Peter Handke

Writer

• Born: December 6, 1942
• Place of Birth: Griffen, Austria

Biography

Peter Handke became one of the most prominent and prolific writers in the German language, with works published in many genres. Born in a small village in Austria on December 6, 1942, he spent his early adolescent years at a private Catholic school and knew from about thirteen that he wanted to be a writer. He attended the University of Graz, but he immediately left when his first novel was accepted for publication. Handke gained notoriety when he vehemently criticized the writing of his contemporaries in a well-publicized outburst at the 1966 meeting of the Gruppe 47 Writers' Association. He was married in 1966 and divorced in 1972. Handke left Austria soon after publishing his first novel and moved to Paris, France, with his daughter; he would subsequently spend much of his time in Paris.

An innovative and highly controversial author, Handke was well-received abroad, especially in France and the United States, but has often been attacked by German literary critics for his writing and political views. While he 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.

Handke's early writings focus on the relationship between language and the perception of reality. He examines how "reality" is often a construction of linguistic forms or sign systems that tend to alienate the individual from experience. For example, his early plays, Offending the Audience (1966) and Kaspar (1967), are highly experimental theatrical treatments of this structuralist theme of language and perception. His initial experimental novels were not easily accessible but also addressed this issue. The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1970) was his first commercial success; it deals with the linguistically distorted perceptions of a schizophrenic soccer goalie who commits a random murder. It was adapted into a film in 1972 by German director Wim Wenders, who would go on to other notable collaborations with Handke.

Handke's subsequent works, especially the novels, often involve decidedly autobiographical elements but still focus on existential themes of perception, reality, and the estrangement of the individual. Short Letter, Long Farewell (1972) describes the narrator's anxiety-ridden journey across the United States as he compares his perceptions with the images of American society that he knows from books and films. A Sorrow Beyond Dreams (1972) deals with his mother's death by suicide in late 1971. In it, he examines how traditional linguistic stereotypes of women shape and distort his mother's perceptions of herself and others. In A Moment of True Feeling (1975), the alienated Gregor Keuschnigg wanders the streets of Paris for several days as he seeks to find some experience that will reconnect him to reality. Handke also wrote the screenplay for Wenders' film Falsche Bewegung (The Wrong Move, 1975). He then built upon his personal experiences as a single parent with the novel The Left-Handed Woman (1976), in which the female protagonist, estranged from her husband and living alone with her son, attempts to achieve some sense of identity apart from her roles as wife and mother. In 1978, he directed a film adaptation of the work.

The theme of language, poetic or literary images, as a mode of overcoming or transcending alienation is implicit in Handke's earlier writings but becomes an explicit topic in his later texts. In his journal, The Weight of the World (1977), he tries to use language and imagery to enhance experience rather than distort it. During the years 1979 to 1981, Handke wrote an unconnected trilogy of texts translated under the general title Slow Homecoming; it includes the novels The Long Way Around (1979), The Lesson of Mont Sainte-Victoire (1980), and Child Story (1981). These works represent the author's personal and literary odyssey and a return to his Austrian homeland and the literary heritage of German and Austrian authors, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Adalbert Stifter, and Rainer Maria Rilke. The works reflect Handke's ongoing search for existential roots and personal identity concerning the creation of a post-Romantic poetic vision. Die Geschichte des Bleistifts (A Pencil's Story, 1982) is a journal Handke kept during the composition of Slow Homecoming and contains his reflection upon the poetic process.

The novel Across (1983) tells the story of Andreas Loser, a teacher of classical languages who is also an amateur archaeologist. Across also presents the author's search for origins in literary history (the Latin nature poetry of Virgil) and in the self. As is the case with all Handke protagonists, Loser abandons his everyday life to embark upon a personal journey of rebirth and regeneration, an attempt to achieve a new vision of his life. In doing so, he murders an older man whom he finds painting swastikas on the side of a mountain. This scene suggests Handke's rejection of the Nazi past in his personal and national heritage. (Handke's father was a German soldier during World War II.) Repetition (1986) also returns to Handke's roots. It is a first-person narrative of a young Austrian man as he remembers incidents from his childhood and recounts a journey to the former Yugoslavia in the footsteps of his older brother. The Afternoon of a Writer (1987) is another strongly autobiographical narrative text that depicts the life of a writer who believes that he has lost the ability to write. 1987 also saw the release of Wenders's highly acclaimed film Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire), cowritten by Handke. Handke's quest for identity and existential rootedness in the act of poetic transformation informed all of his writings and earned him many readers.

In the 1990s, Handke reestablished himself as one of the enfants terribles of German literature by vociferously taking the side of the Serbs in the Bosnian and Kosovo conflicts, thus finding himself under attack from fellow writers, journalists, and politicians alike. Most of Handke's literary output of the late 1990s is a reflection of and a commentary on the events in the former Yugoslavia. Having begun his career as a dramatist with an examination of language's inability to communicate, Handke had moved to an examination of how language forces humans to construct reality. In the plays he wrote in the late 1990s responding to the Balkan conflict, Zurüstungen zur Unsterblichkeit (Preparations for Immortality, 1997) and Die Fahrt im Einbaum (The Journey in the Dugout Canoe, 1999), he arrives again at a position first articulated in Kaspar: Language is a tool of manipulation and indoctrination. The Einsager, the linguistic, social engineers of his most famous play, turn into the chorus of the three journalists in Die Fahrt im Einbaum.

As part of his condemnation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) attacks on Serbia, Handke returned the Georg Büchner Prize, including a substantial stipend, that the German government had awarded him in 1973 and formally renounced his membership in the Roman Catholic Church, which he accused of supporting what he called the genocide of the Serbian people. At the same time, he proudly accepted his elevation to the rank of Knight of Serbia. Handke outspokenly supported and even delivered a eulogy for ousted Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević, who was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, leading German politicians to block the writer's reception of the Heinrich Heine Prize in 2006. Similar controversies erupted when Handke was awarded the International Ibsen Award in 2014.

Despite the controversies, Handke continued publishing in the twenty-first century. His works include Die morawische Nacht (The Moravian Night, 2008), Bis dass der Tag euch scheidet oder Eine Frage des Lichts: ein Monolog (Till Day You Do Part or A Question of Light, 2009), Der Große Fall (The Great Fall, 2011), Die Obstdiebin oder Einfache Fahrt ins Landesinnere (The Fruit Thief or One-Way Journey into the Interior, 2017), Das zweite Schwert (The Second Sword, 2020), Mein Tag im anderen Land (My Day in the Other Land, 2021), and Die Ballade des letzten Gastes (The Ballad of the Last Guest, 2023). 

The turmoil over Handke's controversial political views earned new attention when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019. Although many critics, fellow writers, and cultural commentators criticized Handke as a genocide denier and war crimes apologist, the Nobel Committee defended its selection, noting the complexity of Handke's views and, above all, the quality of his works. In the 2020s, Handke continued to be honored. He was awarded the Order of Karađorđe's Star in 2020, the Order of the Republika Srpska in 2021, and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Gold with Sash for Services to the Republic of Austria in 2024. 

Bibliography

Britton, Bianca. "Peter Handke's Nobel Literature Prize Win Sparks Outrage." CNN, 11 Oct. 2019, www.cnn.com/2019/10/11/europe/peter-handke-nobel-prize-criticism-intl-scli/index.html. Accessed 9 July 2024.

Coury, David N. and Frank Pilipp. The Works of Peter Handke: International Perspectives. Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2005.

DeMeritt, Linda. New Subjectivity and Prose Forms of Alienation: Peter Handke and Botho Strauss. New York: Peter Lang, 1987.

Demetz, Peter. "Peter Handke: A Fragile Witness." In After the Fires: Recent Writing in the Germanies, Austria, and Switzerland. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.

Firda, Richard Arthur. Peter Handke. New York: Twayne, 1993.

Franklin, Ruth. “The Peter Handke Controversy, Considered.” The New Yorker, 14 Mar. 2022, www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/03/21/literatures-most-controversial-nobel-laureate. Accessed 11 July 2024.

Gilman, Richard. "Peter Handke." In The Making of Modern Drama: A Study of Büchner, Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, Pirandello, Brecht, Beckett, Handke. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000.

Hern, Nicholas. Peter Handke. New York: Ungar, 1972.

Klinkowitz, Jerome, and James Knowlton. Peter Handke and the Postmodern Transformation: The Goalie's Journey Home. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1983.

Konzett, Matthias. The Rhetoric of National Dissent in Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke, and Elfriede Jelinek. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2000.

Linstead, Michael. "Peter Handke." In The Modern German Novel, edited by Keith Bullivant. New York: Berg, 1987.

Perram, Garvin H. C. Peter Handke: The Dynamics of the Poetics and the Early Narrative Prose. New York: Peter Lang, 1992.

"Peter Handke: Biobibliographical Notes." The Nobel Prize, 2019, www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2019/bio-bibliography. Accessed 9 July 2024.

Ran-Moseley, Faye. The Tragicomic Passion: A History and Analysis of Tragicomedy and Tragicomic Characterization in Drama, Film, and Literature. New York: Peter Lang, 1994.

Rorrison, Hugh. "The 'Grazer Gruppe,' Peter Handke, and Wolfgang Bauer." In Modern Austrian Writing: Literature and Society After 1945, edited by Alan Best and Hans Wolfschütz. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble Books, 1980.

Schlueter, June. The Plays and Novels of Peter Handke. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1981.

Wallace, David Schurman, and Peter Handke. “What Happened to Peter Handke?” The Nation, 26 July 2023, www.thenation.com/article/culture/peter-handke-fruit-thief. Accessed 11 July 2024.

“Winner of the 2014 International Ibsen Award: Peter Handke.” PR Newswire, 20 Mar. 2014, www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/winner-of-the-2014-international-ibsen-award-peter-handke-251181871.html. Accessed 9 July 2024.