Peter Handke

Yes, I wanted to tell a story (and I enjoyed studying dissertations). For often, in reading and writing, I had seen the truth of storytelling as a clarity in which one sentence calmly engenders another and in which the truth—the insight that came before the story—is perceptible only as a gentle something in the transitions between sentences. Moreover, I knew that reason forgets, the imagination never. For a time I thought of treating particular aspects—the mountain and me, the pictures and me—and setting them down side by side as unconnected fragments. But then I rejected such fragmentary treatment because it would have resulted not from a possibly unsuccessful striving for unity but from a deliberate method, known in advance to be safe. Then, in Grillparzer’s The Poor Minstrel, I read: “I trembled with a longing for unity.” A desire for the One in All was rekindled in me. For I knew that unity is possible. Every single moment of my life hangs together with every other—without intermediate links. I need only reconstitute them with the help of my imagination.