Sunday, February 14, 2010

Peter Handke, a Rapsody and A Variation of an Incestuos Little Night Music

drawing by marguerita


The German word “Einfall,” meaning a sudden notion or fancy,
contains the image of something dropping precipitously into the mind.

Don Juan, in this whimsical tour de force by the Austrian writer Peter Handke, is not a man but an Einfall, and the mind into which he drops, with a crash, is that of a French innkeeper and chef who (unlike the world-renowned Handke) has lost his customers and is living in solitude.
Pretty soon the Einfall develops into a full-fledged idea.
But what is it? The book’s epigraph quotes Da Ponte andMozart’s
Don Giovanni: “Chi son’ io tu non saprai” —

“Who I am, you shall not discover.”

Perhaps, but I will hazard a guess: Handke’s Don Juan personifies the idea of the fulfilled moment, where time and eternity intersect.





1 comment:

SUMMA POLITICO said...

A letter to the book review about their review and some handke links for youL


1] THE LETTER


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/books/review/Agee-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3


When Joel Agee writes "For all its engaging and delicate ruminations, and despite its bold, humorous claim to be “the definitive and true story of Don Juan,” the book left me wanting to hear again Mozart’s treatment of the same theme. That music has everything Handke’s prose lacks: brio, verve, declarative intensity, a vast range of emotion and, last but not least, brilliant, joyful virility."

Agee suffers from adjectivitis, a much more serious ailment than conjunctities because it will not respond to anti-biotics. The comparisons he makes are just as inapt and inept. I happen to delight in the formal dance Handke performs there, it is as good if not better and lighter than what he does in his THREE ESSAYS [on Tiredness, the Juke Box, and The Day that Went Well. And if you read what I write about Handke - even though his backer and once translator - I have no compunctions about criticizing him when I feel he can be criticized within his own terms, and do a better of of it than any German or American reviewer.

I myself have not written about Don Juan so far,
I have a page devoted to Handke's DON JUAN @:

http://www.handkeprose2.scriptmania.com/index.html
s!

2] thought it was the best review Handke has ever gotten in the NY Times, which i realize is not saying much considering that it has treated him to some of the stupidest and most insulting reviews this side of archangelsk. i have a roundup of the handke reception at my
http://www.handke-trivia.blogspot.com
and since i decided about twenty years ago to focus exclusively on a developting target – handke and his work – from every imaginable side, there have been unanticipated findings: i.e just looking at the handke reception both for his plays and his prose you notice how entirely incapable is of dealing with “the new” , which allegedly the culture and the whole business community is always championing. how these reviewers are incapable of even descring their own reaction.
it is a thorougly depressing. and so it never comes to intelligent criticism or consideration of his work, ditto for no end of others of course.

“As I was saying.” [which is how 'Ride Across Lake Constance begins] I liked the review quite a bit
except for that moronic ending, which manifested to me that Agee who is no slouch as a memoirist or translator hadn’t really understood, taken delight, or contemplated what ought really to happen to the reader after that danse. close but not as good as william gass might have been.

LINK OF LYNXES TO MOST HANDKE MATERIAL AND BLOGS ON THE WEB: http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html http://www.handke-nobel.scriptmania.com/ HANDKE MICHAEL ROLOFF http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/ http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society This LYNX wilhttp://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.htlm