[In the following review, Skwara offers a positive assessment of Langsam im Schatten.]

Peter Handke's most recent book, containing essays, speeches, reviews, and critical comments, is by no means a minor but a major work. Its richness, diversity, and depth confirm—differently yet almost more so than narrative prose publications of recent years—the author as one of the most interested, most informed, most concerned, most universal literary figures alive today. Needless to say, all these qualities mentioned are referred to as greatness when found in a writer. This assessment holds true all the more so when based on the reading of a collection of so-called peripheral or secondary works such as presented here, since subjective agreement or liking is not of the essence but much rather a growing awareness of where Handke's mind takes the reader. I, for one, could not imagine a guide I would follow more willingly if I were lost “in the dark forest” (and aren’t we all lost, more so than ever?).

Langsam im Schatten contains a good number of essays on various writers of various languages, most of them composed on the occasion of these very writers’ receiving the exclusive Petrarca Prize (awarded by a jury consisting of Alfred Kolleritsch, Michael Krüger, Peter Hamm, and Handke himself). The authors Philippe Jaccottet of France, Gustav Januš, a Slovenian poet whom Handke has translated into German, the Czech poet Jan Skácel, and the English-born writer John Berger figure among these recipients, and naturally Handke knows and reads their works (excluding Skácel) in their original languages. These essays (seeing them as mere lectures or laudatio texts would be grossly inappropriate), together with others on past writers such as the magnificent “Franz Grillparzer und der Clochard von Javel” or the pages (originally a French text written for Le Monde) on Adalbert Stifter or on the late Nicolas Born, are necessarily reprints of first publications in various media, most frequently from the German weekly Die Zeit. Only in their togetherness, however, can the spark ignite, and suddenly we are faced with one of the most complete poetics available from anyone writing today.

Handke never feeds his readers mere opinion or judgment; he takes them along on his adventures in reading and carefully develops whatever vision he presents. These poetics—I insist on the term—are always just and seeking the positive. Handke, quite alone amid a Kulturbetrieb of fads and fashions and the pleasure in playing down others’ works, exercises what I would call a healing if not redeeming hand. His text on Gerhard Meier (“Zeit für eure Toten”) or the small jewel “Über Lieblingswörter” may illustrate this contention. His Petrarca Prize speech on Gustav Januš, most amazingly, shows Handke speaking on the absurd contemporary German-language literary scene and the obscene ugliness of the critical press (we all know which German daily subtitles itself “Zeitung für Deutschland”) with a clarity and rage never found anywhere else. At moments the reader imagines this writer speaking with a “fiery biblical tongue,” so genuine is Handke's accusation, when he chooses, ever so rarely, to accuse.

The fourteen collected texts under the heading “Vom Übersetzen: Bilder, Bruchstücke”—Handke himself is a most distinguished translator from the English, French, ancient Greek, and Slovene languages—add to the aforementioned poetics and the most complete vision on art and life which Handke reveals in these collected works.

Finally, and equally important, Langsam im Schatten is, among many things, a wonderful rejection of the often-voiced opinion of Handke as being unpolitical, withdrawn, weltfremd in recent years. Such gossip is refuted by the book’s immensely contemporary, concerned, and political aspect. “Eine andere Rede über Österreich,” but most hauntingly “Abschied des Träumers vom Neunten Land,” where Handke voices his pain over the events in the former Yugoslavia and his utter disagreement with the new independent states of Slovenia and Croatia in the most intelligent, logical ways, are indeed ample proof that this author is, more so than most of us, part of our world and our times. This entire “world” package, moreover, is delivered in the most beautiful, impeccable German prose imaginable.