of an untroubled consciousness :
Der Zusammenhang ist moglich. Jeder einzelne Augenblick meines Lebens geht mit jedem anderen zusammen - ohne Hilfsglieder. Es existiert eine unmittelbare
Verbindung - ich mufi sie nurfrei phantasieren. (LH 117, LSV 78-79)
The most significant event of the last section of the book is the curious "epiphany" in the New York coffee shop ; after this Sorger becomes less burdened by his past and aware of the need to take responsibility for his own personal history, according to Sharp (1981). He can therefore return to Europe "no longer obsessed
by the search to ground the self, and accompanied by the curious message "Touch
home soon" which recurs, for a second time in his journey, this time from a hotel
chambermaid . This may well be an example of the grotesque humour which, Zorach (1985) suggests, is a feature of this final section (for example, in the scenes following Sorger's "healing" of Esch) and undermines the serious impression (of a quest for self-legitimisation expressed in what she calls "a sort offictionalisation of
Heidegger" ) given earlier in the book. Zorach also draws attention to "the shift
from the third person to the second, and the shift from the narrative to the lyric"
which occur in the final two pages of the book. This, like the mention of the
"Evangelium der Falschung", characterising the artist as a trickster or joker figure,
is inteipreted as revealing that the book really tells the story of the narrator ; narrator and protagonist are seen to merge. Therefore, when Sorger "disappears" at the end of the first pait of the tetralogy, to be replaced at the beginning of Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire by a first-person narrator who seems to resemble Peter Handke himself, the change of narrative voice (and of continent) does not mean that all connection with the preceding work is lost - the narrator eventually admits that
"Sorger, der Erdforscher, hatte ich ja in mich einverwandelt... " The preoccupation
"Augenblick der Ewigkeit" (Nunc stans 1 31 _ which Handke daims to have experienced at Mont Sainte-Victoire in Provence, the site of Cezanne's celebrated series of paintings. "Naturwelt und Menschenwerk,..bereiteten mir ein
Beseligungsmoment", he proclaims. The book is built around this incident, and, in
contrast to its predecessor, totally abandons any conventional narrative framework for an exploration of the relationship between the self, nature and the modern world with particular reference to the process of artistic creation. Where in Langsame Heimkehr very little is described by its everyday, given name, here there is a proliferation of names, both of places visited (Provence, Paris, Berlin, Yugoslavia) and of individuals whom Handke considers relevant to his "lesson". There are writers - Stifter, Goethe, Homer, Flaubert, Christian Wagner, Ludwig Hohl, Hermann Lenz, Borges, Nicolas Born - "der Philosoph", Spinoza, quoted repeatedly but never mentioned by name, is the only exception to this rule ; painters - Cézanne, Courbet, Jakob von Ruisdael, Edward Hopper, the Georgian Pirosmani, "der andere Maler" 32; film-makers and actors - Handke's "Meister" John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, Yasujiro Ozu, Joseph Gotten, Henry Fonda, "Inspektor Columbo". Information is given about Handke's own family background, his relationship to his stepfather and to his father (both of them Germans), the Slovenian descent of his mother's side of the family - including his mother's brother, whose letters he would read again and again (and will eventually quote in Die Wiederholungl - as he delves into previous experiences in order to clarify his personal development and his present attitudes. Of the book's nine sections, the chapter entitled Das kalte Feld can be seen (e.g. by Dinter) as the most autobiographical - in it he examines his life in Austria, West Germany and France, and it is worthy of close examination, as present and past concerns are here
3^ Interestingly Gamper(1977, 10) uses this term to describe the unrealisable "Poesie" of
Bernhard's fictional characters.
32 And subject of a recent film which is described at length in Botho StrauB's Trilogie des
1 6 2 combined to relate the expression of Handke's artistic "Lehre" elsewhere in the book with an insight into its origins.
The opening pages contrast Pai'is with the recently-visited landscape in Provence which has provided an "Analogie von Farben und Formen" , recurring "fast
alltaglich" ; the narrator climbs two hills which have wartime associations, again
evoking the sense of guilt which Handke often associates with his German ancestry. Then follows a mention of Cézanne and the frequent comparisons of his work with music, a concept given a personal twist by the author; "als ich namlich die
Gegenwart, um sie zu erhalten, schiitteln wollte 'wie eine Marimba' ". Next, a
short, lyrical passage describes the sensation of aesthetic delight in living in the present, in terms which echo the book's themes of colour and form as expressions of a higher truth:
Am Abend schaute ich dann von einer Strafienbriicke am Stadtrand auf die Peripherie-Autobahn hinunter, die sich in beweglichen Goldfarben zeigte; und es kommt mir auch hier noch vernUnftig vor, was ich damais dachte: dafi jemand wie Goethe mich beneiden miifite, weil ich jetzt, am Ende des 20. Jahrhunderts, lebte.
- the visual image harking back to the mention of the Farbenlehre at the beginning of the book. After this, the chapter's main section is announced, with the statement: "Die Kreise um die Sainte-Victoire wurden immer weiter, ungewollt; es
ergab sich so". Sketching in his family background, Handke here stresses the
Slovenian side of his ancestry and informs the reader that Slovene was his first language - a theme he will later explore in greater detail in Die Wiederholung. Then, he gives his impressions of Austria and West Germany over the course of his life in those countries. Austria is criticised in terms of language - "...in Osterreich,
wo - es war eine Eifahrung - kaum jemand meine Sprache sprach..." : in West
Germany, where, he tells us, he lived for a decade, Handke feels a little more at home, and he praises the Germans for their passion for reading:
Es ist mir immer noch vorstellbar, dort zu leben; denn ich weifi, dafi es nirgends sonst so viele von jenen "Unentwegten" gibt, die auf die tagliche Schrift aus sind; nirgends so viele von dem verstreuten, verborgenen Volk der Leser.
On a puiely matter-of fact level, this could be taken, given the overall tone of the tetralogy, as a typically archaic way of describing the Germans' enthusiasm for books - statistics show that they do indeed buy more books than anyone else in
E u r o p e 3 3 . And Handke, like other Austrian writers, is certainly aware that the
majority of his readership - to say nothing of his publishers, the Suhrkamp Verlag - can be found in the Federal Republic. So it is possible, therefore, to see this passage as Handke's way of complimenting his readers by portraying them as a kind of Stendhalian "happy few" - and those critics who have accused Handke of elitism in his aesthetic programme would doubtless interpret such a definition in a negative sense. Yet nonetheless the readers are invested with exceptional powers
{"so viele von jenen 'Unentwegten' " ), the religious overtones of Handke's
language seemingly making of this "verstreuten, verborgenen Volk der Leser" a kind of elect. Gabriel (1984) deals with this concept at some length, arguing that, thi'ough the tetralogy, Handke attempts to solve the problem of a "Situation, in der der Dichter sich im Gegensatz zur Gesellschaft begreijï, sich von ihr ausgeschlossen
fUhlt" 34- _ and that the notion of a "Volk der Leser" grows out of this effort.
Sorger's loneliness, gradually ameliorated by the "gesetzgebende Augenblicke",
serves as the starting-point of a return journey seen as a "Heimkehr zu sich selbst,
und das heifit auch zu den anderen". Gabriel also observes that the
"Beziehungsfahigkeit" which Sorger gains as a consequence of the three "
Begegnungen" - with Lauffer, the "verstorbener Schulfreund" and Esch - is bound
up with thoughts of such a journey. Furthermore, these relationships are based not on the exchange of ideas and feelings through dialogue, but rather on an emotionally-based sympathy, a "gefUhlte Gemeinschaft". For example, Sorger admires the "kindliche Ojfenheit" of his neighbour's wife; and this ideal of relating to others is taken up in Kindergeschichte. where, on the very first page, the adult's imagined life with a child includes "die Vorstellung von einer wortlosen
33 See Schnell 1986, pp.29-31, 36-40
164
Gemeinschaft... " According to Gabriel this provides the adult with "das Gefiihl der
Wirklichkeit und eroffnet ihm den Blick auf die Natur As is pointed out, this
view owes something to the Austrian tradition of language scepticism which Handke inherits (although it also recalls the 1960s utopianism of the "flower-power" era, in which the cultivation of naive, childlike qualities was seen as a means of attaining happiness). Yet Gabriel notes that, with the tetralogy, the relationship to language of Handke's previous works, which has been more directly linked to that tradition, is abandoned in favour of a new position in which "Dichtung erfahrt ihren Antrieb
durch die Faszination des Objektiven the emphasis on the affinity between
literature and painting in Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire goes hand in hand with a rejection of the use of language in a purely functional, rational sense. This explains both the "project" of that book - "Verwandlung und Bergung der Dinge in Gefahr" , suggesting a recovery through language of the essence of things, such as Cézanne had achieved in painting (and recalling the work of Francis Ponge, which Handke was reading and translating at the time Die Lehre... was written) - and the continued avoidance of passages of conventional dialogue. In the social field, this finds expression in concepts such as the "Volk der Leser ".
In fact, as Gabriel shows, there is considerable sympathy for "verborgenes Volk" in Handke's work. The Slovenes are the most obvious example - not unnaturally, in the light of Handke's ancestry. There is also the pasage in Kindergeschichte in which the Jews are praised - as a true "Volk" with an intact tradition, the "alteste und strengste Gesetz der Welt" and as the only "Volk" to which the narrator had ever wished to belong. Yet he knows that he can never fully integrate himself into these communities. As Gabriel points out, in Austrian literature there are numerous earlier examples of Slav or Jewish characters being invested (by German-language writers) with special qualities of purity and humanity, but the "verborgenes Volk" of Handke's tetralogy is something more mysterious than this; something less easy to define. For Gabriel, it is a product of the author's programme : the epiphanies described in the work do not, it is claimed.
simply grant the author freedom to create personal laws through aesthetic activity, but also to employ his creative powers to convince others of the need to follow his example - thereby founding a community. However, Handke is equally well aware of the problems of "Dichtung als Lehre", and the consciousness of the near impossibility of bringing his ideas to fruition gives rise, according to Gabriel, to the
"Stimmung der Trauer und Melancholie, die in der Tétralogie...herrscht”,
accounting for the "Allgegenwart der Haltung des nachsinnenden Melancholikers"
in the work. The argument is summarized in Gabriel's abstract; "In his critical reconsideration of literary tradition Handke arrives at a new definition of literature in terms of "das Element des Sozialen". He envisages a "Volk der Leser", a community grounded in aesthetic experience".
It is nonetheless true that, as Gabriel observes, the "Hafitiraden" which surface from time to time in Handke's work can be seen as "Ausdruck einer fast tragischen
Situation" - illustrating the gulf between the author's Utopian project and the world
he rejects. The section of Das kalte Feld dealing with the "immer bosere und wie
versteinerte Bundesrepublik" is an example of this. At first it can appear as a
somewhat poetic and imaginative piece of "Kulturkritik", recalling the speech by "Der Hausherr" in Falsche Bewegung (pp.44-45 ; "Ich mochte nur kurz von der
Einsamkeit hier in Deutschland sprechen....Die toten Seelen von Deutschland... " ).
Then, a more personal note is introduced:
Damais verstand ich die Gewalt. Diese in "Zweckformen" funktionierende, bis auf die letzten Dinge beschriftete und zugleich vollig sprach- und stimmlose Welt hatte nicht recht. Vielleicht war es woanders ahnlich, doch hier traf es mich nackt, und ich wollte jemand Beliebigen niederschlagen...
He then compares his hatred of the "functional" world of modern West Germany with the violent feelings he held in childhood against his - German - stepfather. Sudden outbreaks of violence are, of course, nothing new in Handke's work, perhaps unsurprisingly for a writer who once claimed that "Amoklaufe" were
166 for him the only conceivable kind of political activity^^. Yet they are frequently more shocking than Bernhard's tirades, for example, precisely because they contrast so obviously with what tends to be a generally controlled and "cool" narrative style. Here, the critical reader may briefly wonder if there is such a great difference between those described earlier in the passage as "Meuten" and the narrator. The moment passes quickly, though, and the reflections on the German landscape which make up the remainder of this section are of a much more tranquil nature. Once again, a reconciliation is achieved with the aid of geology; an exploration of the city of Berlin provides the narrator with a new awareness of its geographical position and its resonances of personal and national history. Literary figures are mentioned; Holderlin {"Ich las neu den Hyperion, begrijf endlich jeden Satz und konnte die
Worte darin betrachten wie Bilder" ), the brothers Grimm, his contemporaries
Hermann Lenz and Nicolas Born, even a "Langenscheidtstrafie" - together with Dutch painting, with its "Northern" landscapes. The narrator's visit to his father is also marked by forgiveness - even though he also feels frustration at the lack of real communication between them. This leads directly into the vision of "ein anderes
Deutschland" which closes the chapter^^, and could be inteipreted as the final stage
in Handke's analysis of his past relationship with the country - as well as, perhaps, the incorporation of Germany into the book's schema ; Dinter (1986) draws attention to the word "Mittelsinn" - "das heifit SinnfUr die Vermittlung der Dinge
untereinander" , as in Cezanne's work. Yet the final sentence of the chapter
expresses the provisional nature of this vision:
Und der es sah, kam sich schlau vor wie der Inspektor Columbo bei der Losung eines Falls; und wufite doch, dafi es nie ein endgUltiges Aufatmen geben konnte.
In Die Lehre der Sainte-Victoire. confirmation of the above observation is given by the section entitled Der Sprung des Wolfs, in which the narrator's encounter with what at first may seem to be a typically ferocious "chien méchant" - aggressive
35 In Das Gewicht der Welt, p. 159
guard dogs being a seemingly unavoidable characteristic of modern France - takes on an almost hallucinatory quality, becoming an "identitatsbedrohende Etfahrung"
37 for him. The animal becomes a "Feind" and an embodiment of evil, in stark contrast to the calm and tranquility of the nature descriptions elsewhere in the book. It is a passage whose singularity has attracted some critical comment ; even speculations as to whether Handke was using the extremely vivid description of the "Dogge", marked by the imagery of hatred, brutality, mass murder and ghettos, symbolically, in order to settle scores with his "enemies" in the literaiy world by portraying their hostility in animal form. Yet he again draws a moral from this encounter, his confrontation with the animal forcing him to recognise the futility of hatred : "FUr das, was ich vorhabe, darfich nicht hassen".
Rita Felski identifies in "visions" such as this a general tendency in the tetralogy: "The child (i.e., in Kindergeschichte). like the mountain of Sainte- Victoire, is important not in its concrete individuality but in its capacity to generate certain potent feelings and associations of innocence, mystery, other-worldliness
which play an important function in Handke's mythology". As she says, there is a
great difference between solitary contemplation in Mediterranean landscapes and the
"autobiographical treatment of his experiences in society as a single parent" - which
is the theme of the next work of the tetralogy. In this context, Demetz commented ;
"What is still missing in his fictions, and perhaps in his life, is a trusting workaday
love for a woman or a man" - something which seems to be reflected in his work in
his depiction of relations between the sexes. This loneliness, which could be considered a consequence of the idea of the writer's role as a transmitter of knowledge to those lacking his own special gifts or insights, is a constant factor in Handke's work. As Demetz (1986) says, this gap in his life is - or was, in the 1970s - "filled in his fiction by Amina, his adored daughter, who slowly emerges
as a mystical child illuminating the darkness of our world" ; this comes through
168 most clearly in Kindergeschichte. Yet Felski can also find a "rigid hostility to the
outside world " in this work, making, in her view, his attempts to portray harmony
between himself and his child seem somewhat strained. Given the secular, rational and authoritarian tradition of French state education, it is doubtful whether Handke, even if he does take issue with "progressive" ideas, would view it as suitable for his child; rather, he finds worrying echoes of his own education in the "staatlich(e)”
school, associating the state's role with the enforced conformity he resists. In contrast, he describes his daughter's time at the Jewish school in glowing terms. This also connects with his awareness of the Jews as the "Volk" bearing an ancient, unbroken and still meaningful tradition. Felski regards this reaction as "indicative of the nostalgia for an ordered existence which also conditions his reactivation of a