FN 4-6 & 13 from my piece on FRUIT THIEF
THE Focus is on writing autobiographically and thus on some lies Handke has committed in the process.
About twenty years ago, in the mid-90s -
contemplating how Handke had begun a second stint in Paris, at NO-MAN’S-BAY
Chaville that he may have discovered while living in the LEFT-HANDED WOMAN’s
Paris-Meudon - it occurred to me that in his prose works – overall – via his
various autobiographical tacks - and the
“part objects” as which one could describe figures as different as Bloch of
GOALIE and Alexia – who are more than projections - was creating a kind of Yoknapatawpha County of
his many-faceted self – {while showing us and teaching us his many developing
mettles as a writer]; and that, thus, you could assemble a biography by
selecting the significant sections from the growing oeuvre and make the most
interesting multi-faceted portrait ever. You would need to do some bridge work
by annotating with some standard biographical writing of the kind that Herwig
and others and I have done, and add some of my or other psycho-analytic
insights - such a portrait, then, would need to point out a few “warts” [to put
matters mildly and unprogressively] and correct Handke when he lies; of which
lies I happen to be aware of about half a dozen.
1] As we
know from Herwig’s biography, there was no graduation trip with Handke’s real
father, Schoenherr, as Handke foolishly claims at the end of SORROW BEYOND
DREAMS – why? To injure that man, payback for his abandoning his mother,
forcing her to find that dreadful surrogate, Bruno Handke? Gratuitously? What
is strangest is the fear that Handke projects into the father during that
imagined trip - that he and his son may be regarded as a homosexual couple –
Handke’s homophobia??? Handke’s homophobia would be well justified based on his
experience in his mother and stepfather’s bedroom. - Upon his first daughter
Amina’s graduation Handke takes her on that kind of standard pater familias trip to Portugal – what
fear accompanied that expedition? –
2] Libgart Schwarz did not leave Handke in 1971
to return to her career in the theater, which she had never left, but because
life with her husband, of which I got a good whiff while the couple and
Kolleritsch were in New York in 1971, had become entirely impossible - the only surprise is why Libgart waited as long
as she did.
3] Handke has not a congenital heart valve
problems, the official reason why he
ended up in a Paris hospital in the early 70s - he did for panic attacks that I
attribute to his mother’s suicide and his wife leaving him: someone as beloved
by his mother as Handke, suddenly bereft of all mother figures, is bound to
start fugueing if he has Handke’s kind of sensitivities, as he describes in the
three long poems of NONSENSE & HAPPINESS {from ALS DAS WUENSCHEN NOCH
GEHOLFEN HAT] –
Valium then calmed the nerves – and what a
surprise that someone who had victoriously conquered fear as a kid and played
with fear and demonstrated it’s conquest during his “I am new Kafka period” should then succumb to
panic.
4-6] In
Handke’s AFTERNOON OF A WRITER the “former once friend” – yours truly – does
not cross one sierra after the other while sending the writer postcards that
sign off with ‘as ever’.
While translating WALK ABOUT
THE VILLAGES - the best translation he had ever seen, and the best work I had
ever done, and under extreme conditions - as its postscript recounts - I
entirely forget that Handke once had taken possession of one of my previous
wives, the Great Fondness, an act with consequences for our relationship [see
anon].
Now I had a new wife, had won
the first of several big lawsuits against a former partner, thought I had found
a publisher, PAJ, for WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES and could leave town and regain
my sanity and health and so I and the
new wife cut out to American Southwest - where the two of us did a lot of
traveling and loving all over the place and ended up living at 8,000 feet in
the Sacramentos in Billie the Kid country. However, the only, the one single
solitary Sierra that we got near to was the Mexican Carmen Range adjacent to
the southern Rio Grande – but while traveling, also in love with the Handke who
could write something as magnificent as WALK ABOU THTE VILLAGES, I sent a
postcard at about each of the many hamlets we stopped at. Including Marta,
Texas where one of my favorite American authors, of the Devil;s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce is said to
have met an unhappy end.
AFTRNOON OF THE WRITER, thus,
contains a host of lies, just concerning yours truly, and how many others? Subsequent
to writing the book Handke fled to Paris, leaving manuscripts behind.
Why by the time of writing
AFERNOON I was regarded as a former friend, see anon footnote 13.
6] Then, in MORAWIAN NIGHT, Handke lies about the
reason why he became physically violent with Marie Colbin, not he first woman
that he hit – and why the writer of
SORROW BEYOND DREAMS – who would seem the most unlikely man to hit women - does
so nonetheless my guess has been the subliminal influence exerted on Handke
during the decade of being exposed to a physically violent stepfather
especially during primal scene settings. See my HANDKE, WOUNDED LOVE-CHILD.
[fn-2]
Passages from other Handke acquaintances will be
needed – to arrive at this kind of multi-faceted portrait, a few warts and
their explanation; nearly saintly just not quite! Such a tome would also be a
great lesson in how Handke’s approach to writing changed, or did not change.
Fn # 13
Subsequent to the Spring
1966 Gruppe 47 meeting at Princeton Jakov Lind (Soul of Wood), and „beautiful and beguiling American Panna Grady, whose
self-effacing generosity to artists and writers in her New York apartment in
the Dakota building had been on an epic scale”, and I gave a party for the Gruppe and for American writers at
Pannah’s splendid Dakota apartment, and that is where I then saw Peter Handke
for the second time whose famous Princeton statement had intrigued but scarcely
shocked someone who had been in American writing classes. So when I spotted the
Beatelish fellow in his small-checkered - yellow and brown -shirt - a pink
carnation [?] - in a button-hole, I approached him to know whom he had in mind
as being dscriptively impotent. For I didn’t imagine he could mean Grass. Uwe Johmson
Siegfried Lenz or Peter Weiss – but who could tell? Perhaps the fellow was a
fool. Though among other matters I was doing, I was an Amerian scout for
Suhrkamp Verlag I had not heard of the fellow. I myself had beome half-way well-versed
in post-war German literature as reader for a variety of American publishers,
had spent a year scouting in Germany for Sam Lawrence at the Atlantic Monthly Press
[which led to the publication of Peter Weiss’s and Peter Bichsel’s prose], had
read a lot of things in German galleys, had been the first Amerian scout to do
so in East Berlin with a famous – Uwe Johnson apprised - visit to err Kaspar at
the Aufbau Verlag; introduction to Rowohlt had acquainted me with avant-garde
Austrian literature - I would even sign a contract with Ledig on a napkin at
Harry’s bar for Ossie Wiener’s Die Verbesserung Mitteleuropas
and within the year dip the
napkin in a glass of whisky soda, which is why Ledig became my favorite
publisher. I had founded and edited, with Fred Jameson, the magazine Metamorphosis which had foundered when
its publisher Michael Lebeck had started to lift imaginary rocks in his head as
he joined a Sufi sect that received all his money. I had met Hans Magnus Enzensberger
at Ruth Landshof York’s in 1961 and found him to be congenial and a good
listener, had interviewe Grass, for The
Atlantic, Uwe Johnson for Metamorphosis,
and Peter Weiss for Partisan Review, had
met Hans Werner Richter in Berlin but we had not been impressed with each
other.
I was
feeling my way, was insecure but not completely and trusted my judgement in
literary matters – to close friend Frank Conroy’s query what all this German-American
stuff was about had replied that it was about joining separated halve - and was
about to get my first steady job as editor for German matters at Farrar, Straus
– and without even asking. Asking, I had been turned down by Viking Press the
publisher with whom – courtesy of a tip from
code-cracker Ladislas Farago – I had a contract for a biography of the
German resistance figure, Colonel Grosskurt of Canaris’ Abwehr. I had translated three Hermann Hesse novels for Roger Klein
at Harper & Row, of the three DEMIAN made an impression and did not seem as
aniquated stylistically as did Peter Camenzind
& Beneath the Wheel to someone who had gone dead in graduate school at
the prospect of a lifetime in a German Department, and who had not completed
his thesis on Robert Musil but for translating The Portuguese Wife – a text which taught me that a life can hang
in the balance of a comma.
Upon my second attempt to
engage Handke in conversations - in the center of Pannah’s spacious living room
– Alan Ginsberg approached us - whom I had never met and of whose presence - or
that Pannah had a thing for the Beats or that they sponged off her I was unaware
– or that these would be the American writers who were meant to mingle with the
Germans and who at the end of evening would smash her Persian vases - as
Ginsberg addressed me with the request to translate that he „wanted to fuck
Handke” and that I was meant to translate.
At
that point in my young life I had never heard of anyone saying anything of the
kind directly not even of a man to a woman much less a woman to a man, although
within the course of the next twenty years such direct requests, gestures and meaningful
contacts became anything but rare - and so I did not even reply to Ginsberg who
seemed not to be aware that few if any German writers did not know English, and
- if in fact his presumption was correct and the fellow assented to the
translated request - he would be fucking someone to whom he could not or
perhaps preferred not to talk. However, upon Ginsberg’s repeated request in a
more peromptory fashion the Prussian in my blue eyes shot several daggers and Ginsberg
backed off, and we would meet only one more time, about 15 years hence, as
members of USA Pen’s executive committee. And a good thing, too, that he backed
off. I loved being a protector! In this instance of a fellow the expression on
whose face during my and Ginsberg’s inter-action had become „haemisch”, a kind
of sadistic grin that told me that the fellow’s orgins were in village ways –
and I gleaned this not only because it takes a least a quotient of sadism to
glean sadism - but because I had spent ages 5 and 6 at the village school of
Vornbach am Inn and then a few years at the Volksschule
in my home-village Schoenebeck [see the Vornbach chapter in my Screen Memories]. I had smelled the village
sadist and as Handke himself has written, „the smell sticks.” [The
chief memory of the sadism of my village school was a fellow who enjoyed fame
for dropping a stocking full of dung on a passerby – the perfect image for
Freud’s stage of anal sadism – except it is not meant to persist after age 2!] –
And so I did not find out that evening whom Handke had in mind with his
Princeton statement. - However, it then turned out that Handke had
misunderstood whom Ginsberg had wanted to fuck; he thought I was the intended
object - a misapprehension that we failed to unravel until the last time that I
saw the fellow, on the Moenchberg in Salzburg in 1980 – by which time a fair
amount of water had flown under and over the Handke-Roloff bridge that I
established when I translated and published KASPAR & OTHER PLAYS at Farrar,
Straus and GOALIE and the second volume RIDE ACROSS LAKE CONSTANCE & OTHER
PLAYS, INNERWORD and NONSENSE &
HAPPINESS.
The misunderstanding
made the well-remembered sadistic expression on Handke’s face apppear even less
pleasant; whereas I had read it as complicitous and derisive it now struck me
as in pleasurable agreement with Ginsberg’s wishes. - I had no idea whether
Ginsberg had been at Princeton but I connected his wish with a comment I heard there
about Handke: „Ach, ein Maedchen!” – someone had mistaken the Beatles haircut
for effiminacy. However, the misunderstanding of Ginsberg and failure to notice
the blue daggers that had shot out of my eyes may have created a memory in
Handke for something he would say to me the next time he was in New York,
in Spring 1971 - by which time we had
met in Berlin – in Spring 1969 - to discuss my translation of his KASPAR, and
Baby Amina had been shown to me who
loved babies, unlike other revolutionaries who it appeared did not [vide A
CHILD’S STORY, for me his weakest book for its defensiveness and unawareness
and the fact that I could not help but notice how deathly quiet the little girl
was when I saw her in New York in the mid-70s, and that I read, carefully, Weight of the World].
Upon
Handke’s and my second encounter in New York – on the ocsasion of the first
public premiere of several of his plays at B.A.M. which coincided with the
three person package Handke, wife Libgart Schwartz, and Freddie Kolleritch’s
Austrian cultural tour - see SHORT LETTER LONG FAREWELL - I gave a small party for
Handke to which I invited the first two positive reviewers-backers of KASPAR &
AND OTHER PLAYS - of its printed version, a rarity - Richard Gilman and Stanley
Kaufmann. – I also was no longer at Farrar, Straus but had succumbed to
Siegried Unseld’s imprecation to become the Suhrkamp agent in the USA, working out of the Candida Donadio–Robert Lantz
Literary Agency. During the party Handke escaped Gilman/ Kaufmann’s literary
interrogation by squatting down by my record player and put on one of my
Beatle’s records - a retreat into the Jukebox as it were - but squattted in such a way that I could not
but help think „Just like a woman”; as his forever surprsing first words -
after the small group of guests had departed and he had resurfaced -„You are
gay!” - which saying – coming apropos what? – came as much of a surprise as
Ginsburg’s proposition five years earlier. Moreover, once again no one had ever
said anything along those lines, was entirely disconnected from the topics of
the party, and not just insulting but about as wrongheaded as he could be under
the there and then context – had he read my mind thinking that the way Handke
squatted was like a woman? –
I
never enquired what brought out that comment but I expect the explanation for the
mutual misapprehension is that both Handke and I had very beautiful mothers who
influenced the way we behaved in so many ways – the way Handke squats and the
way I used to hold a cigarette, just like my mother, and both of us lacked imitable
emulataeable fathers, though mine at least behaved most courageously as a
Hitler opponent but in few if any other ways was exemplary but as a driven
upwardly mobile businessman who left me a great unread library to peruse during
my childhood but terrified me and my cousins.
As to the wrongness of the
context: instantly upon Handke’s comment wife Libgart Schwartz piped up and cited my girlfriend of the time,
the flaxen-haired Saraw Lawrece Professor Renate Karlin, who had to leave early
to care for her two kids - a polite way of setting her husband straight for, if
she had wanted to be direct she could have said. „Peter, if Michael had money
and didn’t have to be the Suhrkamp agent and translate your stuff we would have
run away together the first night we met at the premiere in Brooklyn and at
Elaine’s when we were doing all these sexy things with each other under the
table cloth while you and Freddy, as you have been the entire trip, were all
involved with each other and neglecting me as you have for years while having no
end of affairs.” - And Libgart would not have been far off. At Elaine’s, after
a lot of hanky-panky under the table cloth, I had slipped her one of those big
yellow Elaine’s matchbooks with my telephone # written on the inside and the
suggestion „zum Friseur?” – she glanced at it and nodded – when she called
saying „ist da bein Friseur” I planned to say „Frauelein Sie sind das Glueckkind
- heute als Premium lecken wir Schamhaare.” I was positive she would call,
someone who evidently had not had a loving for a long time and we would consume
each other on an afternoon. She was so rasant!
As we
stepped out of Elaine’s I wanted to walk to the Algonquin and hoped for some
time with Libgart on the way – Fitzgerald’s Hotel to which Handke had
tranferred from the dull Third Avenue one where the Austrians had put them up -
Handke said he was too tired to walk the two miles but took a photo of
Kolleritsch, Libgart and me and as I placed my right hand on Libgart’s ass, just
the way she took my hand from her ass and placed it on her right hip told me
what a clever beast she would be in bed – she had enchanted me the way she
descended the staircase at the Austrian cultural house playing RIDE ACROSS LAKE
CONSTANCE. „Rasant” was the word I would forever associate with her. – Then Libgart
and I both thought the better of the assignation. - Or you can just read SHORT
LETTER LONG FAREWELL where the wife is a threat to the husband and the husband seems
deathly afraid – it appears Handke was not unaware of her rising anger but
failed to do anything about it or change his ways, until decades later and a
second runaway wife and he reconciled.
The
threesome’s return from their 21 dates in 28 days USA roundtrip madness had Kolleritsch’s
tachycardia collapse on my once marriage bed while Handke rushed out to buy
foreign newspapers and magazines at the nearby Rizzolis and Libgart and I [liebaeugelten]
regarded the couch in my workroom for a quickie... but again thought the better
of it.
But what kids they were too! „Whom,” - what
evdidently famous person - „had they
seen on the plane?” they asked me.
Stumped
does not describe my unwillingness to even guess.
„Cassius
Clay.” Or was he alrady called Muhamed Ali? – on the flight to Atlana.
Libgart’s and my flirting however, elicited
Kolleritsch’s famous statement „Libgart du bist so anders.” [!] - And here am I
who really likes my Renate, very much at least my equal, later I even ruined
what was a relationship that made sense by becoming crazily jealous – a feeling
that came out of the blue! I had just broken out of a rather staid hard-working
marriage to a first rate illustrator artist who was not much interested in my
interests nor in the Big Bright City or
then its demi-monde as exemplified by the restaurant Elaine’s. – I
wasn’t in the least faithful to her being the usual state of affairs though I
liked her best while hopping into and out of a lot of other beds while she was
out of town.
At
that point Handke and I were not friends and I don’t think we ever were, although
he -despite what he then did with „the great fondness” – see anon – seems to
have been under the misapprehension that we were. – The split between liking
the work and feeling dubious about its creator set in early. I was his
translator who knew quickly that he was a genius and I thought his work was
extraordinary as I still do, but it came to deeply affect me only with the
translation of WALK ABOUT THE VILAGES around 1981-2 and subsequently with quite
a few other works, including Fruit Thief.
Since Handke and I were not friends my usual
inhibtions not to make a pass even at a friend’s ex so as not to endanger the
frienship did not come into play, a resolve I have never broken no matter that
just about every male friend had made passes at my girlfriends ever since
highschool. – In Mexico I then spent time with a tribe in the Copper Canyon
where the men chase each other’s women and all the women try to steal each
other’s men while drinking a beverage brewed from the Agave! An all year office
party as it were.
I did not see Handke again then until he had relocated to Paris in
the early 70s... desultory meetings at Rue Montmorency where a city walker then
never was offered as much as a glass of water and which never lasted long as
Handke writes Kolleritsch „Der Roloff is so angenehm langweilig” - Handke
saying I should come by soon again and I failed to say why don’t we play chess
– it was the time of the Spassky-Fischer matches and the last time that my
chess was up to snuff and I think I saw a chess board. One time an Austrian Backfisch
was present – „huckable” as the Mick has it.
Again I was asked to leave soon after arriving – and asked to call soon.
Subsequently when I did call Handke mentioned that he had exposed himself – that
he had these moments when he was a little develish - as I would think he also
might have as a kid have exposed himself competitively during that continuous
exposure to the primal scene – he said that the girl blushed. What did he
expect? -Thus I knew that he was also an actual exhibitionist not merely as a
more or less sublimated writer. Another time we went to the Bois de Boulogne
with the actual Austrian Paris cultural attache – Esterhazy [?]- who died young, who had a daughter Amina’s age,
and whose acquaintance may have given Handke the idea to make Gregor Keuschnigg
of A Moment of True Feeings and No-Man’s-Bay a cultural attache. Yet
another time I brought friend Jerry Leiber along who was meant to write the
lyrics to the music I thought we might introduce at a few moments for the
prospective Yale Rep premiere of my
translation of Handke’s THEY ARE DYING OUT – and Handke uttered the famous
phrase „I don’t do Singspiel.” – He
had much liked Leiber/Stoller’s early work with The Coasters. After Leiber and wife Barbara Rose left Handke
remarked how ugly she was he could puke – the second time he had said something
along the line, the first being in referenc to the translator Joachim
Neugroeschel whom he had met in my company in New York – ugly physically and in
nearly every other way I might add, not beautiful ugly, say like J.P. Sartre.
In 1974 the small publisher Urizen Books was founded and the then
girl friend „the great fondness” - as distinct from a half dozen great passions
- went off to Denmark and Africa to do research for a biography and I told her
if she stopped by in Paris on her way back to look up Handke – she was
impressed by his work; and upon the „great fondnesses’s” return to the Big
Bright City from her biographical labors I felt we needed to debrief the degree
to which our libidos had to defray their interim needs. I had had several of
the briefest of flings, one with a British friend of hers that I might have
explored further had it not been that fondness and our commonalities carried
the day, and one great lewdnes - for
intents and purposes the „great fondness” and I were living together but
for being sensible and having seperate work spaces. I realized that she, too,
had had something but it was a molar extraction. And once it did come out it
turned out that the Pasha of Rue
Montmorency had taken posession of her for a week or so. If they had fallen in
love - fine with me.
The
great benefit of this occurrance was that the „great fondness” then described
in great detail what had transpired and I received a far more intimate view of what
life was like at Rue Montmorency than I had had from my own visits. She had
been taken hard, the daughter had expressed extreme jealousy – standard among
young children I was discovring during affairs with divorced or single mothers
with young children – and, most valuably, that Handke said his wife Libgart
leaving him had been the worst thing that had ever happened to him. – It was
not a statement with which the translator of the three stormy poems in NONSENSE
& HAPPINESS could disagree, and it validated the panic attack and the
fuguing that had landed Handke in the hospital in the early 70s. The statement
of course failed to indicate the slightest awareness that his own behavior was
in any way connected with the wife’s disparu. – The worst thing that happened
to Handke, I would say. occurred when his pregnant mother felt she needed a
husband to legitimize her child and she married the child’s married father’s -
a Herr Schoenherr’s - buddy Bruno Handke of the German company stationed in
Griffen-Voelkermark in 1942, Bruno Handke, a goodlooking fellow who also wanted
to sleep with her, then again was sought out in Berlin in 1942 when the fellow,
now a wounded ex-soldier tramway driver, was already cohabiting with another
woman - and there ensued those many years of
abuse as we can read in SORROW BEYOND DREAMS.
Absent the inevitable but at the very least subliminal absorbtion
of the example that the dreadful Bruno sets I would doubt that Handke would
ever have hit a woman in anything but self-defense.
However, let us not let Maria Sivec completely off the hook. She
continues to mourn and be depressed that the love of her life, Herr Schoenherr,
did not marry her – and what does this do to Bruno’s feelings? A marriage of
convenience commissioned by the hell of convention. These psychological
ramifications remain unexplored in Handke’s work and I imagine cannot be fit
into his great family drama FOREVER STORM
Later we find out that the
chief reason the depressed Maria Sivec took her life was the prospect of having
to live once again with Bruno who was just returning from a tuberculosis rest
home – and no one has heard of divorce or separation in that part of darkest
Austria .
When
Handke shows up next in New York in 1975 [accompanied by Amina] I give him my
one bedroom apartment on the 25th floor of Independence Plaza in Tribeca which
I was renting for the very reasonable $ 450.00 a month
I am already living with my psychotic composer
passion in our loft on Duane Park
half a block away. I don’t
think the great fondnesse’s tryst with Handke has anything to do with my
ultimately choosing the composer after singing I have two lovers for about half
a year [FN- why I might have preferred to become a pianist.]
However, Handke stays in the apartment just one night – where
might he be? I call the Algonquin - of course.
Why did he move out?
„Suicide apartment.”
The great view of downtown New York Harbor and Jersey seemed not
have compensated. Though I lived in the area for a decade I never heard of any
suicide from those towers.
I am interested in a meeting
where both Handke and „Fondness” will be present and arrange for tea at the
Algonquin, and what a shock: Handke scarcely recognizes the Great Fondness and
I am forever spooked. [Her acquaintance with Handke is mentioned in Gewicht der Welt as someone who goes to
the trouble of learning several languages to write a biography.] We make small talk! After he leaves first I
suggest – slyly! - to „Fondness” -to whom I remain close for another half dozen
years - that she contact him. She demurs. No retrospective love for him has set
in.- And what a shame, that spookedness, there came a time, during the Alaska
episode, that he really seemed to want to be friends. I had taken him up to my
loft with rooftop and we were leaning on its barge-like balustrade and he noted
„how hard” New York was – he had just installed himself in the Hotel Adams in a
wealthy area – and I – who had gathered quite a bit along that line of hardness
- and who felt lonely, too - with a partner who turned out as „very dark” or
„at least very German as Handke had assessed him within minutes of their
encounter after the B.A.M. premiere.-
Back to the Algonquin -
What if I had said, „Don’t
you recall making love to this woman and telling her such and such ?” – What if
I had been a Renaisance prince? - Such a confrontation would have been
interesting. -Great Fondness herself I recall seeming a tad awkward, none of her
customary shmoozing. - But spookable me is forever spooked and makes sure to be
as little as possible alone with this overly forgetful or schizophrenic [?] fellow
no matter how much I care for his work; and usually manage to interpose Michael
Brodky, who became a Urizen Book author for Handke and Patricia Highsmith sending
him to me.
From what I gather from the Great Fondness and other biographical
accounts and of Handke’s often autobiographical work: by age 30 he had
committed the combined sins of both his real and his stepfather. He had
fathered an illigitiamte child [see
MORAVIAN NIGHT], he had hit a child [vide CHILD STORY], had hit not only Maria
Colbin but Jeanne Moureau, and how many others? And he had exposed his daughter
who knows with what frequency to the primal scene.
As
few people know, in the mid-70s Handke was thinking of living in a New York
suburb. I took him and Amina in my MGB on an exploratory trip – it made sense
that he would live in a suburb with his sensitivities and his life plans - no
doubt the leaf blowers in Nassau or Suffolk would have bugged him as much as
they do in Chaville – I knew about
Shelter Island, between Long Island’s North and South Fork
a future rest-stop escape of mine and I
might have taken him out there to its preserve and true wilderness. I did take Handke and the photographer of the
cover of NONSENSE & HAPPINESS to the Rockaways where I lived for three
years for its good air after my freighter trip half way around the world and
back, 1972-75 and where I worked well as editor and translator for Continuum
Books and would have continued to if the publisher had not turned out to be a
shit. Handke and his notebook – it was late afternoon and the sun was just
sinking near Staten Island and reminded me of the WW II account of the sinking
of the Graf Spee in South America during which she was said to have become
molten as Handke pulled out his notebook and scribbled something – and I failed
to ask what.
During
the expedition to the suburbs I recall Amina as a frighteningly intimidated
child and checking out lycées for her – who then would have been raised on
French and English and German. – I expect that Handke’s unhappy stay in the Hotel
Adams at 86th and Madison and Fifth in the later 70s on his return
from Alaska - where he wrote the novel part of A SLOW HOME-COMING - extirpated
any thought of living in New York or this country. “Very hard” was his instant
comment on having contemplated the street scene for just a few days as I recall
while I was still I think trying to avert the City’s extreme brutality, well on
its way to becoming Kalkota on the Hudson, and the situation I found myself
with my partners at the firm sinking in.
I would have asked Handke
to join me when I stopped working between 10-11 p.m at my Tribeca office and
hit my downtown bars and music clubs CBGBS and MUDD and SCREECH where the
pretty ones told you up front when they wanted you, love making was like
breathing and night life reminded me when the living had been easy at the
Timberline in Fairbanks, and it happened to be the rare time that I had not a
main squeeze, and Handke, had he wanted, would at least have a bit of a good
time to look back upon and not just how “hard” NY struck him and A SLOW
HOMECOMING not working out, a NY period that then disabused him of his once
explored idea - to live in Manhattan or its suburbs and for his daughter Amina
to attend a French lycée.
I
dropped him off at the airport and noticed boarding the same plane as the third
partner Oberon N.V. but did not introduce the two – Feldsberg had near
instantly become a huge embarrassment.
Thus,
no 2nd Paris Period, no moseying around the Picardie.
It is while Brodsky and
Handke and I are at BARNABUS REX, a bar with a real Handke juke box,on 1977, that
[1] the Great Passion, the crazy composer - whom I had left after two years -
enters, sees me among friends, and feints, and Tim Burns, an Aussie sheepfarmer’s
son anarchist revolutionary, carries her back to what is now just her loft in
Duane Park, half a block near.
And [2] that Handke tells me that if Urizen Books needs $ 10,000
he would be willing to lend it to me. – How does he and two other friends know
that I am $ 30,000 shy of my renewed committment to a firm that I own one third
of? But two friends, both lovers, offer 10 k at about the same time. Mindreaders?
And I accept the offer despite the fact that we are not friends. That event is
memorialized in Die Geschichte des
Bleistifts with the notation that he saw someone who was as playful as he
was serious.
Handke’s next appearance in New York is in 1978 in preparation for
his trip to Alaska and he leaves a green leather – patent leather [?]– satchel
with me at my office before he heads out,
and I stash it in a corner behind my swivel chair.
Upon his return we have our one and only hike, it is across the
Brooklyn Bridge, a light snow if falling on the way to Michael Brodksy’s. I
inquire what he is doing – he is writing a book about Alaska. The mother hen in
me becomes fearful at the prospect of someone writing a book about such an
immensity after spending just a few weeks. Have you read McPhee’s book? Yes he
has. I want to share some of my experiences but Handke says that he is full up
– and I understand.
We see each other maybe once or twice more, I take him and Brodksy
to Elaine’s. I pick him up at the Hotel Adam’s and notice the view to Central
Park that comes with that room.
Later I hear from Nancy Meiselas, a fine editor of his at Farrar,
Straus, that he told her that he had fucked up the Alaska book. [as to LANGSAME
HEIMKEHR’S significance to me, see the main text @
Though I spend a fair amount of time with the newest wife-to-be in
Paris in 1979 she and I only go to see the one other author I have living in
the Clamart-Meudon quartier, the formidable war-correspondent Wilfred Burchett
and his darling very peasant Bulgarian wife. The newest wife-to-be who and I have
just returned from Spain retracing her parent’s wedding trip, also likes Handke’s
work, but is anything but a chaste 18 year old and I don’t want the Pasha
layabroad to interfere with yet another important relationship.
Thus, I don’t see Handke again - and it is in Salzburg - for the
last time – until 1980 during my return trip from my month as a piece of
cultural exchange from Bulgaria.
Im Herbst 1980 hatte ich vor der Abreise nach Sofia in
Handke in Salzburg aus Wien oder Frankfurt angerufen, und beim zweiten mal
fragte ich ob die die da das Telefon am ersten Mal beantwortet, ob er sich
vielleicht eine Sekretärin angeschafft hätte: nein, das sei die Libgart
[Schwartz]- was mich um einiges erstaunte, und nach vier Wochen Bulgarien und einigen
Wiener Erholungs Tagen kam ich dann - um einen Zug verspätet - mich königlich
fühlend [als einer der wenigstens ein bisschen Kulturfrieden in
Bulgarisch-U.S.A. Beziehungen gebracht] in Salzburg an; fragte den Portier des
Mirabellen Hotels wo denn der Moenchsberg sei. Da Leben die Grossen Tiere,
sagte der, und dieses Gefühl hatte dieser Irredentist auch irgendwie schon wohl
seit langem; und erzählte dem dann, dass er doch mal den Simmel den er gerade
schmoekerte lassen sein sollte, denn da oben lebe ein Schriftsteller, der
schreibe auch ganz einfach aber besser.
Dem Herrn Handke, wie ich es dann später in seinen
eigenen Worten lesen würde, ist's eines der schlimmsten Sachen, dass man ihn
warten lässt, und seine Reaktion auf die lese majeste war sofort zu bemerken
wie er da auf mich in den herbstlichen Park Anlagen des Mirabellen Hotels mit
den Blättern zuwehte - "Na du altes Arschloch," war ja eigentlich
recht freundlich - ich ihn dann aber schnellsten beschwichtigen musste mit der
quid-pro-quo Lüge, die man ja immer in der linken Tasche haben soll, er sei
doch selbst nicht immer gerade pünktlich, er schuldete mir viel mehr als
pünktlich zu sein!
Er sagte er hätte es erwartet dass ich in solch einem
Hotel absteigen würde, was mich verblüffte, da er nichts über meine Hotel
Vorlieben, die billigsten abseitsliegendsten Pensions, außer dass ich eben
jetzt auch aufs Schwimmen aus war, {und
die USIA die Rechnung beezahlte ] gelernt von dem allergrößten Verlagsschwimmer
überhaupt, dem Siegfried Unseld.
Dass er wohl von seinen eignen Hotel Präferenzen sprach
sagte ich ihm nicht, dem Algonquin in New York, oder The Adams, wo
er die Langsame Heimkehr verfasst, ausgeschwitzt hatte. Sein
bemerkbar verletzten Eitel ein wenig beschwichtigt, stimmte er auch emphatisch
zu als ich mich enthusiastisch über die Bulgarier die ich da getroffen
hatte ausließ, [im nachhinein haben wir also beide eine Vorliebe
für Einbaum Fahrten]. Als
ich ihm die schöne Sammlung verdeutschter moderner Bulgarischer Dichtung,
eine weiterer Beschwichtigungs Versuch, vorzeigte - "Ja, von
hier," vom Müller Verlag in Salzburg, deutete mein Finger - riss er mir
ihn fast aus der Hand als ich auf
Levchevs grosses langes Gedicht deutete und er es in einem Zug sofort las und
auch ausgezeichnet fand, die herrische Geste - nie zuvor von ihm, der in New
York, zuletz vor so ein oder zwei Jahren, mir manchmal ziemlich zahm, und
teilweise "down" [bei der Zurueck kunft aus Colorado, wo ja scheinbar
wirklich ein alter Freund als Schieleerer umgekommen sein muss - [3te Kapitel
von Langsame Heimkehr,] ja irgendwie imponierte mir diese
Geste schon. Levchev, wahrer Dichter und Mitglied des CK, hatte der Kultur
seinem Geheimdienst gegenüber schon ein wenig Raum verschafft. Ich war während
der vier Wochen ein wenig entpropagandiert worden, trotzdem ich mich selbst
vorher doch einigermassen gegen die Propaganda gefeit gehalten hielt. [Was dem
Gehirn Schwamm eitel Wahn in diesem wie wahrscheinlich jedem Jahrhundert ist.]
Wir kamen auf Langsame Heimkehr zu sprechen.
[Es ist möglich dass ich das Buch in der Jackentasche oder meinem Maultiersack
bei mir hatte].
Der Anfang des Gesprächs ging ungefähr so:
"Auch du liest mich nicht mehr?"
Na ja, es gab das Buch seit einem Jahr, er hätte
es mir auch in New York als Manuskript geben können, und mir hatte niemand
eins geschickt sagte ich nicht. Was ich sagte, und was auch sicherlich ziemlich
stimmte, war: "I wasn't ready for it."
Das Jahr 1979-80 war schon teilweise ein sehr Ereignisreiches gewesen,
Liebschaften, Reisen, der ewige Kampf mit dem Verlags Partner, the downtown
life. Aber ich hatte auch
nicht irgend etwas besonderes von dem Buch erwartet: noch ein Alaska Buch, zwar
vom Peter, ich dachte mich ja in Alaska und der Literatur schon
auszukennen. Ich hatte ihn auf die Winter da aufmerksam gemacht als er sich
darüber erkundigte, schon ganz früh während unserer Bekanntaschaft, so um 1970
herum, aber er sagte daran erinnere er sich nicht. Weiteres über Alaska
wollte er nicht von mir hören als ich es ihm während wir unterwegs zu Fuss -
leichter Schnee - über die Brookyn Bridge zu Michael Brodky. "Ich hab
schon zu viel", so ungefähr, was ja dann schon stimmt wenn man
dieses grosse Kapitel liest. Aber ich war jemand der wirklich eine Zeitlang - 9
Monate, aber immerhin - da als geologischer Gehilfe gearbeitet hatte. Aber wie
gesagt: Handke kann Erleben und das wiedergeben von Erlebnissesen ein Erlebnis
für den Leser machen. Ein grosses Glück solch Erlebnis gehabt zu haben und dass
es dann so was gibt das jemand es ausdrücken kann.
r hatte nichts weiteres über das Buch gesagt, 1978 oder so in New
York und auch nicht über Alaska, und wenn‘s ein
Roman werden würde, fragte ich schon besonders nicht. Auch von dem bösen blöden
Empfang des Buches dann in Deutschland hatte ich nichts mitbekommen,
interessierte mich auch nicht zu der Zeit. Also hatte ich es erst auf der Rückreise von Sofia in
Wien gelesen, eine Schauspielerin in Wien sagte ich sähe so aus wie sie sich
den Sorger vorstellte: ich selbst hatte keine Vorstellung dann oder jetzt wie
der aussieht, und auch Handkes angebliches Gesichts Tabu spielt da ihre Rolle,
besonders in diesem auch "namenlosen" Buch. [Aber warum jemand
mit solch einem Gesichts Tabu sich dann dauernd photographieren lässt?
fällt mir im jetzt ein.]
Er sagte darauf, dass er nur einmal während des Buches an
mich gedacht hätte, wonach
mir sofort der Gedanken-[Fehl]-Schluss durch Gehirn schoss, dass jemand der
sich an jeden Gedanken den er über oder an einem Buch gehabt hat erinnert -
dass ich gegen ein so buchmessengelaendeartiges Gedächtnis-Vermögen nicht
ankommen könnte.
[Außerdem hatte ich schon länger es
vorgezogen eher ein "Laufer" [dem "Sorger" sein
Gehilfe] zu sein, was zur Zeit dieser früheren Existenz schon der Fall
war.
Ueberwaeltigt von dem noch ziemlich unverdauten Buch,
dass ich so alle fünf Jahre wiederlese, besonders seinen ersten Teil, welcher mir eins der
wichtigsten Erlebnisse meines eigenen Lebens artikulierte, sagte ich:
"Sehr viel Pathos." Das bejahte er emphatisch.
Dies könnte der Anfang, Anbruch, Einbruch zu einer
Dissertation sein.
Dann kamen wir auf dies und jenes, oder es schienen dies
und das aus beiden von uns hervorzustürzen. Vielleicht waren es Versuche
endlich ins Gespräch zu kommen. Das Briefe schreiben ging ja wunderbar. Ich
wollte auch irgendwie über diesen unsern wunden Punkt - Punkte eigentlich - weg
kommen. Er erzählte mir von
Valium, ich machte dazu eine erbrecherische Miene, meine Traumarbeit hatte damit
schlechte Erfahrungen gemacht. Angesichts irgendwelcher Natur, erzählte ich
plötzlich von einer Kousine die im frühen Alter immer nur die Baueme umarmt
hätte. Dazu sagte er "ja, natürlich." Das muss irgendwie mit dem
Pathos zu tun gehabt haben. Ich sprach also in Ashantiartigen Rätsel-Sprüchen.
Ja auf diese Art waer es schon gegangen. Also im Schmerz verstanden wir uns
schon.
Er sagte, dass er von all dem was er bis dahin
geschrieben nur den Kaspar bereute. Ich antwortete darauf hin nichts,
überlegte nur huschend was denn an dem Stück denn auszusetzen sei - wohl sein
Nihilismus und dass es, trotz seiner musikalischen Struktur, irgendwie so ein
randalisierend lautes Stück ist? so wie die Analytiker den Nachhall des
Kastration Komplexes beschreiben: noisy. Was über die Identitaets Sucht und
Politik und Sprache da ausgesagt wird hat für mich aber in der Zwischenzeit an
Wahrheit nichts eingebüßt. Aus dem Blauen kam ein wütender Angriff auf ein mir
unbekanntes neues Gedicht von Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Ich war schon ganz erschrocken, des
Tonfalls wegen, der Vehemenz, so bin ich immer noch, und sagte auch nichts
dazu. "Wenn ich so'n Art Gedicht lesen wollte, dann konnte ich mal..." Dies war nicht das erste mal, dass
solche Urteile aus ganz unerwarteten Himmelsgegenden kamen... aber die Vehemenz
war neu. - Vielleicht lag diese Attacke daran, dass ich viele Enzensberger
Essays waehrend einer langen Schifffahrt übersetzt und in New York verlegt
hatte? Vielleicht hatte
dieser Enzensberger Hass, wie ja auch jetzt bei Jugoslawischen Angelegenheiten,
mit Handkes Neid zu tun, der damals noch so genialen Essays? und wo dann wegen
dieser besonders vehementen Art besonders viel projiziert wurde? Ich selbst
hatte den Enzensberger, den ersten der Nachkriegsgrossen, schon 1961 by Ruth
Landshoff-York in New York kennen gelernt, vertrug mich aber nicht mehr mit
ihm, wahr auf ihn boese enttaeuscht: er hatte sich unerwarteter Weise als zu
aalartiges Wesen entpuppt, die Lage war gestört und wurde auch nie wieder
richtig-gestellt werden. Falsche Hunde, Disloyalitaet, außerdem interressiert
mich- nach der Psychoanlayse - was er, auch die Susan Sontag, all diese
Brillierenden schreiben - weniger als zuvor.
Was Enzensberger betrifft: am Anfang als Handke
bekannt wurde hatte er es mit Handke versucht, aber Handke schon von Anfang abgesagt;
Ich sagte aus irgendeinem anderen nirgendwo: Man muss ja
alles selbst schaffen; und meinte damit den Verlag.
Und er so etwas wie: Die Dichter müssen aber Zeit zum
traeumen haben. Oder vielleicht: Die Welt wieder zusammenzutrauemen. Dagegen hatte ich
nichts einzuwenden. Jeder ging auf seine Art Grandiositaet zu Grunde.
Dann lud er mich zu einem Schoppen ein und wunderte
sich ungeheurlich darüber, dass ich im Schneidersitz auf der Bank sass, als ob
das etwas ungeheuerlich ungewöhnliches wäre, was bei mir nicht der Fall ist,
trotzdem ich an diesem siegesreichen Tag ["Trunkheld."] schon etwas
lockerer als sonst war - das Trunkheld sein hatte sicherlich mit den mir in
Wien verschriebenen Magenpillen zu tun; Bulgarische Schwarzmeer Energie - tief
eingeatmet in Plodviev [wo angeblich 10,000 Jahre Macedonisches und Thrakisches
oder irgendwelches exotisches Blut in die Bulgarische Adern floss! So hieß das
schon damals in 1980!] - strömte aus mir heraus; ja wenn dass wirklich der Fall
ist würde ich mir schon gern davon eine tägliche Transfusion geben lassen.
Dann gings bergauf und zum Tarok spielen; und es freut
mich zu berichten, dass Herr Handke unter mehr als vier Augen beim Tarok leicht auszuspielen
ist, dass die Leute die mit uns spielten, diese anderen angeblich Grossen
Tiere, auf ihre Weise alle hoechst gescheit waren, und dass wenn Handke
im Felsfenster schreibt er hätte während seiner Jahre
in Salzburg keinen einzigen intelligent Menschen da getroffen, es vielleicht
auf die Schrifstellerei, aber auf nichts sonst zutrifft; was dann ja zu
Wanderungen des Verwundeten durch Salzburg fette Mitte den Stadträndern
zu und an blanken Trauemen sich selbst-heilenden Buechern wie Chinese des
Schmerzen und Der Nachmittag eines
Schriftsteller fuehrt
und dass Herr Handke wahrlich nicht richtig verspielt sein kann,
und jedes verlieren - wie er's ja in Über die Dörfer zugibt -
von ganz früh an nicht vertragen hat. Kein Wunder dass er's so hasst wenn's
scheint, dass sich ein anderer breitmacht! Ich selbst gewann nur vollkommen
verspielt, ohne geringste Anstrengung - und nicht nur in diesem Fall, sowie ich
mich anstrengte hatte ich schon verloren. [Mein, im allgemeinen, viel
ambivalenter ausgestatteter Oedipus Komplex wie ich dann erfuhr.]
Bevor es aber zum eigentlichen Spiel in dieser
Bischöflichen Umgebung kam erzählte Handke in seinem patentierten
hoehnischen Tonfall, dass er sich da umgesehen habe ob es noch eine
Kopie von dem Buch von früher, gemeint war die Kaspar and Other Plays Übersetzung,
herumliege, er aber keins finden konnte. Eigentlich handelte es sich ja nicht
um ein Buch, sondern derer fuenf, und insgesamt so um die dutzend Stücke, auch
ein Roman, und die zwei Gedichtbaende - ich spüre ein damals weit
unterdrueckteres Outrage au Handke jetzt nach, so leicht fiel diese Arbeit mir
doch nicht, ein wenig Anerkennung ging
bei mir schon sehr weit, wahrscheinlich war's mir
schwerer gefallen als die Original Arbeit, und es ist anzunehmen, dass mich das
dann als er mich von sich weg zu dem Dermatologen setzte schon
schön zum siegerischen Spiel angestachelt hat [und noch was, dass wohl im
tiefsten Hintergrund lag]. - Ja, es fing damit an, dass er mich
neben sich setzte und mir - der Skat seit Kind auf von dem Großvater gelernt, der
Bridge, Poker und noch so eine paar andere Sachen kann - brav das Spiel mit
seinen vielen Jokern erklärte. Ich lernte es wahrhaft im Handumdrehen, aber als
ich ihm wahrscheinlich zu Energie sprühend war, setzte er mich neben
einen Dermatologen, und der Dermatologe sagte ganz erstaunt: Ja, so geht's
auch! und wir droschen schön weiter - dass das Handke irgendwie ärgern konnte,
dieses absolut ihn übergehende unhöfliche Benehmen seines Gastes, kam mir zur
Zeit überhaupt nicht in den Sinn, taucht mir erst jetzt aus der Tiefe meines
Unterbewussten als haarsträubende Möglichkeit auf! - Irgendwann kam es auch zu einem
vorverhandelten Anruf von Unseld, es muss ein Sonntag gewesen sein. Dieser Sonntag Abend wahr
wahrscheinlich auch die Zeit die Handke sich eingerichtet hatte eben mal nicht
allein sondern in Gesellschaft zu verbringen. Unselds Sonntags Anruf; er war
eher wie ein Geschaefts Gespraech; und ich fragte den Dr. Dr. auch etwas
Geschäftliches, da ich nach vier Wochen Bulgarien etwas in Vaduz vorhatte. Aber
Unseld tat sich unüberzeugend unwissend und war nicht behilflich.
Im nu hatte ich eine dritte oder wars vierte oder fünfte
Dimension ins Spiel gebracht, und der Handke verstand leider nicht diesen Spass. An diesem Abend
jedenfalls war ich auf keine Weise bereit einer von diesen statischen
Kartenspielern in dieser Cezanne Szene zu sein. Diese Szene wird auch nicht als
mögliche Verspieltheit im Chinesen des Schmerzens erwähnt,
wo das Tarok Spiel mir ein bisschen mystifiziert vorkommt, eine Qualitaet - der
Koans - die er mir dann spaeter sehr geraten hat bei der Übersetzung vonÜber
die Dörfer zu vermeiden. - Hie und dann huschten Hausfrau
und Tochter dazu und bedienten die spielenden Herren [Ich konnte
die Bemerkung "Sie spielen Karten" mir im Hintergrund gesprochen
vorstellen] und machte Handke auf das mir, der bedient aufgewachsen bin,
unangenehm bedienende der Frauen aufmerksam. - Dieser Abend mag wohl dann
irgendwie verärgert in einem der Tagebücher erwähnt werden.
Das war aber noch bei weiten nicht alles: das Spiel
vorbei, war Handke scheinbar wütend, jedenfalls sagte er mir, dass er mir jetzt nicht
die Libgart Schwarz vorzeigen würde. - Da sank mein Herz schon um einiges tief
in die Stiefel, Libgart wegens, scheinbar re-importiert, der Bergheld musste
auch eine Frau haben, zum vorzeigen, und ich denke daran was Vim Wenders mir
vor gar nicht so langer Zeit hier in Seattle erzählte, dass Handke diejenigen
die ihm am naechsten stehen oft verwundet ja, da is ja viel diesartiges im Gewicht
der Welt vorzufinden. Die Frau existierte zum vorzeigen, wie ja auch
vielleicht jetzt wieder, so ein Kaerntnerischer Citizen Kane, was wird das
Motto auf seinem Schlitten heißen? Die zweite jetzt auch weggelaufene Frau,
kaum eine Schauspielerin, zwar schön, und mit Französischen Accent, wurde dem
Peymann als Schaulspielerin oktroyiert bei der Uraufführung des Jugoslavien
Stücks in Wien
Dass sich dieses doch in ihm beruhigen möchte. Wieviel
Anerkennung braucht denn dies verwundete Kind um endlich sich zu beruhigen und
zu heilen? Let it Bleed.] Ja, wenn ihm wirklich damit geholfen wäre, wäre er ja
schon längst geheilt und nicht wie ein wilder Keiler so auf die Pilze aus in
der Niemansbucht, ein schöner Konflikt zwischen Friedensucht, Liebe
und Hass weilt in dem Kerl.
Blasiert wie Goethe möcht er, aber wird's glücklicherweise
nie sein. Der Wutanfall scheinbar schnellstens vorbei - war's von mir erwartet
auf das unangeforderte Vorzeigen der Libgart zu bestehen? Als sie Ritt
Ueber den Bodensee am Geländer des Oestreichischen Instituts in New York spielte, das hatte
eigentlich genügt; aber wenn ich bedenke in was fuer einer Verfassung ich an
dem Abend war, und über die Verfassung von Libgart zu diesem Zeitpunkt wusste
ich nicht geringste [im Vergleich zum Jahr 1971]; und meine schon wieder zahme
Nachgiebigkeit bedeutete ihm wohl, dass der Anflug nebenbuhlerischer
Bergbesieger zu sein wieder verflogen? Jedenfalls: waer dieser Abend eine Party
gewesen: all die strikte, disciplinierte Arbeiterei der vorigen vier Wochen war
sehr im Begriff sich bei mir aufzulösen in einen brautraueberischen Rausch, der
sich dann am nächsten Tag, auf der Rückfahrt aus Vaduz und im Schwellenbad des
Hotel Dolder ausleben würde.
Er fragte, wieder freundlich, ob ich denn vor haette ewig
Kind zu bleiben, und
als ich darauf - es muss so ziemlich der Ort sein an dem der berühmte Stein im Chinese des
Schmerzens geworfen wurde, oder war's wo ererzählte dass sich da schon
viele Salzburger hinabgestürzt hätten? - wieder so ein Selbstmord Ort - dann in
die stille - Mond in der Erinnerung ab ob das stimmt - Nacht Bergluft mein
eigentlich ziemlich verzweifelt protestierendes "never" hinausschrie,
war es schön, so wie ne Segnung, als er sagte, dass das auch in Ordnung sei,
und was wohl stimmt wenn man es mit mindestens ein bisschen mehr Diskretion anfängt
als ich an dieser Nacht... Eine ziemlich kaligarische Stadt, so kam mir das
vor, dieses Salzburg und seine gewundenen Gassen in so einer Mondnacht beim
Abstieg - nachdem er mich, den so leicht disorientierten der sich nur durch das
Wegverlieren zurechtfindet, den Weg zurück nach unten zu den kleinen Tieren
gezeigt hatte. Ja, so bugsiert er auch die Leute die ihn in der Niemandsbucht besuchen
noch herum. Das
Despoten Gesicht hat er ja angeblich bei der Ueberpruefung am Ende der Langsamen
Heimkehr nicht vorgefunden.
Aber im Nachhinnein der Gedanke: du kriegst die nicht zu
sehen weil du - dieser grässliche sadistische, deutsche Tausch/Bestraf Gedanke - es ist
als ob er selber nichts von seinen eigenen Sachen, z.b. dem Bodensee oder
dem Muendel gelernt hatte.
Am Morgen danach war noch das Oestreichische Staats
Schwimm Team mit im Olympia Bad der Mirabelle, versuchte den Handke anzurufen um mich zu
entschuldigen, aber er kam nicht ans Telefon, und ich flog ab zum naechsten
Schwimmbad. Nach einer Zuricher Nacht ein unglaublich wilder Tal Flug einer
neuen, fruehmorgentlichen Verbindung Zurich-Frankfurt, mit einem Piloten der
seine 727 scheinbar mit einer F-16 aus Vietnam verwechselte, um dann in New
York noch das letzte Mal Jimmy Carter zu wählen, der angeblich, so die
Botschaft in Sofia, meine Stimme garnicht brauchte, die hatten sich auch in
irgendeinen Dornröschen Traum eingewickelt.
Einer Oestreichischen Regisseurin der ich die Tarok
Geschichte in Los Angeles erzaehlte, sagte: Ja, dass kann er nicht vertragen. Aber
auch: Er kann schon groß sein. Und dann erzaehlte sie mir Handke - Colbin
Geschichten da sie bei der Verfilmung des Duras Romans dabei gewesen war.Diese
Frauen Sache, die Colbin Kaempfe, kommen auch eher mystifiziert im Chinesen
des Schmerzen vor.
The three important takes
from the Salzburg visit are [1] the discovery that Handke had misunderstood in
1966 whose ass the hideous Alan Ginsburg had wanted to nail – which made
Handke’s then expression appear retrospectively that much more sadistic.
[2] That Handke cannot lose
at games as he himself so wonderfully describes as being unable to even in
early childhood, in the great WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES... that he, in person
cannot be truly playful... dommage. And [3] that if he loses he won’t show - as
compared to showing off Amina baby in Berlin in 1969 - I was being punished by
NOT being - shown the briefly re-imported Libgart – and what a wise move that
might have been, too, considering the conquering mood my visit to Bulgaria had instilled
in me, so if she had been willing to run away as she had been in 1971 in New
York we might have spent a marvelous night in the Hotel Mirabelle .- As the son
of a courageous counter-spy my libido had controlled itself for four straight
weeks while being offered Bulgaria’s best temptresses, but then had to wait one
more day for a beauty and myself to pick each other up on the way back from
Vaduz – the ravishing beauty that was meant to meet me in Vienna had gotten
cold feet, and if she hadn’t I expect I would have been more than one train
later than I was.
After the return from
Bulgaria I
gave Urizen Books one more
big try
but during a vacation from
my exertions had spotted shrimp dock on Jekyll Island in the Marshes of Glynn
and felt I could live happily in just a single big room in one of the robber
baron’s so-called „cottages” – mansions - and knew the time was nigh to pay
obeisance to the Einsiedel side of my heritage as the firm then went down for
which I had staked my life and got myself into a lot of trouble because I
failed to shoot the dark partner in time whom Handke had described in 1971 as
„very dark” or „at the very least very German”
Handke once mentioned that I
didn’t seem to have much luck. Well, you too wouldn’t either if you worked for conmen
like Roger Straus, Siegfried Unseld, Werner Linz and then picked a partner like
Schulz-Keil and be a bit of a wus.
http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2015/04/summa-farrar-straus-roloff.html
However, with all that bad
luck what seemed like a Godsend reached me in 1981 in the form of galleys for
UEBER DIE DOERFER. After being made very happy by the work I wrote Handke that
translating it would test me to the utmost. But it then took me a while to get
to the work which was completed in the early 8os while my analyst was on a Festivus with me shouting the
text out in my loft all by myself – the newest and neglegted wife and I were apart.
When Handke saw my final he wrote it was „the best translation he had ever
seen” and that it was „cutting” as indeed it was bound to be not only for it
being a translation for voice, to actors to SPEAK it, but for the state of mind
recent events had induced in me – it wasn’t just that a piece of butter might
not want to come in my way at that time.
However, after that brief interim, bad luck, where there was no
luck, would be the best I could get. What if the drip who had opposed Handke at
the start at Farrar, Straus, the fellow who had opposed all and killed some of
my projects who had killed off my Adorno Reader with its promised Susan Sontag
introduction, a true drip children’s book editor, should not be editor in
chief! I kept Handke apprised of the correspondence and he was astonished at my
persistence.
I then found a different publisher, PAJ, folks
whom I had given work prior to their starting their own small firm. The
significant excerpt from Handke’s and my correspondence - especially his
extremely valuable suggestions - can be found in my long postscript as it was
then published in the 90s by Ariadne Press.
In the early 80s while still
in my Tribeca loft a Berlin artis and I picked each other up at Le Zinc, one of
those uptown off-shoots – from Un Deux Trois – that had started to sprout in
the gentrifying quartier, a brasserie
with a real zinc bar in what had been one of many shoe stores on Reade Street,
run by three Parisian musketeers, and the Berlin artist and I got along as well
as I had ever with anyone – she was my equal what a nice feeing, and my age.
Once I mentioned guess-who she confessed to having had an affair with him while
he had been in Berlin which he had broken off because she had another lover – I
won’t soon forget the touching way she explained that this had been a period
during which she had been „geil” – telling which confirmed the suspicion that
my man was a pasha who even as a married fman felt that all women were his. A recent
communication from Elisabeth Borchardt is truly touching showing that he could excercise
politesse in the matter - he appears at her door and ask her partner whether he
will allow him to sleep with Elizabeth
„An einem heißen Sonntag – es geschah zu der Zeit, als
Borchers mit dem Autor Claus Carlé liiert war – kam Peter Handke zu Besuch,
offenbar mit starkem Drang in der Lendengegend. Borchers berichtet:
"Erlaubst du, dass ich mit ihr schlafe,
fragte er Claus. Er solle mich fragen, er fragte mich. Ich war aber noch nie
für dergleichen Gastfreundschaft zu haben. Dann doch lieber eine Tasse
Tee."
I was meant to join the
Berlin artist and then fly with her to Tokio, but clearing up the Urizen mess
and the pursuit of the law suit against the former partner and then finalizing
collection once I had won took longer than she could wait. I could hear the leaving in her phone voice, and subsequently
had a dream where half of my head flew off – like a flying saucer – to Berlin I
suppose, a dream that also contained in that respect memories of the very
earliest event of its kind.
To resume the theme of
„lying” - while writing autobiographically - of pages 4-6 of the Notes
section of
that initiated this huge
footnote that has footnotes of its own:
In Handke’s AFTERNOON OF A WRITER the “former
once friend” – yours truly – does not cross one sierra after the other while
sending the writer postcards that sign off with ‘as ever’.
While translating and
subsequently for a few years upon translating WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES I entirely forget that Handke once had taken
possession of one of my previous wives, the Great Fondness, an act that even
now - that part of me not only loves much of the work but even its originator
nearly as much as my mother - will suddenly lurch up destructively from below
like a forever lurking grumpy shark – it was an act with consequences.
Now I had a new wife, had won
the first of several big lawsuits against a former partner, had found a
publisher, PAJ, for WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES and could leave town and regain my
health, and the new wife and I cut out to the American Southwest - where the
two of us did a lot of traveling and loving – say in White Sands
https://tinyurl.com/ya5m4ojf
and then ended up living at 8,000 feet in the
Sacramentos in Billie the Kid country, Simcoe County adjacent to Lincoln, New
Mexico with goats and dogs and horses. However, the only, the one single
solitary Sierra we got near was the Mexican Carmen range which is adjacent to
the Rio Grande – but while traveling also in love with the Handke who could
write something as magnificent as WALK ABOU THTE VILLAGES I sent a postcard at
about each of the many hamlets we stopped at. AFTRNOON OF THE WRITER, thus
contains a host of lies, just concerning yours truly, and how many others? since
subsequently to writing the book Handke fled to Paris, leaving manuscripts
behind?
Walk
About the Villages became my „Heart
test” and few if any passed it, and perhaps Handke had good reason to be so
forgetful and negligent of the Great Fondness and never contacted her in New York, for her sole reaction to the
manuscript was to quote its line about „hefty taxes,” and by the time she did
she had already had two reactions that made me think that my idea of a „great
fondness” was not appropriate to her but that I was glad that I was capable of
such a feeling which makes for a better partnership among artists than those
many passions that do a lot of burning.
Upon returning to NY PAJ
decided not to publish VILLAGES and earned themselves a mallet on your toes
kind of letter – I had really had it, nearly everyone I had been good to had
turned on me, and PAJ – unbelievably - while doing so asked me if they could
reprint something else of mine!
I sent
Handke a copy of the letter – the year is
1986 – and for a reply had a letter that started „that it was good to hear from
me again” – as though the postcards did not count! – and that „one could not do
something like that letter to him” and that „if I persisted it would be the end
of our friendship.” – It never was a good time to threaten me as it is rarely
to threaten anyone without eliciting an unpleasant response, but especially me
in particular and partcicularly in the frame of mind I was in at that time in
my life – but was not too surprised to read in Herwig’s biography that Handke
threaten’s others as he did Kolleritch for publishing a negative review of one
of Handke’s book in Literatur.
And so I wrote back „as to friendship „arent
we lucky about your taking posession of the Great Fondness” – and detailed how
close Libgart and I had come to running off together! – which must have really
hurt, and I wouldn’t have written that jibe now that I have given thought to
the injury that her leaving caused him. – And, as a matter of fact, I was quite
willing to laugh the matter to smithereens and chuck it off to „one of those
things, but no the Lord Pasha of the Moenchsberg who quickly got another
translation of VILLAGES by Ralph Manheim and no longer answered letters. But I
had really found out something in the course of this correspondence and relationship
– and that was the inviolability of Handke’s self-image - which also explains a
lot of the lying at which he is not particularly ingenious so that he might as
well not. The only time to lie as I learned from my mother is when the Gestapo
has entrapped you and confronted you with the utensils you have provided a
fellow conspirator and you say „yes, of course, don’t you know that I am
working for you” and have a clever code name for yourself that they can’t
trace.
At about the time that WALK
ABOUT THE VILLAGES was finally published, by ARIADNE PRESS, I heard from the
then mutual friend Erich Wolfgang Skwara, two of whose novels I translated, that
Handke thought of me „graesslich” – while really liking my work on Skwara’s Plague of Siena!...and he refused to
anwer letters inquiring whether it was all right to quote at length from his
part of our extensive VILLALGES correspondence for my long postscript account
[Daviau got the o.k.]. But anyhow, at
least he allowed the work to be published – that no one knows of it is due to
Ariadne’s Donald Daviau breaking his word that - unlike other Ariadne titles - he
would submit VILLAGES to Publisher’s Weekly & Library Journal, the barest
minimum to let the world know that a title exists, which is why the Austrian
marvels, that Ariadne Books pblishes, are never reviewed.
WALK ABOUT THE VILLAGES is
also a great plea for peace – and just look at the all around misery that
ensued upon the best work Handke and I had done; how unaffected everyone had
been, starting with that swine of cultural swine Roger Straus – you could stuff
all the Nobel PrizeS winners he published into him and you wouln’t get a gram
of foie gras.
Here in Seattle, what if Wim
Wenders does not show up at the University where I am visiting scholar and he
asks whether Handke and I are still friends – and I don’t say that I don’t
think we ever were personal friends, but explain why we are not and Wim nails
the coffin shut saying that „Handke hurts all those closest too him” which
means that Wim, too, was injured, but nonetheless ctd. to work with the great
artist.
Also in Seattle, at the time
of EINBAUM I find that I can do a production of it at Cornish and inquire via
Petra Hardt as to its disposition – Petra writes back, puzzled, that Handke said
„ich sollte das akzeptieren.” Perhaps the fellow is slightly off his rocker.
But his decision not to let me do the translation was just as well – Cornish
turned out be liars as just about everyone in theater here turned out to be.
and in American theater, all
those alleged Handke enthusiasts who fail to come through to do the mature
work.
Scott Abbott then did a fine
translation of EINBAUM – and what do you know PAJ published Handke’s most
Brechtian play, not that any of the creeps in American theater has seen dit to
put it on.
Upon publication of Malte
Herwig’s Handke biograph MEISTER DER DAEMERUNG I receive an e-mail from Marie
Colbin asking whether I wilL put her review on my blog – Herwig has threatned
the Austrian publication that published
it with a lawsuit that will cost them dearly and have taken it down. I oblige
and Marie and I marry and will stay married forever because we will never run out
of amusing Handke anecdotes.
A few years ago friend Zejlko
in Chicago asks me to translate Handke’s THE BEAUTIFUL DAYS OF ARANJUEZ and it
appears Handke has no objections and I do so with the help of fellow Handke
translator Scott Abbott
It seems these two
layabroads know the pornographic heart
of the world where the erotic fixes and possesses and forever arouses and
forever churns. - Thus, I regard Handke
as a great writer, a bit flawed in his younger years, for reasons that I understand, and so - while the work is
venerable - I find the author less so. Ditto for venerators. What might easily
have been a great friendship has left me in a position where I feel free to
admire and propogate and express occasional reservation. Hell, we could laugh
off what transpire between us!
Most
amusing is that the once lay-a-broad - now on the road to sainthood - regards
marriage as a sacrament! Ah the lessening of libido... most of the dancing
girls of yore have become staid maids too & no longer slip into our beds in
the dark of night!
Only a single lie!
NOTES
1] Handke
is said to write autobiography and use his valuable notebooks for that purpose,
as I assume he did for this so imaginative hike [s] through the Picardie that
are the basis for the adventures then assembled into Alexia’s; and it will be
of scholarly interest to compare the final m.s. – in this as in other instances
- with the notebooks
2] Let us not forget the
other statement, less well known, that Handke made at Princeton, to friend Ted
Ziolkovwky, a Hesse scholar, that he „was the new Kafka” which has a certain
truth if you regard his anxiety riddled and inducing and conquering early texts
such as DER HAUSIERER, RADIO PLAY I, MY FOOT MY TUTOR, and which becomes
comprehensible once you contemplate the continuous exposure of someone with Handke’s
nerves to violent primal scenes during
his formative years; [by he time that Handke around age 12 says to his mother
that Bruno cannot be his real father the damage is done] nor I would entirely
discount the „hormigas” of his first novel, the war time bombers – one of my
first traumatic screen memories is of the first bonmbing attack on Bremen, in
1940,
He would understand what transpired and what
effect it had on him to be exposed for a decade - not just to the presence and
example of his dreadful name-giving stepfather Bruno Handke but the effect of
the decade-long exposure to the primal scene with the male a rapist beater - which leads me to suppose is how “the devil –
at least during his early years – slipped into Ms Jones of a genius who in many
other respects is one of the great generous darlings.” - Those infamous “dark sides” that are mentioned
with such frequency of writers having them - derivatives which I don’t think
are genetic or existential but can be specified in each instance, those wound
out of which writers write as Handke – in the ART OF ASKING – confesses that he
does.
