by Peter Handke
“But now you’re losing the line completely. Go home to your book, to writing and reading. To the original texts, in which for example it is said: ‘Let the word resound, stand by it—whether the moment be favorable or not.’ Have you ever experienced a successful day? With which for once a successful moment, a successful life, perhaps even a successful eternity might coincide?”
“Not yet. Obviously!”
“Obviously”?
“If I had experienced anything even remotely resembling that, I imagine, I should have to fear not only a nightmare for the following night but the cold sweats.”
“Then your successful day is not even an idea, but only a dream?”
“Yes, except that instead of having it, I’ve made it in this essay. Look at my eraser, so black and small, look at the pile of pencil shavings below my window. Phrases and more phrases in the void, to no good purpose, addressed to a third incomprehensible something, though the two of us are not lost. Time and again in his epistles, not to the congregations, but to individuals, his helpers, Paul, from his prison in Rome, wrote about winter. For example, ‘Do try to get here before winter. And when you come, bring the cloak I left with Carpus at Troas …’”
“And where is the cloak now? Forget the dream. See how the snow falls past the empty bird’s nest. Arise to transubstantiation.”
“To the next dream?”
Farrar
Straus
Giroux
New York
ALSO BY PETER HANDKE
Kaspar and Other Plays
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick
Short Letter, Long Farewell
A Sorrow Beyond Dreams
The Ride Across Lake Constance and Other Plays
A Moment of True Feeling
The Left-Handed Woman
The Weight of the World
Slow Homecoming
Across
Repetition
The Afternoon of a Writer
Absence
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Peter Handke and Ralph Manheim had a fruitful, long-standing collaboration and were accustomed to reviewing translations together. Mr. Manheim, who translated works by many internationally acclaimed writers, died shortly after completing his translation of two pieces included in this volume: Essay on the Successful Day and Essay on Tiredness. The final editing on these two essays was done after Mr. Manheim’s death, with Mr. Handke’s approval.
Translation copyright © 1994 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux
All rights reserved
Originally published in German under the titles Versuch über die Müdig-
keit, Versuch über die Jukebox, and Versuch über den geglückten Tag
© Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1989, 1990, 1991
Published simultaneously in Canada by HarperCollinsCanadaLtd
Designed by Fritz Metsch
eISBN 9781466806986
First eBook Edition : December 2011
First edition, 1994
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Handke, Peter.
[Essays. English. Selections]
The jukebox and other essays on storytelling / by Peter Handke ;
translated by Ralph Manheim and Krishna Winston.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Published separately in German under the titles Versuch über die Müdig-
keit, Versuch iiber die Jukebox, and Versuch iiber den gegliickten Tag.
I. Title.