424
PARTISAN REVIEW
Poe try is the genre where wo rds are mos t eas il y ta ken fo r them–
selves, but H andke's work here stresses the po int even mo re. The
context he creates for his words-in-poems is se lf-consciously artifi cia l,
tha t o f the seri es; a nd as often as poss ibl e, the seri es is deliberately
experimenta l o r unna tural-of "The Inverted Wo rld " where " I don 't
prono unce wo rds , and words prono unce me; / I go to the window and [
am opened ," of the sys tema ti c cha nges in person recorded in "Changes
During the Course of the Day," and ultima tely of "Th e J a pa nese Hit
Parade of May 25, 1968." These poems a re from
The Innerworld of th e
Out erworld of th e Innerworld;
in the coll ecti on
Nonsense and H appi–
n ess
( 1974, 1976), H andke demonstra tes how impo rtant wo rd s in their
own sen se, the poeti c sense, can be, fo r the a bsence of tha t qu a lit y leads
to
" Life Without Poe try":
In thi s monotonousl y glowing autumn world
wiring too seemed nonsensical to me
Everything pressed itself so much upon me
that I los t my gift for fantasy
Before the external magnifi cence of nature
there was no imagining anything anymore
and within the monotony of the sum IOtal of dail y impress ions
nothing particul ar moved me
In his recent fi ction H andke has expl o red th is very po in t of how
easil y on e loses touch when the imagina ti on di es . In
A Moment of
True Fee ling
(1975) Gregor Keuschni g dreams tha t he's kill ed a
woman; thi s shocking thought ma kes him di strust everythin g else in
hi s life. " Because everythin g had los t its va lidity, he could imag ine
nothing." Like the goa li e of H andke's first p rose work, Keuschni g is
virtua lly disconnected from hi s wo rld . "Al o ud he li sted everything tha t
was to be seen-tha t was hi s onl y way of perceiving," since none of
these things lives for him-that had been the do ing of his imagina ti on ,
which has now di ed . The pas t di es as well : "H e couldn ' t remember the
feeling, wha t he remembered was the
fact
of h a ving been ha p py."
Peopl e on the street a re mere cari ca tures . He fee ls like a pri soner in
Disney land. His own manner becomes one of extroverted sui cide, as
" H e wanted to a bolish everything!" But life itse lf does tha t fo r him , fo r
his mind n o longer anima tes the world. " In a n y event, rega rdl ess o f
how he put hi s p erceptions together," H andke tells us, " they a rranged
themselves, independentl y of him, into the traditi on a l well bred non–
sen se."
Keuschni g's act h as been minima l, simpl y having a dream. In
The
L eft -H anded Woman
(published in
The New Y orker
for November 7,
