Peter Handke

[Bartleby]

But you are offering an answer: indifference. And it’s not clinging to hate when it’s still ongoing:

They held a roundtable discussion where they decided that members of the institute should try to pressure history textbook writers in the region to discuss the causes of civil war from a pro-Serbian Perspective

Dear Red, I was referring to Handke alone, not this prize and the people who organise it and what they’ve been doing. And again, as for Handke, I believe I’ve previously made my positions on him clear here (a page or so earlier) and elsewhere ?

 

[nagisa]

Dear Red, I was referring to Handke alone, not this prize and the people who organise it and what they’ve been doing. And again, as for Handke, I believe I’ve previously made my positions on him clear here (a page or so earlier) and elsewhere ?

If you're sticking to your "I have this feeling people willingly misunderstood him, they’re so keen on this idea of one sole perpetrator of the war, that him being willing to just be a witness that bad things also happened in Serbia as well got people mad" (a page or so earlier, like you said) — then yes, that is a clear position. It is also one that is historically and factually wrong, and morally monstrous.

I urge you to educate yourself beyond Handke's twisted and insincere views on the Yugoslav wars. Like I said a page or so earlier as well: "Why can't he be a great writer with terrible politics? Why does he have to be "misunderstood"?" And why is it that when this all is brought up, you prefer to wave it away and pretend it doesn't exist?

 

[Liam]

Peter Handke: the gift that keeps on giving...

I'm not sure if it's possible to have any flat, middle-of-the-road feelings about this man, ?

 

[Bartleby]

If you're sticking to your "I have this feeling people willingly misunderstood him, they’re so keen on this idea of one sole perpetrator of the war, that him being willing to just be a witness that bad things also happened in Serbia as well got people mad" (a page or so earlier, like you said) — then yes, that is a clear position. It is also one that is historically and factually wrong, and morally monstrous.

I urge you to educate yourself beyond Handke's twisted and insincere views on the Yugoslav wars. Like I said a page or so earlier as well: "Why can't he be a great writer with terrible politics? Why does he have to be "misunderstood"?" And why is it that when this all is brought up, you prefer to wave it away and pretend it doesn't exist?

I don't pretend things don't exist; It's just I've already expressed myself about it and I stand by it, even after your replies (which I've read, including the links contained therein); and I don't see the need to be caught up in an endless loop talking about things already spoken (or to put it more accurately, written). As you might have noticed, I'm pretty much averse to discussing politics, so I don't intend to talk about it, to pontificate about it; my thing is Art (I'm aware, tho, that politics can be infused into Art, and I'm not contrary to that happening; simply put, whatever point of view presented, I just consider it as a part of a work like any other and judge not its contents but how they were handled).

At the stage we're in, however, I'm not sure I could say anything that could settle this whole debacle but to agree with you that Handke, a person I don't even know, is a most terrible human being, beyond any forgiveness, and apologise for my "morally monstrous" character.

One thing we can all agree is how bad any sort of crime and harm ever perpetrated in human history is condemnable. And that is that. I’m totally against any kind of violence, verbal or physical, and I’m also against denying any sort of violence, be it a genocide or anything else. So, without us pretending to know what's inside each other's minds, what our thoughts consist of, can we just leave each other be and engage in the world in whatever way we find most suitable and pleasing for ourselves, as long as it doesn't offend or deprive others of their rights?

I thank you in advance, and apologise for not willing to further attempt to respond in a satisfying way to you or anyone, and for refraining for good from this complete ordeal.

 

[nagisa]

Peter Handke: the gift that keeps on giving...

I'm not sure if it's possible to have any flat, middle-of-the-road feelings about this man, ?

Sorry, do you have flat, middle-of-the-road feelings for any other genocide deniers?

 

[nagisa]

At the stage we're in, however, I'm not sure I could say anything that could settle this whole debacle but to agree with you that Handke, a person I don't even know, is a most terrible human being, beyond any forgiveness, and apologise for my "morally monstrous" character.

Actually, no, not really, because that's not what I'm looking for, and I've said so many times ("By all means, have your problematic fave. I have many.") What I'm looking for is the recognition that it's important that we see the creators that show us things of beauty and deep emotion as people in all their flawed (and sometimes extremely dark) reality. Not wave it all away because it's inconvenient to the shrine we've built internally.

I don't see the need to be caught up in an endless loop

It doesn't amuse me much either, but given that genocide denial is quite literally the first step towards it happening again, I feel the need to underscore the point. Especially when you come in the thread praising Handke's little "reconciliation" speech spoken at an institute whose function is to deny genocide, funded by the denialists.

One thing we can all agree is how bad any sort of crime and harm ever perpetrated in human history is condemnable. And that is that. So, without us pretending to know what's inside each other's minds, what our thoughts consist of, can we just leave each other be and engage in the world in whatever way we find most suitable and pleasing for ourselves, as long as it doesn't offend or take away the rights of others?

Except that genocide denial takes away the rights of every single person in the targeted community, because it's saying that the crime didn't happen (and if you don't watch out it could happen again).
I'm not pretending to know anything here. I'm going off strictly your words here, and Handke's.

refraining for good from this complete ordeal.

I think the 130,000 people killed in the Yugoslav Wars, of which 65% Bosniak, the 4,000,000 displaced, the 50,000 women raped, etc, had more of an ordeal than you getting your feelings hurt on internet, or Handke getting a mean letter written in shit. "Ordeal"? Seriously?!

 

[Liam]

Also he’s written a novella this year and I hope it gets translated soon.

Thanks for this,

I am excited about The Fruit Thief being translated into English finally, even if it means that I have to wait nearly a year before I can read it.

This novella (we go from a fruit thief to a fruit grower) looks interesting to be sure--I am only familiar with Handke's "short" fiction at the moment, but I know he excels at it.

 

[Bartleby]

Wow, theatre directors are wild! I love their creativity. Wish I could have attended this performance.

Here is a full audio performance of the play.

 

[Liam]

American cover for The Fruit Thief is in, and overall I am pleased with its minimalist design, very much in keeping with the rest of the line of books (by PH) that FSG has been putting out. Translated by his long time translator Krishna Winston, the novel is published in tandem with a volume of non-fiction, collecting Handke's essays from across the decades.

 

[Leseratte]

A beautiful cover, yes, thanks for sharing it. The one thing I didn´t like about it was the mention "winner of the Nobel prize in literature" and without even mentioning the year of the prize. To me that was pure propaganda and didn´t go with the good taste of the cover design.

 

[Liam]

Oh yes, another victory for the department of advertising. They put it on everything! They even spoiled the beautiful black-and-white photo cover of Tranströmer's The Great Enigma by putting that little blob-circle on it, ?

You don't need to remind us about these authors winning the Nobel Prize. And those people who don't care much about prizes aren't going to buy the book anyway, whatever else the front cover says. You know?

 

[nagisa]

Wow, theatre directors are wild! I love their creativity. Wish I could have attended this performance.

Here is a full audio performance of the play.

Inspired by this on Self-Accusation, I listened to the whole play here and read it in French translation, in Outrage au public et autres pièces parlées (including Insulting the Audience, which is unforgettable, with Prophecy and Calling for Help). I highly, highly recommend Handke's early theatrical work (his Sprechstücke), and Kaspar. (These can be found in Kaspar and other plays and The Ride Across Lake Constance and other plays in English translation, which has been reedited with the new minimalist-cum-racoleur design Liam showed.)

I think I prefer early Handke, mid-60s to early 80s, stylistically speaking. The driving tensions are sharper; the magnification of the natural world less omnipresent. And there is plenty of truly excellent pieces in that period: I've already spoken of my like for desolateness of The Left-Handed Woman (over The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, which was truly manically disassociated), and the terse anxiety of the short stories of Welcoming the Supervisor. I look forward to reading A Sorrow Beyond Dreams and The Hornets, among others in this part of his œuvre.

(I did a bit of comparison between the French and English translations, and found a few curious discrepancies across a couple of plays. I assume they were references or word-play that had to be reworked. I'd like to say I'll go compare with the German, but coming off reading his novella Lucy in the Forest With the Thingies bilingually with the French, I'm not confident I have a German level that can do Handke's justice. A lot of recherché vocabulary whose intuitive feel in German is necessary to drive home the allusion, long sinuous sentences chained together in ways only the German can. He definitely mines the resources of the German language deep.)

 

[Leseratte]

I never read him, lack of opportunity I think and because of the controversies. But I´ll have a look at the on line library, to see which plays they have there.

 

[Liam]

A Sorrow Beyond Dreams is one of the most heartbreaking books I have ever read, ?

 

[Leseratte]

Found A Sorrow Beyond Dreams In the Goethe Online library, but not the plays.

 

[nagisa]

I will note here a nice inexpensive French edition, the Quarto by Gallimard, that presents a selection of "chosen" texts (unclear if by Handke himself): Les Cabanes du narrateur. It includes:

Les Frelons - L'Angoisse du gardien de but au moment du penalty - Le Malheur indifférent - L'Heure de la sensation vraie - La Femme gauchère - Lent retour - La Leçon de la Sainte-Victoire - Le Recommencement - Essai sur le juke-box - Par une nuit obscure je sortis de ma maison tranquille - Lucie dans la forêt avec les trucs-machins - La Grande Chute - Discours de remise du prix Nobel de littérature.
As well as Annexes, a Bibliography and a Map of his region of Austria bordering on Slovenia.

It's a great selection of his earlier work that made him famous in the 70s-80s, and a couple of later masterpieces. (No theatre though.) Most are a good entry in different parts of his œuvre, and I'm fairly sure all the translations are solid (the ones I read have been as far as I can tell). I like the way Quartos handle, but I've been collecting Handke piecemeal so far and I dislike reduplication, so I'm passing on this one personally, but I can vouch for it and its contents.

 

[Americanreader]

Has anyone actually read Handke's essays, I want to know if I should pick up Fruit thief and the essays together when they come out.

 

[nagisa]

It seems it's a collection of his five essays on tiredness, the jukebox, the successful day, the mushroom-crazy man and the "quiet place" (=toilet) (going off my french translations). I've read all of them, and while they're not essential Handke, they echo some of his themes and they're an interesting "variation" on his style (in quotes because it's not so much a variation as a particular concentration, at times a playfulness).

 

[nagisa]

Excellent and perceptive article on the genocide denialism in Handke by a professor of Balkan history:

A Literary Consecration of Genocide Denial

The Swedish Academy’s embrace of Handke comes at a time when far-right movements worldwide have also seized elements of 1990s Serbian nationalism as fuel for violent fantasies from Utøya, Norway, to Christchurch, New Zealand.

newlinesmag.com

 

[basho_89]

I’m midway through my first Handke (“Crossing the Sierra de Gredos”), really like his writing so far. Some books give you new knowledge, while others change the way you see knowledge, and the best do both; Handke does both for me. I’m sad to say that I know almost nothing about the controversy surrounding him, lack any conclusive thoughts about whether a writer is judged by character or work. I’m not so sure I’d like to have lunch with Mr. Handke (dude would probably make me re-evaluate the nature of food, lol) but I’m loving his work, want to read more by him.