An Interview with Peter Handke

Handke comments on the relationship of his early essays to his fiction, maintaining that there is no theory of literature but only practice. For him, fiction brings daily occurrences into a new order, with the point of intersection of these occurrences suggesting a story. Handke believes there will always be a need for narrative prose which goes beyond mere reportage, and, with respect to his journal, Das Gewicht der Welt, he sees no contradiction between «journal» and «fiction.» His distinction between everyday and poetic language is central to Handke's approach to fiction. Explaining that there is no language for nature, he speaks at length of his latest novel, Langsame Heimkehr, which he calls an epic poem. Handke also comments on writers who have influenced his thinking and work, including Barthes and Holderlin; considers the relationship of the creative impulse to film-making, drama, and fiction; and speculates as to why college students in America are attracted to his work. This article is available in Studies in 20th Century Literature: http://newprairiepress.org/sttcl/vol4/iss1/6 AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER HANDKE JUNE SCHLUETER Lafayette College Peter Handke, who is perhaps best known in the United States for his play Kaspar, has written nine plays and nine novels, as well as poetry, short stories, radio plays, essays, screenplays, and reviews. Handke is a deeply thoughtful, softspoken, unceremonious man of 37, who seems very unlike the image of the arrogant, angry young man suggested by his intemperate remarks at the 1967 Group 47 meeting in Princeton. Perhaps best described as a "post-contemporary classicist," Handke uses a spare, selfconscious style which reflects a range of literary and philosophical kinships, including Kafka, Wittgenstein, Lukacs, Jakobson, Sartre, Robbe-Grillet, Barthes, and Holder lin. His more recent narratives suggest a spirit of self more like the Goethean "I" of mankind than a narcissistic, modern "me." Handke is continually in search of new orders for experience, new interpretations of meaning, new ways of revitalizing language. The interview which follows was held in Berlin on July 23, 1979, in the apartment where Handke was staying for a few weeks between moving from Clamart, a suburb of Paris, to Salzburg, in his native Austria. It is one of three to appear thus far in English, the first being a translation of Artur Joseph's interview concerning Handke's plays, published in The Drama Review, 15, 1 (Fall 1970), and the second being an account of H.R. Lottman's meeting with Handke, which appeared in Publishers Weekly, 212, 11 (September 12, 1977). The present interview is the first by an American scholar and the first in English to include questions on Handke's fiction. Although Handke's English is good, he preferred that the interview be in German, and what appears here is a slightly edited translation. Though perhaps insufficient in capturing the precise language of Handke's replies, the text which follows casts considerable light on the intent and achievement of one of the most significant voices in contemporary literature. 63 1 Schlueter: An Interview with Peter Handke Published by New Prairie Press 64 STCL, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Fall 1980) Berlin, July 23, 1979 Translated with Dietrich Biischer JS: The subtitle of your recent novel, Das Gewicht der Welt, which is tentatively scheduled to appear in English as Fantasies and Prejudices, suggests that you wrote this book every day over a period of one year and five months, from November 1975 to March 1977. Was this so? PH: Yes. There are possibly two or three days which I combined, but for the most part all these dates are accurate. It is the nature of a journal that it be written daily and that nothing be left out for any day in a year. JS: Were the daily events of your life during those months the specific stimuli for your journal entries? PH: Yes, only these. JS: Yet in the preface to this book, you say that it is a previously unknown literary possibility for you. Do you think you are misrepresenting the book by calling it a journal, making it appear to be fact when it is fiction? PH: I see no contradiction between "journal" and "fiction." "Journal" is only an objective description of notes which are made day by day. "Journal" is also a term I used because I did not find any better term. It is, I believe, more a novel. For me it is a sort of novel or epic of everyday occurrences. But this can only be said afterwards, after one sees the result. JS: In "Die Literatur ist romantisch" ("Literature is Romantic") (1966), you write about a new definition of literature, a literature without fiction, without wordplay, without rhythm, without style. And you say that the word "realistic" would only be applicable for such a literature. Do you consider Das Gewicht der Welt (The Weight of the World) "realistic"?