SOME COMMENTS ON:
FREIHEIT DES SCHREIBENS – ORDNUNG DER SCHRIFT
PROFILE # 16: PETER HANDKE
MAGAZIN DES OESTREICHSCHEN LITERATUR ARCHIVES
AND
OESTREICHISCHEN NATIONAL BIBLIOTHEK
Profile 16, Peter Handke
Freiheit des Schreibens - Ordnung der Schrift – herausgegeben von Klaus Kastberger
Erscheinungsdatum: 07.09.2009
Flexibler Einband, 352 Seiten
Erscheinungsdatum: 07.09.2009
Flexibler Einband, 352 Seiten
Preis: 21.50 € (D) / 37.50 sFR (CH) / 22.10 € (A)
ISBN 978-3-552-05476-9
Zsolnay
Zsolnay
[Ausgangspunkt
des Bandes ist die betonte Eigenständigkeit der Literatur von Peter
Handke. Eine Art zu schreiben, die oft quer zur veröffentlichten Meinung
steht und sich planvoll gegen
äußere Vorgaben zur Wehr setzt. Legendär sind Handkes Auftritte vor der
Gruppe 47 ebenso wie seine Theaterstücke und Bücher - von der
"Publikumsbeschimpfung" über "Wunschloses Unglück" bis zur "Morawischen
Nacht". Beflügelt von frühen Erfolgen vermochte sich der Autor in einer
jahrzehntelang weiterentwickelten Schreibarbeit als autonomer Dichter zu
etablieren. Auch die vieldiskutierten Aufsätze über Jugoslawien zeigen:
Aus dem alltäglichen Schreiben und den konkreten Ausformungen der
Schrift gewinnt er die dazu notwendige poetische Kraft. Ein fundierter
Beitrag zur neueren deutschen Literaturwissenschaft mit zahlreichen
Faksimiles aus dem Vorlass des Autors am Österreichischen
Literaturarchiv und aus anderen Sammlungen.]
FREIHEIT [for short], is a large-size, elegantly produced, paperback of 350 pages, appr. 500 word per printed page; and, overall, is a first collection of essays about various aspects of Handke's work. What makes it essential are the seventy pages - p.31-72 + 157-182 -
of documentary material from the Austrian national Handke Archive, and
fascinating indeed it is to see Handke’s diaries on which he draws in
his very own way for his books, manuscripts and galley corrections and
photos, drawings, etc. etc, and photos of the salt works that provide
the background for his operatic novel KALI. Nearly worth the reasonable price of admission itself.
The Austrian National Archive and the German collection in Marbach got
their moneys worth - two payments of E 500,000 the reports say and our
upstart can continue to haunt five star hotels.
Broadly
speaking, the content addresses various works of Handke’s going back to
his 1980-1987 Salzburg period and earlier, to the then most recently
published [2007/8] MORAWISCHE NACHT and DIE KUCKUCKE VON VELICA HOCA,
and certain interesting aspects of his work, GOETHE/HANDKE,
MUSIL/HANDKE… the subject of Stifter crops up frequently but no single
essay addresses itself to the subject STIFTER/ HANDKE, [which I compared
recently in my long piece on DEL GREDOS by taking a close look, and
translating passages from WITIKOV]...
...or,
say, to that of Handke/and the Grilled Seal [Robbe-Grillet] something
that of course has been done earlier on... or for that matter address
the development of this driven virtuoso genius phenomenologist from his early work - from 1964/5 to the current work.
Most of these essays are first rate, Hans Hoeller’s on VELICA HOCA a standout – even though I read KUCKUCKE twice Hoeller proved an eye-opener; as are Fabjan Haffner and Elisabeth Schwaegerle’s on Handke and translation which are on line PICASSA ALBUM WEB PAGES via links at respective pages at the handke-scholar.blog and at http://www.handketrans.scriptmania.com/
Georg Pichler’s on HANDKE/ GOETHE has been on the scriptmania site long prior to publication of FREIHEIT and so is Karl Wagner’s on MUSIL/ HANDKE now, essayings which can be found at:
as well as at the respective pages of the:
and its links to their Picassa web albums.
Ditto
for Katharina Pektor's piece on CHINESE DES SCHMERZENS [ACROSS is its
idiotic American title] - very useful that provided the jump-off points,
its denials did, for me to take a depth psychological perspective at
our author; from Ms. Pektor's piece and the documentation we get a
notion how Handke manages to project himself into his texts that then so
powerfully hold the real reader.
Leopold Federmaiers piece on the Kunjunktiva in
Handke's developing epic style is utterly pertinent; so is Thomas
Deichmann's piece on traveling with Handke in Yugoslavia and amplifies
what we already know about from these matters from Handke himself and
Scott Abbott on these matters. Deichman emphasizes the autobiographic
nature of Handke's work, without addressing the more interesting
question of how this Cezanne of the word manages to create a different
view of Mont St. Victoire every time he sets out - after all, Handke
does not repeat himself. That is, Deichmann as well as the other
contributors fail to address the question of form, or why Handke's are
as graceful as they are, why most of them describe that "line" - the
line of a shapely breast! As seen from the side!
Raimund
Fellinger on the development of MY YEAR IN THE NO-MANS-BAY makes
someone like me who read the book five times and then wrote at length
about it, want to run to the site where the galleys and versions are
kept to see what's been cut, etc.
The over-all editor Klaus Kasteberger is in a position to indulge himself in his essay on KALI in dwelling at length on my adolescent favorite, Stendhal’s ON LOVE, in connection with the KALI's love theme, and
discussing the significance of salt, before admitting that it really is
of little pertinence - that is, he avoids the artistic and formal and
thematic issues that that again extraordinary book raises.
I discuss it only briefly so far on the page devoted to KALI at:
Surprisingly, the volume, which has the crème de la crème of Austrian Germanistik and Handke studies as contributors [Fellinger and travel companion Thomas Deichmann, I think, are the only non-Austrians in the volume] lacks anything by Handke’s first reader/ out of house editor Peter Hamm. Perhaps he is all written out on the subject, as I am not quite.
The
one rather disappointing piece is on Handke’s later plays. Since I
translated all the plays up to and including WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES, I
recall wondering how that ultimate anti-boulevard boulevard play THE
RIDE ACROSS LAKE CONSTANCE would actually play – I had directed the
other early one or participated in rehearsals, and so had an idea of
what effect they produced, and was then astounded that RIDE left me
entirely addicted to the STATE OF MIND – refreshed, mind wiped clean,
that RIDE produced at its American premiere in 1971 at Lincoln Center. And during its five week run would go for just a ten minute hit! Better than the best cocaine any day! HOUR
has the same effect and does so without juggling words, it is just a
series of images and a movement when you see it – and in fact it leaves
you reborn. As far as I am concerned, Handke achieves what Brecht set
out to do: a non-Aristotelian catharsis – that, too, I
imagine my neurological scalp cap could ascertain – the health of the
group depends on the health of the minds of its members. I am uncertain whether the 3-D spectacles in movie houses perform the same necessary trick.
Leopold Federmair contributes a useful reading of how Handke roots his work in
localities, as is of course evident to anyone who has read the THREE ASSAYINGS or the novels.
The volume also contains a good, not great, interview with Handke who continues to give good interview in serious times, or have his coy fun with folks like Andreas Mueller. However, if the book length Gamper/ Handke interview of 1986 ICH LEBE DOCH NUR VON DEN ZWISCHENRAEUMEN sets the standard for an important Handke interview the current Kastberger/ Schwaegerle - comes in as a “B.” It
fails to follow up on certain most important matters that Gamper
addressed or which Handke offered there of his own free will. It is too
deferential: when Handke baldly states "I don't have a poetics" no one
seems to recall the poetics as expressed in a wonderful passage in WALK
ABOUT THE VILLAGES.
I miss something on the several matters that interest me:
A] the experience of reading Handke
– how via what he does with language, no matter that he changes over
the years, reading Handke constitutes a very particular experience – which, say in DEL GREDOS, conveys
the writers love of writing in such a way as to put me – I don’t think
and I know it is just nutty me – into a finely agape state of mind. THE READER in NO-MAN’S-BAY and also in MORAWIAN NIGHT is one side of Handke’s artistic self – and being not just psychoanalytically half-well
trained but also paying the proper deference to the ever neurological
interface of our mind am planning to try to get one of my friends in that field to put an electronic cap on my brain to see how the brain changes while reading Handke! Handke as better medicine than anti-depressants – which I have never taken,
and which is surprising since Handke absorbed his mother’s depression
intra-uterine and is a depressive who for a considerable time during his
prolonged adolescence suffered from suicidal impulses. Yet utterly self-confidente prima primadonna initially. The conqueror of fear, writing, now, conveys his love of existence. Still a primadonna though! The book lacks a biographical essay, and as is customary in the instances of these collections of essays about Handke, anything critical, he didn’t use to permit it, perhaps here, too.
B]
No one seems interested in how these forms are conceived - or follows
up on Handke's comment that he draws out the book for as long as
possible, another version of
the 'Angel the longer the better."
1]
“vom biograpischen aufgerollt” – since Handke projects himself
re-imagined into his text, the naturalistic question of the
autobiographical...?? interesting as this is when and if you write Handke’s biography, if anything shows the irrelevance of the biographical this might….unless you decide to explore what it means to be a genius who started to practice writing …. Thomas Deichman, the editor of NOVO, and traveling companion to Yugoslavia talks about that a bit. As I put it the other day to a Handke biographer: he might be goat with three heads, what counts is how she meckert! Thus
the relationship between text and biography if one wishes to approach
them in that manner needs to be carefully calibrated: in SHORT LETTER
LONG FAREWELL we have the buddies “German Writer” “Austrian Dramaturg”
and a wife who pursues… is that pursuit a physical representation of the
neglected wife
Libgart Schwartz’s longing, which is perceived as a threat, a very
pronounced theme, once again, in MORAWIAN NIGHT, a threat to the
solitary profession as a writer? His isolation? The
fine analytic notion of “over-determination” and how each of these
complicated locks can be unlocked, from one vault lock to the other…
2] “autistsiche Zusstaende”
I would ask him to describe what he means and how he came to that
formulation. Autists have been showing up in Handke’s recent work,
idiots nearly from day one!
3] A closer probing of what those “threshold” inbetween-states consist of, or are comparable to in the case of someone as super ultra hypersensitive as Handke is.
4] Why Handke, while going to the Milosevic funeral and visiting him in jail and in general coming to the defense of the Serbians being made exclusively responsible for the disintegration and the atrocities [do you ever come on, except with me and Choussevsky, on the suggestion that economic warfare ought to be regarded as a crime on the order of war crimes?]… why Handke then did not follow
the request of Milosevic and family to be an expert witness for the
defense; after all, he offers no explanation in DIE TABLAS DES DAMIEL for his refusal, and didn’t even write the requested letter to the tribunal!!!???
5] What he meant when he said “I am writing out of my wound – has he configured its complicated nature, at least for himself?
6} Is he meanwhile aware that the list of matters that tired him as he recounts them in Essay on Tiredness all derive from intense rage?
7] Gamper’s observation about a certain naturalistic use of linguistic material on Handke’s part.
8]
Re what I hint at above with his texts and the experience of his plays
being fairly unique experiences – does he have an image of a reader and
how he wishes that ideal reader to experience when he composes. I myself
prefer to think of Handke as a composer.
9] are we to believe, from Morawian Night, that, as a young man, he left an illegitimate child behind in Cordula/ Krk?
10] and for good measure: does he still beat up his women and the like when they step out of line?
11]
And perhaps, following up on a wish he expressed to Mueller, that he
would like once in his life to "behave like a Schuft" - whether he feels
that Mueller's idea that he had lots of time left to do that, whether
he had managed to accomplish that too?
TABLE OF CONTENT
p. 5 MEINE FUELLFEDER [my pen] an essay written for school, 1956, aged fourteen.
p. 11-30 THE KASTERBERGER/ SCHWAEGERLE Interview
p.31-72 WERK MATERIAL on: Kaspar, Ride Across Lake Constance, They Are Dying Out, A Slow Homecoming, Austrian Poem, The History of the Pencil, Two Letters to Rene Char, Voyage by Dugout, Lamenting, in Tears; Del
Gredos; Hanging around the Tribunal; the Milosevics Funeral Speech; a
letter to the magazine FOCUS; Subday Blues; Morawian Night.
p. 73 Fabjan Hafner, on Handke as translator, on-line at the handke translation site and the handke-scholar blog via Picassa album here;
p.
87 Elisabeth Schwagerle, on Handke translator, as above accessible in
the same manner via the translation site and the scholar blog.
p. 109 Katharina Pektor on Across: “How do I approach Loser’s story.” Fascinating!
p. 133 Raimund Fellinger, on the creation of NO-MAN’S BAY. Fascinating!
p. 143 Klaus Kasterberger, on KALI see my note above. Provides extraordinarily interesting background material.
p. 157-174 WERK
MATERIAL on the creation of THE CHINESE OF THE WATER TORTURE [Across],
NO-MAN’S BAY, KALI [great photos of the salt works which become so very
present in the reading of the book].
p. 183 Thomas
Deichmann TRAVELING WITH PETER HANDKE [Klaus Peymann, too, is absent in
these pages, who not only did some actual traveling to Kosovo with
Handke, but had all those trips prior to the premieres. Bondy, too,
might have some interesting matters to say.
p. 205 Hans Hoeller’s terrific piece on KUCKUCKE OF VELICA HOCA.
p. 222 Michael Hansel HANDKE AND THE PENCIL.
P. 237 Ulrich von Buelow, the archivist of these Euro 500,000 papers!
p. 253 THE THIRD SECTION DEVOTED TO ARCHIVAL MATERIAL
on the NOTEBOOKS,
p.
281 Georg Pichler on Handke and Goethe which has been online with the
scriptmania site for many years, and can also be found on the handke-scholar.blog
p.294 Karl Wagner, HANDKE/ MUSIL accessible Picassa web album
HANDKE-SCHOLAR and via the handkeprose2.scriptmania site and via its page on the handke-scholar blog. These blogs exist to encourage discussion.
p. 306 Leopold Federmair: ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CHRONICLE AND THE EPIC in Handke’s work. Need to re-read it. Very interesting so far.
p. 325 Alexander Honold: DECIPHERING THE ECUMENICAL… need to finish reading what looks like a very obscure approach TO ME!
p. 347 Index of Authors... which, oddly, list a Clemens Oezelt who however
does not have a piece in the collection, but appears to be working on the "polphonous" in Handke, which sounds fascinating.
