, 163–169). NATO undertook, according to proponents of the attack on Serbia, a “humanitarian intervention”; in 1999 it was to save the Albanians in Kosovo. To portray this war as immoral was bound to lead to exclusion from the narrative community (Seeßlen 1999, 175). After the German Foreign Minister Fischer had referred to the supposedly authentic images of Serbian “concentration camp” both at the party conference of the Green Party and later together with the Minister of Defense Scharping in the ‘Bundestag’, the formula had been found that could also convince authors and intellectuals in the changed situation of united Germany after 1989. It seemed clear how the other images from the war were to be interpreted, and of course it had to be possible to name the guilty party. That Handke himself considers this to be a central turning point in public discourse is shown by the cutting caricature with which he later depicts the then German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer in Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos) (BV 736 f.). As a participant in the public discourse, Handke initially concentrates on criticizing the anti-Serbian reporting of Western print media in the preface and epilogue of his travelogue from Republika Srpska, which was created by the ‘Treaty of Dayton’, as well as the commitment of other authors and intellectuals to the Croats and Bosnian Muslims. Basically, he wants to question the enemy images developed by the media against “the Serbs”. He had powerful opponents in Le Monde, FAZ and Spiegel. It turned out that no one there was willing to question the mode and quality of their own reporting. Instead, a broad front of rejection against Handke formed, ranging from bourgeois to left-wing media. The accusation of demagogy leveled against Gerechtigkeit für Serbien was eventually adopted by most print media. This was combined with personal attacks. Handke was accused of denying the Srebrenica massacre, Hans-Christoph Buch placed the author in the Tagesspiegel in the company of authors who were close to fascism, such as Ezra Pound and Louis-Ferdinand Céline. Finally, in the Standard of May 14, 1999, Hans Rauscher calls Handke a “Wiederholungstäter gegen humanes Denken” and attested him the level of Holocaust trivializers and accused him of having reached the moral-intellectual rottenness of those intellectuals who praised Stalin and Mao for the creation of a ‘new man’ (Gritsch 1996; Colbin 1999; Reinhardt 1999). This public debate found a new culmination on the occasion of the planned awarding of the Heine Prize in 2006, which led Handke to follow Zola’s stance with his “Je refuse” and to insist on literature’s continuing claim to a critique of the political (Wagner 2010, 268; Handke 2006).

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11.4 The “bösen Fakten”: Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land. Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien (1996), Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise (1996), Unter Tränen fragend. Nachträgliche Aufzeichnungen von zwei Jugoslawien-­Durchquerungen im Krieg, März und April (1999), Rund um das Große Tribunal (2003), Die Geschichte des Dragoljub Milanović (2011) Handke’s provocative statement “Niemand weiß, was im Kosovo passiert, denn niemand kann hinein […] Die Flüchtlinge sagen doch alle das gleiche. Muß das deshalb glaubhaft sein?” (Reinhardt 1999) makes it clear that his Serbian texts certainly not only engage with public discourse, but also take a political position beyond media-­ critical consideration (Brokoff 2011, 66). The Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land (The Dreamer’s Farewell to the Ninth Country) from 1991, written before the war, the Winterliche Reise (A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia) published in 1996 and its Sommerlicher Nachtrag (Summer Postscript to a Winter Journey) from the same year, finally Unter Tränen fragend (Asking through the Tears: Belated Chronicle from two Crossings through Yugoslavia During the War, March and April 1999), the account of the Holy Week Journey from 1999 and the text Rund um das Große Tribunal from 2002, which reports on a trip to The Hague in 1998, express this in different ways. Closely connected to this is the play Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stück zum Film vom Krieg (Voyage by Dugout), whose rehearsals for its premiere in Vienna took place after the Holy Week trip and still during the NATO mission “Operation Allied Force” from March 24 to June 10, 1999. Finally, the Kuckucke von Velika Hoća (The Cuckoos of Velika Hoca) provide images from Kosovo, which became the site of a Serbian-Albanian conflict that provoked NATO’s intervention. The Abschied des Träumers uses the metaphor of the “Neunte Land” to focus on an image Handke has of Yugoslavia that is closely linked to his memories of Slovenia and his simultaneously political and poetic fantasy of the otherness of the Balkans (WR 86 f.). Winterliche Reise contrasts the media coverage of the war in Serbia and what Handke sees as obvious prejudices with a poeticizing account of the Serbian hinterland. The first part of the book, which is characterized by a sharp criticism of the media, is nevertheless a narrative and not simply a factual report. The second part, however, already foreshadows what then also determines Sommerlicher Nachtrag. In view of the landscapes destroyed by the war (SN 188 ff.), the author himself no longer seems to be in any doubt about his project of a poetic counter-­ draft to the media’s report on the war. It is therefore striking that the text Unter Tränen fragend, which is written during the air raids in the course of the so-called Kosovo war, formulates, not unlike Rund um das große Tribunal, a renewed attack on the reporting of the Western media and Western policy towards Serbia, and finally also on the activity of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which is repeatedly and quite ambiguously described as happening in a ‘camera obscura’ (RT 21, 35).

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The Geschichte des Dragoljub Milanović is the last of the Serbian texts to deal with an event that Handke sees as emblematic of the legal reappraisal of the Yugoslav war. The former director of the broadcasting station RTS is sentenced by a Serbian court to ten years imprisonment for not having evacuated the broadcasting building and for the death of sixteen employees during the NATO attack. In contrast, the bombing of this civilian building was classified as a “mistake” but not a war crime by the Yugoslav Tribunal in The Hague a year later (GDM 6 f.). In tenor, this story follows Handke’s fundamental criticism of the Hague Tribunal, which he later wrote down in Rund um das große Tribunal (FE 91, RGT 30 f.). At the same time, it finds its parallel in the conviction of Novislav Djajić Lovis by a German court, which constitutes a central episode of Einbaum (RGT 52, 56 f., 539). In Handke’s view, the facts that could have led to the exoneration of the accused were not adequately assessed in this trial, up to and including the fact that the International Court of Justice speaks of regular Serbian troops to which Lovis is said to have belonged, while the German court classified the unquestionable war crime as an action by free-armed forces. The critique presented in this text basically follows a binary scheme, which, however, does not fundamentally prevail, but is modified in the report on the Serbia trip and then in later texts. Even Fahrt im Einbaum, which, quite in line with the account of the Serbia trip, continues along some of these lines, contributes to a differentiation of the “bad facts” through poetic discourse by the discourse game it enacts. This is followed by Tablas von Daimiel (The Tablas de Daimiel) and Kuckucke von Velika Hoća, which, like a continuation of Sommerliche Reise, juxtapose the images of war with a poetically transfigured everyday world, partly serious, partly ironically broken. The journalistic and media discourse, as well as Handke’s Serbia texts, exemplify the clash of two narratives that cannot escape the conditions of a media-led confrontation. The problem here is not only that Handke wanted to complementarily oppose the reports on war, which he perceived as “Einheitsfront” (Brokoff 2011, 80), and develop a counter-discourse, but also that both discourses are fundamentally related to each other in that they both refer to images. In doing so, Handke sees it as his task to oppose the images of an authentic perception to the artificial, “anderen und andersartige[n] Bilder[n]”. These are angepeilt oben von einem gut gewählt Kamerahochsitz, desgleichen kadriert und noch trefflicher ausgeleuchtet, hochglanzbereit und farbraffiniert für den vom Interplanetarischen Photographenverband allsonntäglich verliehenen Goya-, Wurlitzer- oder ‚Bilder-ohne-­ Grenzen‘-Preis. (SN 235 f.)

So, it is not primarily about the facts themselves, but about the explanatory model, the narrative, and its appropriateness, into which they are inserted. When Handke emphasizes the specificity of the aesthetic text over the factual representation of journalistic and public discourse, he is following a critique of the media that was already apparent in his early criticism of language and the media (EF 19–28). Apart from this, however, it should be made clear that the journalistic

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report, even when it purports to be a factual report, is not infrequently a construction that systematically transcends the mediation of the merely factual. Even the forefather of reportage, Egon Erwin Kisch, with his guiding concept of ‘logische Phantasie’, which he first used in 1918 in a text titled Das Wesen des Reporters, outlines a mode of writing that current reportage also seems to follow unacknowledged (Cuevas Dávalos 2019, 15 f.). Spiegel’s recently uncovered ‘Relotius’ affair cannot therefore come as a complete surprise. Kisch emphasizes to the so-called “Leitartikler” the journalistic necessity of closing the gaps between facts through textual elements that follow the principle of probability alone. However, he admits that this procedure inevitably also has a political and ideological function in a 1935 speech on Reportage als Kunstform und Kampfform, where he unequivocally insists that all reportage must ultimately be an “accusatory work of art” (Cuevas Dávalos 2019, 15). In the media’s self-representation, however, these writing strategies are usually not addressed, and the focus is exclusively on conveying information. In fact, however, striking schematizations of media discourses are undeniable, of course, for a variety of reasons. This led Harold Bloom to call television a “consensus monster” (Bolz 2003, 263). Conversely, patterns can also be discerned in Handke’s presentation of political facts in the narrative concept of his Serbian texts, which are subject to political judgement even if one grants him “right of a different, poetic view of the political world” (Deichmann 1999) (Löffler 2005, 79). However, the author’s political judgement is by no means as one-dimensional as many media would have us believe. The author of the reports on Serbia explicitly formulates this himself: “Das Problem – nur meines?  – ist verwickelter, verwickelt mit mehreren Realitätsgraden oder -stufen, und ich ziele, indem ich es klären will, auf etwas durchaus ganz Wirkliches, worin alle die durcheinanderwirbelnden Realitätsweisen etwas wie einen Zusammenhang ahnen ließen” (Handke 1996; Reinhardt 1999). The starting point of his reflections is the premise that the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, which was recognized by the ‘Federal Republic of Germany’ on December 23, 1991 and which led to the independence aspirations of the other republics, destroyed a functioning, multicultural state structure which could have been a model for Europe; Yugoslavia appears to him as “das wirklichste Land in Europa” (AT 27), in which the peoples of the Balkans were able to escape the “Fluch der Geschichte” (AT 30). He wants to provide proof of this with a view to European history, but also in the context of his own Slovene-influenced family history in Carinthia. The text Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still), published in 2010, inscribes this political implication in a family history. Handke maintains that Slovenia’s path to independence was not a result of its own decision alone, but of external interference (AT 28 f.). For him, it was a matter of submission to the judgement of the Western states. In his view, this is illustrated by the fact that the Slovenian president, in a public appearance, offers his country to the foreigners in the attitude “eines Kellners, fast Lakaien” (WR 136). This is preceded by the fact that Handke, in Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land, sees political change as prefigured in a change of discourse among Slovenian intellectuals and fellow writers, who increasingly cater to Western-influenced public

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expectations (AT 15, 19, 20). Legalistically, he evaluates the independence movement as a denunciation of a “gemeinsam beschlossenen Bundesstaat[s]” (AT 22); ideologically, he opposes the “Gespenstergerede von einem Mitteleuropa” that destroyed the “urslowenische Märchen vom Neunten Land” (AT 18). Linked to this is an anti-modernist and anti-Western affect, which criticizes the public erasure of all references to cultural identity, folklore, and tradition in favor of the creation of an artificial “Westwelt”, which makes all things seem “gegenstandslos” (AT 10), for which the dominance of Western, incidentally classical, music throughout the country becomes a sign (WR 138). This explains the formula of the “durch den Vertrag unter die Macht des Moslemstaats gekommenen Serben von Sarajewo” (WR 150). Admittedly, it is not correct in this form under international law (Pellet 1992, 178–185) and does not correspond to the construction of Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the Serbs live in the independent constituent republic/entity of the Republic of Serbska (Brokoff 2011, 75; ET 93). In consequence, however, the ‘Dayton Treaty’ actually worked against Handke’s ideal of a multicultural state order in the rest of Yugoslavia. In Bosnia-­ Herzegovina, its aftermath resulted in an almost complete ethnic segregation of at least Bosnians and Serbs and the end of their former spatial coexistence. The Porodin episode of Morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night) provides a narrative for this judgement (MN 57); the reversal between external and internal perception associated with it at the same time makes clear the mode by which political and poetic reflection interfere. In a commentary on Dragan Velikić’s novel Zeichner des Meridian, classified by Handke as “scherbenhafte Geschichte über das zerschellte Jugoslawien”, he remarks in a programmatic statement that can be related to his own oscillation between political and poetic reflection: “Erzählung und Erzähltes wirken ineinander und ergeben zuletzt neben ‚Buch‘ und ‚Land‘ ein Drittes” (WR 107). This comes about – the same happens with Handke himself – through a “Zusammenstoß von geographisch-­ geschichtlichem und dem entsprechenden Splitter-Ich, das zugleich doch nicht weniger ‚Ich!‘ ist” (WR 107). But sometimes the splinter ego of the narrator of Handke’s Serbia texts gets stuck in a predetermined discourse; this is especially the case when the reflection is historically perspectivized. To explain the Srbrenica massacre, Handke repeatedly refers to its “prehistory” in the Serbs’ struggle against the Turks and Hitler’s Germany (SN 199, 239–241; AT 49), although he himself stresses at length elsewhere the problematic nature of such historical references (Handke 1993, 73). In this way, the author inevitably moves parallel to a nationalist discourse of the Serbs, as articulated by, of all people, General Mladić, who was responsible for Srebrenica, in a speech documented by the BBC (Brokoff 2011, 79). A comparable problem arises when the “Erzählung” of Winterliche Reise ends with the letter of the former partisan under Tito, Slobodan Nicolić, and his lament, formulated in 1992, about the dissolution of Yugoslavia. By adopting the words of another and a representative of Tito’s Yugoslavia here, Handke’s judgement deliberately hides the complexity of political developments thereafter, and indeed ‘Dayton’: “Der Verrat, der Zerfall und das Chaos unseres Landes, die schwere Situation, in die

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unser Volk geworfen ist, der Krieg […] in Bosnien-Herzegowina, das Ausrotten des serbischen Volkes” (WR 161) are evoked in this quotation. Moreover, it has been pointed out that this statement by the former partisan follows a view that corresponds with the founding manifesto of Serbian nationalism written by philosopher Mihajlo Marković (Brokoff 2010; Brokoff 2011, 73). It should also be noted that the author is not willing listen to Dragan Velikić’s indictment of his own Serbian authorities in Belgrade (WR 112). On the occasion of the visit to Višegrad in Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise (SN 188 f.), however, the author combines his criticism of the legal and journalistic treatment of the acts of war there, which repeatedly calls for a view of three warring parties (SN 213), with a conspicuous empathy above all with the Serbian mothers (SN 193). Throughout, their expressions of suffering are described as more dignified than those of the Bosnian mothers, who had suffered the same fate (SN 205 f.). Here, an irritating questioning of the course of events is combined with a fundamental doubt about the correctness of the media coverage, in view of the facts dealt with in The Hague. However, this reflects a controversial assessment, also in research (Brokoff 2011, 84 f.). A comparable situation arises with regard to the question of the Serbian expulsion of Bosnians from the Krajina (WR 66, 68). There the author emphasizes that Serbian victims are portrayed in the media in a fundamentally different way than Bosnian victims, and that in the case of the latter, moreover, a staging of the suffering through the close-up of the cameras is to be assumed (WR 67). Under these conditions, the assumption that the problematic nature of Handke’s Winterlicher Reise and Sommerlicher Nachtrag lies not so much in their political judgement as in their thoroughly ambivalent language and perspective cannot be easily invalidated. This is all the more striking when one compares the play of Fahrt im Einbaum with it. There, the two film directors, confronted with a complex situation, abandon their joint film project about the war in Yugoslavia at the end. They do not succeed in transforming their perception of the events into a story with audience appeal, in which everything happens “schön der Reihe nach” (EF 123).

11.5 The Challenge of Politics and the Promise of Poetry Handke’s remark that no distinction can be made between the acts of violence and crimes of the actors involved in the war and the image and text manipulations of the journalists, among whom some are “genauso arge Kriegshunde […] wie jene im Kampfgebiet” (WR 149), must, however, be decisively differentiated. For the author makes a clear distinction between the “entdeckerischen Journalisten”, who as participating and observing “Feldforscher” (WR 148) are involved “vor Ort (oder besser noch: in den Ort und die Menschen des Orts)” (WR 148) on the one hand and what he calls the propaganda apparatus of the Western media on the other. He criticizes the latter for resorting to a vocabulary that is both inappropriate and manipulative because of its historical recoding, citing as examples: “Massaker”, “Konzentrationslager”, “Massenvergewaltigungen”, “ethnische Säuberung” or

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“soldateska”. It is important to note that he does not question facts here, but rather inserts the terms mentioned as marked quotations into his text (UT 22). With this procedure, he harkens back to his early critique of language and the media, which had already defined the essay Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms (I Am an Inhabitant of the Ivory Tower) with very similar words (EF 20 f.). In addition, Handke not only criticizes the fact that the same standardized images of suffering are always used to promote a manipulative intention of reporting, but he can also point to clear manipulations of images, as represented by the ostensible concentration camp image already mentioned (Sexl 2011, 89–106; Breuer 2001, 285–303; Schöningh 2000, 159–169). In turn, the author wants to overcome “eingefahrene Medienstandards” (WR 70) by means of “Sprach- und Bildempfindlichkeit” (WR 69). He explicitly notes in an interview, “Meine Arbeit ist eine andere. Die bösen Fakten festhalten, schon recht. Für einen Frieden jedoch braucht es noch anderes, was nicht weniger wert ist als die Fakten” (WR 159). Of course, his reference to the capacity of the poetic does not change anything – and he does not deny this at all – about the facts of the objectively existing suffering, the real violence, and the military actions, which have meanwhile been judged as war crimes in The Hague. Handke does not deny facts such as the Srbrenica massacre in principle. Decontextualized, some of his statements appear as relativizations that can provoke an ideology-critical or moral evaluation (SN 241; Steinfeld 2010; Höller 2007, 118). Handke can certainly live up to his claim of opposing the manipulative use of language, images, and media in journalistic war reporting with the “grundandere” power and authority of poetic language, insofar as he succeeds in making the completely different world of poetry visible as a critique “des Bestehenden”. On the other hand, the attempt to oppose the political word in ‘decisive negation’ with objecting arguments or gestures alone had to fail. Although his speech at Milošević’s grave can by no means be regarded as an appreciation or even acceptance of Serbian actions in the war, this ostentatious act gave rise to misinterpretations. However, the fact that none of the critics addressed Handke’s now published text in terms of content marks the fatal schematization of the public debate (Kastberger 2009, 62–64). Even if Handke himself doubted until the very end whether he should have held his speech at all in the constellation he found with the other speakers, his appearance ultimately thwarted his claim to enlightenment (Brokoff 2011, 61–88; Sexl 2011, 89–106). The fact that Handke prefaces the book edition of Gerechtigkeit für Serbien with the text Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land (The Dreamer’s Farewell to the Ninth Country) indicates how he envisioned the solution. This text not only connects the political and the intended narrative discourse, but it also proves that there is an interaction between the two. At the same time, it makes clear that this is emotionally charged. It takes the place of collective historical images and mobilizes an early world of experience through words and images in order to allow the images of the poetic imagination to emerge from it. It is precisely the change from the image to the epitome that Der Bildverlust thematizes later, in that it certainly traces the warlike battle of images of the Serbian War (BV 743). The resulting need to contextualize the images of Handke’s Serbian texts has often been missed by political and

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literary critics of the author. This was shown in a completely inappropriate way when they believed they could accuse Handke of a relapse into the imagery of ‘Blut und Boden’ (Zülch 1996, 67; Düwell 2007, 577–587). In principle, Handke’s indication that his travelogue from Serbia is, word for word, a “Friedenstext” that seeks to promote the possibilities of a “gemeinsames Erinnern” (WR 159) and reconciliation between the hostile warring parties requires a double reading. On the one hand, it indeed reflects a concrete hope for peace that Handke has after the Dayton Accords (WR 112; Höller 2007, 111). On the other hand, in Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise, Handke explicitly, and even before that repeatedly implicitly, emphasizes that this report not only plays off poetic language against political language, but that it is also a text that unfolds its inner logic quite differently from a journalistic report. The way out of the entanglements and burdens of history at which Handke’s Serbian texts aim is not merely a political perspective, but ultimately a poetic program; it is the idea of an “andere Zeit” that Handke’s text repeatedly mobilizes. But beyond that, this aesthetic utopia is at the same time a political utopia, which may not be appropriate to the circumstances, but loses nothing of its challenge. Aiming at this, the author wants to contrast his own perception with the increasing number of reflections of the same images transported by the media, which in the end lead to “Verspiegelungen in unseren Sehzellen selber” (WR 39). As a prerequisite for this, he demands “Augenzeugenschaft” (WR 39), he wants to move through the country “als irgendein Passant, nicht einmal als Ausländer oder Reisender kenntlich” (WR 40). The political and the aesthetic implications of this program are to be evaluated differently. Incidentally, Handke himself is well aware of the inner dialectic of his writing; as early as 1993 he had noted: “Das Poetische und die Politik sind ja nicht zu trennen” (Handke 1993, 80). The text of Winterliche Reise confirms this. Objectively, it can be noted that he deliberately omits the war zone (Brokoff 2011, 70) and that, only admitted in Sommerlicher Nachtrag, accurate perception is sometimes replaced by a biased view that could be accused of inaccuracy (SN 178 f.) and at times even private self-stylization (Brokoff 2011, 71). However, Handke has largely refuted the last objection by himself making clear the premises of his perception on the journey. It can certainly be seen as a literary form, an aesthetic experimental arrangement that transforms the real material (AT 39); he explicitly uses the term “Erzählung” for Sommerlicher Nachtrag (SN 167; Brokoff 2011, 66). His remark that his text aims at peace is, beyond the concrete reference to reality, also a metaphor for the attempt to counter “die bösen Fakten” of the world with the image of an aesthetically transcribed reality (WR 159). That this textual play can sometimes be so counteracted by reality that it must be questioned is made clear by Sommerlicher Nachtrag in particular. Moreover, doubts become apparent there as well. Confronted with reactions to the travel story, Handke comes to think that by writing down he has done “etwas Unrichtiges, Falsches, ja Unrechtes” (SN 176 f.). This leads to the self-critical remark in Good Friday Journey: “Du kannst nicht auf Dauer Feind deiner Zeit bleiben” (UT 89). Die Morawische Nacht confirms how this doubt persists and inscribes itself in other texts as well.

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The self-critical insight is combined with observations of the factual. In view of the destroyed Višegrad, where there are no more minarets (SN 194), he also states unequivocally: “Und spätestens hier hörten wir drei Männer im Auto auf, unsere serbische Wintergeschichte frühsommerlich zu wiederholen; hörten überhaupt auf, die Personen einer bereits geschehenen und aufgeschriebenen Geschichte zu sein (was doch Erholung, Lust und vor allem Schutz sein konnte); und spätestens nach dem folgenden Abend […] schien es dann nötig, […] zu unserer Wintergeschichte diesen Nachtrag oder Zusatz zu machen” (SN 188). In this respect, Sommerlicher Nachtrag also performs a correction of the poetic fantasy of Yugoslavia. It is no different in Unter Tränen fragend (Asking through the Tears: Belated Chronicle from two Crossings through Yugoslavia During the War, March, and April 1999). The partisanship for Serbia gives way to insights that cannot be ignored. The narrator is shocked by the “Totalnihilismus der gegenseitigen Vertreibungen […] der bedenkenlosen Vertreibung der Muslime und Kroaten durch diese und jene der mehrheitlichen Serbenschaften” (UT 97). Everything is based on a logic that can no longer be controlled, which only allows a “Warum das? Wozu?” as a question (UT 98). It turns out that these insights also mark the seam between the appropriate perception of the political and the poetic image of reality. The narrator is particularly impressed by the destruction of the tools perceived in the battlefield, which were, after all, once “Zeichen der Menschwerdung” (UT 117). Thus, in the end, “Weitererzählen” is initially also subject to a ban on images; later, under the pressure of journalistic “narrations”, becomes the word “‚Erzählung‘ […] eins der edelsten der Menschheitsgeschichte, etwas Zuwideres und für lange Unbrauchbares” (UT 73). Poetic narration must change; it succeeds only when rejecting “[die] großen, [die] ausgemalten, [die] zu Ende geschilderten, [die] monumentalen und panoramischen Bilder”; all that is possible are miniatures, joined with others to form an “Arabeske” (SN 224). Here, on the one hand, Handke takes up Schlegel’s notion of the arabesque as “[…] älteste und ursprüngliche Form der menschlichen Fantasie” (Schlegel KSA II, 318 f.). Instead of a non-linear narrative, it unfolds an abbreviated combination of word and image that gains its evidence from a transcription of the factual through the text (Oesterle 1985, 187). On the other hand, the arabesque also becomes an epochal signature, in this it can be compared to the capriccio to which Ernst Jünger resorts in order to reveal the signature of history (Jünger SW-7, 80). A comparable judgement is made later in Unter Tränen fragend, when the author succinctly states: “[der] Traum von der Geschichte als einer Utopie wird durch diesen nicht nur vermeidbaren, sondern auch scheinheiligsten Krieg bis zum Zeitenende etwas Ausgeträumtes und Untotes, eine untote Idee […] etwas Gefälschtes sein” (UT 136). Already to the traveller of Sommerlicher Nachtrag, knowledge seemed more and more uncertain on the journey, “während die Ahnung, die, gemäß meiner Erfahrung, ganz anders vorausweist als jedes Wissen, immer gewisser wurde” (SN 243). Under this restriction, the account of the trip to Serbia follows the fundamental conviction that an alternative perception becomes possible only in the “Ahnung”, in the Other of the poetic text, a perception that is conditioned neither by the concepts

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of reason and politics nor by politically unambiguous names and designations. In this literarily recoded rendering of the supposedly universally known, the figure of the distanced observer from the outside proves to be a meaningful and necessary literary staging. It follows the epistemological model formulated by Robert Musil in Skizze der Erkenntnis des Dichters (Wagner 2009, 303). At the same time, it can be related to literary models, to Swift’s enlightened visit to foreign worlds as well as to Baudelaire’s observation of the modern world. In this way, the role of the travellers in Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise is determined by a textual order, by the narrative in which they find themselves (WR 175). The formula “justice for Serbia” can be understood solely under this premise; the author is concerned neither with denying the facts of the case nor with accusing, but rather with the endeavor to allow “Bedenklichkeit, Zu-bedenken-Geben” (WR 150). Beyond the parties, it is also fundamentally about the present status of all societies. In view of Srebrenica the question arises “wie ein solches Massaker denn zu erklären ist, begangen, so heißt es, unter den Augen der Weltöffentlichkeit, und dazu nach über drei Jahren Krieg, wo, sagt man, inzwischen sämtliche Parteien, selbst die Hunde des Krieges, tötensmüde geworden waren” (WR 147). The attempt to describe the “kristallinische[.] Alltagswirklichkeit” of the parts of the country not involved in the war (WR 141) is to be evaluated under these conditions. In the description of idyllic-seeming everyday scenes, of people who drank water from hand to mouth (WR 84), in the description of “turkey-sized soup chickens” and “andersgelben Nudelnestern” at the market  – contextually, by the way, counter-images to the pejorative reports about Serbian markets  – (WR 97), the depiction of a family meal (WR 101) and the sale of fuel from bottles and jars (WR 114), the literal and substantialist reading of many critics wanted to identify a backward-­looking idealization. It was seen as an ideological counter to the media stereotype of evil Serbia. But in the final analysis, this reading falls decidedly short. It does not grasp the semiotic game that the text stages, for it aims to release a prospective view from a supposed look back. Thus, the fountain scene does not simply depict another world, but it becomes a sign that cannot be read without the context of the preceding events; it also visualizes “eine[.] große[.] Nachdenklichkeit, eine[.] übergroße[.] Bewußtheit” of the population (WR 84 f.). In contrast, the image of the family dinner shows that the place Porodin, where the scene takes place, as a language island, becomes at the same time a sign for the utopia of cross-linguistic understanding. In addition, the description of the distribution of fuel in bottles and jars is linked to the “Wunschvorstellung” that this way of dealing with fuel as a “Bodenschatz” should be continued in this way and perhaps even spread to other countries (WR 114). Finally, the eye contact with a truck driver from Skopje/Macedonia, whose transistor radio plays oriental, almost Arabic music, conjures up a “gemeinsames Gedächtnis”, the disappearance of which triggers a “Phantomschmerz” (WR 139). In an interview, Handke explicitly emphasizes the difference between the description and perception of the real and its textual reconstruction, which determines these scenes. Asked about his own motives for returning to the Balkans, he answers that a homecoming and a real home can only exist “im Buch” (Steinfeld

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2010). This classification of the alternative world as a book world fundamentally invalidates the accusation of political naivety as well as that of partisanship. Moreover, it is already apparent in Sommerlicher Nachtrag, and finally in the subsequent text Unter Tränen fragend, that what he has seen has by no means passed the traveller by without leaving a trace, and that even the poeticising images of hope cannot erase the actual signs of war. Rather, its images reach into the present. Even when perceiving quite different images, the narrator now experiences a “zwangsweise[s] Verwechseln mit einem der täglichen Massengrabbilder” (SN 247). In the end, there is to be no point of view and no image of the enemy in his attempted “Geschichte ohne menschheitsfeindliche Bösewichte” (SN 249). But perhaps, he self-critically reflects, his narrative alone records a “Durchbruch der Trauer, oder […] zur Trauer” (SN 248). The fact that these texts are not only about media criticism but also about something quite different than one-sided political partisanship or a relativization of violence becomes clear above all when the author himself comes into play. More than a decade later, the text Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still), the core of which is a family constellation, proves that Handke’s confrontation with the Balkan War has its hidden origin in his memories of Slovenia. It is not solely politically shaped but unfolds from a biographical constellation a basic poetic figure of writing that pervades all of the author’s texts equally (Hafner 2006, 47–63; Hafner 2008). He explicitly addresses the loss of familiarity he once felt during his wanderings through the newly founded Republic of Slovenia, his “Gehheimat” (WR 134). It is no coincidence that at the end of Sommerlicher Nachtrag he refers to Ivo Andrić’s review of Višegrad, describing this place as the “Ursprung” of one’s memories, where one “frei die ersten Schritte tat” (SN 250). At the same time, the narrator emphasizes that he never had a comparable feeling in Serbia before (WR 141); for quite a while, even for him, the Serbs were “Feinde des Menschengeschlechts” (WR 62). Precisely for this reason, the question of the coexistence of ethnic groups remains the central theme. When Handke speaks of “Unwirklichkeit” in Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land (AT 10, 12, 15), he does not use the term in a media-­ critical way but evaluates it as an alienation that can be understood both literarily and psychologically, with explicit reference to Hofmannsthal, and which presupposes a social context. He counters this with the newly won poetic attitude that his Serbian texts follow. The real experience of Slovenia allowed things to remain ‘representational’ for him only as long as he succeeded in ascribing historicity to this country. The collapse of reality in the form of the war put an end to this and challenged a countermovement in writing. The same applies to the notion of “Entwirklichung” in Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise (WR 175). It, too, can be applied to the configuration of a narrative in which the characters move “als Figuren eines fast schon alten Spiels” (WR 175). Thus, the concept of the Sommerlicher Nachtrag points beyond Winterliche Reise. It establishes, in addition to the familiar recourse to the actuality of events, an aesthetically mediated perceptual program. This follows the previously found guiding formula that it is about a history yet to be written, which is to redeem the peoples from their mutual “Bilderstarre” (WR 76). It is precisely in this

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way that the poeticizing representation proves to be a counter-design to the media images, which are probably not by chance contrastingly evaluated as Francisco Goya’s successors (WR 63; Jünger SW-2, 315). While Goya in his Desastres de la Guerra captures the unchanging signature of his epoch in the image, Handke wants to precisely overcome this by opening up a history-free space of writing that also gives room to other images. Although he fundamentally believes in the “begriffsauflösende Kraft des poetischen Denkens” (WÜ 76), he has always been aware of the inner dialectic of this attempt. An early document of this is Versuch des Exorzismus der einen Geschichte durch eine andere, in which he shows how the memories of a history of violence cannot simply be erased by the images that the poeticizing gaze creates, but that they shine through as in a palimpsest (AT 25 f.; NT 85–89). This alternation of overpainting and deciphering determines the Serbian texts as a whole. Irrespective of this, the figure of thought of a transcription of biographical, psychological, and political perspectives, which as a circumscription of the world forms the background of the Serbienreise, has always determined Handke’s writing. Since In einer dunklen Nacht (On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House) it has even more clearly shaped the images of his texts, which, following the guiding formula “Schreibend bleib immer im Bild” (GB 94), must as a rule be deciphered in multiple perspectives. This is of particular importance because Handke’s Serbian texts are interlinked by the central metaphor ‘Balkan’ on quite different levels with the other fictional texts, which in turn fulfil quite different functions. On the one hand, Unter Tränen fragend sharpens Handke’s political argumentation and thus stands parallel to Rund um das große Tribunal; at the same time, some political references find their way directly into the play of Einbaum. But in both cases, the political argument gives rise to the fantasy of a different perception. It is part of the strategy of Handke’s argumentation that it repeatedly recodes supposedly fixed terms and thus makes them doubly legible. Of central importance is the reflection on the term ‘propaganda’, which is deliberately inverted, and then understood both as political ideology and as the mobilization of resistance at the same time. In the case of the Serbs, who want to resist a Western monopoly of interpretation, the recourse to tradition, culture and folklore is ‘propaganda’ as the mere dissemination of a counter-image, an insistence on their own as a form of internal resistance. “[Sie] machen Propaganda für ihr Land, auch ohne gefragt und gefilmt zu werden, aus eigenem – jeder propagandiert da für sich allein!” (UT 53). It is a defensive attitude because the country sees itself “von einer unbezwingbaren Übermacht bedroht, umzingelt, eingekesselt […]. Es zieht sein ältestes und feiertäglichstes Gewand an, und warum nicht seine schönste Volkstracht? Und es tanzt seine ältesten und traditionellsten Tänze” (UT 19 f.). In contrast, the propaganda of the Western war powers appears as a “Trommelfeuer aus sogenannten Informationen” (UT 21). The author concludes: “[das] erste Opfer des Krieges ist die Wahrheit”, and therefore a new language must be found (UT 23). In addition, an autobiographical reference is opened up here, which makes the aggressive defense appear as the consequence of a traumatic constellation. Unexpectedly, triggered by the war images in Serbia, there is now a “Sichwiederholen meiner ersten Kriegserinnerung, oder meiner ersten Erinnerung überhaupt?”: the

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epitome of a bombing raid on the farm at home in Austria in April 1945 appears to the reporter (UT 64  f.). Undoubtedly, this memory later combines in a psychic superposition with the experience of a NATO bombing raid (UT 147  f.). In this interplay of remembered images from childhood, thus congruent images from Yugoslavia, and present perceptions in France, a dissonance becomes apparent that cannot be resolved at first. The superimposition of these images does not reveal a “Zugleichräumigkeit”; rather, they appear as a kind of “Ortsräuberei”, even a “Weltentzweireißen” (SN 246). Following a dictum of Theodor Adorno, one’s own experience of war has also made clear a “zeitlose Folge von Schocks” between which gape “Löcher, paralysierte Zusammenhänge” (Adorno GS-4, 60). The intensity of this experience leads to the Western reporting being perceived as “Wort- und Bilder-Pornographie” (UT 155) after the return to France. Once again it becomes apparent that the Serbia texts are not only about the authentic report and not only about the political accusation, but always also about the attempt to put one’s own experience, which has become pictorial, into law as a correction of the images and concepts of journalistic information and at the same time as a form of expression of an individual and poetic resistance (UT 71). What Handke undertakes here he has shortened elsewhere: he points out that those, of all people, who had presented themselves to the public with the slogan “Die Phantasie an die Macht” are now acting as warlords in the Balkan war. He tries to hit them all with the gesture of a poetic erasure: Their names are reduced to the abbreviation of their initial letters just as they themselves shorten a complex political situation to strikingly used names (UT 56).

11.6 Places of Resistance and Imagination: Die Tablas von Daimiel. Ein Umwegzeugenbericht zum Prozeß gegen Slobodan Milošević (2005), Die Kuckucke von Velika Hoća. Eine Nachschrift (2009) The text Die Tablas von Daimiel. Ein Umwegzeugenbericht on the trial of Slobodan Milošević follows directly on from the critique of the trial in The Hague as formulated in Unter Tränen fragend and in Rund um das große Tribunal. Once again, Handke criticizes the Hague Tribunal’s legal guidelines, in particular, its assumption of a “joint criminal enterprise” (JCE), which was supposed to establish Milošević’s responsibility, and that of non-local commanders, for the Srebrenica massacre – a finding that the Tribunal then not only ultimately failed to make, but against which it raised reasonable doubts (TD 25, 34; ICTY: Karadžić, case no. IT-95-5/18-T, para. 3460, p.  1303 and note 11,027). For Handke, in any case, a ‘detail significatif’ as understood by LeGoff appears no less probative than a judgment based on such a legal construction. For him, a mimically underlined gesture by Milošević points to the reality of Balkan power structures at the time, which makes him question the basic legal assumption of sole responsibility (TD 32). Moreover, independently of the discussion of judicial responsibilities that he also raises in the play about the Einbaum, he criticizes the ultimately ideological specifications for a

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court that he classifies as a “Schuldspruchtheater” or “Bewußtseinstheater” (TD 18). As in the play of Fahrt im Einbaum (Voyage by Dogout), he underscores his opinion through visualization. He contrasts the metaphor of the camera obscura, to which the accuracy of Vermeer’s View of Delft (Fig. 11.1) has been compared, with the image that the Hague Court creates of reality (TD 22). In contrast, following a concept of French jurisdiction, he brings his ‘intimate conviction’ into play, which for him fundamentally calls into question the legality and appropriateness of the proceedings in The Hague. The term “Umwegzeugenschaft”, which he already claims for himself in the title, thus gains a double meaning. On the one hand, he thereby evades the classification of witnesses made by the Court. On the other hand, it points to the fact that the final verdict on Serbia can only be pronounced later. In a poetic figure, the motto of Ibn Arabi “Die Zeit ist Richterin” and the anecdote of Tablas von Daimiel, which concludes the text, point to this. These tablas are lakes in the Spanish La Mancha formed by the río Guadiana, which flows underground in places and rises to the surface through so-called ojos. But invasive agriculture – the cultivation of maize deprived the river of water – caused the tablas to

Fig. 11.1  Jan (Johannes) Vermeer, gen. Vermeer van Delft (1632–1675): View of Delft, c. 1660/1661. (The Hague, Mauritshuis, © akg-images/picture alliance)

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disappear and destroyed the underground water system (TD 62 f.). The author transforms this geological event into a historical metaphor. Moreover, he refers to the dialectics of history with a poetic narrative figure that is shortened to a simple image. He places two Spaniards side by side at the end of his journey to the Tablas. He juxtaposes his driver, who with the sentence “mir ist etwas genommen worden” laments the loss of an old order of which a geological formation has become the image, with the “permanent grin” of a Spaniard in Brussels. It is the Spanish NATO Secretary General Javier Solana who commanded the NATO military action against the old Yugoslavia. Thus, the preceding legal considerations are shortened and condensed into a poetic form of subversion. It alone still seems meaningful to the author in this situation. The end of Tablas von Daimiel thus foreshadows what Die Kuckucke von Velika Hoća (The Cuckoos of Velika Hoća) will later undertake, at short intervals and in different ways, in its interplay with Die Morawische Nacht. In the context of the Serbian texts, they establish an aesthetic transformation by mirroring real and imagined images in each other. Morawische Nacht, which is also referred to at one point as “imaginierte Reportage” (MN 287), appears in 2009. A year earlier, in the summer of 2008, Kuckucke von Velika Hoća had emerged as a “reportage” following Handke’s third trip to the Serbian enclave in southern Kosovo. A few months earlier, on February 17, 2008, Kosovo’s independence had been declared. The place Porodin in Die Morawische Nacht is an example of the overlapping of real and poetic discourse that determines both texts. It takes place in the play of names, which simultaneously contours and alienates the places. The real geography is overlayed by a “Geographie der Träume” (Fetz 2009, 194). The place name Porodin connects a village in Serbia, near the town of Velika Plana (MN 8) with the fantasy of an enclave in Kosovo; both geographical dates disappear at the end of Die Morawische Nacht (MN 557; Fetz 2009, 201). But even before that, both are long since no longer topologically determinable, but have their own coordinates. Basically, the perception of places in Die Morawische Nacht aims at a “hier wie dort in unserem Europa” (MN 560), it follows a description of the Balkans that connects the real places with a political utopia, a poetic fantasy, and the space of childish memories at the same time. These are names that become signs that a homecoming is possible after all (Fetz 2009, 462). This is exemplified by Samara, which was originally intended as the title of Die Morawische Nacht, and Samarkand, which appears in many late texts. Both, unlike Porodin alone, can be attributed to a mythical geography (Kastberger 2009, 67; Fetz 2009, 462). The Balkans, imaginatively coded in this way, begins spatially long before the geographical and morphological borderline (MN 523), at the same time it marks a temporal dimension that brings it close to another world, a utopia in space and time in the literal sense. That is why the memories associated with the word ‘Balkan’ appear as “Einsprengsel […] in der Zeit und in den Räumen, Vorwegnahmen, Inselchen, Inselmomente” (MN 524). It remains to add that images of nature and natural history are always linked to the depiction of this other world (Fetz 2009, 196). It is no coincidence that the two mottos preceding Sommerlicher Nachtrag

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place the question of a representation of history that Saint-Simon discusses next to a nature scene from the medieval Lancelot epic (SN 164). In the context of this imaginary geography, Die Morawische Nacht, not unlike the text about Velika Hoća, is also a book about Yugoslavia, the Balkans, or Europe, which transcends political coordinates at every point (Fetz 2009, 199). It is no coincidence that the description of the region plays a central role, which had already appeared in Handke’s preceding Serbian travelogue as the “Inbild der stillen und friedlichen Mitte des europäischen Kontinents” (UT 60 f.). In Holy Week 1999, the author had the impression “als seien diese Dörfler hier unfähig, die Kriegsnachrichten nachzuvollziehen; da sie aber doch daran glauben müssen, wird mit diesem Unwirklichkeitszwiespalt auch ihr Alltagsleben unwirklich” (UT 63). In Die Kuckucke von Velika Hoca, the reporter unfolds comparable images, but they are contextualized differently. This begins with the fact that the counter-­ discourse of the political and the watchwords of journalism are now not aggressively warded off, but used playfully (Höller 2009, 205). For this reason alone, the postscript of Die Kuckucke is to be placed alongside Sommerliche Nachschrift zur winterlichen Reise. Both take up a fantasy from the epilogue to Winterliche Reise, which conjures up an “ausscheren zu einer anderen Geschichte” that could oppose “die Unheilskette [der] Jahrhundertgeschichte” (WR 157). This renewed “Nachschrift” is possible solely through the hindsight of writing and is “[von] Nachdenklichkeit geprägt” (Höller 2009, 206), although the author finds a political situation in Albania comparable to that of the Serbs in Bosnia-­ Herzegovina, because the population has to live in a ‘foreign state’ (DKV 7). Yet, here too, these political data are overwritten with the names and signs of a mythical geography. In this way, the text follows a significant double movement that results from reading and rereading the data to which it refers. First, the disappearance of the language of the defeated (Höller 2009, 208) becomes evident in an observation similar to that found in the erasure of Cyrillic script in the Porodin episode of Die Morawische Nacht (DKV 97; MN 100, 521). The author’s map-reading becomes a criminalistic reading of a cultural and political change of register (Höller 2009, 209), and the postscript does not conceal the loss of language and the traumas that characterize the inhabitants of the area, a passage that has been referred back to the narrated space of Die Hornissen (The Hornets) with good reason (Höller 2009, 217). Yet at the same time, the text, which also attests to the failure of journalistic investigation of causes (DKV 8 f., 44 f., 46; Höller 2009, 211), evaluates the cultural changes of register in the Albanian-Serbian area as “Polyphonie” (Höller 2009, 207) and reads the signs of a possible future in the present. They shine through the “entdeckerische Kraft des Erzählens”, which is initially directed at Vekoslav’s hidden garden, the project of a man who otherwise appears in the village community only as a “Mittel- und Zukunftslose[r]” (DKV 69; Höller 2009, 214). They are condensed when crossing the bridge of Mitrovica, where, after pushing aside the rolls of barbed wire, the view of the Albanian part perceives an almost utopian image: “[Der] Friede hatte seinen Grund – er lag in der Luft und ebenso klar auf der Hand –” (DKV 26 f.). It is significant for this other Serbia text that this image is free of pathos and social romanticism. The focus on the cuckoos opens up a counter-world to

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Rambouillet, the place of political decision, described humorously and not without self-irony: it is a “regelrechtes Kuckuckswelttreffen oder -konzil” (DKV 39). At the same time, the great political utopia is replaced by a view of simple things, which guides the narrative and at the same time ensures that it does not overestimate itself. Having returned to France Handke notes: “Das Deutungslose, es wirkt nach – nachhaltiger Teil des Bleibenden und Überdauernden; jedenfalls, jetzt und jetzt, in mir. Und so möchte ich es überliefern, hier und hier” (DKV 97; Höller 2009, 219).

Between Drama and Epic: The Plays After 1989

12

There is a great deal of evidence that Handke wants to avoid the dramatic in the theatre as well as in his writing, based on both his reflections on the theatre and his ideas about narrative. In Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil) they are formulated concisely at the outset, and in later stories reference is made to them. All these statements make it clear that the author’s recourse to the epic can in no way be compared to Brecht’s (Lehmann 2012, 67). Die Geschichte des Bleistifts programmatically states: “Ein Epos aus Haikus, die sich dabei aber keinesfalls als solche Einzeldinge bemerkbar machen, ohne Handlung, ohne Intrige, ohne Dramatik, und doch erzählend: das schwebt mir vor als das Höchste” (GB 52). This consideration also explains Handke’s fascination with Aeschylus, in whom he sees some of his approaches prefigured and who seems to him to be “the most perfect” of all dramatists, because in him there is “nur die Wortgewalt; reines Drama” (GB 238). It remains to add that this de-dramatization also determines the view of other media from the beginning. The film adaptations of Die Linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman) and Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire) provide examples for film; the view of Cézanne in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire) and the extensive reference to Poussin’s LʼÉté ou Ruth et Booz in Die Obstdiebin (The Fruit Thief) emphatically demonstrate this for painting (OD 466).

12.1 “Zum Dreinschlagen fremd”: Das Spiel vom Fragen Oder die Reise zum Sonoren Land (1989) The fact that Handke continuously writes texts for the theatre despite an aversion to the theatre, which he expresses in a letter to Henning Rischbieter in 1967 (Lehmann 2012, 67), has a twofold reason. Firstly, Handke’s spoken theatre, which one also tried to devalue as an ultimately unperformable reading drama, is the site of a publicly staged language experiment in which language consciousness and language reflection are combined from the very beginning, thus perpetuating the basic figure © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_12

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of Kaspar through all the other plays. Secondly, Handke’s plays repeatedly refer to images that show references to the narrative texts. It is no coincidence that the scene instructions for Das Spiel vom Fragen (Voyage to the Sonorous Land or the Art of Asking) indicate a landscape plateau as the setting right at the beginning, which is also the preferred setting in many of Handke’s narrative texts. This intersection of language and linguistic image is already foreshadowed in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts: “wenn ich ganz ruhig versunken bin, nehme ich wahr eine Art ewiger Schrift (besser: ewiger stiller Rede); wenn ich ganz ruhig aufmerksam bin, nehme ich wahr eine Art ewiger Bilderfolge: das bewußte Schreiben aber hieße, daß beides in eins geschieht […]” (GB 49 f.; 63). Finally, the publicly performed linguistic reflection on stage establishes a new relationship between the audience and the actors. This corresponds to the intertextual relationship between narrator, characters and reader, which Handke’s texts also repeatedly stage as forcefully as if they followed Roland Barthes’ definition of “intertexte” (Barthes 1974, 94). Within his texts, this corresponds to the depiction of narrative communities, which take on central importance especially in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay), Die Morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night), and Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos). Moreover, this writing practice obviously has a psychological component: At its core is the question of the extent to which the self can articulate itself through language or writing. The theatre can offer this as a possibility, but it only repeats what is already happening on the author’s inner stage: “Wie oft bin ich schmerzlich allein auf der Bühne meines Innern, und dann kommen endlich andre dazu, du und du, manchmal die Völker der Erde, und auf meiner Bühne spielen wir dann nicht, sondern sind einfach zusammen, und in meiner Brust ist es weit und warm geworden” (GB 13). With good reasons, one has also seen is psychological image as an analogy to the “polarity of spectator and actor in the theatre” (Lehmann 2012, 70). At the same time, it deals with the central theme of the relationship between writing and language, which Handke also mentions in detail in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts and which is later repeatedly inserted in passages in his narrative texts. In dem, was ich geschrieben habe, bin wohl ich, aber es fehlt meine Stimme. […] Als wäre es eine Erlösung, alles vom Schriftlichen ins Mündliche überzuführen. Ich würde nur noch, manchmal, reden, nicht mehr schreiben. (GB 134)

However, he does not pursue this very alternative; rather, his narrative reflections on language and writing prove that this consideration not only determines his narrative, but that it is also openly negotiated there again and again. On the one hand, the notion of stammering narration in Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across) (CS 231) and the immanent poetology in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (MJN 836) point in this direction. On the other hand, this theme is directly related to that of the search for lost language. This is evidenced above all in In einer dunklen Nacht (On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House) (IN 86), where the protagonist’s decision to go back to the people immediately requires a decision for language, a suspension of silencing (IN 266).

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In Handke’s work, theatre and narrative are thus in a mirror-image relationship: theatre, through its language, refers to written texts, and the written texts, for their part, create an idea of language. This interrelationship develops dynamically, for Das Spiel vom Fragen (The Art of Asking) thematizes the search for a new form of theatre and at the same time presents it. Programmatically, the wall-watcher and the player agree in one sentence: “Laß uns eine Zeitlang noch ohne Ziel gehen!” (DSF 156). At the same time, this is the basis for a departure from the rules of traditional theatre. When the actress emphasizes at the beginning: “[…] ich tue dann nichts, ich verkörpere einfach […]” (DSF 24), she means this in the literal sense. She does not represent a role she has to portray, but only show the presence of her body, which alone she brings into play. It is precisely in this way that the actor can become a “Wahrspieler” (DSF 24). This presence of the body is also configured at a later point. Quoting central considerations of Jacques Lacan, the actress speaks of desire itself, “einzig das Begehren meines Gesichts, das Begehren meiner Augen” (DSF 95; Lacan Seminar I, 226 f.; XI, 122). From this, too, arises a demand on the play, which wants to bring to the stage what cannot really be shown. While traditional theatre makes the body an “unnahbares Massiv” and regards the actors as “in den Käfig lockende Affen” (DSF 27), Das Spiel vom Fragen requires a new art of theatre acting as well (DSF 25; Roeder 2012, 180 f.). But apart from this program, which outlines a questioning game and a searching game at the same time, because all questions have to be learned in the course of a journey, this play not only establishes the presence of what happens on stage, which creates a different form of simultaneity than narrative. The theatre also allows to become present what the writing constantly circles around: The presence of the voice and the moment of shared speech, even if this may often be merely declaratory. This is why Handke’s post-dramatic theatre, which is emphatically related to literature, has been called “language theatre and theatre of language” (Lehmann 2012). Strictly speaking, this play is “nichts und alles. Ein Singspiel ohne Gesang. Ein Sprechstück, eine Litanei, ein Wortschwall. Eine Pantomime. Eine Zauberposse. Ein philosophischer Disput. Ein Prüfungs- und ein Lehrstück” (Henrichs 1990). Die Reise zum Sonoren Land (Voyage to the Sonorous Land) promised by the play’s subtitle makes it clear that language here is first and foremost about its sound and not so much about a transported meaning. The actors articulate this when they recognize as their problem “daß wir heutigen Spieler unfähig zur Durchlässigkeit sind [und] unsere Gesten nur noch uns selber zeigen, statt hinaus in einen Raum” (DSF 26). In order to achieve this permeability, an image that connects to the role of the persona, the mask in ancient drama, it is necessary to start “von vorne wieder mit dem Fragen” (DSF 29). This alone can give rise to the “d r i t t e Körper” of which the actor speaks (DSF 27). This creates a performance on stage that mobilizes the notion of a return to immediacy through its connection to the story of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. This resolutely points back to the experiential and emotional world of childhood; the actor lives “von der Frucht [s]einer Kindheitswunden” (DSF 28; Roeder 2012, 180 f.). Precisely for this reason, the questioning at issue

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here is neither goal-oriented nor standardized; it is based on autoreferential speech gestures, not on linguistically determinable speech acts. At the same time, this “ausstehende Drama des Fragens” (DSV 29) pierces the surface of prevailing discourses with a gesture critical of civilization, as also happens in other texts by the author, especially in Der Große Fall (The Great Fall). Through its concentration on voice and body presented on stage, the play also partially eludes the law of representation and in this very way touches the physicality of the spectator (Roeder 2012, 182 f.). Parallel to this, in the relationship between the actor and the actress, the body alone becomes the connecting element, albeit in a significant double figure. On the one hand, it points to the “Spur von Blut und Sperma kreuz und quer durch den Kontinent” (DSF 33), which becomes the phantasmatic image of his love relationship for the actor; at the same time, this form of corporeality is immediately erased again playfully in the idea that the lovers unite in what seems like a disembodied “Ineinanderübergehen” (DSF 35). It is a fantasy that Handke will repeat in Die Obstdiebin (OD 436). The two old people interpret this double movement from the historical constellation: “Was für umständliche Spiele die Paare doch heutzutage spielen müssen” (DSF 101), because they [don’t have] “Zeichen, die ihnen den Umweg des Redens abkürzten” (DSF 101). It is this double figure of concretion and erasure as a sign of another that is repeated on stage. “[Das] Stummbleiben und Nichtfragen”, by which the actress knows herself to be affected, becomes the “Lebenszeichen einer ursprünglichen Scheu” in modern times which are called “schamlos” (DSF 29). At the same time, language on the stage opposes the “Wespenschwarm des Geredes” (DSF 89), to which the spectator is also subject in his everyday life. In the actor’s “Durchlässigkeit”, the spectator is offered the possibility of a mental liberation that takes place beyond identification with the characters on stage. The theme of questioning is given a completely different quality by the reference to Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, in which, as is well known, the question of compassion plays a central role. Handke has repeatedly dealt with this epic since 1970, according to his notebooks; the stage plot follows the scheme of the epic and also has three parts, the last of which again has five scenes. The play thus also establishes the scheme of the adventure; the journey of the protagonists is a questioning journey which, as in the medieval original, takes the form of an “Bildungsweg”. Like the latter, it ends in questioning (Pektor 2012, 165). All this is presented by a group of people, all of them typecast figures with speaking names, who meet in the “Hinterland” and set out to rediscover in the “sonorous land” the proper questioning that they have forgotten. There are three pairs, the old, the young actors, the wall-watcher and the spoilsport, and finally Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s protagonist. The latter’s “tumber Tor” appears in Handke’s work, however, rather as a “Verstörter”, at any rate as a descendant of his Kaspar. Because not only the questioning but also the common language of these characters has yet to be found, the frequently antithetical dialogues touch on themes ranging from the everyday to the pathos of preaching. Handke himself, in an interview from 1992, also assigned this play an overarching work-historical context, calling it his “Faust” in allusion to Goethe (Kathrein 1992, 15). The fact that Das Spiel vom Fragen was

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originally to be called “Kunst des Fragens” suggests that the right questioning, which is to be learned here, would have to take art into view and at the same time the prerequisite of art (Pektor 2012, 165). Alongside this multi-layered play of language, images take on a special significance. At times, Handke even allows speech to take a back seat to images, and in a clear reference to Ferdinand Raimund mentioned in the dedication, the stage can turn into a magic theatre (DSF 110 f.; Henrichs 1990). This is foreshadowed not only in the many images of nature with Handke’s typical inventory of cypresses, mulberry trees and sap berries (DSF 86), but also in the associated alienating images of the settings and those that thwart perception: “Pappellicht: Entfernungsverzerrlicht, Autozusammenstoßlicht” (DSF 86), but finally in the fairy-tale scene in which the “Rad des Fragens” and a hut appear as “Palast des Fragens”, and the light turns into “Fragelicht” (DSF 129). This reduction of the plot to a linguistic action has a hidden inscription. The search for the right questions, which Das Spiel vom Fragen depicts and which it simultaneously stages within itself, has a historical and a life-historical dimension. Fundamentally, this play also follows Handke’s strategy of “laying out the semantic realm of its subject as a traversal of the linguistic world of his childhood and fixing beyond the commonplace those other signs […] that drive his search for forms.” (Wagner 2010, 115). This presents Das Spiel vom Fragen as both a reinvention and a learning process. Both occur in one movement: “Das Fragen abbrechen geht jetzt nicht. Das Spiel muß weitergehen” declares the wall-watcher (DSF 47). The historical reference requires the translation of a historical experience into the present, of one language into another. Parzival, who at the beginning, like Kaspar, appears as infans, as a speechless underage person in the literal sense and who has yet to find his own language, becomes the guarantor for the others that there is a lost language that they can find. For their “heutigen Erwachsenenkörper[.] stumpf geworden von den Wiederholungen, gegenwartsunfähig gemacht durch die Erinnerungen” it is a matter of translating back to life “die Bilder [des] fremde[n] Ritter[s]” (DSF 37). This recourse is at once life-historical in connotation. Parzival, who can only express himself through bodily reactions and gestures, utters a sonorous humming as his first sound before his actual language education can take place. Explicitly referred to as “Kind Parzival” (DSF 42), his first words are nothing more than guiding phrases, set pieces, and quotations from a wide variety of contexts that he parrots and that, in isolation, make no sense (DSF 49–51). This is where the drama of his linguistic upbringing sets in, with the word “Vater” at the top of the list (DSF 49). The spoilsport, as a black pedagogue, mimics Parzival’s sentences so that he “die Spielregeln schockhaft begreift, von seiner Verbannungsinsel zu uns übersetzt und endlich mit uns mitspielt” (DSF 42). Unaffected by this, however, Parzival’s language development continues, although he again initially responds to the increasingly aggressive questions of the two old men with quotes from the world of media entertainment: “Und sag mir, wo die Blumen sind? Und wer wirft den ersten Stein? Und was geschah wirklich mit Baby Jane?” (DSF 106). In this way, Das Spiel vom Fragen follows both the text of the medieval Parzival and Handke’s Kaspar. But in the last scene, both reference texts are inverted in a

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peculiar way. Parzival first appears in a nature scene like a speechless animal reduced to his corporeality, before he first quotes sentences from literature and philosophy in the presence of the native, who appears as stage manager (DSF 122 f.). He then lapses into a monomaniacal speech, a conglomeration of fantastic images, fairy-tale scenes, and the configuration of fantastic memories of his father and mother, which is a patchwork of literary sentences (DSF 126). Finally, he begins to talk about how he had omitted important questions in his life, especially to his parents. But it is not these missed questions of familial interaction that are at issue now, nor is it the insertion into a social context as in the medieval epic. Instead, Parzival realizes that he should have learned an entirely different “Kunst des Fragens”. This is not purposeful, but open-ended, not goal-oriented, but as playful as a quest for a “Phantasiestraße” (DSF 133). In the end, however, Parzival steps back. The play concentrates on the three figures of the spoilsport, the wall-watcher and the native. Only in the interplay of their dissonant speeches do the contours of another questioning, which had only been hinted at in Parzival, become clear. From the outset, the destructive social behaviour of the spoilsport, which at every point aimed at deconstructing both the big words and the fantasy images, stands in sharp contrast to the teichoscopy of the wall-­ watcher, whose gaze captures images of nature, such as the “Spiegellicht” behind the forest or the dark patch of an oak grove, and at the same time allegorically contextualises them. He speaks of the “Aufwind aus der Heimat des Fragens”, of the silence and the question without which there is no image (DSF 62). In doing so, he brings to the stage a high tone that corresponds to the poetic fantasies of its inventor as presented in Der Bildverlust. Parzival’s linguistic socialization is replaced by images of a cultural socialization that the wall-watcher must repeatedly defend against the spoiler. Indeed, the inner drama of the author is repeated on stage, as he oscillates between claiming a sublime tone of poetry and self-doubt. It is not without reason that the spoilsport, when he exhorts us to look at the tips of our shoes and speaks of the lowered gaze (DSF 63), takes up a critical self-image of the author that pervades his early texts (AW 31). In the final scene, these references transform into a triad of contradictory world concepts. The wall-watcher, who most closely quotes Handke’s reflections and follows his literary models  – he also speaks as Chekhov and Raimund  – follows a fantasy of poetry, using Handke’s signal word of “Schauen” as a metaphor for the other perception and the immersion in things (DSF 78). At the same time, he ties this poetic fantasy into a picture of cultural socialization. The sharper looking is dependent on reading, which at the same time determines the role of the book: As a reader, the wall-watcher talks about reading (DSF 89). He understands this as “Erlösung von den Spiegelbildern, durch den Eintritt in das Eine Bild” (DSF 90), at the same time he fears that the “Zeit des Lesens” is over. It is precisely the basic figure that Handke will treat some time later in Der Bildverlust, where reading and images are threatened by a historical upheaval. This is the perspective that the spoilsport’s comments open. He is one of the counter-figures that repeatedly contrast Handke’s own proclaimed guiding principles, taking up the author’s self-doubt as well as the feuilleton’s reservations about

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him. Thus, the spoilsport’s criticism is directed, on the one hand, at the poetic images of the wall-watcher, among which a linden tree stands out (DSF 84), and at the high tone that makes the latter alien to others: “Deine Art Schauen, heißt das nicht Vereinsamung, im Sinne von: Für nichts mehr in Frage kommen?” (DSF 77). On the other hand, he attacks the philosophical context associated with it. He declares the word “Lichtung”, which opens the reference to Heidegger’s existential ontology addressed in other texts (Huber 2005, 351), to be “Mittelalter”, an “unwirkliche[n] Ort” (DSF 134). At the same time, it initiates a change in strategy, which Handke’s play in fact then follows: The narrative of questioning transforms into a “fragende[s] S p i e l” (DSF 135). It is a poetic figure of thought that asking the question is more than the expected answer. Playing this questioning means remaining open to the unfamiliar and not yet thought. However, even this attempt seems outdated by the march of time. The spoilsport considers it possible that the common journey to the ‘Sonorous Land’ was pointless, quite different from the Cheyenne’s heroic move back to their homeland (DSF 144). But at the same time, he is afraid that after this “Zeit im Weltreich der Stille und der fragenden Phantasie und des zur Frage geweiteten Traums” he will have to go back to the district of a “Despotie der Wappen, Fahnen, Nummern- und Namensschilder”. The meaning of Spiel vom Fragen, in which he also participates, albeit merely as a critic, lies in the fantasies opened up by the questioning journey. It also consists in the respite granted by the journey to the question. “Schwindet das Fragen, so schwindet auch mein Schöpfungsgefühl” (DSF 150), he now realizes. This opens up the performance of the theatre, which stages Handke’s play in the literal sense. As a play that is removed from historical time for the duration of the stage action, when it follows its own time, it allows a view of what has been lost in the course of history. One may recognize an inappropriate pathos here, but first and foremost it is a concentration of perception on simple things, an outside view from the window of civilization into what it has left behind. In this respect, the native represents the lost and the own at the same time. Acting together with him, Parzival is neither an outworn figure nor a mere literary reminiscence. In the events on the contemporary stage, which makes him seem foreign, he becomes an intermediary. As a figure, he marks the intertwining of childhood fantasy and poetic imagination. It is not by chance that he rehearses the words “Wind”, “Himmel”, “Staub” and “Wasser” in his interchange with the native, and with good reason he speaks of his “Kindheit an der Märchenquelle” at the end of his subsequent literary fantasies (DSF 127). The native, however, is always already there, where the others first want to go. He represents a utopian present and, unlike the latter, does not need to undertake a journey. And unlike his author, he no longer needs interstices and thus no more questions. He is with himself in a naturalness that poetry must first catch up with (DSF 159; Wagner 2010, 113). It is reserved for him to fall back on the images that determine the aesthetic transformation of nature by its author. For them stand on the one hand, the fantasy of being able to weigh oneself into the movement of the trees (DSF 159) and, on the other, the image of the first raindrops falling on a dusty path, recalling the autoreferential world of the aesthetic. There alone the questions can

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end: “Die Rose ist ohne warum” is said at the end of the play (DSF 160). This has made the fantasy of the origin visible but will never be able to redeem it. It remains alone as long as the game of questioning lasts.

12.2 Theatrical Experiments: Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten (1992) and Spuren der Verirrten (2006) Before turning to the grand narrative design of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, Handke once again takes up the experimental approach he had outlined in Das Mündel will Vormund sein (The Ward Wants To Be Warden) and in his Sprechstücke with the two pieces Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wussten (The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other) and Spuren der Verirrten (Traces of the Lost). The play about the Mündel had achieved the distance to the events, which in the prose texts is established by the perspectivisation of the narration, through its consistent transfer into speechless sequences. These were nevertheless dramatized by the stringency of the gestures performed by the figures. Their behaviour appears ritualised and standardised at the same time, the body pantomime simulates a speaking between the characters. It makes clear that there is not only a relationship of tension between them but also one of domination. Thus, the absence of speech leads, on the one hand, to a dramatization of the movements and, on the other hand, to the fact that the spectators become interpreting co-actors of the stage events. A comparable substitution of absent theatrical elements took place in the early Sprechstücke (Spoken Pieces). There, speech action and wordplay “als Schauspiele ohne Bilder” took the place of a theatrical staging that works with figure drawings and stage sets (ST1 21). In Die Stunde, da wir nichts voneinander wußten, a further reduction takes place. Those appearing on stage are perceived primarily through their gestures, steps and movements. As they aim at a “Sich-Einspielen” (DS 9), they cannot be deciphered as defined “roles”, but remain dancing, fleeting, changing bodily figures; there are good reasons for calling their appearance a “performance” (Roeder 2012, 182). They are not what matters in this play; rather, the space in which they appear and which the stage represents is the real actor of the play. The play confines itself to presenting a showplace. The characters’ “acting themselves in” is a mere appearance, an acting in the medial sense. This results in two stylizations that are directly related to each other. At the same time, they open up a parallel between what happens on stage and the medium of film. It does not seem coincidental that Charlie Chaplin flits by (DS 63), a star of early silent film, for in some respects what is shown on stage is reminiscent of the media strategy of early silent film. The “free slace”, the ‘Schau-Platz’ appears at the beginning of each scene as in a cinematic fade-in bright “light” to become dark at the end like in a fade-out (DS 7, 64). Moreover, the representation follows the concentration on a detail that is common especially in early films; it is the principle of framing that many film theorists and directors observe. This is of importance for the

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representation of movement, which in early film, unlike in modern film, is realized neither by a moving camera nor by different zoom settings. On the squared screen, and for the experimental directors it is also a square screen, the representation of movement is intensified by the fact that the figures pass through the screen (Eisenstein 1932/1991, 157–176). This is exactly what happens here on the stage for Handke’s play. At the same time, the importance of the play with movement is underlined by the fact that towards the end everyone begins to move at an accelerated pace (DS 62). Handke’s play is therefore, in the literal sense, not only a play on a stage but also a play with movement. The play with space and time, the prerequisite of every modern media presentation, is thus made conscious in concentrated form through the visualisation of the theatre. Or to put it more pointedly: The theatre foreshadows a media development that will become its competition. At the same time, it becomes clear that movement and setting have only a substitutive character. Speech does not appear on stage, but it is simulated; silences and speech are also visualized and are thus as present as they always are in silent film (DS 56). This speechless stage event is nevertheless accompanied by language. The stage directions are more than indications, they do not simply name a changing situation but at the same time change their own linguistic style with the change of images. There is a recognizable correlation between the text of the instructions and the images they create. The play is also designed as a reading piece, modelled by the rhythm of the language, which follows a linguistically produced movement pattern. The descriptions of characters with sentence-like participial constructions, preferably in the present tense (DS 15), simultaneously portray the movements. They are increasingly replaced by a staccato of short sentences (DS 62), which primarily describe actions and events. The reader of the stage directions thus gains the impression of an alternation of deceleration and acceleration. The images and scenes that can be seen on the stage are partly taken from everyday life. They are based on a close observation of figures characterized by their activity (DS 11, 25) or their clothes (DS 18, 37). But it turns out that this is not all; the instructions are also part of a game, follow a language game. Some people are described with the word “als” as if they were actors or are attributed an attribute that is somewhat abstract: “Ein Beliebiger geht nun an einem Beliebigen vorbei […]” (DS 37). Moreover, the “Platznarr” who appears acts like the play director of an event (DS 34, 39). Again and again, the regular events are interspersed with references to literary or culturally coded images. A passing beauty recalls Baudelaire’s À une passante (DS 19), one who “swings” across the square mobilizes the memory of Tarzan (DS 36), and a Papageno crosses the scene (DS 23, 43). The combination of mimetically depicted figures of the contemporary world with such topical figures stages collective memories and turns “viewing into reading” (Schößler 2010, 194). A “Hüpfschritte-Macher” also appears next to a “High-noon-Helden” and a “gleichmäßig stillem Schreiber” (DS 47), a self-deprecating passage in which Handke seems present as both person and author.

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From the beginning, however, the seemingly real scene is interspersed with fantastic and alienating elements. An old man carries on his head a “mächtige Wiege, samt entsprechendem Wappen” (DS 12) and one sees a man like “Moses, returning from Sinai with the Tablets of the Law” (DS 33). Abraham and Isaac also appear (DS 46). At some points, the appearances of the various characters and their combination become condensed into dream sequences and images (DS 26  f.). This is precisely the goal of the play. The final scene, in which the spectators go on stage (DS 63 f.), is prepared from the beginning by the fact that the scenes and their constellation are designed to be deciphered not only visually but also unconsciously. The physical interaction of spectators and stage characters is preceded by a psychological one. As in the medium of film, in this “Schau-Spiel”, this interplay is generated solely by a field of visual perception that in fact copies and makes visible mental processes: attention and fading out, reality testing and imagination, memory and association. The “fundamental gesture” of the actors walking back and forth on stage, which has characterized Handke’s plays since Spiel vom Fragen (Schößler 2010, 194), also determines the play Spuren der Verirrten. There, it is preferably couples, usually a man and a woman, who move across the stage, usually joined by a “third person” (SV 14). Unlike in Spiel vom Fragen, however, the movement of the actors leads only to limited scenic configurations of constellations of action and relationships, which are visualized iconographically on the stage. The play of movement is now complemented by a play of language, though both are decidedly abbreviated to “traces”. These are marked either by the stage direction or by the gaze of an I that controls the spectator’s perception. Thus, here too, the spectator’s work proves to be the decisive element of the theatrical design. The spectator has to follow the scenic hints, but in doing so, unlike the third person who joins in and drives the action forward or the I-instance that appears at the end and brings its own perspective to bear (SV 13), the spectator is exposed to the demands of an interpretation that has no unambiguous register of decoding at its disposal. Rather, the multiplicity of textual references and designs, which in the interplay of plot fragments, psychogram, and stage direction also reenacts Handke’s writing movement, requires the spectator’s ability to simultaneously semiotize and deconstruct what is happening on stage. Because this movement of interpretation must always begin anew with the various fragments of action, it shatters any linear dramatization of the events on stage. The stage becomes a “champ de distribution”: the scene of Spiel vom Fragen corresponds to the field of action in Spuren der Verirrten, which opens up a field of possible interpretations (Barthes 2003, 17, 18, 102). This also establishes a temporal order of its own, which distinguishes stage time from real time as well as from the time horizon of its interpretation. Moreover, the play itself opens up two internal time levels. It first reveals, albeit rudimentarily, a state of the world that is marked by violence that is possible at any time. Scenic splinters appear on stage, hinting at forms of everyday coexistence that can immediately turn into violence (SV 60–62). Explicitly, the third proclaims, “Es wird bald Krieg hier geben. Schon zu lange ist Frieden in dieser Erdgegend, viel zu

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lange. Und dieser Frieden ist bloß noch äußerlich. In Wirklichkeit, das heißt im Innern, existiert er nicht mehr” (SV 19). In this situation, the individual characters, that is the second time level, are “Verirrte” who cannot find a common goal anywhere, therefore they only know their own temporal horizon, they live in a time bubble. This gives rise to a sometimes almost circus-like clown game, dominated by short, disjointed scenes that allow for the observation of types and strange behaviour. Frequently, the traces of past encounters that are as brief as they are meaningless are also made visible (Lhotzky 2007). The mix of images and quotations linked to them refers to texts and memories by Handke (SV 16, 31, 32, 83), to Wolfram von Eschenbach (SV 64) and to the Old Testament (SV 54). He makes clear the construction principle of the play, which in the play itself questions its premises. Through the interaction of the I, which calls itself a role, and through the actions of the spectators and hecklers, it becomes clear that, on the one hand, the third party is also only playing a role (SV 65) and that, on the other hand, the watching I finally declares itself an actor (SV 80). As such, it is at the same time an interpreter, it describes what is happening on stage and judges the possible forms of the theatrical representation of reality. The time of his interpretation leads this I to a judgment that is at once historical and poetological: “Die Zeiten der Tragödie […] sind vorbei, weil es keine Schuldigen mehr gibt, weder bewußt Schuldige noch unbewußt Schuldige”; finally, he insists that here, where he speaks, a completely different time applies, “die Spielzeit, welche seit jeher endet, ohne ein Ende zu haben” (SV 77 f.). This leads to the poetological inscription of the play, which one critic has called Handke’s “hardcore-poeticization” (Hilpold 2007). Without a doubt, the notion of play time circumscribes Handke’s poetic fantasy of another time, which mostly appears in moments of danger or in scenes of destruction. The order “zurück ins Gleichmaß” (SF 82) marks the necessity of a reflection on the very other of poetry, which appears in that which is resistant to it. This marks the most important task of the viewer, for whom from hints the image of another world emerges with a “Ruck”. As always with Handke, it emerges from the detail or the isolating gaze. Without relying on the perspective of clearly defined figures, the text abruptly presents sentences of this immanent poetology: “Mitten im Binnenland das Meer herbeigestaunt. Vor einem Stück Rasen die Savanne der Freiheit herbeigestaunt” (SV 83). Again, a dialectical figure of thought proves to be central: of all things, the experience of the foreign makes possible a view of one’s own. In a stranger one’s own father can be perceived in the mode of “nachschauen”, and the extinction of his language is transformed into a fantasy of the emergence of language (SV 84). In the end, even the leading guiding phrase of going astray transcends its literal meaning, transforming into a metaphor for the origin of poetic language. At this point, the time of drama is finally over, the play ends in a lyrical text that makes experiences of time appear as dream images and systematically depotentiates the merely real (SV 87 f.).

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12.3 Under the Law of History: Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit. Ein Königsdrama (1997) The fact that the drama of the king, not only since Shakespeare, is always also a drama of war is confirmed by this play in several ways (Henrichs 1997). On the one hand, it is about a real war that threatens a small enclave people, and on the other hand, it is about the confrontation between two incompatible attitudes to life, which the brothers Pablo and Felipe embody. Finally, it becomes apparent that Pablo, who is to become a new king and on whom the people of the enclave, threatened by the “Raumzerstörer”, destroyers of space, place all their hopes, is himself a torn man. His energy, which is also destructive, is based on a crevice, a “wie angeborene Bodenlosigkeit”. Pablo is fascinated by power and glory and at the same time has self-doubt: “Kein Erfolgs- oder Siegestag bisher in meinem Leben ohne Schuld und Tod” (ZU 65). With good reason, the narrator reminds him of his failures and that he, too, depends on others (ZU 68 f.). To her he succinctly declares, “Ich bin nie ein ganzer geworden” (ZU 104). This is not simply a literary allusion to Johann Nestroy’s last comedy, but points to an inner drama whose proximity to the psychological disposition of the author Handke is obvious. By following his poetic leitmotifs with the play, he not only oscillates between redemption fairy tale and despair story. He also subordinates characters and scenes to an order that is always only unstable and can turn into its opposite at any time. As in Das Spiel vom Fragen, the action here is also centered by an inner drama of the author, while the outer plot visualizes Pablo’s psychodrama and links it to the history of his people (DSF 63; AW 31). Behind this is no mere playful theatrical direction, for this tension is coded in a double way, it refers to an individual life story and the political history of the present at the same time. The play points to the dominance of family history, which in Handke’s narrative texts as well as in the play Immer noch Sturm and the travelogues about Serbia, which are continued after Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit, plays an often concealed but formative role. At the same time, they all revolve around not only the subject of Serbia, but also the role of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, about which the author will write later. It is no coincidence that there is already an allusion to Delft in Zurüstungen, which later, on the occasion of a reflection by the author on Vermeer’s view of this city, becomes the starting point for a critical reflection on the war crimes trial in the Netherlands (ZU 9; FE 88). The play, which sometimes seems to readers, viewers and critics to be a detached construction that primarily brings Handke’s poetology transformed into images onto the stage, thus has a hard core. It is overtly a brother story, covertly a father and mother drama, and beyond that a political play that alludes with barely veiled references to the history of the peoples of Yugoslavia after the dissolution of the unified state, a history that affects both Slovenia and Serbia. And in this as in other plays, the high tone that pleases Handke’s adepts as much as it may displease his critics is often ironically and playfully broken. In an almost casual way, this is the case when, in a monologue by the narrator, who appears as “neue und letzte Erzählerin” and most closely follows this tone (ZU 49), there is talk of “Volksleidensgeschichten

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vom Amsel- bis zum Krähenfeld” (ZU 83) in allusion to the Serbian national myth. The same thing can be seen in the depiction of the grandfather, who tells of a mythical solar time (UT 8) and playfully finds the transition from high to colloquial language: “Lecke Boote! Lecke Portale! Lecke Kutschen! Lecke Welt! Leckt mich, alle” (UT 12). In an interview in 1992, Handke stresses that in the play he has yet to write he is concerned with a portrayal of “the family that has disappeared”, but not with a “so-­ called poor people’s drama, but that these are kings and that they perish as in a history play by Shakespeare” (Kathrein 1992, 14). In Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still), he will rewrite this story in a different way by making the mother’s brothers resistance fighters. Here, however, such concrete political considerations take a back seat at first, even though this story is linked to his own brother’s story. In Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, the author explicitly addresses this reference in a passage written on June 29, 1993: In dem folgenden Jahr blieb ich in meinem Geburtsort Rinkolach in der Jaunfeldebene, untergekommen wie als Kind im Keuschlerhaus der Eltern, inzwischen rückerworben von meinem erfolgreichen Bruder, meinem Fast-Zwilling, dem stillen König unserer Familie, und dem Verlierer noch und noch (von ihm werde ich zu gegebener Zeit vielleicht mein erstes Drama schreiben, mit dem Titel “Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit”, eine Tragödie?). (MJN 405 f.; ÖLA 326/W7, Bl. 244)

Obviously, the brother story and the inner drama of the author overlap in such a way that this can be separated into two figures. The fantasy of the gifted world child Pablo moves next to the self-critically questioned role of the limited but literarily creative and sensitive Felipe (ZU 106), whom the play also shows on a swing like a child. It is certainly no coincidence that both sons, who grew up fatherless, imagine their father according to their own ideas (ZU 30) and that both are traumatized in different ways by the death of their mothers (ZU 86 f.). As a consequence of this constellation one can see what a reviewer calls a fight “Handke[.] gegen Handke. Friedenssänger gegen Amokläufer. Oder auch: Alpenkönig gegen Menschenfeind, eine alte Wiener Zaubertheateraffäre” (Henrichs 1997). Handke’s preliminary considerations, however, show that he wants to both overand rewrite this familial core of his play. He states that the play should become archetypal (Kathrein 1992, 14); to Siegfried Unseld he speaks of a “Menschheitsdrama, [den] Versuch, zu einer neuen, gewaltlosen Gesellschaft zu kommen” (Handke/Unseld 2012, 668). These considerations combine the political and the aesthetic inscription of the play in a thoroughly precarious way. This gives rise to a problem that also affects the Serbian texts that precede and follow it. For the desire to juxtapose the reality of war with a poetic world is always in danger of substantializing the aesthetic images, which only endure as such in their autonomy, but not as descriptions of a reality that actually exists. In the play, this danger may seem less than in the narrative texts, but when the enclave people are referred to as “Weltkindvolk”, the ideas of das “Neunte Land”, “Sonore Land”, “Land der wahren Empfindung” and the “Niemandsbucht” that determine them overlap with the political fantasies of the Balkans, Serbia and Slovenia. This can be seen in individual

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images that represent seams between the realms of the mythical, the poetic and the political. Among them, the keel-up boat of the opening scene (ZU 7) is to be emphasized, foreshadowing Die Fahrt im Einbaum (Voyage by Dogout) as well as the boat of Die Morawische Nacht. It is ambiguous, for it reminds us of the dugout canoe as the original vehicle of Serbia, and at the same time it bears witness to the passage of time (FE 115). It is then less a symbol than a mere remnant of history. Moreover, as a sign of the past, it is connected with images of a recently past time, the border barriers of the modern nation states (ZU 32). This opens up another level of meaning in the play. Its stage sets prove that in it history itself becomes an actor. They provide signs of a changing world, gradually plunging into the rubble of time’s sediments and announcing the passing of time, even of whole ages (ZU 32). Moreover, there is a concrete story at stake. The stage direction at the beginning, naming an enclave “zum Beispiel im Bergland von Andalusien” (ZU 6), cannot hide the fact that the history of Slovenia and Serbia is in the background. The changes in independent Slovenia (ZU 34, 74) are visualized, as is the removal of border barriers, which ultimately leads to the incursion of foreign powers, in which the West, with its claim to power over the former countries of Yugoslavia, can be seen. Like the International Observers later in Die Fahrt im Einbaum, the space destroyers succinctly proclaim, “Die Welt, auf diese oder eine andre Weise, gehört uns” (ZU 58). They are the exponents of the “Großmachtleute, [die] gar kein eigenes Reich [mehr brauchen]” (ZU 42). The fact that historical development is dialectical at every point and that freedom can turn into its opposite is condensed in the motif of “[die] Schlacht am Schwarzen Berg” (ZU 20), which gives a different sign to the memory of the Battle of the White Mountain, in which the Bohemian estates were defeated by Habsburg superiority, and evaluates it as a catastrophe. Behind the mythical story, which the Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit conjure up and from which the past and future of the enclave portrayed are to be founded, there is a grid of concepts that make it possible to evaluate the events on stage critically and with an awareness of contemporary knowledge and current historical experience. The introductory sentence “Rache! Rache? Gerechtigkeit” (ZU 8, 11) of the grandfather and ancestor introduces a devastating historical diagnosis. It sees the people of the enclave in a dying world that can be overcome only by a departure for immortality, which in the end will prove to be nothing more than a utopian image. Justice, which demands a reasonable judgment in place of revenge, points back to Handke’s Serbian texts and competes with two other leitmotifs. It is, on the one hand, “das neue Recht” that Pablo should bring to the enclave (ZU 75) and it is, on the other hand, “das Gesetz” of another time that the narrator recalls and that Pablo wants to replace with faith in a possible peace (ZU 121 f.). Pablo’s law is the basis for the independence of the enclave people, at the same time the mythical time ends with him, also the last king has now disappeared from the earth, “[das] Königsspiel ist ausgespielt” (ZU 76 f.). Temporarily, Pablo’s new order and the narrator’s promise seem to complement each other. Under her guidance, historical deposits in the enclave are removed in layers (ZU 81), and in the process another history appears. A “Reich” emerges in

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which one can “die täglichen Erscheinungen geschliffen sehen zu Kristallen” (ZU 82). But in truth, Pablo did not find his own law; he has only established a “Zwischenzeit”, which in turn must be overcome (ZU 110). To do so, he wants to align himself with a mythical model. In conversation with Felipe, he recalls the Epic of Gilgamesh as a quest for immortality, but he knows that this is only to be understood as an idea (ZU 88). For himself, the idea of immortality arises solely between “Todesangst” and “Unsterblichkeitsenergie” (ZU 89). But what he wants to oppose to the “Raumverdränger” who want to undo the knowledge of the Enlightenment and the modern emancipation of the individual (ZU 96 f.) fails because it depends on a realization in “Alltagszeit”. Immortality, however, only exists under the new law, which can establish “eine[.] neue[.] Weise von Zeit” (ZU 90 f.). This results in the play’s defining assessment of justice and law, both of which are subject to the dialectic of historical judgment and history. They already become problematic because the state of the world in everyday time cannot be clearly determined: “Mitten im Frieden sind wir im Krieg” states “Raumverdränger Eins” (ZU 92). Under these conditions, justice, as demanded by the author years earlier, refers solely to the necessary attitude in a political constellation marked by revenge and violence. And law, as the defining element of the new order that Pablo brings to his people after years of absence (ZU 75), is nothing more than an autonomizing order-­ making power that will probably become totalitarian in the end. In his reflections on the trial in The Hague, Handke will see law first and foremost as the order of the victors and as the result of a limited view of the facts. “Die Eindimensionalitätsbrille” (ZU 95), with which the space destroyers perceive, foreshadow this consideration. In the travelogues from the Serbian War, law finally appears as a merely humanistically dressed up legitimation of the Western intervention forces; later, in Die Fahrt im Einbaum, explicit reference is made to “blutrünstige Richter” (FE 7, 69). Law cannot produce a lasting new order, if only because it is itself subject to the dialectic of history. This consideration seems suitable to replace Pablo’s new order with the law of the new time, for which the narrator stands. She promises Pablo that when the crevice opens up for him, she will be able to “ganzerzählen”; she wants to be “grün” to him (ZU 104). From this could follow a schematic that withdraws the district of the poetic from the order of the real and the dialectic of history. But Handke does not take this path in this play either. For the promise of the completely different, which the aesthetic order offers, can never be completed here, but must remain a guiding image, which at first alone promotes “Anschauung” (ZU 99). Consequently, the stage direction transforms the inventory of the entrance scene into mere models (ZU 126). Thus, the promise itself is shaped by a fundamental contradiction. That the new law will be inescapable and thereby “umgreifend, ausschließlich fundamental” does not sound threatening by accident (ZU 134). It is an indication that everything that becomes real will in the end turn into a totalitarian danger (GF 169, 219). Anyone who thinks this can no longer write didactic plays. Instead, with the story of the sons Pablo and Felipe, who are quite actually fatherless, Handke has sketched the signature of a historical situation in which society evades the law of filiation, the transfer

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of civilizational and cultural tradition from father to son, and the sons, detached from all bindings as “terrible children of modern times”, plunge the world into disaster (Sloterdijk 2014). The recourse of Handke’s play to the biblical Psalms corresponds to the radicality of a word from Luke, which is handed down in the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus spoke”, it says there, People seem to think that I have come to bring peace to the world. And they do not know that I have come to bring strife into the world. Fire, sword, war. For there shall be five in one house: three shall be against two, and two against three, the Father against the Son, and the Son against the Father. And they shall stand alone. (Luke 12:51; Sloterdijk 2014)

This basic figure is not resolved in Handke’s play; neither Pablo nor Felipe can establish a lasting new order in peace. This precisely determines the place of the narrator in Handke’s play. Only her narration can create duration, but only as long as it lasts. Even before this, the narrator had placed the demand corresponding to Pablo’s “Verbot der Sorge” (ZU 124): “Stellt euch, was ihr tut oder laßt, als Erzählung vor”. Only if this is possible “ist es recht” (ZU 123). Therefore, the conclusion of the play is kept open by the narration, which not only copies the play, but in truth can continue it: “Besser, das Gesetz weiter so anzuspielen, wie hier geschehen, damit der Schrecken hinausgeschoben wird” (ZU 134).

12.4 Nema problema. Nema Jugoslavije: Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stück zum Film vom Krieg (1999) The play, performed in 1999, refers in several respects not only to Handke’s reports on Serbia, but also explicitly to the public debate about these texts. This takes the form of a spoken play whose characters recite basic patterns and images of Handke’s poetology as well as the guiding formulas of the media’s public discourse on the war in Yugoslavia, which is determined by the interaction of image and text. The play acquires its special significance not only as a new “addendum” to the Balkan war, but also because it is created in a situation in which Handke’s final judgement on these events has by no means yet been formulated. While rehearsals for Die Fahrt im Einbaum (Voyage by Dogout) were taking place at the ‘Burgtheater’ in Vienna, the author undertook two more trips to Serbia, which was being bombed by NATO planes at the time, in March and April 1999. He recorded the exact route of these journeys, which also took him to Srebrenica in Bosnia, in great detail on a map. If we look at the strategy of the play, we first notice that the theatrical intention of challenging the audience to react is already prefigured as a plot pattern within the play itself, which creates a relationship between actors and observers. Two directors, an American and a Spaniard, behind whom John Ford and Luis Buñuel, later Antonio Machado, are concealed, want to make a film about the war in the Balkans and to this end have a tour guide, a historian, three journalists and an announcer recite their different views of the events. Opposed to these reporters are three

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characters who are not out for professional judgement, a ranger, a “madman” and a “field woman”. The Greek and the poet do not belong to either group, the former has turned away from his journalistic profession, the latter appears only as a marginalized peripheral figure. The fact that this constellation is about the preparation, actually the casting of a film, also makes it clear that for Handke every judgement about the war arises from the outset in the field of tension between language, writing and image. Moreover, the reference to John Ford points back to a narrative fantasy of the author’s that has pervaded other texts since Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell) and condenses in the late work (KB 195). With a quotation from the authentic Machado, a verse from En el entierro de un amigo ends the play Die Fahrt im Einbaum. The three mottos that precede the play follow a strategy of multiple references common to Handke. The quotation from Ivo Andrić, which immediately follows the preceding Serbia reports, aims at their central dialectical figure of thought, that the “moralische Euphorie”, of course, the author here means that of the West, can also turn the judges themselves into “blutrünstige Richter” (FE 7). By extending this line further, the play at the same time thoroughly inverts all positions and also makes the helpers appear as perpetrators. This is brought to a head by the appearance of the “madman”. In an emblematic abbreviation, he illustrates the norm of action of a Western society which, if one follows Handke’s polemic of the Serbian texts, sets itself up as a judge in the name of humanity and in the process becomes guilty itself. “Ich bin ein Massenmörder”, he continues, “Vielleicht der größte in diesem, in unserem, Krieg. Und wenn nicht der größte, so der dafür typische. Ich wurde Massenmörder, weil mir das Helfen mißlang” (FE 69). A quotation from Goethe’s Serbian Songs also follows a line that determines not only Handke’s Serbian texts but also his late stories; it marks the difference between the poetic and the historical evaluation of events. In this tense relationship, the fantasy of peaceful coexistence evoked by the third motto from a law book of the Serbian king Dušan takes on the significance of a guiding formula that Handke both argumentatively unfolds and visualizes in his Serbian texts. The characters, whose speech moves within the framework of these mottos, are standardized, they do not go through any development, have no psychology. The play has no real plot, even the announced trip in the dugout canoe does not take place. The fact that in the last scene the dugout proves to be too small to accommodate everyone is in any case rather reminiscent of Géricault’s Le Radeau de Méduse – it is no coincidence that the dugout is given a sail at the end – or of the end of Emir Kusturica’s film Underground, which Handke quotes in his Serbian texts (WR 48). These are good conditions for a performance that, beyond the practices of so-­ called director’s theatre, relies on the evidence of a language that oscillates between mimetic representation and naming of the actual. At the same time, these are poor conditions for the reception of a play whose standardized imagery evokes schematic reactions from an audience that is sometimes intent on nothing more than renewing the reservations it has already expressed against the Serbian texts (Stolle 1999). It

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seems that this is the reason for the restrained to rejecting attitude of the audience and critics, which the Viennese performance staged by Peymann in particular provoked. However, the latter also proceeded in a deliberately striking manner, because it took the very general instruction for the stage design rather as an illustration of a schematic discourse. The irony that also characterizes Handke’s text did not come to bear under these conditions. At the same time, the justified core of Handke’s media criticism was so overdrawn into the ridiculous by the caricatured portrayal of the three internationals that it was already defused again (Assheuer 1999). The first poses as an expert who seems to know all the institutions and only names their organizational abbreviations in conversation. He writes in the “INTERNATIONAL TIMES” and has already pronounced his guilty verdict on Serbia (FE 63 f.). The second international, instead of facts, tells equally lurid and sentimental stories in the style of the Yellow Press (FE 69). They correspond exactly to the report of the First International, which describes the Kravika massacre, the attack on a peaceful village on Christmas Eve (FE 84–86). The Third International, on the other hand, directly addressed to the First International, criticizes the journalistic formulaic language, which has also long since been shortened to abbreviations. It is characteristic of this play that, it repeats word-for-word actual assessments and judgments of the author that are already recorded in the previous Serbian texts, but it also subjects them to a double semiotic game. On the one hand, the assignment of speakers and text sometimes changes in unexpected ways. Figures of thought of the author also permeate the speech of persons from whom they are precisely not expected (FE 17). On the other hand, the references to the authentic Handke tone are peculiarly fractured. For this reason, the theatrical presentation of reality and the attempt at its aesthetic transformation in the play are by no means as opposed to each other as the schematics of the characters would lead one to expect. According to the latter, the three “Internationals” represent the discourse of journalism; therefore “[der] Hereingeschneite” addresses them as those to whom language, the image of war and, as they themselves emphasize, the associated image-stories belong (FE 70 f.). The Greek, on the other hand, contrasts his images with those of the war as a disguised alter ego of the author and at the same time as a commentator who follows his arguments (FE 72). Without a doubt, it is precisely this figure that provides a decisive “differentiation of the representation of war” (Wagner 2010, 155). At the same time, however, the Greek gets caught up in the dialectic of public discourse and therefore draws upon himself a judgment that repeats the catchwords of public discourse about Handke’s Serbian texts. Anything that deviates from the publicly dominant mode of reporting is described by the First International as a “Verhöhnung der Opfer” (EF 70). Because the Greek, like others, was opposed to the cinematic masterpiece on this war has not only destroyed “den Traum des Dichters” but has also shot again the child shot on the run (FE 73). Obviously, here, in inverted form, the discussion of Handke’s favouring of Emir Kusturica’s film Underground is taken up in such a way that it transcends the different ideological positions (RGT 23). In addition, there are single-line references to earlier texts by the author. They concern, on the one hand, events of the Yugoslavian war and, on the other, their

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representation in the media discourse of journalistic reporting. The guiding principle is Handke’s assumption that the independence of Slovenia in particular has already led to Westernization and submission to the power and signs of global capital. It is guided by the view that journalistic reporting is nothing more than a capitalist colonisation of society in a country that ends up dominated by euros and dollar bills (FE 12). In addition, it is worth highlighting passages that formulate Handke’s concrete factual criticisms of Western reporting on the war. Of central importance here is the reference to the person responsible for the murders in Višegrad (FE 51; Deichmann 1999), from whom a public confession of guilt was expected, a ritual ultimately enforced by the media. Unless otherwise indicated, the text states, “die Welt” is always “die Öffentlichkeit”, “die internationale Gemeinschaft”, “der Okzident” or “der Internaut” (FE 55). Alongside this are the different interpretations of the “bad facts” that Handke’s Serbian texts deal with. The announcer and the historian take on roles that correspond to the author’s media criticism, but at the same time ironically alienate his guiding principles. Thus, the guide initially describes the war zone solely as a cultural and historical space as well as a district of authentic life, thus following Handke’s mythicizing and poeticizing image of the Balkans, which has pervaded all texts since Die Wiederholung (Repetition). Only then does this guide mutate into a modern analyst who explains the war from social and geographical circumstances: “Nein, das hier war kein Krieg der Religionen oder der Völker, vielmehr ein Krieg des Hinterlands gegen die Stadt, eines Hinterlands, das ein einziges Riesengebirge ist […]” (FE 17). This phrase, of all things, repeats, albeit in ironic alienation, what was the point of departure and destination of Handke’s journeys into the hinterland of war. It is all the more remarkable that neither knowledge nor certainty arise from this gaze in the play. It turns out that the supposedly reasonable judgments expressed there are fundamentally questioned anyway, because they are seen only as the result of prefabricated registers. Thus, the guide reports that the announcer, as an amateur radio operator in three enclaves, repeatedly sent out radio messages that entered the world news and were finally regarded as facts when written down in the “jeweiligen drei Geschichtsbücher[n]” (FE 19). And the guiding phrase of “Phantasie an die Macht” which had originally proclaimed social awakening, now reveals only its current erasure. Of all things, the generation that had once taken up this slogan now provides the commanders in the war against Serbia. The fact that in this play neither the poetic ideas nor the author’s critical view of political reality and its media presentation are attributed to a single figure alone proves true in the presentation of the poet. It corresponds to the manifold refractions of the self that Handke also inscribes in his narrative texts. Like these, the play Fahrt im Einbaum presents a field of reflection and discourse that knows as little about clearly delimited discourse formations as it does about a single centering perspective in which an author’s ego could assert itself unbrokenly. Only in the mode of a ‘bruissements’ the answer to the “bad facts” is possible (Barthes 2003, 17, 86, 102). This structure can only be presented dramatically to a limited extent because its realization is at the same time aimed at philological decipherment beyond

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immediate perception. No wonder that some critics and reviewers who relied on immediate theatrical evidence failed precisely because of this. The sentences of the author Handke, which are followed by the tour guide as well as the Greek and the announcer, and finally by the ranger of all people, reveal, as in a rebus, different facets of the author and at the same time varying attributions from outside. Without a doubt, a special form of interaction with the audience in the theatre is staged here, as well as with the audience of feuilleton and politics. Here, too, it remains decisive that all references between inventor and figure are broken several times. It is in this context that irony gains its significance. Of all things, the pathos of Handke’s mythical counterworlds, devalued by the critics, is reduced in the figure of the ranger to uncontrollably emitted primal sounds. But while these seem to him to be a persiflage of Handke’s original fantasies, the primal sounds, into which the announcer and the tour guide also lapse, circle indiscriminately around the key words of the public discourse as well as its counter-discourse (FE 20). The Jew’s harp, which becomes the sign of a society outside the public discourse norm, especially in Die Morawische Nacht, also appears here reduced to a sign and designed for intertextual decipherment (MN 347). In addition, even from the point of view of the characters, to whom are ascribed a limited horizon of perception in the play, guiding concepts of Handke’s poetic counter-discourse lapse into criticism. In this way, the author combines criticism and self-criticism, and both are in turn diminished in power.. Thus, the chronicler criticizes the assumption of a possible peaceful coexistence of ethnic groups, a central leitmotif of Handke’s image of the Balkans, as an “invention of some war leaders”. The same criticism applies to Handke’s idea that this social utopia could have been realized in a large country alone, but not in a “erkünstelten und herbeimassakerten Kleinstaat” (FE 27). What applies to the relationship between the author and his characters also determines the characters themselves. The attribute assigned to the forest walker instead of a name by no means points solely to an atavistic and pre-modern figure; rather, the modern figure of the forest walker appears under this foil at the same time, whose outsiderness is based, as Die Morawische Nacht later shows, on the conscious negation of the existing (MN 109).

Medium of the Film and Medium of the Theatre If one takes into account the central role that reflection on the cognitive performance of language and image assumes in Handke’s texts, then the plot-defining interweaving between theatre and film, which the play takes as its point of departure, takes on particular significance. For just as journalistic reporting controlled by images is determined in the Serbia texts as social power, the medium of film now also appears as an order of discourse that exercises power. It is no coincidence that the two directors follow the claim of the three internationals when they in turn succinctly proclaim: “wir beide bestimmen […] die Geschichte” (FE 13). In Handke’s play, they are given the same power as “[die] sonore[n] Schwätzer” to whom, according to the Greek, “the world is on lost ground from the start” (FE 86). Despite the First

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Reporter’s realization that all are but prisoners of their “initial opinion” and eager to expand it, “noch schriller, und vor allem monoton […]”, the Second Reporter confidently states “Wir sind der Markt” and continues “Wir sind die Welt. Wir sind die Macht. Wir schreiben die Geschichte”. At the same time, the First International declares the founding rule of discourse: “Und die Geschichte braucht nun einmal Schuld, Schurken, Sühne, Gnadenlosigkeit” (FE 87). This form of unmasking the factual as well as individual orientations through irony continues in a remark by the announcer, who allows the directors freedom of choice, but at the same time places them under the prevailing public discourse regulations: “Es soll Ihr Film werden! Es bestehen nur gewisse Richtlinien, gezogen durch das Weltkomitee für Ethik, das internationale Ästhetik-Institut, undsoweiter” (FE 14). The turn against “[die] allunseligmachende[n] Schemata” (RGT 56) is developed in this play as an ideology-critical and media-critical perspective at the same time. This is why the irony of the play is by no means used in a biased way; precisely as a critique of the media, it simultaneously hits the opposite position. For the director O’Hara, who was originally to be called John Ford, speaks with formulas that can be related to the author and narrator Handke himself, when he wishes for his war film something beautifully narrated in sequence, which should appear “wie ein-­ und-­aus-geatmet, ob mit dem Atem des großen Geistes der Rockies oder dem des Ebro- oder Donaudeltas”. The concept of rhythm, which is central to Handke’s narrative, is also ironically alienated by this context (FE 22). Connected with this is the allusion to another of Handke’s guiding ideas, which always shows itself at the point of contact between poetic design and the political world: it is the fantasy of “Eingreifen”, which in other texts is determined as an intervention of the observer. Here, it guides the “verschwundenen Autor” who wanted it to emerge from the change of consciousness of a researching historian, of all things (FE 24). Subsequently, the contrast between history and its poetic transformation, which determines Handke’s reflection on Serbia, gains significance, the contours of which emerge in the course of the different discourses. In the cynical perspective of the historian, history is nothing but a fake: “Die wahre Geschichte kennt niemand. […] Und die falscheste Historie ist jene, die Religion spielt, Vernunftreligion” (FE 41 f.). But it is precisely the historian who not only reconstructs the history of Serbia in a polemically abbreviated form, but also establishes a relationship to other war crimes. In doing so, he opens up the very discourse that, in Handke’s opinion, has modeled the international perception of Serbia through polemical key words and images. The latter, according to the historian, proved to be “eifrig im Ausrotten der Juden und Zigeuner und bombardierte[.] Dresden, Berlin, Coventry und Linz”. Cynically, this falsification of the facts is at the same time assessed as the internationally prevailing view: “kein Gott sieht auf Dich herab, sondern der interkontinentale Satellit” (FE 36). The director O’Hara turns against the presentation of these facts, assessments and misconceptions when he points out that it is quite possible for the film to end with a “good lie” continuing to spin legends or life lies, while his colleague Machado sets the images of the film against the facts of Spanish history (FE 43). This “good

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lie” of the film simultaneously opens up the fundamental poetic reflection that guides Handke’s play at its core and elevates it above public discourse. It is prepared in an episode narrated by the chronicler. The latter, who had always put on a mask when he became a perpetrator and committed atrocities, at the same time reports a completely different experience. In the midst of his violent acts and fantasies, unexpectedly appears, in the very person he had made his enemy, “für einen Augenblick ein unglaublich sanftes Menschengesicht, ein verlorenes, sterbenseinsames Menschenkindgesicht  – das Schönste, was dir auf der Erde begegnen kann –” (FE 33).

The Other Image of Art The play, which addresses a political theme and a media interaction at the same time, also revolves around a reflection on the aesthetic presented by several characters, which emerges most clearly initially in the speech of the Greek. It is connected with an immediate reference to the image of a painter, which, as a transitional image, allows the aesthetic to emerge from a dialectical relationship to social and political reality. In some respects, the Greek first appears as a mask, a persona of his inventor. He shares the latter’s political judgement when he describes the Western helpers in the war as “Teufel des Gutseins” and “Humanitätshyänen” (FE 94). This judgment points to the problem of judicial processing of the Višegrad massacre and to the fact that reports of Bosnian war crimes receive less attention in The Hague than proceedings against Serbian defendants (FE 90; RGT 31–33). His doubts about the ability of witnesses to remember correspond exactly with the observations that Handke later noted in his book Rund um das große Tribunal (FE 91; RGT 30 f.). The same applies to the assessment of the prosecution of Novislav Djajić Lovis, which constitutes a central episode of Die Fahrt im Einbaum (RGT 52 f.) and the criticism of the German trial (RGT 56 f.). In the face of the First International’s remark that language is therefore a “Nebensache” because “politics has failed in this war”, the Greek demands appropriate language with good reasons. For the journalistic intention to “lay bare the wound” only disguises an ideological assessment of the bare facts (FE 76) and circumscribes, barely veiled, that journalists have long wanted to make policy with their language. In contrast, the other language the Greek calls for points decidedly beyond the political context of the play. On the one hand, it is connected to the perspective of the ranger and the fur woman with her dugout, and on the other hand, it is related to the notion of an “Zwischenzeit” addressed by the Greek (FE 80). This finds a counterpart in many of Handke’s texts, which set an aesthetic perception against the experience of the everyday and the resistant. In this context, the concept and the image of the camera obscura gain central importance, first, through its internal function in the play Die Fahrt im Einbaum, and second, because the image of the camera obscura is taken up again in Handke’s subsequent text Rund um das Große Tribunal (RGT 21, 35). In both cases, the

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author is obviously referring to an article by Lawrence Weschler that appeared in the New Yorker in 1995 under the title Inventing Peace (Weschler 1995; Kastberger/ Pektor 2012, 43). Weschler’s commentary there suggests that through the camera obscura “the chaos of the world might be drawn in and tames back to a kind of order” (Kastberger/Pektor 2012, 42). However, Weschler’s comment fundamentally misses the point of how the optical instrument of the camera obscura works. For its optical technique is based precisely on the fact that, although it inverts the world outside the box, it nevertheless reproduces it in perfect detail. Neither does the technical apparatus alter the image, nor does the viewer have any possibility of perspectivizing it. On the contrary, he must perceive everything from a point of vision inside the camera obscura that is predetermined by the laws of physical optics. It has therefore been pointed out, with good reason, that the perceiving subject could only assert itself as the leading medium of the artificial image after the historical replacement of the camera obscura (Crary 1990, 72 f.). It seems that Handke has implemented this reference to the camera obscura more appropriately than the author to whom he refers. However, and this is what makes his recourse to the camera obscura special, he does so in a double, yet completely different way (FE 89; RGT 21). In Rund um das Grosse Tribunal, the camera obscura becomes a metaphor for the courtroom in which the verdict is passed. This contextualization brings two aspects to the fore: The isolation of the judges from the reality outside and the single-mindedness of their arguments, conclusions and descriptive registers. The technical functional law of the camera obscura, whose image projection is subject to the intersecting theorem in physics and can also be calculated by means of them, becomes a metaphor for the functional rule of public and ideological discourses, according to whose law reality is depicted. In Die Fahrt im Einbaum, on the other hand, another aspect of the camera obscura comes to the fore. Irrespective of its replacement by other image media, such as the panorama and later film, this optical instrument continues to exist among landscape and portrait painters until the medium of photography is available to them for the production of painting templates and the fixation of motifs. This is especially true for Vermeer (Hockney 2001/2006). The recourse of the play Die Fahrt im Einbaum to Vermeer and his use of the camera obscura therefore covertly unfolds a fundamentally different consideration than the writing on the great tribunal. For here the optical instrument of the camera obscura becomes only the technical precondition of an aesthetic representation of reality, which in the midst of war presents the view of Delft as an image of peace. This figure of thought brings the inner dialectic of Handke’s play to a head. For this judgement on Vermeer’s painting is made by the Second International, who had already attracted attention by transforming political and historical facts into stories that can be read in a striking way. It is no different now, because he is incapable of distinguishing between the signs of politics and those of art. Because for him all images belong to a single discourse, he is able to link his commentary directly to his account of the war crime at the Višegrad bridge, he is able to see the peaceful Delft as a prefiguring of a Yugoslav peace, as a unilinear metaphor for political peace. But it is precisely this limited way of seeing that fatally confirms Handke’s pejorative

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comparison of the court and those gathered there with people in a closed system, which is also visualized by the camera obscura. For the Second International, the prosecutors of the Hague Court prepare for their verdict by looking at a peace painting that can be viewed next to the courthouse, for “ihr ruhiges Recht-Schöpfen entsprach auf den Tupfer den Bildschöpfungen Vermeers” (FE 89). For the reporter, it is therefore clear: der Maler hatte, malend, mitten im Krieg den Frieden erfunden – sein Delft wandelte wie Jesus im Sturm auf dem Wasser (Matthäus 8, 23–27)! Und ich dachte: kein Wunder daß unsere Richter und Ankläger Kraft suchen bei solchen Bildern! Auch Sie erfinden, indem sie unbeirrbar anklagen und verurteilen, ohne Zweifel den Frieden. (FE 88)

It is exactly here, however, that one of the refractions typical of Handke’s play becomes apparent, because for the author the commentator’s sentences are only correct if they are contextualized in a fundamentally different way. The aesthetic achievement of Vermeer’s image lies beyond the conditioning of the camera obscura. It arises literally from an overpainting of the lines and contours given by this instrument and is thus not simply representation but already transformation. In a comparable way, the aesthetic message of Die Fahrt mit dem Einbaum can unfold solely from a re-reading and overwriting of the commentary provided by the Second International. It is this tension between two readings that the performance has to tap into, for the play always also stages an “innere ‘Bühne’ des Schreibens” that is ultimately comparable to the “polarity of spectator and actor in the theatre” (Lehmann 2012, 70). Therefore, it is by no means appropriate to read the Second International’s assessment of the aesthetic in Vermeer as a unilinear message pointing to the author. Rather, through the discourse entanglement he enacts, the latter shows that the aesthetic must each be redefined and is not simply a counter-world. No overpainting can escape the dialectic of the real. Only at the end of the play does the dugout appear, which is mentioned in the title. Above all through the comments of the fur woman, it becomes a testimony to a mythical story (FE 115), at the same time reminding us of a land of origin. But this image, which is both the title and the scopus of the play, is deconstructed in several ways at the end. First of all, because it competes with a machine which, as a “Neue-­ Welt-­Orgel”, pushes the people apart who have lain down together because there is no room for them all in the dugout anyway, and transports them out of the scene (EF 120). This deconstructive image makes clear that the dugout can no longer travel back to any land of origin in which the social utopia of a prehistoric society could be fulfilled. Its significance is as a mere sign that injects the play into the reality it depicts. It is no accident that the fur woman points to its indestructibility by comparing it to a picture from which paint runs and which, in the opinion of its painter, for this very reason allows the idea of a “going home” (FE 119). The origin that this primeval vehicle recalls is not something to return to; it remains a fantasy that confronts what exists in the same way as the “Walddickichtstanz” of the ranger. It marks a symbolic configuration that has lost its social context (FE 79). And the true

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place of the dugout is, according to the fur woman: “An der Grenze zwischen Schlafen und Wachen” (FE 117). The scenario of the last scene underlines this representational strategy of the play. Both the district of nature described by the ranger and the description of the Balkans by the fur woman (FE 115) prove to be quotations and images that represent fragments from Handke’s texts and, precisely through this fragmentation, point to the “Hirngespinst” of Yugoslavia (MN 506). The reference to orchards and the Sierra de Gredos (FE 118), to dancing butterflies (FE 115), or the description of a raspberry (FE 112) can be cited as further examples (FE 98, 106, 118). But they all do not sketch out the contours of a coherent text that could be placed alongside the wholeness of Vermeer’s image of peace (FE 118). In view of the failure of utopia, even the promise of the aesthetic seems only precarious. The coordinates of these images in the play result from the failure of a political and social utopia, which the natives, who appear as fur woman and ranger, have allowed to become strangers to themselves (Wagner 2010, 159). Neither can they touch, nor are they identical with themselves. The director Machado remarks that “die Leute hier mit dem, was sie geäußert haben, immer wieder etwas grundanderes sagen wollten. Ihre Gesten, ihre Augen und ihre Stimmen widersprachen ihrem Reden, fast Wort für Wort” (FE 121). This prompts his colleague to remark that each of these natives needs a translator (FE 122). Confronted with a historical turning point at which society falls apart “mehr und mehr in Horden”, even coming to its end (EF 123); the new medium of film fails as it cannot do without a social framework (Kracauer 1979, 223–226; Deleuze 1997 II, 216, 399). In the end, the planned film is not made. The play thus also draws a temporary line under public debates about the war. Machado’s quotation from his poet ancestor makes it clear that the only truth in a society that resists symbolic exchange is death, and that at the end of the great war of opinions, the inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia, “[das] tragische[.] Volk” (FE 92), must go on living without those who claimed to explain their world to them: “Kein Problem. Kein Jugoslawien” (EF 126; Baudrillard 1994, 1–43, 87–95).

12.5 “Endstation des Theaters”: “Warum eine Küche?” (2003), Untertagblues. Ein Stationendrama (2003), Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts. Ein Monolog (2008/9) The reduction of the stage to a mere setting, which Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten had undertaken, and the restriction of character action to gestures and movements in Spuren der Verirrten continue as an experimental strategy of Handke’s plays, first in the texts he writes for the play La cuisine by Mladen Materić, then in Untertagblues (Underground Blues), and finally in Bis dass der Tag euch scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts (Till Day You Do Part Or A Question of Light). The most radical reduction is presented by the scenes assembled under the title “Warum eine Küche?” Here, not even speechless persons appear as in Spuren der

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Verirrten. Objects and glances take the place of actors (CU 21 f.), communication is replaced by the narration of memories, which has no addressees (CU 19). The disconnected scenes do not follow a linear order; sometimes they merely present an aleatoric game that combines kitchen ingredients with place names as if they were menu items from a starred restaurant (CU 24). The combination alone also determines the lyrical passages as a principle of regulation, which moreover place the incompatible directly next to each other and at the same time leave open which poetological concept of order they want to follow: “Lied-Litanei-Erzählung-­ Monolog-Dialog etc.” (CU 28). The same is true of the passages listed under the heading “Erzählungen” which are characterized as fundamentally segmentable by the stage directions: “Dialog, Trialog, Tetralog, Pentalog etc.” (CU 18). Untertagblues, which promises a Stationendrama in its subtitle, is anything but what this poetological designation suggests. Formally, it is primarily a monologue on the underground railway, segmented by the stations it passes. Again, this opens up the possibility of a combinatorial approach to the text. The “wilde Mann” who appears as the speaker could, as the text states, also be called “Volksredner”, “Spielverderber” or “Volksfeind” (UB 9), and the railway stations generally bear three names that combine references to different times and cultural circles. The protagonist’s speech is nothing other than a manic abuse of his fellow passengers, usually based on external observations and focusing on their clothing, habitus, and movements (UB 54), thereby condemning disabilities just as unrelentingly as exaggerated self-representations designed for effect (UB 42  f.). Undoubtedly, this aggressive monologue, directed first at the passengers and then at the spectators, who are addressed head-on at the end, follows a psychological disposition whose aggressiveness is the result of an overestimation of self. The logic that determines this play is solely a psycho-logic. Triggered by detailed observations and associations, the monological speech unfolds in obsessive garlands, the hallmark of which is that conscious and unconscious perceptions constantly overlap and intermingle in them, thus permanently recoding perception as a whole. In this respect, this play is also a “Versuch” on perception and a document for the power of the unconscious at the same time. It is not difficult to see that the imagery of this psychological disorder corresponds to the author’s judgments and poetic imagery (UB 19 f.), and that the insults uttered by the wild man correspond to his author’s often nasty looks at the society around him, as recorded in the narrative texts, especially Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht and Die Morawische Nacht, and later continued in Die Unschuldigen, ich und die Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße (The Innocent, Me and the Unknown Woman by the Side of the Road). At the same time, insults are also made with recourse to literary forms or highbrow expressions. “Grimasse zu Grimasse, Staub zu Staub, Unkraut zu Unkraut” (OB 29) is said in one place, “verstummt mein ganzes Wesen und schweigt?” in another, referring to a guiding aesthetic formula of the author (UB 31). The defense against the others is characterized by the key words of their “Unnatur” (UB 10) and “Unform” (UB 22), which find their target point in the defense of the “ewig Heutigen”. In doing so, the verbal aggression hits quite different targets. It is directed at social groups such as priests (UB 36 f.), scholars (UB

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38–40), or couples (UB 33–35), and it stages a systematic alternation between an external view of bodily details (UB 31) and an internal view that reconstructs presumed unconscious perceptions. Finally, it follows an attribution of invented or presumed histories (UB 22). When, at the very end, the “wilde Mann” is confronted by a “wilde Frau” who shows the same aggression towards him as he does towards the others, his state of mind abruptly changes. It becomes apparent that his monologue on the stage of the subway, which is open to the auditorium, makes the typical change from grandiosity to depression, which characterizes a manic-depressive disorder, conspicuous through language. Unawares, the wild man appears in the wild woman’s speech not only as ugly, but also his claim to be another is systematically and aggressively destroyed: “Du: verholzt von deinem Schönheitswahn” the woman characterizes him, reproaching him, “wußtest du denn nicht, daß heutzutage die Schönheitssuche und die Verkümmerung Hand in Hand gehen?” (UB 76). This change had been prepared by a period of complete solitude (UB 67), at the end of which is a station bearing a leading name where real geography and Handke’s psycho-topology overlap: Nueva Numancia. The fact that this disposition no longer permits controlled linguistic action from the outset becomes apparent at the latest when the wild man, who at the end wants to flee from the insults of the wild woman, flees “unversehens entgegen” her and seeks “Zuflucht […] bei ihr, der Vollstreckerin” (UB 77). This turn, which marks a plunge of the monologue speaker into depression, parallels an almost fairy-tale conclusion: the underground train goes “hinauf in die Taghelle” And the two protagonists appear only as “Silhouetten vor einem sonnigen Hintergrund”. At first, they are in a terminal station that bears no name, only numbers are visible, until the name of a “Übergangsstation” appears “Toisin – Autoisin – Potamoisin” (UB 78). The underground journey and the mind game have come to an end, the dominance of the unconscious is fading, a different order now applies, the rules of which are not yet clear. In the postscript to Bis dass der Tag euch scheidet, Handke refers directly to the model of Samuel Beckett, in whose play Krapp’s Last Tape he sees a perfect and necessary “reduction of the theatre” because Beckett has freed himself from “den Resten des Symbolismus und der Meinungen zur Existenz” (BTS 51). Handke explicitly notes that he himself cannot go beyond this point, referring to his own play Bis dass der Tag euch scheidet (BTS 51). In it, the static dominates in fact and in extreme form, which he always wanted to bring to the stage. Two statues, a man, and a woman, stand side by side in the same posture, only for her monologue does the female figure briefly step out of her niche, only to retreat again at the end. The fact that the two nevertheless appear quite different is due solely to the viewer’s gaze, to whom the woman, in extreme contrast to the man, initially appears like “[das] blühende Leben” (BTS 8). This text, too, is a long insult, a systematic dismantling of the man by the woman, and ultimately also a scathing judgment of their living together, which is summarized from the beginning in the sentence: “Wir zwei spielen zwei verschiedene Spiele […]” (BTS 10). The judgment on the man thereby follows an opposition

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typical of Handke. The man, whose fixation on forms without meaning the woman criticizes, is confronted with the “Zeigen der Kinder” which is supposed to mean nothing because it follows the pure desire “auf nichts und noch einmal nichts zu zeigen, geheißen von niemandem, bezogen auf niemanden” (BTS 16). It is the antithesis of the man’s consciousness (BTS 16). But also, the man was with himself only as long as he was alone. As soon as he met the woman, he had “immediately lost his center” (BTS 20), from the beginning this relationship was disturbed. It is true that in the end the masculine claim prevails over the woman; according to the woman, the man himself wants to be “das verkörperte Zeichen” (BTS 22). But the woman, figuratively speaking, must remain in darkness. In reversal of the common wedding rhyme, their promise of fidelity should be read: “bis daß der Tag uns scheidet” (BTS 23). Thus, the register of tension between the unconscious and the conscious inscribes itself in the relationship between man and woman and the characterization of their opposition, as if following a sexist cliché. Yet, this is precisely what keeps the play in suspense. The stage directions describe how, at the moment when the woman has determined her own role as speaker and has nevertheless remained in the state of “Schauen” the statue of the man aligns itself with her. This happens in a moment of “Innehalten” for its description Handke combines his words with those of Beckett. It is a pausing, the woman says, “bis mein letztes Echo auf dein letztes Band verhallt” (BTS 27). Again, the plot of a play is reduced to the representation of a psychodrama; at the same time, its guiding phrase “Fortdauernder Sturm” becomes a foreshadowing of the play Immer noch Sturm, with which Handke brings the psychodrama of his family to the stage (BTS 27).

12.6 Homecoming to the Ancestors: Immer noch Sturm (2010) In Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet the word ‘storm’, which entered the title in reference to Shakespeare, had already been used as a metaphor for a precarious relationship between husband and wife; now it describes the relationships of three generations of a family and the particular historical constellation that shaped them (BTS 27). Again, it is a drama of the interior. Everything that appears is produced by the radically subjective gaze of an “I” who appears as a figure alongside the family members. But this I cannot provide a stable perspective for the others because it doubles itself. In its perception, different life-historical experiences overlap and influence each other. In the course of a superposition of mental states and speech acts, the textual distinction between stage direction and character speech typical of plays is abolished. What this I presents is always both memory and scene, both are narrated in equal measure. In the tension between present and memory, action is not only staged in dialogue with others, but fundamentally also as an interaction between scene and characters, which is designed solely by the reporting self. Therefore, in this play, the drama of the interior, which takes place between the perceiving and the

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remembering I, corresponds to a change of scene and setting in the exterior, which puts different stages of a family constellation into the picture. When the I, who is the center of this almost therapeutic constellation, perceives his family, the mother, the grandparents, and the mother’s siblings in the present, his current perception is superimposed by the memory of symmetrical scenes in the past, which appears as a superimposition of images as in a cinematic ‘morphing’ and is also reminiscent of the medium of black and white photography. This superimposition is further complicated by the fact that this self not only doubles into a perceiving and a remembering one, but because it also appears itself in its memories. On the one hand, it is addressed as “Nachzügler” (IS 9) by the ancestors who appear to it in its present; on the other hand, it simultaneously sees itself in the past as a child, it even imagines scenes in which it is still in its mother’s womb. The overlapping present perception and memory are moreover, as if following the logic of the dream, signally connected by individual situations and objects that the reporting self believes to have seen before. “Da seid ihr nun, Vorfahren. Die längste Zeit habe ich auf euch gewartet. Nicht ich lasse euch nicht in Ruhe. Es läßt mich nicht in Ruhe, nicht ruhen” (IS 10). Of central importance is the bench from which the I, as if it were a spectator, observes the ensemble of figures of its ancestors and at the same time itself. In this way, the play designs a game of perspectivization that either inverts or playfully uses the classical boundary between spectator and stage. The bench from which the I looks around marks a temporal and genealogical, a psychic and a theatrical boundary at the same time. It points to the family’s past, is also a sign of a phantasmatic construction, and finally determines the place on stage where two perspectives overlap: the view of the reporting I on the past and present, and that of the spectator on the central figure. This ambivalent sign of the bench is coupled with another, whose recurrence in different scenes also seems to follow a dream logic, as it also runs through other texts and plays by the author: Next to the bench stands an apple tree “mit etwa 99 Äpfeln” (IS 7, 44, 71), which was already present as a sign in Zurüstungen für die Unendlichkeit (ZU 33). Because present scenes, memory and daydream overlap seamlessly, the stage space, which is actually a narrative space, is thoroughly alienated; this affects topography and time simultaneously: “Eine Heide, eine Steppe, eine Heidesteppe, oder wo. Jetzt, im Mittelalter, oder wann” (IS 7). These and other passages make it clear that in this play, not unlike Handke’s later texts, all signs have a dual function. They are never solely denotative and depictive, it is not just about the Jaunfeld in Carinthia, but all images are always at the same time sliding signifiers in a psychically coded subtext. Its aleatory construction law makes it comparable to the logic of the dream at every point, it stages a constant change between mimetic depiction and psychogenetic ciphering. More clearly than other texts, Immer noch Sturm falls back on the familial and autobiographical core that has always been varied in covert form by Handke. Die Hornissen (The Hornets) already records references to the mother’s brother (HO 131, 133), whose life story was told in Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams). Die Wiederholung established a link between family history and the

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Slovene resistance with Filip Kobal’s search for his missing brother (W 71, 238), and in Die Morawische Nacht the narrator meets his family members in Carinthia (MN 429). The family is also in the background of Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit, which are linked to Immer noch Sturm by common images (ZU 33). Now, however, this family history is dynamized for the first time; there is a constant regrouping of the characters that makes the social rules to which they are subject apparent. This becomes clear in the example of the mother’s sister, who never succeeded in creating a “place” for herself (IS 17), and in the reporting self, who as a “Bankert” is insulted by Gregor as an “Familienfeind” and a “Volksfeind” (IS 80) and whom the mother had already called fatherless” in the “Spiel”, which is nothing other than a socialisation game (IS 12). In any case, it has always had an outsider role in the family and its mother was ostracized because she had a relationship with a German (IS 61 f.). No one can escape this social register: “Du hast im übrigen keine Wahl, es ist dein einziges Spiel, seit jeher, dein einziger Bauplan. Bleib bei uns, Sohn”, the mother says (IS 43). This reconstruction of a family history is linked to language in two ways. On the one hand, it refers to a “familiäre Schrifttradition” (Höller 2007, 13), and on the other hand, it traces the language politics in the territory of Austrian Carinthia, which directly mirrors the course of political history. This writing tradition is conveyed to Handke through the letters of his uncle Gregor, which he already reads in his preparation for Die Hornissen and which are incorporated both in Die Wiederholung (W 154, 181) and in Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit (ZU 36 ff.) (Haslinger 1992). In Immer noch Sturm, entire dialogues and passages of letters are now injected into the text (IS 50 ff.). This reference to traditional texts also includes the repeatedly mentioned fruit-growing book, the transcript of uncle Gregor Siutz from the fruit-growing school in Maribor, entitled Sadjarstvo! Obstbau! (W 161, 165; ZU 36 ff.). This text is now stylized as “[das] heilige Buch der Familie” (IS 23), to which reference is made several times (IS 24 f., 51). This preludes the later role of spoken language, for the common reading in this scripture becomes a communal translation game of the family. This theme of translation as a particular form of writing runs through all of Handke’s texts. The theme of language is finally dramatized in an exchange between the characters, which refers to the language policy in Carinthia. It becomes clear that language is at the center of the family story because the mother’s brothers, who each chose a different language, had to lead their lives in different ways. “Wie man doch herumverschlagen wird”, the family comments (IS 99). Moreover, the German and Slovene languages are socially and politically connoted. “An unserer Sprache sind wir alle Versammelten hier zu erkennen, erkennen wir uns wenigstens untereinander […]. Keiner in der Gegend hat so gesprochen wie wir. Keiner im ganzen Land spricht so wie wir, wird so gesprochen haben wie wir” (IS 14). The grandfather describes the story of his slow linguistic socialization. He stresses that German has not merely opened the house and yard gates to the young men (IS 19), but for him, however, all Slovenes who speak German have already lost their homeland (IS 23). He will later elaborate on this in a long rant about the Germans and their language (IS 67).

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The brothers’ lives are different and fatefully linked to their choice of language. Valentin, for whom the German language also includes a rejection of Slavic (IS 82), falls like Benjamin in the war of the German Wehrmacht. Gregor, on the other hand, also makes a language change with his switch to the Slovene resistance. He insists that with the Slovenian language, the space of his origin becomes not only familiar to him but also a space of hope. The sister, too, discovers a new experience of commonality with Slovenian and her connection to the resistance; the dual of Slovenian language becomes a metaphor for this (IS 92). Gregor, renamed Jonatan, connects this with the ideology of the resistance: Slovene does not know the word “I”, he emphasizes (IS 106). This was prefigured in 1936, in the year of “Sonne und Schnee” (IS 30), where renaming took place in the homeland for the first time, without being forced. It is the year in which Gregor, wanting to strengthen the family’s identity through Slovenian, returns to Carinthia from Maribor, Slovenia (Leskovec 2013, 36). In his case, the turn to the Slovenian hopeful space is accompanied by a fundamental rejection of the West. He introduces Slavic customs into the house and is therefore initially apostrophized by his sister as “Der mit seinem ewigen Jugoslawien” (IS 40). The familial dissent reflects the dispute over language, which after 1920 had also divided the Slovenes themselves into “Windisch” speakers and Pro-Yugoslavs. The political contextualization of this linguistic socialization, which affects all family members, opens up a general and a work-historical perspective at the same time. Obviously, Handke once again provides a covert and partly inverted commentary on his Serbian texts using the example of the history of the Slovene resistance in Carinthia. When he elaborated in an interview that his play is “ein Sturm gegen die Geschichte, gegen Geschichte als Fortschrittskategorie” (Greiner 2010), he emphasizes the dialectical basic figure of history that affects both the Serbs and the Slovenes on Carinthian soil. Both are pushed into a role they did not want by Western states acting in the name of reason and humanity. At the same time, the liberated are only subjugated again in a different way. “Die heutigen Teufel dagegen spielen Engel, und teufeln und teufeln, und teufeln am Morgen, teufeln am Abend, teufeln in der Nacht… Und das ist die ganze Geschichte…” (IS 150). Thus, in the end, the Serbs find themselves part of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while the Slovenes, who had staked everything on their independence, are the bearers of a “tragical resistance” and assigned to the state of Austria after 1945. Their actions Handke finds recorded in Karel Prušnik-Gašper’s memoir Gemsen auf der Lawine (MN 88). However, Austria claimed their resistance for itself (IS 149) and at the same time classified the Slovenes as a minority. The dream of liberation in a free Europe (IS 96, 125) collapses through military and linguistic subjugation. Already the English liberators ask the Slovenes to speak German and not Slovene (IS 141). Not coincidentally, these occupying forces, called “Raumverdränger” (IS 142), resemble the “Raumzerstörer” who threaten the people of the enclave in Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit (ZU 65, 68 f.). Under these conditions, the linguistic enclave becomes the signature of a history that is both self-determined and non-violent. The text succinctly notes: “Jenseits der Sprache bricht die Gewalt los” (IS 140). But it is not only the violence of war but also colonization by others. The old priests go to

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the new Yugoslavia and the Slovenes are joined by new priests from the western parts of Austria (IS 144). In this play, the attempt not only to retrace historical reality but also to rewrite it connects the I, who appears as the protagonist, with his inventor. Again, the fixation on the history of the family becomes a central theme, which the author highlights in an interview. “Das Leben der Toten hat mich immer beschäftigt, schon Die Hornissen, mein allererster Roman, beruhen auf einer Geschichte, die mir meine Mutter erzählt hat und in die ich mich hineingeträumt habe” (Greiner 2010). This provides another keyword, which the text names and which also applies to the author himself: writing emerges directly from a capacity for dreaming, which at the same time models the “Geschichte der Ich-Werdung” (Höller 2007, 67 ff.). Handke himself underlines this significance of the dream for himself; it is moreover confirmed in his dream notes Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen (Greiner 2006). As in the case of Die Hornissen, this can also be demonstrated more precisely in the text Immer noch Sturm. Its sentence “Ich habe sie vorzeiten, in einer anderen Zeit, gesehen, und sehe sie jetzt wieder, samt der Sitzbank, auf der ich einst mit meiner Mutter gesessen bin […]” (IS 7) actually extends beyond the play; it seems like an abbreviation of Handke’s remark that he has “herumgeträumt an diesem” for five years (Patterer/Winkler 2012). Yet this dreaming also starts from texts. Again, it is the field letters of Uncle Gregor that the author reads early on (Haslinger 1992, 67 ff.). In a letter of January 16, 1963, he reports to his mother a dream in which he himself was his uncle Gregor and notes, “alles, was ihm widerfuhr, das erlebte ich an mir, ganz unbeschreiblich war das” (Haslinger 1992, 69). This seems to be connected to a late dream recording that is entrusted to the diary in 2008. Not only does it sketch a scene, but in it, not unlike in the play, the author himself makes an appearance. “Prozession der toten Vorfahren, auch Nachbarn, aus dem Dorf, zwischen Erhabenheit und Bedrohlichkeit, und ich uralt wie sie alle” (Herwig 2011, 315). From this perspective, the play becomes a dramatic enactment of the author’s own dream world, which allows the I of the play to become the playwright, a dramatic configuration that Handke also pursues in Das Spiel vom Fragen (IS 161; DS 34, 39). But it is precisely the perspective sketched out there that does not open up here. The guiding phrase pronounced at the end “[…] endlich aus der Albtraum Geschichte, und nichts als die ewige Kinderzeit” (IS 152), which seems to promise entry into another state, remains a mere wish that cannot be fulfilled in the course of the story. This too is prefigured in a scene that has dreamlike features. The brother wants to help the I into an ancestral skirt, but it tears as he puts it on (IS 160 f.). At the same time, the I hears his ancestors speaking in the words and Slovene-German mixed language of the “Windisch”. He spreads his arms to gather them behind him and lead them, but a dramatic turn occurs as Gregor and the mother begin to speak, counteracting his fantasy. As in other plays by Handke, the climax of the play involves an increasingly rapid change of perspective that dramatizes the dialogue between the actors. At the same time, the author’s self-criticism gains contour; here, too, it is voiced by other characters.

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Gregor recalls historical experience and invokes a continuing storm as the secret law of history. He reproaches the I for having “to fairy tales” and nevertheless trying to play “Spielleiter” (IS 161). He had already attested to his naiveté: “Nur ein Kind der Liebe malt solche Einfaltspinselbilder. Zimmert aus seinem Daher- und Dahingeträumten Weltenräume. Träumt, und bestimmt, daß wir Toten nicht tot sind. Tot sind wir, Nachfahr, tot. Nacht um Nacht und ohne Jüngsten Tag tot” (IS 155). When Gregor points to the ineffectiveness of the very texts that the I reads and identifies himself with themas documents of resistance (IS 156), the dreamlike scene extends the author’s implicit self-criticism in the same way that it informs his later narrative texts. The phrase is familiar: “Du und deine andere Zeit. Es ist aus mit der – wann wirst du das wahrhaben wollen?” (IS 153). Gregor’s remarks are thus aimed at the political context of the poetic evocation of ancestors, whereas the mother makes clear the psychogenetic model from which the narrative emerges. It is not in the field of politics, but in the narrative that the child’s fantasies can once again be invoked. The mother deciphers the self-doubling that writing attempts to enact in order to realize the dream of the other time and – at the same time – to overwrite the trauma of the familial outsider role, as the desire to be confronted with the former “I”. But this wish does not come true; an annulment of time is not possible. Thus, the maternal understanding ends up in a double-bind that recognizes the son’s regressive desire while at the same time keeping him at a distance as an adult: “Du kannst nicht alles bestimmen, Herr Sohn” (IS 162) she counters declaration “Ich binʼs, der bestimmt” (IS 162), which makes the same claim to absoluteness that the “Raumzerstörer” formulate. At this point, the psychological constellation is simultaneously visualized through a fairy tale image. The doppelganger of the ego appears, both whirl around each other in a fight. Comparable to a scene in Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit, where Pablo says he has never been “ein Ganzer” (ZU 104), now the question is: “wer ist stärker, ich oder ich?” (IS 163). In the face of this romantic diffusion of the ego, a self-empowerment fantasized in the play is formed. It becomes possible because the speaker of the play finally turns from actor into narrator of his story. The play, which is divided into five parts like a drama, becomes a game of storytelling that explicitely declares the genre boundary obsolete. In it, the fairy tale of reclaiming the past becomes true. In the end all those appear “die vorher zeitweise im Hintergrund vorbeigezogen waren” (IS 166).

12.7 Socialization Games: Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez. Ein Sommerdialog (2012) and Die Unschuldigen, ich und die Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße. Ein Schauspiel in vier Jahreszeiten (2015) The double game with the identity of an I and at the same time with forms of theatre that depend on contoured instances continues in the two plays Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez) and Die Unschuldigen, ich und die

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Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße. The first text already thwarts the unambiguity of formal determination with its classification as a Sommerdialog; the second, under the title Ein Schauspiel in vier Jahreszeiten, takes a similarly playful approach to formal specifications. It takes up the designation as a play in a literal form. As in Spuren der Verirrten, the setting becomes a co-actor, especially as it makes visible a real place and phantasmatic projections of the self at the same time (SV 14). In both cases, we are dealing experimentally with given forms, which at the same time assembles splinters of autobiographical references as if in a bricolage (Derrida 1967, 418). In Die Schönen Tagen von Aranjuez, the departure from expected form is explicitly stated: “He, eine Aktion! War’s denn nicht gedacht: Keine Handlung – nichts als Dialog?” The man’s reply, “Eine kleine Aktion darf sein” (AR 63 f.) seems to contradict this at first. But it does not really happen in this play either. Reassured, the man declares, “Zum Glück ist das hier zwischen uns beiden kein Drama. Nichts als ein Sommerdialog” (AR 43). As the play progresses, however, it becomes clear that both phrases miss the point. For this dialogue takes place between two characters who use different registers of language; moreover, it is asymmetrical. The questioning man initializes the woman’s narration, who is forbidden to give short yes-or-no answers to the man’s directed and guiding questions. The man presents himself in a distanced manner, seemingly unimpressed by the woman’s confessions, some of which are intimate. She, on the other hand, speaks undisguisedly of her desire, which seems to be pure aimless lust that requires no concrete object. It corresponds to Lacan’s guiding phrase of the “Begehren des Begehrens des anderen”, which is reenacted in Handke’s work from Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire to Die Obstdiebin (LSV 25; GF 180; OD 435). The first “Liebesakt” reported by the woman, which she describes as a “Einswerden zweier Körper, und was für eines!” (AR 8), also has nothing to do with a particular man, but is a bodily perception that is not bound to any counterpart, not even to a sexual act. It occurs in the rocking, in the climax of the movement, which slows down before changing direction. It is at the same time the image of an orgiastic experience (AR 11–13). The woman cannot even tell the man with whom she is in dialogue whether this first experience she is recounting was indeed the moment she discovered her sexuality. But the feeling continues, irreversible as defloration, except that, the man’s blunt question makes clear, no blood has been shed (AR 12). But like the first sexual act, this experience nevertheless prefigures later sexual experiences, in which the man as partner, however, also played no role. On the one hand, he was perceived only as a “Silhouette” (AR 19); on the other hand, the wordless union of man and woman that is subsequently described is nothing but the allowing of pure desire not directed towards an object (AR 21). It is no coincidence that allusions to salt and a mine connect this sexual fantasy with the love relationship between man and woman described in Kali (Potash), which proceeds solely from the phantasm of the woman (AR 32). This shows that the basic figure of this dialogue is not aimed at understanding, but at marking a distance that seems to result as if inevitably from a gender

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difference. This is precisely the dramatic core of this dialogue, which has all the more lasting effect because it is not openly expressed. Therefore, the clichés of sexual determination not only persist in the dialogue, but are reinforced by a reciprocal attribution, though not consistently in conventionalized form. The woman insists that true face of woman, which seems to lie in the constancy of desire, condemns her “to being alone” (AR 53). Parallel to this, she attempts to explain the reactions of the male body from its conditioning through education (AR 37 f.). But at the same time, the woman transcends this register. Her love with one man is never revenge against another; rather, it is similarly aimless as her desire. The universal revenge against the opposite sex that other women follow is far from her mind (AR 36), even if she persisted for a time in the hostile attitude of the feminist (AR 52). Regardless of this, her “Männerfolge” and her “Fick- und Vögeljahre” (AR 33), about which the man unabashedly asks, consist of episodes that all unfold play forms of intimacy that revolve around the theme of love as passion (AR 34, 36,38, 40; Luhmann 1999). A correspondence between man and woman occurs in a completely different area, namely when both turn to images in different ways. The name Aranjuez, which centers this dialogue, refers to a journey of the man in the course of which he seeks out the “Casa del Labrador” in the garden of the castle of Aranjuez, which turns out to be a small castle inside which there are paintings of idyllic social scenes from country life (AR 31). The man had expected to find a wooden building or a hut, and with it “[das] Licht eines Liebesakts” (AR 32), a special visual and at the same time physical experience. The woman has a comparable scene of enlightenment after an act of love; she perceives nature in a new way, intensely and sensually, and it is precisely this that intensifies the sexual experience, which now moves beyond all so-called erogenous zones. She no longer knows the difference between I and he, but only “das Körperuniversum, Punkt und Universum zusammengefallen: Ein Körperpaar, liegend in der Unendlichkeitsschleife” (AR 41). This constellation inverts a central configuration of love in the early Goethean period, the juxtaposition of man and woman with the topoi of wanderer and idyll that distinguish man’s sphere of action from woman’s sphere of culture. Here, the woman, who feels “Ergriffenheit von diesen zerbrechlichen Männern”, proves to be the dominant partner, living entirely from the certainty of the body (AR 47), while the men, who constantly speak of love (AR 45), primarily follow a social and cultural construct of love and at the same time encode it through images they carry within themselves or seek out in the cultural space. This play thus follows Handke’s central theme of Der Bildverlust. The man senses the loss of the images that he cannot dispose of in bodily immediacy and that he must replace with constructed images; the woman, on the other hand, sees that the universal competition for images also calls into question the woman’s image of herself at every point; around her she sees only “Masken statt Gesichter” (AR 53). But it seems that here the asymmetrical dialogue actually gives rise to an agreement, albeit a temporary one. While the woman talks about love, the man lapses into a long description of nature, showing its “rhythmische Relief” (AR 57) and by this means mobilizing other fantasies of the woman, which, however, are now connected

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not with nature but with cultural testimonies to which Handke repeatedly refers. It is film, not coincidentally probably including John Ford’s A Streetcar named Desire, and it is literary figures, certainly not by chance “Garvein oder Erec oder Parzival” (AR 58). At the same time, a very different fantasy sets in with the woman. It is the desire to be the wife of a man and united with him. The male fantasy of Aranjuez and the female fantasy of desire thus temporarily coincide (AR 59). The internal dramatization of the play, which, as in Handke’s other plays, accelerates towards the end and once again mobilizes opposites, now takes place in a double way. On the one hand, the man reports how plants from the castle garden gradually spread beyond their terrain into the meseta; at the same time, he sees that a struggle is also taking place among the animals, in which the hornets that have migrated from Asia dominate at the end as the killers of the bees. “So ein Rhythmus war nicht gedacht”, he states of this development (AR 65). Moreover, the dialogue between man and woman is now increasingly linked with sounds that build up like the mood music of a Hitchcock film and become more and more threatening. At first, they are sounds of nature and then of civilization, which gradually turn into signs of alarm and terror. It is no coincidence that the man recalls a “witches’ circle walk” of his youth, in the course of which he was unexpectedly confronted with a dangerous threat (AR 67). Obviously, the presence of dialogue cannot remain under the pressure of historical time. Again, and in a very different way, the encounter between man and woman is marked by contradiction and is therefore fundamentally threatened. The woman is afraid of turning into an “Einbaum des Todes” and dupes the man’s illusions, who is reminded of his inventor when the woman addresses him as “Du mit deinen ewigen Apfelzaubermärchen” (AR 69). Again, an encounter ends with an image that seems to come from a dream, the woman’s body transformed, glowing with a magical light from within. As a final sign, it also constitutes the end the of Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez). For “the first time the play to which the title of Handke’s text refers to is mentioned by the man with a literal quotation: Schiller’s Don Carlos. At the same time, another central guiding phrase of Schiller’s protagonist enters Handke’s text as a quotation: “O wer weiß, was in der Zeiten Hintergrunde schlummert?” (AR 69 f.; Schiller NA-7.1, 364). This convergence of two plays is revealing in two ways. First, because the woman addresses the man as Fernando, it is Countess Eboli’s husband’s name, who in Schiller’s play, after realizing that Don Carlos loves only the Queen, takes revenge on him. This suggests a dramatic configuration in which the utopia of unfulfillable love is challenged by the power of circumstances. But it is also noticeable that Handke’s play already announces through its title that it represents an alternative concept. This is nothing other than a reconstruction of the moment in Schiller’s drama that is still untouched by later developments. From the beginning, the aim was obviously to suspend this moment, at least for the duration of the play. Ein Sommerlicher Dialog means nothing other than an attempt to stretch time and let the utopia of a duration beyond history appear. But this poetically staged peripetism comes to an end at the moment when the conversation, whose presence faded out history, is over (AR 69 f.).

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The plot configuration of the play Die Unschuldigen, ich und die Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße. Ein Schauspiel in vier Jahreszeiten (The Innocent, Me and the Unknown by the Side of the Road) is based on comparable strategies; it openly plays with theatrical theoretical considerations by having the I as protagonist appear in two guises, as “Ich, Erzähler” and as “Ich, der Dramatische”, whereby the two are “nicht immer unterschieden” but “zeitweise beide in einem”. To make matters worse, there is another double of the I among the group of so-called “Unschuldigen”, whose spokesman appears as “Häuptling/Capo”, whose wife also shows up in multiple guises. Only “die Unbekannte von der Landstraße” is a single figure (DU 6). This splitting of the characters opens up a relationship to the author Handke himself in two ways. On the one hand, the doubling of the I reflects aspects of his authorship, which oscillates between narrative and dramatic design, with narrative presenting itself as the preferred form of expression. On the other, this split in turn taps into a psychic drama of the interior. The splitting of characters reconstructs in dramatizing form aspects of Handke’s writing that combine psychogenetic and cultural, unconscious and textual set pieces. In this way, the preconditions of writing and of the constitution of the ego, both of which are subject to permanent transformation, are brought onto the stage. In the interspersed scene descriptions, which not only sketch out the setting but also the action, “ICH, oder der, in den ich mich verwandelt habe” speaks and states an act of violence against a woman “wie aus einem Tagtraum erwachend”. It is Handke’s recurring configuration of a relationship between man and woman determined by aggression. Of all things, this act of violence is now the starting point for a dramatic conversation (DU 57 f.). The street on which the I sits becomes at the same time a projection surface on which one’s own experiences are reflected, which refer to life-historical interfaces and other places as well as to the special role of the I as a mask of the author, who here brings his psychological and work-historical description of the way onto the stage. It is no coincidence that the street marks an area that the protagonist does not want others to have access: “Du führst dich auf, als wär sie dein, oder gar, als wär sie ein Stück von dir, oder gar, als wärst du ihr Wächter”, comments the spokesman of the Innocent (DU 48). Under these conditions, the street becomes the symbolic site of a language game. The formulaic turn of the word leader, which combines an allusion to Zuckmayer’s autobiography with one to Kafka’s Vor dem Gesetz, shows that this is also about an opposition of textual and everyday reality. It is in line with other guiding phrases familiar from literature, the arsenal of proverbs, or the pop song, which are either quoted or playfully transformed: “Himmel und Erde werden vergehen” (DU 44), “Ecce poeta” (DU 35) “Freude, holder Niemandsfunken” (DU 14). “Meinen täglichen Gruß gib mir heute” (DU 13), “Hier bin ich Menschenkind, hier kann ich’s sein” (DU 10), finally “Sag mir wo die Sphären sind, wo sind sie geblieben?”, an allusion to the anti-war song composed by Pete Seeger and interpreted by both Marlene Dietrich and Joan Baez (DU 45). Even aggression against others presents itself in a language game, as the Innocent are referred to as “Pack! Doppelpack! Tetrapack!” (DU 49). They, who focus on the merely existing, moreover become the object of a satire directed, for example, at tourism and the posing of

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self-dramatization in the media world, in which cliché images and consumer-driven imaginations destroy reality more than they allow it to be perceived (DU 73 f.). The object of this critique becomes the ideology of the street, which here is nothing other than the dogma of so-called do-goodism. This is described as a political phenomenon of decay, whose watchwords are dismantled by the Capo, as it were the repressive double of the spokesman, in order to allow only the concept of good neighbourliness to apply in the end (DU 79). The plot consists first of all in the confrontation between the I and the Innocent, behind whom one can recognize the author and the society of his time that he criticizes. In this antithesis, which is only casually segmented by four seasonal datings, different patterns of socialization can be discerned. As in Spuren der Verirrten, the street literally opens up a scene of action that constitutes the theatrical stage. At the same time, it is the site of a fantastically deformed self-reflection. The figures that move about on it spring from the author’s imagination and transport splinters of his work, his aversions and obsessions. These are combined with one another in a dream-logical shift and condensation: “Und da kommt sie, da erscheint sie, da fliegt sie mich an, da erstreckt sie sich, die Landstraße, vorderhand leer. Und indem ich mir das laut vorerzähle, ist die Straße auch schon bevölkert mit mir, der ICH am Rand der Straße daherschlendere, mit ausgreifenden, epischen Schritten, vorderhand allein” (DU 7). In this way, the country road also represents a basic figure of literature itself; a poetic game with other texts and images of everyday life is performed on it. The figures are, psychologically speaking, split-offs of a single ego; at the same time, their representation follows the rules of a creative combinatorics, as it constitutes the core of literary production. This neither adheres to a fixed perspective, nor does it design a stable person. In this arrangement, the I becomes a shifter; instead of talking to others, it can simply decide to enter into a “dramatische[s] Selbstgespräch” (DU 58). Related to this is the playful reference to the author’s own writing and the guiding words and images that run through his texts. The country road becomes a stage on which texts and references to works are made audible, not without ironic refraction. Thus, the leader is amused by the prop of the Jew’s harp (DU 39), another asks, “Noch so eine Mutter-Vater-Geschichte?” (DU 37). In addition, the narrating I fantasizes a son (DU 24), the story of Juan de la Cruz is addressed (DU 41–43), and the image of raindrops in the dust, which is always repeated in Handke’s narrative texts, is not to be lacking (DU 38). Alongside these references to the history of the work, there are references to everyday life in the form of “Verzettelungen”. They form a sharp contrast to the address to the “Gottesmutter von der Landstraßeneiche” (DU 106 f.) and the allusion to a prodigal son, followed by a series of typical Handke phrases, which are nevertheless alienated into colloquialisms: “der Himmel und ich, wir zwei schwofen!” (DU 109). In this way, endless meta-loops result: text that comments on text, text that first gives rise to the stage and the I’s, which in turn speak the text, which again gives rise

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to something else. ‘Speaking as a performative act’ is at the heart of the drama, which thus follows the earlier language games (Fischer 2019). Parallel to these references, which make clear that on the street the capacity of authorship is presented in a play of words and images, a counter-world is revealed whose attributes correspond to the world of modern living despised by Handke as well as his protagonists. In a powerful philippic, the people on the street who gather behind the “Wortführer” are referred to as “die ewig Heutigen” (DU 50; Wiele 2015). The further splitting of the I into a double belongs in this context. Memories that the author made during his travels are now attributed to this double; they are all topographical and life-historical data, obviously nothing more than outsourced fragments of memory (DU 63 f.). The comments of the one and the other can also be seen as such when they ruminate on the “Buchstabenkrieg”, conveying judgements and prejudices of the author. The author’s reference persons and reference texts are also named in an ironizing language game: “Ein Haiku? Basho? Issa? Inoue? Ozu?” (DU 70). In accordance with the fundamental recoding of technical stage terms, the encounter of these characters is called an “Freilichtspiel”; language, too, is to be made visible on the stage of the theater (DU 71). By contrast, the Innocent appear as “[die] einzige und letzte Weltmacht” that has completely submitted to the dictates of the existing, “ihr macht mit dem System gemeinsame Sache, und gemeinsame Sachen” (DU 85), the Capo expresses when he traces the opinion of the absent I and at the same time of the author. As a parallel, the woman portrays the latter as cranky and compares him to the idiot on the country road (DU 90). The other people on the country road also verbally attack the I; for them, it is the evil neighbor who exhibits many of the author’s characteristics, or rather peculiarities. As the plot progresses, he is not only called a “Volksfeind” but also one who appears all alone “als Ingroup” (DU 97). The stranger from the country road is presented as more threatening in this scenario. As a representative of the counter-world, she reports on images of war and puts the I into a soliloquy in which the latter in turn refuses the dramatic and succinctly expresses: “Im Epischen sehe ich das ganz andere Gesetz”. It is a clear work-historical allusion to the author when the “epische Schritt” is associated with Parzival and the latter’s sister is portrayed as one “im Gewand einer Obstdiebin”. Finally, it is double irony when the name Pacific Palisades in this context recalls the narrator whom Handke does not necessarily appreciate: Thomas Mann (DU 102 f.). Strikingly enough, however, these double figures do not represent stable positions either. This becomes clear in the acceleration of the interchanges in the climax of the play, which dramatizes the dialogue and is typical of Handke. The Chief of the Innocents, who is in some respects a critic of the I, to whom he attributes some of Handke’s fixations, at the same time dismantles the latter’s everyday behaviour (DU 114) and figurative guiding formulas such as “die Maya, die Athabasken, die Windischen” (DU 129). But at the end he emphasizes that he and the I are linked by a common childhood whose linguistic world they memorize together (DU 116, 151, 154 ff.). The stranger from the country road, who hangs on the I’s lips for a long time, also follows the pattern of his descriptions of nature when she herself begins

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to speak. In doing so, she simultaneously transforms all images of nature into images of time by linking them with dates close to nature. Both are in sharp contrast to the woman’s criticism, who describes the I as a stranger “der nicht unsere Sprache spricht” (DU 144). The I also knows itself bound to the chief by a shared historical pessimism. It is no coincidence that the latter alludes to Shakespeare’s The Tempest and thus establishes a cross-connection with the autobiographical text Immer noch Sturm (DU 125). His statement “Es gibt kein Zurück mehr” (DU 139) corresponds to the fact that over time “alles […] von Tag zu Tag rätselhafter [wird]” (DU 129). In the case of the latter, however, the strangeness goes back to his resolute rejection of the world of the Innocent, which also gathers set pieces of Handke’s critique of civilization. The I berates the Innocent as automatons, criticizing their “pandemic” (DU 127) and the fact that they claim the last systemless white spots (DU 125). Inverting the title of one of Goya’s famous engraving from Caprichos, it is said that innocent sleep gives birth to monsters (DU 126; Goya 1799). Through his idiosyncratic insistence on a fundamental rejection of the other, the I as road-walker is comparable to the forest-walker of other plays by Handke (MN 109). His resistance to the modern world and its watchwords can therefore be read not only psychologically, but also in terms of ideology. Guiding ideas here are the dialectic of freedom and the defense against the misuse of big words. Thus, the reference to the critique of the West in the Serbian texts and the revocation of modernity in Der Große Fall becomes unmistakable. The I speaks of “Freiheit als Diktat und Diktatur”; his reproach is: “Vor lauter Freiheiten kein Wind, kein Sturm, kein Ansturm einer Freiheit. Was habt ihr nur aus der Freiheit gemacht!?” (DU 134). The decisive demarcation of the chief of the Innocent from the I consists in the fact that he rejects its turning back to the dead, the ancestors in the past, just as he rejects the dream. He demands an end to dreams and the beginning of a “lasting peace”; for him, only the “Traumfreien” are also the “Universalfreien” (DU 133). In contrast, the I initially believes that he can realize his counterproposal to what exists by moving into the line of his ancestors: “Knecht sein, wie meine Vorfahren. Endlos hier eingespannt sein, ins Umreißen, Umrunden, Ornamentieren” (DU 134), he formulates, evoking the imagery of Immer noch Sturm. But such reversals are just as unsuccessful as the immersion in a fantastically alienated scene on the country road, which seems to quote the setting of Spuren der Verirrten. The country road image begins to fade, it “vergilbt, bleicht aus, wird durchsichtig, verduftet, verkrümelt sich, sang- und klanglos”, disappearing as if in a cinematic fade-out, only to reappear as if in a fade-up after a discourse between the epic and dramatic I on the appropriate rendering of reality (DU 166). Now, however, the figures on the street have changed, they are “ledig aller Kostüme und Zutaten, als bloße sich still an Ort und Stelle bewegende Silhouetten, jede für sich, im Abstand zur anderen” (DU 173). The alternating speech between the narrative and the dramatic I ended in a theoretical and practical aporia. Now, after the reappearance of the country road image, “ICH-DER-DRAMATISCHE” and “ICH-ERZÄHLER” speak in unison for the first time, proclaiming a resolution of all oppositions in the waking dream, in which the dreamer has not only the first but also the last word (DU 177). Thus, in the end,

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the life-giving dream of the power of authorship, with its tensions and contradictions, is brought to the stage. The theatre is the place that transforms this dream into images and language at the same time – at the price of a progressive expulsion of reality from the theatre. The experiment with language has become totalitarian to the extent that the author himself has become the ultimate reality. Handke’s plays have continuously worked towards this point.

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With the translation of Walker Percy’s novel The Moviegoer in 1980, the visual medium of film becomes thematic, among other orientations that connect both authors. Even earlier, in a study of the painter Pongratz, Handke had emphasized that the “templates”/“Schemata” for writing and painting are comparable (EF 14; Mixner 1977, 172). The influence of the media of film and image subsequently shapes his writing in different ways. First, he establishes an adaptation of cinematic strategies since Die linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman) and an engagement with painting since Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire). Secondly, he produces a text-determining and at the same time fundamental reflection on the relationship between the media of writing and image, as in Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos). This is differentiated in two ways: On the one hand, the intermedial relation of writing and image is complemented by the interaction of word and image; on the other hand in addition to the immediacy of the word, the visual perception itself becomes an issue. In this way, the concept of intermediality is redefined. Thirdly, the productive engagement with the medium of film gains a central role in Handke’s film adaptations of his own texts and in his collaboration with Wim Wenders. In turn, this determines the texts themselves, and Der Bildverlust in particular confirms this intermedial trace in the author’s work.

13.1 From Text to Film: Handke as Moviegoer, Author and Director Many of Handke’s texts are characterized by passages that recreate cinematic techniques of representation. In Die Linkshändige Frau, patterns and variations of cinematic sequences are implemented narratively (Durzak 1982, 139), and in Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick), the protagonist’s gradual loss of orientation is visualized with strategies of film: “reality appears to the hero like a view artificially produced in cut and counter-cut, in long © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_13

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shot and detail, in zoom and pan: a montage of images and sounds: an assembled second or third nature that can only provide images of images of reality” (Grossklaus 1979, 52). The orientation towards film simultaneously influences the character of the textual use of signs. Not unlike the only seemingly iconic film images, the visually unambiguous is semiotized in Die Linkshändige Frau as well as in Die Angst des Tormanns. As in film, the simulation of a second reality emerges from the interplay of different semiotic strategies. The film adaptations of both texts continue this line; from the semiotically already arranged signs and images, the trivial myths of the consciousness industry and the myths of everyday life, they allow a world to emerge beyond everyday perception (Grossklaus 1979, 100–122), which is nevertheless of high visual memorability (Schober 1977, 180). Alongside this, a second line, also determined by reflection on film, emerges; it too is prefigured in Percy’s novel about the moviegoer. In this novel, the protagonist’s visits to the movies not only follow an “idea of quest” (Percy 1980, 19) expressed in snapshots (Percy 1980, 24 f., 72 f., 76). Seeing films also becomes, as we read in Handke’s translation, a form of “Bezeugung” (Percy 1980, 67). It fulfills the existential gesture that Handke, following Heidegger, places at the centre of his text of Die Wiederholung (Repetition). Percy states: What is a repetition? A repetition is the re-creation of a past experience for the purpose of separating out the vanished segment of time in such a way that it, the vanished time, can be experienced as itself, without the usual distortion by events that makes time clump like peanuts in molasses. (Percy 1980, 83)

It is characteristic of Handke that he takes up this philosophical figure of thought and at the same time implements it narratively in a manner reminiscent of cinematic presentation strategies. This results in a staged play with time that creates an almost experimentally produced space-time constellation in the text. Directly related to this is the fact that in Handke’s texts, images and metaphors of light, luminescence and female eyes, and ultimately a sequence of glances, repeatedly take the place of a causal story (GB 178 f.; Höller 2013, 133). The protagonist has the ability to “sich verschauen” (LF 10). At the end of the text, her gaze through a window transforms rigid nature into moving nature; she herself appears included in this image of nature through a reflecting pane. Image and epitome, planar projection and perspective view not only intertwine as in a cinematic dissolve, they also stage the connection of perception and imagination made possible by them. Comparable cinematographic strategies are also described in other texts. “Kreisende Totalen von Landschaften, die einander überblenden, die Städte bei Nacht, die Berge bei Tag, die Ebenen am Abend, von Hügeln und Hubschraubern aus. Völlige Lautlosigkeit. Blick auf Hochhäuser, Flußtäler, Bergrücken. Es entsteht der Eindruck von Geschichte” (CLE 66), says Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse (Chronicle of Current Events). Handke’s late Versuche (Essays) and his collaboration with Wim Wenders go beyond these transpositions of motif. They develop an aesthetic program that

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initially seems to rely primarily on images. His Journale (Journals) are characterized by a turn towards contemplation and conceptless perception. The “Urerlebnisse” described in Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World) and Phantasien der Wiederholung (Fantasies of Repetition) encourage the author to rely on an “Heraus aus der Sprache” and to write in images. The fairy tale of Die Abwesenheit (Absence), Das Spiel vom Fragen (The Art of Asking), Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers (Afternoon of a Writer) and Versuche (Essays) continue this programme. Here, too, Handke approaches a construction of image sequences that could be described as cinematographic in a general sense. This intensive implementation of various medial strategies and motivic references to the medium of the image in Handke’s writing can also be proven philologically in a variety of ways. From Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell) to Die Obstdiebin (The Fruit Thief), his texts repeatedly make open reference to films, directors, or significant film scenes (KB 193–195; OD 188, 217, 414; v. Hofe/Pfaff 1980, 71). At the same time, one can see how central figures of thought in media theory are retold or functionalized in the narrative. A decisive condensation here is undoubtedly offered by the narrative of Der Bildverlust, in which the distinction between immediate perception, afterimage/“Nachbild” and dream image is differentiated, as is the categorical distinction between the individually shaped guiding images for the author and the collectively mediated images of the developed media society. In this context, it can be seen more clearly than in the earlier texts that Handke’s narrative traces positions that are characteristic both of the media reflection of modernity and of its prehistory in the nineteenth century. This results in a new evaluation for some of his texts. Of course, these reflections on the moving image also concern the function of painted images, which are also given a central role in Handke’s narrative. Of particular importance here are Cézanne’s Montagne Sainte-Victoire and Homme aux bras croisés (LSV 36) in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire and the reflection presented there on landscape painting from Ruisdael (LSV 18, 118 f.) to Courbet (LSV 31–33) to Edward Hopper (LSV 19 f.). Finally, Ruisdael’s Great Forest in Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil) (GB 214), Breughel’s The Gloomy Day in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay) (MJN 629), and Poussins Ruth et Booz in Die Obstdiebin (OD 466). The very insertion of these pictorial quotations into Handke’s texts translates the assumption, constitutive of media theory, of a tension between gaze and image into a narrative strategy, which is ultimately already prefigured in the painter Nicolas Poussin. The related central question of perception theory concerning the conditions of seeing, especially the interaction of objective and subjective factors, is of importance to Handke from the very beginning. When his texts repeatedly show that the eye is not a completely reliable organ and that vision by no means conveys only unambiguous perceptions, he is following the sensory physiology of the nineteenth century. This describes an autoreferentiality of visual perception, from which Ernst Mach and Robert Musil later famously draw epistemological and narrative consequences (Crary 1990; Mach 1905, 44). The German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, with the help of the ophthalmoscope he constructed, recognizes that

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planar images appear in each of the two human eyes, which are transformed into a three-dimensional image only in the cortex (Helmholtz 1882, vol. 3, 541,609). Moreover, he draws attention to the fact that the eye perceives the world anyway only as an “aggregate of coloured surfaces”, a fact that decisively influenced aesthetic reproductions in painting as well as in texts and that also shaped the holistically oriented natural science at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Helmholtz 1959, 93–135). Alexander von Humboldt, to cite one example, in his geographical work Kosmos aims to translate “the external phenomena into the internal imagination” through the interplay of observation of nature, reflection and imagination (Humboldt 1845/1847, vol. 1, 70). From here, two different discourses are founded, one media-theoretical and one aesthetic-philosophical, both following the medial innovation. Humboldt already emphasizes the importance of optical media, which aim at an ever more perfect simulation of three-dimensional spaces. He compares the intensity of painted images of nature with the technical simulations of the panorama and the diorama (Humboldt 1845/1847, vol. 2, 93). At the same time, the scientific study of perception in optics and physiology at the beginning of the nineteenth century unfolds striking parallels to the contemporary aesthetic discourse on the imagination. The two converge precisely in describing an autonomization of the observer (Crary 1990, 90). Subsequently, the assumption of a complementarity between the perceptual space explored by natural sciences and the space of the aesthetic imagination, which Maine de Biran attributes to a ‘sens intime’, becomes established (Maine de Biran 1949, 180). Nicolas Artaud and Joseph Joubert in France, Friedrich Schlegel in Germany no longer conceive of the imagination as a reflection, but as a substitution of the sensual perception of the world (Artaud 1869, 51; Schlegel KSA II, 371). Baudelaire, as is well known, later extends this line further. In Salon de 1859, he develops a semiotics of the aesthetic, to which the entire visible world becomes a “magasin d’images et de signes”, a mental perceptual space subject to its own laws (Baudelaire Pl-2, 627). Handke’s texts not only take up these links, they also trace them and for their part unfold the aesthetic imagination from the experimental handling of visual perceptions. In doing so, they draw on strategies of literary modernism and approach, for example, Proust’s narrated experiments with perception, which themselves follow the traditional concept of imagination of the nineteenth century (Warning 1991, 312 f., 317 f.). An example is given by the well-known scene of À la Recherche du temps perdu that triggers Marcel’s first attempt at writing, the carriage ride from Martinville to Vieuxvic: this opens up a sequence of two-dimensional and three-­ dimensional images in perspective-perceived space (Proust Pl I, 476 f.). An interplay of surface and tridimensional space, perceptual space and memory space also determines the ‘Madeleine’ episode; moreover, the narrator there describes the depth of true art as spatial, but the truth of the mind as planar (Hohl 1977, 55, 65; Proust Pl IV, 177–180). In Handke’s work, too, seeing from movement repeatedly leads to new perceptions; many narrated images correspond to the simulation technique of film, in which space and movement are systematically coupled. “Nur im Gehen öffnen sich

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die Räume und tanzen die Zwischenräume” (A 113) is said programmatically in Die Abwesenheit. Complementary to the visual perception thus determined in natural space, imagination also unfolds for Handke in psychic space, an example being given by the blind narrator of Die Hornissen (Hornets), who reconstructs what has been forgotten. Unlike a sighted person, he can perceive what he wants. Narrated, remembered and fantasized images overlap for him, cutting and fragmenting “die weiße und leere Ebene des Gehirns” and linking memory and the present. Wim Wenders film Bis ans Ende der Welt analogously depicts a technical reconstruction of the ‘first’ and the ‘second’ vision for the blind (HO 15; Wenders 1992, 32 f.). Both representations follow a comparable concept; they thus simultaneously capture the role of visual perception in modernity. First of all, they confirm that the only supposedly reliable visual experience can be replaced and changed by poetic or technical simulation. Even in nineteenth-century science, the realization that the body influences, alters, or even substitutes for visual perception had previously prevailed. Long before, this biomechanical process of seeing is explicitly recorded in Bis ans Ende der Welt in synchrony with the images perceived, first Die Angst des Tormanns, then Der kurze Brief (Short Letter, Long Farewell), combine bodily experience and perception. In the latter text, a cypress seems to take possession of the narrator’s body as he looks at it. But at the same time there is a counter-movement, which is also grounded in the psychology of seeing. Nature shows how confusions and sensory illusions give rise to metaphors (KB 79). Prerequisites for this, in text as in film, are an alternation of acceleration and deceleration and a focusing of the gaze that allows even the smallest things to become significant. Imaginary and imagination thus coincide, as emphasized by film theory from Kracauer to Balázs to Kittler. In addition, as in the cinematographic language, visual and acoustic elements are combined in the closest possible way. The glare of a steel tabletop or a pattering rain in Die Angst des Tormanns (TO 17, 112), the sound of the storm and a typewriter in Falsche Bewegung (Wrong Move) (FB 81), the barking of a dog in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire are examples here (LSV 56). Obsessive reactions to sounds also register Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht and Die Morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night), where a “Symposium über Lärm und Geräusche” is recounted, “Weltgeräusche” even cause “eine Art Raumverlust” (MN 172). Basically, Handke and then together with him Wim Wenders follow a modernity-­ critical consideration when they no longer take the eye seriously as the guiding symbol of the Enlightenment, but in turn, completely in the sense of the Dialektik der Aufklärung, repeatedly point to the unenlightened self-overestimation of seeing in modernity. In Wender’s Bis ans Ende der Welt, the visualization of dreams blinds sighted people, the technical reproduction of inner images leads to profound dissociations. In Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, filming appears as an act of violence against a community that resists the collectively disseminated images; in Der Himmel über Berlin, the angels criticize that people’s eyes are only “gewohnt zu nehmen”. Nevertheless, a productive tension also emerges from this critique, which follows a consideration constitutive of aesthetic modernism. When looking at

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Constantin Guys’ pictures, Baudelaire experiences “un duel entre la volonté de tout voir, de ne rien oublier, et la faculté de la mémoire qui a pris l’habitude d’absorber vivement la couleur générale et la silhouette, l’arabesque du contour” (Baudelaire Pl-2, 698). Accordingly, for the protagonist of Der kurze Brief, memory, experience, and aesthetic contemplation are already condensed into a “systematisches Erleben” (KB 124); he, too, follows Baudelaire’s prefigured renunciation of the mimetic and the autonomization of visual signs (Herding 1986, 252). In Handke’s work, this is the basis for a search for the lost origin that is both motivated and guided by images, emblems and visual impressions. In Die Hornissen it follows a psychological trail, in the case of Die Reise nach La Defense critical of modernity, in Eine winterliche Reise (A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia) a trail critical of media and ideology. In the late novels and Journale, it becomes even clearer than in the texts up to the 1980s that this search can be justified ontologically; moreover, Handke points out that he is concerned with a reconstruction in “the sense of a new modernity” (Wagner 2010, 151). The consideration that media experiences generate first and foremost cognitive control of time and space and are essential to human self-awareness, is a central component of material media theory. In this theory’s view, the media produce the modern conception of the human being in the first place by simulating and re-­ enacting psychological and physiological processes. Film, in particular, brings unconscious processes into the picture in the spatio-temporal coupling of on-screen and off-screen; the cinematic technique of flashback functions like memory; editing brings about the separation of the real and the imaginary and corresponds to association, whereas the close-up corresponds to perceptual selection. Handke’s writing can undoubtedly be linked to these media-theoretical considerations. Her narrative images and visual perceptions link physiology, psychology and imagination, body images and sensual experiences. The new “Art des Schauens” in Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across), the “Einheit von Gewahrwerden und Vorstellungskraft” expressed by the Greek word leukein, is thus not merely a historical retrospective projection. It also relates to the changing interaction of viewer and object in different space-time coordinates, which is constitutive for the modern conception of visual perception and the characteristic interplay of ‘visual world’ and ‘visual field’ that media theorists speak of. Handke’s film versions of Die Angst des Tormanns and Die Linkshändige Frau follow such fundamental considerations and translate them into images. At the same time, they condense a representational intention that has determined Handke’s texts at least since Die Angst des Tormanns. Out of the semiotically pre-arranged signs and images they narrate, which belong to the “trivial myths of the consciousness industry” as well as to the “myths of everyday life”, they allow new contexts of meaning to emerge: “signifiers of the first system [...] become signifiers in the second or third: in the mythical system” (Grossklaus 1979, 58). It is precisely in this way that text and film can release things and objects of the world from their alienated status as signs of trivial-mythical contexts and, after passing through a presemiotic state, create a counter-myth: the “desemiotized world” (Grossklaus 1979,

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60). Handke’s remark on the occasion of the filming of Die Linkshändige Frau “Es soll mythisch sein, mythisch!” points in this direction (Schober 1977, 180).

13.2 Experiments of Perception: Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse (1971) and Falsche Bewegung (1975) Without a doubt, Handke’s films and film adaptations also reinforce another line from the beginning, one that has begun to assert itself in his texts at the latest since Der kurze Brief: the approach to an unmediated experience is again attempted through the telling of a story (Nägele/Voris 1978, 102). The tendency of remythification in narrative and the narrative semiotics of film prove to be structurally symmetrical. Nevertheless, this symmetry does produce different effects. The fact that the text of Falsche Bewegung has been regarded as the “Prosaauflösung” of a screenplay (Durzak 1982, 141), and that the impression sometimes prevails that the unity of some of the texts, especially of Die Linkshändige Frau, only emerges at the editing table (Durzak 1982, 141), is of less consequence than the fact that the film’s image sequences produce fundamentally different effects than those of the texts. The failure of the Tormann adaptation and the restrained reception of Die Linkshändige Frau point to this. At the same time, Handke is well aware of the particular difficulties of the medium of film. In a study from 1968, he already recognizes that the images of film do not lead to the “formation of a standardized (and also normative!) cinematic syntax” in any way different from literary forms: Ein Filmbild ist kein unschuldiges Bild mehr, es ist, durch die Geschichte aller Filmbilder vor diesem Bild, eine Einstellung geworden: das heißt, es zeigt die bewußte oder unbewußte Einstellung des Filmenden zu dem zu filmenden Gegenstand, der auf diese Weise der Gegenstand des Filmenden wird […] die Einstellung von dem Gegenstand dient als Ausdruck des Filmenden: die Einstellung, dadurch, dass vor ihr schon eine Reihe von gleichen Einstellungen von dem Gegenstand produziert worden sind, die alle das gleiche bedeuten, wird, das kann man sagen, zu einem filmischen Satz, der nach dem Modell bereits vorhandener filmischer Sätze gebildet worden ist. (E 69)

The script for Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse (Chronicle of Current Events), a WDR television film broadcast in 1971, takes this consideration into account. Its structure also aims at a further differentiation. It makes clear that the visual language of television is already in competition with that of the cinema film. Unlike the cinema film, however, which is able to preserve “Wunschbilder” first and foremost, the television film also shows those spectres of terror and horror that would precede and follow the film when it is broadcast (CLE 129). Depicting this contrast makes it at once literary, personal, and political. The television film is literary insofar as it is intent on a narrative sequence that appears familiar and uses familiar settings; it also becomes literary in that this narrative becomes allegorical (CLE 129 f.). Formally, this is done by the script inserting typical television images of the political feature, the discussion panel, and the entertainment show between the wish sequences of motion pictures.

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The television film is also a personal document because it attempts to combine the chronicle of the television images shown in the Federal Republic in 1968 and 1969 of the political events, above all of the “student movement” (CLE 128 f.) with a chronicle “meiner Gefühle, Wünsche und Befürchtungen von damals” (CLE 129). In this way, a private plot is told in public film clichés, in which themes of television are in turn interspersed (Nägele/Voris 1978, 103). This film is political not only because it shows a “mythischen Kampf zwischen Kino- und Fernsehbildern”, in the course of which ultimately the cinema images are displaced by television images (CLE 137), but also because it makes us aware that television images can, on the one hand, deform the immediate perception of reality, and on the other, change reality itself. In this way, the television film not only points ahead to the incompatibility of political and poetic views that centers the screenplay of Falsche Bewegung, it also ties in with considerations that Handke develops in his Büchner Prize speech and in a statement on the end of the Vietnam War. Die Geborgenheit unter der Schädeldecke reports that the “finished images” of television achieve only a “fiction of understanding” (WÜ 73) because, as ritualized sequences of images, they alone still allow fixed concepts and opinions to be recalled and repeated. Even more provocatively, the argument in Was soll ich dazu sagen? links television and politics by casting fundamental doubt on the existence of a political morality. The Vietnam peace negotiations in Geneva appear no different than union wage negotiations. They are ritualized battles that do not proceed according to factual constraints or imperatives of political morality, but have long since become merely the law of the media. So ist der Waffenstillstand in Vietnam nicht aus der doch immer nur beschworenen menschlichen Friedensliebe entstanden, auch nicht aus der Materialerschöpfung, sondern aus der Bewußtseinserschöpfung der kriegführenden Amerikaner und ihrer Fernsehzuschauer. Diese Erschöpfung des Bewußtseins tritt dann als Sehnsucht nach Frieden auf, die man mit Friedensliebe nicht verwechseln darf. ‘Danke fürs Mitmachen, danke fürs Zuschauen!’ (VT 27)

It is only logical that in Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse it hardly becomes clear that the story of the three main characters Baumont, Spade and Kelly, which is repeatedly torn apart by the omnipotence of the television images, is retelling the story of Der gläserne Schlüssel by Dashiell Hammett (CLE 53, 115; ÜD 82). For this plot pattern is already adapted by Handke to the ductus of the television images. The plot is told very slowly, perhaps even boringly, and all action in the film only happens through the film itself, through the editing or through the type of setting (Scharang ÜH 82). In various ways, however, the television film breaks through this slowness. Sometimes the forms of television entertainment and information are distorted into the absurd, for example in a political discussion about the role of schizophrenia in society (CLE 48). In addition, they are also transformed into a sequence of slapstick interludes, as in the description of a television show with games of skill (CLE 57 f.). Sometimes sequences of images are created that are not sequences, but rather a compilation of television film images or of shots from documentary television plays

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(CLE 95–97, 101, 120). Finally, the medium of the image also creates perspectives that prove to be related to Handke’s narrative (CLE 66). Some passages are also determined by the representational principle of allegorical imagery: Images are coupled with texts and are thus given the task of demonstration. This view of things connects Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse with Falsche Bewegung. In this text, too, in addition to the demonstration of seeing images, there is a coupling of image and writing (FB 16, 18). What is the supreme law of television reality appears to the main character Wilhelm at the same time as a precondition of writing. Yet this script does not rely on the persuasive power of an arbitrary story, but retells, transforms, and uses traits and characters from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister as the contrast of a new story (Pütz 1982, 69). Perception is not a procedure determined by the preconditions of the medium. Rather, it is grounded as an “erotischer Blick” in the feeling of the perceiver: Was ich sehe, ist dann nicht mehr nur ein Objekt der Beobachtung, sondern auch ein ganz inniger Teil von mir selber. Früher hat man dazu, glaube ich, Wesensschau gesagt. Etwas Einzelnes wird zum Zeichen für das Ganze. Ich schreibe dann nicht etwas bloß Beobachtetes, wie die meisten das tun, sondern etwas Erlebtes. Deswegen will ich eben gerade Schriftsteller sein. (FB 58)

Quite unlike Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister, the Wilhelm of Falsche Bewegung finds no harmonious relationship to the world. His frame of reference is an over-civilized world and the laws of technocracy (Mixner 1977, 214), which already appear to Handke in his description of ‘La Défense’ as prerequisites of a modern placelessness (WÜ 37). Wilhelm detaches himself from all relationships and finally seeks out an extreme place in nature, the mountain Zugspitze, in order to be able to write there. His decision for writing and against action (Pütz 1982, 72) stands in contrast to Goethe’s idea of development. The encounter with other people does not change Wilhelm’s consciousness but proves to be a “Falsche Bewegung” (Pütz 1982, 67). The intention of self-discovery that arises from looking at a photograph (FB 11) leads into ever greater opposition to the “Tatsachenmenschen” (FB 36). A growing distance from society also arises from the increase in private mood- and wish-­ images (Nägele/Voris 1978, 104), which become as conscious in writing as the impossibility of their political redemption (FB 52). This experience connects Wilhelm directly with his narrator. Like the latter, he knows himself to be at a distance from the political; he is unable to translate his desires into social practice. Obviously, in this way the author Handke inscribes Wilhelm’s story with images of his own life and signifiers of his own texts; it is a strategy that has been perfected since Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. The dream images of half-sleep (FB 38 f.), the metaphor of going over ice (FB 48; MN 34), the experience of loneliness and abandonment in Germany (FB 42, 45), the desire to be alone and without relationship (FB 8, 70) and the image of nature as a counter-world and place of intense self-experience (FB 55, 81), which is at the same time a prerequisite for writing, prove the image sequences of Wilhelm’s story to be fragments of an autoanalytical discourse that does not require any logical connection.

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It is striking that this text already opposes the film’s sequences of images with another principle of linkage that gains significance for the writing. Wilhelm justifies his distance from politics and people by saying that he wants to escape the distraction of accidental seeing. He tells Therese: “zum Schreiben muß ich mich ungestört und genau erinnern können, sonst schreibe ich nur was Zufälliges” (FB 32). Later it says that writing as a process of remembering will become “endlich selbstverständlich” (FB 77 f.). Remembering thus proves to be a form of poetic fantasy that combines external and internal images. In place of a harmony between the individual and society, Falsche Bewegung sets a fusion of perceptual images and the images of fantasy and memory. Of all things, this utopian message of the aesthetic is given weight by an emblematic image. It appears in a pictorial setting that in turn directly relates image and writing: Das Bild der Ebene und des Himmels. Schrift über dem Bild: ‘Manchmal starrte ich lange vor mich hin, absichtlich ohne etwas anzuschauen. Dann machte ich die Augen zu, und erst an dem Nachbild, das sich dabei ergab, merkte ich, was ich vor mir gehabt hatte. Auch während ich schreibe, schließe ich die Augen und sehe einiges ganz deutlich, das ich bei offenen Augen gar nicht wahrnehmen wollte’ (FB 61 f.).

This representation of writing leads back to a shot in Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse in which a play scene is commented on by voices: “Man schließt die Augen, damit sich inzwischen alles verändern kann, aber dann ist es zu spät, die Augen wieder aufzumachen” (CLE 103). In this way, reflection on the prerequisite of narrative writing arises directly from cinematic narration.

13.3 Semiotics of Perception: Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1970) Wim Wendersʼ film version of Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) is a faithful adaptation of Handke’s text. The director’s first film establishes a long collaboration with the author, in the course of which Wenders also adapts central motifs and visual constellations of Handke to his own cinematographic language. In the film version of Die Angst des Tormanns, he attempts to stage the disorientation of the protagonist with simple means. Handke’s reduction of language and action is put into the picture in different ways. The camera operates with long shots that create distance; its movement is interrupted by long black fade-ins that also omit crucial elements of the plot. At the very beginning, a goal shot is shown to which the goalkeeper does not react at all (2:31). The intimate relationship with the cinema cashier is only hinted at (19:05), as is her murder, only the scenes before and after are shown in detail (27:35, 27:39). The camera also systematically alienates the setting of ‘Burgenland’, which is often shown from a moving bus or at night in such a way that the neon signs on the street sometimes suggest America (36:02). As the film progresses, the camera also increasingly follows the gaze of the protagonist Bloch. As a result, his increasingly

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obsessive perception of individual objects or details also becomes the film viewer’s perspective. The view through a blind onto the airport (19:33) or inside the room onto a teapot (20:44) provide examples of this process (1:09:32), as do rotating landscapes that the protagonist perceives from above in long shot, a clear reference back to a strategy of Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse (10:02:20; CLE 66). Alongside this is an almost documentary-like depiction of rooms by a slowly moving camera, which makes the rural interiors of the seventies seem quite oppressive. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Bloch repeatedly searches for orientation in dark rooms (8:30), in the cinema (4:42, 1:14:50) or as a listener to music boxes – of course a Wurlitzer is also present (10:08, 35:29, 45:50). At times, he finds himself in rooms where a blind on the window blocks the view outside (19:06). Thus, he also appears lost in space. He doesn’t show any feelings, even the women he turns to in his direct way don’t give him any support, all of them red-­ haired or wearing wigs, they seem interchangeable anyway. In addition, the film images not only keep Bloch at a distance, such as when he is shown from the outside in a glass elevator (13:20). He also finds himself, following Handke’s text, in an environment that always seems foreign, on the southern border of the country. Not only during his bus journeys, but also at the bus station, he seems lost when he tries to orient himself at the turntables of the timetables and foreign languages surround him (31:00 ff.). The central theme of perceptual disorder, which determines the text, is meticulously realized in the film. Several levels can be distinguished. First of all, there is the loss of social empathy, of which the characters are not aware, but which the film viewer perceives all the more clearly through their gestures: Bloch’s callousness towards women, the innkeeper’s coldness towards her child reflected in a continued double bind, or that of the waitress towards a handicapped child, provide examples of this. So do Bloch’s unmotivated outbursts of violence, a recurring motif of Handke’s narrator (Höller 2013, 121), or his sometimes aggressive style of speech, which he displays just as abruptly as he commits the murder (1:17:20, 1:21:00). As in the text, however, decisive weight is initially given to the tension between the descriptive word and reality, which is repeatedly placed in the image, and finally to disturbances in visual perception, which occur in a tension between the gaze and the image. By contrast, the film presents the performance of denotative language in a satirically alienated way when Bloch asks for directions to the inn. At first, he gets no answer from the locals because they either can’t hear – deafness seems common in this rural area – or don’t want to hear because they won’t let the questioner enter their district as a stranger. Afterwards, however, a woman intervenes and provides a meticulous description of the way to the border, not even forgetting to describe the changing road surface (41:00 ff.). This detailed language alienates the entire situation. Its logical order does not fit the setting of the village, where it is said of the students there that they speak only single words and are actually “sprachbehindert” (41:45). It also contrasts completely with the frequently anacoluthic sentences spoken by Bloch himself, which lead to asymmetrical dialogue in him and others (53:40). The denotative language is juxtaposed with another that is characterized by

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blank spaces. These must be resolved by the film viewer, either psychologically or logically, because they are shaped by presuppositions of the respective speakers. The fact that such blanks can also lead to dissociations for those who want to orient themselves is demonstrated by Bloch himself, who omits the number one when counting and only begins with the two (57:40). Not coincidentally, his friend at the inn later says that the child doesn’t count (1:00:21). Every individual disorientation has social consequences. The interaction required of the film viewer with the language presented in the film corresponds to his gaze control, which demands constant reorientations from the viewer not unlike the protagonist. In this way, the viewer becomes a co-actor in a double way. Only in a few places, such as when Bloch picks up American coins next to the dead cashier, which are later named in the newspaper as a clue that is supposed to lead to the murderer, does he receive an attention cue through a dissonant sound sequence on the soundtrack. In contrast, he is often referred to Bloch’s gaze, where it is not at all clear whether his perception is reliable. The most striking example is a scene in which the protagonist looks from a bridge into the river, in which the missing student can be seen dead. The viewer follows Bloch’s gaze with the camera, and the moment he sees the student, he receives an attention signal on the soundtrack, as he did earlier with the coins. Bloch, on the other hand, gazes at the missing person for considerably longer than the viewer, but shows no reaction (1:05:49). The film leaves open whether he has not noticed the dead student or has repressed what he has seen. At other instances the viewer can see what the participants do not seem to perceive. The waitress at the inn sees the American coins depicted in the newspaper without making a connection to Bloch, who has lost one such coin (1:10:04). Nor can she decipher the very accurate phantom image of Bloch that she perceives in his presence, unlike the film viewer (1:31:35). In these scenes, the relationship between the signs and the objects to be signified is cut, which follows very closely the linguistic reflection that Handke’s textual model develops. Linked to this is the reference to the arbitrariness of signs. It is demonstrated by the example of the bailiff, for whom the price of things is the only element of order in his perception (10:03). In this film, the question of the unambiguousness of sign orders also concerns writing. This becomes ironically clear in the blackboard inscription, which cannot change the students’ one-word sentences. It is also recognizable when Bloch is shown as a reader of a sensational press, which creates almost fantastic images through exaggeration. “Hinten aus seinem Kopf sprang eine Fledermaus heraus und klatschte gegen die Tapete. Mein Herz übersprang einen Schlag” he reads as a headline and looks completely unimpressed at the scene surrounding him (17:28). Elsewhere, he also ignores what is communicated to him through writing. He immediately covers up the report printed in the newspaper about his murder of the cashier by turning the page of the newspaper. Thus, it is replaced by the news about the missing student (40:15). Alongside these visual disorientations, which in Bloch’s case seem to have individual causes, Wenders’s film, in accordance with the text, places the problem of deciphering signs. This is presented twice and each time in denotative language.

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The first time is when the border guard talks about the possibility of apprehending someone who has decided to flee by interpreting their movements and at the same time trying to predict what calculations they are following (1:27:50, 1:28:43). For the second time, this question is raised on the occasion of the reflections on the penalty shootout, the central theme of Handke’s text. This basic situation of soccer is also controlled by a string of physical gestures, which interacts with a reflexive reflection in both the goal scorer and the goalkeeper. This becomes aporetic, however, because both actors simultaneously try to include the reaction of their counterpart in their own reflections (1:35:50). The consequence of both scenes is that social decisions are fundamentally unsolvable by language. Enlightened reliance on unambiguous communication is replaced by the realization that there is no rule for dealing with such situations. One is always at a disadvantage because one is always being watched by the other. In Wender’s film version, this linguistic and communication-theoretical center of Handke’s text is also dealt with on the level of visual perception. Right at the beginning of the film it is shown that the film spectator, not unlike the spectator at football, is subject to the focussing of his own gaze. Just as every speaker follows an immanent logic of language, the conversation about the penalty shootout – in the course of which Bloch presents himself as a remarkably deliberate and clear speaker – shows that visual perception is also subject to a rule: “Man schaut auf den Ball und nicht auf den Torwart”, it says succinctly (1:34:50). In the end, it is precisely this dialectic of perception that can explain why Wenders’ film at one point witnesses an image that seems decontextualized and for this very reason can be perceived as an autonomous visual sign: The close-up of an apple (1:05:13). It is obviously the only unambiguous sign in these entanglements of linguistic and visual perception. Without already knowing it, Wenders thus also inserts a prospective sign into his film, the significance of which will only unfold in Handke’s later work (KA 112; Höller 2013, 53) and in Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez (The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez) (A 65, 69).

13.4 Gender Roles and Patterns of Perception: Die linkshändige Frau, 1978 While Wim Wendersʼ film version of Die Angst des Tormanns translates the linguistic-­analytical elements of Handkeʼs text into a dense network of short dialogues and scenic constellations, in Handkeʼs film version of Die linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman) language initially recedes in a conspicuous manner, while at the same time the images are frequently encoded in multiple ways. As a director, Handke works with long shots; much like Wenders, he shows many of his long shots like a sequence of slides, with a striking alternation between well-lit and dark scenes. The protagonist often presents herself conspicuously rigid and unmoving; in the first shots she almost resembles a silhouette, her sparse movements at times making her appear statuesque. The same is true of the first appearance of her husband Bruno.

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When she picks him up at the airport, the greeting is initially silent, the man wears sunglasses, and the distance that characterizes even this encounter is underscored by the camera providing an obliquely cropped perspective (5:26). This moment of distancing is heightened by the subsequent car ride into the descending night, in the course of which barely decipherable contours of city and country reveal themselves (6:09; 7:10 ff.). Already at the airport, the couple appeared peculiarly delimited by the camera’s focus from the other people in a building that appears more as an architectural testimony to modernity than as a meeting place for people. In addition, the film repeatedly visualizes images of a counter-world in single shots, which is established in the relationship with a child. The child is mostly close to the mother and is only excluded from her when she starts working again. The two bathe together (1:37:45), and when they leave the office where Bruno had demonstrated his intimidation techniques to them, they lapse together into the skipping step that in Handke’s work always marks a demarcation from everyday coercion (49:45). Like a child, the woman also walks on stilts in her apartment as she begins to implement her new concept of life (17:56). These images without language contrast sharply with the scenes in which men try to become dominant by speaking. The encounter with the writer, who, not unlike her husband Bruno, exerts a barely concealed sexual pressure on the woman, initially proceeds in conspicuous speechlessness for long stretches. But the man’s body language already appears demanding, before he finally states his claim openly to the woman. “Why are you playing the mother-child game?” he remarks sarcastically when Marianne does not respond to his advances (35:25), after he had recalled the past and made a rudimentary seduction speech. Bruno, in turn, wants his wife to dress to his liking for a restaurant and subsequent hotel stay. His formula, “Do you have any plans for the night?” is a sexual demand made explicit after dinner in the presence of the waiter. The predominant, strikingly distancing images are matched by the controlled alternation between interior and exterior spaces. The film begins with a view of the park that unfolds a deep space in terms of perspective. As is often the case with Handke and Wenders, this long shot is accompanied by two different sounds on the soundtrack, the natural sounds of birds chirping and technical noises emanating from trains or planes, as is almost always the case with the director and the author (1:15). It is also noticeable that the sparse camera movements are still, for example, when there is a zoom on the woman’s apartment building and then on the interior; already at the beginning, a still life will end the tracking shot (2:35). For long stretches the depiction of the woman is dominated by focused images that show her alone. Her long and heavy fur, which she initially puts on when leaving the house, initially counteracts the sexually connoted literary and pictorial imaginings of the ‘woman in fur’. It appears not as an attribute of seduction but as a protective covering of the body. Marianne presents herself almost throughout in a long dress that gives a hint of her bodily forms but is ultimately intended to conceal them. At a single point in the film, her body becomes visible in the literal sense. In front of the mirror, she exposes her shoulders and looks at herself intensely.

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This setting marks the woman’s self-discovery, prefigured by the text, which is visualized here as the rediscovery of the body and at the same time heralds the beginning of her translatorial activity (54:00). A prerequisite for this seems to be the exclusion of men. It is clearly pointed out in a scene in which Franziska, who can otherwise explain everything (48:50 ff.), and Marianne embrace and the camera shows this as a silhouette image (1:46:40). It is only in the context of the controlled alternation of distancing and body images that language acquires its special role. While direct speech seems reserved for men, women’s speech is peculiarly mediated. This is evident from the very beginning, when the child inside the house reads her wish poem, “Wie ich mir ein schöneres Leben vorstelle…” (3:35), which the film viewer tends to decipher as the protagonist’s inner monologue. The woman’s external gaze at the window makes it clear that her concentration on herself presupposes seclusion. Later glimpses through windows or the kitchen door will underscore this (7:28). In the first scenes with Bruno, the woman indeed appears as a ‘spoken being’; the film visualizes her closeness to the man as a union that is foreshortened into a sign and also superimposed with the image of a tree (12:45). Such visualizations of being spoken to and vicariously spoken for precede the woman’s direct speech with Bruno. However, this is strikingly indirect through her choice of words, for Marianne, who wants to separate from her husband, does not justify this at all in the analytical language of her friend Franziska or the self-awareness groups (1:16:50), but speaks of having had an “Erleuchtung” (14:20). Cinematographically, this passage is interesting because the woman’s speech initially seems to come from off-screen. Since she has closed her mouth, the viewer again gets the impression that it is an inner monologue. Only then are the character’s speech and language synchronized. However, the phrase “Wehe Dir, wenn ich es sage” (15:06) opens up a peculiar linguistic ambivalence. The formula “Erleuchtung dass du von mir weg gehst” is transformed into the immediate request: “lass mich allein” (16:09). The woman’s mediated speech will continue later when she is presented as the translator of Flaubert’s Trois contes and obviously identifies with the figure of Félicité in the first narrative entitled Un coeur simple (41:45). Her translation appears as an attempt to find a language that is only possible through concentration on herself. Not coincidentally, the editor had announced to her a long period of solitude as a consequence of this activity (45:30 ff.). The distance that the film builds up by means of plot and images is reinforced by two other elements. One is a contrapuntal soundtrack and ironic alienation. At the beginning of the relationship crisis and in the course of its later intensification, the scenes are underscored with the hit song “Rote Rosen sollen blühn” (24:15), and the street names “rue de la raison” (24:15) and “rue terre neuve” (1:24:40) can be read at the locations. On the other hand, the moments of the woman’s self-absorption, which are mostly connected with glances through the window to the outside, evoke a confusion in the film viewer that seems like a fantastic alienation of the real. This opens up a realm of the imaginary. As the film viewer looks from the outside at the front of the house with the internally lit window from which the woman is looking

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out, a suicidal man apparently throws himself out of the window above, without triggering any reaction in the woman (48:20). In a later shot, which also shows these two windows lit from within, the upper one from which the person had thrown himself is still lit and the shutters are half-closed, as if a normal life is going on up there. Wenders will repeat a similar alienation, starting from a window view and thereby making the distinction between visual and imaginary perception problematic for the film spectator, in his filming of Die Abwesenheit (F-A 1:16:19). The aforementioned shot makes it clear that the woman’s self-discovery, which the film is supposed to present following the text, is by no means unbroken, and that the visual presentation shapes this more sharply than the text. While on the one hand the woman’s development is signalled by the hopeful sign of snowfall that runs through many of Handke’s texts (1:18:45), at the same time the woman’s writing and translating also lead her into isolation. The images she focuses on alone are contrasted with a long shot showing an elderly couple spending time in quiet togetherness in a small garden plot (58:22). Marianne, on the other hand, is later prophesied by the obviously lonely publisher, “You’ll end up just like me” (1:28:20). She herself states beforehand that writing sometimes seems like an excuse to her (1:26:40). Furthermore, the film images mark an increasing distance between the woman and her child; already visually, the mother-child dyad breaks down. This is visualized in a scene in which Marianne, during a conversation, looks unconcernedly at her and another child, both of whom are engaged in an argument in the background of the image like actors on a stage (1:18:45). Although the images of children displace those of latently violent male-female role-playing, they do not now open up an alternative world. The strangeness between man and woman that the opening images at the airport had shown is replaced at the end by the image of two children crossing an underpass together, but separating at its end and heading in opposite directions (1:48:50). Whereas the text of the film depicts a woman’s sinking into herself, which expresses her finding herself, the film images primarily show the end of social cohesion. The closing motto sums up this visual impression in a linguistic aphorism: “…Ja, habt ihr nicht bemerkt, daß eigentlich nur Platz ist für den, der selbst den Platz mitbringt…” (1:49:54).

13.5 Textual and Visual Construction of Identity: Der Himmel über Berlin (1987) In the collaboration between Handke and Wenders, which culminates in Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), these approaches are continued and at the same time placed in the context of a fundamental reflection on media, which takes up a central theme of Handke’s storytelling in the medium of film and in mirror image correspondence to the author’s texts. Wenders also redefines the meaning of the media of writing and image by relating them to one another. At the beginning of Der Himmel über Berlin, one hears the voice of the angel Damiel and sees in an insert how some lines of a poem by Handke are written. The film viewer reads there: “Als das Kind

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Kind war, / wußte es nicht, dass es Kind war / alles war ihm beseelt, / und alle Seelen waren eins” (00:13–00:48). This beginning of the film, which also foreshadows the scene at the end (1:58:58), is interesting in two ways. First, it uses the particular cinematographic technique of the white fade-in, which, unlike the black fade-in, is perceived by the viewer and, since Eisenstein, has been perceived as breaking the illusion (Eisenstein 1999, 157–176). Here it serves to underline the act of reading that is demanded of the spectator and is supported by another cinematic device. We hear an off-screen sound that precedes the cinematically staged reading. On the other hand, the presentation of the white surface on which writing is done breaks from the very beginning the perspectivization of space that has been the aim of film since the twenties, which now appears first as a surface, not as depth. It is a procedure that Fassbinder as director also uses again and again. Language and writing, which are otherwise only two of many possible cinematic sign systems, thus acquire a prominent significance. The interplay of fade-in, voice-over and written image reconstructs the act of reading and its linking of phonetic sign, mental image (‘Gedankenbild’) and visualisation of the mental image. At the same time, the technique of white superimposition draws on the medium of painting. For Kandinsky, the representation of the white surface leads to the self-reflexivity of painting (Kandinsky 1955, 139, 168); for Rodtschenko, who in Manifest der Konstruktivisten wants to “open eyes to the surface”, following Malevich, the square on the pure white surface appears as its zero form (Spielmann 1994, 143 f.; Rodtschenko 1988, 184 f.). The medial recourse does not only refer to the competition of image and writing in modern media, but at the same time puts it up for discussion. In many passages, this film deliberately foregoes the full development of its specifically cinematographic means. For the semiotic relationship between text and image, this also means in this case that screenplay and text become almost identical (Wenders 1992, 246–248). It falls to language alone to link visual perception, imagination and memory. The mental image staged by language and writing takes on an equal importance as the visually perceived image. The presentation of surface and writing in the opening sequence of Wenders’ film is subsequently matched by the wide-angle shot, which also transforms the dynamic action space of the film back into surface, as well as the two-dimensional shot and counter-shot images and the refraction of the perspectival perceptual space created by the alternation of colour and black-and-­ white images (33:56 f., 1:25:29 f., 1:39:29, 1:50:56 f.). It opens up scenes of love (33:15) as well as images of the past (38:20, 51:22). Under these conditions, the medium of film does not require the technical-optical simulation of space that has been favored since the 1920s; rather, like narrative, it relies on the mobilization of imaginative spatial images. However, Wenders does not simply dispense with advanced cinematic and cinematographic means, but rather functionalizes this withdrawal, unfolding it as a game itself. The surface images are deliberately set against the perspective views from above, from the world of angels; the intermediality that the film emphasizes through the close bond between word and image is simultaneously unfolded as intertextuality (Fig. 13.1) (36:45). The angels correspond to a multiply coded image of the angel in literature,

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Fig. 13.1  Still from Wim Wenders/Peter Handke: Der Himmel über Berlin, 02:34

the setting in Berlin is transformed into a historical space that relies on a narrator who is, not coincidentally, almost blind, and in doing so shows mythically exaggerated events such as becoming human and becoming language as well as the spatial orders that structure him himself?(38:15). This leads to a functional change as well as to an autonomization of visual and written signs. Image and writing do not depict, but they organize conscious and unconscious perceptions that release memories and fantasies. The conditionality of perception becomes evident precisely because the medium is reduced to its simple elements and is not concerned with illusion or suggestion. Wenders’ film is characterized by slow takes, which stand in complete contrast to the prevailing trend of visual perception fixated on increasingly faster changes. Without a doubt, he takes his cue here from the settings of Yasujiro Ozu, from the experimental transformation of the perspective-organized film image into a two-dimensional display, about which Godard comments: “Ce n’est pas une image juste, c’est juste une image” (Bordwell 1997, 28 f.). In this way, the more advanced medium of film returns to strategies of the preceding media of writing and language, thus the historical sequence of the dominant media is revoked. Therefore, from the original competition of the media of writing and image, a new form of their interaction emerges in this “film auteur”. The narration of Homer establishes continuity in the alternation of images. Peter Falk, known from many films, appears as himself and as an actor, his role following the role-play of socialization and creating a specific narrative code (46:10  f.). It is primarily through this interaction of writing, word and image that the “Gemeinsprache”, which Handke strives for, emerges, namely the language “die jedem vertraut ist” (cf. FF 76).

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In this way, both Handke and Wenders find their way to a new modernity. In Wenders’ film, the angel wants to move from a “zeitlosen Herabschauen” to an “Aushalten eines jähen Anblicks” and become a human being in order to be able to “fight for a history” (Wenders 1987, 84). Handke, on the other hand, tries to remain a “Menschenkind” by coming to a writing beyond knowledge, to a “Heraus aus der Sprache” (GB 94). The angel Cassiel, who like Handke’s Loser in Der Chinese des Schmerzes wants to repeat what has been lost through language and sign at the same time, speaks with words reminiscent of the epilogue of this novel: “Ernst bleiben! […] / Nichts weiter tun als anschauen, sammeln, bezeugen, beglaubigen, wahren! Geist bleiben! Im Abstand bleiben! Im Wort bleiben!” (Wenders 1987, 255; CS 251 f.). The text, the static nature of Wenders’ film images, and the mythic images of Handke’s narrative converge decisively in this respect. This double semiotic strategy denies the postmodern questioning of the medium of writing; at the same time, revokes the modern belief in the omnipotence of the image, because language can no longer be a medium of domination. In Wender’s film, the inserts of Handke’s text and the images of the characters that are made to speak lead to a deconstruction of the medium of film by the film itself: It resolutely corresponds to the narrative defense of film images and their false suggestions in Handke’s text Der Bildverlust. The “Naturschatz” of images has been used up, it says there, and “man zappelt als Anhängsel an den gemachten, serienmäßig fabrizierten, künstlichen Bildern, welche die mit dem Bildverlust verlorenen Wirklichkeiten ersetzen, sie vortäuschen und den falschen Eindruck sogar noch steigern wie Drogen, als Drogen” (BV 744). In Der Himmel über Berlin, however, Handke and Wenders once again understand language and writing as meaning-giving systems of reference that not only assert themselves against the image as the medium of the new age, but actually open it up in the first place. It is no coincidence that the film’s action is concluded by a second insert with a text that immediately follows the first: “Ich weiß jetzt, was kein Engel weiß” (Wenders/Handke 1987, 168), writes Damiel, and here the film relies entirely on words and writing. Programmatically, Wenders remarks, “Ich glaube nicht an vieles in der Bibel, aber doch, inbrünstig, an diesen ersten Satz: ‘Im Anfang war das Wort.’ Ich glaube auch nicht, dass es einmal heißen wird: ‘Am Ende war das Bild…’ Das Wort wird bleiben” (Wenders 1992, 197).

13.6 Visual Inscriptions of the Own: Mal des Todes (1986), Die Abwesenheit (1992), Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez (2017) A characteristic of these three film adaptations is their close proximity to the respective texts. In the case of Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez and Die Abwesenheit, this is obvious; in the case of Mal des Todes (The Stigma of Death), which refers to Handke’s translation of a text by Margrit Duras, proximity is nevertheless established by the fact that the film version uses an arsenal of images that characterize Handke’s work. This also applies to the film version of Die Abwesenheit, in which

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Wim Wenders supplements the images of the original text with images that belong to other texts in Handke’s oeuvre. The three films are therefore not determined solely by the linearity of their plot, but also by an aleatoric use of images that simultaneously opens up intertextual and intermedial perspectives. Besides the transcription of other texts, the inscription of one’s own into the other, and the intermedial transformation, there is the principle of a variation that, as in the texts, produces an autonomizing field of signs. This is no coincidence. On the contrary, there is every indication that Handke, as director and consultant, also wants to reinforce his strategies of storytelling in the medium of film through the interconnection of word and image, as well as his ideas of authorship through visualization. It is fitting that in Die Schönen Tage von Aranjuez and Mal des Todes he can also be recognized as the real author Handke. In Die Schönen Tage, he appears as a gardener and, of course, carries a ladder (49:20); in Die Abwesenheit, he joins Luc Bondy in bidding farewell to the old man as he sets off on his wanderings, addressing him by the name Antonio from Die Schönen Tage (14:07). In Mal des Todes he speaks not only off-screen, but at the end as a person himself (56:40 ff.). These three films in particular take the opportunity to visualize the intense descriptions of nature and landscape from Handke’s texts. What is striking here is a concentration on the change of seasons, the contrasting of snow and plants, a series of different images of water as sea, river, canal or even as rain, but above all, time and again, landscape tableaux that are psychologised or set against the urban images. Much more clearly than in the texts, Handke’s obsessive rejection of all forms of the noise of civilization, the sign of the invasion of the historical world and its forms of violence, can be heard on the soundtrack of the film. This is underlined, especially in Die Abwesenheit, not only by the technique of abrupt editing. It also becomes, as in the respective textual models, a metaphor for a poetology that takes the experience of silence as a prerequisite for appropriate perception as well as for writing, and in listening to the sea or the rustling of the trees enables an experience that seems to have fallen out of time (MdT 39:47; AR 7:30; AF 49:35). Mal des Todes (Fig. 13.2) depicts, in long shots that are more like a kaleidoscopic sequence of images than a story, an encounter between a man and a woman that, without shaping the identity of the two, concentrates on visualizing and commenting on sexual desire. At the same time, immediate proximity and extreme distance are staged. An almost physical closeness, in that the film makes the woman the object of a camera that repeatedly presents her body voyeuristically. Constantly, a new distance is presented because the image of the body is counteracted by other images. On the one hand, this is done by showing and telling the relationship between man and woman entirely from the man’s perspective. On the other hand, the woman’s body is placed in completely different contexts by the image sequences. Its visual presentation alternates between poses that show the woman as a model through ambience and clothing, and a focus on her body alone, which is sometimes shown almost uncovered (31:08). At other points, it is blended in such a way by painted images that it appears to be frozen. These are frescoes in which the figures’ facial features are only partially discernible (24:10, 31:40, 40:49). They are from the so-called ‘Prince’s Procession’

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Fig. 13.2  Still from Peter Handke: Mal des Todes, 31:08 (ORF)

in ‘Freisaal’ Palace, which is accompanied by a representation of the cardinal virtues by allegorical female figures. They are supplemented by grisaille paintings which, in addition to battles and scenes from Roman antiquity, depict models of ancient virtue such as Mutius Scaevola or Lucretia. The theme of passion that the film deals with (41:35) is decisively counteracted by this painted catalogue of virtues. This refraction is repeated when the film image of the woman’s almost unclothed body is juxtaposed with the representation of her silhouette, which only reveals contours (23:35). This corresponds to the fact that the film repeatedly relates images of nature and landscapes to a sexual content through symbolic connotation (6:43–6:47). With this specifically cinematographic strategy on the image level, this film combines another one on the sound level. The image sequences are commented on by Peter Handke’s voice from off-screen. He first addresses the viewer as ‘sie’ (4:50), before he, as speaker and character, refers the image sequences to himself and the theme of love at the same time and switches to ‘Du’ (58:11). This medial construction opens up a psychological subtext. The camera’s eye cancels out the distance between the speaker and the images by focusing on the male gaze. The gaze guided in this way allows the strategy of the technical medium and the psychology of the act of seeing to coincide. This coincidence also becomes a theme in the sequences of images. Again and again, the camera focuses on the woman’s eye, but it is precisely this framing that has a double function. On the one hand, it shows the eye as a bodily organ when it makes tears appear in it (24:24). These are a reaction to the spoken text from off-screen as much as to the immanent logic of the images. On the other hand, the woman’s eye is also the instrument for

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establishing a counterview (12:00). The cinematic strategy of shot and counter-shot is thus decisively psychologized. The gaze of the man, which is one with that of the film spectator, is opposed by the gaze of the woman. Already at the beginning, this counter-gaze is inserted into an aggressive scene: While the viewer’s gaze, like that of the man, takes in the woman’s face and counter-gaze, she spits at her counterpart (16:50). The male perspective, which the film’s image sequences initially follow, is decisively broken in this way. The woman’s behaviour is a reaction to the violence, which is part of the sexuality of the man addressed as well as of the off-screen speaker. The film explicitly addresses this. That the woman’s body cries out for abuse is noted by the off-screen voice (18:30), sexuality is named as an act of submission that is reduced to penetrating the woman’s body (6:46). From the male point of view, she appears “always ready” and she fulfills this stereotype when she asks the man to “take her” (50:40). However, the fact that the counter-gaze can be quite ambivalent and can result in very different reactions depending on the situation becomes impressively clear in a short scene later on. While the woman looks directly at the man – again, his perspective and that of the viewer are one – she slowly opens her legs while sitting down and directs the focus of the camera and the man’s gaze to her sex. But the camera does not show this at the lower edge of the picture. At the same time, the woman’s unflinching gaze, directed at the man, keeps him at a distance. Through their simultaneity, these two opposing body signals subvert both the dominance and the unambiguous directionality of male desire. The woman, who in the first image sequences seems to be the mere object of the male gaze, withdraws from the man: at the very moment in which she shows her own desire, she also becomes the speaker. But her request “take me” (51:05) leads to a double bind evoked by contradictory body signals. At the same time, this visual staging correlates with a linguistic one. The scene illustrates a psychological tension that the woman expresses with the guiding phrase of the desire of the desire of the other (49:40). Jacques Lacan’s central phrase, already noted in the journal Vor der Baumschattenwand (In Front of the Walls of Tree Shadows at Night) under the rubric of the “11 Gebote”, becomes the guiding formula of the visually imagined encounter (Lacan Seminar I, 226 f.; VB 420 f.). This draws attention to the special role of language in this film. Although the woman also becomes a speaker, in the end the word nevertheless privileges the male gaze in a double way. Not only is the male perception of the woman accompanied by an off-screen linguistic commentary, but even more importantly, the man is also established as a narrator. He first reports the story of a child whose faded-in life data suggest a proximity to the author’s story (45:10). Moreover, the off-screen speaker is also characterized as the writer from the very beginning. The first scene begins, like Der Himmel über Berlin, by showing a text in the making. The final title of the film is only found in the way of a series of crossings out (2:00). At the end of the film, pencils move into the frame, undoubtedly showing the writing tools of the author Handke, who is assigned a central role as speaker and writer. This fact is significant in two ways. On the one hand, it marks

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the interaction between the media of image and text, which is a central theme of Handke and Wenders. On the other hand, Handke, whose film is based on his translation of Margarete Duras, again proves himself to be a ‘repeater’; he appropriates a text by transforming it through image and writing. Following the content of Duras’s text, the theme of sexuality is linked to that of death. Death seems to emanate from the woman (35:10), illness and death can be perceived in her (33:50). This gives the scenes shown an existential contour that connects this film to the narrated life plans in other texts by Handke. In this respect, the depiction of the encounter with a woman who not only promises pleasure but at the same time always reminds us of death follows a phantasm that also characterizes the central sexual encounter between man and woman in Kali (Potash)(K 93  f.). From the beginning, images of seeing (19:09–19:29) and death are thus linked (20:07–20:21). The man’s gaze captures the visual signs of the ambivalence of sexuality (21:52), which is one of Handke’s central themes. Lust and aggression, the desire for union, and an almost fatal strangeness between man and woman characterize it. In his early formula “Sexualität als letztmögliche Feindschaft” this psychological disposition is prefigured (GW 200). The psychological core for this ambivalence of feelings lies in man’s inability to love without preconditions. I have “niemals geliebt” (31:43) and “Ich liebe nicht” (40:20), he confesses to the woman. Thus, Duras’ text is headlined by a central topic of Handke’s writing. Duras’s suggestion that the film is directed against a homosexual, with the motif of a man incapable of love, in the end fundamentally misses the autoanalytic inscription of Handke’s own life in Durasʼ text (Struck 2014, 62). The author himself comments on this in an interview, “Ich habe mich da auch selbst umrissen gefühlt. Es ist ja die Beschreibung der Unmöglichkeit, einen Menschen ganz zu besitzen. Je mehr man besitzt, desto irrealer wird alles […]” (Müller 1989). This inscription of a very personal psychological connotation is linked to the particular mode in which the media of text and image interact in this film project. The fact that the voice from off-screen is at the end connected with the person of the author Handke appearing in the film gives this film version a completely different direction. In retrospect, it turns out that what is shown as a cinematic sequence of images was first created by language. From the very beginning, everything that happened was nothing more than a creation of words that needed no reality to be depicted. A key scene in this context is the superimposed transcript “Und dann lauschen Sie jenem Brausen, welches sich nähert. Sie lauschen dem Meer” (39:56), which is subsequently translated first into a series of body images and then into images of nature, in which the sea takes on a central role (1:03 ff.). It is probably no coincidence that Handke’s film begins with a scene comparable to Schlöndorff’s film adaptation of Eine Liebe von Swann a few years earlier: with a writing that prefigures the film images (Schlöndorff 1984). This includes the fact that he repeatedly interrupts the series of images with superimposed writing, and that the central sentence “Wie kann das Gefühl, zu lieben, erwachen?” is interpolated in a fade-in in black and capital letters (48:32). The peculiar ambivalence, in which both the visible body of the woman and the theme of love are linked in Handke’s work, has its reason here.

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The medium of film thus repeats the very configuration that also determines Proust’s À la Recherche du temps perdu. Passion and immediacy are first and foremost generated by language. Language creates a psychic reality that can be expressed in very different ways: Through the visual strategies of narrative, as in Proust, as well as through the cinematic adaptation and transformation of text in Handke. Which medium Handke prefers in this film project becomes clear in the final shots. After a book on the shore, they first show pencils and then, again in a fade-in black, a quote from Juan de la Cruz: “O word, my bridegroom, show me the place where you are hidden” (1:04:29). It seems by no means coincidental that the verse of the Spanish mystic that ends Mal des Todes is spoken at the very beginning of the film version of Die Abwesenheit by an old man whose subsequent absence constitutes the basic figure of this narrative because it decisively influences the behavior of the other protagonists (9:30). Not least through this linking of two of Handke’s film projects, it becomes clear that his films as a whole put into the picture continuations and variations of central themes that also determine his texts. As in the texts, therefore, an overarching context emerges in the films that links them together. At first, this leads to the fact that the text is hardly changed in the film. There, too, four people find each other as if by chance, and then set out on a common path, the destination of which they do not know at the beginning. Apart from the old man, they are a soldier, a gambler and a young woman. The narrative level of the film shows their departure, the path they seek through nature and landscape, and a coming together at the end. From a cinematographic point of view, it is striking that predominantly only the stations of this trek are assigned a three-dimensional space as a plot space. As soon as the figures start moving, on the other hand, the visualization of a sequence of landscape images dominates, which appears like a series of slide projections. They show the figures, who are mostly inserted into a long shot, only from a distance (1:00 ff.). It is a technique of distancing that can be compared to the epic storytelling of the medieval epic as well as to many film beginnings in the modern western film, both of which equally focus on the movement of the protagonist in space through a distancing long shot. In Die Abwesenheit, this method of presentation is further intensified by the fact that the sequence of landscape tableaux is interrupted by drawings (53:00 ff.). In this scenario, the theme of absence is visualized by the fact that the old man disappears in the course of their walking together and the protagonists do not manage to find him again. But in a departure from the book, the film ends with a monologue by the old man’s wife, who portrays his person in such a way that much of what he has said before is counteracted. The other motifs and plot elements taken from the book – irrespective of the fact that shifts are also made – are transformed into visual building blocks in the film in such a way that their meaning is made visually clear by the film-typical framing of the visual space. Through their iconic nature, they favour an unambiguous reading before they are contextualised. This is particularly true of image settings that appear like illustrations of leitmotifs of Handke’s narrative. This includes the interstitial space that allows a view through; it is marked by a path in both the departure of the

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woman and that of the old man, which obviously leads to Handke’s house in Chaville (6:59; 14:31); later, this view is repeated in the landscape (1:32:26). Corresponding to this is the soldier’s departure, which begins with the passage through a tunnel, also a frequent motif in the narratives (21:35). This condenses into an image of nature, which also signifies a turning point in the constellation of relationships between the characters. The young woman and the player are resting in front of a rock that has a portal-like incision leading into its interior. Among these standardized pictorial settings are the scenario of the clearing and a detached hut (1:30:37) and individual motifs such as the ladder, shown as an iconic sign of another knowledge both here (29:59) and in Die Schönen Tagen von Aranjuez (ARF 49:20; GU 550 f.). The view from a moving bus or the pasture fences, which mark a pattern on the landscapes under consideration, also belong in this category. At the beginning there are four scenes of departure. The woman is shown in her house, the soldier with his parents, the old man talking to his wife in his house and only the player is in a public space from the beginning. The movement of the characters is focused by the film’s images on individual stations, and the fact that they come from all over the place becomes clear in a shot in which the four of them walk towards each other at a crossroads from four different points of the compass (21:55–22:50). This constellation of four people in space will be repeated later at different turning points in the plot and in different landscape spaces, such as when they climb over a mountain ridge (1:00–1:40). The old man is a speaker from the beginning, he comments on the meeting and gives the signal to set out on a pilgrimage, which, however, is not to lead to the usual places, but to a ‘tierra nueva’ (25:40). At the same time, his speech seems like a meta-discourse that encompasses the characters’ immediate speech; it could just as easily be spoken off-screen. This makes this film project similar to the presentation technique of Mal des Todes. Yet another element heightens the tension between visualized action and speech. The old man speaks Spanish, the soldier and the young woman French, the player German. This mixture of languages is condensed in a scene in which the old man pronounces the invitation to “Hören”/“listen”, which stands at the beginning of the new experiences, in Latin, Greek, Spanish, and German (49:35). The subtitling of the image sequences and the mixture of languages thus not only create distance, but they also correspond to the principle of plurilingualism, which Handke’s texts also practice. The viewer therefore follows a journey in space and in language at the same time. As the landscapes are repeatedly contrasted with images and sounds of civilization, mountain bikers, joggers, hikers, cars, trains, and airplanes (25:50, 34:30, 51:00), the migration of the four simultaneously appears as a movement through time that contrasts their domain with images of modern civilization. This becomes clear in other ways as well. The entrance into a landscape that all the wanderers perceive as another realm is marked not only by a gendarme but also by a Roman boundary stone, recognizable with the inscription D. I. M. (‘Deo invictae Mithrae’) as a relic of a pre-Christian time (55:35–57:30). This threshold of space and time is interpreted, in accordance with Handke’s immanent poetology, by the old man as a transition to a land without signs. In the author Handke’s perspective, this means

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that the signs for deciphering this realm have yet to be found. The protagonists’ search is thus directed towards another truth or a new form of knowledge. At the same time, clear references to reality are shown. The wanderers find a package with a newspaper clipping whose title refers to the assassination attempt against the Spanish minister Carrero Blanco in 1973 and uses the word “Verschwinden” for it. Next to it, they notice books that refer to dream narratives and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. Because the wanderers also find the image of a boy in a sailor suit along with these, a cultural and a familial context for their journey open up at the same time. Both are very closely related to the psychological development of the protagonists (59:59). It corresponds to another element of Handke’s poetology that for the old man the crossing of the border means a return, the repetition of an experience he had long ago and which he now wants to make accessible to his fellow wanderers. This, too, marks the particular character of this journey, which, after a bus ride, is now not coincidentally continued alone still walking. Moreover, in accordance with a central guiding figure of Handke’s narrative, the old man characterizes this locomotion as a prerequisite for a particular mode of perception and the gaining of knowledge (50:00–51:50). Externally, this hike leads out of civilization. It becomes a search for a realm of silence, which seems like a visualization of the ‘other time’ that many protagonists of Handke’s texts are looking for. The old man articulates this and at the same time turns against a civilization that has lost this silence (1:03). His speech thus relates the film to the motif that is also central in the novel of the same name, named there in the ‘Song to Silence’ (1:14; A 175, 176). At the same time, it becomes clear that this journey leads into the unconscious. The woman determines the hike as a “pilgrimage into ourselves” (58:22), and indeed the protagonists learn more about themselves and their relationship to others. In terms of motifs, their hike is linked at the end to Gottfried Keller’s novel Der Grüne Heinrich, in which Handke exemplifies a comparable parallel between movement in space and self-awareness (1:41:12). As a tertium comparationis, this reference to Gottfried Keller connects the film of Die Abwesenheit motivically with Mal des Todes. There, not unlike the old man of Die Abwesenheit, the desiring man reads the text of the Grünen Heinrich to a woman in order to express – comparable to the protagonist of Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied – his self-experience in the mode of a literary cipher. Fundamentally, the movement of characters through space traces a central figure of Handke’s late narratives, which often re-enact the structural law of the medieval aventiure, governed by a three-cycle of departure, journey to destination, and return to starting point. Not unlike in the novel, however, the absence of the old man fundamentally alters the behavior of the remaining characters (1:17). Their search and then their quest for him therefore seem as futile as their journey was aimless and haphazard from the beginning according to the norms of the real world. “He who seeks does not find”, the soldier comments at the end, in Kafka’s words, on her path, which he declares to be a mere dream and over. In the same move, the young woman explains to the player that the path they have traversed has opened up nothing but a chimerical world for them (1:34). This very fact corresponds to the text, in which

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the absence of the old man causes the perception of the others to be heightened to an “Innewerden” (A 185), and their continuing on seems like a “beständiges, unablässiges Ankommen” (A 186). Their journey has turned into a search that leads each to his own self, the spaces that the characters passed through did not change the fact that each of them remained, according to the commentary, “im Exil überall” (1:01), precisely what characterizes their ‘tierra nueva’. The coordinates of this journey to one’s own self, which is linked to the external movement in space, become more clearly discernible when the protagonists are all gathered together in an inn and begin to talk about themselves. In the process, the camera initially shows them from the front and side by side, like the rudimentary tableau of a supper. The narratives of the four thus prove to be a secret counter-history to the journey. They provide, in addition to the external images of the landscape, the internal images that these have mobilized in the inner perception of the wanderers. Therefore, they reach into historical time as well as into the history of psychogenesis. The player’s memories mobilize images of his father and mother. As in Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams), the mother is remembered as an outcast from society (IS 17). She turns a hostile gaze on the child who comes to meet her, while the father appears before a wooden cross as a weary man who does not want his son to stay with him (1:09:31). It is a configuration that pervades Handke’s narratives as much as his Journale. Moreover, the crucial metaphor that links this film to Handke’s Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still) is the player’s reference to feeling seen by his parents in the landscape (1:09). The soldier remembers a window view from his childhood into an open plain that he wished was cultivated. The images of subsequent civilization dominate his memory until he realizes that his father, a painter, still painted the later completely changed landscape in his pictures as untouched: From a small vista he reconstructed the original empty plain (1:11). This constellation also provides the central image for the wanderings of the four, as the soldier describes how he had always walked through the landscape and, in doing so, through his father’s paintings (1:11:53). But because this father is no longer alive, the memory turns into a speech of loss that leads to the exclamation “père apparais!”; it continues later when the quest is resumed, and then is combined with a gesture of raised arms that recalls an invocation to God (1:12:16, 1:28:54). In any case, the imperative “apparais” no longer moves linguistically in the field of real experience. A subsequent cut marks a change in space and at the same time a change in discourse. The resistance that opposes the utopian project is made clear by the fact that historical time becomes the subject. When the camera shows a bed instead of the guest room, behind which a raw rock wall can be seen, the old man declares himself ready for silence, but at the same time wonders whether he can find it at all in the present time (1:12:30). In truth, the time of silence is over, and he relates what he owes to it, while at the same time describing how it made him haughty. In doing so, he wishes for his former receptivity to return, for she is “[die] Mutter der Phantasie.” The criticism of time that he refers to continues in the speech of the young woman. It also leads to a break in illusion for the film viewer, for the woman not

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only insults the old man as a liar, at the same time she refers to the Roman remains, which she has seen as dummies and film decorations, just like the viewers of the film. The names Euphrates and Tigris no longer apply to her; the land of the ‘tierra nueva’, which the film had opulently illustrated, is for her nothing but “le vide vide”, a complete void (1:16:14). She counters the presence suggested by the medium of film with the experience that the past can no longer be retrieved. This loss is impressively visualized by an image configuration that takes up the repertoire of the medium of painting. In one of the few hard cuts of the film, which simultaneously stages a change of place and a change of time, the old man’s wife is seen as a rear-view figure at an open window. It is a central configuration of Romantic painting (1:16:19), which, in Caspar David Friedrich, thematizes the consciousness of being lost in time and nature. Yet at the same time, this visual configuration appears like a dream scene; the film image does not allow for a clear reading, but brings its ambivalence as a medium of depiction and of the visualized imaginary into play at the same time. When a stole falls into the woman’s arm from above, she covers her face with it and seems to fall into a dream. The following cut, which again introduces a change of location and focuses the camera on the young woman talking about her home, could therefore also introduce a dream sequence. At the very least, however, the film viewer is led into a fundamental uncertainty because he cannot verify the authenticity of the film image. In this way, the specific simulation technique of the film links the real with the imaginary. At the same time, the young woman talks about a dream in which she imagines herself as the last person. This sequence not only marks a fundamental break in the plot because the old man has now disappeared (1:16:49), it also introduces a structure of repetition in which the protagonists’ inner images lead them through a series of film images that are supposed to represent actual reality. From this turning point, the journey of the remaining three, now accompanied by the old man’s wife, continues, but each of them initially takes a different path and follows a very personal goal. Only at the end do they find themselves together again under changed circumstances. The condition is that the search for the missing old man “[im] Grab der Kinder des Landes” (1:22:37) has been abandoned. The old man’s wife continues to search for the missing man, the soldier still follows the image of his father, whose return he repeatedly invokes, but the gambler and the young woman now find each other under new conditions. Her story is central to the entire film. In terms of form and content, the story connects the film to the text of Kali and the film project of Die Schönen Tagen von Aranjuez, in the process, an intermedial image repertoire becomes discernible that combines text and film. In addition, two aspects gain particular importance. On the one hand, the films and the text revolve around the theme of desire between man and woman, which is an overarching guiding principle in the complex history of relationships in the film. On the other hand, it becomes clear that this is simultaneously generated through the media of image and language. Here, the visual perception of the other through the gaze initially foreshadows an intensification of passion. In Mal des Todes, the male desire increases while voyeuristically looking at the woman; in Kali, the woman is looking for a man she only knows from a television image in the

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beginning (K 33); in Die Abwesenheit, the player finally discovers his passion for the young woman when she is the object of a medical demonstration in the lecture hall (A 75). But in all three cases the image is only the trigger of the passion, whose intensification and confirmation takes place through the word. In the dialogue of man and woman in Die Schönen Tage von Aranjuez, in the suggestive speech of the man in Mal des Todes, which in the end also makes the woman a speaker, and in the speech of the player in Die Abwesenheit, which is visualized as a parallel action of word and fantasy at the same time. Here the rule is: While the man speaks, the woman keeps her eyes closed (47:30). As in many of Handke’s later texts and plays, this film also knows a climax that not only allows contradictions to break open and contrast, but at the same time establishes a counter-discourse that counteracts the linear development of the protagonists. The old man’s wife becomes his harshest critic at the end and, of all things, during the Feast of Absence (1:38 ff.) and, like the young woman, she dismantles all the utopian formulas he has used. In doing so, she destroys the man’s central utopia with the words “Es ist nicht mehr möglich, in der Stille zu leben” (1:38:39). What in Die Abwesenheit becomes a covert self-critique by the author Handke of his literary configurations, because no “coming back”/“Wiederkehr” is possible for the time that has passed (A 170), is here combined with a critique of the cinematic simulation technique that is put forward in the medium of the film itself. By contrast, the soldier describes the old man like a sage who motivates his companions to search for their own selves by walking together (1:24:29), recalling long-­ forgotten things and giving meaning to the wandering of which the young woman speaks (28:06, 34:30). This is the narrative material of childhood, otherwise hidden only in the pages of a book (1:24:50). The soldier thus interprets the prophetic language of the old man, who had pathetically stylized walking and listening as paths to knowledge and self-knowledge, from a perspective that is at once psychogenetic and existential-philosophical. He thus resorts to the central double orientation of Handke’s texts (50:00 ff.). Moreover, the motif of childhood is at the same time underlined cinematographically. A Jew’s harp can be heard on the soundtrack, in Die Morawische Nacht the sign of a world that is removed from the demands of reality (1:26; MN 347 f.). The soundtrack thus follows the strategy of ‘mood music’; the same applies to the use of Schütz’ cantatas, which are played from offstage during the meal at the inn. The fact that such acoustic signals simultaneously set time markers becomes apparent at the end. The speech of the old man’s wife is almost drowned out by the sound of helicopters. What can only be assumed at this moment is confirmed by the continuation of the Feast of Absence, which attributes the increasing aggression between some of the participants to a historical reality that links this film to the theme of Der Große Fall. ‘The last war has already begun, you just don’t know it yet’, one of the participating women remarks to her counterpart. This puts into effect a sign that runs through the film from the beginning. Before the soldier begins his search, he speaks words at his post that cannot be understood at first (17:30), later it is revealed that he has written

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them on his hand (33:34). This opens an intermedial trail to a short notation in Gestern unterwegs (Travelling Yesterday) (GU 428), for it concerns three names of Chinese executed in the aftermath of the Tianmen Square riots. At the same time, the climax of this film is marked by a renewed change in the role of language and image as well as their interrelationship. The player’s desire for the young woman, which is only guaranteed by language, finds its symbolic confirmation and condensation not only in the environment of a salt works, but also through the natural sign of a crystallized block of salt, which the soldier delivers to the player and the young woman with the words “fin de recherche” (1:34:30). Earlier, the young woman had struggled to decipher a notebook at a bus stop that could be by the author Handke. The film brings writing and language together at this point, linking them with an intermedial reference. With the formula “Ich suche nicht, ich warte”, the woman adopts the very attitude that already acquires an existential contour in Der Chinese des Schmerzes (1:28; CS 252). This tension between language and image is continued at the end of the film. After a party participant refers to the last war, the camera abruptly shows children playing a game of hide and seek. Then it switches to a footprint on the bank of a watercourse, which becomes a sign of permanence because it does not blur (1:43:40). More than language, the images in this way vouch for both new beginnings and permanence. The film makes it clear that the orders of language and image coincide through an arbitrariness that opens up spaces of fantasy precisely in the intermedial interplay. Wim Wender’s film version of Die Schönen Tage von Aranjuez is also, at its core, a fairly exact transposition of Handke’s play from 2012; at the same time, it can be seen as a parallel draft to Mal des Todes. Above all, the central theme of desire and love is taken over in large part verbatim from the theatrical text. The description of the woman’s first sexual experience, still without a partner, in which, as she describes, her I became an It and an It became an I (11:43), prefigures the game of identities that the dialogue between the two enacts. In it, the man is first the questioner before eventually becoming a speaker as well (1:08:50). Even more than for the play, this dialogic structure forms a problem of representation for the film as well, which is openly addressed at the very beginning. “Wer macht den Anfang?” says the male interlocutor, and continues, “Ist es überhaupt eine Geschichte?” (7:15). Wenders consistently condenses and supplements this dialogical structure of the original with a frame of reference created by cinematographic means that unfolds its own medial language. He gives the film images both a focus and a strict rhythm that visually reinforces the text’s fixation on the speaking couple. Again and again, there is an internal framing of the pictorial space, dominated by an arbour in the centre of which the dialogue partners can be seen and which opens up views of the landscape that seem like window views. In addition, there is a consistent alternation of exterior and interior space, which not only structures the action space, but at the same time opens up different levels of reality. This is linked to a varying interplay of image and sound track. As in the film version of Die Abwesenheit, the sound begins before the image, here as there it is dominated by the sounds of nature. In Die Abwesenheit it is the rippling water, here it is

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the chirping of birds. This is combined with the sound of the wind in the trees, which increases in volume to correspond with the acceleration of the camera movement. The music on the soundtrack, which accompanies the shots and image changes, is given special weight. Right at the beginning, Just a Perfect Day by Lou Reed can be heard as a prelude to the summer conversation, while the camera pans from the cityscapes to the natural space and then to the house (2:13 ff.). At the same time, a view of the interior opens up, where even before the interior can be perceived, the play of lights from a Wurlitzer jukebox stands out (3:24). It becomes clear that some of the scene changes are connected in parallel with songs that sound from this jukebox. The music on the soundtrack is complemented by other elements. The woman’s central speech about her ecstatic experience is accompanied by another technical device, the sound of a typewriter (28:20). Moreover, the sounds contribute to a dramatization of the action. At the end, a dominant soundtrack with sounds of technical civilization indicates the end of the summer dialogue and, like the text, provides a pessimistic view of the collapse of history (1:23:40). The other film images and the camera work complement this structuring. The film begins with long tune-ups in long shot, with a view of the Arc de Triomphe from the Champs-Élysées (00:39 ff.). This is followed by other cityscapes that appear like a sequence of slides in slow framing shots. Contrasting this is the extreme focalization of the camera through a telescopic view that synchronizes space and time by simultaneously showing the skyline of Paris and the movement of a cyclist wearing the yellow jersey (59:30). Its counterfactual is the transformation of the film frame into a still life during the summer dialogue. The pans of the camera operate in a similar way. At the very beginning, they direct the view to a natural landscape and then a garden landscape. Finally, the camera movements focus the viewer’s gaze first on the ambience of the house and garden before directing it to the talking couple. Parallel to this, the camera underlines central points of the dialogue by increasing the speed of the image sequences and panning movement. This happens especially at the moment when the man’s questions become more demanding and the woman’s answers more intimate. Related to this is another variation of camera movement. As the dialogue between the two becomes dominant, as in the play, the theme of passion and desire, the camera begins to circle around the two speakers. This causes the perspective to constantly shift for the viewer, who not only sees the speakers once frontally and then from behind, but also perceives an overlapping of the two figures that appears like an exchange of their identities because it blurs the contours and constantly changes the positions of man and woman. It is the cinematographic equivalent of a passage in the text in which the woman perceives the man only as a silhouette (AR 19). By contrast, as she narrates the intimate part of her life account and reflects on her passion, the camera pans up to show the treetops in slow motion. Her focus, which guides the viewer’s gaze, becomes one with the woman’s gaze in this scene, the outside view becomes a psychological inside view (44:00 ff.). Unlike the text of Die Schönen Tage von Aranjuez, the film can unfold a form of self-reflexivity that is directed at both the medium of the image and that of writing.

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It is shown here more clearly than in Mal des Todes that the images perceived by the film viewer emerge from a text and that pictorial fantasies and strategies of narration already interact in it. In any case, it is already a central feature of the dialogue in the text that the man responds to the woman’s female description of earlier love relationships with a series of descriptions of nature (AR 61–63). These scenes are inserted into an initial constellation in which the film becomes self-reflexive with its specific means. Right at the beginning, it directs the viewer’s gaze not only to the interior of the house. Rather, the camera pans from the jukebox to the writer, who first invents the events the viewer sees and then transforms them into text with his typewriter (4:28). Yet this interplay is intricately shifted in time. At times, the writer describes what he and the spectator see at the same time, combining commentary and stage direction. At other times, however, he first writes down the scene in sections on paper before it actually begins to unfold in the simulated reality of the film. Thus the action, which consists of dialogue, is first written, and sometimes spoken, before it can be visualized with images. Even at the beginning of the film, which fixes the time and place of the action, the phrase “Und wieder ein Sommer und wieder ein schöner Sommertag” is first spoken and then written by the author before the film shows the speaking dialogue partners (5:49). At a later point, this interplay between two levels of reality is intensified by the fact that, for a short time during the dialogue shown, the voice of the woman and that of the writer pondering at his typewriter overlap in such a way that they sound like an echo. The two image planes that Wenders lets run side by side in these scenes are usually separated from each other by cuts, but sometimes they are also intertwined. This is illustrated by a scene in which the writer’s gaze from the interior of his house to the garden scene follows exactly the direction of the woman’s gaze. This scene is juxtaposed with another, in which the writer temporarily leaves the house, forming a triad with the two dialogue partners in the pictorial space of the story he is telling (1:14:09). Wenders complements these cinematic glimpses of the interaction of text and image with a striking visual iconicism. As he writes, the narrator draws in his notebook the outline of a jukebox, which corresponds with the contours of the frame in which the man and woman of the film appear (Fig. 13.3) (36:09). It is not only an ironic reference to Handke’s authorship, but also to his original idea of bringing a dialogue about this technical apparatus onto the stage. This interrelationship between the levels of time and reality is heightened when, in the interior of the house, a grand piano with Nick Cave singing Into my Arms suddenly appears in front of the jukebox, while in the background the dialogue partners in the garden appear frozen into a still. It is a striking superposition of now three levels of image and at the same time reality, which is emphasized by the fact that Cave’s song parallels the sound and image tracks (1:03:50). The interplay of interior and exterior space also serves as a metaphor for the interaction between the space of the imagination and a reality generated by text or image. Again, as in Mal des Todes, the interior becomes the starting point of a medially staged reality. Through its interaction of the media of text and writing, linked with the technique of editing, the film inscribes leaps in time and reality in its

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Fig. 13.3  Still from Wim Wenders: Aranjuez, 1:03:50

sequences of images on the visual and the sound track. The medial construction of reality is thus made vivid. Apart from this, and in accordance with Handke’s reflections in Versuch über die Jukebox (Essay About the Jukebox), the film realizes through its cuts what the author had in mind as a possible mode of writing, “[das] unverbundene[.] Miteinander vieler verschiedener Schreibformen” and a combination of “Augenblicksbilder[n und] weit ausholenden, dann jäh abbrechenden Erzählläufen” (VJ 67 f.). Wenders marks the breaking of the medial illusion and thus a further level of self- reflexivity by letting the writer leave the film’s image space and the viewer’s fantasy space at the end. At the same time the camera focuses on the jukebox, from which The World Is on Fire by Gus Black can be heard (1:28:30). In addition to this fixation on music, the film, which relies almost entirely on language and speech, ends up focusing on a wordless image. It remains behind its own medial possibilities by showing Cézanne’s painting of the Sainte-Victoire (1:30:30). In doing so, the camera traces the geological lines of the mountain seen in this painting, on which Handke’s reflections on self and image in the narrative of Lehre der Sainte-Victoire are based. For the last time, the film stages an interrelation of image and text by implicitly having the image refer not only to a landscape but also to a text. He thus ironically stages the law of effect of the modern medium, which is based on an interaction of image and perception that also marks the origin of writing. But while this image in Handke’s text transcends its limits by becoming a visual panel that enables reflection, the concentration on the image in the film ends with its erasure, with a pixelation of the pictorial space and the dissolution of all structures. The fact that the promise of the media of image and text alike is called into question testifies to a pessimism that has been dominant in Handke’s play from the very beginning and which the protagonists already formulated at the outset when they spoke of the summer of their dialogue possibly being the last. The noise attacks of

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technical civilization, from which the male dialogue partner suffers, also bear witness to this. Shortly before, the relationship of man and woman had been related to – and at the same time limited by – fiction and imagination, when the man could recognize the ideal role of woman solely in the world of Western films and in the medieval epic (1:16:00). Yet this promise of fictional designs is challenged by Handke’s recourse to the Don Carlos quote, “O wer weiß, was in der Zeiten Hintergrunde schlummert?” (1:25:20; AR 69  f.; Schiller NA-7.1, 364), which he inserts into both the text and the film. It is also called into question by the song The World Is on Fire, with which the film ends.

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14.1 The Fairy Tale of the Other World: Kali. Eine Vorwintergeschichte (2007) In his essay on the narrator, Walter Benjamin notes, “The fairy tale, which is still the first counselor of children because it was once the first of mankind, lives on secretly in the narrative. The first true storyteller is and remains that of fairy tales” (Benjamin 2007, 103–128). Peter Handke, whose reflection on narrative in Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos) parallels Benjamin’s reflections in some respects, follows this phrase of the philosopher in his story Kali. Eine Vorwintergeschichte (Potash) from 2007. However, the fairy tale forms only the innermost core of this story, which simultaneously displays elements of mysticism, the epic, the initiation novel and the road movie. It is important to realize, however, that the images and scenes presented in Kali are also part of an intertextual network of relationships that equally determines other texts by the author Handke and is closely linked to his metatextual reflections developed in the narrative. Many of the fairy-tale and mythical motifs correspond to the “mythe personnel” (Mauron 1962, 284, 286) that the author inscribes in his texts; at the same time, they belong to his cross-textual treatment of the themes of perception, experience and memory, writing and image. It is precisely in the fairy-tale narrative that the author presents here that this general writing principle of creative schematization becomes evident. It uses a limited stock of narrative set pieces to continually generate new stories and narrative situations. Observation and movement, departure and arrival, remembering and recognizing, crisis and new beginning, past and present, childhood and death, to name but a few of these points of reference, are at the center of a game of textual variation that, in the end, confirms above all the capacity of narrative itself.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_14

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The Journey to the Other Country At the center of this text is the narrative of the journey of the protagonist, a singer, to the region of her childhood. It leads first to the surroundings of a potash mine, the depiction of which, beyond the geological description, has all the features of a symbolically charged place. At the same time, the search for a child is described there, whose description, course and happy outcome indeed seem like a modern fairy tale. It is a story of losing and finding again at the same time, marked by contrasting experiences; moreover, the signs that structure this fairy tale are not always clear. This ambivalence, which is characteristic of the whole text, is evident first in its title and finally in the story of the protagonists themselves. ‘Kali’ is the name of an Indian deity who brings death and destruction, but afterwards also a new life. Of course, at the same time, the title Kali simply refers to the story’s location near a mine. There is no question, however, that it is about both. It is significant for the multi-layered nature of Handke’s narrative in this text that not only the readers, but also the protagonist herself, are repeatedly deceived about what they see and experience, and that the unambiguousness of the signs that surround them is fundamentally questioned. A central scene gives evidence. The woman initially sees a man she wants to look for as a lone figure on television, yet she gives herself the illusion that the man appearing on the screen wants to address her directly. He had turned in the direction of the white potash mountain when saying the word ‘Kali’ in the broadcast; she, on the other hand, believes that he is calling to her “wie in Zärtlichkeit” (K 33). As a result, a double deception occurs. That the man is in fact talking about the mountain of potash salts at his back and not addressing her becomes clear to both the singer and the reader much later. But even the engineer of the potash mine in the blind spot does not really know who the woman he has obviously always expected is. Only gradually does he come to believe that she is a death-bringing revenant of the goddess Kali. A comparable uncertainty also afflicts the narrator of the text, which is already evident in the enigmatic opening formula with which he begins his account. His narration is not simply a report, but an attempt to come to terms with the irritation that the visual perception of the woman triggers in him: “Auch mir hat sie Angst gemacht, macht sie Angst. Aber ich möchte mich ihr stellen” (K 7). This is not easy, however, because the narrator is by no means sure of his role; he must first find himself as well as his story. While he is initially only an observer of the events, in the course of the plot he finally also appears as the author and reader of his own narrative. The biblical formula “so steht es geschrieben”, with which he himself takes on the perspective of the reader, marks this distance. And only through his “umfassende[s] Zuschauen”, which leads to a precise observation of every gesture, every look, every exchange of words, do the characters of the story gain contour. The narrative arrangement of the text thus also includes a meta-reflection by the narrator on himself and his story. From the very beginning, the narrator himself takes on the perspective of the spectator, and it becomes clear that his narration not

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only emerges from visual perception, but also has to assert itself in competition with it. Moreover, it is directly related to the medium of music, as the narrator observes the singer from the moment he hears the final sound of a concert, the last during her winter tour. Thereafter, his gaze turns to the woman in different situations, during her walk or in the course of a taxi ride. Adding to the narrator’s irritation with the woman is his observation that her voice is not at all warm and that this can be explained by her way of looking. “Ihre Art Schauen war finster, und es hat mir Angst gemacht, eine seltsame Angst”, he remarks (K 14). At the same time, an intermedial perspective opens up at this point. The woman seeks out a cinema, and there her gaze is directed not only at the blank screen, but also at the spectators. The cinema screen appears as a field of psychic projection and imagination. It seems as if the text stages the tension between gaze and image that is constitutive of visual perception when it reports that the woman perceives a fantastically deformed reality as she leaves the cinema: A newspaper vendor proclaims eternal peace, but his reassuring message is counteracted by the aggressive and alienating behavior of passersby and house dwellers (K 20–23). The woman’s encounter with a musician from the orchestra leads to a joint visit to the bar, which ends rather abruptly with the woman pushing the man back: “Nicht Du. Nicht gestern, nicht heute, morgen. Keine Nacht, keine einzige, kein Tag, kein einziger. Keine Angst, du bist es nicht” (K 27). At the same time, the woman reports her intention to spend the winter in her childhood neighborhood and adds: “dort ist der Winter noch Winter. Oder: es ist eine Auswanderer-Gegend” (K 30). This first sequence ends with the scene described at the beginning, in which visual perception, language and imagination overlap in a communicative situation. Between glimpses of nature from her terrace and those into her hotel room, the woman sees on the screen of her television the mining engineer she wants to seek out (K 33). This search for the man, which leads to the land of childhood, is linked to a trip the woman takes to visit her mother, the description of which creates simple scenes that relate the present to the past. The bus driver, who later reveals himself to be the landlord of the inn where the woman is staying, is a childhood friend of hers; both describe themselves as readers, and it is said of the bus driver that his reading stems from “bedürftig sein” (K 47). As in a play within a play, actors appear who point ahead to what will happen later, for they perform a play entitled “Die Auswanderer” (K 48). At the same time, another intertextual register opens up. The woman’s interchange with her mother, who was obviously once a star, opens up a clear reference to the biblical gospel, circling around the phrase “life has appeared”, but the mother asks, “Und jetzt: das Leben ist verschwunden?” (K 57). The encounter, in the course of which it becomes clear to the daughter that her father committed suicide and that her mother did not want to give birth to her as a child (K 59), takes on a double function in the text. First, the mother’s narrative signifies a psychologically important turning point for the woman; it frees her to enter into a new story. But then it becomes apparent that the narrator makes this psychological turning point at the same time a turning point of the narrative itself by changing its status. Whereas up to this point the text was marked only by a secret

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tension between its realistic and fantastic elements, the description of the natural realm and the mysterious figure of the woman, the narrator subsequently combines the sign order of utopia with that of the fairy tale and the courtly epic. On the one hand, he quotes familiar images and set pieces from these textual genres; on the other, he replaces the description of action with a sequence of signs that condenses everything that happens into images. The narrative order is transformed into a symbolic order that unfolds its own logic and at every point transcends the mere depiction of reality. Utopia is announced in the encounter with her mother, whose experience of a psychological shock has at the same time triggered an initiation in her. After her husband’s suicide, she seems to remain in a self-imposed placelessness and timelessness, doing “nothing” all day long (K 60). It is this attitude that the daughter approaches. Even at the beginning of her journey to the childhood place, all identifiable place and time are erased for her (K 35), and later it becomes apparent that she wants to stay away from the signs of civilization as well as from real geographical designations (K 68). For the narrator, she no longer is “im Jetzt und Jetzt, im Hier und Hier” (K 35). The chapter “Un pays dont nul ne revient” from Chrétien’s Lancelot, which accompanies her as a book from the beginning (K 36), marks her exit from real time. It also allows her to perceive a Europe other than the present one. A fellow traveller concludes that what is described in Chrétien’s epic is the “Geschichte von Europa, dem anders aktuellen, von unserem Europa” (K 44). This voyage, which seems to lead to a “Utopia” in the literal sense of the word, is associated with familiar motifs of classical utopia. The central theme of the search for a new world can be read as the name of the ship ‘Die Auswanderer’, it is connected with the motifs of the sea and the island. The area of the potash mine appears not only as a remote utopian district, but also as an asylum for the emigrants who are actually refugees. This reiterates the tension between exile and asylum typical of eighteenth-century utopias (Renner 2019, 507; Haas 1961, 67). As in many classical utopias since Gottfried Schnabel’s Insel Felsenburg, Handke’s journey to the unknown land has salvific connotations. Entering the island’s harbor seems to the woman like arriving at a border “von der Art, wie sie in unseren Breiten längst abgeschafft sind” (K 71), and it is no coincidence that insertion into this other world requires instruction from a spiritual person, a priestess. Like the mother, the priestess lives in an environment that seems cut off from the rest of the world; like the mother, she does not believe that the new generation can also create a new world. A sign of this are the frescoes with images of the biblical story painted over by the iconoclasts in the past, which are now almost obliterated by salt corrosion (K 80). Of her own generation, this pastor judges, “wir richten nichts als Unheil an in der lieben Welt, und das nicht einmal durch unser Tun und Lassen, sondern durch unser bloßes Dasein” (K 81). The comparison with an earlier generation, in which men still stood before the church, shows her now only a church full of men who promise nothing good. The men of the present embody for her “[…] das Unheil. Das schuldlos Schlechte nimmt inzwischen, machtvoll und auch nicht mehr zu bekämpfen, die Stelle des einstigen Bösen ein” (K 82).

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In this way, the images of utopia are transformed into a documentation of the lostness of salvation that seems in need of redemption and in which the children would have every reason for a “gottgewollte” children’s crusade (K 83). It is the modern variant of a world condition that Georg Lukács described as “transzendentale Obdachlosigkeit” (Lukács 2009, 59, 127) that accounts for the end of the old epic and the need for a modern narrative form, which for Lukács is the novel as a stand-in for the epic. The narrative of Kali follows this figure of thought when the speech of the priestess is about the present state of the world being tellable “von niemandem” (K 87). For Lukács, who follows this very judgment, the creation of a context must therefore take the place of a lost immediacy (Lukács 2009, 59), and here he is decidedly in concordance with Handke. Under these conditions, the search for the missing child, which takes place in the background of the plot, simultaneously acquires a salvation-historical, a mythical and a fairy-tale significance. This multiply coded situation of the search also requires a new textual form: the descriptive narrative is replaced by the lyrical speech of the priestess, which is directly reminiscent of that of Nova in Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Village; ÜD 96–106). The clergywoman wants to intervene in a seemingly lost state of the world. Ja, es ist die Hölle. Und ganz anders als in der Vorstellung. Und ganz anders als in der Überlieferung. Eine Hölle ohne Teufel. Eine Hölle ohne Flammen. Eine Hölle ohne Schall und Wahn, erzählbar von niemandem. Eine melodische Hölle, eine summende Hölle, eine Hölle aus zehn Milliarden verschiedener Erkennungsmelodien. Eine Hölle der Apparaturen, Tastaturen und Systeme. (K 86 f.) It is part of the special nature of this text that its utopian elements not only combine directly with fairy-tale motifs, plot patterns and narrative sequences. They also complement Handke’s typical descriptions of nature, which on the one hand refer to Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming) in terms of the history of the work and on the other hand intertextually to the “sanfte Gesetz” of Stifter’s novellas Bunte Steine (Stifter HKA-2.2, 12). A parallel also emerges with Goethe’s Novelle, whose events unfold in a topography of symbolic places. These literary references, which also identify the author as a reader of the Bible, are found alongside explicit references to everyday culture that could not be more different. John Lennon and Freddy Quinn are as present as Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. In the protagonist’s encounter with the man from the mine, the places and plot configurations that could also be elements of a romantic fairy tale become condensed. This begins motivically with the singer’s hike through alienated nature and

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the ascent of a mountain that leads to a mysterious tree house where the sought-after stranger from television lives with his child. He seems to have been expecting her and greets her with the surprising formula ‘You’ve been been letting me wait for you for a long time’ (K 93). This encounter also seems fairytale-like to the reader in that it follows a set of rules that he does not know. This is first evident in the description of their night meal. The man sits with his back to the woman, obviously they are not allowed to look each other in the eye: “Er will nicht, er darf nicht Auge in Auge mit ihr geraten” (K 97). At the same time, the man speaks of his own personal guilt; this passage in particular reveals an autofictional inscription that links it to the other texts in Handke’s later work. He has not let his wife get close to him and has blamed external circumstances in each case (K 98). Throughout his life he has waited for a third party to light the way for him and his wife, but it is only when she has died that he can be close to her in the apparitions of the night (K 99). A comparable constellation is repeated in the relationship with the stranger described below. Everything the two of them say follows the guiding phrases of a secret set of rules that he cannot control. Without really knowing it, he believes he recognizes a messenger of death in the woman; without resistance, he justifies his distance from her as a law he finds in Chrétien’s Lancelot. The protagonist of the latter is not allowed to enter the queen’s room: Only his heart, not his body, is allowed to do so (K 100 f.). Thus, everything the man does is subject to a law that demands unconditional submission from him as well as from the woman. “Warum ich? Warum gerade ich?” he asks later, when he begins to realize that the woman’s appearance does not herald a love adventure but only his death. She, however, only says, “So ist es gedacht. So habe ich es gesehen, auf den ersten Blick” (K 125). When he asks her why she wants to die, she replies, “Ich möchte nicht. Ich muß. Ich soll. So ist es bestimmt. So wird es gefordert” and continues “ich habe es ausgesprochen, daß ich es tun werde; habe so mein eigenes Urteil gesprochen” (K 114 f.).

The Inscription of the Real These literary references are associated with images that, in the status of alienation, suggest familial and social constellations that recognizably belong to the real world. On the one hand, there is the memory of the father’s violence towards the son (K 103) and of the parents living together, which makes them both appear as lost figures (K 107  f.). On the other hand, there is the description of the society of “Auswanderer”, which presents very precise images of a global migration of poverty in literarily alienated language. These are, it should be noted, images that are described in such a way that they can be empathically perceived. Their discursive recoding, however, is left to the reader alone; the text itself refuses it. In this way, the text, in the mode of a fairy tale narrative, but all the more pointedly for that very reason, makes clear a writing strategy that also determines other texts by Handke. The people working in the mining complex are “die Flüchtlinge dieses neuen Jahrtausends”, who are no longer at home anywhere, who in the meantime have come “from all regions”, they are “Umstrukturierte”, who want to work but no

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longer can, because they have become incapable because of their flight, probably forever. “Sind, ein jeder für sich, in diese Landschaft gestolpert und gepurzelt wie auf offenem Meer von einem Schiff gestoßen und dabei fast ertrunken. Und der Schock weicht nicht. Sie sind auf ewig Schiffbrüchige” (K 110) They have therefore lost all vitality in their struggle for survival (K 111). Because they can no longer dream or love, there are no children left in the area. It is all the more disconcerting that precisely here the priest delivers a sermon which, for the narrator, resembles a “Abkanzeln” a denunciation of the people; she calls them “Gesindel […] auf Gottes Erde”, also “Desperados” (K 156), and speaks not at all about the situation of the emigrants but about the prevailing “Zeit der Schamlosigkeit” (K 157). It is undoubtedly a speech that reproduces an extra-textual discourse, barely encoded into a sermon.

On the Way to Narrative: Image and Language The central figure of thought in Handke’s texts that every crisis also unfolds its overcoming, is condensed in this fairy tale in the depiction of the woman who, as a mythical as well as a fairy tale figure, can bring death and life at the same time. In this way, this text also becomes a book of transformation, which, in turning away from the everyday, discovers a new world that is fairy-tale-like and may seem alienating to some. At the same time, as in Der Bildverlust, the presentation and language of the text depart from familiar registers. The narrator frequently interrupts himself, asks questions, pauses and starts again, and not infrequently violates the usual grammatical and stylistic forms. Consistent with the texts of Der Bildverlust and Die Morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night), this is linked to a medial reflection that relates to visual perception and narrative as much as to the media of text and image. The story of the search for the child, which accompanied the story of man and woman as a subtext from the beginning, makes this evident. That the two stories are interconnected becomes apparent when the woman begins her search and brings it to the forefront of the plot. Now another characteristic of the woman gains importance, for she is described by the text as a “finder”. This ability is based on her “woandershin schauen”; finding, she herself elaborates, “geschieht entweder im Augenblick, im Handumdrehen, oder erst viel, viel später!” (K 147). But other factors come into play in their search for the child. The grandfather, a painter, first imitates for his wife his grandchild’s “Gangart und Geschau”, while his wife imitates his “Art zu reden und dessen Stimme” (K 149). Something else entirely, however, becomes decisive. In the painter’s studio hangs a seventeenth-­ century landscape painting (K 150 f.), which the wife looks at closely. In the light of her flashlight, she discovers an initially indeterminate shape that is obviously a child’s vertebrae. This scene reconstructs a motif central to Handke. The woman’s gaze uses the picture as a “Sehtafel”/ “visual chart” on which, like the protagonist of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (The Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire), she discovers lines that are determinative for her; moreover, these remain visible “as an afterimage even after the lamp has been switched off” (K 151).

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The text thus combines a double change of view. On the one hand, the narrator now reports that he sees the woman standing in a landscape that resembles that of the painted picture. On the other hand, the real landscape appears to be transforming under the woman’s gaze. An idyllic scene is revealed in which one seems to hear voices from another time saying, “Wir führen keinen Krieg” (K 155). Even before this, the narrator has the impression that the woman has just crossed a threshold, “die Schwelle zur Heimlichkeit” (K 152). In this way, reality transformed into a painted image is immediately juxtaposed in the text with the fairy-tale transformation of the image into a real space of action. The motif of transformation, which Handke’s texts repeatedly describe as the effect of a medial transformation, from perception into image, from image into writing, also determines this fairy tale. At the same time, however, this configuration is also transcended, for the fairy tale, following its own law, imagines another time. This shows a state of the world before all social orders. In this way, the fairy tale definitively withdraws the social registers of utopia that Kali’s text records. In its place comes the description of a time that does not yet know a representation of reality through the signs of writing. The scene of redemption that concludes the text thus unfolds a text-theoretical and a media-theoretical perspective at the same time. It is no coincidence that before this the narrator intervenes and begins to think about what he should not do. “Laß diese Frau. Meide sie. Todesgeschichten, insbesondere gewaltsame, sind nicht dein Fach”, he admonishes himself, and subsequently pauses as an observer (K 115). Even when the two are in the mine, before they climb the mountain with the original intention of throwing themselves down from a ridge there, the narrator loses contact with the action. He can still hear what the two are saying, but he is now somewhere else, not in the depths there (K 126). And in the decisive scene on the summit ridge he notes: “Ich kann die beiden nicht mehr sehen und schließe die Augen […]” (K 131). It is there, at the summit, where what is actually like a fairy tale happens. It is not simply the decision of the two to live on and together and not to submit to the mythical death sentence, but it consists in the rediscovery of a language that is solely at the disposal of the individual before any codification by a writing that transports social rules and commandments. Listening to the wind, the man hears that his supposed death sentence is said but not written: “Und – da – es – nirgends – geschrieben – steht, – und nur – gesagt – ist, – müßt – ihr – es – nicht – tun”, he speaks as if in a trance (K 132). And further he hears, “Ihr seid frei. Ab mit euch” (K 133). The redemption of the two consists in the fact that they are referred to their own origin in language and are thus also freed to speak. This turn of phrase, which traces the unexpected event of a fairy tale, thus becomes at once a metatext about the latter itself. It radicalizes the idea of the fairy tale as a medium that bases its power on the immediate language of a narrator and does not necessarily require writing. This is the very fantasy of origin that this text sketches. During the ensuing feast, the revelers sketch the fantasy of a prehistoric social order ‘avant la lettre’. Not only do they leave behind the “beleidigende[n] Geräusche der Gegenwart”, but they express a common wish: “Und kein Vaterland und keine Muttersprache mehr. Und keine Besitztümer und sonstigen -tümer mehr. Und keine Zwiebeltürme und

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sonstigen Türme mehr. Und das Spielen kein bloßer Zeitvertreib mehr: Freude, ja, Freude” (K 142). It corresponds to the immanent logic of the text that now the time has come when the child can be found again. His physical return becomes at the same time a historical sign. The change of times that this announces seems at first to be contextualized in the speech of the priestess in terms of salvation history: “Das Leben ist neu erschienen. Die Träume sind zurückgekommen: Schaut, schaut  – hört, hört” (K 158). But at the same time, the pastor calls for a radical focus on the present: “Dort leben, wo die Welt ergreifend ist. Und wo ist sie ergreifend? Hier, im Toten Winkel. […] Unser Geburtstag ist heute” (K 159). This idea of the future in the present is based, and this is the final fantasy of this text, on an idea of the origin of narrative, which alone can preserve this state. At the same time, it is linked to a hope that is directed towards the child when he or she starts telling (K 159). The origin of times, of the fairy tale and of storytelling are one.

14.2 The Revocation of Modernity: Der Große Fall (2011) The text initially published in 2011 tells a simple and presuppositionless story. A man, who we learn he is an actor, leaves the house of a woman with whom he has spent the night, crosses the natural space of a forest until he reaches the center of a large city, presumably Paris, through outlying settlements and suburbs, where he is supposed to arrive for filming. On the one hand, this limited story is peculiarly exaggerated by the title Der Große Fall (The Great Fall); on the other hand, it presents itself in a web of quotations that refer to other authors and also to Handke’s earlier texts. However, these references are not always as clearly marked as in the scene in which the protagonist is greeted as one who carries “das Gewicht der Welt” (GF 185). However, this strategy, which characterizes the author’s writing earlier, is exaggerated to such an extent in Der Große Fall that it leads to a hybridization of narrative in which intertextual references to other authors as well as to the author’s own work are radically transformed and used aleatorically. The tense relationship between pre-text and text creates a “negated dialogicity” (Blasberg 1991, 514, 525, 534). It also leads to a recontextualization of preceding texts by the author. While comparable narrative games always unfold a sense-giving experience that seems to endure at least temporarily, the game of references now ends with the marking of an irresolvable contradiction; it serves to elaborate a historical moment that presents itself under the sign of an irreversible catastrophe. This double and at the same time contradictory order of the text corresponds to a complex narrative stance. On the one hand, the narrator oscillates between distance and closeness to what is reported; on the other, the protagonist of his story also tells of another, about whom he reads a story that he begins to compare with his own. This narrative play with identities and certainties corresponds to a doubling of content. In the context of his protagonist’s story, the narrator simultaneously describes a social, historical and mental constellation that is the precondition for his own

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writing. There is much to suggest that in doing so he also communicates the perspective of his inventor. Text, metatext and authorial reflection are directly intertwined. This inversion, characteristic of the late text, not only follows a track that has marked Handke’s writing from its beginnings, it also leads to a rejection of modernity that radicalizes an attitude Handke had already begun to take. While the experimental writing of his early texts was still oriented towards an aesthetic concept of modernity and followed the gesture of permanent innovation, he later fundamentally questions the concept of political modernity as a linear model of progress. Already in Die Reise nach La Défense, he deciphers the social model of enlightened society as an economically based order of power (WÜ 36). In early texts such as Die Geborgenheit unter der Schädeldecke and Was soll ich dazu sagen he extends this line further and marks the incompatibility of the standardized political discourse with individual experience. In Winterliche Reise (A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia), he finally brings the two positions together by not only stating a disappearance of the world in the images, but also by emphasizing that the images become an instrument of political manipulation (WR 39, 72, 149). Both figures of thought are taken up in Der Große Fall. In the images of the city the dialectic of progress as a transition from emancipation to violence and domination becomes clear. At the same time the city bears the signature of a world created by the media, which suppresses authentic perception just as much as it manipulates political judgement. This strategy of Der Große Fall already prepares itself in the narrative linking of psychological references and philosophical orientations that characterizes the late novels and Journale (Journals). It also connects with the autobiographical self-­ reflection and poetological reflection in the so-called Tetralogie (Tetralogy), and finally with the later existential-ontological characterization of the narrative, which lays the foundation for an epistemological questioning of the enlightened concept of modernity and describes a reality withdrawn from the control of the subject (Nenon/ Renner 1989, 104–115; Huber 116–119). Der Große Fall takes up these lines and connects them with a political judgment on contemporary society. The different concepts of visual perception that Handke’s texts unfold reflect this change in the conception of modernity; in the process, different paradigms for the status of the subject emerge from the capacity of visual perception. Of particular importance is the notion, developed in recourse to antiquity, of “Einheit von Gewahrwerden und Vorstellungskraft” expressed in Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across) by the Greek word leukein (CS 179). It describes an interaction of viewer and object in different space-time coordinates that connects aesthetic images with life-historical experiences. However, the author does not consider his writing in this phase as a depiction of reality, but as a “Nachsprechen” of the world (GB 155). When Handke talks about a reconstruction “im Sinne einer neuen Moderne” (Wagner 2010, 151) that is unfolded in seeing, he places these two models of perception in a new context. He now aims above all at the subversive power of visual perception. This is directed against the manifestations of the modern world and the visual worlds of its “Universal-Pictures” (GW 34), as well as against the “Diktat

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[der] Nachrichtenwirklichkeit” (GW 291). Der Große Fall thereby points out the simultaneously visual and mental conditioning of humans in the age of the image. As in Der Bildverlust, the search for a new perception that he stages is not aimed at the naïve gaze; rather, it unfolds in the basic figure of a conscious retrieval of what has been lost. This is what the author means when he talks about “natural” images that he contrasts with “artificial” images of the media-mediated world. From this point of view also he calls “Bildverlust”, the loss of these natural images, it is the real catastrophe of humanity (BV 726). When “[der] Naturschatz” of images is exhausted, humanity “flounders” only as an appendage to the “gemachten, serienmäßig fabrizierten, künstlichen Bildern, welche die mit dem Bildverlust verlorenen Wirklichkeiten ersetzen” (BV 744). What Handke reflexively presents in Der Bildverlust, he ascribes to the protagonist of Der Große Fall as an experience. This is developed in a complex narrative situation that simultaneously presents a narrator, the man he depicts, and the story the depicted reports. While the spatial and temporal coordinates of this story are quite simple – the described migration from the natural realm to the center of a city takes place between a real thunderclap and the expected “Great Fall” in a single day – the role of the narrator changes decidedly. A detached beginning is followed by a slow approach to his character. The perspective of the narrator, who eventually speaks of ‘one’ actor and increasingly puts himself in the actor’s place (GF 40), becomes intertwined with that of his protagonist at the end; increasingly, sentences are spoken from his inner perspective. This oscillation between identities corresponds to an abrupt change between empathy and defensiveness towards all the persons described, whose psychological motivation is by no means clear. Therefore, the fact that the protagonist is an actor seems to signal that the entire narrative situation is in fact an experimental game configuration. Through this narrative strategy, the boundary between the real and the imaginary is consistently erased. The actor imagines situations that could redefine his relationship with the woman he has just left. He believes himself to be in a “Durcheinander von Ortsgefühlen” that appear to him “als lägen sie in einem Innenraum, der sich zugleich im Freien befand, und umgekehrt” (GF 42). Therefore, the acting that is spoken of becomes a metaphor for a life strategy. For as an actor, the protagonist has the ability to constantly and playfully cross the boundary between conscious and unconscious experience. Unlike the actors in films, whose being asleep is questionable (GF 12), it is said of him that he really slept while “er den Schlaf spielte, und schlief und schlief, und spielte und spielte” (GF 12). Undoubtedly, the narrator has deliberately chosen a protagonist in whose life the transition between the “he” of the film roles and the “I” of the actor is fluid. In his films, the latter becomes one whom everyone recognizes immediately, whereas in ordinary life he is not perceived by others as the actor of any particular role (GF 16). In the meantime, however, he has stopped acting, he is convinced that there are “no more stories to tell”, nevertheless we learn that his departure from the woman’s house is only a stop on the way to a new film story in the city, which is obviously about an act of violence (GF 18).

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Images of Places and Times The juxtaposition of a natural realm that makes individual experience possible and a civilization that appears as a latent or overt order of violence, as depicted in Der Große Fall, is also prefigured in many of the author’s previous texts. While in Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell) a reconciliation between nature and civilization can take place in the garden of the director John Ford at the end and the images of the imagination and the medium of film coincide, now the realm of nature is already permeated by signs of destruction (v. Hofe/Pfaff 1980, 74). The dialectic of modern civilization no longer knows any protective spaces; in this, the late text follows a consideration already developed by Don Juan (Don Juan – His Own Novel) and Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos). It is important to remember that Handke’s texts deal with the theme of violence on very different levels. The ever more precisely defined violence in political constellations, in the familial context, and especially in the relationship between man and woman, and also the idea of violence of the gaze demanding conformity, are prefigured by the murder in Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick) (TO 7) or the dreamed killing for lust in Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling) (SWE 34 f., 43, 64). There is a comparable scene in Der Große Fall when the protagonist describes how a collector is stung to death by a swarm of wasps. It is both a real and a symbolic murder, for this man, who is actually a stockbroker, also represents all those who destroy the integrity of the forest – in which the protagonist feels safe – through behavior that is the hallmark of modern urban civilization. Like the theme of visual perception, that of violence not only takes up representations in Handke’s work that precede it, but at the same time intensifies them by relating political, psychological and aesthetic reflection to one another in the sign of violence. While violence between man and woman seems to erupt suddenly in Der Kurze Brief zum Langen Abschied, it is founded in the context of rural society in Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams). In Der Chinese des Schmerzes (Across), a swastika is a reminder of political violence; in the Balkan Texts, not unlike in Don Juan, violence is already constantly visible through the vapour trails of fighter planes in the sky. In Der Große Fall, however, political violence seems present in all the images that define civilization before the “Great Fall”. It appears most clearly in the president’s media presentations, which the protagonist sees on a giant screen in the heart of the city, where the politician describes his military intervention not as war but as the fulfillment of a divinely ordained course of history (GF 235). While protest rises in society against a president who “kein Gesicht hat” and whose way of walking is a “Geschichtsfälschergang”, the actor is left only with symbolic resistance, subverting the president’s statesmanlike demeanor by reenacting it (GF 237). These images of political violence are directly linked to a father fantasy of the protagonist (GF 239), who remembers the constricting promises of his father, which only allowed things to enter the son’s head that he had not thought of before, and also to a reflection on his own role as a father. This is triggered by a chance

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perception in the Metro, where, in the company of two young women, he sees a newborn baby in a basket looking up at him, which he assumes suggests the sentence: “Vater, warum hast du mich verlassen?” (GF 233; Blasberg 1991, 528; Huber 2005, 229). It is a fantasy obsessively inscribed in Handke’s texts and repeated in changing configurations in other texts as well (A 161; OD 244; AF 488, 522; GU 419; VB 150, 367). Corresponding to this parallelization of political and familial violence is the depiction of the relationship between husband and wife, which unfolds through mutual perceptions and is characterized from the beginning by a latent violence that condenses in a love scene in the end. There, affection for the woman is transformed into the fantasy of knocking each other down and fighting and tearing each other to pieces until they will be “zeitlebens ineinander eingerenkt” (GF 279 f.). This is also a scene that determines Handke’s writing as an authentic memory as well as a textual configuration (Herwig 2012, 233–235), and also the film version of Mal des Todes (The Stigma of Death).

Poetization of the Real The relationship between man and woman in particular shows that in Der Große Fall there are no longer any lasting fantasies of reconciliation. Gaze and counter-­ gaze, image and counter-image do not cancel each other out, but unfold an irrevocable dialectic. This becomes clear above all in the way in which moments of epiphany are coupled with the impression of crossing “Zeitschwellen” (GF 57); in this way, too, an earlier configuration in Handke’s work is first taken up and then subverted. First of all, these time thresholds are linked to natural signs, which are also given a central meaning in other texts by Handke; here it is the feather of a falcon. These signs assign the time thresholds to different spaces of experience; Paris, Rome and Madrid are mentioned (GF 58). At the same time, these fundamental changes in perception also lead in Der Großen Fall to a change in the perceiver himself, who suddenly assumes the identity of another. The actor transforms himself into the old man he thinks he sees, he begins to tell his story (GF 67): narration becomes an attempt to escape the “violence of context” (Kluge/Negt 1981, 19) by rehearsing the “Gegenwartsruck” (GB 142). These acts of spontaneous imagination are juxtaposed with a conscious poetic program for perception and narrative. As in other texts by Handke, it is linked to an erotic one; the fantasy arises in the moment of turning towards a woman. The guiding principle of the poetic program in Der Große Fall is Handke’s renewed orientation towards Goethe. Obvious references to Goethe’s work run through the text; here too, however, it is true that every narrative development of references also aims at recoding them. This is made clear by the fact that the author contrasts his reference to Goethe’s late work with the pathos of Faust, for the latter seems to present him with precisely a model of appropriation and subjugation of the world, the catastrophic end of which is completed in Der Große Fall.

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From this perspective, the reference to Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister acquires its significance, but it opens up a significant dialectic. For the protagonist of Der Große Fall follows an “Irrtumslehrpfad” which, with its concentration on the precise description of nature, is oriented towards the beginning of the novel Die Wanderjahre and towards Wilhelm’s perception and interpretation of nature under the guidance of Jarno (GF 61–63; Goethe HA8, 6–12). Therefore, this practice in seeing and recognizing at the same time produces “Irrtumsblitze” (GF 64), which result in a “Suchen, Finden, Verlieren, Im-Kreis-Gehen, ein Verwechseln in der Natur und durch die Natur” that has symbolic power (GF 66). This, too, is comparable to a basic narrative figure of Wilhelm Meister’s ‘Bildungsweg’/ pathway to personal cultivation. This tension initially gives rise to counter-images to a modern world perceived as a threat, whose fatal status becomes visible to the protagonist as he makes his way through the forest. In the process, many of the images he perceives correspond to the film’s simulation technique, in which space and movement are systematically coupled. “Nur im Gehen öffnen sich die Räume und tanzen die Zwischenräume” is said programmatically in this regard already in Die Abwesenheit (Absence) (A 113; Gamper 1987; Wenders 1991; Wenders 1992, 32 f.). It is no coincidence that elsewhere the activity of collecting and a collector are described, who chracterizes his activity as an art consisting of “Forschergeist, Rhythmus und Fingerspitzengefühl” (GF 97). It is significant that here, too, Handke simultaneously opens up an intermedial reference that underscores the timelessness of this program of world appropriation. The orientation towards the “Obere Leitende”, a concept which also refers to the late Goethe (GF 174), connects with his fantasy of the “Sanfte Lauf”, which reminds him of the film with the same name with Bruno Ganz from 1967 and of his own earlier attempts to “survey” the surroundings (GF 173). Another cinematic memory comes into play here. The wandering actor, who wants to transform everything back into the image of a great harmony through imagination, knows that even this attempt would only produce a “Fälschung”, but he calms himself by remembering an actor who walks in the gravel in his last film and says “das Gehen im Kies ist so tröstlich” (GF 87). It is reminiscent of Handke’s film version of Die Linkshändige Frau (The Left-Handed Woman). The self-­ assurance that the protagonist gains at this point foreshadows his later fantasy in which he becomes the savior of his son, who finds himself in a fantastic threat because a “third hand” breaks directly from inside his chest (GF 210). This scene is also depicted against the backdrop of an intermedial reference. It explicitly emphasizes that it is limited to the familial sphere and does not unfold the cinematic pathos of Gran Torino, where Clint Eastwood sacrifices himself for someone else. This holistic experience corresponds to a scene in which the protagonist participates in a mass in a chapel in the forest. There, the celebration of the Eucharist is suddenly transformed into a sexual fantasy; the body of a woman is felt as the “Herabkunft der Allgegenwart des Geistes in der Nacht” (GF 179), as a mysterious power that allows the man to experience the “Begehren des Begehrens des anderen” (GF 180). Again, with this guiding phrase, the text follows Jacques Lacan’s dictum

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on female sexuality, which Handke already relates to his own notion of the “Versöhnungswunsch” in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (LSV 25). These references prove that – complementary to the capacity of visual perception in natural space – Handke narratively emphasizes the importance of imagination in psychic space. Already for the blind narrator of Die Hornissen (The Hornets), narrated, remembered, and imagined images had overlapped, linking memory and the present (H 15). Handke’s collaboration with the director Wim Wenders develops this configuration further. With reference to nineteenth-century analysis of visual perception, the latter describes in Bis ans Ende der Welt how the “biomechanical process of seeing” is also recorded synchronously with the images perceived (Wenders 1987). As film theory from Kracauer to Balázs to Kittler emphasizes, the imaginary and the imagination coincide.

Beyond Language This differentiation of visual perception is a prerequisite for the subversion of the modern world determined by media, which Der Große Fall explicitly formulates. It definitively places the theme of seeing and perception in a political context and at the same time provides a psychological complement to the self-overestimation of seeing in modernity criticized in Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung. In Bis ans Ende der Welt, the visualization of dreams blinds people with eyesight, and the technical reproduction of inner images leads to profound dissociations. In Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay), filming appears as an act of violence; in Der Himmel über Berlin, the angels criticise the fact that that people’s eyes are only “gewohnt zu nehmen”. In Handke’s late text Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst), too, the fixation on the problem of visual perception also unfolds a poetological program characterized by intermedial reflection. Of central importance now is the distinction between the immediacy of the gaze and the medial forms of communication in speaking and writing. The love enacted by Don Juan takes place beyond speaking, in the immediacy of seeing. To the narrator, seeing this character seems like recognition in the literal sense of the biblical word. The seductive power of this lover lies not in his speeches, certainly not in his sexual potency, but in the power of his gaze alone (DJ 74). At the same time, it comes into play that the “Augen-Blick” of seeing, which creates its own order of time, also leads into the realm of the imaginary. Der Große Fall refers to this figure of thought. The relationship to women is established here exclusively through seeing, but the “Antlitz” that the protagonist looks for in all women has nothing to do with the images presented by the media, which treat women solely as pure commodities; rather, from here the images of a violence that has become self-evident are overcome. Even before this, participation in a fair has fundamentally changed the protagonist’s view. Dismissed at its end with a “Go in peace” (GF 182) and subsequently recognized by the priest as an actor, he feels joy (GF 186). Although, as in Der Chinese des Schmerzes, this is a joy in the face of catastrophe, it is “durchwirkt von Schmerz” (GF 188), it allows

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him the emphatic perception of any road, which he greets with the words “Salve, Carretera, Magistrale, Highway Sixty-six” (GF 189). In doing so, he again has a visual experience that becomes an allegory of his hope for change. He sees a bus filled with soldiers, driven by a strikingly beautiful young woman with loose blond hair (GF 190). This experience prepares him for the perception of two other women, one of whom has an “Antlitz” like the one he had been looking for all along (GF 248). Becoming aware that his gaze is a repetition, a recognition of the woman he spent the night with, he realizes that he has “ihre Liebe mißbraucht” (GF 249). In retrospect, he can now decipher the words she spoke in the scene she observes: she reported having loved without expectation (GF 250). These passages again recall constellations of earlier texts. It is explicitly stated in Der Große Fall, with reference to Don Juan, that time thresholds mark moments of the collapse of what is thought and what appears in the flesh. Under the perspective of the end, however, which Der Große Fall suggests, such a connection between thought and sign appears only as a fear-inducing order (GF 59). Under these conditions, seeing itself is transformed. Again and again, Der Große Fall presents unstable changes of view; seeing is no longer presuppositionless. This is also evident in the fact that the text reenacts strategies of the visual medium of film. When the protagonist’s perception oscillates between the images of nature and those of civilization, he remembers films and film actors (GF 18); in the process, the film references and the film actors are also openly named. The mode of representation corresponds to these references in terms of content and citation. As in a film, the images jump abruptly when the protagonist, wandering into the city, suddenly finds himself in the no man’s land of a track field and experiences a movie-like scene with plainclothes policemen (GF 197–200). Elsewhere, he leaves a clearing in the woods backwards, associating camera movements, thinking of Alfred Hitchcock’s second appearances in his films, while at the same time recalling the central passage in Antonioni’s Blow Up, where a clearing becomes the site of a crime that only a photograph has recorded and that cannot later be verified again (GF 102; Renner 2019, 467). This change of image between perceived reality and remembered film scenes stages a double view, as it was often developed by authors of classical modernism in connection with optical media. In Musil and Proust it is the telescope, and in Marcel Proust, in addition to this, the magic lantern (Proust Pl I, 9 f.). In an early essay, Ernst Jünger also speaks of a “stereoskopisches Sehen”, which mediates between the “Topographie”, which real perception is based on, and the magical “Trigonometrie” of fantasy (Jünger SW-9, 22). In this process, “[der] stereoskopische Genuß” arises from a solitary marriage of object and eye (Jünger SW-17, 286) that releases the beautiful and the terrible, the conscious and the unconscious alike (Bohrer 1978, 183 f.; Jünger SW-7, 93). In Handke’s work, the stereoscopic images combine danger and reassurance, reality and fantasy in a comparable way, and they too operate in opposition to numbers, which are subject to ratio alone, and signs, which can only be read through imagination. Der Große Fall here draws on a constellation prefigured in Don Juan.

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The latter, too, after his erotic adventuring has driven him into a manic compulsion to count, turning his former lovers into numbers, is told by a listener to look for the “Schrift” (DJ 156). This was to capture the “Augen-Blick” that unleashes “victorious” desire. With this guiding phrase of Don Juan, reminiscent of Juan de la Cruzʼ Llama de Amor viva and also of Nietzsche, Handke simultaneously recurs to images of his earlier texts. For his Don Juan, the spontaneous access to women provided by the gaze finally opens up an “andere[s] Zeitsystem” (DJ 77) of which he can narrate. His experiences with women never happen in “[der] gewohnten Zeit”, but in truth “in keiner Zeit” (DJ 102 f.). Der Große Fall takes up this constellation with the formula of the woman as “der andere Buchstabe” (GF 180), but it does not stop at the opposition of narrated and fulfilled time, of counting time and narrative time, any more than Don Juan. Instead, it aims at the phantasm of a collapse of the immediacy of experience with the signs of writing. Don Juan’s “Buchstabieren” (DJ 156) becomes a metaphor for a writing ‘avant la lettre’, before the discursive fixations and the orders of socialization. It already makes Don Juan another. “Vollkommen ruhig blickt er um sich, mit der Ruhe eines Wilden” (DJ 157), it is the image Baudelaire uses to make the savage and the courtesan cross the order of reason (Baudelaire Pl-2, 720). In this way, Handke’s narrative approaches the reflection on the philosophy of language that Theodor W. Adorno unfolds in Ästhetische Theorie (Adorno 1970, 86; Adorno 1984, 36). Don Juan’s “Zählzwang” (DJ, 105), which can be compared to Adorno’s concept of “meinende Sprache” (Adorno GS-16, 634, 650; Huber 2005, 450 f.), is replaced in his narrative by a strategy of the mimetic. It intertwines immediate experience with the order of writing: Telling of love, Don Juan “spells” women, just as the protagonist of Der Große Fall experiences woman as “another letter”. Spelling thus designs a system of signs that becomes a metaphor of love and narration at the same time; it marks a naming that leaves what is named in its specificity. Handke thus translates the philosophical constellation developed in Kritische Theorie of a separation between the meaning and the mimetic language into the metaphor of fulfilled love: the narrated scenes of love for women transform the critical gesture into a mimetic one: thought becomes desire, Eros is in the word, the narrated images of desire unfold “le plaisir du texte” that promises permanence (Barthes 1974, 94). But this utopian program of eroticism, while taken up in Der Große Fall, is eventually radically erased. There, at the end, the protagonist meets the woman he had left again under changed conditions, but they choose as their meeting place not the Café de l’Espoir but the Café du Destin; the space of hope is closed (GF 277).

End of Times This revocation of hope gains its significance from the fact that in Der Große Fall, as before in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire and Der Chinese des Schmerzes, the narrator repeatedly establishes a relationship with his inventor when he emphasizes the

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capacity of narration over the mere experience of reality. Already in Langsame Heimkehr, the narrator, whose journey to Europe mirrors the author’s development, addresses his character Sorger as “you” and attributes to him an experience that is his own. On his “first real journey” he learns “was der eigene Stil ist” (LH 199); in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire this style is found; at the same time the narrator can say he has transformed back into himself (LSV 93). In Der Große Fall, not only does this autoreflexive constellation continue, but as in previous texts, every description is allegorically overformed. On his way to the “Megastadt”, the protagonist initially finds the city beautiful and in “Ebenmaß” (GF 125), but in the end its houses appear to him like “Fragmente eines den gesamten Erdkreis durchziehenden Kreuzes” (GF 128). This formula gives an indication that also in this late text, the topography presented by Handke must at the same time be read as metaphorology. Its peculiarity, however, is that it does not develop single-digit relations. Rather, almost all the images of nature, civilization, and space not only open up contextual references, but at the same time refer to other texts by the author and their guiding images. They fit into a work-historical and meta-reflexive context, which in turn is recoded autoreflexively, sometimes also philosophically. An example of this is that for the protagonist of Langsame Heimkehr the wilderness in Alaska becomes “sein höchstpersönlicher Raum” (LH 11) and that all his attempts at “Zusammenschau” are at the same time glimpses at himself. “Es beschäftigte ihn ja schon seit langem, daß offenbar das Bewusstsein selber mit der Zeit in jeder Landschaft sich seine eigenen kleinen Räume erzeugt, auch da, wo es bis zum Horizont hin keine Abgrenzungsmöglichkeiten zu geben schien” (LH 107). The spatial images of the forest, the origin fantasies of nature, and especially the memories of the Alaskan woman in Der Große Fall thus refer throughout to earlier texts. The fact that the focus here is primarily on Langsame Heimkehr, where Handke simultaneously describes his own return from the natural realm of Alaska to European civilization and culture using the example of his protagonist, gives the end-time text of Der Große Fall its special significance. For the first time in Handke’s oeuvre, individual experience is encoded in the context of an inescapable catastrophic world history that also recontextualizes previous texts by the author. This is condensed by another reference to the history of his work. On his way into the forest, the protagonist finds in a community of homeless people not only the remains of a special form of “ecumenism” (GF 50), but at the same time the workbook of a boy who had sought his hiding place in the undergrowth. This scene refers to Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, where in the image of a woodpile, the memory of the stories of “Saint Alexius under the Stairs” comes to mind. The theme adopted by Hofmannsthal runs as an image through many of Handke’s texts and is also central in his review of the family genealogy (LSV 70; Wagner 2010, 86; Hofmannsthal SWKA XXXIII, 136 f.). Together with the memory of the Georgian painter Pirosmani, it becomes the narrator’s wishful image of himself “als dem Schriftsteller” (LSV 56). This child image as a cipher of authorship not only unites “die eigenen Lebensbruchstücke in Unschuld [im] Augenblick der Phantasie”, it also guaranteed protection at the time from the memories of paternal as well as

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political violence, which – comparable to the topography of Der Große Fall – find their sign in the image of a “cold field”. In the late text, however, the story of the child, of whom only remnants remain, becomes a parable for the loss of childhood and the fundamental hopelessness of a world in which even children experience nothing but strangeness (GF 54 f.). This turn has particular significance because all of Handke’s children’s stories, including the story bearing this name, possess a special psychological inscription. They can be related to a “mythe personel” that transcends the text, which the author Handke inscribes in all his stories (Loch 1977, 238, 247) and which becomes recognizable in the superposition of his texts (Mauron 1962, 23). Here, images of ontogenesis, memories of childhood, are directly linked with perceptions of nature, not infrequently landscapes. In Der Große Fall, however, this simultaneously autoreflexive and meta-reflexive trace initially seems to disappear behind a critique of civilization fed by topical observation. The protagonist’s migration into the city exposes the view of a theatre of civilisation in which the defects of modern society are outlined. This begins seemingly inconsequentially, as the intrusion of leisure society into natural space is portrayed with fierce defensiveness. In a clearing, the protagonist, still feeling the “emptiness of man”, is suddenly struck by the “shock of the corporeal” when this space is occupied by other people (GF 72). He has the impression of being jumped on by something unattractive which he perceives as an “Auswuchs” (GF 77). The “clearing occupants”, walkers, runners, cyclists and elderly walking groups, appear throughout as caricatures of leisure society. Moreover, the closer he gets to the city, the more clearly the perceived images and scenes appear as visualized abbreviations of sociograms. The community of the homeless is followed by the old, the couples and the elderly cared for by the young, before the wanderer enters a zone where he notices the same aggression that prevails in the fenced schoolyards (GF 158 f.). Even closer to the city center, the actor describes a society of the lost and constantly violent, a decaying civilisation, houses for sale, people who can no longer find their way around. The story of the “great fall” begins, the narrator suggests, here. The path through space traces out a temporal development for him; spatial coordinates can be read as temporal coordinates. From this point of view, the great event, which is always spoken of but does not take place in the course of the narrative itself, is prepared by the “great and small wars” (GF 165), the former of which take place in the Third World, but the smaller ones at home, “tagaus und nachtein”; they are, according to the text, not civil wars but “Nachbarnkriege” (GF 165). These are ultimately groundless but deadly, they take place between people who are quite similar and live under the same conditions, social scientists consider them an “unerklärliches Phänomen” (GF 167). Although the actor sees only the preliminary stage of these wars, characterized solely by violence against property, he already refers to this phase as an end time in a double sense, as a final stage and as a time that will never end (GF 169). At the same time, the crossing of the “treshold” to the inner city is marked by an absurd alienation (GF 219). The wanderer prepares for his final entry into this district in a public toilet, which he perceives as a devotional space (GF 220 f.). The

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silence in it forms a sharp contrast to the noise of the parallel streets of the city, whose houses here are covered in graffiti, whose mirror writing ultimately remains indecipherable and which conveys reconciliation as well as violence at the same time (GF 225). The fact that the “silent place”, to which Handke has also dedicated a text, becomes the last residuum is not merely an ironic narrative figure, but the condemnation of a doomed world that can no longer save itself by its own efforts (VO 23, 39, 44). Against the protagonist’s increasingly disquieting perceptions, the text initially mobilizes satirical glances. The telephone users, who put on Plexiglas helmets, are no longer engaged in “Entziffern und Lesen” (GF 228); they have lost the ability to “Lauschen”, as it says in reference to Der Chinese des Schmerzes (GF 78). In the sadness-stricken passengers of the metro he suspects a “Tötungswunsch”; in the carriages he perceives a “wahren Pestgestank” (GF 230). The almost unclothed women on the screen of the large square form for him a bizarre contrast to the veiled women in the crowd; looking at images and people he only perceives a “große Ratlosigkeit” (GF 242). It is above all in this supposedly merely descriptive sequence that the allegorical structure of the text is condensed. It points to a poetological and a philosophical recoding at the same time. The poetological one opens up on the basis of the visual metaphor of the text. Initially, seeing unfolds liberating fantasies. The actor sees his reflection in the mirror, fantasizes himself into the others, and attributes a fantasy to them as well, which soothes the “Untergrundgesichter” (GF 231) and transforms them into actors of films long past. Finally, he succeeds in a “Ausweichtanz” (GF 258), believing that on his hat he is wearing again the hawk feather lost when he entered the forest, and throws in a letter without an address, firmly convinced that it will reach his son all the same. This poetological concept also includes the fact that in Der Große Fall, as in previous texts, Handke’s images of childhood and landscape fantasies are related to one another. Even before this, the wanderer sees in the forest man above all “[das] einstige Kind” (GF 118); later, in the city, he counters the threatening images with the visual fantasy of an image of nature that is explicitly described as an afterimage/“Nachbild”; it is a glacial valley/“Urstromland” (GF 251; Goethe WAII, 11, 281  f.). The poetological significance of this perception consists, on the one hand, in the fact that it arises from a psychophysical reaction described by Goethe, which is already established in his writing as the core of poetic imagination. On the other hand, the image of “Urstromland” emerges in the setting of the memory of the son has significance in the immanent poetology of Handke’s texts. In Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, the attempt to a primeval valley beneath the city “freizuphantasieren” (LSV 94 f.) marks the power of the aesthetic imagination. At the same time, this is directed against a precisely determinable reality; there, “Freiphantasieren” opens up “ein anderes Deutschland” under the historically present (LSV 77). Der Große Fall takes up this idea as well as the motif of the “other time”, which, as a counter-image to the historical and social situation of the present, from Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (KB 25) to Don Juan (DJ 77), centers the immanent poetics of Handke’s texts. Corresponding to both images in Der Große Fall is

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the fantasy of “ferne[n] Zeiten und Räume[n]” (GF 267), among which the memory of the New World and the “Alaska-Frau” play a central role (GF 152, 274). In the preceding texts, these images mark a junction between the poetological and the philosophical references that Der Große Fall further unfolds. They follow an orientation of the author that determines his texts parallel to the “Kehre” in Heidegger’s work since Der Chinese des Schmerzes. The reference to the fact that people can no longer “Lauschen” refers to the protagonist Loser in this text. By etymologically deciphering this name as “Lauscher”, Handke oriented himself to a figure of thought of Heidegger’s that assigns man the obligation to “listening” and “corresponding”: But by listening to the “address of Being”, the latter has become the subject, while the human subject appears decentered (Heidegger UN 33). Already in earlier texts Handke, following the philosopher, transformed this requirement into a poetic program. However, even then he recognized the inner dialectic of the attempt to “Ins Innere der Sprache Gehen” (GB 182), for nature is not a presuppositionless projection space, but also reveals itself as an autonomous sign system. Der Große Fall takes up this figure of thought, but also fundamentally questions the possibility of an aesthetic transformation of the philosophical requirement. In the text, this state of affairs is revealed on the one hand through the words and images, which can be read simultaneously as descriptions and as philosophical references, and on the other hand through the systematic destruction of earlier images of nature and landscape. The migration from nature to civilization is marked by two places that give it a new perspective. The first is the clearing where the protagonist first sees the distorted images of modern leisure society, and the second is the threshold to the inner center of the city. It should be remembered that for Heidegger the “clearing” marks the coming into “Being of Being”. The threshold, in turn, is both a point of transition and a point of change, whose tension, whose “Zwischen”/ “In-­Between” must be endured (Heidegger UN 26). In Der Chinese des Schmerzes, moreover, the threshold is not only the image of an existential experience, but also a place of imagination and a sign of authorship, a sign of poetry. A comparable constellation seems to be hinted at in Der Große Fall, when the protagonist, under the pressure of the contradictory fantasies of love and violence that beset him in rapid alternation, believes that the time has come for the “zweiten Sanften Lauf” (GF 279). But, as in a “Umsprungsbild”, this hope is radically extinguished almost at the same moment. The new, which for Heidegger begins at the threshold, now opens neither a new perception nor a livable future. The aesthetic, of whose capacity Heidegger speaks explicitly, has lost its power (Heidegger UN 28, 30). Now it becomes clear why the wanderer already at the beginning has the impression that it is “aus mit den Menschen” and why the old man, in whose history he projects his fantasies, appears to him as “der letzte der Menschen” (GF 69). The “end time” that the protagonist experiences and that leads towards the “great fall” can no longer be changed. Confronted with the images that point to it, he feels a “Zeitnot”; this is precisely the experience that Don Juan has when he stops narrating and returns to real time from the other time system created by narration. This is underlined in Der Große Fall by the recoding of a landscape name that has central significance in the preceding work. In Der Chinese des Schmerzes

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“Feuerland oder Montana” is still a metaphorical description for the fantasy of a new beginning (CS 203), whereas in Der Große Fall the narrative ends with “Great Falls, Montana, Juli-September 2011” (GF 279). Now the name “Montana” signals that there is no longer an alternative between nature and history, aesthetic contemplation and experience, but that the two are catastrophically interrelated: The natural land of the Great Falls is also the site of nuclear retaliatory weapons. The signs of the end times are inscribed in history from the beginning, “Zwischenräume” are no longer livable (MJN 36 f.), they are definitively deciphered as a merely aesthetic configuration that ends with the narrative and does not outlast it.

14.3 Radicalization of Narrative: Die Obstdiebin oder Einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere (2017) Narrative Constellation In several respects, the late narrative Die Obstdiebin. oder Einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere (The Fruit Thief – or A simple Trip into the Interior) directly follows Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, Der Bildverlust, and Die Morawische Nacht. Even the subtitle, which alludes to a “simple Trip into the Interior”, makes it clear that, as in these three texts, it is about the description of a movement in space; in the process, the topology of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht is explicitly taken up. In addition, the plot follows the cipher of a circular movement, which is determinant above all in Handke’s late work, and which can be traced as “a circle of moving out, losing oneself, finding oneself, and returning home” (Blasberg 1991, 528). The beginning of a first-person narrator’s journey in the garden of his own house near Chaville not only openly refers to the central location of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, but is also characterized by a combination of images of nature and descriptions of place that closely follows this text (OD 9). In it, too, topology simultaneously opens up spaces of time that can be viewed in different ways, as places of the past and memory or as signs of new and different experiences. An immediate link between Der Bildverlust and Die Obstdiebin is the figure of the Fruit Thief herself: It becomes clear that the protagonist’s search in Der Bildverlust was for a child who is now the Fruit Thief, who is in turn searching for her missing mother in the central French plateau (OD 62). For this reason alone, the two stories can be read in parallel. The search for the daughter in Der Bildverlust corresponds to the search for the mother. Many images associated with the course of the two women’s wanderings are the same or repeated. An example is given by the use of a dictionary, which opens up references to another language, for many perceptions are immediately translated or presented bilingually. This results in a cross-textual interconnectedness that refers the reader to an almost closed system of signs. For the aforementioned motif of the dictionary runs through many of Handke’s texts, Filip Kobal also requires such a dictionary. It becomes clear that, like other of the author’s motifs spanning several texts, it is also an autofictional sign: Not only is Peter Handke’s uncle Gregor Siutz hidden behind

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the character Kobal, but the author himself also always carries a dictionary with him when he explores places in the Balkans and his own origins (W 206 f.). It is also no coincidence that “[der] frühere Erzähler” in Die Morawische Nacht remembers having been a fruit thief in his youth as well (MN 477 f.). Moreover, the space of childhood that he associates with this reminiscence opens up an autofictional reference. Not only within the text of Die Obstdiebin are qualities attributed to the woman that characterize the first-person narrator who searches for her, but also beyond the text, an autobiographical inscription of Handke’s narrative thus becomes indirectly decipherable.

The Character as a Mask of the Narrator The fact that the fruit thief is the daughter of another novel character gives rise to some fundamental considerations that affect not only this, but all of Handke’s texts since Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht at the latest. The depiction of protagonists in the context of other characters, which becomes decisive there, opens up a view of a particular strategy of Handke’s narrative. It has been rightly criticized that the characters in his texts do not possess an individual psychology that can be deciphered contextually or extratextually (Mangold 2017). Nevertheless, this assessment falls short because it does not adequately account for the special status of the relationship between the author and his characters. Clearly, he is not at all concerned with creating plausible psychograms of individual characters. Rather, his characters present behavioral patterns and psychological dispositions that can be traced back to the author himself in a form that is as isolated as it is pointed, though in each case they only reveal facets of his identity. For example, in the ensemble of some figures, the life-historical constellation that prompts the author to write a story can be reconstructed, or an individual figure becomes the mask of a certain psychological disposition. Moreover, there is much to suggest that the perspectivization of the narrative through a single figure, who, as it were, unaffectedly walks through his social environment – which becomes particularly clear in the last texts – visualizes a fundamental attitude of the author himself. His view of the surrounding social and political context is determined by the fact that, while he repeatedly evaluates or criticizes individual perceptions, he also expresses an attitude of distance and refusal. He does not attach any importance to unfolding discursive justifications for his own writing. The narrative game configuration, in which his mushroom hunter, his fruit thief or his businesswoman traverse different social fields, can be compared to the attitude of the “Waldgänger” described by Ernst Jünger, who pursues his own path unperturbed by all political developments and in doing so reveals all the more clearly the contradictions of the social and historical reality surrounding him.

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 he Fruit Thief as the Narrator’s Alter Ego and the Narrator T as the Author’s Alter Ego A parallel between the narrator and the fruit thief arises first of all from the fact that his gait and perception of the woman are comparable. At the moment of leaving his house in Chaville, he perceives double images, memories of previous experiences and scenes (OD 51). Afterwards, he succeeds in a free striding out, which gives him a sense of “illegality” (OD 53) and triggers a peculiar “Hochgemutheit” (OD 55). Subsequently, he takes “epic” steps and comes to a place with two bars, Espérance and Providence. In his mind, he compares his gestures to those of the fruit thief he has yet to find. Her movements, which he imagines, already appear to him as a “Schriftbild, wie das einer Notenschrift” (OD 57). Moreover, the special relationship between the narrator and the fruit thief is underlined by the opening of an axis of vision that focuses his first perception of the woman. Her appearance becomes particularly memorable for him because he perceives her with a telescopic gaze. There is much to suggest that a central scene from Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre is being re-enacted here. There, Wilhelm can only see Nathalie in the distance and through a telescope, yet he wants to establish a relationship between her wandering and his (OD 124; Goethe FAI-10, 163, 384). The first-person narrator and the fruit thief are also united by their outsider status. With regard to the latter, the narrator reports on her “Schlafwandeln am hellichten Tag” (OD 159) and her use of a “Diebestasche” (OD 161). It becomes clear that she is capable of a double gaze, which, as in the case of the narrator, overwrites immediate perception with signs of memory and fantasy at the same time. Already at the beginning of the narrative, images of contemporary France and distant regions of the world such as Brazil or Siberia overlap in the woman’s imagination (OD 163–165). Moreover, her present experiences are linked to images of youth, to memories of the time when, instead of her baptismal name and the name Alexia by which her mother calls her, she was given her present attribute as a thief by the owners of the orchards. By contrast, the narrator explicitly does not classify her stealing as an offense, but as an act that commits her to the “secret”, to that which only she perceives, but which obviously determines others as well. Not only does the woman elude the legal and social system of rules, but her outsiderness, revealed in the theft of fruit, also enables her to have a particular view of reality, which opens up an aesthetic dimension (OD 171). This is evidenced by her orientation in space, for she always directs her gaze only to individual trees, which in her imagination form a system of trigonometric points that lay across the landscape like a grid, transforming the unobstructed gaze from the outset. It is an image that corresponds very closely to Ernst Jünger’s metaphor of the “Trigonometrie” of imagination, a force of imagination that takes its place alongside topographical conceptions and, together with them, allows us to see the two “Masken ein und desselben Seins” (Jünger SW-9, 22). In Handke’s work, this orientation of his protagonist is paraphrased as

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an “Ortwerden” (OD 173); it is a metaphor that expresses an existential disposition and opens up an ontological level of meaning. The fact that the fruit thief follows an individual orientation system and does not submit to the rules of socialization also establishes her special position for her father. “Du hast einen Auftrag, mein liebes Kind. Du musst deinen ganz besonderen Platz in der Welt gegen die alle behaupten, und du hast darüber hinaus eine Pflicht. Du hast die Pflicht zur Macht”, but it is a power that is supposed to be “quite another” (OD 178). The path that this protagonist takes in a self-determined way begins with a visual perception. She sees the starry sky in a window, lets it affect her and initially has the impression of seeing an afterimage of a former perception. The peculiarity of the latter is that it combines the media of image and writing; the visual signs she sees eventually become a writing, more than that, a “Handschrift mit verbundenen, lückenlos an- und ineinander geschlungenen Buchstaben” (OD 237). At the same time, she realizes that it is not an afterimage of something she has seen or overlooked before. Nor is there the jumping around of the image typical of the afterimage. She also sees words that run on and form a script that cannot be deciphered (OD 238). The fact that this initially indecipherable writing appears following the signs of nature does not only obliterate the medial boundary between image and text. Here, at the latest, it becomes clear that the fruit thief is an alter persona of the author. Her experience predicts what the author’s goal is: the deciphering of the world through writing that makes the world narratable and at the same time encodes its own signs in a different way. It is no coincidence that this orientation based on constellations corresponds to a figure of thought by Theodor W. Adorno. At its center is the concept of “constellation” adopted from Walter Benjamin, which, as the signature of so-called “mimetic” thinking, outlines a form of description and at the same time transformation of the world through aesthetic contemplation that avoids any conceptual approach. Adorno encircles this visual construction when he concludes: “Das Schriftähnliche solcher Konstellationen ist der Umschlag des subjektiv Gedachten und Zusammengebrachten in Objektivität vermöge der Sprache” (Adorno GS-6, 167 f.). Handke, however, translates this configuration into a religious metaphor, corresponding with another passage, in which the event of transubstantiation in the course of a Eucharistic celebration metaphorizes a profound change in the protagonist’s consciousness (OD 491 f.; LSV 66; Barth 1998, 140). Moreover, as she gazes at the starry sky, the fruit thief is referred to as a “Auserwählte[..] unter den Frauen” using a formula from the biblical story of the Annunciation (OD 239 f.). The child that appears in her dreams is indeed “klar ihr eigenes”, but there is no mention of its birth or its producer; what remains decisive is solely that the woman finds herself in a “Mutter-und-Kind-Reich” such as one can initially only imagine in “the beyond of dreams” (OD 244). This visualization of the imaginary, which gives rise to aesthetic forms, corresponds to the woman’s later perceptions, which follow the strategy of cinematic presentation. When leaving a house with a mourning party, the fruit thief does not have a continuous perception; rather, she perceives a chain of individual images

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that, frozen like the stills of a film, form a serial sequence (OD 250). This role of cinematic images not only forms a textual strategy, it also determines the woman’s perception. Having arrived in the Cergy region, she recalls a film by Eric Rohmer (OD 188), and in the course of her hike she visits various cinema films (OD 217), which make her perceive the place of Courdimanche in particular with heightened intensity.

The Signs of War and Violence In contrast to the particular perception of the fruit thief, which is directed towards “Zwischenräume”/“interstices” that enable the poetic gaze, there are clearly drawn areas that structure the narrative’s space of action. In the background of these perceptions of nature that accompany the protagonist’s path are signs of war and violence, thus this text is also determined by a dissonant basic figure, as it begins to emerge more and more clearly in Handke’s writing. Before entering the forest, the fruit thief, like the earlier narrator of Die Morawische Nacht, crosses a bomb crater. The war from which this originates is not only associated with an exact date, the Battle of Vexin in 1944, but it is also revealed here as the signature of a world perpetually dominated by violence (OD 258). While in Die Morawische Nacht the crossing of bomb craters still recognizable in nature points to three wars of the twentieth century (MN 550), the text of Die Obstdiebin opens a comparable historical perspective. In an inn, a guest reads a book about the Battle of the Somme, thus the memory of this great battle of the First World War enters next to the image of the Second World War (OD 75). A visual perception of the wanderer makes this clear. Twice she sees an illegible writing. The first time, when she thinks back to her mother standing at her chamber door in her childhood nights “riesengroß”, an image reminiscent of Kafka’s Urteil, she remarks in this writing only “einzelne Buchstaben aufblinkend” (OD 432). Later, as she roams the prairies of the floodplain on the Troësne, she also sees indecipherable writing with her eyelids closed, but now “stauten sich die Zeilen im heillosen Durcheinander, kein Buchstabe zu entziffern, kreuz und quer, in der Form eines Scheiterhaufen” (OD 502). Perceiving this configuration, she has the impression that the “great fall” is upon her (OD 503), thereby naming the very metaphor Handke uses in his text of the same name to describe the end of every historical utopia. Her phantasmatic image visualizes the notion of a history of violence that will continue throughout the ages, thus echoing Alexander Kluge’s pessimism about history (OD 256; Negt/Kluge 1981, 198). As in Kluge’s work, the images of history that pervade Handke’s text are not only characterized by open violence and war, but also by “Gewalt des Zusammenhangs” that Alexander Kluge and Oskar Negt define in Geschichte und Eigensinn, among other things, as a prerequisite for the resistance of individuals. The dialectic of history described by these authors can be assigned to a story of resistance that is inserted into the text at a central point in Die Obstdiebin. It is the suicide of the

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young Czech Zdeněk Adamec, who is placed alongside the story of Jan Palach; Handke’s last play to date will make him the protagonist (Handke 2020). This opens up a political context in which individual names take on special significance for the young companion of the fruit thief; he calls them by their first names and marks his empathy with them. For him, Zdeněk has catapulted himself out of the world to protest against the world (OD 317). He eludes the dominant discourse and behaves differently from everyone else anywhere. Put into a picture, this means that in the age of digital information he becomes a sprayer again (OD 319). This political passage of Handke’s text, which is as unambiguous as it is clear, is therefore not exhausted in its description of Jan Palach’s political resistance. It also aims at a fundamental critique of everything political, as expressed by Adamec. Thus, the status of Handke’s text changes decisively. It becomes apparent that his aesthetic gesture, even his aestheticizing attitude, cannot be read merely as that which they superficially bring to view; rather, they refer dialectically to that which eludes them and resists them in the innermost. The aesthetic here actually becomes a form of critique in Adorno’s sense, insofar as it represents everything that “is not the case” (Adorno GS-11, 50). It is therefore not at all surprising that this undisguised political discourse is followed by a long treatise on hazelnuts, of all things. This narrative technique of thematic inversion through completely different fields of reference in terms of content, which Handke practices time and again, can also be deciphered as a figure of critique. The concentration of the figure of an old man on the description of the hazelnut (OD 319–324) is contextualized in such a way that it can simultaneously be read politically and ontologically. It becomes a trigger for a reflection on the Arabic word dikr, which means to remember and commemorate or “Eingedenken”, and thus concerns the forms of experience of historical events. This reflection expresses that it can never be solely a matter of remembering an event individually or collectively, but that the ability to be “eingedenk” without fixation on a single event must be developed (OD 326). It alone can, unlike the rehearsed rhetoric of the discourse of memory, unfold a deeper existential dimension, a “Lauschen” that takes its cue from Hölderlin and corresponds to Heidegger’s “Hören auf den Zuspruch des Seins”/listening to the address of Being (cf. GB 234; Heidegger UN 33).

The Images of Nature and the Dialectic of Perception Handke’s later texts provide evidence of the increasing formation of a network of autonomizing images running across the boundaries of individual texts, which significantly often emerge from observation. As the author’s manuscripts, sketches, and drafts attest, these meticulous descriptions of nature, which often expand short sections from Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts. Zeichen und Anflüge von der Peripherie 2007–2015, into longer prose passages (Böttiger 2019), not infrequently emerge from previously sketched images. The accuracy of these images of nature

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may well contrast with the schematics with which they are narratively employed (Mangold 2017; NL 22 f.). The basic pattern of such configurations is an incursion of fantasy that starts from an everyday and limited perception and triggers an imagination of other realms, times or alternative worlds. At the beginning of Die Obstdiebin, the comparatively insignificant episode of a bee sting becomes a trigger for images of the imagination. Moreover, these are mobilized at a particular moment, on a summer afternoon, during the course of which the first-person narrator has the impression of being freed from his “Zeitnot” (OD 13). It is a moment of silence reminiscent of Mallarmé’s L’Après-midi d’un faune, which seems to allow for simultaneous perceptions (Mallarmé 1876). At such points of contact between the everyday world and fantasy, it is not uncommon for double images to be perceived, and often also for the perceiver to have the feeling of being someone else. At the beginning of the text, for example, the narrator sees himself and compares himself to Cézanne’s gardener Vaillier (OD 15); he falls into a state of half-sleep in which he believes he hears the voice of the fruit thief with its particular modulation. However, dissonant experiences are often associated with such moments. The narrator, who feels he is “sinking into the ground” (OD 20), begins, like the protagonist of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, to reflect on his own life, the passing of time, and his own productivity. Like the latter, he experiences that his experience of fulfillment and concentration on himself is thwarted by thoughts of death. All at once the history of the last months and years appears to him “mörderisch zugeschärft” and he believes to hear a “Todesschrei” in the garden (OD 22 f.), spontaneously his parting pain seems to be dominated by the formula “für immer” (OD 27). Such experiences of endangerment, which equally belong to the network of constant images that is at the center of Handke’s poetology, always receive counter-­ images that are comparatively constant. In the story of the fruit thief, these are the eyes of an infant, the memory of the Slovenian language, the view of a natural object. As in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, here it is a yellow quince (OD 28). And not unlike in this text, visual perception triggers linguistic associations that determine one’s situation. Not coincidentally, the idea that one can stop “counting” sets in. Moreover, memories of different places of writing are evoked as the narrator tries to determine, viewing his “Eigentum”, what he can call his “Eigen” at all. In Die Obstdiebin, this reflection takes on a fundamental significance that points beyond the text. For here the narrator explicitly takes himself back, even the idea of a foundation of one’s own through authorship of a “Werk” loses significance in relation to what is “das Werk der Natur” (OD 33). In this he recognizes another order, a rhythm, which he can appropriate. In it, images are perceived that have a power of their own. They are “menschenleere Bildmomente aus der Vergangenheit, in der Regel einer Längstvergangenheit, ohne einen Zusammenhang mit gleichwelchem Tagesgeschehen, von keinem Gedächtnis und keiner vorsätzlichen Erinnerung herbeirufbar” (OD 34 f.). Under these conditions, the fruit thief, who is later accompanied by a boy of colour, perceives vicariously through the narrator. She grasps the significance of the

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images of nature, among which individual observations such as the view of an oak crown stand out (OD 301) and which, another basic figure of Handke’s poetology, occur primarily in movement. This movement is less purposeful than playful; the wanderer herself speaks of “weiter spielen” when she wants to motivate herself to go on (OD 474). Thus, it is not surprising that the woman and the boy take steps forward and backward, that they seek paths without footbridges and bridges (OD 302), while giving the impression of moving in a time of their own. This, too, follows a typical narrative strategy of Handke’s: the description of a movement of the figures in space takes the place of a narratable plot. It produces chains of images that the reader has to follow and that steer the reader’s gaze. These seemingly autonomous images are not only generated by the narrated movement of the protagonists but are also ordered at the same time. Baudelaire’s figure of thought of the kaleidoscope endowed with consciousness, which expresses the perception of modernity, seems to be re-enacted here as a narrative figure (Baudelaire 1967, Pl-2, 692). This repeats what characterizes the wanderer’s path in Der Bildverlust. Now, too, the characteristic double images attributed to the woman open up not only alternative images, but at the same time a layer of time beneath the present. The illusion is created that she and the boy are something of an anachronism in the landscape image, namely that they are moving through the countryside in a time when potatoes were not even grown in Europe yet (OD 303). This leads to the experience of a fundamental alienation. Looking back, a sign of modern civilisation can disturb the impression of the landscape “als etwas Unzeitgemäßes [als ein] Fehler im Ortsbild; Bildstörer; Fremdkörper” (OD 309). This overlapping of different temporal experiences, which is also described elsewhere in the text, is given a psychological inscription in the story of the man who searches for the remains of his father missing on the battlefield, from the perspective of which the story of the wanderer can be read. Explicitly, the text says of this man that in his missing, he mourns not his father, “sondern sein Kind. Und nichts schrie lauter zum Himmel als Gejammer um ein verschollenes Kind” (OD 471). Just as this septuagenarian’s search produces fantasies that invert the genealogical sequence of time, so the wanderer increasingly perceives images that do not simply seem like afterimages, but appear much later as past image, present image, and future image all in one (OD 473). This new form of perception, which allows the wanderer to experience different times, is complemented by a synaesthetic experience that also includes listening. The view of nature is not only coupled with a memory of music, Eminem’s rap is mentioned for example. The fruit thief is also encouraged to “lauschen” to nature, she is supposed to adopt an attitude that Handke already used in Der Chinese des Schmerzes to encode a perception that aims at a hidden sense. Again, Heidegger’s guiding phrase “Der Mensch spricht, insofern er der Sprache entspricht. Das Entsprechen ist hören”/ “A human being speaks inasofar as the human corresponds to language. Corresponding is listening” is present in the background of the text (Heidegger UN 33; GB 234). The chirping of a cricket finally motivates the woman to think that in the world “das Heimliche” may prevail (OD 214).

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The Familial Inscription and Its Poetic Transformation If one directs one’s attention beyond the relationship of mother and daughter to the relationship of the fruit thief to her father, then, on the one hand, mirror-image correspondences to the family history of the earlier narrator from Die Morawische Nacht can be discerned. On the other hand, these correspondences are reshaped into a poetic image that bears fairy-tale features. This is matched by the fact that the woman’s movement in space is never really purposeful but follows a playful configuration of different experiences that are not necessarily linked in a linear fashion. Poetic images take the place of a continuous story, which do not allow access to a continuous psychological working through. The core of this text also relates to the theme of fatherhood and being a child. Many of the woman’s recollections, which revolve around the concept of authority (OD 146), describe dissonant experiences. Her feelings oscillate between the memory of care and rejection by her father and the admission that she – long since no longer a child – was finally mentally “weder ihres Vaters noch ihrer Mutter Kind, [sondern] niemandes Kind”. She herself interprets this attitude as a reaction to an experience of the “double bind” that emanated from the father: “Ohne sie handgreiflich zu verstoßen, hat er sie verstoßen” (OD 230), she recalls and emphasizes that the father hated himself for his “Lieblosigkeit” (OD 233). The fruit thief’s fundamental distance from her father is made clear by the fact that, in retrospect, he appears to her more and more like a “Gorilla” because he appears as an “amateur historian” and represents qualities of the masculine, as they also appeared in the various figures that surround the businesswoman in Der Bildverlust. This representation of the father relates doubly to the author Handke and to other texts in his oeuvre. First, the father is here attributed an attitude that the author observes in himself. It is the insistence on a “statelessness” that becomes a metaphor for a withdrawal from others and from prevailing political and social attitudes. Secondly, the father’s rant expresses an aggressive attitude towards politicians (OD 154 f.). Moreover, it gains significance that the childishness of the fruit thief Alexia/ Alexis is given a poetic coding that corresponds to a familial constellation in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. In terms of its motif, her story is related to that of Saint Alexius, who spends a period of his life, unnoticed by his parents, under a staircase of their house. This correspondence to the text Der Bildverlust is first alluded to, as if in passing, when the fruit thief sleeps in a train under the stairs to the part of the floor (OD 109). Later, the place comparable to Alexius’ hiding place is a chamber where Alexia’s mother was already staying (OD 426). This image immediately prepares for the family’s imminent reunion. As in a text by Kafka, objects thought lost reappear and become signs of the plot’s progress (Kafka GS-1, 242). It is no coincidence that a scarf is now reported to be found again as abruptly as the lost shawl in the story of Der Bildverlust (OD 429); in this way, too, the Alexius episode links mother and daughter stories. Obviously, the mother was in the same place, but her image becomes ambivalent precisely because of this. In memory, she takes on

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fantastic features, appearing as the “in den Kindernächten riesengroße Mutter”, again an overt allusion to Kafka’s father fantasy in Das Urteil (OD 431).

Images of Divisiveness and Union The ambivalence of these dissonant images appearing in the field of the story corresponds to the depiction of the violent confrontation between the fruit thief and her doppelganger. In its course, “Mordgier” and “Totschlagswut” prefigured in the former girlfriend’s feelings of hatred are evident (OD 347–351), but they are defused in the text in two ways. First, during the distanced description of their struggle, the reference to the marionette museum Derrière les jardins in Fribourg in Switzerland makes them seem like pawns rather than human beings. Second, the narrator ends the description of their physical confrontation with a quotation from Hölderlin’s Dichtermut (OD 515): “Wandle nur wehrlos [fort] durchs Leben, und fürchte nichts!” (Hölderlin GSA-2, 62–65). At the same time, these scenes are recoded through the visual reference to another literary text. When she looks at some drops of blood, the fruit thief is close to crying; the drops of blood, which cannot be clearly assigned, appear as a literary allusion. They are reminiscent of the blood drop scene in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival, marking the onset of a trance state whose fields of reference cannot be clearly resolved (OD 515; Hasebrink 2005, 237–248). Explicitly, the text Vor der Baumschattenwand speaks of Die Obstdiebin as the author’s “last epic” and refers to the protagonist as “Parzivals Schwester” (VB 196). A comparable function to this recourse of the narrative to other literary text is fulfilled by its reference to an image. With it, the narrator explicitly attempts to banish the old stories of the Bible associated with violence from the story of the fruit thief. It is Poussin’s LʼÉté ou Ruth et Booz, part of a cycle of seasons (OD 466) (Fig. 14.1). In Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht, the composite landscape of Breughel’s The Dark Day acquires its special meaning by being dissolved into a field of signs to which is attributed a symbolic connotation that goes beyond what is depicted (MJN 629; OD 466). Poussin’s image in Die Obstdiebin can be viewed in a comparable way, especially since the painter, with his terminological distinction between “aspect” and “prospect”, developed a consideration that can also be applied to the relationship between text and image. He himself distinguishes between the visible, the image character of the picture, and its interpretation (Poussin 1968, 143 f.). Poussin’s painting, which depicts an Arcadian landscape with great attention to detail, shows a biblical scene in its center, the meeting of Ruth and Boas, from whose union Obed will emerge, who will establish the ancestral line of Jesus. This gives the painting, like many others by the painter Poussin, a double inscription that is not overt (Köhler 2008). On the one hand, it opens up a salvation-historical perspective to the Bible-literate viewer. On the other hand, in focusing on Ruth and Boas, it shows a couple that is by no means able to redeem the idyllic appearance suggested by the landscape of this painting. For the widowed Ruth, who thanks Boas on her knees, must ask for the right of so-called gleaning, which is expressly

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Fig. 14.1  Nicolas Poussin (1594–1655): The seasons, summer, or Ruth and Booz, 1640–1644. (Paris, Musée du Louvre, © Heritage Art/Heritage Images/picture alliance)

reserved for the poor and the stranger. As the daughter-in-law of Naomi, who has emigrated from Israel to the land of Moab, she is a stranger denied integration under Israel’s Moabite law. Nevertheless, she protectively accompanied Naomi on her way back to Israel. Her later marriage to Boas follows, at least from the point of view of Naomi’s mother-in-law, a clear legal consideration. For the rules for the so-­ called “levirate marriage” and the “solution” result in both Naomi and Ruth now being invested with all the rights of married women and the succession of Elimelech (Dtn 25:5 ff.; Lev 25:23). It remains to be emphasized that the biblical text, however, focuses primarily on the close relationship between Naomi and Ruth, who both together later raise the son of Boas and Ruth. This is why, after the birth of Ruth’s child, the women around Naomi, having seen through the legal arrangement, exclaim, “To Naomi a son has been born” (Ruth 4:17). Naomi and Ruth, mother-in-law and daughter-in-law, become the symbol of a community beyond the patriarchal family order and far from an exclusion of the stranger. Poussin’s painting cannot depict all this; only in the interpretation does it unfold its inner dialectic. This can be compared to the basic figure of Handke’s text, which repeatedly combines its descriptions of a nature promising security with images of threat, which are in part visualized, but often appear only as an inscription that must be deciphered like the painter’s pictures. This is why in his text the motif of strangeness, as evidenced by the fact that the fruit thief “does not want to belong to any

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state” (OD 499), stands right next to the fantasies of fulfilled moments in different relationships. Just so, it is evident that all these depictions often have a hidden message. They repeatedly revolve around the phantasm of an ideal family without making it a permanent reality. This reference to an image thus opens up the structural law of Handke’s text, which oscillates between visualization and linguistic denotation when it presents contradictory experiences. He recreates the basic figure of Poussin’s painting and stages a reflexive movement by the reader without wanting to lead it to a final destination. This interplay of visual denotation and imaginative connotation corresponds to that of visualization and psychologization, which is also presented in Handke’s text as an unfinished movement. The relationship of the fruit thief to her young companion provides an example of this, drawing attention to both violence and reconciliation. During the walk, the woman first notices a psychological change in the boy. He walks faster and faster because he has the obsession of having to prevent a catastrophe, the “Riesin Angst” overtakes him (OD 400). They both begin to run, arrive at a house where they were in the presence of a man who seemed to have been expecting guests, and experience a communal scene in a room that has a tabletop football (OD 411) and a jukebox (OD 412). The inexplicable restlessness that had afflicted both of them is initially banished. The young woman, a girl, and the man eventually dance, and the narrator thinks he sees the dance of mother and son in John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath again, a familial primal scene that seems to him to visualize timeless protection and security. “So ist es. So war es. So wird es gewesen sein”, he states (OD 414). But this scene of consent is threatened. The fruit thief senses a readiness for violence arising in the young man; she empathically puts herself in the boy’s mind and recognizes his terror fantasies, which are combined with suicidal thoughts (OD 416–418); recognizably, the actual knife attack in Magnanville and the attack in Nice in 2016 have left a mark on the text here. It is only when she includes the boy in the couple’s dance that the tension is released. Her companion realizes she had him figured out. For the first time, according to the narrative, their conversation actually ends in dialogue (OD 418). This scene foreshadows the image of a union that appears to the woman in her dream. This fantasy is determined by the desire that the woman directs towards the boy. But she imagines the longed-for union disembodied alone because, according to the text, the destiny of the two for each other was “zugleich Begehren […] und das Begehren zugleich Bestimmung –, aber ein Handeln, eine Aktion, ein Akt kam nicht in Frage” (OD 435). The fruit thief’s related notion of entering a realm “jenseits der Zeit und der Orte, und auch jenseits von Mann und Frau” (OD 436) corresponds to the image of an author whose texts Handke otherwise avoids: Robert Musil described it twice in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (Musil GS-1, 125; Musil GS-4, 1084). In Handke’s text, the bodies of man and woman merge “ohne ein Zutun, nachtlang ineinander” (OD 436), Musil describes how the bodily boundaries of people disappear, they can pass through each other “ähnlich wie im Traum zwei Wesen […], ohne sich zu vermischen” (Musil GS-1, 125). What both authors have in common is

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that these disembodied relationships also result in insights that model future experiences. Handke’s fruit thief becomes aware that she must “mit ihrem Traum bleiben […] bis zu der Stunde ihres Absterbens”, Musil’s protagonist enters an “anderen Zustand”. It is “klar und übervoll von klaren Gedanken”, but also remains in the mode of “Anschauung” and even keeps away from conceptualization. It is explicitly stated that he is “von der Schärfe befreit” (Musil GS-1, 125). In both Musil and Handke, connections to a central image of mysticism can be discerned here; the influence of Juan de la Cruz undoubtedly also determines Die Obstdiebin (Wagner 210, 140).

The Feast of Reconciliation and the Apotheosis of Scripture At the end of the journey, which for long stretches appears like a search game (OD 529) by the narrator and a search run by the fruit thief, there is a reunion of father, daughter and son. This encounter is prepared by a telling about telling. The brother recounts the tensions in the family, his situation, and his journey. In the process, shared memories of the siblings are mentioned (OD 534) as well as an anecdote about the player Javier Pastore of the soccer team of Paris Saint Germain (OD 535–536). Afterwards, in an area described as a geological plateau, the celebration of unification takes place, at first idyllically introduced by the view of a child’s balloon, by narration and peaceful voices, only slightly irritated by a speeding car and a drone, which are perceived on the sidelines as signs of warfare (OD 541). That the fruit thief begins to walk backwards is a sign of the exceptional situation she is now experiencing. This interrupts the linearity of the narrative, which previously ran in sync with the movement of the characters in space. In the text, this scene appears as a still moment in which speech and music can be heard. The narrative is transformed into the representation of a tableau. This continues a narrative strategy that previously governed the account of the fruit thief’s movement. In the interpolated story of a man searching for his lost cat, the woman and accompanying boy succeed in crossing a thicket only because they are able to follow a human on the run. Escape as a game becomes the metaphor of their journey (OD 378). This is supplemented by the idea of a narrative game, which the text itself creates. In the end, the narrator’s account of the fruit thief’s story is replaced by her perception by others, who are explicitly told that they could attribute different versions of her story to her (OD 543). The interaction between author, narrator and reader, always intended by the text, is thus not only made evident, but also demanded. The sentence “eine Taube jagte einen Falken, der gellte vor Angst” gives an indication of this performative power of imagination and narration. It also marks the fantastic deformation of reality that narration is capable of (OD 544). Afterwards, the feast begins under the shelter of a tent, not only logistically well-organized by the bank woman from Der Bildverlust, but also by the fact that she first makes all those present watch the sunset through collective gaze control. At this point, the

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narrator intervenes and describes the mode of this perception. He remarks: “Die Augen von uns Zuschauern konnten so offen bleiben und weiteten sich im Betrachten womöglich noch, ohne ein Blinzeln” (OD 546). A similar gaze control takes place when the sound of music is reported. Now explicitly addressed to the reader, the text says that everyone who reads this “möge sich die gerade von ihm erwünschte [Musik] dazudenken” (OD 547). At the center of this scene, however, is now a festive speech by the father, who seems to change in this situation. Originally a loner who aggressively set himself apart from others, he suddenly speaks not only with a “Wir” never heard from him before (OD 550). With his speech, he also gives marriage a psychosocial interpretation, because it makes the two sentences “Ich werde beobachtet” and “Ich fühle mich gesehen” (OD 554) obligatory patterns of socialisation. Before that, he describes the situation of the stateless and alienated person who – the allusion to a text by his inventor is evident – feels as if stranded in a dugout canoe and therefore defenceless and disoriented. But at the end of his speech, which becomes ever more clearly a commitment to community and to togetherness, he evokes the shared experience of a child: “Sind Kinder einem Menschen doch die Seele” (OD 557). The mother initially remains unaffected by this speech in the literal sense, but for the fruit thief the situation has changed fundamentally; she embraces herself, “drückte sich selber an sich” and, with her eyes closed, sees the writing come back again, at first as “helle Handschrift auf schwarzem Grund, Wiederholung der Milchstraße bei offenen Augen. Dann sprangen die Schriftzüge um in Schwarz, während der Grund weiß wurde: viel leerer Platz, in Gestalt von hellen Buchten um die unentzifferbaren Worte” (OD 558  f.). Thus, the writing itself opens up, the spaces between the letters becoming emergent spaces that mark the realm of a self-­ discovery. The time of the fruit thief has come to an end, only a bright summer streak in her dark hair remains as a sign of the memory of a journey that in the end lasted no longer than three days. However, it would fall short of the mark to equate the writing that repeatedly appears in the protagonist’s dreams and fantasies solely with the writing of the narrative itself. The fact that it is classified as changing and in principle illegible and that it not infrequently appears in states of rapture or dissociation already speaks against this. Rather, the image of writing that appears at turning points in the text must be resolved in two ways. On the one hand, it refers to writing, which is the medium of the narrative itself, then it is mere metaphor of writing. At the same time, however, it is linked to a hidden system of signs that is inscribed in this writing of the narrative and requires deciphering. In this way, writing is both a medium for depicting reality and an instrument for its aesthetic transformation. The idea that this gives rise to the necessity of a general deciphering of signs in the text as well as in reality combines a figure of thought from Romanticism with an experience of modernity. Theodor W. Adorno’s concept of “Écriture” in painting and music aims at this hidden structure of all aesthetic sign systems, which also determines Handke’s text.

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Adorno’s concept of a “lesbare Konstellation von Seiendem” unfolds a further consideration that also directly concerns the literary text. It describes the “Umschlag des subjektiv Gedachten und Zusammengebrachten in Objektivität vermöge der Sprache” defining it as “[das] Schriftähnliche” (Adorno GS-7, 167 f.). In addition to depicting reality, language understood in this way also becomes the sign of a recognition that takes place in a cognitive flash. This describes the mode in which Handke’s language and images approach reality. They do not depict it, but only touch it. Adorno also found a formula for this: art reaches for reality in gestures but recoils when it touches them. “Ihre Lettern sind Male dieser Bewegung. Ihre Konstellation im Kunstwerk ist die Chiffrenschrift des geschichtlichen Wesens der Realität, nicht deren Abbild”/Its letters are instances of this movement. Its constellation in the work of art is the encoded script of the historical essence of reality, not its reproduced image (Adorno GS-7, 425). This narrative gesture is also realized in the story of Handke’s protagonist. If one looks at the description of her path, the wandering of the fruit thief ends in a pervasive ambivalence. Through different observers, as her appearance on the plateau confirms, several stories could be attributed to her. This results in an openness that corresponds with the chains of association in the father’s speech. It is also precisely from the preservation of this openness that the text as a whole gains its continuing impact. This is indicated by a peculiarly ambivalent formula that emphasizes the remarkable and the enduring simultaneously. The story of the fruit thief is “Bleibend seltsam. Ewig seltsam” (OD 559). Like Der Bildverlust, this text also concentrates on opening up different, sometimes irritating views and images of reality in the mode of a story and making them narratable through their sequence. In place of the mere depiction of reality and the fixation on a story determined by action, it sets a sequence of images and scenes whose ‘écriture’ the reader is charged with deciphering anew. This work of reading alone can mobilize and make permanently accessible experiences that transcend mere experience. It enables a perception that can transform everything that appears as reality through imagination and language.

14.4 Telling the World Anew: Das zweite Schwert (2020) After the heated public discussion on the occasion of the awarding of the Nobel Prize for Literature, the question was raised whether Handke’s first text written thereafter would refer to this controversy. Its title, which deals with a sword, and its first sentence, “Das also ist das Gesicht eines Rächers!” certainly suggest this. But the reference to the public debate at the end of the year 2019 is initially rejected by the reference to the time and place of its creation “April – Mai 2019. Ile-de-France/ Picardie” (ZS 156). The title addition Eine Maigeschichte also points in a different direction, to nature and a new beginning, which is moreover linked to Easter, to the association of a rather idyllic scenario. But quite apart from the fact that dating in Handke’s texts is often deliberately fictional, this story is indeed situated in the “echo chamber of the great dispute of

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the autumn” (Kühn 2020). In one central substantive point, it relates to a theme that takes on significance in Handke’s engagement with journalism and, in particular, with journalistic coverage of the war in Yugoslavia. It is the question of how to deal with images that are meant to document political events: The subject of the story of Das zweite Schwert (The Second Sword) is the planned murder of a journalist who has used image manipulation to report inappropriately on the narrator’s mother, who is oddly enough referred to as “heilige Mutter” (ZS 73 f., 96). This opens up a work-historical and a biographical reference. On the one hand, the accusation of image manipulation plays a central role for Handke in the debate about the Serbian War, which he also addresses in Fahrt im Einbaum (Voyage by Dugout) (FE 98). On the other hand, this question has an authentic background for the present text because it opens up a direct reference to Handke’s mother: The template for the narrator’s story in Das zweite Schwert is likely the author’s decisive turn against a montage of images in Katie Mitchell’s 2014 production of Wunschloses Unglück in the casino of Vienna’s ‘Burgtheater’. There, an authentic image of Handke’s mother was mounted into a photograph of the crowd cheering Hitler on ‘Heldenplatz’ in Vienna in 1938 (ZS 74). Handke’s outrage at this dramaturgical strategy is documented (Wurmitzer 2020). Linked to this in the text is a wish to kill, directed at the journalists described as “Fernschreiber”, undoubtedly meaning those whom Handke distinguishes in his Serbia texts from the “Feldforscher[n]” on the spot (ZS 73 ff., WR 148). Directly related to this, the text also records a passage that can be read as the author’s self-criticism. The narrator recalls his inclination to violence in childhood and later life; “[er fühlt sich] zum Mörder [geboren]”, though not as an avenger (ZS 68 f.). In this, fictitious and authentic references are mixed. Alongside the alleged murder of his father are images of violence towards women, openly admitted and actually vouched for in self-expressions by the author Handke (MJN 189; IN 106, 159; Carstensen 2014, 59–61), and their unmediatedness and intensity are striking. A half-sleep image recorded in the Journal of Am Felsfenster morgens (At the Mountain Window in the Morning: And Other Local Times 1982–1987) also provides a clue to this (AF 186 f.). Such clear references initially distract from the fact that the narrative detaches itself from topical references in several ways. First, it transforms the event recounted as authentic into a story that deliberately deletes the references pointing beyond the text and allows the trigger of the action to recede behind a sequence of references to other texts by Handke. This happens already structurally, as the story gets its contour from the fact that it represents a movement through space, which is a prerequisite for the protagonist’s observing and seeing. Although its goal, the search for the journalist, is precisely determined, it seems strangely aimless. Moreover, the peculiar alternation of delay and acceleration of movement, which already begins with the strikingly long preparation for departure, corresponds to a narrative method practiced in Die Obstdiebin, Die Morawische Nacht, and other texts. This corresponds to the fact that in the perception of the observing narrator time seems to stretch and thus the usual coordinates of space and time are changed (ZS 23). The explicit reference to Karl Philipp Moritz’ Anton Reiser and the implicit reference to

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Handke’s Der Kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (SZ 67) indicate that, in addition to the search, the journey will also be about self-awareness. Secondly, this text is also marked by Handke’s characteristic reference to other narrative forms. Even in the sequences of abbreviated scenic images he alludes to the narrative mode of the medieval aventiure; moreover, the narrator’s story is interspersed with romantic and fairy-tale motifs. This is indicated not least by the protagonist’s dream, which refers to his current experiences and at the same time makes him forget them through a temporary disorientation. This ambivalent role of the dream, a traditional motif of Romantic texts, is also a central configuration of Handke’s narrative, gaining significance above all in Der Bildverlust (BV 97, 395, 538). At once fairy-tale and poetic are the scenes in which the narrator is under the impression that animals are addressing him. “Do it! Do it!” a robin calls out to him before the beginning of his revenge journey, and at its peaceful end a “belated” blackbird addresses him in the night as “Bridegroom, Bridegroom” (ZS 157). In addition to these fairy-tale elements of the narrative, the coordinates of the journey, which is undertaken by public transport, buses and trams – another motivic scheme to which Handke often refers – repeatedly unfold direct references to other texts by the author. His Don Juan is alluded to by the narrator’s detour to the monastery of Port-Royal, Versuch über den geglückten Tag (Essay about the Successful Day: A Winter Day’s Dream) is addressed by a reference to the aesthetic figure of the “line of beauty and grace” of the painter Hogarth, who is treated in detail there, Gedicht an die Dauer (To Duration) (SZ 66, GD 22) and Versuch über den Pilznarren (Essay on the Mushroom hunter) become present through the reference to Goethe’s concept of “Geistesgegenwart” (VP 52), the play Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still) through an episode with the skirt of the ancestor (ZS 109, IS 160 f.). Thus, the journey described here also runs parallel with a “departure into one’s own work” (Müller 2020). This tension between different textual components characterizes the particular mode of narration. It creates a miniature that not only quotes central elements of Handke’s writing, but at the same time playfully reorganizes and transforms them. In this patchwork of references to previous texts – a textual bricolage – different interpretations become possible – this too characterizes Handke’s writing. The references organizing the narrative are not only ambivalent in themselves, they also unfold different fields of reference for their resolution; it is a technique that consistently determines the author’s last texts. Moreover, it can be observed that this play with the self and the other not only eludes final fixation but is also ironically fractured. A trivial scene makes explicit reference to Proust’s À la Recherche du temps perdu: as the narrator drinks from the shared bottle of wine of those gathered in a bar at the train station, he notices the “Nachgeschmack des Zigarettenrauchs” and recalls Proust’s madeleine episode from Recherche (ZS 29), which is thus ironized. Moreover, the allusion to this author determines Handke’s play with references, images and places throughout, even if otherwise only in a covered form (ZS 114). Irony also determines other scenes and images. In the second part of the narrative, the protagonist unexpectedly sees himself as an “Rächer mit den verschiedenfarbigen Socken” (ZV 110). This image is peculiarly opposed to the image he

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creates of himself. In it, he appears wearing a three-piece blue and black Dior suit, a wide-brimmed Borsalino, and a buzzard feather in his hatband, and also dark-­ tinted glasses (ZS 138). This caricaturing description is accompanied by guiding phrases such as the “Epos der Ersatzbusstrecke” (ZS 146) or the reference to the “Narretei” of one’s own mushroom hunt (ZS 130), and finally the scene in which the narrator simply swallows the chestnut leaf on which the “line of beauty and grace” shows itself to him (ZS 156). Furthermore, an autobiographical reference arises from the description of the place of departure. It is a scenario that undoubtedly recalls the area around Chaville, whose coordinates are also cited. Almost standard images of nature and civilization are juxtaposed here, the season of spring moves next to the unlocations of suburbia (ZS 22 f., IN 209). Moreover, in the “Bar der drei Bahnhöfe” people of different social classes and nationalities are portrayed. After the end of the soccer match on television, after-work conversations ensue that relate stories of social declining as well as life dreams and fantasies. One of the social climbers even speaks of his longing to get to the “obersten Etagen zum Rittertum” (ZS 40–45). In an ironic alternating reference, a closeness thus opens up between the author and the narrator, who reflects on his changes of place and the eternal decision to set out (ZS 33), who gets in the mood for the day in half-sleep images (ZS 18), who seeks out the company of the residents in Hotel der Reisenden and in a melancholical way recalls John Lennon’s Life is Very Short (ZS 29). From the very outset, there are indications that seeing and perceiving nature will become important for the later departure, because they prepare it and only unfold their final effect as it unfolds. “Zeitlebens, zu einem, wie ich meinte, entscheidenden Aufbruch entschlossen, hatte ich vorher eine, wie ich wiederum meinte, dazugehörige, eine wesentliche Ablenkung gesucht, und zwar jedesmal in der Natur. Und so auch jetzt und hier” (ZS 33). Already the described location of the house and its surroundings appear as the precinct of a privileged observation of nature, which in some respects traces the intense images of nature in Journale, especially in Am Felsfenster morgens. Und andere Ortszeiten 1982–1987. The predominant focus on seeing in this text (AF 539) derives directly from the capacity for words, which in the end leads to narration (AF 439; BV 746). After the departure from the house, the description of movement and the movement of seeing enter into an immediate reciprocal relationship. The narrator’s “becoming aware” captures a movement in nature that proceeds in the course of spring. Bilder beinah wie sonst in den Zeitraffern, Ruck um Ruck – begrünt, und am letzten Morgen zog und wellte sich, bei großer Sonne und Zephyr, das, von Baumart zu Baumart das Spiel wechselnde, unendlich vielfältige Grün, kein Haus, das den Blick ablenkte, himmelan zu dem einfältig reinen Blauen. Und nicht bloß leuchtete, schimmerte, glänzte, selbst graute! jedes der Grün anders, anders das der Weiden, Erlen und Pappeln am Hügelfuß, der Buchen und Eschen auf halber Höhe, der Birken, Eichen, Robinien, Vogelbeeren, Edelkastanien allüberall […]. (ZS 36)

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At the same time, the signs of civilization and nature initially seem to be equally subject to formative shapes reminiscent of the aesthetic figure of Hogarth’s “line of beauty and grace”. This is already shown by the harmonious image of two columns of smoke above the neighbouring house, which are originally quite different, but then “in contradiction to the ‘antediluvian fratricidal story’ not only take on the same colour and consistency, but finally also join together (ZS 21). Corresponding to this visual configuration is the panoramic gaze of the narrator, who perceives the landscape spread out before him as a picture of movement, characteristic of Romantic perception. “Jeder einzelne Baumwipfel auf der Hügelflanke zeigte sich als eine Mühle. Die Mühlen, sie mahlten und mahlten. Was machten die – gar die Fortsetzung? Doch: die Fortsetzung. Und wie dort von Laub zu Laub dies verschiedene Grün herrschte, so mahlte, drehte, zirkelte, kreiselte es von Blattwerk zu Blattwerk deutlichst unterschieden” (ZS 37). The geometrical movement projected into nature simultaneously illustrates a psychological one: the path from seeing to word, which initially begins with naming, following the biblical archaeology of human language formation. This is implicitly linked to the poetological notion, developed not only in Versuch über den Pilznarren (Essay on the Mushroom Hunter), of a writing that is based above all on observation and seeing, which only emerges in the act of walking (VP 128–130) and thereby stages a game of “Geistesgegenwart […] völliger Abwesenheit und […] vollkommener Geistesgegenwart” (VP 52). Here, mere perception leads to word-­ finding: The linguistic signs end up gaining more meaning than the images, allowing an imaginary topography to emerge in the process (Luckscheiter 2012, 12): Ja, oft hatten die Namen jener Orte, in der Regel mehrsilbige, für sich stärkere Bildkraft und Kontur als die nebulösen Bildhöfe oder -beigaben im Anhängselbereich. ‚Circle City, Alaska‘, ‚Mionica‘, ‚Archea Nemea‘, ‚Navalmoral de la Mata‘, ‚Brazzano di Cormòns‘, ‚Pitlochry‘, ‚Gornji Milanovac‘, ‚Hudi Log‘ (übersetzt ‚Bösenort‘), ‚Locmariaquer‘: rein gar nichts war mir dort passiert, weder Gutes noch Böses, keine Liebe, keine Angst, keine Gefahr, kein Gedanke, keine Erkenntnis, geschweige denn ein Zusammenhang oder, Gott im Himmel oder wo, eine Vision. Ich hatte die Orte nur gestreift, war zufällig durchgekommen […]. (ZS 39)

The self-assurance of the view and the coherence of the images of nature cannot, however, hide the fact that everything that happens between the two glances into a mirror reported by the narrator at the beginning and end of the text is permeated by an inner tension, which is, however, obscured in the narrator’s perception. “Und trotzdem sah und erlebte ich diesen Umkreis der Hügel weiterhin als die, die sie mir am Anfang erschienen waren. Die Tatsachen konnten der Illusion nichts anhaben. Die Einbildung war dauerhaft, nahm mit der Zeit an Räumlichkeit, Stofflichkeit, Farbigkeit – an Rhythmik noch zu. Ob wirklich oder nicht: sie wirkte” (ZS 35). But this panoramic view of the “Eternal Hill” of Vélizy has an undisclosed inscription (ZS 35), for in the midst of the emphatically described panorama of the plateau of Vélizy the military base mentioned at the beginning is located (ZS 16). It is ‘Base aérienne 107 Villacoublay’ on the plateau of Vélizy, where not only France’s state guests arrive but also the fallen of French wars are brought home. During the

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Battle of Britain at the beginning of the Second World War and later when the Allies began their bombing raids on Germany, it was an airfield for the German Air Force. This repeats a configuration that also defines the end of Der große Fall. As in other texts by the author, images of a reconciled nature are combined with overt or covert signs of war and violence (ZS 35, MN 550, GF 279, CS 203). The text Das zweite Schwert records another example of this when the narrator finds an inscription on the stone of an old seawall, which in turn recalls a past history of violence and thus counteracts the idyllic configuration of a “Maigeschichte” in literal terms as well: “HEUTE ACHTEN MAI 1945 – LÄUTEN DIE GLOCKEN DEN SIEG” (ZS 117). It is precisely at this point that he turns to a very different writing, also linked to the place of Port-Royal. It is the text of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées. “Schließ die Pforten deiner Sinne!” the narrator formulates accordingly (ZS 119). A comparable dialectical tension that unfolds between perceptions, signs and texts determines the entire narrative. If one looks at the protagonist’s search, it becomes apparent that, between his two glances in the mirror at the beginning and the end (ZS 11, 157), it is also characterized by a double perception when looking at the fellow travellers, for he encounters the balanced and calm as well as the deranged and aggressive. Again and again, moreover, his perception is pervaded by “Umsprungsbildern” – changes in the registers of perception – that are typical of Handke (Höller 2013, 117), and which not infrequently occur here at the reversal loops of the buses (ZS 99, 148). As a result, the narrative is transformed into a game bent on the accentuation and fixation of opposites. It establishes a double order that also corresponds to a procedure of romantic fairy tales. At the same time, it is directed beyond the narrated reality: the narration opens up another order of discourse that interferes with the poetic one. The signal word of this double reference is the word ‘sword’ in the title and the supplementary characteristic as a ‘May Story’. This corresponds to the two parts of the narrative, the first of which, entitled “Späte Rache”, is followed by a second, entitled “Das zweite Schwert”. There are some indications that this textual configuration is in accordance with the biblical context that Handke’s narrative consciously sets as its motto, and that it can also be related to the salvation-historical linkage of the Old and New Testaments. What is surprising, however, is that this linearity is inverted in the narrative in a double way. The narrative takes up a dialectic that already determines the biblical text: The passage from the Gospel of Luke already opens up a tension between the willingness to use violence and a conscious renunciation of it. The medieval doctrine of the two kingdoms, which explicitly refers to this passage, tried to determine the relationship between secular and spiritual power with these words of the evangelist in the investiture controversy. But in addition to this political reading, it is significant for biblical exegesis that the passage is related to the story of the passion and the resurrection of Jesus, and that its context reveals concessions to a Zealot interpretation as well as its rejection (Schirmer 2009). Jesus’ call to the disciples to get a purse and a sword is by no means a call to violence; rather, Jesus initially only signifiess to the disciples that they will be on their own after his death. A little later, when Peter begins to defend him with his sword, he admonishes them to accept the actions of the servants of the high priest; he even heals the ear of Malchus, which

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was cut off by his disciple (Luke 22: 51,52). It makes sense, therefore, to read the passage also in view of the Gospel of Matthäus, where it explicitly says, “Put up your sword into its place! For whoever takes the sword shall perish by the sword” (Matthew 26: 52). This contextualization fundamentally changes the status of the story of vengeance announced in the text. The fact that the dialectic of the biblical text is initially perpetuated in Handke’s narrative reveals its functional rule. It becomes clear that it deliberately does not provide an unambiguous reading for the motto that precedes it, but rather unfolds the interpretation only in the course of a narrative that only gradually differentiates the various coordinates. Basically, it follows the figure of a homiletic interpretation that sketches out rules of practical action. This characterizes Handke’s typical approach to the Gospels, which is also evidenced by his psychologization of biblical themes in Gestern unterwegs (Travelling Yesterday) (GU 523, 537). Now this strategy of textual interpretation is reinforced by both an intellectual-historical and an autofictional reference. In this context, the station of the monastery of Port-Royal first gains importance. It is a place that became the sign of a spiritual turn that aimed at a fundamental redefinition of the Christian faith in the political world. The Cistercian movement countered the Roman Church, which was fixated on worldly power, with a new spirituality. Handke’s Don Juan already encircles this turning point in intellectual history. In the context of his writing, however, this religious reference has a thoroughly ambivalent consequence. It cannot be overlooked that the secular interpretation of the biblical word presented in the text, the parallelization of religious and poetic language, opens up an autofictional track that leads in some Journale to a thoroughly irritating identification of the author with Christ (GU 419, 245, 538, VB 172, 383). His explicit orientation towards Christ as the Son of God, which already determines Gestern unterwegs, thus continues (GU 390, 514). Moreover, this link attests to the importance of the autoanalytical line, which also defines this text: it becomes the crossroads of a narrative discourse game that combines sociocritical, psychological, and poetological considerations. In Port-­ Royal, the narrator meets one of his neighbours, a former judge, who, in the course of a critique of his profession, criticizes the “abuse of the law”, which he interprets as a sign of the modern loss of volonté générale determined by Rousseau (ZS 130 f.). Without having learned what the narrator’s intention is, this judge accompanies him with his wishes and states: “Sie haben ein ernstes Vorhaben” (ZS 133). This episode follows the narrator’s reflection on the authority of judges, which is unmistakably based on Handke’s questioning of the International Court of Justice at The Hague. Now, however, the criticism solely takes on a satirical image: “Hätten [die Richter] wahrhaftig das Recht auf ihrer Seite, so müßten sie keine Juristenhüte tragen. Die Erhabenheit ihrer Wissenschaft wäre Autorität genug. Doch da ihre Wissenschaft eine bloß eingebildete ist, muß der Weg der Rechtsherren jener der Einbildungskraft sein, wodurch sie dann tatsächlich Autorität ausüben. Alle Autoritäten sind verkleidet” (ZS 119). In satirical exaggeration, nothing other than a usurpatory self-empowerment is criticized. The narrator had already succinctly countered the guiding phrase “Ich schlage um mich mit meinen Rechten, also bin

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ich” (ZS 131) with “Jetzt gibt’s keine Gerechtigkeit mehr auf Erden ohne Gewalt” (ZS 120). But this critical distance breaks down in the episode. At first, the narrator himself claims the right of the sword, his “wahrhaftes Recht”, to solve the case of his mother (ZS 120). But in a subsequent dream he recalls his earlier question about his mother’s resistance in the ‘Third Reich’. Playing the role of a prosecutor like the journalist on whom he seeks revenge, he had already disturbed the “Mutter-Sohn-Szene” (ZS 121) as a child to such an extent that the mother cried like a defendant, with the result that she “wortlos, wimmerte, schluchzte vor ihrem Möchtegern-Richter”. In the dream’s fantastic perspective, this past extends into the present: “ihr Schluchzen wird niemals aufgehört haben”, the dreamer surmises (ZS 122). Shortly afterwards, the situation is radically reversed. As is often the case in Handke’s texts, this is visualized in a psychologically impressive way by the fact that it happens in a sequence of narrated film images. A close-up in “supercinemascope” is followed by a fade-in in black and then again, a close-up on the mother’s face, this time in black and white and alienated in an ominous way. In this sequence of images, “[das] Muttertraumgesicht” becomes that of an avenger (ZS 123). This scene repeats a central obsessive memory of his mother, who also appears in Die Morawische Nacht as an “apparition” like an “Bildeinschuss mitten ins Herz” (MN 499 f.), which also looks like a film image which shows “einzig das Gesicht der Mutter, vom Dunkel umgeben” (MN 500). This dream is as clear as it is upsetting. The image of “primary maternity” (Winnicott) is through its threatening intensity already the act of revenge that needs no reason. The narrator has no choice but to wake up, “weggeflüchtet, von der Historie hin zur Gegenwart” (ZS 124). What this formula means is already indicated by the fact that this present is associated with the name Blaise Pascal. Pascal’s thought and texts open up a space of escape, a vista in the course of time. The sentence “Nous sommes embarqués” (ZS 126) becomes a guiding phrase for stepping back behind things, which is developed here as a poetological formula. This corrects an earlier notion of the author about the mode of writing. Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (History of the Pencil) had still celebrated the unlimited omnipotence of the imagination. “Erst, wenn das, was war, in die Phantasie gehoben, noch einmal kommt, wird es mir wirklich: Phantasie als die auslegende Wiederkehr”, one could read there (GB 202). Now this free disposal over appearances is differentiated in two ways. First, by a reference to “[der] Schein” and “[das] Schöne” as Friedrich Schiller defines them in more detail in the 27th Letter of Die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen. There Schiller describes how “[der] ästhetische Bildungstrieb” establishes “[das] dritte fröhliche[.] Reich[.] des Spiels und des Scheins”. This takes away from human “die Fesseln aller Verhältnisse” (Schiller NA-20, 410) and refers him to himself: “Nichts darf ihm hier heilig sein als sein eigenes Gesetz”, it says programmatically in the 26th letter (Schiller NA-20, 512). In his speech on receiving the Nobel Prize, Handke relied on this autonomy of the aesthetic, not only by opposing it to public discourse, but also by refusing it at the same time. He opposed it solely with his aesthetic concept of Über die Dörfer. In the story of Das zweite Schwert, Handke also excludes the political dimension of

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his reflections; moreover, he defines aesthetic “Schein” independently of the idea or concept of beauty, which would be referred to a social context. “Der Schein, er ist für sich, und von sich aus, Materie; ist Stoff; Urstoff, Stoff der Stoffe”, it says (ZS 125), and a little later he notes, “Alle die Wüsteneien und Badlands der Schönheit. Dagegen die Quellen, Bäche, Ströme und Meere des Scheins! Pazifik des Scheins” (ZS 126). It is significant that the narrator’s self-assurance thus established is biographically recoded. The text is now related to Handke’s real mother, of all people. Her narratives take on central importance for the author’s memories (Greiner 2010). The mother’s narration prefigures and initiates the narrator’s narration: “Und sie erzählte und erzählte. Sie erzählte am Morgen, sie erzählte am Abend, sie erzählte in der Nacht” (ZS 70). The fact that the narrator’s desire to take revenge is directly linked in the narrative to his memories of this maternal telling – no doubt also an allusion to the life-historical significance of the “drame de mon coucher” in Proust – takes on special significance for this story. For it too leads to an apotheosis of narration, which, precisely because it frees itself from immediate reference to reality, can create a completely different image of it. This is exclusive in the true sense of the word; it allows only that which can be opposed to the merely real. The “second sword” is the word, it is not “das Schwert aus Stahl” (ZS 157). Thus, in the context of narration, a depotentiation and at the same time transformation of the real takes place. The narrative elements with which Handke describes this are familiar. As in other texts, at the end of this journey there is a celebration that dissolves all tensions (ZS 152 ff., OD 541, ÜD 37, 41) and in the course of which, as if it were a dream, all previous orientations dissolve. As in the children’s game that the narrator remembers, the coordinates of his previous orientation shift for him: “Und plötzlich rollte die Kugel, rollten die Murmeln ganz woandershin, als zu Beginn dieser Geschichte gedacht” (ZS 156). This becomes possible solely because the protagonist is a narrator who not only tells a story or his story, but at the same time reorganizes it in the telling. His text can include or exclude reality, it is a staging, not a story that is told, but a fantasy about the capacity of narration. Both the coordinates of the reality described and the way they are dealt with are solely at the narrator’s disposal. In the course of the feast, the narrator believes he recognizes in a group of women the perpetrator on whom he wishes to avenge his mother. The passage in which he identifies her, however, is decidedly ambiguous: “War das wirklich sie? – Es war sie. Ich bestimmte es so” (ZS 156). It is in this scenario alone, vouchsafed by the narrator, that the long-­ planned revenge can come to pass, and it does so now in an unexpected way. The destruction of the hated woman occurs solely through the act of narration. “Sie, die Übeltäterin, Sie und ihresgleichen gehörten nicht in die Geschichte, weder in diese noch in sonst eine! Es war darin kein Platz für sie. Und das war meine Rache. Und das genügte als Rache. Das war und ist Rache genug” (ZS 156  f.). This phrase points beyond the plot of the narrative. It becomes a sign of a basic figure of narrative that transcends the text and to which Handke repeatedly returns in his late texts. The strategy of telling anew – “Umerzählen” –, which forms the core of the narrative, also claims to redesign the world beyond the individual text. This happens in

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an ongoing movement, on which the author is constantly working. It is no coincidence that it is both triggered and vouched for by the view of nature. Looking at the plateau of Vélizy, the narrator notes, on behalf of his creator, “Ja! Und dazu noch kein Ding, sondern ein Wort!”  – “Womöglich die Ewige Wiederkehr?”  – “Nein! Was ich sah, als Wort wie als Sache, war die Fortsetzung.” – “Die Ewige?” – “Nichts als die Fortsetzung. Auf zur Fortsetzung!” (ZS 37). The narrative must continue.

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From the very beginning, the reception of Handke’s work in literary criticism and literary studies has revolved around a few thematic areas, which are determined on the one hand by the public discussion of the author and on the other by specific academic questions. Especially at the beginning of Handke’s writing career, journalistic and literary criticism overlapped, if only because the author stylized himself as an ‘enfant terrible’ of the literary scene. A comparable combination of public and scholarly criticism occurs in connection with the debate about Handke’s Serbian texts (Deichmann 1999), which was revived on the occasion of the Nobel Prize award in 2019. In the process, an almost structurally identical debate is repeated, without the basic positions that have changed. In it, one can observe both an even greater divergence of journalistic and literary-critical discourse, as well as a recourse not only to the same arguments over and over again but also to comparable methods in influencing public opinion about the author. In this respect, nothing has changed in the early assessment of Handke criticism by Rolf Michaelis: “Peter Handke and his critics – that is the story of misunderstandings and misjudgements, of devout adherence and defamatory combat, of surprising conversions and apostasies” (Arnold TK 1978, 116). The statement from the fourth edition of the special issue of Text und Kritik on Handke itself belongs to this development, for it sketches a completely different picture of the author than the preceding editions. A comparable change in the public assessment of the author is also documented in Michael Scharang’s volume of materials Über Peter Handke, published in 1972. On the occasion of the controversy printed there between Peter Handke and Peter Hamm, who changed from a sharp critic to a well-meaning companion of Handke’s work (Hamm 2017), the editor remarked: “Handke is not a symptom; what is symptomatic is the behavior of those critics who put him down as a positive or negative symptom” (Scharang ÜH 11). This is precisely what the public discourses during the Serbian war and on the occasion of the awarding of the 2019 Nobel Prize confirm.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1_15

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This interaction showed from the beginning that the controversy of criticism was never solely aesthetically motivated, but belonged to a political debate (Arnold TK 1978, 115) that sought the appropriate aesthetic categories. It also transported a myth of Handke’s beginning at Princeton (Arnold TK 1978, 117 f.). Rolf Michaelis, who at no point questions Handke’s writing, points out with good reason that the formula of the “Überläufer”, which Peter Hamm brings into the field against Hellmuth Karasek, in fact, makes clear in a significant way the “clique thinking” of criticism and the schools of literary theory that Handke’s works encountered in the sixties (Arnold TK 1978, 122). In doing so, he addresses not only the “barrier of ideological, materialist-Marxist criticism” (Arnold TK 1978, 122), and the “probing, enervating energy of Handke’s language and thought” (Arnold TK 1978, 122), but also almost in passing the envy that strikes criticism’s “favorite child” (Arnold TK 1978, 116). For Scharang, too, it is clear that Handke was stylized as a “suspect figure between two camps” not least because of his literary success (Scharang ÜH 11). Through his fictional texts as well as through his essays on literary theory, the author reinforced rather than cast doubt on this fixation of the fronts. His attack on the language of the student organisation SDS published in DIE ZEIT in 1968 (Scharang ÜH 309) confirms this. It also shows that he sometimes exaggerates his attitude. As in his essays on literary theory, he builds up counter-­ positions in writing and argumentation that in this form do not exist. This applies to his beginnings as well as to the argument about Serbia. Both major publicly conducted discourses are, however, linked from the outset by the fact that Handke’s political attitudes can never be separated from his fundamental poetological views, and above all from the conviction that poetry must create an alternative to politics. Wunschloses Unglück (A Sorrow Beyond Dreams: A Life Story) ushered in a striking turnaround in the critics’ verdict. It was based not only on Handke’s opening up to a realistic style of writing, as noted by literary critics, but also on a paradigm shift in post-war German literature. To a large extent, it can be explained by the disappointment of hopes triggered by the student movement of 1968. As a result, a utopian dimension of art is increasingly recognized and appreciated in Handke’s plays and texts (Arnold TK 1978, 129 f.). Michael Schneider, who originally speaks of Handke’s “formalist fantasy” (Scharang ÜH 96) and accuses him of expressing a feeling for life that is “not socially mediated, i.e. not socializable at all” (Scharang ÜH 97), because he compensates his “disinterest in the ‘social construction’ of ‘second nature’” by its “aestheticization and naturalization” (Scharang ÜH 99), arrives only two years later at an opposite assessment, which is quite consequential. There he states that “precisely our still all too abstract and all too conceptual left could learn a lot from Handke’s highly developed sensual cognitive ability, if he would finally put aside his defiance of the reason of political enlightenment, finally grow up” (Arnold TK 1978, 124; Schneider 1974, 44 f.). Despite this change in criticism, the consequences of the simultaneously aesthetic and ideological controversies of the years 1968 to 1974 over Handke’s work can still be discerned today, although there are characteristic shifts. While many

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critics in their evaluations at least still covertly fall back on the alternative of experimentally oriented and committed literature originally – brought into play by Handke himself – and continue to write about it in variations, Scharang emphasizes very early on that Handke’s literary-theoretical programmatic developed a sham alternative, because his decision against committed literature was based on a one-sided reading of his opponents Sartre and Brecht. By contrast, it is important for him that his opposition to the so-called “Beschreibungsliteratur”/descriptive literature only proves that Handke reduces “a concept that has a literary, social and political dimension”, namely the concept of “late bourgeois realism” to a “literary dimension” (Scharang ÜH 12). Apart from this, Handke’s thinking remains literary for him. At the same time, however, he considers Handke’s approach to reality to be more appropriate than that of the “idealistic do-gooders with a left-wing background”. However, his demand that “literary thinking”, which is “implicitly hostile to theory” and only a “state of suspension”, must sooner or later “decide to think theoretically”, is not fulfilled by Handke (Scharang ÜH 1977, 13). Rather, literary criticism is confronted with the fact that he unfolds his grasp of reality in a dialectical form as a correction to what exists, but always in the gesture of an autonomization of the aesthetic. Despite the recourse to earlier polarizations, current studies of Handke’s work have become decidedly more objective. In particular, three thematic complexes are being developed: first, the biographical and autobiographical inscription of Handke’s texts, secondly, his self-confident recourse to traditional literary forms, and thirdly, his intertextual play with narratives and quotations, which unfolds a specific Handke tone. As far as the autobiographical inscription is concerned, Handke emphasized the secret inscription of his texts from the very beginning. Already about Die Stunde der wahren Empfindung (A Moment of True Feeling), he remarks: “Unverschämter als in meinem letzten Buch kann ich nicht mehr schreiben, glaube ich: Da ist die Grenze zum bloß Privaten hin erreicht  – sonst würde es nur privat werden” (Arnold TK 1978, 33). At the same time, he emphasizes from the beginning a fundamental connection between politics and privacy (Arnold TK 1978, 38): “Als ob die subjektivistische Literatur, die ich mache, nicht auch als Korrektur, als ein Modell von Möglichkeit, Leben darzustellen, akzeptiert werden kann” (Arnold TK 1978, 39). Following the conviction “dass Literatur nur dann verbindlich wird, wenn sie in die äußerste Tiefe des ICH hineingeht” (Arnold TK 1978, 44), he writes texts in which the movement of critical self-exploration, which becomes the moment of a critique that pushes outwards, is brought to bear in a connection between “der äußersten Oberfläche [und] dem äußersten Verbohrten” (Arnold TK 1978, 44). That the acceptance of this attitude in criticism also leads to foreshortening of the dialectic that marks Handke’s self-expressions is shown by the first critiques that follow this track. One example of this would be Reich-Ranicki in particular accuses the author of Langsame Heimkehr (Slow Homecoming) of misusing religious imagery, thereby missing the complexity of Handke’s highly diverse use of religious metaphors, as emphasized in recent criticism, as well as the difference between psychogram and fiction. He declassifies this novel as an “episches Manifest der

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baren Innerlichkeit” (Werner 1980, 99). Manfred Durzak’s monograph on Peter Handke und die deutsche Gegenwartsliteratur takes a more differentiated approach. However, it too initially follows its subtitle Narziß auf Abwegen in a pathologizing gesture. Durzak, who takes up Kohut’s theory of narcissism, does see that Handke’s writing, which he derives from a “psychic defect” and from “psychic deformations”, is not simply their reproduction, but aims at a productive transformation. In the end, however, precisely when looking at Tetralogie (Tetralogy) and Journale (Journals), he lapses into a foreshortening that he originally wanted to avoid. He states that the “increasingly prominent impertinence with which he made himself the fixed point of his literary works made the artistic processing recede more and more and in its place made the psychic raw material stand out more and more” (Durzak 1982, 30). In looking at Stunde der wahren Empfindung, he follows the psychoanalytic interpretation of Tilmann Moser, who in his analysis of this novel at least suggests an open boundary between the “conclusive clinical picture” of the borderline patient Keuschnig and its author (Moser 1981, 1138). However, this reduction of the psychological to the language of case analysis completely ignores the act of productive processing, of transforming the psychological material into the aesthetic configuration. As early as 1979, Peter Hamm, therefore, formulates quite rightly that Handke’s narcissism – which, incidentally, is admitted and reflected – “cannot seriously be the object of criticism” (Werner 1980, 39). Reich-Ranicki’s position is symptomatic of the overwhelming majority of reviews, which, while consistently eager for decisive judgments, show themselves unwilling to reflect either on the inner context of Handke’s literary work or on the changing theoretical presuppositions of his writing. These reviews mark with increasing sharpness a boundary that separates literary studies from criticism committed to topicality. In Handke’s case, the accusation of mystification, which other critics have also adopted after Reich-Ranicki, applies to a writing whose theoretical foundation increasingly eludes quick access and which, for this very reason, falls prey to prejudice. The subsumption of Handke’s Über die Dörfer (Walk about the Village) under the title “Sehnsucht nach Heimat” (SPIEGEL, 01.10.1984) is only one example of such rubrications, which devalue a fact by capturing it within a given grid. By contrast, Handke’s 2019 Nobel Prize speech confirmed precisely the capacity of the aesthetic not only to elude prevailing discourses, but also to thoroughly question them. It is symptomatic of the stagnation of intellectual discourse that this functional change of the text Über die Dörfer quoted by Handke in his speech has not even been recognized (Weidermann 2019). A decisive objectification of the literary debate was only brought about by the fact that the autobiographical and biographical inscription of Handke’s texts was increasingly examined from a work-historical perspective. The monographs by Manfred Mixner and Rainer Nägele/Renate Voris are paradigmatic for this. While Mixner’s monograph can justify the conciseness of its approach from direct knowledge of the Austrian literary scene, Nägele/Voris develop Handke’s literary position not only from the analysis of some decisive “coordinates of literature”, which they also relate to the approaches of the Graz “Forum Stadtpark” and the “Wiener Gruppe”. More differentiated than Durzak, they make clear that in Handke’s work

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the strikingly strong and in later texts increasing proportion of autobiographical material, is of literary interest (Nägele/Voris 1978, 32). This brings into focus a motivation for writing that, in the change of themes and modes of writing, simultaneously captures turning points and continuous developments in Handke’s prose and changing preconditions for writing (Nägele/Voris 1978, 34). The same applies to the study of dramas. It is particularly concerned with the contradictory relationship to Brecht and can show that Handke “by no means starts from a zero point, but from a theatre and drama situation in which reflection on the problematic of the genre […] has already become a tradition” (Nägele/Voris 1978, 71 f.). This consideration is followed by the later studies on Handke’s “postdramatic epic” (Lehmann 2012, 67–74), which are included in the anthology by Kastberger/Pektor (Kastberger/ Pektor 2012). They demonstrate the extent to which these late plays also possess an autobiographical and autofictional centering, which they express most clearly in Fahrt im Einbaum (Voyage by Dugout) concerning the author’s political conflicts and most explicitly in Immer noch Sturm (Storm Still) in respect to his family history. The connection of a “Dekonstruktion vorgegebener Diskurse” with the “Kategorie des Utopischen” as pointed out in the Büchner Prize speech, which is characteristic of Handke’s late texts, is also rightly thematized, even if it sometimes falls behind a “Kult der Unmittelbarkeit” (Nägele/Voris 1978, 138). Of significance here is Nägele’s note in a later study on Wunschloses Unglück that the transformation of autobiographical data in Handke’s fictional text already amounts to the outline of a poetology (Nägele 1983, 388–402). Correspondingly, Peter Pütz’ essayistic study traces the significant turning points in Handke’s work, which reveal both change and continuity. Pütz, too, reads the author’s texts as a draft of a progressively completing poetology, which points to the utopian power and the “omnipotence of artistic appearance” with the “audience encouragement” of Über die Dörfer (Pütz 1982, 121 f.). He thereby emphasizes that this poetology also unfolds a program that understands the supposedly resigned retreat into the private sphere as a “fundamental return to the epistemological function of the subject” (Pütz 1982, 8). In line with this, Christoph Bartmann’s monograph, which takes its title Suche nach Zusammenhang (Searching for Context) from the Grillparzer quote cited in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (Lesson of Mount Sainte-Victoire) (Bartmann 1984, 1; LSV 100), emphasizes the continuity of Handke’s work. He characterizes Handke’s writing as “phenomenological” (Bartmann 1984, 21) and at the same time as the result of a work-determining process in which the category of context relates the thematic and the structural to one another (Bartmann 1984, 167). Like Volker Bohn before him (Bohn 1976, 368), Bartmann thus simultaneously opens up a direct connection between the thematization of the linguistic and the problematization of identity (Bartmann 1984, 116). The “model and etude character” and the “voluntary reductionism” of the early work already outline for him the transition into a post-­ reflexive state (Bartmann 1984, 47), which is finally redeemed by the texts after Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied (Short Letter, Long Farewell). In them, a continuous I gradually takes form as a “permanence of consciousness” (Bartmann 1984,

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139). From this perspective, the series of protagonists in Handke’s work appears as an “series of interpreters”, an “ever new edition of an idea of oneself, which, as soon as it is sign (in the form of a hero), already draws the next interpreter after it” (Bartmann 1984, 144). In this way Handke’s texts, from Der kurze Brief onwards, unfold a doctrine of form that finally becomes overtly a poetology in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire (Bartmann 1984, 168). The fact that the path to a “Gesetz” and “die Begierde nach Zusammenhang” (Bartmann 1984, 238), at the latest in Langsame Heimkehr, aim at a recapture of temporal spaces and of the “Kindheitsgeographie” is the decisive continuing perspective here (LH 109). It points to the fact that Handke’s writing has an autobiographical center. This becomes clear the more the poetological system completes itself and autobiographical memory reveals itself as the precondition of aesthetic imagination. The biographical works on Handke have decisively reinforced the necessity of taking this into consideration. Following the biographies of Adolf Haslinger (1992), Georg Pichler (2002) and Hans Höller (2009), this can be paradigmatically demonstrated in Malte Herwig’s Meister der Dämmerung (2012). An important intermediate area is first opened up by the work of Fabjan Hafner (2008), which traces the Slovenia theme through Handke’s entire oeuvre and, using this theme as an example, opens up an inner line of writing that captures not only the biographical but also a political context. Under the title Peter Handke: Unterwegs ins Neunte Land, Hafner examines the history of Handke’s work along the lines of Handke’s life. In his view it is determined on the one hand by the author’s experiences in Slovenian Carinthia. On the other hand, it is based on the fact that Slovenia also becomes a construct for the author Handke. What Hafner describes as his utopia can be linked to theoretical considerations by Slavoj Žižek, who understands Handke’s idea of Slovenia with Lacan as an imaginary phantasm that emerges from construction of the Other. However, the pointed formula that this simultaneously constitutes an “extreme form of racism [sic]” is untenable (Hafner 2008, 34; Žižek 1992, 69; Žižek 2004; 2019). It seems more sensible to view this construction, which is relevant to the history of works, with Robert Pfaller as the result of the attitude of “interpassivity” typical of Western intellectuals, which seeks to reconstruct the lost own in another. Following this line of thought, Hafner states that Handke’s texts oscillate between the construction of presence and absence. Through this, the autobiographical recording of the texts becomes a writing strategy that gives the work as a whole an inner line. The two texts Die Wiederholung (Repetition) and Die Abwesenheit (Absence) complement each other in a mirror image, precisely because they are both centered by an autofictional core. “If Wiederholung leads to a narrative rupture, Abwesenheit ends with the succession of a disappeared person, an absorption in absence” (Hafner 2008, 208; cf. Hamm 2002, 132). Wiederholung also takes on special significance because it relates remembering and envisioning the past to one another in the same way as the text of Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht (My Year in the No-Man’s-Bay) (W 101; Hafner 2008, 190). In addition, the third section of Die Wiederholung, entitled Die Savanne der Freiheit und das Neunte Land, reveals the imaginary’s share in the narrative (W 225–334).

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Haslinger had already pointed to the shift within the familial field of reference affected by narrative, which replaces one’s father with one’s grandfather and transforms one’s mother’s brothers into one’s brothers (Haslinger 1992, 14; cf. Hamm 2006, 120), when he described the alternation of loss of identity and search for identity recorded in Handke’s texts (Haslinger 1992, 38). The clearest sign of this is a dream in which Handke becomes one with his uncle (Haslinger 1992, 69). Following this line of thought, Hafner already interprets Die Hornissen (The Hornets) as “a retrieval, a correction of history – through an inductive procedure that is capable of uncovering the superindividual in the particular individual fate through deconstructive insistence” (Hafner 2008, 82). He extends this line of interpretation to the text of Der Bildverlust (Crossing the Sierra de Gredos), where the bank woman remembers her own center and the place of her Wendish ancestors (Steinfeld 2002; Hafner 2008, 321). Although it must be taken into account that the father configuration sometimes also functions as a “functional blank space”, the work-determining and autobiographical significance of the real father figure is by no means erased by this textual strategy (Blasberg 1991, 528; Huber 2005, 229). Slovenian, however, is not only the “foremost language of the childhood landscape” (Hafner 2008, 88). By opposing the history-laden German language, it also marks the critical relationship to Germany (Hafner 2008, 159; Müller 1993). This gives the dictionaries mentioned again and again and the reference to the “Ein-­ Wort-­Märchen” in Die Wiederholung their special significance (W 205). While the contouring and functionalization of the Slovenia theme prove fruitful for the interpretation of the fictional texts, Hafner falls somewhat short in the discussion of Serbia, however, when he makes Slovenia and not Yugoslavia the center of Handke’s political utopia, which is, after all, initially directed at the vanished multiethnic state of Yugoslavia. Along these lines, Herwig’s biography also initially focuses on the reconstruction of Handke’s earliest family history. For him, too, it is determined by the particular living situation of the Slovene minority in Carinthia, but also by the political history of this country in the context of Austrian and German history before and after the Second World War (Hafner 2008, 40–42). Since Handke’s stepfather, like his biological father, belonged to the German ‘Wehrmacht’, this results in a double orientation of the author for Herwig. The struggle of the Yugoslavs against Germany becomes a kind of “founding myth for Handke’s home of the soul” (Herwig 2012, 29) and uncle Gregor, the mother’s brother, is transformed “in Handke’s literary cosmos into the dreamed-up historical counter-image to the German fathers” (Herwig 2012, 25). On the one hand, Handke obviously also influenced his mother, who is an important addressee of early letters (Herwig 2012, 18.07.2011), against his stepfather (Haslinger 2011, 46; Herwig 39); on the other hand, his family history is repeatedly traced and rewritten in the fictional texts. This special situation, which is also burdened by the difficult relationship between the stepfather and the mother, gave rise for Herwig to the countermovement of a resolute self-positing. From the very beginning, it takes place solely in writing. This is a form of “necromancy” (Herwig 2012, 25), but at the same time a transformation of experience. The narrator’s guiding phrase in Die Wiederholung

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“[…] dieser stille Erzähler, in meinem Innersten, war etwas, das mehr war als ich […]” (W 16) can thereby certainly be read, as Herwig suggests, as a self-commentary by the author (Herwig 2012, 116). It describes a doubling of identity that can be related to the inner dialectic of a history of socialization in which writing also establishes an outsider position. It is the repeatedly described distance of even the young author from the other members of the family (GB 150; Herwig 2012). In this context, it is not only the notes in notebooks, which already began in the high school years, that gain significance (Herwig 2012, 106), but also the letters to the mother, which refer intensively to this familial constellation (Herwig 2012, 187). Based on this, Herwig reads the text Die Hornissen as both a reflection of and a coping with this situation. It is characteristic of his biographical deciphering of the texts that he thereby places real experiences and literary configurations on an equal footing. This includes the fact that, in the context of Handke’s performance at Princeton, he classifies Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience) as a “resounding comedy of liberation” (Herwig 2012, 150). Moreover, because he adopts Handke’s vocabulary, the transition between the sources, the description and the fictional texts are not always clearly marked. This results in an approach that sometimes seems feuilletonistic, but which is certainly creative and pointed: “Transformation, not repetition, is Handke’s artistic principle” (Herwig 2012, 125, 215). The turn to the classical highlighted by Höller’s monograph is such a transformation, pronounced in the 1979 Kafka Prize speech. Moreover, the mediation between fictional and autobiographical texts also leads to surprising insights. This is most clearly demonstrated by a passage in a letter that links the term ‘threshold’, beyond its philosophical contextualization (Renner/ Nenon 1988, 104–115; Huber 2005, 116–119), to a life-historical experience. It is the threshold experience that the author has in a crisis situation – when entering the house of Hermann Lenz  – who, according to Handke, “saved his life” (Herwig 2012, 205, 207). Other key scenes that enable a double resolution also become points of articulation between the real and the fictional. Examples are the reference to the primal scene of amazement (HO 14; Herwig 2012, 77), which will be repeated later, or to walking away into the snow (Herwig 2012, 78  f.). By contrast, the memory of boarding school days in Tanzenberg, also present in many of the author’s texts, is decoded as a real constellation responsible for both an experience of confinement (GU 94 f.) and the first encounter with literature (Herwig 2012, 93). It is not only here that the author attaches particular importance to Handke’s notes. In general, he pays attention to both the diary notes, which Handke classifies as “spontane Aufzeichnung zweckfreier Wahrnehmungen” (GW 5), and the original notebooks, in which drawings, scraps of sentences, addresses, and found objects gather as very personal traces of life (Herwig 2012, 161). In doing so, Herwig also outlines character traits and psychological dispositions of the author. He describes Handke’s tendency towards causing an éclat, which is expressed in plays and texts such as Publikumsbeschimpfung or Lebensbeschreibung, also as a private mode of behaviour (Herwig 2012, 122  f., 142). He discusses Handke’s undisguised description of his tendency to fantasize violence (Herwig

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2012, 122; Haslinger 1992, 40; SF 57 f.), his repeatedly expressed dislike of women (Herwig 2012, 197), and his admitted outburst of violence toward Marie Colbin (Herwig 2012, 241; Colbin 1999). The expressions of female violence found in his texts are also prefigured in a notation of the diary (Herwig 2012, 233–235). They complement the scenes of marriage and family inscribed in Der Kurze Brief as well as in Kindergeschichte (Children’s Story). In terms of intensity, they are surpassed only by the images of the relationship with Sophie Semin recorded in Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts (Till Day You Do Part Or A Question of Light) and Die Morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night) (Herwig 2012, 303). Based on this, Herwig’s view of the sources simultaneously provides elements of a psychogram. He shows that the author is prone to panic attacks and provides evidence of the aversion to noises repeatedly described in the texts (Herwig 2012, 162; Tagebuch, March 1976 DLA). In addition, there is a reference to the “schreckliche Grenzenlosigkeit der Depression”, which certainly connects with mundane everyday problems (Herwig 2012, 163). It too is traced again and again in the changing psychological dispositions of Handke’s protagonists. An example of this is provided by the anxiety dream from Der kurze Brief (KB 9), which can be related to a letter Handke wrote to his mother, in which he reports a dream: “ich war vielmehr Onkel Gregor, ich meine damit: alles, was ihm widerfuhr, das erlebte ich an mir; ganz unbeschreiblich war das” (Höller 2009, 7; Herwig 2012, 167). Undoubtedly, this dream evidenced a precarious psychic balance, expressed in what the author himself calls dream rhythm disturbances (Herwig 2012, 197). A central role in Herwig’s account is taken up by the tracing of the public debate about Handke’s Serbian texts. It not only describes his political stance on developments in the Balkans, but also explains his written statements on the one hand from a specific belief in the power of poetic language as an alternative to the political world, and on the other hand from a vehement rejection of preconceived opinions, as the author sees them prevailing in public discourse mediated by the media (Herwig 2012, 131). The debate with the French press, Le Monde and Nouvelle Observateur, is traced out here, as are the simultaneous German discussions that led, among other things, to denial of the Heine Prize award. Herwig rightly sees that in a situation in which, in the end, “fast nichts mehr zu verstehen [ist]” (Handke SZ 2006), the literary form in which Handke sketches his view of Serbia goes back to the border crossing he had undertaken with Die Wiederholung. It was already a path to another country, which is at the same time the country of childhood. Because this equally opens up a reference to the early beginnings of writing on the island of Krk, the political discourse of the Balkans is also ultimately dominated by the “law” of his writing (Herwig 2012, 258). It, too, is concerned with the creation of a poetic counterworld that makes possible the exorcism “der einen Geschichte durch eine andere” (THU 89; Herwig 2012, 261). It is therefore not only consistent, but an expression of unwavering adherence to his own poetological program, that Handke returned the Büchner Prize in 1999  in protest against the NATO bombing of Belgrade and the form of its political and media legitimization (Herwig 2012, 286). In the speech for its award, he had formulated his credo of poetic imagination, to which he returns again and again.

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It is only logical that Herwig ends his biography with the basic figures of return and repetition, around which he sees Handke’s work centered. The fruit-growing book of his uncle, which hangs like a crucifix in the corner of a room in Handke’s house in Chaville and which runs through his texts as a symbol, becomes a material sign of such return. A linguistic connection between life and work that coincides with this is signaled by the formula “Den Toten kann ich immerhin mehr versprechen als den Lebenden” noted in the diary in 1987 (Herwig 2012, 312). The biographer links it to the memories of the ancestral orchard that Handke records in the journal Am Felsfenster morgens (At the Mountain Window in the Morning: And Other Local Times 1982–1987) (AF 540). With extreme intensity, Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht also documents the “attempt to unite life and writing” (Herwig 2012, 271), and the requirement to alternately put oneself into the text (MJN 699). Hence results the scopus of this biography. Referring to Die Morawische Nacht, Herwig formulates: “It is as if in writing the poet continued the conversation with the dead and thus brought them to life” (Herwig 2012, 313). In particular, a dream of January 4, 2008, recorded in the diary confirms this obsession (Herwig 2012, 315; IS 161). Equating the author with the playwright in Immer noch Sturm (IS 162), the biographer concludes that the author “stopped the hands of time and resurrected the dead in the name of his […] ancestor. Against all the laws of the world, he invokes the right and power of narrative […]” (Herwig 2012, 317). Handke’s reconnection to the literary tradition is paradigmatically addressed in Hans Höller’s monograph under the programmatic title “eine ungewöhnliche Klassik nach 1945”, which complements his biography of the author (Höller 2007). It examines Handke’s oeuvre as a whole from a thematic point of view that opens up both an autobiographical line (“das Pathos meiner Herkunft […] verlangt von mir das Klassische”) and a reference back to tradition (“Goethe und Stifter”). The texts after the seventies are of particular importance here. Langsame Heimkehr, especially, which emerges from a writing crisis and is a momentous turning point in Handke’s “Schreiberleben”, initiates for Höller Handke’s path to Goethe (Höller 2013, 34). This explicitly makes German classicism the point of reference, and not its rewriting in the sense of “classical modernism”. Within this field, the central motifs, images, and figures of thought in Handke’s writing are discussed in individual analyses; in doing so, the author aims to relate Handke’s “obstinate narrative to the historical preconditions of writing and thinking after 1945” (Höller 2013, 13). This is done by opening perspectives that Höller calls “geologische Fenster”, in which “otherwise disparate, sometimes widely displaced layers of meaning become visible in their context” (Höller 2013, 12). The reference to the text of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival becomes just as clear here (Höller 2013, 97) as the tracing of the spaces of the epic (Höller 2013, 137) or the connection to Goethe’s Märchen (Höller 2013, 153). The function of the images and motifs that recur so often in Handke’s texts that they can be attributed to a transtextual network is also clearly worked out: the motifs of “Umsprungbild” (Höller 2013, 117), “Ruck” (Höller 2013, 141), finally “Bombentraum” (Höller 2007, 9) and the images of the apple (Höller 2013, 53), the ladder (Höller 2013, 141) and the man from Upper Austria (Höller 2013, 157, 159). In the process, a functionalization of

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these images is elaborated, which always accompany thematic and structural turning points in Handke’s writing; this is especially true about the motif of snowing (Höller 2013, 164) and the depiction of a “zitternde Sekunde” (Höller 2013, 181). In another direction, the author follows Botho Strauß dictum that Handke must be regarded as an “episteme-creator” in the sense of Foucault (Höller 2013, 13). He also interprets the motif of the threshold philosophically, though not concerning Heidegger’s reflections on the threshold cited in Handke (Nenon/Renner 1989, 104–110), but referring to Benjamin’s “Schwellenkunde” (Honold 2017, 445). Basically, the classical understanding in this way is also placed in the context of dangers in Handke’s work. On the one hand, this is determined by the author’s psychological disposition, in which the reference to Kafka is just as important as the latent fascination with violence, which can sometimes lead to an “offensive poeticization” (Wagner 210, 133). At the same time, Handke’s texts respond to the political constellations of their time. War plays a special role here, opening up both an autobiographical and a contemporary-historical reference. Handke’s notation “Romanik: die klassische Antike (wieder?) kindlich geworden” in the journal Gestern unterwegs (GU 297) opens up a line of connection between the author’s orientation towards Weimar Classicism, described by Höller, with its writing patterns also schooled in antiquity, and Handke’s determination of epic writing, which Thorsten Carstensen explores in his study Romanisches Erzählen. Peter Handke und die epische Tradition. However, Carstensen more precisely subsumes the notion of “classical writing […] under the concept of Romanesque narrative”, in which, for him, “representation and imagination can hardly be kept apart” (Carstensen 2013, 25). With good reasons, the author also sees behind the mimetic representation the “epic search for the childhood landscape” (Carstensen 2013, 119) that pervades Handke’s whole work: It connects with intertextual references, but the view of reality changes fundamentally. According to Carstensen Romanesque modelling of what is perceived is at the center of an autoreflexive writing program that always already has in mind the perspectival shaping of any presentation of the world (Carstensen 2013, 25 f.). In this context, Handke’s Journale gain particular significance as the central turning point of his pictorial and textual figures. In them, the Romanesque is explicitly declared the guiding metaphor of epic writing. On the one hand, it is an “Erzählvorbild” (GU 504), on the other hand, it explains, from a different perspective, the writing principle of an “Abenteuer der Varianten in der Wiederholung” (GU 167) that determines the work. It is no coincidence that these notations foreshadow the narrative principle that also forms the text Der Bildverlust. In any case, the year 1987, when Handke records these sentences, marks a poetological turn. Like the author, who in Soria describes the sculptures of Santo Domingo as reported in Versuch über die Jukebox (Essay About the Jukebox) (VJ 121), Carstensen also takes his cue from visual patterns. He concludes that, for the author, Romanesque art initiates an art “that, in a gesture of simplicity, constantly returns to basic existential questions and mythic images to present them from changing perspectives and enrich them with new facets” (Carstensen 2013, 20). It is the utopian project of a “pure epic narrative” (Carstensen 2013, 22).

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This is embedded in the gesture of a “sentimental appropriation of the world” that is inherent in most of the characters, who share the “experience of a fundamental lack” (Carstensen 2013, 40). Carstensen interprets the fact that in Handke’s later texts the telling of stories loses significance in comparison to the “narrative arrangement of reality” (Carstensen 2013, 106) as an epochal figure that ascribes the author a special place in literary history; it is an attempt to unite “modern subjectivity with the collective claim of the epic” (Carstensen 2013, 111). In this view of the Romanesque, which is historical, literary and art-historical at the same time, an autobiographical inscription comes through in the final consequence. Historically, the Romanesque also represents for Handke the “Dorfheimat”, the collective, as opposed to the Gothic, which he sees as a representation of power. This results in a peculiar link with an autobiographical reminiscence of the collegiate church of Griffen. It captures the insistence on the Romanesque at the same time as a political inscription, as it will repeatedly determine later texts by Handke in a comparably mediated form. The Romanesque sculptures are “landmarks of a peripheral landscape that does without ‘secular signs of rule’” (Carstensen 2013, 160; GU 11), almost democratic in a pre-modern way, or a “gemeinsamer Atem”, as it says in Gestern unterwegs. As works of art, the Romanesque sculptures also have a model character. On the one hand, they are “mythical pure forms” that preserve the lost story; on the other hand, they embody “a narrative condensed into pictorial formulas” (Carstensen 2013, 164), which the author regards as a model for the renewal of epic traditions. From this perspective, Romanesque narrative develops a “phenomenological gaze” (Carstensen 2013, 171). This precisely combines the real with the “power of imagination” (Carstensen 2013, 179). Directly related to this is the often emphasized turn of Handke’s narrative toward a poetics of slowness (Huber 2005, 333; Pelz 2007, 166), in which narrative is oriented on the one hand toward pausing at thresholds, and on the other toward the movement of walking through landscapes, cities, and suburbs (Honold 2017, 465; MJN 580). What Carstensen calls “the graceful, decelerated participation of the self in the world” (Carstensen 2013, 189) becomes in Alexander Honold’s study Der Erd-­ Erzähler. Peter Handkes Prosa der Orte, Räume und Landschaften the organizing center of a lineage of “deceleration” that defines Handke’s oeuvre as a whole (Honold 2013, 492). For Honold, the author is a “Erzähler der Erde, ein mit fußgängerischer Langmut und penibler Beharrlichkeit vorgehender Chronist von Orten, Räumen und Landschaften. Einer, dem sich die Welt als Erfahrung in doppelter Weise erschließt, durch die eigene Fortbewegung im Raum und durch den sie nachund umgestaltenden Zug des eigenen Schreibens in der Zeit” (Honold 2017, 11; Hummel 2007, 93). Honold, therefore, opens up the figurative scheme of the passage in Handke’s descriptions of the way and the journey, right down to syntactic subtleties. At the same time, he describes striking rhythmic sequences that determine the landscape description (Honold 2017, 517; BV 305). From this emerges the image of a “topo-graphic poiesis” that can be linked to many observations on the overlapping of imaginary and real topography in Handke (Luckscheiter 2012, 12),

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but at the same time perpetuates the tension between “panic and linguistic disorder” that defines the early work (Wagner 2010, 19). Honold provides evidence of this early on in the course of an intensive autobiographical deciphering of Die Hornissen, which, as a “memory landscape in a language experiment” (Honold 2017, 14), exhibits an experimental, an autobiographical, and an existential trace (Honold 2017, 11; Renner 1985, 1, 4; Wagner 2010, 19). Not least through this linkage, continuous lines become discernible even in the landscape descriptions of Handke’s work. Of particular importance here is the connection between Langsame Heimkehr and Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. In Honold’s estimation, the latter follows almost “seamlessly” the aesthetic of “describing the earth and exploring forms, which had increasingly become the activity of the geologist Sorger […]” (Honold 2017, 180). Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire already sets out the form that characterizes Handke’s narrative in his later texts. This text is already a “mixed genre”, composed of narrative, descriptive, and reflective parts, a “hybrid [.] combination of divergent textual forms and modes of representation” (Honold 2017, 180). This taps into social contexts beyond spatial images. In Der Bildverlust, Honold makes an entire branching system of “thresholds and contact zones” the building law of Handke’s narrative (Honold 2017, 544). Because of this technique of interconnectedness, which organizes the individual texts as well as their interrelationship, the question has been asked, with good reason and in view of Handke’s late work, whether all his texts do not belong together as a “continued epic” and whether the “supposed redundancies” are just Handke’s “Phantasien der Wiederholung” (Wiele 2017). The striking rhythmic sequences that define the landscape description (Honold 2017, 517; BV 305) simultaneously open up a visual dimension that organizes the narrative. The narrative begun in Langsame Heimkehr as a “graphic project of recording and drawing landscape manifestations” (Honold 2017, 222; LSV 108) is substantially expanded as “landschaftliche Bilder-Schrift” in Die Lehre der Sainte-­ Victoire and continued in Die Wiederholung (Honold 2017, 233). In addition to these monographic approaches, individual analyses follow some central points directed at both the intertextuality and the textual order of Handke’s writing. Apart from the references to Austrian and world literature, which are repeatedly thematized, the recourse to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language (Wagner 2010, 113) and Heidegger’s philosophy are of particular importance. The latter leads on the one hand to a “postulatory rhetoric and an imperious gesture of proclamation” (Wagner 2010, 84), and on the other hand to a redefinition of the role of the poetic subject starting from the Tetralogie (Renner/Nenon 1989, 104–115; Huber 2005, 116–119; Meyer 2004, 252–275.) and an inscription of basic ontological figures in Handke’s texts. However, this particular aspect of the reference to Heidegger loses its weight when the poetic and the philosophical text are read in parallel, as in places in Huber’s analysis. This becomes evident with respect to Der Große Fall (The Great Fall). On the other hand, it must be considered that Handke transforms Heidegger’s keywords situationally (Huber 2005, 186–189). He often opens up references, but at the same time deconstructs them through the narrative. This can be seen not least in the fact that the places and names in Handke’s texts

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often create imaginary geography in which chronotopoi are created by linking spatial and temporal references (Wagner 2006, 14; Luckscheiter 2012, 143). They are further differentiated by a complex intertextual narrative structure – the reference to Cervantes provides the pattern here (Pichler 2013, 5). Moreover, the locations of this “geo-poetics” are linked to a “psycho-topography” that is above all oriented towards childhood (Wagner 2010, 92 f.). The resulting “hybrid and dissonant worlds of signs” (Wagner 2006, 11) and the “ramified system of references to his own earlier texts as well as to a world-literary canon that can hardly be surveyed” overlays all attempts at a periodization of Handke’s work (Wagner 2010, 91) and reveals the special status of Handke’s narration, which is expressed in Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht as the project of “erzählende[.] Erzählforschung” (Wagner 2010, 119), thus refusing a solely realistic or an overtly psychologizing interpretation.

Bibliography

Peter Handke: Works and Texts with Sigles With a view to easier usability, quotations are made according to the paperback editions where available (with the exception of the tetralogy “Langsame Heimkehr”): the “Hausierer” according to the edition published by Fischer, the other texts according to the paperback editions printed by Suhrkamp. As a rule, the Suhrkamp paperback editions have the same pages as the first printings. Deviations occur only where the first editions were published by Residenz-Verlag. Not page-perfect with the first editions are the paperback editions of “Hornissen” (Frankfurt, 2nd edition revised and abridged by the author 1980), “Wunschlosen Unglück” and the tetralogy “Langsame Heimkehr”. The plays, radio plays, prose texts, essays, feuilletons and reviews are cited according to these editions, as is the poetry, insofar as it is included in anthologies; the versions in the anthologies are sometimes slightly revised by the author. The “Gewicht der Welt” is quoted from the unabridged first edition. A AF AR AT

BA BTS BV BW/HK BW/HL

Die Abwesenheit. Ein Märchen [1987], Frankfurt a. M. 1990. Am Felsfenster morgens (und andere Ortszeiten 1982–1987), Salzburg/Wien 1998. Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez. Ein Sommerdialog, Berlin 2012. Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land, in: Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land. Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien. Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise, Frankfurt a. M. 1998, pp. 5–32. Begrüßung des Aufsichtsrats. Prosatexte [1967], Frankfurt a. M. 1981. Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts. Ein Monolog, Frankfurt a. M. 2009. Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos. Roman, Frankfurt a. M. 2002. Peter Handke, Alfred Kolleritsch: Schönheit ist die erste Bürgerpflicht. Briefwechsel, Salzburg 2008. Peter Handke, Hermann Lenz: Berichterstatter des Tages, hg. und mit einem Nachwort von Helmut Böttiger, Charlotte Brombach and Ulrich Rüdenauer, Frankfurt a. M./Leipzig 2006. (continued)

© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2023 R. G. Renner, Peter Handke, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05932-1

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Peter Handke, Siegfried Unseld: Der Briefwechsel, hg. v. Raimund Fellinger und Katharina Pektor, Berlin 2012. Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse. Filmbuch, Frankfurt a. M. 1971. Der Chinese des Schmerzes, Frankfurt a. M. 1983. „Warum eine Küche?“ Texte für das Schauspiel‚ La Cuisine‘ von Mladen Materić, Wien 2003. Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst), Frankfurt a. M. 2004. Teilvorlass Peter Handke, Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach. Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten. Ein Schauspiel, Frankfurt a. M. 1992. Das Spiel vom Fragen oder Die Reise zum Sonoren Land, Frankfurt a. M. 1989. Die Unschuldigen, ich und die Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße. Ein Schauspiel in vier Jahreszeiten, Berlin 2015. Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms. Aufsätze, Frankfurt a. M. 1972. Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen, Salzburg/Wien 2010. Falsche Bewegung, Frankfurt a. M. 1975. Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stück zum Film vom Krieg, Frankfurt a. M. 1999. Die Geschichte des Bleistifts [1982], Frankfurt a. M. 1985. Gedicht an die Dauer, Frankfurt a. M. 1986. Die Geschichte des Dragoljub Milanović, Salzburg/Wien 2011. Der Große Fall, Berlin 2011. Gestern unterwegs. Aufzeichnungen November 1987 to July 1990, Salzburg 2005. Das Gewicht der Welt. Ein Journal (November 1975 to March 1977), Salzburg 1977. Der Hausierer. Novel [1967], Frankfurt a. M. 1992. Die Hornissen. Novel [1966], Frankfurt a. M. 1977. Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt, Frankfurt a. M. 1969. In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus. Roman [1997], Frankfurt a. M. 1999. Immer noch Sturm, Berlin 2010. Der kurze Brief zum langen Abschied. Erzählung [1972], Frankfurt a. M. 2001. Kindergeschichte, Frankfurt a. M. 1981. Kali. Eine Vorwintergeschichte, Frankfurt a. M. 2007. Die Kuckucke von Velika Hoča. Eine Nachschrift, Frankfurt a. M. 2009. Die linkshändige Frau. Erzählung, Frankfurt a. M. 1976. Langsame Heimkehr [1979], Frankfurt a. M. 1984. Leben ohne Poesie. Gedichte, Frankfurt a. M. 2007. Langsam im Schatten. Gesammelte Verzettelungen 1980–1992, Frankfurt a. M. 1992. Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire, Frankfurt a. M. 1980. Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. Ein Märchen aus den neuen Zeiten [1994], Frankfurt a. M. 2007. Die morawische Nacht. Erzählung, Frankfurt a. M. 2008. Meine Ortstafeln. Meine Zeittafeln. 1967–2007, Frankfurt a. M. 2007. Notizbuch (31. August 1978 – 18. Oktober 1978), hg. von Raimund Fellinger, Berlin 2015. Nachmittag eines Schriftstellers. Erzählung, Salzburg 1987. Die Obstdiebin oder einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere, Frankfurt a. M. 2017. Teilvorlass Peter Handke, Österreichisches Literaturarchiv Wien. Phantasien der Wiederholung, Frankfurt a. M. 1983. (continued)

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2003 2003 2003 2004 2005 2005 2006 2007 2007 2007 2008 2009

2009 2010 2010 2011

Versuch über die Jukebox, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Versuch über den geglückten Tag. Ein Wintertagtraum, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land. Eine Wirklichkeit, die vergangen ist: Erinnerungen an Slowenien, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wußten. Ein Schauspiel, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Theaterstücke in einem Band, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Langsam im Schatten. Gesammelte Verzettelungen 1980–1992, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Mein Jahr in der Niemandsbucht. Ein Märchen aus den neuen Zeiten, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Die Tage gingen wirklich ins Land. Ein Lesebuch, Stuttgart: Reclam. Die Abwesenheit: Eine Skizze. Ein Film. Ein Gespräch, Dürnau: Kooperative Dürnau. Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Sawe, Morawa und Drina oder Gerechtigkeit für Serbien, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Sommerlicher Nachtrag zu einer winterlichen Reise, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Zurüstungen für die Unsterblichkeit. Ein Königsdrama, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus. Roman, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Am Felsfenster morgens (und andere Ortszeiten 1982–1987), Salzburg/Wien: Residenz. Die Fahrt im Einbaum oder Das Stück zum Film vom Krieg, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Lucie im Wald mit den Dingsda. Eine Geschichte, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Unter Tränen fragend. Nachträgliche Aufzeichnungen von zwei Jugoslawien-­ Durchquerungen im Krieg, März und April 1999, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Der Bildverlust oder Durch die Sierra de Gredos. Roman, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Mündliches und Schriftliches. Zu Büchern, Bildern und Filmen 1992–2002, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. „Warum eine Küche?“ Texte für das Schauspiel La Cuisine von Mladen Materić [„Pourquoi la cuisine?“ Textes écrits pour le spectacle La Cuisine de Mladen Materić. 2001], Wien: Edition Korrespondenzen. Rund um das Große Tribunal, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Untertagblues. Ein Stationendrama, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Über Musik. Mit Illustrationen von Amina Handke. Herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort von Gerhard Melzer, Graz/Wien: Droschl. Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst), Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Gestern unterwegs. Aufzeichnungen November 1987 bis Juli 1990, Salzburg: Jung und Jung. Die Tablas von Daimiel. Ein Umwegzeugenbericht zum Prozeß gegen Slobodan Milošević, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Spuren der Verirrten, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Kali. Eine Vorwintergeschichte, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Leben ohne Poesie. Gedichte, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Meine Ortstafeln. Meine Zeittafeln. 1967–2007, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Die morawische Nacht. Erzählung, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Bis daß der Tag euch scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts. Ein Monolog [Französische Erstschrift, Jusqu’à ce que le jour vous sépare ou Une question de lumière, 2007 und Deutsche Version 2008], Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Die Kuckucke von Velika Hoča. Eine Nachschrift, Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp. Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen, Salzburg/Wien: Jung und Jung. Immer noch Sturm, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Der Große Fall, Berlin: Suhrkamp. (continued)

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470 (continued) 2011 2012 2012 2013 2015 2015 2015 2016 2017 2020

Die Geschichte des Dragoljub Milanović, Salzburg/Wien: Jung und Jung. Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez. Ein Sommerdialog. 2012, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Versuch über den Stillen Ort, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Versuch über den Pilznarren. Eine Geschichte für sich, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Die Unschuldigen, ich und die Unbekannte am Rand der Landstraße. Ein Schauspiel in vier Jahreszeiten, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Notizbuch. August 31, 1978 – October 18, 1978, Berlin: Insel. Tage und Werke. Begleitschreiben, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Vor der Baumschattenwand nachts. Zeichen und Anflüge von der Peripherie 2007–2015, Salzburg: Jung und Jung. Die Obstdiebin oder einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere, Berlin: Suhrkamp. Das zweite Schwert. Eine Maigeschichte, Berlin: Suhrkamp.

Movie Directory Screenplay by Peter Handke 1969 1970 1975 1971 1978 1985 1987 1992 2016

Drei amerikanische LPs, Regie: Peter Handke, Wim Wenders. Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter, Drehbuch gemeinsam mit Wim Wenders, Regie: Wim Wenders. Falsche Bewegung, Regie: Wim Wenders. Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse, Regie: Peter Handke. Die linkshändige Frau, Regie: Peter Handke. Das Mal des Todes, Regie: Peter Handke. Der Himmel über Berlin, Drehbuch gemeinsam mit Richard Reitinger und Wim Wenders, Regie: Wim Wenders. Die Abwesenheit. Ein Märchen, Regie: Peter Handke. Die schönen Tage von Aranjuez, Drehbuch gemeinsam mit Wim Wenders. Regie: Wim Wenders.

Peter Handke: Further Works and Texts Handke, Peter: Noch einmal vom Neunten Land. Gespräche mit Jože Horvat, mit einem Anhang und zehn Reproduktionen, Klagenfurt 1993. Handke, Peter: Gerechtigkeit für Serbien (Teil 1), in: SZ, 05.01.1996. Handke, Peter: ‚Ich bin nicht hingegangen, um mitzuhassen‘. Interview mit Peter Handke, in: Die Zeit, 02.02.1996, see: https://www.zeit.de/1996/06/Ich_bin_ nicht_hingegangen_um_mitzuhassen, 29.10.2019. Handke, Peter: Das gerade Gegenteil, in: Focus, H. 11, 1999, 15.03.1999, see: https://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/serbien-­das-­gerade-­gegenteil_aid:175593. html, 29.10.2019. Handke, Peter: Moral ist ein anderes Wort für Willkür. Der Schriftsteller Peter Handke über die Nato-Bomben auf Serbien und die Frage, warum Amerika umerzogen werden muß, in: SZ, 15.05.1999.

Bibliography

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Handke, Peter: ‚Gegen Schreihälse und Einpeitscher‘. Peter Handke im NEWS-­ Interview über seine Trauerrede für Slobodan Milošević, in: News, 23.03.2006. Handke, Peter: Ich wollte Zeuge sein. Die Motive meiner Reise nach Požarevac, Serbien – an Miloševićs Grab, in: Focus, H. 13, 2006, 27.03.2006, see: https:// www.focus.de/kultur/medien/zeitgeschichte-­ich-­wollte-­zeuge-­sein_aid:218700. html, 30.10.2019. Handke, Peter: Parlons donc de la Yougoslavie, in: Libération, 10.05.2006, see: https://www.liberation.fr/tribune/2006/05/10/parlons-­d onc-­d e-­l a-­ yougoslavie_38687, 29.10.2019. Handke, Peter: Was ich nicht sagte. Eine Entgegnung auf die Kritik am Heinrich-­ Heine-­Preis, in: FAZ, 30.05.2006. Handke, Peter: Am Ende ist fast nichts mehr zu verstehen. Die Debatte um den Heinrich-Heine-Preis, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 01.06.2006. Handke, Peter: Je refuse! Ein Briefwechsel, in: FAZ, 09.06.2006. Handke, Peter: Zdeněk Adamec – Eine Szene, Frankfurt a. M. 2010 Handke, Peter, Siegfried Unseld: Der Briefwechsel, ed. by Raimund Fellinger and Katharina Pektor, Berlin 2012. Handke, Peter: Schnellkraft und Wuchtwelle. Der Dichter im Museum. National Galleries of Scotland. Allein mit dem Maler Nicolas Poussin und seinen sieben Bildern von den sieben Sakramenten. Eine Anschauung von Peter Handke, in: blau H. 28, 21.04.2018. Handke, Peter: Zeichnungen. Mit einem Essay von Giorgio Agamben, München 2019. Handke, Peter: Rede zu Verleihung des Nobelpreises, in: Kurier online, 07.12.2019, see: https://kurier.at/kultur/peter-­handkes-­nobelpreisrede-­im-­ livestream/400696151, 19.12.2019.

Conversations and Interviews with Peter Handke Behmann, Jan C./Mladen, Gladić: „Ich habe keine Schublade“. Interview mit Peter Handke, in: Der Freitag, H. 34, 2018, 26.09.2018. Blum, Heiko R.: Gespräch mit Peter Handke, in: Michael Scharang (Hg.): Über Peter Handke, Frankfurt a. M. 1972, S. 79–84. Böttiger, Helmut, Peter Handke: ‚Die Obstdiebin‘. Eine einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere, see: https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/peter-­handke-­die-­ obstdiebin-­e ine-­e infache-­f ahrt-­i ns.950.de.html?dram:article_id=402091, 21.01.2019. Gamper, Herbert, Peter Handke: Aber ich lebe nur von den Zwischenräumen. Ein Gespräch, geführt von Herbert Gamper, Zürich 1987. Greiner, Ulrich: Ich komme aus dem Traum. Ein ZEIT-Gespräch mit dem Schriftsteller Peter Handke über die Lust des Schreibens, den jugoslawischen Krieg und das Gehen in den Wäldern, in: Die Zeit, 01.02.2006. Greiner, Ulrich: Eine herbstliche Reise zu Peter Handke nach Paris. „Erzählen“, so sagt er, „ist eine Offenbarung“. Ein Gespräch mit dem berühmten Schriftsteller über seine neuen Bücher ‚Ein Jahr aus der Nacht gesprochen‘ und ‚Immer noch

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Sturm‘, über die enttäuschende amerikanische Gegenwartsliteratur und über sein umstrittenes Engagement in Bosnien, in: Die Zeit, H. 48, 25.11.2010. Hoghe, Raimund: Unsereiner hat keine Gemeinde. Ein Besuch bei Peter Handke auf dem Mönchsberg in Salzburg, in: Die Zeit, 29.10.1982. Kathrein, Karin: „Ich wär so gern skrupellos“. Bühne-Gespräch mit Peter Handke, in: Bühne 5 (1992), S. 12–17. Kümmel, Peter: „Die Geschichte ist ein Teufel“. Der Schriftsteller Peter Handke im Gespräch über den Brand von Notre-Dame und das Unglück Europas, in: Die Zeit, H. 18, 25.04.2019. Kurtz, Ulrich: „Das sind die Sachen, die mich zum Schreiben bringen“. Peter Handke im Gespräch mit Ulrich Kurtz über Doppelgänger, Verstorbene, Schwellen, in: Das Goetheanum 67.4 (24. Januar 1988), S. 21–25. Kurtz, Ulrich: „Da war ich vielleicht etwas naiv“, in: Kleine Zeitung, 07.05.2010. Linder, Christian: Die Ausbeutung des Bewußtseins. Gespräch mit Peter Handke, in: ders.: Schreiben & Leben, Köln 1974, S. 33–45. Müller, André: Wer einmal versagt im Schreiben, hat für immer versagt. André Müller spricht mit Peter Handke, in: Die Zeit, H. 10, 03.03.1989. Müller, André: ‚Ich bin ein Idiot im griechischen Sinne‘. Interview mit Peter Handke, in: Profil, 01.09.2007, see: https://www.profil.at/home/ich-­idiot-­ sinne-­182406, 29.10.2019. Schwagerle, Elisabeth, Klaus Kastberger: „Es gibt die Schrift, es gibt das Schreiben“. Peter Handke im Gespräch mit Klaus Kastberger und Elisabeth Schwagerle in seinem Haus in Chaville, 1. April 2009, in: Klaus Kastberger (Hg.): Peter Handke. Freiheit des Schreibens – Ordnung der Schrift, Wien 2009, S. 11–30. Steinfeld, Thomas: Ich erzähle von einem Leben, das über mich hinausgeht. Peter Handke über den Roman „Der Bildverlust“ (im Gespräch mit Thomas Steinfeld), in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 30.01.2002. Steinfeld, Thomas: Im Gespräch: Peter Handke Du mit deinem Jugoslawien, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26.11.2010.

Other Primary Texts with Sigles Adorno GS Arnold TK

Baudelaire Pl Goethe A

Goethe FA Goethe Gesprr

Adorno, Theodor W.: Gesammelte Schriften, Frankfurt a. M. 1970 ff. Text + Kritik: Peter Handke. Hg. von Heinz Ludwig Arnold H. 24, Stuttgart, München und Hannover 1969; München 1971; München 1976; München 1978. Baudelaire, Charles: Œuvres complètes, hg. von Claude Pichois, Paris 1975. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, in: ders.: Artemis Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche, Zürich 31977, Bd. 24. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche (Frankfurter Ausgabe), Frankfurt a. M. 1989. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Goethes Gespräche, hg. von Woldemar Freiherr von Biedermann, Bd. 1–10, Leipzig 1889–1896. (continued)

Bibliography

473

(continued) Goethe HA Goethe WA

Heidegger EF

Heidegger SuZ Heidegger VO Heidegger UN Hofmannsthal SWKA Hölderlin GSA

Jünger SW Kafka GS Kant KA Lacan Schrr Lacan Seminar

Mann TMW

Musil GS Proust Pl Scharang ÜH Schiller NA

Schlegel KSA

Stifter HSKA

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Hamburger Ausgabe, hg. von Erich Trunz, 14 Bde., München 121981. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Werke. Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen. (Weimarer Ausgabe). Abtlg. I–IV. 133 Bde. in 143 Teilen. H. Böhlau, Weimar 1887–1919. Heidegger, Martin: Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, in: Gesamtausgabe. Erste Abteilung. Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976, 13. Band, Frankfurt a. M. 1983. Heidegger, Martin: Sein und Zeit, Tübingen 111967. Heidegger, Martin: Vorträge und Aufsätze, Pfullingen 1954. Heidegger, Martin: Unterwegs zur Sprache, Pfullingen 1975. Hofmannsthal, Hugo von: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Ausgabe. Veranstaltet vom Freien Deutschen Hochstift. Hg. von Rudolf Hirsch, Christoph Perels, Heinz Röllecke, Frankfurt a. M. 1991. Hölderlin, Friedrich: Sämtliche Werke. Stuttgarter Hölderlin-Ausgabe. Im Auftrag des Württembergischen Kultministeriums, hg. von Friedrich Beissner (Große Stuttgarter Ausgabe), Stuttgart 1946–1985. Jünger, Ernst: Sämtliche Werke, Stuttgart 1978–2003. Kafka, Franz: Gesammelte Werke, Taschenbuchausgabe in sieben Bänden, hg. von Max Brod, Frankfurt a. M. 1976. Kant, Immanuel: Gesammelte Schriften (Akademie-Ausgabe). Königlich Preußische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1900 ff. Lacan, Jacques: Schriften I und II, hg. von Norbert Haas und Hans-Joachim Metzger, Berlin 1976. Lacan, Jacques: Das Seminar, Bd. I, Olten/Freiburg 1978, Bd. II: Das Ich in der Theorie Freuds und in der Technik der Psychoanalyse, Olten/Freiburg 1978, Bd. XI: Die vier Grundbegriffe der Psychoanalyse, Olten/Freiburg 1978. Mann, Thomas: Gesammelte Werke in dreizehn Bänden. Neudruck der Ausgabe von 1960, erweitert um einen 13. Band, mit Nachträgen, Frankfurt a. M. 1974. Musil, Robert: Gesammelte Werke in neun Bänden, hg. von Adolf Frisé, Reinbek 1978. Proust, Marcel: À la recherche du temps perdu, hg. von Jean-Yves Tadié, I– IV, Paris 1987–1989. Scharang, Michael (Hg.): Über Peter Handke, Frankfurt a. M.: 31977. Schiller, Friedrich: Werke. Nationalausgabe. Begründet von Julius Petersen. Herausgegeben im Auftrag der Nationalen Forschungs- und Gedenkstätten der klassischen deutschen Literatur in Weimar (Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv) und des Schiller-Nationalmuseums in Marbach von Lieselotte Blumenthal und Benno v. Wiese, Weimar 1974 ff. Schlegel, Friedrich: Kritische Ausgabe seiner Werke, hg. von Ernst Behler unter Mitwirkung von Jean-Jacques Anstett und Hans Eichner, München u. a. 1962 ff. Stifter, Adalbert: Werke und Briefe. Historisch-Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Im Auftrag der Kommission für Neuere deutsche Literatur der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften hg. von Alfred Doppler, Wolfgang Frühwald und seit 2001 Hartmut Laufhütte, Stuttgart/Berlin/Köln 1978 ff.

474

Bibliography

Other Primary Texts Adorno, Theodor W.: Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben, in: ders.: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 4, Frankfurt a. M. 1980 [= Adorno GS-4]. Adorno, Theodor W.: Negative Dialektik, in: ders.: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 6, Frankfurt a. M. 21984 [= Adorno GS-6]. Adorno, Theodor W.: Ästhetische Theorie, in: ders.: Gesammelte Schriften, Bd. 7, Frankfurt a. M. 1970 [= Adorno GS-7]. Agamben, Giorgio: Homo sacer. Die souveräne Macht und das nackte Leben. Aus dem Italienischen von Hubert Thüring, Frankfurt a. M. 2002. Appadurai, Arjun: Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis/London 1996. Apollinaire, Guillaume: Alcools. Mit einem Essay von Paul Léautaud, Paris 2013. Arendt, Hannah: Organisierte Schuld, in: dies.: Die verborgene Tradition, Frankfurt a. M. 1976, S. 32–45. Balint, Michael: Die Urformen der Liebe und die Technik der Psychoanalyse, Stuttgart/Bern 1966. Barthes, Roland: Die helle Kammer. Bemerkungen zur Photographie, Frankfurt a. M. 2003. Baudelaire, Charles: Œuvres complètes, hg. von Claude Pichois, Paris 1975 [= Baudelaire Pl 1, 2]. Baudrillard, Jean: Simulacra and Simulation, Michigan 1994. Baudrillard, Jean: Der Geist des Terrorismus, Wien 2002. darin: Baudrillard, Jean: Herausforderung des Systems durch die symbolische Gabe des Todes, S. 11–35. darin: Baudrillard, Jean: Die Gewalt des Globalen, S. 37–64. darin: Baudrillard, Jean: Die Gewalt der Bilder. Thesen über den Terrorismus und das Attentat vom 11. September, S. 65–78. Benjamin, Walter: Gesammelte Schriften, hg. von Rolf Tiedemann und Hermann Schweppenhäuser, Frankfurt a. M. 1977 ff. darin: Benjamin, Walter: Das Passagen-Werk, hg. von Rolf Tiedemann, Bd. V, Frankfurt a. M. 1982. Biran, Marie François Pierre Gonthier Maine de: Considérations sur les principes dʼune division des faits psychologiques et physiologiques, in: Œuvres de Maine de Biran, hg. von P. Tisserand, Bd. 13, Paris 1949. Biran, Marie François Pierre Gonthier Maine de: Influence de l’habitude sur la faculté de penser, hg. von P. Tisserand, Paris 1949. Cervantes, Miguel de: Der geistvolle Hidalgo Don Quijote von der Mancha, hg. und übersetzt von Susanne Lange, 2 Bde., München 2008. Cézanne, Paul: Briefe, hg. und übersetzt von John Rewald, Zürich 1979. Chamisso, Adelbert von: Sämtliche Werke in vier Bänden (in 2 Bde.), mit Einleitung von Rudolf v. Gottschall, Berlin 1910. Chandler, Raymond: The Long Good-bye (1953). Dt.: Der lange Abschied, übersetzt von Hans Wollschläger, Zürich 2013. Chomsky, Noam: The Attack. Hintergründe und Folgen, Hamburg/Wien 42003.

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Columella, Lucius Iunius Moderatus: De re rustica libri duodecim. Zweispr. Ausgabe: Columella: Zwölf Bücher über Landwirtschaft. Buch eines Unbekannten über Baumzüchtung. Lateinisch-deutsch, 3 Bde., hg. und übersetzt von Will Richter, mit Namen- und Wortregister in Bd. 3 von Rolf Heine, München 1981–1983. Debord, Guy: Die Gesellschaft des Spektakels, Hamburg 11978. Debray, Régis: I.F. Suite et Fin, Paris 2001. Deleuze, Gilles: Das Bewegungs-Bild. Kino 1, Frankfurt a. M. 1997. Deleuze, Gilles: Das Zeit-Bild. Kino 2, Frankfurt a. M. 1997. Derrida, Jacques: De la Grammatologie, Paris 1967. Eisenstein, Sergej: Das dynamische Quadrat (1932), in: ders.: Das dynamische Quadrat. Schriften zum Film, hg. von Oksana Bulgakova und Dietmar Hochmuth, Leipzig 1991, S. 157–176. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus: Aussichten auf den Bürgerkrieg, Frankfurt a. M. 1996. Foucault, Michel: Die Ordnung der Dinge. Eine Archäologie der Humanwissenschaften (Titel der Originalausgabe: Les mots et les choses, 1966), Frankfurt a. M. 21978. Freud, Sigmund: Studienausgabe in X Bänden (Conditio humana), Frankfurt a. M. 1973. Geertz, Clifford: Dichte Beschreibung. Beiträge zum Verstehen kultureller Systeme, übersetzt von Brigitte Luchesi und Rolf Bindemann, Frankfurt a. M. 1987. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Goethes Gespräche, hg. von Woldemar Freiherr von Biedermann, Bd. 1–10, Leipzig 1889–1896 [= Goethe Gesprr]. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines Lebens, in: ders.: Artemis Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche, Zürich 31977, Bd. 24 [= Goethe A]. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Hamburger Ausgabe, hg. von Erich Trunz, 14 Bde., München 121981 [= Goethe HA]. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Werke. Herausgegeben im Auftrage der Großherzogin Sophie von Sachsen. (Weimarer Ausgabe). Abtlg. I–IV. 133 Bde. in 143 Teilen. H. Böhlau, Weimar 1887–1919 [= Goethe WA]. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von: Sämtliche Werke. Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche (Frankfurter Ausgabe), Frankfurt a. M. 1989 [= Goethe FA]. Habermas, Jürgen: Die neue Unübersichtlichkeit, Frankfurt a. M. 1985. Habermas, Jürgen, Jacques Derrida: Philosophie in Zeiten des Terrors. Zwei Gespräche, geführt, eingeleitet und kommentiert von Giovanna Borradori, Berlin 2004. Heidegger, Martin: Vorträge und Aufsätze, Pfullingen 1954 [= Heidegger VO]. Heidegger, Martin: Sein und Zeit, Tübingen 111967 [= Heidegger SuZ]. Heidegger, Martin: Unterwegs zur Sprache, Pfullingen 1975 [= Heidegger UN]. Heidegger, Martin: Aus der Erfahrung des Denkens, in: Gesamtausgabe. Erste Abteilung. Veröffentlichte Schriften 1910–1976, 13. Band, Frankfurt a. M. 1983 [= Heidegger EF]. Helmholtz, Hermann von: Handbuch der physiologischen Optik, Leipzig 1856–1867.

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