Thursday, April 23, 2009

Noted: Peter Handke

From "The Long Way Around" section of Slow Homecoming (translation by Ralph Manheim):
He had never thought of himself as a scientist, but at the most (occasionally) as a conscientious describer of landscapes. As such, to be sure, he sometimes felt as excited as if he had invented the landscape--and as an inventor he knew that he could not possibly be wicked or selflessly good but was, in his work, an ideal human being. But then it might occur to him that perhaps he was doing good after all, not by giving something to others but by not betraying them. And this non-betrayal was not a failure to do something; it was a strenuous activity. At times he felt that his study of landscape was a science of peace.

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