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PARTISAN REVIEW
other people's rhythms. When a friend says: "We were expecting to
find the loneliest woman on earth," she replies, " I apologize for not
being alone this evening. It's quite accidental."
But a storm is raging outside and when Bruno asks whether she
has decided what she is going to do with her life, she tells him: "No.
For a moment I saw my future clearly and it chilled me to the bone."
After the visitors leave, she cleans up, looks into her eyes in a mirror
and says: "You haven 't given yourself away. And no one will ever
humiliate you again. " Suddenly she jumps up and begins sketching:
... first her feet on the chair, then the room behind them, the
window, the starry sky, changing as the night wore on-each object
in every detail. Her strokes were awkward and uncertain, lacking in
vigor, but occasionally she managed
to
draw a line with a single,
almost sweeping movement. Hours passed before she laid the paper
down . She looked at it for some time, then went on sketching.
And the novel ends:
In the daylight she sat in the rocking chair on the terrace.
The moving crowns of the pine trees were reflected on the window
behind her. She began to rock; she raised her arms. She was lightly
dressed, with no blanket on her knees.
A queer, celebratory ending, but tempered by disturbing premoni–
tions and many unanswered questions. The heroine has convincingly
learned new languages for getting more accurately in touch with
herself and the world of objects around her. Yet proud solitude is
achieved by rejections and ' withdrawals and an estrangement, the
consequences of which remain unclear. The peopled world is curiously
distanced, almost drugged; and even the son with whom she shares so
much seems unnaturally passive. The hint of autism in the concentra–
tion of her sketching reminds us (as do other details) that the liberating
new modes of self-expression are also capable of chaining her. Dreamy
vigilance may be another kind of trance. In this remarkable novel (as in
his other fine book,
Short Letter, Long Farewell)
Handke is providing
a fresh, engrossing fictional demonstration of Walter Benjamin's
aphorism: "All decisive blows are struck left-handed." But he is
demonstrating too that the process of remaking the self can be violent,
risky, wayward, provisional, always in motion, with all questions of
certainty suspended.
LAWRENCE GRAVER
