This thesis aims to explore the “difficult” nature of Peter Handke’s prose with special attention to the author’s principle of “Langsamkeit.” Operating according to this principle, the author aims to slow down the reading process and resist the reader’s tendency to “devour” the text: a practice which often frustrates readers. Related to this aim is Handke’s effort to resist the “burden of history” (i.e. the politically charged literary atmosphere of Post-World War II Austria and Germany) by creating a self-referential text in which the author’s Engagement lies almost exclusively in his ability to reflect on language and discourse.
Related to Handke’s principle of “Langsamkeit” is a more “classical” concern for form and composition. Handke pursues an aesthetic agenda inspired by authors like Goethe and Stifter and largely based on his study of various painters—especially Paul Cézanne. However, his aesthetics can also be classified as typically postmodern in that he attempts to undermine the temporality of the narrative. In Handke’s novels, static motifs are often foregrounded so that description serves as more than a simple background to plot. In this thesis, an interpretation of In einer dunklen Nacht ging ich aus meinem stillen Haus (1997) reveals the „untranslatable“ elements of the text—the descriptive events which cannot be grasped according to causal relationships between narrative units. The goal is to demonstrate how visual and spatial motifs in Handke’s prose undermine the traditional causality of the narrative structure.