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Dealing with Peter Handke: "This stark juxtaposition of work and shit"

2019-10-20T11:19:38.326Z


In the dispute over the Nobel Prize for Literature for Peter Handke there are no more ambivalences, no dialogue. Or? Here, a Handke lover and a Handke critic try to get into conversation.



Frank: Peter Handke ...

Sila: Oh dear.

Frank: I was happy about the Nobel Prize for literature. Very.

Sila: Not me. For me, that is almost an existential offense.

Frank: There seems to be nothing between these two poles now, the debate is heavily poisoned. Would that be fruitful to talk about?

Sila: Definitely. It's just emotionally charged. I notice that too. Actually, I have put a clamp on the topic "War as a biographical chapter" for me. But the Nobel Prize in Literature for Handke, that hit me. It's bleeding.

Frank: We both take this award personally. Does it bother you if I want to keep reading Handke?

Sila: No, that's okay. But what I would expect is a differentiation.

Frank: What do you do to him?

Sila: My reproach is the biggest one can possibly do to a writer, because he is a dork. A political idiot. His sympathy for the criminals was authentic. I believe that he sincerely thought that this myth "Yugoslavia" would have such a reflection that everyone in it would be decent. And then comes in Germany quite often: "No idea what was going on down there, I just enjoy his language skills."

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Frank: That's me who says that.

Sila: What did you like about the Nobel Prize?

Frank: Maybe that a "higher authority" will finally authenticate my years of reading.

Sila: And what do you like about Handke?

Frank: I'm not a germanist. I know only a few novels, the plays do not interest me. But the notes, these diary-like entries, no real aphorisms, only such incidental observations, splinters, this capture and Poetisieren of the most casual, even Abseitstem - large.

Sila: He makes you feel that everyone can be an artist?

Frank: Let's call it inwardness, too. I get into stammering. It touched me in a way that hardly any other literature has ever done. For example, when he describes that he breaks off masturbation because "longing" interrupts him. ...

Sila: That's from "The short letter for a long farewell", I recognized that!

Frank: Maybe, but he writes about it more often. Probably he is just a wanker. How did you react to the news that he received the prize?

Sila: My first reaction was astonishment. Really? He? Not only the work, but also man and work should be appreciated. It's hard for him. In addition to the case with Serbia, he is also a confessed women's bat. ...

Frank: Does that make his work worthless, if it's true?

Sila: No. I appreciate many of his novels very much. But humanly it is a disaster.

Frank: But a writer may be.

Sila: Handke is that to an extent that I never thought would last for the Nobel Prize. Counter question: Why did this price put you in such a confirmation mood? Why Handke? What is it about him that makes people willing to endure this blatant coexistence of work and shit?

REUTERS

Bosnian Muslim women flee from Srebrenica (1995): "He does not recognize our suffering"

Frank: I do not feel that as juxtaposition. I can just leave out , which does not concern me. Because I can afford it. Maybe I'll be guilty of making use of a privilege. I know about the shit, but do not take note of it. There are records by Miles Davis, they are embarrassing, I just do not listen to them. That does not diminish my worship for Miles Davis. What do you mean?

Sila: It's more common with musicians, right. It's no surprise that despite their talent, they can be fools-though I do not mean Miles Davis. Writers should assume that their art is ideally an exercise in penetration. A side effect would be greater compassion, a loathing for actions that are at the expense of other people. At Handke there are a few rooms, they are just empty, there are at most a few wooden blocks on the floor.

Frank: Is not that his problem?

Sila: Not if he gets such a prize. For people who have experienced this war, nothing is more important than acknowledging what they have experienced. It's exactly what happened that Handke denied for me.

Frank: I can not hurt any scars from wounds that never hit me. He did not want to see it, so I do not see it.

Sila: That's the perfect thing about sharing his view with his readers as well. That's the scandal on this price. He does not acknowledge our suffering, and you? You're there!

Frank: That's a moral objection.

Sila: Not only. Only the weakest texts that attack him at present argue morally. He is trying to deny him his status as a writer due to a misconduct. His early work is great. At some point there was a rift, and that also has to do with Serbia. He has mentally destroyed as a writer, since then he writes mushroom books.

Frank: I would argue. The retreat into the small is legitimate and precious.

Sila: But was that what he was doing with his life as an artist? He already had the big novels, you can tell by his attitude. That he finally arrived in small and was also kleinlauter, as far as the Serbian thing, there is already a connection. He knows he was wrong.

Frank: Eben. If I tell him what he wrote in 1995, do not I have to credit him for what he wrote in 2016? He calls Srebrenica "the worst crime against humanity committed in Europe after the war".

Sila: He admitted the confession of his monstrous error in a footnote, so to speak. But you can not bring that shit for years and have you cheekily photographed in front of the town sign of Srebrenica, and then say, "Oh, I'm a writer, just a cheeky idiot!" Too little, too late .

Frank: In the debate, there are specialists who defend him, who bring in purely literary standards. Is this over?

Sila: A few months after Srebrenica he demanded in the title of one of his books "Justice for Serbia", which you can make even with Germanistic cutlery bad salad. The bitterness you do not get flushed out. Do you also argue that way?

Frank: I'm just a reader. And as such a lover. That's my problem now. I would like to sign what Eva Menasse wrote: "Great art presupposes that a fallible human being has created something that stands far above him, the human being, in its meaning and duration of action". Is not that possible?

Sila: Generally it works. Handke is a human being who has blatantly gone astray. But! While he is not on the trail, he is vicious, so: "Put your dismay in the ass!"

Frank: In the debate, there are people who have never even read a sentence by Handke - and moralize. And there are people who have read everything from Handke - and lecture.

Sila: It's all over here.

Frank: The defiant backsliding position of many fans is that you would have to banish Handke on the shelf in the second row, just like Richard Wagner can only be enjoyed with headphones.

Sila: This attitude contributes to the toxicity of the debate. Like some in their role of superiority, others like their role of the frontier worker who can fathom evil - with the bourgeois sense of art that can endure, not the proletarian affectivity that sees only good and evil and blah blah, bla. ...

Frank: That's not the case for me, I hope.

Sila: I know, and with Handke it's also harder to get into such a position. In his role as a solidarist, he is one who can not look evil in the eyes. The effort to not see what was obvious cost him a lot. I do not want a boycott. What annoys me is the price, this recognition. It signals to me as a survivor: What you endure is actually worthless.

Frank: I still hope he will not accept the prize.

Sila: Above all, he should not accept the money. The money makes it especially öbszön ....

Frank: But if he took it to donate to the mothers of Srebrenica?

Sila: That would be something else.

Frank: And what if he accepts him and uses his speech in Stockholm for an attempt to explain himself?

Sila: That would be hard for someone who made such a big shit. But it would be much, much, much worth. I do not know if he can do it. It would actually require a Tolstoy to bring that. An uncompromising attitude that reaches out to the inaccessible. Yes, that would be a big gesture. But I do not know if Handke can do it.

Frank: Me neither.

Source: spiegel

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