Warsaw. A two-volume anthology of Peter Handke’s dramas has been released
that the motto of his work is “the unmasking of language”, a particularly suspicious attitude to the language of politics and the media – says Elżbieta Manthey, head of the ADiT publishing house, which published “Wędrowca poświatach z Ĺ‚ów”, a two-volume anthology of plays by the Nobel Prize winner for 2019, Peter Handke.
photo. mat. Adit
When asked where the idea to publish a two-volume anthology of plays by Nobel Prize winner Peter Handke came from, the head of the Drama and Theater Agency, Elżbieta Manthey, said: “Maybe I’ll see from the boast.” “As a modest dramatic publishing house, supporting stage texts, we have been operating since 2000. We have published black look Austrians they called sockets with sockets, so revolutionary artists such as Peter Turrini, George Tabori and Wolfgang Bauer. And also plays by Felix Mitterer, who is a separate author, not this enfant terrible,” they said. “Then, in 2006, we published a drama by Harold Pinter, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2005. Then we published a play Bubble and Winter journey Elfriede Jelinek” – she created.
“The idea to publish Handke’s works has been ruled out since 2019 – based on the fact that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature by some critics. in the image of the author how with his attitude towards Serbia and the war in the Balkans.
The head of ADiT committed that “people came to help, as usual.” “We started in 2019 with orders from Jacek Kaducczak for a new translation insults and more or less at that time to our publishing house Dr. Katarzyna Nowakowska with a question and a proposal to publish additional plays by an additional author. “Then in 2020 you made your contribution with us Nadal storm Jacek Lachowski, who is no longer alive today,” he informed.
Mantey created that “Handke was lucky because monthly Dialogue His plays began to be published as early as the 1960s.
“The work began with the collection of many texts and orders for new translations of plays. We wanted to show Handke cross-sectionally, in the process of development” – it was announced. “As Dr. Nowakowska wrote in the introduction, the common denominator was to emphasize the term A wanderer around the world of wordsapplied to Handke’s work by the well-known literary critic Wolfgang Paterno” – she noted.
The head of ADiT concludes that the “father and godfather” of the two-volume anthology was the history of literature by prof. Edward Białek from the University of Wrocław (co-author of the preface and translator of Handke’s plays and essays published in the second volume of Handke) and Dr. Katarzyna Nowakowska, a Germanist (co-author of the preface and scientific editor of the anthology).
“We have the fact that Handke’s works are published, that he is a well-known Polish reader for his prose works.
When asked about the acclaimed writer’s attitude towards the war in the former Yugoslavia and the “excessive” and critics’ support of Serbia, Manthey propose: “The Balkan war, unless it has not yet healed all wounds, and Europe will live with this responsibility.” “Because it’s easy to demolish or destroy locations, totalitarian systems and to bring education, but if it means – and genocidal at that – then the picture after such a war is actually more bloody” – she said.
It was noted that “today we have a proper history lesson in Ukraine.” “In the second volume, we published an essay by Handke Attempted answer translated by prof. Białka”, she wrote. “From the very beginning, it was very important for us to create texts in this second volume that reveal Handke – and it is known that the motto of all his work is language unmaskingthat is, a thoroughly suspicious eye for language, especially the language of politics and the media.
“FROM Try an answer it follows that the author, declaring sincerity, was perhaps manipulated. “Because these essays and his Nobel lecture can influence how an effective writer’s argument works,” he said.
Manthey showed that his Nobel lecture, in turn, “is a kind of manifesto, an attempt at a confession, which is attached to the roots of his personality.” “When translating this lecture, we used a translation from English, Handke’s language is strictly hermetic. He uses terms and checks taken from his works, so in order to understand, you have to take part in his achievements” – she reviewed.
She noted that ADiT wanted to publish more of Handke’s essays but did not receive the rights. “Other releases beat us” – Polish.
When asked about Polish stagings of the Austrian’s plays, Manthey stated that “in Warsaw’s Studio Theater in 1996, Zbigniew Brzoza brilliantly staged Handke’s play An hour when you don’t know anything about yourself perfectly“. “It was a real event” – naturala.
“It seems to me that Handke’s early plays are, paradoxically, extremely contemporary and can serve the theater today, which is in the process of turbulent changes, and also strive for sincerity, for perceiving each word in a very profound way” – they assess. “One could say that theater looks at language as a weapon of crime – and in this context Handke is an extraordinary author. Since the 1960s, he has looked at language as a potential torturer” – exactly.
“We know only his flagship case being offendedbut his older plays are equally valuable” – they inform. “Of course, being offended to its very credible text, which is why I persuaded the translator Jacek Kaducak, using the best modern, brutal language in translation, to make this text adequate to the living language that is used in life” – the criterion.
Manthey also calls attention to the fact that his other plays, transmitted in the first volume of the anthology, such as “Self-incrimination”, “Prophecy”, “Call for help”, “Quodlibet” – “are almost entirely his briefcases, which see one phenomenon in a potential viewer in a way incredibly modern.” “They treat him brutally, with honesty that hurts. This is a kind of confession, provocation,” she said.
“I think that Handke proposes a very interesting model of theatre. He addresses the viewer and recognizes him as the +most important actor+. This is a perverse, paradoxical shift of the boundaries of theatre, but understandable given the author’s deep distrust of theater and language,” she said.
She announced that on December 9, the Institute of German Philology of the University of Wrocław will hold an international scientific conference entitled “Peter Handke in Poland. Translations – Performances – Criticism of whom” will accompany the promotion of a two-volume anthology of texts by the excellent writer published by ADiT and an attempt to read his play “Self-Accusation” translated by Karolina Bikont.
The first volume, 501 pages long, contains nine of Handke’s plays, additionally in new translations prepared especially for this publication and written by Dr. Katarzyna Nowakowska and prof. Edward Białek before speaking “Wanderer around the world with words. About the early and new stage work of Peter Handke”. Readers of care here works: “Injury harmful”, “Self-incrimination”, “Prophecy”, “Kaspar”, “Call for help”, “Quadlibet”, “Apprentice and Foreman, or the egg wants to teach the hen” “The hour when nothing is known about myself. Spectacular” and “Preparations for immortality. Royal drama” and information about the authors of the translations. They illustrate the meanders of the development of Handke’s aesthetics in three sources of writing activity and bring closer the stages of the individual endless journey of the Nobel Prize winner in literature through the worlds of words.
In the second volume, four new dramas were published on 287 pages, additionally by Handke already in the 21st century. They are: “Until the day breaks you apart”, “Still the storm”, “Beautiful days in Aranjuez” and “Zdeněk Adamec. Scene”. They are complemented by two essays (Austria and the Writers” and “An Attempt at an Answer”), in which the writers “sketch out their proper literary movement and set out the stance against it of accusations of trying to relativize the crimes of the Serbian cause”. 2019 in the building of the Swedish Academy.
“I am convinced that in the reality of an unimaginably tense geopolitical situation experimental at the time, the vision of Handke’s theater in which the spectator and the actor find a common ground for this action, as well as the expressionist cry of the writer warning against the dominance of the Space Plungers, will receive an award for a new search for theatrical forms and stage language” – the introduction from the publisher, Elżbieta Manthey, was noticed.