Anyone who sets out to read Peter Handke's hotly debated Serbia Book in the belief of finding provocative quotes about Slobodan Milosevic or the genocide in Srebrenica will be disappointed. There is no meaning here for the Serbian president's defense, nor a hint of questioning of the brutal massacre.
It is a book that, as I read it, had a completely different case: a kind of daring attempt to reach a new language for the conflict, to find the nuances of a black and white war. An experiment that divided readers (and non-readers) into two camps.
The book consists of two long newspaper articles, published in early January 1996 in the German Süddeutsche Zeitung. The texts are based on the journey Handke made to Serbia in November 1995, when the war lasted for over four years. In German, the title Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen reads Danube, Save, Morawa and Drina or Gerechtigkeit for Serbia (A wintry trip to the rivers Danube, Save, Morawa and Drina or Justice for Serbia). And perhaps an answer to the controversies surrounding the book can already be found here.
The first title reflects that it is a searchable, literary travelogue, in which the author wanted to go to the sources (the rivers!) To try to create his own, nuanced and true image of Serbia. The second title, which was set by the newspaper editorial, signals more that it is a completed position: a polemical, political pamphlet.
Handke's reason for the Serbia trip was his growing anger and powerlessness over what he (like many others) perceived in the war report: that the public and the media had from the outset chosen a one-sided, mechanical and cemented attitude in which the Serbs were the bad guys, the executioners, and the others the former Yugoslav people were the good, the victims. Prepared and confident opinions that, according to Handke, were based on hearing and ignorance. He also believed that the opinions were expressed in a standard and cliché language, without contact with the ambiguous truth.
With his Serbia trip he wanted to invite resistance - words that counterbalance, contradict, contradictory permeate the text. On the basis of his own senses he wanted to experience the real "world of life" (a philosophical expression borrowed from Husserl), and to present it in a searching, trying language. And here he is himself and his other literary works faithful:
I have no ideology, I have no worldview, no real message to the world. My message lies in changing the sentences so that the sentences become material, so that I can try to rework my speechless experiences into a kind of second nature. (The Time, 2019-10-10)
However, I think there was a further reason for Handke to write the book, a reason that deals with exclusion and identification with what happens in the periphery (see Nobel Prize motivation). The Serbs are consistently described as outlaws: excluded, excluded, cut off, without the right to their own story. Recurring is how quiet they are. Literally, it is almost clearly emphasized with the increasing winter and the increasingly dense snowfall - which also prevents Handke himself from leaving the Serbian village he visits. Together (!) They sit there, cut off from the outside world, both literally and figuratively in the cold.
But - throughout the book, Peter Handke questions his own motives and reactions. Almost every thought is followed by a question mark. And his own reactions are contradictory: some of him places a heavy debt burden on the Serbs, for example for the "carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina", another part of him wants to find a counter-image of dead Serbian victims directly.
Already in Handke's desire to go against the usual image of the "enemy", there is of course a breeding ground for conflicts. But I think even his linguistic search can lead to controversy. The sentences are windingly long, searching, trying - preferably ended with question marks. Often with countless inserted additions, including those with question marks. Individual words are also followed by question marks. It is a trying way to write, and a trying way to read. It is easy to start answering yourself, and thus easy to get into the predetermined opinions you have, and in their predetermined way of reading. Thus, it is easy to do what Handke wants to challenge: stay in the generalized, finished, unquestioned.
He even questions his own choice to write about Serbia, when so much more suffering has occurred in Bosnia. But, he writes, his work is something else: “Sticking to the bad facts, that's right. For peace, however, something more is needed, not less important than facts. ” What he is referring to is just another language, a kind of“ poetic intervention ”, where he wants his counterparts to stop throwing slogans like“ nationalist ”,“ revisionist ”, "Bloody dictatorship" on one another, words that hinder attempts at reconciliation and mutual understanding.
In retrospect he found that he did not succeed in that work. Handke's attempt to nuance the image of both the Serbs and the Yugoslav war has not landed where he wished. Perhaps it is difficult to stick to the shades of gray in a black and white war. But that his case has been misinterpreted and misunderstood a number of times since the text was written, will probably find his explanation beyond just this book's covers - in the clearly more controversial he would write, say and do in the years to come.