Neue Kaerntner Tageszeitung vom 2.8.2000 Seite: 26 Ausgabe: Kaernten GRIFFEN.Die Kulturinitiative Stift Griffen unter der Leitung von... GRIFFEN.Die Kulturinitiative Stift Griffen unter der Leitung von Bernd Liepold-Mosser setzt sich seit ihrem Bestehen dafuer ein, eine lebendige Kulturszene im alten Stifsgebaeude in Griffen, dem Geburtsort des Schriftstellers Peter Handke, zu etablieren. Wie schon in den vergangenen Jahren ist auch in diesem Sommer eine Austellung fuer interessierte Besucher zugaenglich, die ueber Leben und Werk des Dichters Aufschluss gibt. (Schluessel beim Gasthof Stifterwirt anfordern!) Liepold-Mosser, der sich mit grossem persoenlichem Engagement fuer die Handkeforschung einsetzt, konnte bekanntlich mehrmals Schauspieler des Wiener Burgtheaters fuer Auffuehrungen von Stuecken Handkes im Stift gewinnen. Urauffuehrung Um dem Publikum heuer etwas ganz Aussergewoehnliches zu bieten, wird morgen auf Initiative des Peter-Handke-Archivs ein Fragment des Dichters uraufgefuehrt. Der bisher noch nie regulaer erschienene Text mit dem Titel Schulfrei oder: Der Staat und der Tod stammt aus dem Jahre 1975 und ist ein Versuch, ein Theaterstueck ohne gesprochene Worte zu schaffen. Handke hat sich in ein erstickendes Universum hineingesteigert und ist dabei so tief hineingerutscht, dass er selber nicht mehr herausgefunden hat und so seinen Versuch abbricht. Typisch siebziger Jahre Erst 15 Jahre spaeter kommt es mit Der Stunde da wir nichts voneinander wussten zur UEberarbeitung und Vervollstaendigung des Fragments. Das Fundstueck ist ein typischer Text der siebziger Jahre: Es gibt kein Thema, die Atmosphaere ist gedrueckt und die Vermutung liegt nahe, dass Handke diesen Versuch auch deshalb abgebrochen hat, weil ihm das Befreiende fehlt, das ihm spaeter in der ,Stunde glueckte. Das ambitionierte Team (Michael Zelenka, Regie; Gerhard Fresacher, Buehnenbild; Richard Klammer, Musik) sieht den Text als grosse Herausforderung. Es spielen Claudia Buser, Dagmar Leesch, Christian Lessiak und Karsten Ruehl. Die Premiere findet am 4. August um 20.30 Uhr im Kreuzgang des Stiftes Griffen statt. Weitere Auffuehrungen: 5., 6., 19. und 20. August um jeweils 20.30. Uhr. Kartenreservierung unter der Telefon-Nummer 0463/513546 (Erwachsenenbildung) moeglich! CHRISTIANE WEBERNIG Datenbank KTZ Dokumentennummer: KTZ200008020030220050
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Neue Kaerntner Tageszeitung vom 2.8.2000 Seite: 26 Ausgabe: Kaernten Ein Fundstueck aus Handkes Fruehzeit In den siebziger Jahren entstand Peter Handkes dramatisches Fragment Schulfrei oder: Der Staat und der Tod. Am 4. August wird es im Stift Griffen uraufgefuehrt. Eine literarische Sensation. Der Kaerntner Schriftsteller Peter Handke gilt als eine der umstrittensten Persoenlichkeiten der Gegenwart. Datenbank KTZ Dokumentennummer: KTZ200008020030170049
Neue Kaerntner Tageszeitung vom 27.7.2000 Ausgabe: Unterkaernten Kultur im Kreuzgang des Stiftes Griffen GRIFFEN. Unter das Motto Kultur im Kreuzgang hat die Kulturinitiative Stift Griffen den Juli gestellt. Ein Teil des Kulturprogramms ist der Urauffuehrung des dramatischen Fragments Schulfrei oder: Der Staat und der Tod von Peter Handke gewidmet. Das wiederentdeckte Stueck aus dem Jahr 1975 wurde noch nie inszeniert und soll nun am 5. August im Kreuzgang des Stiftes Griffen Premiere haben. Datenbank KTZ Dokumentennummer: KTZ200007270043280109
Ausgabe: Kaernten
Wege in Handkes Wortland im Stift Griffen
GRIFFEN. In das Wortland der alten illyrischen Provinzen, Kaernten, Slowenien, Friaul und Istrien, entf uehrt der gleichnamige bei Wieser erschienene Band mittels einer aus Handke- Texten gewobenen abenteuerlichen Route. Im puristisch schlichten Refektorium des Stifts Griffen sind ab 27. August Requisiten zu ke-Inszenierungen von Handke-St uecken ebenso zu sehen wie Lisl Pongers Fotografien zur Publikation Ein Wortland, das zwischen liebevollen Blicken auf vergessene Alltagskultur sowie kulturelle Synchronie und Diachronie in einem labyrinthischen Beziehungsgeflecht in eine reizvoll-suggestive Zwischenwelt eintaucht. Skizzen, Kost ueme und Szenenbilder zu UEber die D oerfer des großen Sohns Griffens von Marlies Liekfeld-Rapetti ergaenzen die Pfade in das geheimnisvolle Wortland.
Eine gute Gelegenheit, sich ueber das Burgund der Levante jenseits von Panzerkettenstakkati und Kosovo-Get oese den literarischen Leistungen Handkes und den stimmungsvollen Bildern Lisl Pongers anzunaehern. FF Er oeffnung am 27. 8, 19 Uhr, im Stift Griffen.
Datenbank KTZ
AN EARLIER PRELIMINARY CONDENSATION:
THE CASE OF H.P. - Ultra Condensed
1942 in a hamlet in Carinthia, Austria to an exquisitely beautiful young woman of the Slovenian minority in that province; mother's family is a farmer-carpenter clan. Father a German Army company paymaster, who, being married, was unable to marry Maria, whose love of her life he was; who instead married a corporal in the same outfit, who married her on a bet. Both men, the real father and stepfather, are sent to the Eastern front at the inception of the Russian campaign in the Summer of 1942; both survive the war.
Though Handke repeatedly intimates a "birth trauma" as the first cause of his plethora
of symptoms, there were no complications at birth according to the midwife's report: which meant, at that time in Carinthia: headfirst, no umbilical cord around the neck or any other unusual complications. The fantasy of the birth trauma involves "loud noises" and the color "black," and is based on something young H.P. was allegedly told by his family; and around which, in the usual fashion, an explanatory myth was fashioned. e.g. curiosity as to causes. There may be a conflation with tales about the half siblings.
The mother's father, the "Ote" as grandfathers were called in that region, would
assume the father figure in H.P.'s internal and external world; Ote was notorious for fits of Zeuslike fury; during the 20s and 30s depressions he repeatedly kept saving all over
again; during the 1921 plebiscite he voted for the "Slavic option".
After two years of the kind of bliss that a baby experiences as long, I suppose, it remains unconscious of the so survivable horrors of Melanie Klein's Boschian world, the
mother joined the stepfather in Berlin where this casualty from the Russian front was
working on the tramways, and already living with another woman. Berlin was certainly a far more dangerous place to be in 1944 than the Carinthian hamlet of Griffen/Altenmarkt.
Upon his mother's rejoining her sexually vigorous husband young P.H. appears - from
all the evidence - to have been exposed for a decade to violent drunken primal scenes. Many of his sequelae fit. Also there were physical beatings, customary for the period. It might be noted that sexual intercourse "a tergo," as Freud so delicately called it, was customary in this patriarchal rural culture; with the consequence of a high incidence of cervical cancer.
In 1946, mother, stepfather, four year old H.P. and one of the other siblings, a half-brother, returned to Carinthia under circumstances which, in the child's later recollection of them, assumed a romantically dangerous air. However, the stepfather, so it appears, was despised by the clan in Carinthia, and also by the mother; hating him became child's play for the jealous and unrestrained love child; his later hatred of the stepfather is unique for its lack of ambivalence; the hatred of the stepfather also manifests itself in fairly unambivalent hatred of all things German; later in life, H.P. will admit that a bit of self-hatred probably plays into those sentiments!
By age 12 the local priest picks young H.P. to go to the local seminary for priests, a
substantial fortress-like building, a monastery of ancient vintage. After an altercation with a superior, Handke leaves, staying for only four of the usual eight years, and transfers to a regular preparatory public Gymnasium in Klagenfurt. Upon graduation he attends several years of lawschool which he does not complete -- one of his roads not taken is that of a cultural attache, a standard sinecure for talented writers in the Austrian diplomatic service -- because he enjoys early near instant success as a writer.
Later he will state that it was the reading of ancient Roman legal texts, the differentiations they detail, introduced "clarity" into his head. From what Handke has told us from early on in life he was highly assertive, especially when it came to
secreting himself under the stairs or wherever, so as to read. At age 12 he reported a
detailed dream to his mother in which he appears as her dead Slovenian brother Gregor,
whose wartime letters were a family heirloom. Gregor becomes the name of numerous of his
most important characters; the search for the dead Gregor is the major theme of Handke's
first novel The Hornets.
Later in life H.P. will complain that he suffered immense homesickness when sent to
the Seminary, and he traces his aversion to the physical presence of other bodies,
especially men, to the experience of the proximity of the other rural candidates for the
priesthood; the proffered explanations are on that order: the first time an aversion is
manifested the cause of it is the place. The sequelae and then some as H.P. manifest them
correspond closely to those cited by Wayne Myers in his summary work CLINICAL CONSEQUENCES OF CHRONIC PRIMAL SCENE EXPOSURE [P.A. Quarterly, Jan. 79].
In this instance these are:
Insomnia -- lifelong;
Exhibitionism, phallic, with the entire body becoming phallically cathected;
continuous in his writing, whose subject, early on, in somewhat displaced and stasified
fashion were threatening and bloody primal type scenes. These works can be regarded as successful attempts at mastery of the obsessive trauma. E.g. the need for mastery. These works, not so incidentally, are on the highest level of Western literature.
The exhibitionism becomes more direct subsequent to several severe crises in the
author's life in the early 70s; not only is some of the work acknowledged to be a "naked
ego" exhibitionism, but there is considerable acting out: aggressive, pleading
manifestations. Aside from ambition, exhibitionism, even for an artist, plays an
inordinate part as motivation -- and its obverse, the wish to be acknowledged, admired.
Once he has worked himself out of this period he is "pleased to show his naked body to the world."
Depression. He calls himself, as an artist, "the melancholy player." Also: regarding
depressions, he has stated repeatedly, that as compared to other depressives who act these
states out against others, he only takes them out on himself.
Whether H.P.'s own violent temper is merely modeled on that of his mother's father would seem doubtful.
Defensive splitting, dissociation; the entire episode described below was experienced as a split; dissociation is of course a major requirement for his kind of artistic production.
Voyeurism, trained then to the fantasied ability to "see through people."
However, his hyper-sensitivity to visual stimulation, and his host of nauseas cannot
be explained solely on the basis of his chronic exposure to violent primal scenes: Handke
suffers from bouts of occasional color blindness, and so started wearing protective
glasses from early on; he himself calls this phenomenon "nausea of the eye balls" -- as a
matter of fact, nauseas of all kinds play a highly significant role, especially until the
late 70s. e.g. hyper-sensitivity that manifests itself in "seeing black" and color field
distortions. Handke had himself tested, no genetically determined color blindness on
either side of his family; as can also be seen on many photos Handke "averts his eyes"
and has developed an entire ideology that only people who lie look each other in the eye!
"Nausea" at language, surprising especially in light of Handke's verbal abilities, did not
cease until the mid-80s at which point he had learned Slovenian, started translating from
it into German, and thus felt that he had "regained, retrieved" his mother. [who had
disappeared as it were with the suicide that he describes in Wunschloses Ungluck.]
He also describes himself as suffering from occasional bouts of "autism", e.g. he will
"avert" himself from conversations in company; or will find himself unable to speak; that
indeed is the case, I have witnessed such events. Dissociative phenomena that provide, so one could put it, considerable epinosic advantage to his writing activity. Handke claims, and this no doubt is true, that only when he holds a pencil in his hand, that is when he is writing, does he feel as one and strong; inveterate note taker at nearly all times of the day. Has expressed frequent pride that his formulations at the very least are very "geil" [a German word that implies not only sexual heat but lewdness], whereas his own language comes out as chaste as the driven snow, and beginning with his turn toward the mythic in The Left Handed Woman increasingly begins to modulate and calm his readers.
Hyper-sensitivity to loud noises.
Beating and murderous fantasies appear galore in the early work... which however is invariably characterized by an eventual calming of the anxiety, the cessation of fear, no matter how deep the degree to which it involves the reader.
Defensive splitting of self-representation... to the point of profound identity confusions, which have pretty well ceased with his "taking the Slavic option."
"Tirednesses" of all kinds are symptoms recalled from his adolescence: "A head like an elephant's";"dry eyed" [inability to produce tears? alexythimia appears to have been the case until the critical Paris period]; as though enclosed by an "iron maiden" [the breathing difficulties that Gamper notes Handke as having during his interview whenever something profoundly important to him is touched on]; painfully tired; "a steel band around the temples"; additionally, "a loss of blood from the heart"; decades later a feeling of shame overcomes him at the recollection of these states of fatigue; "loneliness;" tiredness to the point of catatonia; "rigidified to the point of being a column of tiredness;"; "tiredness as a split" when with girlfriends... etc. [These descriptions are from H.P.'s "Essay on Tiredness"].
After early, grand success on an international scale, H.P. entered a period of severe crisis in the early 70s. The crisis was brought on, first of all, by the suicide of his
mother; which he mourned-wrote himself out of with what became his most accessible book; a
German analyst, Tilman Moser, attested that H.P. had failed to objectively dissociate himself from his mother in the writing of the book; in an interview, many years later, H.P. confessed -- since he didn't know all that much first hand about his mother's early life -- that he had really been writing about himself, and in his numerous self-representations, when that representation calls for woundedness, he represents himself as a wounded woman.
The suicide of the mother was followed that same year by his extremely attractive actress wife leaving H.P., for cause as one might say. H.P.s reaction to the event was to down a handful of sleeping pills, which he then spat out, whereupon he called Interpol. [e.g. the initial impulse of turning against the self, the super ego as a however archaic policeman]. The wife is represented as "having done the worst possible to him;" H.P. is left with their child, a 3 year old daughter, and except during the summers it is he who raises her; this child, it can be said, then expresses the same kind of jealousy of her father's lovers as he must have of his mother's husband. Later on H.P. will write a book about raising the child, and confesses that at one point, in a fit of frustration and
fury, he nearly killed her with a slap to the head; she is spanked; the father notes his own pedantry, and her humor in being able to defuse it. At about the time of what seem to have been face to face therapy sessions in Paris he begins to keep a note book detailing impressions as the occur to him spontaneously; e.g. something approximating "free" associating. During that period there occurs an episode of tachychardia for which H.P. is briefly hospitalized, a heart condition that is prominent among the autistic and points to an interuterine disturbance of the modulating centers of the brain. Valium is prescribed to contain what he terms "the vigor of my anxiety." Gradually, with a series of books, the author writes himself out of the confinements, into what he calls "mythic openness"; he becomes a confident projector of his love, and, though once having turned against his past and anything having to do with nature, becomes a writer in synchronicity with it. The reaction against his earlier attitude, when every sign of a piece of hay nauseated him, into its opposite, again points to the abruptness and strength of the reaction formation, typical as these can be for the autistic. Though his lusting for domination and admiration remain in some respects unfulfilled, and though his sometimes grandiose and gauche and asocial behavior result in severe psychic injuries to the hyper-sensitive H.P. he continues to renew himself and his work; what he call's "nothing" "emptiness" the source out of which he writes, appears to be our old familiar, the blank dream screen.
Seeking some explanation for the the odd constellation of the pluses and minuses of Handke's symptomatology, it is evident, now that we know a fair amount about the highly variegated phenomenon of autism, that we ought to look in that direction for the etiology. Inborn hyper-sensitivity as we now know - without going more deeply into the differentials of non-synchronous brain development - signifies at the very least a lack of modulators. In Handke's case, if we are to believe him, the "occasional color blindnessis not hereditary [genetic autism more frequently than not itself, too, is overdetermined, involving as it appears to a series of Americas little gods], which might mean that his autism, too, is unique to him, and derives from an unknown interuterine illness or severe disturbance to the baby while being carried to term; the enthusiastic dancing girl that
was his mother for example. Considering Handke's hardwon genius as a writer, it nonetheless occurs to one that his over-developed verbal capacities, when he is in the state of writing/composing, is one of the odd benefits accruing to those whose modulating/inhibiting function is disturbed, or absent; e.g. the frequent occurrence of idiot-savantism in conjunction with the debilitations that characterize autism are, as it were, one of its unusual benefits.
However, autism's debilitating features - Handke's social gaucheries for example - appear in many instances to result rather from interactions [or lack thereof] subsequent to birth, they are secondary happenstances as it were, unfortunate conjunctions. An especially crucial period in the instance of the autistic, whose hypersensitivity and the attempts to deal with it, frequently remain unrecognized until the 2nd or 3rd year, in Handke's case turned out about as fortunately as it could at that time: absent the absent fathers, love child Baby Peter, had the undivided attention of his exquisite mother until the onset of the violent primal scenes at age 2 in Berlin. Whether he averted his eyes from her, their sight being too intense, and so observed her exclusively out of the also hypersensitive corners of his eyes, we may of course never know, or whether the mother, flirtatiously turned the aversion into an early form of the peakaboo game. That his writing is modulating and mastery on the order of the great composers and innovators and transposes the reader into a uniquely physical verbal world however is meanwhile beyond doubt. In all other respects Handke suffers from the components of the condition humaine that we are heir to
Michael Roloff
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This is one of my favorite images
