Across by Peter Handke

First published:Der Chinese des Schmerzes, 1983 (English translation, 1986)

Type of work: Philosophical novel

Time of work: The early 1980’s

Locale: A suburb of Salzburg, Austria

Principal Character:

• Andreas Loser, a teacher of ancient languages and an amateur archaeologist

The Novel

Across is a first-person narrative with little plot action. It consists of three major sections and an epilogue. Andreas Loser is a teacher of ancient languages at a high school in a suburb outside Salzburg, Austria. He lives separated from his wife and two children. He considers himself to be an observer of, and not a participant in, life. One day, Loser deliberately knocks over a passerby while walking in Salzburg. He does not know why he does it, but only that he must act—that it is now or never. He is clearly undergoing some kind of inner crisis, and he believes that he needs time to assess himself and his existence. The day after this incident, he takes a leave of absence from his teaching post. Loser uses the free time to work on a treatise he is writing. His hobby is researching and excavating ancient doorsteps, or entryways (the German, Schwelle, also suggests a threshold or brink). During the rest of the first section of the novel, Loser remains an observer, describing his apartment and the suburb in which he lives. He longs to find those things that might still have meaning for him: landscapes and simple objects. He is very interested in the ancient Roman writer Vergil, especially his bucolic literature. Late at night, he hears a child wailing and reflects upon its distress.

In the second section, Loser becomes a participant in life, ironically through an act of willful destruction. He is on his way over the Monch mountain to attend his monthly game of tarok cards with his friends. He describes the mountain and its landscape in great detail. He catches sight of an old man spray-painting swastikas on the trees and is seized by a tremendous feeling of melancholy and despair. Loser grabs a rock and runs toward the man, hurling the stone with all of his might and mortally wounding him. Undetected, Loser pushes the dying man over the cliff and then scratches out the signs the man had painted. He believes that he has acted decisively for once in his life. Continuing to his friend’s house, he feels no regret or remorse. During the card game, he and his friends—a priest, a young politician, an artist, and a homeowner—discuss the meaning of the word “threshold.” After the game, he and the artist walk through the city.

In the third section, which begins the next day, Loser remains in bed, thinking about his act of the night before, the theme of death, and his terrible isolation. Several days later, he emerges from his apartment and walks around the suburb. Days pass. His behavior becomes seemingly erratic. He takes a bus to the airport near the site of one of the excavations on which he is working. At the airport, he meets a woman with whom he spends the night. The next day, he visits his mother in a retirement home. He then flies to Milan, Italy, and on to Mantua to visit a landscape described by Vergil. He flies from Mantua to Sardinia and, finally, returns to his school in Salzburg to begin teaching again. (Later, he visits his family.) The epilogue consists of a description of a canal.

The Characters

Andreas Loser, the narrator of Peter Handke’s Across, is typical of many of the author’s characters. He is a solitary individual caught in an existential crisis in which the everyday meaning of his job and family has suddenly been lost. Loser desperately seeks to find significance for his existence. His violent act of murder is also seen in earlier Handke texts, notably in Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1970; The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, 1972), in which the protagonist randomly kills a cinema cashier. Other Handke characters have dreams or feelings of violence. This behavior is an aspect of the violent “break” with reality that plagues these figures and is indicative of their inner turmoil and rejection of society.

Loser’s vocation as amateur archaeologist suggests his preoccupation with the past as a source of meaning for his life. This concern is also indicated by his job as a teacher of ancient languages. His interest in the doorsteps of ancient buildings represents the threshold or passageway that he has reached in his own existence. His restless wanderings during the course of the novel also point to his search for a new life.

Critical Context

Handke has been called a representative postmodernist author by a number of critics. Postmodernism is a literary and cultural movement that grew, in part, from the insights gleaned through the structuralist and deconstructionist movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Handke’s earlier writings clearly show the influence of these trends of thought. “Reality,” “truth,” and other such absolute values are relative, a function of perception or one’s perspective. This is the “deconstructionist” side to postmodernism. There is no absolute meaning to anything, only a point of view. Handke’s texts repeatedly illustrate how “reality” is often a product or function of the language with which one describes it. The thrust of his first works was to demonstrate how what is taken to be “truth” is merely the linguistic sediment of words—fictions, as it were—that have become confused with a vision of reality. The construction of the “world” is, in essence, a creative act, a playing with fictions. This is what can be called the “constructionist” dimension of postmodernism. The fictional “truths” by which one lives can be trite and cliched, or they can be challenging and liberating. Handke’s postmodernist art seeks that latter, creative vision of reality.

It is clear why Handke places such value on the aesthetic mode of perception. Art and the imagination free one’s static perspectives on existence and make it possible to envision other possible kinds of life. The creative act is the ultimate liberation and transcendence of being or nature. Loser is on a quest for “aesthetic myths” that will allow him to transcend the suffering he experiences. The original Greek word mythos means “plot” or “story.” Art is the sole domain of mankind—only humans create works of art—and it is through creation that humanity gains its true meaning. In Heidegger’s philosophy, genuine art attempts to capture the essence of what is, and art is equal in stature to philosophy. Handke’s postmodernist quest is not for eternal truths per se, but for myths or fictions that can structure human existence.

Bibliography

Best Sellers. XLVI, October, 1986, p. 248.

Enright, D.J. “Special Subjects,” in The New York Review of Books. XXXIII (August 14, 1986), pp. 37-38.

Booklist. LXXXII, June 15, 1986, p. 1498.

Graver, Lawrence. “Personal Growth Through Murder,” in The New York Times Book Review. XCI (July 27, 1986), p. 13.

Kirkus Reviews. LIV, April 15, 1986, p. 566.

Labanyi, Peter. “Thresholds,” in The Times Literary Supplement. October 5, 1984, p. 1136.

Los Angeles Times. June 25, 1986, V, p. 6.

Publishers Weekly. CCXXIX, April 25, 1986, p. 67.

Schlueter, June. The Plays and Novels of Peter Handke, 1981.

Sharp, Francis Michael. “Der Chinese des Schmerzes,” in World Literature Today. LVIII (Summer, 1984), p. 405.