FINAL -for the time being -COMMENTARY ( after birth to come, re the FEMALE characters)
note these links:
note these links:
http://handke-drama.blogspot.com/2016/03/directorss-take-on-handkes-unschuldige.html
photo album
Our modern Classic writes a play
that, dramatically, is modernistically innovative yet I feel his grandfather
might have found enjoyable, a somewhat disconcerting experience and
realization.
I’ve now spent quite a few
weeks with Peter Handke’s exuberant DIE UNSCHULDIGEN & ICH AM LANDSTRASSEN
RAND/ THE NOT SO INNOCENT INNOCENTS &
THE BIG THEATRICAL ME BY THE COUNTRY ROAD as one might title an American
version, and I can only say, with any
certainty, that it has been, will continue to be an extraordinary READING
EXPERIENCE. If Handke took as much trouble to direct the readers of his prose
texts to what he wanted them to see and feel as he does in INNOCENTS he would
be a far more popular author. The low-comedy Shakesopearean side of him is even
entertaining, not a quality to be found often in is work – stretches of THEY
ARE DYING OUT come to mind, the fairy tale about picking mushrooms & his
second daughter Lucie im wald mit den dingsda - von peter handke (Lucie in the Woods with the
Thingamajigs) is cute, another Handke quality that manifests itself comparatively
rarely. I come up with a lot of very
brief examples, Handke, after all, can be as witty as any whippoorwill.
What kind
of experience it would be if the whole nearly 40 k text of INNOCENTS were put
on, however brilliantly, as perspicuous as the text, is beyond current
imaginative capacities. For all, the piece’s ultimate effect might be one of
great stillness, after the word avalanches, the now far more sophisticated
(than in WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES) alternating discourse, that idiots continue
to call monologues, with lots of other stuff going on inbetween.
e.g: DIE UNBEKANNTE:
Was ist notig zur
Vogelschau?
ICH: Der
Gefiederblick!
DIE UNBEKANNTE Ja,
der Blick fuer ailes, was fluegge ist. Der Faecherblick. Der Saumeblick. Der
Windweilenblick. Und das Gefiederherz.
Und die gefiederte
Seele! Der Blick fur das, was noch nie abgehoben
hat, aber jetzt,
jetzt! Zu mir wie ~ den andern: Und jetzt -
#
INNOCENT IS
built in dualities – “dialectically” friend Scott Abbott would say. The # 2
rules the roost from the gitgo. The “I” that invents the entire fantasy by no
means out of whole but very real cloth, splits AT ONCE into a NARRATIVE &
DRAMATIC “I”. The “I” itself has a DOUBLE who is one of the GROUP OF INNOCENTS
(who however, does not split – that would be once too much!). Handke’s
admission - if you read the piece auto-biographically as one can up to a to the
point of realizing that he’s having fun -
that he’s just as much a normal sheeple as the entire INNOCENT bunch - a
point that, dramatically I would say the DOUBLE is the least effective part of
the piece if mounted. Reading what Handke does with this notion of the DOUBLE becomes
more interesting, because more subtle; mounted I think it, the subtleties
called for, would merely distract and mystify, to no good purpose that I can
see so far. – Unless other unsettling elements are meant to amount and…
After
translating his THE BEAUTIFUL DAYS OF ARANJUEZ last year, with Scott, and
realizing how well conceived and executed within his own terms are his VOYAGE
BY DUGOUT, STILL STORM & ART OF ASKING I trust Handke as carpenter of his
structures, the DOUBLE - necessary as it is within the balanced context of the
INNOCENT’S who are derided
micht mit euch
Experten,
Probs,
Spezialisten, euch unschuldigen Schurken, euch Unschuldsluzifern - heillt »Luzifer«
nicht »Lichtbringer«? -,euch unschuldigen Durch-einander-bringern, euch unschuldig
Belauerern, euch
unschuldig Rache Ubenden, je unschuldiger, desto fuerchterlicher, nicht mit
euch - Heiden, heillosen, heillosen, heillosen. Wo ihr Unschuldigen auftretet,
bleiben alle Augen trocken. 1ch weiss: 1hr seid nicht schuld daran, dass ihr so
ueberwaltigend, so erdrueckend, so erstickend viele seid.
Aber kannt ihr
nicht ein wenig, ein klein wenig lichter unterwegs sein. 0 lichte Weite! Ah,
wie mehrheiten-muede ich bin. Nicht lebens-, mehrheitsmude. Keine argere Muedigkeit,
keine lahmendere. Stimmt: Niemand von euch sinnt auf Bases - ihr seid
nur da, da, und wieder da. Tatlich werdet ihr, ohne taetlich zu werden, Gewalt-herrscher
ohne Herrschertum
Guten Glaubens? Na
ja. Aber jedenfalls luegt ihr nicht, ihr Unschuldigen. Wuerdet ihr doch lugen,
nicht besser - nein, schoener! Ihr luegt nicht, denn ihr koennt nicht luegen.
Schade.
Aber ihr sagt auch
nicht die Wahrheit. Ihr redet und redet, und manchmal denke ich: Mag sein, kann
sein, oder sogar: Stimmt! Doch letzten Endes ist in dem, was ihr redet,
Then belittling and making fun of the “I” -that
has its fun with them – which doubling is
THE MOST IMPORTANT DIALECTICAL MOVEMENT OF THEM ALL – while the DOUBLE
OF THE “I” is least effectively
realized, nearly superfluous within the exchanges of critiques, at least as it
stands now.
Other
twosomes are the diametrically opposed women, the CAPO’s WOMAN & THE
UNNKNOWN WOMAN. Each of these major player has substantial arias and they, too,
balance off, and I think that the entire piece balances off - a gradual incline
and a gradual decline with a host of dramatic irruptions along both ways – but
lacking the kind of conflict, irreconcilable or whatever, that lurks in back of
the arrangement and threatens to break out as it did in THEY ARE DYING OUT.
The “I” berates, belittles, derides THE
INNONCENT & two INNOCENTS deride berate the “I” in turn, and turn in quite
a bill of particulars.
Ja doch, der Mann
da ist das Letzte. Ein Volksfeind. Ein Sozialfall,
und noch dazu
einer, der, fuer sich ganz allein, ais Ingroup
auftritt. Ein Fall
fuer die Zwangsjacke. Einer, der das
Sagen haben will,
und wieder ganz allein. Mein ist das Reich,
und die Kraft, und
die Herrlichkeit, in Ewigkeit, amen. Mein ist die Welt, mein ist die Landstraeee.
Ein Animist: betet den Wind an, und im Atem des Nachbarn riecht er den
Hollenschwefel.
Ein perverser
Liebender: liebt das Grillenzirpen und hasst die Kinderstimmen. - Aber ist das
auch wahr? Nicht, dass ihr luegt, Leute. Ihr seid Wort fuer Wort guten Glaubens,
und zeitweise sogar guten Willens - kein Mensch kann ja allezeit guten Willen
zeigen, nicht einmal ein Gott.
Moreover,
during one of his monologue the “I” inadvertently chokes the UNKNOWN WOMAN and,
if one wanted to read these amusing attacks, reproofs of the “I”
autobiographically one would have to say that aside the near murder of the
girl, the bill of particular is a lot of small change. If like me who has
written a psychoanalytic monograph on our man and knows of the gratuitous
cruelties and insults he committed during younger years one could convict him
of a variety of major crimes – but the play is not a Confiteor, and not a Penance. & I
would turn toward understanding (my preference), the coin of the realm of
psycho-analysis, instead of the Dostoyevskian blame and self-berating game, that
is at work here when matters are serious and not just lighthearted derision of
Handke’s preference for nature. – After all, Handke has made fun of himself
before, as far back at least as WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES, of the kind of holy
terror he was as a spoiled and favored child and as returning prodigal son
poet. In the 2007 MORAVIAN NIGHT he calls himself a “cold salamander” and a “mommy’s
child” – fair enough I suppose, I myself am interested in the psychological complications that arose out of
having a far-away father, a nearby brutal stepfather who initially was regarded
as a real father until the realization sat in that the monster could not possibly
be, and of being the mother Maria Sivec’s surrogate extra love child – Handke
recently manifested some awareness of being perhaps having been showered with
too much of a good thing, even intra-uterine. However, here in INNOCENTS Handke
is not conducting a trial of the deficiencies of the monkey known as “homo
sapiens” or of them as PSEUDO-INNOCENTS or of his own faults: he is creating a
PROJECTION SCREEN where these matters can be entertained: lightly, amusingly,
playfully. Nor is Handke interested in articulating these psychological oedipal
complications except in the terse manner of “Wonderful to be fatherless!”
Really? Well, you can find Hermann Lenz & Goethe to help you out of the
predicament of a vacuum.
I am not
leching to translate the piece, what a task it will be to get the tone right!
but if I did I’d be tempted to adapt it to American and individual city’s
purpose, and would be far more cutting about matters American than anything in
Handke’s gattling gun - and he said as much in an interview: you can’t just
keep bashing away. It’s a fantasia after
all, the poet conducts a trial and error fantasy as he day dreams by the road… “I
want to save a piece of blue sky,” it says in WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES one of
the serious themes that governs INNOCENTS which contains lots of echoes from
pieces past for those familiar with his work, especially of the all-important
WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES.
My initial
dipstick testing impression is
confirmed: The play becomes linguistically more adventurous as he proceeds with
lyrical riffs such as this:
Die einen Vogel
fliegen so, die andern so, jeder Vogel fliegt anders. Und jeder Falter faltert
anders. - Starker Durchzug der Regenpfeifer im September. Anfang Oktober wurde
bei
Kilometerstein neunzehn
ein laut rufender Rauhfussbussard beobachtet. In derselben Nacht deutliche
Zunahme von Graubruststrandlaufern. Mitte Oktober zog uber der zerfallenen
Bruckenwaage eine
maennliche Steppenweihe im Nachsommerkleid verspaetet durch. Tags darauf
rastete ein weibliches Austernfischerexemplar auf dem Reststuck der urspruenglichen
Pflasterung, gefolgt eine Woche spater voneiner Doppelschnepfe und einem
Ohrenlerchenparchen im Schlichtkleid, dann einem Wanderfalken im Jugend-kleid.
Anfang November sass eine Dreizehenmowe an der Abzweigung
And an amazing
Hoelderlineque outburst:
Es weht mich an. Herbst und Epos. Epischer Schritt und
Herbstmorgenwind,
ein Hauch in dem
und dem dramatischen Moment, ein Anhauch.
Epischer Schritt und Rohren des Mississippi und Gluckern des
Viehweidenbachs oder auch bloss Federnder Landstrasse unter den Solen,
Knirschen des alten Sands
Handke had
I think an amazing amount of fun while writing the piece also in a quite
Shakespearean low humor vein:
Wie erfuellt du bist von all dem Nichts und wieder Nichts auf und an der Landstrasse. Wie aber haeltst
du's mit unsereinem? Nichts als Grillen, Libellen, Schachtelhalme, Zucht-wiesel,
Zuchtbrennessel, Zucht-loewenzahn, wilde Kresse, wilde Apfel, wilder
Spargel, Wildsauerampfer, Wildreis, Wildsaue. 0 Wildnis. Kann es nicht sein,
dass deine Grille mit ihrem Zirpen sagen will: »1ch toete dich!«, und
das die Woelfe heulen und der Tiger knurrt aus Liebeskummer oder aus
Verlassenheit? Und dass die Kater so keifen und die Elstern so kreischen,
weil sie einen Ansprechpartner suchen? Und dass die Eulen so schon still
durch den Nachthimmel kurven, weil sie gleich ihre Eulenkrallen
in einen Hasen schlagen werden? -
With
so many other wonderful translated Handke plays yet awaiting English language
premieres I doubt that we shall see INNOCENT on its stages. How many great
German plays find their ways onto English language stage per annum??
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