No sooner did the Nobel Committee in Stockholm award the Nobel Prize in Literature to Peter Handke and Olga Tokarczuk than the vilification engine kicked in. Almost immediately Handke was called "The Bob Dylan of Genocide Apologists" in a New York Times Op/Ed piece. There was universal outrage in Western media that once again the Nobel Committee had made a disastrous decision - this time awarding the prize to a writer who eulogized Slobodan Milosevic. Handke, das Monster wrote Andreas Rosenfelder in Die Welt. Missing, of course, from all this outraged commentary was any discussion of his work. My own opinion is that yes, the Committee has made a number of bad choices, but Handke is more deserving of the prize than many other recent recipients - as fellow Austrian and prize-winner Elfriede Jelinek openly admitted. Yes, Peter Handke has made indefensible statements. He is fond of hurling insults at detractors and admirers alike - but then again, so was another giant of Austrian literature: Thomas Bernhard. Handke certainly sounds like a very disagreeable character. But if we are forced the honor only agreeable writers there would not be much to admire in German language literature. After all, Rilke was a jerk (number 3 on the list of Ten Greatest German Poets). Handke has made some unfortunate choices, as did that earlier admirer of the Nazis Gottfried Benn (number 8 on the list) and Bertold Brecht (number 9) wrote hymns to Stalin. No doubt Günter Grass would have been eviscerated in the press had he revealed his stint in the Waffen SS before he won the Nobel Prize in 1999.
Handke has written many works (too many?) and I have only read a few of these. But I recall being astonished when I read his first play Kaspar as a young student. Here was truly "the shock of the new" in drama - Handke had surpassed the Theater of the Absurd. In this play Handke takes the Austrian preoccupation with the Limitations of Language (Wittgenstein and the von Hofmannsthal of the Chandos Brief) to its logical conclusion. For the character Kaspar Hauser language is not a liberating force, but rather a form of torture ("Sprachfolter") that imposes a rigid conformity on the mind. Handke has been called a monster for his profanity-laced insults against his detractors and against the press in general. But he launched his career with a virtuoso insulting of the theater audience in Publikumsbeschimpfung ("Ihr seid profilierte Darsteller, ihr Maulaffenfeilhalter.{...} ihr Nimande, ihr Dingsda!") And those insults pale beside his self-critique in Selbstbezichtigung:
"Ich bin nicht, was ich gewesen bin. Ich bin nicht gewesen, wie ich hätte sein sollen. Ich bin nicht geworden, was ich hätte werden sollen. Ich habe nicht gehalten, was ich hätte halten sollen."_
One work that made a huge impression on me and which I've had to re-read was Handke's heart-breaking 1972 short book Wunschloses Unglück (Eng. version "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams") - an examination of his mother's life written shortly after her suicide. Handke describes a talented young woman who was thwarted because of her gender and her poverty from realizing her modest dreams:
"Als Frau in diese Umstände geboren zu werden, ist von vornherein schon tödlich gewesen. Man kann es aber auch beruhigend nennen: jedenfalls keine Zukunftsangst. Die Wahrsagerinnen auf den Kirchtagen lasen nur den Burschen ernsthaft aus den Händen; bei den Frauen war diese Zukunft ohnehin nichts als ein Witz.“
Her attempts to find what might come close to some semblance of happiness fail. Eventually the cold, gray clouds of depression close in her and she ends her life at age 51. One is reminded hat the alternate word in German for suicide (Selbstmord) is Freitod - which almost connotes a breaking free. And the narrator (Handke) is proud that she made the decision to take her own life:
"DAS WAR ES. DAS WAR ES. DAS WAR ES. SEHR GUT. SEHR GUT. Und während des ganzen Fluges war ich außer mir vor Stolz, daß sie Selbstmord begangen hatte."
But with the last sentence the narrator acknowledges that his words failed to capture the essence of his mother and her journey:
"Später werde ich über das alles Genaueres schreiben. "
Peter Handke was awarded the Nobel Prize for LITERATURE - not the Peace Prize or a prize for his political commentary. The tragic outcome of this hysterical condemnation of the Nobel Committee's choice is that people will choose not to read an important - and highly innovative - writer whose works belong in the canon of modern world literature.
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