Handke: Clips: Wordlessness


You wanted to become pure spirit as a writer, and what did you become? A ghost! True: your quivering writerly language came from wordlessness, a primal wordlessness. Without this primal wordlessness, there would be no writing, or so you believe. (And your writing, then, between guilt and elation.) But wordlessness today? As the basis of a writer’s existence? Old hat, snows of yesteryear, not worth mentioning. Every word and every sentence is available nowadays in advance, as prefabricated components, so to speak. Enough of your guilt and also, granted, your elation. The quivering is over and done with, my friend.

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