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Authors: Peter Handke
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kinds of despair that are unknown to us,” said a village schoolmaster in a crime-thriller series.
The Commissar
.
All the jukeboxes in the region had a record called WORLD-WEARY POLKA .
The first signs of spring—mud puddles, warm wind, and snowless trees. Far away, far beyond my typewriter.
“She took her secret with her to the grave.”
In one dream she had a second face, but it too was rather worn.
She was kindly.
Then again, something cheerful: in a dream I saw all sorts of things that were intolerably painful to look at. Suddenly someone came along and in a twinkling took the painful quality out of all these things. LIKE TAKING DOWN AN OUT-OF-DATE POSTER . The metaphor was part of my dream.
One summer day I was in my grandfather’s room, looking out the window. There wasn’t much to be seen: a street led uphill through the village to a building that was painted dark “
Schönbrunn
” yellow, an old-time inn; there it turned off to one side. It was a SUNDAY AFTERNOON , the street was DESERTED . All at once, I had a bitter-tasting feeling for the man who lived in that room; I felt that he would soon die. But this feeling was softened by the knowledge that his death would be a natural one.
Horror is something perfectly natural: the mind’s emptiness. A thought is taking shape, then suddenly it notices that there is nothing more to think. Whereupon it crashes to the ground like a figure in a comic strip who suddenly realizes that he has been walking on air.
Someday I shall write about all this in greater detail.
Written January—February 1972.
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna
Translation copyright © 1974 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
All rights reserved
This edition first published in 2001 by
Pushkin Press
71–75 Shelton Street
London WC2H 9JQ
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 782270 30 0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
Photograph by Jerry Bauer
Quotation from “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” by Bob Dylan © 1965 M. Witmark & Sons. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Music
www.pushkinpress.com
The Commissar
.
All the jukeboxes in the region had a record called WORLD-WEARY POLKA .
The first signs of spring—mud puddles, warm wind, and snowless trees. Far away, far beyond my typewriter.
“She took her secret with her to the grave.”
In one dream she had a second face, but it too was rather worn.
She was kindly.
Then again, something cheerful: in a dream I saw all sorts of things that were intolerably painful to look at. Suddenly someone came along and in a twinkling took the painful quality out of all these things. LIKE TAKING DOWN AN OUT-OF-DATE POSTER . The metaphor was part of my dream.
One summer day I was in my grandfather’s room, looking out the window. There wasn’t much to be seen: a street led uphill through the village to a building that was painted dark “
Schönbrunn
” yellow, an old-time inn; there it turned off to one side. It was a SUNDAY AFTERNOON , the street was DESERTED . All at once, I had a bitter-tasting feeling for the man who lived in that room; I felt that he would soon die. But this feeling was softened by the knowledge that his death would be a natural one.
Horror is something perfectly natural: the mind’s emptiness. A thought is taking shape, then suddenly it notices that there is nothing more to think. Whereupon it crashes to the ground like a figure in a comic strip who suddenly realizes that he has been walking on air.
Someday I shall write about all this in greater detail.
Written January—February 1972.
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 by Residenz Verlag, Salzburg and Vienna
Translation copyright © 1974 by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
Published by arrangement with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc.
All rights reserved
This edition first published in 2001 by
Pushkin Press
71–75 Shelton Street
London WC2H 9JQ
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 782270 30 0
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
Photograph by Jerry Bauer
Quotation from “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” by Bob Dylan © 1965 M. Witmark & Sons. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Music
www.pushkinpress.com
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