Peter Handke

The beginning of Peter Handke’s new book holds a secret: “The day that ended with the great fall began with a morning thunderstorm.” There is something leitmotivically threatening yet attractive about the way in which the “great fall” of the novel’s title is introduced. (…) We follow a day in the life of an actor. At the end he has arranged to meet the woman with whom he spent the previous night. He sees her from afar and stops. It is time to approach her. But then the book ends with the sentence: “Instead, the great fall.” The “great fall”, this magical phrase, remains a mytheme – an essential kernel of a myth, a phrase from the idiosyncratic world of the writer Peter Handke. There are features of a fairytale and great song and allusions to the life of a good-for-nothing. The woman’s house where the actor spent the night is in a lonely location in the midst of nature. The tale is told of how he sets off from this house on foot, passing through forests and thickets as he goes into the outskirts of the metropolis and finally getting through to the centre. And it is right at the centre, on the square with the large cathedral, that the text ends. So while there is a direction of movement and a plot, some ambiguities are conveyed at the same time. Everything seems a bit distorted and transfigured.

Helmut Böttiger: „Märchenerzähler der Gegenwart“
© Stuttgarter Zeitung, 23 March 2011