Hello Gentle Reader
When Elfrede Jelinek won the Nobel Prize for Literature; and becoming the first Austrian to do so, and became the tenth woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature (since then two other women have also been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature) she was pleased by the award, but also with modesty and her well known self-irony had made the wondering question, that she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature simply because she was a woman. She went on to suggest that another living German language writer who deserved the prize more than her was the fellow Austrian writer Peter Handke, who Elfrede Jelinek championed as a “living classic.” This was the first time that Peter Handke (who was under my first assumption, primarily a playwright of avant-garde plays that in the fashion of Samuel Beckett depicted the passion of the nothingness and void of the human condition with the nihilistic gallows humour of George Carlin or Monty Python) however this preconceived notion was incorrect. Peter Handke is a playwright and a novelist. However of late he is known more as a notoriously controversial figure, the kind that Austria appears to produce, along with controversial politicians. Peter Handke’s controversy arises from his views that during the Balkan War (also known as the Yugoslav War), Serbia was a victim.
The Balkan/Yugoslav War, in the early nineties, started after the collapse of the Soviet Union. With the Soviet Union’s collapse, after decades of restrictive fear and survival induced paranoia, and clockwork bleak routines, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the eventual Eastern Bloc’s extinction, prove to be a chaotic mess that induced anarchy in some former states. Even to this day parts of Eastern Europe continue to try finding a meaning and understanding with their new found freedom, years after the yoke of communism had been removed from around their necks.
The complexities and historical fuel for this war though was more than just generations stuck in a rut in mundane routines and daily transactions as well as fear of their neighbours, family members, co-workers – anyone was informing, all were recording, each tattled a tale. All guilty of saving their own hides. This war came down to multiethnic conflicts. The battle for independence or retaining unification. The Serbs and the Montenegrins on one side; while the Croats and Bosniaks as well as Slovenes were on the other. But then the Croats and the Bosniaks fought and to truly split hairs on a complicated war: different factions of the Bosniak factions fought against each other in Bosnia. The war ended in multi stages. With the end outcome being different independent states being formed: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia (and Herzegovina), Montenegro, Slovenia, and Macedonia – as well as two self-governing provinces in Serbia: Kosovo and Vojvodina.
The Yugoslavia/Balkan War, is a notorious tragedy in Eastern European history. Not since World War II has there been such a deadly war on European soil. War crimes and even mass murder and genocidal actions had happened during this war. Again making history, for being the first time since World War II that the term ‘Genocidal,’ was used in the judgements of the actions that had taken place during this time. That is why key individuals who participated in these actions were tried with charges of war crimes; which lead to the formation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. According to records one hundred and forty thousand people lost their lives.
War rape, genocide, mass murder, massacre, detention camps/concentration camps/prison camps – this was a complicated and long war. A war that surpasses simple caveman battle as the defendant in the cave next to the plaintiff caveman took the plaintiff’s caveman’s favourite rock. To which the defendant caveman denies, enraging the plaintiff caveman who then in an act of murderous rage over his missing favourite rock, slaughters the defending caveman – only in a sick twist of irony to learn that he simply misplaced his favourite rock. This particular war came from the whipping whirl winds of change that happened after the Soviet Union dematerialized. The different ethnic people of the former Yugoslavia took up different flags of nationalism. This caused a rift between the different ethnic groups, and therefore the independent nations or rather the future independent nations.
Peter Handke wrote this controversial travelogue (“A Journey to the Rivers: Justice for Serbia,”) during the midst of this war. Published in nineteen-ninety six, this book portrayed Serbia as a victim and criticized western media for its misrepresentation of the cause and consequences of the war. It didn’t help much that that former Yugoslavian president and charged war criminal Slobodan Milošević had asked for Handke to be a witness during his trial. Peter Handke declined; but did go to witness the trial as a spectator and had his observations published in his book of essays “The Tablas of Daimeil.” In two thousand and six further controversy, was struck further when Handke at Milošević funeral had made a speech which was taken in the context that the author was expressing his views on Serbia and Milošević. Translations then ran rampant that in this speech, that was addressed to twenty thousand mourners that Handke felt “happiness at being close to Milošević who defended his people.” However Handke shot back by sending a letter to the French Magazine “Le Nouvel Observateur,” where he offered the translation of his speech as follows:
“The world, the so-called world, knows everything about Yugoslavia, Serbia. The world, the so-called world, knows everything about Slobodan Milošević. The so-called world knows the truth. This is why the so-called world is absent today, and not only today, and not only here. I don't know the truth. But I look. I listen. I feel. I remember. This is why I am here today, close to Yugoslavia, close to Serbia, close to Slobodan Milošević.”
In the same year of two thousand and six Peter Handke declined an award, for political reasons. The Heinrich Heine Prize (of Dusseldorf) is awarded in the spirit of the German Poet Heinrich Heine, supports and pushes for the basic human rights of mankind. The city council of Dusseldorf must agree to the writer that the prize is being awarded too. Controversy erupted when it was announced that the award was going to Handke; and two jury members (Siegrid Löffler and Jean-Pierre Lefèbvre) threatened to abdicate their seats on the jury in protest. Peter Handke then apparently declined the award because of the political scrutiny. Fellow authors who have won this award include the late W.G. Sebald, Nobel Laureate in Literature Elfriede Jelinek, and Israeli author Amos Oz.
“[. . .] Owing to the new, alienating “village literature,” flourishing in Austria with Bernhard, Handke or Innerhofer, Herta Müller explores its dark, sensitive roots in an original manner. When she theorizes about it occasionally falls (like her models) into a stereotyped attitude not without a dash of arrogance.”
So describes both the future Nobel Laureate in Literature Herta Müller and one of her models of writing Peter Handke alongside the forgotten Franz Innerhofer; who in two thousand and two took his own life. After years of alcohol problems, and fell out of literary fashion in the eighties and nineties, being pushed aside for newer stars in literature. Hissing and spitting Franz Innerhofer fought back, but only furthered his alienation and isolation. What connects Handke, Bernhard and Innerhofer besides their national heritage of being Austrian writers, each of them grew up in villages; each of them had the wanion of being like a dandelion – unwanted in the garden. Bernhard was abandoned by his paternal parents. Innerhofer lived a life of drudgery and miserable toil. He worked on his farmers farm as a child, became a blacksmiths apprentice when he was younger and only in the seventies did he start to make a career as a freelance writer. Peter Handke’s early life story is no different. His stepfather was an alcoholic. He grew up in a village in Austria called Griffen. However for the first seven years of his life he lived with his mother in Soviet occupied Pankow district in Berlin. Life in Griffen was culturally stagnant and is theorized that this along with his stepfather’s alcoholism led to his distrust of habit and routine. In nineteen-seventy one Handke’s mother committed suicide which became the memory essay that Handke wrote “A Sorrow Beyond Dreams.”
“Across,” by Peter Handke is my first foray into the authors work. If one could call the work pleasantly surprising, I certainly would. However the world pleasant with this novel is by all means necessary not the choice word. Peter Handke has written a poetically harrowing tale. Where Bernhard wrote interior monologues, that were rabid and full of philosophy disguised as insanity; Handke writes with poetics. Finding meaning in the mundane. Pondering the philosophical and metaphysical attributes that surround us all.
In “Across,” Peter Handke uses a classical languages teacher/professor who finds liberation while contributing in acts of violence. A man who has become distant, from other people including his family, whom he is separated from. His intellectual pursuits have alienated him. His cultural enjoyments have only found reflection and enjoyment with himself. He’s chosen a career that no longer full fills him, and is completely useless outside of the profession that he has chosen to engage in. His only social contact is a game of cards with friends; which leads to the pondering of philosophical nature of thresholds, to which a priest at the card game presents the theological explanation:
“[. . .] According to an almost forgotten proverb: 'The threshold is a fountainhead.' And this teacher says literally: 'It was from thresholds that lovers and friends absorbed strength. But,' he goes on, 'where nowadays are we to find the destroyed thresholds, if not in ourselves? By our own wounds shall we be healed. If snow stops falling from the clouds, let it continue to fall inside me.' Every step, every glance, every gesture, says the teacher, should be aware of itself as a possible threshold and thus recreate what has been lost. This new threshold consciousness might then transfer attention from object to object, and so on until the peace relay appears on earth, at least on that one day--and on the day after and the day after that, rather as in the child's game where stone sharpens scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper wraps stone. Thus, thresholds as seats of power may not have disappeared; they have become conceivable, so to speak, as inner powers. If man were conscious of these thresholds, he would at least let his fellow man die a natural death. Threshold consciousness is nature religion. More cannot be promised.”
This is one of the great examples of how this book behaves. Peter Handke writes about his character Andreas Loser, as a casual philosopher and more as an observer who sees the world around him, and is unable to act or take part in the world. He is just a shadow. A person who can only watch, never act.
“Handke''s novel tells the story of a quiet, organized classics teacher named Andreas Loser. One night, on the way to his regularly scheduled card game, he passes a tree that has been defaced by a swastika. Impulsively yet deliberately, he tracks down the defacer and kills him. With this act, Loser has crossed an invisble threshold, and will be stuck in this secular purgatory until he can confess his crime.”
This how the book is described by the publisher; but it is so much more than just a novel of a murder mystery or philosophical discussion disguised as a murder mystery. It is a novel that has wonderful descriptive passages, and a great deal of philosophical ponderings and wonderings.
Much like a Michael Haneke film (who directed the adaption of fellow Austrian novelist and playwrights Elfriede Jelinek autobiographical novel “The Piano Teacher,”) Peter Handke’s novel asks philosophical inclined ponderings, and questions without answers, or rather that will evermore lead to more questions. Full of imagery with a pessimistic bent; and at times a, swirling ethereal dreamscapes that does not connect or make sense. It’s a surreal ride; and one that will most likely take plenty of re-readings in order to full grasp either the author’s intent or at the very least a superficial grasp of what is happening within this short pessimistic novel, of poetic images that conjure a very sinister place – an Austria that the authors Bernhard, Innerhofer, and Jelinek – themselves present.
Pushing aside Peter Handke’s controversial political views; his literary talents certainly overshadow these blemishes of the author. I certainly look forward to reading many of the authors work to come, into translation or back into print or back into print or back into print.
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
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M. Mary
