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Authors: Peter Handke
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counted; in the foreground, an episodic jumble of shapes, which gradually receded from the picture. I felt mocked and helpless. All at once, in my impotent rage, I felt the need of writing something about my mother.
In the house that evening I climbed the stairs. Suddenly I took several steps at one bound, giggling in an unfamiliar voice, as if I had become a ventriloquist. I ran up the last few steps. Once upstairs I thumped my chest lustily and hugged myself. Then slowly, with a sense of self-importance, as though I were the holder of a unique secret, I went back down the stairs.
It is not true that writing has helped me. In my weeks of preoccupation with the story, the story has not ceased to preoccupy me. Writing has not, as I at first supposed, been a remembering of a concluded period in my life, but merely a constant pretence at remembering, in theform of sentences that only lay claim to detachment. Even now I sometimes wake up with a start, as though in response to some inward prodding, and, breathless with horror, feel that I am literally rotting away from second to second. The air in the darkness is so still that, losing their balance, torn from their moorings, the things of my world fly soundlessly about: in another minute they will come crashing down from all directions and smother me. In these tempests of dread, I become magnetic like a decaying animal and, quite otherwise than in undirected pleasure, where all my feelings play together freely, I am attacked by an undirected, objective horror.
Obviously narration is only an act of memory; on the other hand, it holds nothing in reserve for future use; it merely derives a little pleasure from states of dread by trying to formulate them as aptly as possible; from enjoyment of horror it produces enjoyment of memory.
Often during the day I have a sense of being watched. I open doors and look out. Every sound seems to be an attempt on my life.
Sometimes, of course, as I worked on my story, my frankness and honesty weighed on me and I longed to write something that would allow me to lie and dissemble a bit, a play, for instance.
Once, when I was slicing bread, my knife slipped; instantly, I remembered how in the morning she usedto cut thin slices of bread and pour warm milk on them for the children.
Often, as she passed by, she would quickly wipe out the children’s ears and nostrils with her saliva. I always shrank back from the saliva smell.
Once, while mountain climbing with a group of friends, she started off to one side to relieve herself. I was ashamed of her and started to bawl, so she held it in.
In the hospital she was always in a big ward with a lot of other people. Yes, those things still exist! Once in such a hospital ward she pressed my hand for a long while.
When everyone had been served and had finished eating, she would daintily pop the remaining scraps into her mouth.
(These, of course, are anecdotes. But in this context scientific inferences would be just as anecdotal. All words and phrases are too mild.)
The eggnog bottle in the sideboard!
My painful memory of her daily motions, especially in the kitchen.
When she was angry, she didn’t beat the children; at the most, she would wipe their noses violently.
Fear of death when I wake up at night and the light is on in the hallway.
Some years ago I had the idea of making an adventure film with all the members of my family; it would have had nothing to do with me personally.
As a child, she was moonstruck.
She died on a Friday, and during the first few weeks it was on Fridays that her death agony was most present to me. Every Friday the dawn was painful and dark. The yellow streetlights in the night mist; dirty snow and sewer smell; folded arms in the television chair; the last toilet flushing, twice.
Often while at work on my story I felt that writing music would be more in keeping with its incidents. Sweet New England. …
“Perhaps there are new, unsuspected
In the house that evening I climbed the stairs. Suddenly I took several steps at one bound, giggling in an unfamiliar voice, as if I had become a ventriloquist. I ran up the last few steps. Once upstairs I thumped my chest lustily and hugged myself. Then slowly, with a sense of self-importance, as though I were the holder of a unique secret, I went back down the stairs.
It is not true that writing has helped me. In my weeks of preoccupation with the story, the story has not ceased to preoccupy me. Writing has not, as I at first supposed, been a remembering of a concluded period in my life, but merely a constant pretence at remembering, in theform of sentences that only lay claim to detachment. Even now I sometimes wake up with a start, as though in response to some inward prodding, and, breathless with horror, feel that I am literally rotting away from second to second. The air in the darkness is so still that, losing their balance, torn from their moorings, the things of my world fly soundlessly about: in another minute they will come crashing down from all directions and smother me. In these tempests of dread, I become magnetic like a decaying animal and, quite otherwise than in undirected pleasure, where all my feelings play together freely, I am attacked by an undirected, objective horror.
Obviously narration is only an act of memory; on the other hand, it holds nothing in reserve for future use; it merely derives a little pleasure from states of dread by trying to formulate them as aptly as possible; from enjoyment of horror it produces enjoyment of memory.
Often during the day I have a sense of being watched. I open doors and look out. Every sound seems to be an attempt on my life.
Sometimes, of course, as I worked on my story, my frankness and honesty weighed on me and I longed to write something that would allow me to lie and dissemble a bit, a play, for instance.
Once, when I was slicing bread, my knife slipped; instantly, I remembered how in the morning she usedto cut thin slices of bread and pour warm milk on them for the children.
Often, as she passed by, she would quickly wipe out the children’s ears and nostrils with her saliva. I always shrank back from the saliva smell.
Once, while mountain climbing with a group of friends, she started off to one side to relieve herself. I was ashamed of her and started to bawl, so she held it in.
In the hospital she was always in a big ward with a lot of other people. Yes, those things still exist! Once in such a hospital ward she pressed my hand for a long while.
When everyone had been served and had finished eating, she would daintily pop the remaining scraps into her mouth.
(These, of course, are anecdotes. But in this context scientific inferences would be just as anecdotal. All words and phrases are too mild.)
The eggnog bottle in the sideboard!
My painful memory of her daily motions, especially in the kitchen.
When she was angry, she didn’t beat the children; at the most, she would wipe their noses violently.
Fear of death when I wake up at night and the light is on in the hallway.
Some years ago I had the idea of making an adventure film with all the members of my family; it would have had nothing to do with me personally.
As a child, she was moonstruck.
She died on a Friday, and during the first few weeks it was on Fridays that her death agony was most present to me. Every Friday the dawn was painful and dark. The yellow streetlights in the night mist; dirty snow and sewer smell; folded arms in the television chair; the last toilet flushing, twice.
Often while at work on my story I felt that writing music would be more in keeping with its incidents. Sweet New England. …
“Perhaps there are new, unsuspected
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