Peter Handke: Life and Works

Peter Handke: Life and Works

Main points: (for full list of works and more detail click here)

• Born 6 December 1942, in Griffen, Austria
• He is an avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright
• First publication whilst he was still at University: a novel, Die Hornissen (The Hornets)
• First gained notable attention when he presented his play ‘Offending the Audience’ to a meeting of the avant-garde as part of Gruppe 47 in New Jersey
• He has written many scripts for films
• He has lived in Germany, France, US, Austria
• He was involved in a major (and still ongoing) controversy with Western nations regarding his stand on Serbia in the Balkan war. He saw Serbia as among the victims and attacked western media for their representation of the war.

Peter Handke's theories on language were largely inspired by Wittgenstein.

jhb Overview of the development of ideas of systematisation and language in his plays:

At the end of the first production of Offending the Audience (Publikumsbeschimpfung) in 1966 at the Theater am Turm, Frankfurt, the audience members catcalled, booed and hissed as Handke joined his four Sprecher (speakers) on stage. Offending the Audience exposes the conventions of both the theatre and the act of going to the theatre. It accuses the audience of adhering to social convention and suggests that they thereby function as part of a system which dictates their behaviour. This notion of social systematisation is a central theme to all Handke’s theatrical output. By following the chronology of his plays written, published and performed in the period between 1965 and 1971 one can observe a simultaneous development in the intensification of his theories on systematisation. In his ‘Sprechstücke’ (speech plays), which he began work on in 1965, he explores social systematisation in specific relation to language. Self-Accusation (Selbstbezichtigung), first performed in 1967, in an exploration of how an individual is integrated into the social system through language acquisition. This connection between language acquisition and social integration is then further explored in Kaspar, first performed in 1968. By 1969, when the dumb play My Foot, My Tutor (Das Mündel will Vormund sein) was first performed, Handke was exploring the notion that even in a world without language there is still a system of gesture and body language which defines our social behaviour. Handke had already begun to combine linguistic systematisation with physical expressions of behavioural systematisation in Kaspar but this combination received its fullest and perhaps bleakest exploration is The Ride over Lake Constance (Der Ritt über den Bodensee) which was first performed in 1971. This play is Handke’s most comprehensive exploration of the notion that ‘The whole world is systematic’.[1] The world of the play is reduced to the recognisable conventions of human social exchange and reveals that both our social behaviour and the underlying human consciousness and perception that direct this behaviour, are defined by and form part of a world system.

At a first glance, Handke’s “message” certainly seems to be a disheartening one: Kaspar is destroyed by his resistance to the system; the ‘Ich’ in Self-Accusation is drawn into a tirade of self-accusation; and the characters in Ride over Lake Constance are condemned to going round and round in circles mumbling clichés whilst becoming more and more lost and disillusioned. Pütz[2] speaks of seeing Offending the Audience as a ‘Publikumsbefreiung’ (Freeing of the Audience). This suggests that, in making us aware of this systematisation, Handke is somehow setting us free. J. M Valentin touches on a similar idea when he argues that Handke is presenting us with a ‘Verteidigung des Individuums’ (defence of the individual).[3] By making us aware of the systematisation at play around us, which threatens our individuality, he is simultaneously offering us ‘a new way of seeing, speaking, thinking, existing’.[4] Where, however, does this liberation leave us? Once aware of the fetters of the social system we are reduced to the disillusioned and lonely state of the characters in The Ride over Lake Constance. Handke pulls the system out from under our feet but then leaves us with no alternative to put in its place. He does, however, provide us with momentary glimmers of hope. Both Kaspar and The Ride over Lake Constance have moments of comedy. In the latter the exaggerated focus on the simplest of our day to day exchanges is sure to raise a dark chuckle and in Kaspar comedy is derived from his farcical behaviour in his state of ‘Unordnung’ (disorder). At the end of Kaspar there is the suggestion that there may be forms of writing that could escape the systematisation. Comedy, perhaps? Or poetry? Although these are only moments and suggestions, they still provide some flickers of hope that we might one day reach a world which is not characterised by such systematic indoctrination.

---

[1] Pütz, Peter. Peter Handke. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1982.

[2] Pütz, Peter. Peter Handke. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1982.

[3] Valentin, ‘Reine Theatralität und dramatische Sprache’ in Fellinger, 54.

[4] Handke. Bewohner, 19.

F