Peter Handke

Peter Handke , 1942-, Austrian novelist and playwright. His controversial, avant-garde works often reflect his ironic sense of the constricting limitations of language and reason and the chaos of actual human experience. His plays include Kaspar (1968), They Are Dying Out (1973), and The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other (1994), which contains 400 characters and no dialogue. Among his other works are the novels Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter (1970; tr. The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, 1972), Die linkshändige Frau (1976; tr. The Left-Handed Woman, 1978), In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus (1997; tr. On a Dark Night I Left My Silent House, 2000), and Der Bildverlust, oder, Durch die Sierra de Gredos (2002; tr. Crossing the Sierra de Gredos, 2007). Some of his other writings are a biographical account of his mother's illness, Wunschloses Unglück (1972; tr. A Sorrow beyond Dreams, 1975; also a theatrical monologue, 1977); the journal Weight of the World (1977, tr. 1984); the essay collection The Jukebox (tr. 1994); and the screenplays for Wim Wenders 's Wrong Move (1979) and Wings of Desire (1987). The usually apolitical Handke set off a storm of protest in Europe with his long essay, A Journey to the Rivers (1996, tr. 1997), a pro-Serbian work about the civil war that accompanied Yugoslavia's disintegration.

Handke, Peter (1942– ), Austrian dramatist and novelist, who first attracted attention with his provocatively anti-theatrical Publikumsbeschimpfung (Offending the Audience, 1966). Other undramatic, plotless, characterless one-act pieces followed, until later works established Handke's serious concern with the problem of individual expression in a world overstocked with readymade concepts. In Kaspar (1968; London, 1973) the chief character, an innocent tabula rasa, is imprinted with conformist language and behaviour; in Der Ritt über den Bodensee (1971; seen in NY, 1972, and London, 1974, as The Ride across Lake Constance) the characters try to communicate through stereotyped speeches and gestures. In the more conventional Die Unvernünftigen sterben aus (The Foolish Ones Die Out, 1974) the banality of his business life stifles the sensitivity of the capitalist protagonist. A dramatic monologue reflecting on his mother's suicide was seen in New York in 1977 as A Sorrow beyond Dreams. The Long Way Round (1981; National Theatre, 1989), about an inheritance dispute between three children after their parents' death, is a ‘dramatic poem’ in which the characters declaim but do not interact.