Summary
Peter Handke: The Second Sword
After returning to the Paris area after years spent on the road, the hero of Peter Handke's latest book is forced to leave his home again. Reason? A revenge campaign to right the wrong done to his late, "holy" mother, who was slandered by a journalist by insinuating that she was a sympathizer of the Third Reich. Where to find accomplices to implement this plan? In fact, can we even talk about a plan here, or is it an impulsive gesture, a movement without a predetermined goal?
Here, the experience of all those travelers whom Handke's narrator lets go from home is once again confirmed: "There was that, that one plan. It exists. But that plan is not mine... moving first in the wrong direction, I was part of the plan." So, the original intention will have a completely unexpected outcome, which nevertheless resulted from the conscious decision of the writer: in the written story only what exists in real historical events is recognized, and vice versa, history becomes reality only if it is worth telling.
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