Peter Handke Analysis

Although Peter Handke first achieved literary celebrity on the basis of his avant-garde plays, he is best known as a writer of fiction, having largely abandoned the theater early in his career. Most of Handke’s novels are quite short (several are of novella length), and their language is highly concentrated. As critic June Schlueter notes, while Handke’s awareness of the linguistic medium has remained constant, there has been a development in his fiction from an early emphasis on the limits of language and the failure of communication to an emphasis on the “redemptive power of poetic language.”

In addition to his novels, Handke has published several books, which are often classified as nonfiction but which he himself regards as of a piece with his fiction. Among these are the much-praised novel Wunschloses Unglück (1972; A Sorrow Beyond Dreams, 1975), written in response to his mother’s suicide, and Das Gewicht der Welt (1977; The Weight of the World, 1984). Handke has published a small number of short stories, essays, and several slim collections of poetry; he has also written radio plays and has written or co-written screenplays and otherwise collaborated on the making of several films. Since the 1980’s, Handke has translated many works of French, Slovenian, English, and Greek writers, among them Marguerite Duras, Bruno Bayen, Aeschylus, and William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (pr. c. 1610-1611).

Despite his rather sparse output, Peter Handke is widely regarded as an important and influential contemporary dramatist. He became one of the first of the generation of German speakers born during World War II to achieve prominence. Unlike many other postwar German and Austrian writers, he does not hark back to the Nazi era, nor does he concern himself with “the past” in any usual way. At the same time, his plays do not follow the example of Bertolt Brecht, so pervasive in the postwar German theater: Handke’s plays are not theatrical in the ways Brecht’s are, nor do they have Brecht’s scope. Rather, they seek to define language as act and language as power. Three of Handke’s plays, Offending the Audience, Kaspar, and The Ride Across Lake Constance, have entered the international repertory; these works made him the most prominent German-language playwright of the 1970’s. While Handke was awarded several notable honors and awards—for example, the Gerhart Hauptmann Prize in 1967 and the Schiller Prize in 1972—he refused or returned other prizes, including the Büchner Prize (won in 1973, returned in 1999) and the Kafka Prize (refused in 1979). He accepted the Salzburg Literature Prize in 1986.

Peter Handke (HAHNT-kuh) made his debut on the German stage with the drama Publikumsbeschimpfung (pr., pb. 1966; Offending the Audience, 1969). His subsequent dramatic works include Hilferufe (pr. 1967; Calling for Help, 1970), Kaspar (pr., pb. 1968; English translation, 1969), Das Mündel will Vormund sein (pr., pb. 1969; My Foot My Tutor, 1970), Quodlibet (pr. 1970; English translation, 1976), Der Ritt über den Bodensee (pr., pb. 1971; The Ride Across Lake Constance, 1972), Über die Dörfer (pr., pb. 1982; Among the Villages, 1984), Die Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wussten (1992; The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other, 1996), and Untertagblues: Ein Stationendrama (pb. 2003).

After publishing several radio plays in the early 1970’s, Handke wrote a film script, Chronik der laufenden Ereignisse (1971; chronicle of occurring events), which he also produced, and a television script, Falsche Bewegung (1975; wrong move). He has collaborated frequently with film producer and director Wim Wenders and was the screenwriter (with Wenders) for Wenders’s 1987 film, Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire). An early collection of short stories, Begrüssung des Aufsichtsrats (1967; saluting the trustees), should also be noted. Handke’s collection of poetry Die Innenwelt der Aussenwelt der Innenwelt (1969; The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld, 1974) gives poetic expression to his recurring concern with language as its phrases, in their description of the outer world, simultaneously reflect the inner world or consciousness of the author and vice versa. Handke has also raised these concerns in several of his critical essays, notably Ich bin ein Bewohner des Elfenbeinturms (1972; I am an inhabitant of the ivory tower).

To what extent are Peter Handke’s political views, or his expression of them, relevant to a consideration of his writing?

Handke’s plays provide little in the way of stage directions, apparently leaving staging considerations up to individual directors. What elements of his plays are necessary? What elements are legitimately open to interpretation?

Handke often seems to ask more questions than he answers. What are the effects of this technique on the reader?

As a poet, novelist, essayist, and playwright, Handke engages in a wide variety of literary pursuits. Where does he fit in a discussion of writers who pursue multiple genres?

Some of Handke’s work is overtly autobiographical, some partially so. How important is it to understand the author if we are to understand his writing?

Handke is known for the precision of his language, even as he discusses inarticulateness. Discuss this apparent anomaly. How, if at all, is it relevant that English-language readers will encounter his work only in translation?