Absence: A Novel

by Peter Handke, Ralph Manheim (Translator)

A “challenging and rewarding novel”* from Nobel Prize-winning author Peter Handke.

The time is an unspecified modernity, the place possibly Europe. Absence follows four nameless people -- the old man, the woman, the soldier, and the gambler -- as they journey to a desolate wasteland beyond the limits of an unnamed city.

“In this smoothly written fable, Handke forcefully summons readers to the recognition that the essence of human life lies in the striving for self-expression even though its perfect realization must always remain elusive.”―* Publishers Weekly

"A remarkably abstract book even for the very abstract Handke... Slippery but engrossing work, silkily translated." - Kirkus Reviews

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, Literature, 20th Century, German Literature, Novels

118 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Peter Handke (* 6. Dezember 1942 in Griffen, Kärnten) ist ein österreichischer Schriftsteller und Übersetzer.

Peter Handke is an Avant-garde Austrian novelist and playwright. His body of work has been awarded numerous literary prizes, including the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2019. He has also collaborated with German director Wim Wenders, writing the script for The Wrong Move and co-writing the screenplay for Wings of Desire.

Reviews

[Matthew Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

41st book of 2020.

This is my first venture into Nobel Prize winning writer Peter Handke. I see, in this bizarre and confusing book, that his other more popular novels are probably great. They have better plots, and his writing is interesting - one of the final paragraphs of this is beautiful.

However, as it says on the tin, this book has a great absence of plot, characters, interest...

[Lee Foust · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd and disorienting novel, even by Handke's standards. I'm not quite sure what to think of it.

The text begins with some of Handke's usual--and very beautiful--minute descriptions, as in his other novels, of the sights, sounds, and persons populating an unnamed but familiar European landscape. Soon we're introduced to four characters, each in a kind of state of conflict or crisis who then board a train together and are lead by one of their number on a strange odyssey through an outback region in a nearby foreign country.

Yeah, it's all that vague and mysterious. Also, beginning rather late in the novel--in the third of four sections--the narrator occasionally shifts from omniscient third person to second personal plural, as if one of our three followers were the narrator, but it's not consistent nor does it turn out to be a fourth, as-yet-un-described character, and therefore, again, it's like a dead end, a technique more annoying than suggestive.

I'm tempted to read Absence as a fairy tale or parable of some sort, except Handke's descriptive style and the portraits of the characters are so firmly planted in the realistic tradition that the two methods would seem to clash. Although the characters who follow are nameless and therefore named after what might be taken as some sort of symbolic archetype or other--soldier, gambler, and woman--still, I couldn't really work that out to anything very interesting. It also struck me as sexist as the two men have some sort of profession while the "woman" only seemed to exist in her relationship to an unnamed man whose letter to her introduces her character.

The leader character, an "old man" who incessantly writes what appear to be rather meaningless images and words in a notebook, is obviously a traveler--so an apt guide, perhaps also metaphoric for a writer or the author himself, leading these people "away from history," as the text says, "and into pure geography." Still, the geography is as often cultural and historical as it is natural, so perhaps the novel is about the impossibility of escaping our culture wholly, no matter where we go. Certainly the idea of a journey takes its place beside the theme of absence that does haunt the proceedings. Still, it's all rather illusive and ultimately frustrating. I wanted to get more out of it and enjoy it more than I was capable of doing. First time I've ever been disappointed by a Handke novel.

[Louise Van Cleemput · Rating 3 out of 5]

een boekje even ongrijpbaar als excentriek. hoewel ik het verhaal amper heb kunnen vatten kon Handkes schrijfstijl me bekoren. één groot pluspunt aan de vage symboliek is dat ik de betekenis onbewust ietwat heb verdraaid; het las alsof het eigen reisherinneringen waren van afgelopen zomer. het zal niet geholpen hebben aan het verinnerlijken van dit boek in zijn opzet, maar wel aan mijn ervaring ervan.. :)

"Zozeer wordt het oor door de stilte hier gescherpt, dat het zelfs het strijken van vlindervleugels langs het zand van de weg opvangt."

"Hoeveel dagen zijn er voor mij niet voorbijgegaan op deze ene dag!"

"Wij ontbeten buiten op het gras voor de bunker. Het hoogland, tot aan de verste horizon zo gestadig oplopend als een oprit, strekte zich uit in de zon alsof het verheven was boven alle vier de seizoenen. Moeilijk voor te stellen dat daar een ander leven zou voorkomen dan dat van de bomen en de spaarzame vogels." .... (ROOS! QUINTY! MATTIS!)

[نیکزاد نورپناه · Rating 4 out of 5]

اولش جذب نشدم. کند پیش می‌رفت. یعنی اصلاً پیش نمی‌رفت و جای پام توی فضای داستان محکم نمی‌شد. جسته و گریخته از چهار آدم حرف می‌زد بدون اینکه ارتباطشون به هم مشخص بشه. من هم تند و بدون تمرکز جلو می‌رفتم. اما از وسطهاش خیلی جذبش شدم. نثرش یک کیفیت دعاگونه پیدا کرد. انگار باید زیرلب خونده می‌شد و خاصیتی تخدیری به خودش می‌گرفت. خود داستان هم تبدیل شد به سفر عجیب یا شاید نمادین اون چهار نفر به سرزمینی جدید (با حساسیت وسواس‌گونه‌ی هاندکه به جغرافیا و طبیعت و ادراک ما از اون). تکه‌ای از متن رو ترجمه کردم:


دورانِ کودکیِ مردم، کشورهایی ناشناخته پا به عرصه‌ی وجود گذاشتند؛ کشورهایی آن طرفِ کوه‌ها و اقیانوس‌ها. آن کشورها نام داشتند ولی هیچکس نمی‌دانست که آنجا مستقرند. تنها جهات‌شان معلوم بود، اینکه کدام طرفند، آن هم با قطعیتی نیم‌بند. سرچشمه‌های نیل جنوب بودند، قفقاز در شرق، آتلانتیس افسانه‌ای در غرب، و ”سرزمین تاریک“ در شمال. سپس کشتی‌های تجار سررسیدند و در پی آن جنگ‌ها و فتوحات، پس از آن تاریخ شروع شد، و سپس -با جهش‌ها و پرش‌هایی خشن- بلوغ مردم فرا رسید و این بلوغ تمامی افسانه‌های جغرافیای کودکی مردم را منفجر کرد. سرچشمه‌های نیل گل‌آلود شدند، قلل قفقاز که نوک‌شان به عرش کبریایی می‌سایید به زیر کشیده شدند و ابعاد واقعی خودشان را یافتند، ”سرزمین تاریک“ از سِمت پادشاهی آخرِ دنیا خلع شد. دیگر هیچ آتلانتیسی از اعماق دریاها سر بیرون نمی‌کشد. اما نام‌ها باقی ماندند؛ در قصه‌ها و آوازهایی که به دنیای اساطیر جان و نیرو می‌دادند. پس از آن، بهشت به عنوان سرچشمه‌ی دجله و فرات، و همچنین تکه زمینی که کشتی نوح در کوه آرارت روی آن به گِل نشست، هرچه بیشتر از قبل واقعی شدند، و موسای نوزاد تا ابد در سبدش روی نیل به آرامی شناور خواهد بود. واقعیتْ میزبان نام‌هاست. به ترتیب مشابهی، ما در دوران کودکی‌مان به معدود جاهای محبوب‌مان، نام‌های غریب منصوب کردیم؛ این‌گونه بود که جویبارِ انتهای مرتع گاوان، همان جایی که زیر باران سیب‌زمینی کباب می‌کردیم، تبدیل شد به رودخانه‌ی «لیتی»، یا به اصطلاح رودخانه‌ی فراموشی، این‌گونه بود که دسته‌ای تاکِ لاغر مبدل شد به جنگلی آمازون‌وار، و به همین ترتیب صخره‌ی پشت خانه در هیئت کوهپایه‌های «سی‌یرا نوادا» ظاهر شد، گل‌های شیپوری که نوک صخره روییده بود رنگ‌های عجیبِ سرخپوستی به خود گرفتند و سوراخی که در شمشادهای دور باغچه بود، تبدیل شد به مدخل ما برای ورود به دنیای نو. ما نیز حالا بزرگ شده‌ایم و تمامی نام‌های آن دوران، بلا استثنا، پوچ و خالی شده‌اند. ما نیز تاریخی داریم و آنچه که در آن روزگار بوده با تعویض نام‌ها قابل بازیافت نیست. من باور نمی‌کنم که می‌توان آن روزگار را برگرداند، حتی اگر آن جویبار پهن و پهن‌تر شده بود و به رودی مبدل شده بود، حتی اگر آن تاک‌های لاغر به شبکه‌ای درهم‌تنیده از درختان «لیانا» تبدیل شده بود، حتی اگر یک آپاچی واقعی نوکِ صخره کنار گل‌های شیپوری ایستاده بود. اما هنوز مصرانه به نیروی نهان جاها و سرزمین‌ها معتقدم. به سرزمین‌ها باور دارم، نه سرزمین‌های بزرگ، بلکه جاهایی کوچک و ناشناخته، هم در کشور خودمان و هم در کشورهای دیگر. من به آن جاهای بی‌اسم و رسم باور دارم، جاهایی که احتمالاً پررنگ‌ترین ویژگی‌شان این است که ”هیچ چیزی“ آنجا نیست، در حالی که اطراف و اکناف‌شان ”چیزی“ هست. من به قدرت این جاها معتقدم چرا که ”دیگر“ هیچ خبری در آنها نیست و تاکنون هم خبری نبوده. من به سراب‌هایی خالی باور دارم، سراب‌هایی که از ”کامل“ کسر نشده‌اند، بلکه هنوز در میانش‌اند. شک ندارم که این جاها، حتی اگر هنوز بکر و پانخورده باشند، روزی بار می‌دهند، میوه‌ می‌دهند، بارها و بارها، مکرر، آن هم فقط و فقط با تصمیم ما برای عزیمت، و حس درونی ما در قبال این سفر. قرار نیست آنجا جوانی و نشاطم را بازیابم. قرار نیست آنجا آب حیات را جرعه جرعه سر بکشیم. دنبال التیام نیستم. صرفاً، خیلی ساده، آنجا خواهیم بود، بودنی متصل به قبل. از روی جاده‌ای پوشیده از الوارهای پوسیده، از ورای جنگلی پُر از قاب‌هایی با فرش‌های زنگ‌زده، ما آنجا خواهیم بود، متصل به قبل. آنجا علف‌ها لرزیده‌اند بدان‌گونه که فقط علف‌ها می‌لرزند، و بادها وزیده‌اند بدان‌گونه که فقط بادها می‌وزند، و ستونی از مورچگان روی خاک دقیقاً به همان شکلی خواهد بود که ستونی از مورچگان روی خاک، و ریزش قطرات باران روی غبارِ زمین، به شکل یکتا و منحصر بفرد ریزش قطرات باران روی غبارِ زمین خواهد بود. در آن سرزمین، بر شالوده‌ای از هیچی و پوچی، ما به سادگی، مسخ و دگرگونی چیزها به هیئت آنچه واقعاً هستند را، خواهیم دید. حتی در مسیر، ساقه‌ی علف ساکنی شروع به حرکت می‌کند، می‌خرامد، چرا که نگاه‌مان معطوف به آن است، و برعکس، در حضور یک درخت، درونی‌ترین لایه‌ی وجودمان برای لحظه‌ای هیئت آن درخت را به خودش می‌گیرد. من به این جاها و سرزمین‌ها نیاز دارم -و این کلمه‌ای که می‌گویم کمتر از دهان پیرمردی خارج می‌شود- ”تمنایشان“ را دارم. و تمنایم چه می‌خواهد؟ فقط و فقط می‌خواهد که سیراب شود.

[Steven Godin · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Not his best.

[Alina Stardust · Rating 5 out of 5]

Handke: vier Personen gehen in den Wald
Ich: 😮‍💨😮‍💨🌱🥰🌿🌲🔥

[Donald · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is written in a style similar to a later Terrence Malick movie. I am not sure what is going on with the switches from third to first person (or present to past tense), but it's a beautiful little book.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

[Michael Steger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haunting: the mesmerising voice of someone in a depressive state, wandering here and there but not going anywhere...

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminded me in some ways of Astonishing the Gods by Ben Okri although to be fair it’s been a while since I read it. That book is described as:

A young man is transported to an enchanted isle in a quest to discover the secrets of visibility. He finds himself amidst a society of invisible beings who have built a utopia based on a single law, ‘Every experience is repeated or suffered till you experience it properly and fully for the first time.’

In the introduction to the new edition Okri has this to say:

The philosophical fable, from Rasselas to Candide, reveals how much we dream of quests to unknown places. Astonishing the Gods is of that family. In it everything is allusive, indirect – something I learned from Giorgione. It is written with light but fringed with darkness.

You could say much the same about Absence by Peter Handke. It’s different off course and I didn’t start thinking of Okri until I was well into the book but once I did and started to look back on what I’d read previously it all started to make sense. Well, maybe ‘sense’ is too strong a word. I’m not a big fan of magic realism but the technique exists and I do get it. It’s like cartoon physics. If you can cope with Wile E. Coyote standing in mid-air and not falling until he realises there’s nothing supporting him then anything that happens in a magic realist universe should be a piece of cake.

At the start of Absence we don’t know where we are. The book opens:

Late one Sunday afternoon the statues on the city squares are casting long shadows and the humped asphalt of the deserted suburban streets is giving off a bronze glow. The only sounds from inside the café are the hum of the ventilator and an intermittent clatter.

We’re in an unnamed city. Slowly, carefully, the scene is described to us. We’re shown a park in which there stands “a castle-like nineteenth-century building with tall windows surmounted by triangular tympana and just under the eaves some hundred attic windows running all around the building.” We learn it’s a sanatorium for the elderly and the narrator tells us what he sees in certain windows—potted plants, birdcages, televisions, staff ironing and cooking—but our attention is drawn to one room where an old man—“not an inmate of the home; he is the master of this room” —has been writing in “an open notebook, with outsized hard covers, wrapped in cracked, many-times-mended canvas, its paper spotted with mould, as though the whole had a story of its own”:

The pages are covered with columns of signs that vaguely suggest hieroglyphics. Beside them, written in a clear, official-looking, yet childlike hand, are words that seem to be attempts (some followed by question marks) to decipher the signs, such as “to bear in mind”; “to master”; “to break camp”; “to set out”; “to sit down?”; “the runnel?”; “the cliff on the border?”; “the watershed?”

This is typical of the style of the book. Everything is described in… I can only call it loving detail. Of course the words in the book are, or at least seem, nonsensical and I paid them scant attention. Little did I realise that these outline part of the journey he’s about to undertake. Nor is there any indication he’s not going alone.

The narrator’s attention shifts to another open window but not in the old people’s home. In this one the “walls of the room are covered with photographs of all sizes, some in frames—not mere metal strips, but carved mahogany.” They are all pictures of the woman we meet in the room, photos of her at different times in her life. She’s also been writing but her handwriting is barely legible. Luckily for us she delivers—to herself presumably—a monologue, the contents of the sheets she’s been working on and although she makes a little more sense than what the old man it’s still confusing but it’s also compelling. She begins:

He said I was always demanding love, though I myself was totally incapable of giving love. He said that I’ve never been anyone’s wife and never will be. He said I was restlessness personified and whoever I was with I’d never give him anything but trouble. Sooner or later I’d inspire the gentlest person in the world with a destructive urge, in the form either of homicidal frenzy or of a death wish, and convince him that this trait was his true character.

For several pages she details what this “he” said about her. She then gets her handbag and prepares to leave.

The third character is a young soldier, the fourth a gambler. No one is ever named and they seem unrelated but soon enough all four find themselves in the same train compartment—when trains had that kind of compartment—but it’s still not clear that they’re connected or there with a common goal. The gambler is the last to arrive:

The door is thrown open for him even before he gets there, and closes after him like that of a funicular cabin once it is loaded to capacity.

Yet a number of seats are still vacant after he has sat down. There are only three other persons, who, though thrown together at random, seem to acquiesce in the arrangement. With the gambler the group is complete.

They don’t talk. By that I mean they don’t introduce themselves or pass the time of day. Eventually the woman delivers another monologue talking about how as a child she had ended up being institutionalised. She reveals that one of the group was there at the time, a visiting student, but she never says who although logic dictates it must be the old man or the gambler as the soldier is too young. No one acknowledges or comments on what she has to say and they travel on in silence until the old man sees fit to deliver his own monologue during which something resembling an explanation for their journey is given:

I believe in places, not the big ones but the small, unknown ones, in other countries as well as our own. I believe in those places without fame or name, best characterized perhaps by the fact that nothing is there, while all around there is something. I believe in the power of those places because nothing happens there anymore and nothing has happened there yet. I believe in the oases of emptiness, not removed from fullness, but in the midst of it. I am certain that those places, even if not physically trodden, become fruitful time and again through our decision to set out and our feeling for the journey. I shall not be rejuvenated there. We shall not drink the water of life there. We shall not be healed there. We shall simply have been there.

Okay then. We still don’t know why these four but it does look as if he’s in charge. Eventually they disembark and seem, instinctively, to know their way; they only hesitate briefly when they find themselves at the edge of a large forest before crossing “a kind of border”. From here on things start to get weird, maybe not quite Alice-in-Wonderland-weird but still weird and they happily accept everything without batting an eye; in that respect they’re all like Alice. A good example is the gambler’s knapsack which is nothing less than a magic satchel—think Mary Poppins’s handbag—and whatever they need by it a basketball or a raincoat large enough to cover them all he can provide it.

So where are they and why are they there? Well, I’m not going to spoil the book but it includes two epigraphs from Chuang Tzu which will probably serve to confuse you even further especially this one:

Man’s life between heaven and earth is like a white colt dropping into a crevasse and suddenly disappearing … Suppose we try to roam about in the palace of Nowhere, where all things are one.

The book is called Absence. It’s not a word that appears often in the text but where it does, and very powerfully, is in a speech given by the soldier’s mother:

You’re always absent. At home, where you’ve spent twenty years of your life and have hardly ever been away, nobody asks for you. Nobody remembers you, neither your teachers nor your classmates; and even your friend of those days doesn’t think of me anymore as your mother but only as Frau So-and-So. Even we, your parents, when we see you find it hard to believe that it’s really you. You’re there and then again you’re not. It’s your absence that drives us away from you. Because it doesn’t come natural to you, you put it on as a defence against us, against others, against the world; it’s your weapon. You frighten me with your absence.

Is the same true of the others? Perhaps but their absences aren’t explained nearly as forcefully.

The book’s highly descriptive and some of these descriptions are quite breath-taking but after a while I started to tire of them. I wanted to know what was going on with these four and what they were to each other. The soldier is the quietest of the four but when he does finally speak he too sheds some light on their situation:

You are new here, but not strangers. Each of you has been here before! In the period when you were wandering around aimlessly, you wanted to return here, you traced the paths leading to this country on the watermarks of your banknotes; when a book didn’t speak to you of this country in the daytime, your dreams spoke of it at night.

Kirkus Review wondered if these four are “separate aspects of a writer's life” and that’s a reasonable proposition. About halfway through I wondered if they were dead and on their way to the afterlife—think afterlife express—but even when I got to end I wasn’t sure especially when the old man separates himself from the other three. There’re mysteries here to solve but I’m not sure many readers with have the patience or care enough to give this book the time it needs and that’s probably the real problem here: I really wasn’t rooting for these four or any one of them. The one thing that did annoy me was the mysterious switch in narrator. At first it’s clearly an omniscient narrator watching the old man and the woman in their rooms but later a paragraph begins:

Now all four are at the table and the meal is over. The glasses are still there, but only the old man is drinking wine; the gambler and the woman are smoking; the soldier has moved a short distance away; resting one heel on the knee of the other leg, he is twanging a Jew’s harp rendered invisible by the hand he is holding over it—isolated chords with such long pauses between them that in the end we stop expecting a tune. [bold mine]

Who are “we”? Surely an authorial slip. But later:

The walkers did not cross the bridge but followed an old mule track along the river. We were heading downstream…

No doubt here. It has to be one of the four. And again, “There the four of us stayed a long while…” Well, that's clear. But which one’s narrating? “The old man was waiting for us…”—so not the old man. “[A]s we were all lying on our bed of foliage, the woman spoke…”—so not the woman. “[W]e followed our scout’s directions…--the scout here is the soldier which means it must be the gambler. Er, no: “In vain we waited for the gambler, who ordinarily had something handy for every emergency…” So who’s doing the talking? Damned if I know because every now and then the omniscient narrator takes over and the words ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’ vanish from the text. Perhaps this is where Kirkus Review got the idea that these four are not individuals but aspects of a single personality. Either way I was confused.

It’s not a long book—it can just about be read in a single sitting—but I’m not sure it works; it didn’t work for me but, like Okri’s book, something of it will I suspect stay with me so maybe not an entirely wasted few hours.

[CM · Rating 2 out of 5]

A confusing, experimental tale of 4 characters travelling in a dreamy landscape where weather, time the land itself, and simple bodily movement takes on a new dimension of mysticism. Not exactly sure what I have read but it can be a tough read when everything* seems to be lacking here. More like a play than a novella. It seems rather unfinished with an abrupt end.

*character development, character interaction, everything about the journey...

[mooma · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 stars. Damn.

[Papida · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring

[Ian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Handke's 1990 novel Absence is perhaps the most dreamlike of his shorter works, a brazenly experimental fiction in which he seems content to let his characters loose and see where fate takes them. The setting is Europe at some unspecified time, though certainly post-World War Two. The four characters (an old man who scribbles cryptic symbols in a notebook, a very young and mostly silent soldier, a man of middle age who is a gambler, and a young woman who may or may not be emotionally unbalanced) set out from four separate places in an unnamed city and converge on a train compartment. Here they seem to recognize that some inexplicable fellowship exists among them, and when the train stops in the countryside they disembark as a group. Their subsequent wanderings take them through a variety of rural settings. They picnic on the edge of a lake, they endure a heavy storm, they take refuge in a cave. Perhaps the gambler is leading them somewhere. Or maybe it's the old man. Along the way, each delivers one or two lengthy soliloquies touching upon the path he or she has taken through life, and their impressions of themselves and the people and situations they have encountered along the way. Initially, the narrator is merely an observer recording what is happening, but about midway through the book, the narrative perspective shifts into the first person and the narrator begins to speak as if he is one of the group. There is no attempt at explanation, and indeed the essential nature of the story does not change. In the end, the reader feels that these lives have unfolded in the only manner possible. The novel is elegiac rather than dramatic, and a literal description of the action would, to be frank, make little sense. But strangely enough, at the end we relinquish these characters with reluctance, though we have known them for a very short time. As with his earlier fictions, in Absence Handke again pushes against the boundaries of prose narrative, performing a high-wire act with deceptive ease and grace.

[David Antonelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a huge Peter Handke fan and consider him one of the most important modern writers since Becket and Camus. I find his vivid but precise prose an endless truce of fascination and this novel, perhaps his most abstract and experimental, was a big influence wile writing my novel The Architect, which has sections written in a kind of detached poetic voice, sort of like the angels inner dialogue in Wings of Desire. In Absence there are several travellers and we weave through their thoughts and impressions as they make their journey, whether exploratory or metaphoric, is open for interpretation. There are many sections that are so haunting that I have to read and reread them in astonishment as I saver every single word, every single comma or semi colon - of which there are many! A book for "writers" and "dreamers" that may not appeal to all, but is certainly profound and original and worth reading at least once to see what can be done with words - Handke is a true Wizard of prose!

[Stephan Ferreira · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish it. And even though not finishing a book haunts me...leaving me wondering if the ending would have made it...I just didn't think the book was written well enough, or interesting enough to be worthy of finishing it.

Handke tries to weave the lives of a few separate characters, but his exact descriptions are unattached like someone who's eaten too much and stares lazily out a train window. I kept asking myself what the hell was going on after every three sentences.

[Brett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Absence is a strange book, one of the most post-modern and surreal works I've ever read. Throughout the novel, Peter Handke writes with an eerie beauty that certainly intrigued me. But at the same time, its weirdness and the incredibly cryptic nature of its plot make it a book that I struggled to seriously enjoy.

Handke designs some parts of this story in a genuinely innovative and fascinating way. The whole book is told from an omniscient, yet extraordinarily passive narrator -- but at the same time, he occasionally interjects with the first-person collective in a manner that suggests the oneness and uniformity of humanity. The story is set in some anonymous, dreamlike future reality, and the setting constantly morphs in front of the characters' eyes to the extent that its allegorical nature is undoubtable. Most significantly, Handke is a beautiful writer, and several of his individual lines or monologues struck me as deeply emotional and profound. All of these things lay the foundation for what could be a transformative literary invention, a unique discussion of human nature hitherto unexplored by any other author.

Even though I'm usually inclined to view such innovation positively, I found this novel to be a little too radical and nebulous to truly enjoy. If I had to guess, I'd claim that the story is about the meaninglessness and emptiness of everyday life; the four protagonists must journey beyond all human connection and beyond the defined bounds of their world in order to discover the true meaning and joy in life. The old man acts as a sort of spiritual guide, almost a religious figure, and I did find his intentional disappearance at the end somewhat compelling. Unfortunately, this is all basically a wild guess, and I couldn't really get any concrete idea of what Handke was trying to say. Too much of the narrative was too fluid, and the characters too faceless, for me to become attached to the allegory or draw any genuine emotional or spiritual conclusions from it. So despite the book's presumably far-reaching intentions, I ultimately found myself a little unsatisfied at its conclusion.

I wouldn't call Absence a bad book by any means. Handke is undeniably an excellent technical writer (his Nobel Prize attests to that), and this novel combines some beautiful prose with an undeniably complex and thought-provoking allegory. My conclusion is merely that Absence is an extremely experimental work, such a significant departure from a normal novel that it becomes quite difficult to appreciate in the same way. And even for me, who usually loves experimental, innovative and challenging works, it was hard to be deeply engaged. All the same, if you enjoy postmodern literature and complex experimentalism, you might very well love this book.

[Gabrielle Jarrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clearly I am driven to read more of Peter Handke. I experienced rich illusional whispers of Fellini, Erin Morgenstern, Murakami, and Maurice Sendak. Scenes change flawlessly within scenes, within more scenes. Four travelers journey around half of the world within a single day; an old man (from the institution), a woman, a gambler, and a soldier.
Handke's writing is exquisite: High overhead, hanging from the wires: a traffic light, constantly swaying, despite its great size, in an unearthly rhythm which enables it at certain moments to embody a menacing thousand-eyed goddess glaring red-yellow-and-green in all directions ad demanding human sacrifice."
Another gem: "How quick you have been to betray your whole childhood."
Silence is the fifth character in the journeys, absenting sounds. "So sharpened is the hearing by the silence here that not even the grazing of butterfly wings against the sand of the path goes unheard."
I loved it.

[Anthony Gerace · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s more thought experiment than book, which is a problem I have with a lot of Peter Handke but always forget I have until I’ve read another that hews more towards experimental than narrative. This book is “good” but doesn’t do what his best books do, which is evoke a sensation through a combination of experimental prose and straightforward characterisation. Books like Slow Homecoming, Across, and even the earlier pulpier stuff manage to make you care about the characters you’re reading about while at the same time broadening an understanding of looking, or occupying space, or being in the world, or being corrupted by self-expectation... Absence does none of that, so while for sure it’s triumphantly experimental and pointedly about the conceptual landscape and the decisions people make not to occupy it, it left me feeling bored and annoyed throughout.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5*

Omituinen kirja. Ymmärrän hyvin, miksi kaikki eivät lämpene: kirjassa ei oikeastaan tapahdu mitään tai tapahtumat tuntuvat yhdentekeviltä, ja teksti on polveilevaa ja siksi hidaslukuista.

Otin tämän enemmän meditaationa, jolloin teksti sai ikään kuin virrata pääni läpi jälkiä jättämättä. Sellaisena kirja oli minusta jopa aika ihana. Kirjasta löytyy paljon mieleenpainuvia, minulle Suomen kesää nostalgisoivan kuuloisia kuvauksia. Jollain tapaa kirja tuntuu omalta, kai siksi, että siinä kiinnitetään paljon huomiota ympäristön yksityiskohtiin ja tunnelmaan (oksista muodostuviin varjoihin, erilaisiin vaikutelmiin ja ääniin).

Teemojen puolesta tämä tuo mieleeni Tokarczukin Vaeltajat, mutta tämä oli (minusta) parempi.

[Cyrille Honoré · Rating 1 out of 5]

Et c’est donc à ce monsieur qu’on a donné un Nobel? Il a du style dirons certains. Ouais, ok, il empile les virgules, comme ça, pour le plaisir, pour empiler les jolies mots, les jolies expressions. Mais le tout, sous couvert d’être de la poésie, est illisible. J’ai rien compris. Y’a pas d’histoire, juste une branlette de l’auteur. Seul avantage : c’est court, la souffrance est courte. Désavantage : on cherche jusqu’à la dernière page un truc à se raccrocher mais rien n’arrive pour sauver le livre.

[Searchingthemeaningoflife Greece · Rating 5 out of 5]

[...]Αυτός που ξέρει ποια είναι η κατάληλη στιγμή γα όλα - η κατάλληλη στιγμή για να επέμβει, η κατάλληλη στιγμή για αντιπερισπασμούς, η κατάλληλη στιγμή για την πρέπουσα λέξη' και, που, μ' αυτό τον τρόπο, ακόμα κι αν δεν είναι ο αρχηγός γίνεται εκείνος που παίρνει τις αποφάσεις, εκείνος που επιβάλλεται.

- Γιατί δεν πρόκειται για κάτι που σου είναι έμφυτο αλλά που εσύ το χρησιμοποιείς εναντίον μας, εναντίον των άλλων, εναντίον του κόσμου σαν όπλο σου! Η απουσία σου με τρομάζει.
[...]

[Ville Verkkapuro · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book did nothing to me.
In the beginning the level of description and detail was completely ridiculous. It felt like an example on how not to write.
I hate this kind of prose. It feels so empty, it does nothing. This was the longest short book I've ever read.
Handke has gained a lot of praise and I don't want to give up on him. But my god, was this a drag.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Merited in typical Handke manner; a good case study in the way he nonpeoples his ideal movements. Explosively, terrifying, grippingly, bitingly emotional in an unusual way that I can still feel in my throat and back an hour later.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

on and on and on, absence of a laminal flow, moreso aimless, toneless, sequence of frozen moments that mirror the emptiness of contemporary society as well as the numbness of the detached individual in a confusing landscape; yet without involving the audience in the passion of that emptiness.

[John Madera · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deftly drawn fable whose various narrative ambiguities and characterological mysteries are anchored by superb and incredibly precise descriptions of objects, landscape, weather, and more.

[Hal Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

"A jolt passed though all of us at once when we remembered how in childhood we had often hidden from others because we wanted them to look for us."

Nice try, though, Handke.

[Maija · Rating 2 out of 5]

No nyt oli liian kaunokirjallista mulle

[Nadia]

DNF.
Η Απουσία, Δωρικός, Κατερίνα Χατζή, Αθήνα 1989

[death spiral · Rating 2 out of 5]

Prob not a great place to start with Handke but I had this on my shelf for some reason. Kinda reads like a parody of people’s ideas of “experimental European fiction.”