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A son's long good-bye
About the writings of Peter Handke
(until Die Wiederholung, 1986)
by Karl-Erik Tallmo
ONLY A FEW, IF ANY, of those who …に出席するd the literary セミナー at Princeton in 1966, probably believed in a literary 未来 for this 23 year old Austrian newbie with a Beatles hair-削減（する）, who had crossed the 大西洋 to attack celebrities like Günter Grass, Peter Weiss and Siegfried Lenz. Peter Handke's talk about the "descriptive impotency" of literature seemed at the time to be 単に a juvenile's 勧める for attention.
Handke's first novel, "Die Hornissen", had been published that same year, and after the visit to Princeton, his play "Publikumsbeschimpfung" ("感情を害する／違反するing the audience", transl. Michael Roloff, London, 1971) was 行う／開催する／段階d. Considering that this play belonged to the 実験の scene, its success was tremendous. Handke had turned the communicative 行為／法令／行動する of the 行う／開催する／段階 ninety degrees, and all of a sudden, the actors were 演説（する）／住所ing the audience, they even 命令（する）d it and 乱用d it. "These boards do not 代表する a world", the actors say at the beginning of the piece. Everything at the theater is just what it seems to be, the 行う／開催する／段階 床に打ち倒す, the curtain; nothing needs 解釈／通訳. The absense of a door does not mean that this is supposed to 描写する some sort of "欠如（する）ing door problem".
The 早期に novels and plays all 偉業／利用する this insight that language is 現実に the only reality literature truly may 代表する. いつかs Handke 連合させるd texts in a concretist fashion, letting styles 衝突／不一致. For instance, he interlaced a 法律 text with parenthetically 挿入するd reactions from the audience - like when Lenin's or Stalin's speeches were published in the Soviet union: "thunderous 賞賛", "amused laughter" etc.
In "Die Hornissen", a person keeps fragments of a novel 蓄える／店d in his memory. In such a way fiction is 二塁打d and even self-取り消すing, since the reader 絶えず wonders what is the novel and what is the novel's novel. In "Der Hausierer" from 1967, the 陰謀（を企てる） of a 探偵，刑事 story is first 輪郭（を描く）d and later followed, the result, again, 存在 a narrative, 任意に 棄権するing from suggestive 力／強力にする, instead generously 展示（する）ing its own 機械装置s.
In November of 1971, Peter Handke 苦しむd a personal loss. Maria Handke, his 51 year old mother, committed 自殺. In a short letter she explained that it was "信じられない to go on living". Only a few months later, Handkes grief after this blow resulted in a small 調書をとる／予約する, "Wunschloses Unglück" ("A 悲しみ beyond dreams: a life story", transl. Ralph Manheim, New York, 1975). Handke shows us a both intimate and distant 見解（をとる） of the emotional poverty that 明白に 勝つ／広く一帯に広がるd in his family. 特に his mother 支えるd an almost total 欠如（する） of 身元. The word "individual" was used as an 悪口雑言 only, to be "special" was to be 半端物.
Several critics were delighted to read a more tender, いっそう少なく abstract Handke, one who dared to 含む bluntly autobiographical 構成要素. In his 調書をとる／予約する "Romane als Krankengeschichten" psychoanalyst Tilman Moser （人命などを）奪う，主張するs that Handke is fullfilling his symbiotic 義務 to his mother, a 義務 she at an 早期に 行う／開催する／段階 had 委任する／代表d to him: he was to give her the 身元 she had 欠如（する）d all of her life, posthumously through his writings. That is certainly a 激しい 重荷（を負わせる） for anyone to 耐える. In this 調書をとる／予約する, it seems to me, Handke is showing us a 井戸／弁護士席-embedded 激怒（する） over this 遺産 of poverty, inhibition and 未解決の problems that his mother left for him, but at the same time, there is an ambivalence, since this is the very 衝突 that makes him a writer. Thus, this duality is perpetually masked, now as 弁護 of the literary 面, now as 弁護 of the memory of the dead.
There is an 積極的な 勢い already in the German 肩書を与える: "Wunschloses Unglück" alludes not only to 完全にする misfortune, but also to a misfortune leaving nothing to wish for. Wolfram Mauser is on to this 跡をつける when he, also from a psychoanalytical 見地, scrutinizes Handke's work in "Der Deutschunterricht" 5/1982. He even 持続するs that the 調書をとる／予約する in its entirety is a psychological 弁護 - the 語り手 creates a person out of his collected 失望／欲求不満s and finally lets it stand in for his mother.
Handke used another technique for "Stunde der wahren Empfindung" 1975 ("A moment of true feeling", transl. Ralph Manheim, New York, 1977). He walked the streets, taking 公式文書，認めるs on loose 捨てるs, which became 価値のある puzzle pieces when he later sat 負かす／撃墜する to （判決などを）下す the scattered inner life of Gregor Keuschnig. Keuschnig belongs to the 軍団 diplomatique of Austria in Paris, but after a dream, where he commits a 殺人, he looses his foothold and lets impulse take 命令（する） and lead him all over the city. He experiences "the true feeling" alternately with an inexplicable emptiness and 怒り／怒る. Handke's true feeling is, however, not at all kindered with the Joycean epiphany, which is an 高めるd feeling for life. With Keuschnig it is but a fickle experience of 存在 alive at all; out of a 条件 characterized by 除外 and unreality, suddenly a 一時的な 接触する with life is 設立するd, with both the inner and outer world, and 特に with the self, that connects those two 政治家s.
Tilmann Moser thinks that Handke's portrait of Keuschnig is a very 正確な 臨床の description of the borderline 患者's fluctuation between illusions of grandeur and an all-encompassing experience of 無効の and worthlessness. To 形態／調整 this special 肉親，親類d of sensibility, Handke 養育するs a sort of 都市の superstition, 類似の to the magical thinking, typical of the borderline disorder; chance is 告発（する），告訴（する）／料金d with meaning, "secret understandings" occur all of a sudden 船内に on buses etc.
"Langsame Heimkehr" 1979 ("Slow homecoming", transl. Ralph Manheim, New York, 1985) 示すd the beginning of a new period in Handke's 令状ing. Now he lets nature 代表する mental 明言する／公表するs, with a consistency and almost 宗教的な solemnity that brings to mind Georg Büchner and his depiction of the vogesian mountain country in "Lenz". The main character Sorger is a geologist but preoccupied with "the search for forms, their distinction and description, apart from the landscape /.../ where this often painful, in between enjoyable, activity was his profession".
This is a good description of Handke's own literary 事業／計画（する）, as he explains it in the interview 調書をとる／予約する "Aber Ich lebe nur 出身の dem Zwischenräumen", published in 1987. 明白に, Handke now 令状s in a more and more intuitive way, he says the first 宣告，判決 of the 調書をとる／予約する took him three days to 完全にする. This was, however, a necessary starting point for his account of the 出発 from Alaska, which was supposed to fill ten pages but grew to last for ninety. Sorger had to visit several places before he could return home. The 計画（する） had just descendend through the clouds covering Europe, when Handke suddenly realized that the 調書をとる／予約する was finished.
いつかs language is even more 必須の than time, in getting from one moment to another, and this goes for both Handke as author and for his characters. To "narrate" is an existential need. In several interviews Handke points out that he regards himself not as a 物語を話す人／作家 but as reteller; the world consists of 調印するs to 令状 負かす／撃墜する. Many people say that you must read Handke with the 注目する，もくろむs of a writer, but at the same time he （人命などを）奪う，主張するs that he 令状s like a reader.
Handke had the same sensitivity for his own text while he worked on "Die Wiederholung" 1986 ("Repetition", transl. Ralph Manheim, New York, 1988). He thought of it as 完全にするd many times, but then decided to go on. The 語り手, Filip Kobal, of Slovenian origin like Handke, grew up in a small village in Kärnten in the south of Austria. Here he remembers a 旅行 he made in the 早期に 60's, when he was 20 years old and crossed the 国境 to Yugoslavia in search for his brother, who had disappeared many years earlier.
Handke is fascinated by the 表現 "存在 目だつ by one's absence". In the Kobal family the brother 伸び（る）s a remarkable presence through his 絶えず を待つd return. The disappeared brother is a 無効の that Filip may fill with 発射／推定s and 期待s 広告 libitum. Every time he needs 静める and strength, he evokes the inner image of his brother, and this happens frequently, since the 悲惨 of the Kobalian 世帯 is almost parodic; the father always angry and 不平（をいう）ing, the mother sick and the sister distracted.
One 認めるs biographical data from earlier 調書をとる／予約するs, although 確かな facts have been altered (the brother, for instance, seems to be a portrait of Handke's maternal uncle). Linguistically, Filip is 分裂（する） in his 身元確認，身分証明 between his father's German and his brother's Slovenian. This probably also 代表するs the ambivalence Handke feels himself, when it comes to the German language, which, in the words of George Steiner, "created, 組織するd and exculpated Belsen". Already the 欠如（する） of a passive 発言する／表明する in Slovienian is something the young Kobal regards as 希望に満ちた for the 未来.
Kobal is also travelling the strange karst land of northern Yugoslavia, a world of subterranean 激流s, 洞穴s and dripstones. The story almost loses its steerage-way at times here, and the reader's patience is 厳しく tried. This novel is not one of Handke's best, although there are some very fascinating passages, e.g. the brother's annotations about how to 汚職，収賄 different brands of apple trees, or the account of the Slovenian dictionary, which almost turns into a philosophical tract, yet with an unusual poetry budding out of the very raw 構成要素 of language.
Those mystical, implicit understandings appear in this 調書をとる／予約する too. First there is a servant, whose 無傷の attention and incessant care become 支配する to Filip's adoration: "Once he stood in the night, in the unfurnished, empty room, 在庫／株 still, gazing ahead, then he stepped 今後, up to a remote niche, where he 遂行する／発効させるd a small tender 新たな展開 on the decanter, so that the entire house was filled with 歓待."
At an outdoor party an unsuspecting girl 誘発するs Filip's 賞賛, and while the （米）棚上げする／（英）提議する cloth gets colored more and more 深く，強烈に red by 落ちるing mulberries, he "marries" her in his fantasy, without one word 存在 uttered.
"Slow homecoming" is the first novel where Handke 演説（する）／住所s his main characters, he even いつかs turns to the narrative itself: "Oh story, /.../ 認める us grace." いつかs Handke's style is archaic, his intonation 可決する・採択するs to that of the fairy tale. This 傾向 is even more 明らかな in his next novel, "Die Abwesenheit", 1987 ("Absence", transl. Ralph Manheim, New York, 1990). Handke looks upon himself as a reteller. Maybe this could explain his 勧める に向かって pastiche.
Finally: The more glimpses you get from Handke's own biography, the more you understand of the 明らかに empty and formalistic 実験s in his 早期に plays and poems. Maybe they 描写する the childs 欠如（する） of a 機能（する）／行事ing language within an 積極的な adult world that is permeated by あいまいな messages and humiliation. If you read for instance "Publikumsbeschimpfung" as a family 演劇, where the grown-ups 命令（する） the children in the same way as the actors try to 支配（する）／統制する even how the audience is breathing, then almost every line becomes unbearably あいまいな and upsetting.
Too bold as it may sound, I still would like to introduce an even more 明確な／細部 reading. Should it not be 立証するd in Handke's own biography, it is にもかかわらず an 利益／興味ing angle that casts a different light on the 本体，大部分／ばら積みの of Handke's ｦuvre. Publikumsbeschimpfung" and several other 作品, or parts of 作品, need not be 解釈する／通訳するd as just any family 演劇, but as 正確に that scolding which children most likely are 支配する to after having 証言，証人／目撃するd the Freudian primal scene; their parents having 性の intercourse.
Try to read Handke's 調書をとる／予約するs again with this in mind! Almost every の近くにd room might be a bedroom, almost every enigma or 未解決の problem could be connected with the mystery of one's own conception, which happened during such a primal scene. The goalie, Bruno, Keuchnig, Sorger and all the others - surely they were all 証言，証人／目撃するs!
In retrospect Handke's literary 生産／産物 through the years stand out as remarkably 一貫した, not to say 執拗な, and he spent the greater part of the 70's and 80's trying to define an 独立した・無所属 役割 for his 令状ing, outside of his dead mother's 裁判権.
Her short 自殺 公式文書，認める certainly resulted in a long literary good-bye for him.
This article is © Copyright Karl-Erik Tallmo, 1988, 1994
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