What is amazing, when you follow the way I read Handke’s work, shedding light on the way he disguises or erases, book after book, what he does not want to know regarding historical reality, you understand how seductive Handke’s art is, and how his readers have been totally blinded by this poetic seduction.
As you may suppose, the first person to be deeply surprised by this discovery was me.
My starting point was that for a true writer - and obviously, even if I do not agree with him, Handke is a true writer - each word he uses is necessary. Indeed, what characterizes true literature is necessity. And when you read, even if you do not know what this necessity is exactly for the author, you feel it because this necessity is pretty strong, or even stronger than the writer himself may imagine. And when I read Handke with the question, “why did he take Milosevic’s defence?”, I read it in a different way to how his readers are used to reading him. Generally, the text is more or less like a mirror for the reader. Most of the time, the reader does not mind who is writing and why. Most of the time, the reader is only looking for his own pleasure. His goal is to find this pleasure. And when he finds it, he speaks about this pleasure, about his own feelings more than about the text. But what the background is to this pleasure, he does not care. Moreover, most of the time, he does not want to know about it. And it is easy to understand why: when you try to know about it and when you find it - which I did with Handke’s work - you experience a deep inner conflict. Because there is a painful contradiction between what you want to believe and what you observe. And most of the time, you prefer to avoid the contradiction and keep what you believe - which is wishful thinking - instead of keeping alive this aching conflict and think with it, and try to think through its consequences. In a word, the reader is like all ordinary men, like Handke himself: he prefers to pay attention to his pleasure and avoid the troubling question concerning its background.
Handke’s writings and the Handke Affair illustrate this wonderfully. Those who have been enjoying Handke’s writings for some twenty or thirty years cannot imagine that this work is entirely created by a man who reasons sometimes like an old teenager, sometimes like a traumatized child, feeling himself innocent for everything he says. They cannot imagine that this sixty year old and talented man has remained on the whole immature and has become not so kind as his readers would like to see him. And they do not want to know that this man seems to have been deeply seduced by Milosevic, as others where, one generation before him, by Hitler. When you take pleasure in reading someone, wouldn’t you like the writer to be great and good, as great and good as was your pleasure? Actually, if you agree to see what is in question in the texts more lucidly, and if you agree to hear what the man is really saying under the elegance of his apparent discourse, you feel as if the question was being returned to you, like a boomerang: what really is this pleasure you took with him? And this question is pretty uncomfortable. But it is also possibly fruitful, if you do not avoid it and work with it.
I hope you will forgive this pretty long introduction, but it was important to sketch the landscape of my analysis. Actually, this reading I did of the entirety of Handke’s work was the starting point of a longer one, which is an interpretation of the war initiated by Belgrade in 1991. I concluded this interpretation by publishing, last spring, propositions to build a strong and durable peace for the young generations in all the countries that have emerged from the former Yugoslavia, under the title L’effet papillon. All this work (Nous ne verrons jamais Vukovar and L’effet papillon) is now translated in Croatian and Bosnian and available in Zagreb and Sarajevo (some books have also reached Belgrade).
Now, let’s focus on the Affair. When you examine an object or a situation, you may develop thousands of discourses which may all be contradictory. All of these discourses developing different points of view will not change the object or the situation, but maybe one or two of these discourses may change the way you look at this object or situation. It depends on your own judgment, on your own feelings, on your own history, and on your own work. It depends also on your own aptitude to change your mind, which is not so easy.
In my mind, because of the work I did, this Affair is deeply interesting precisely because it is like a miniature showing exactly what had been happening in France during the war since 1991. In other words, this Affair is a symptom of a larger debate that is very difficult to open in Europe. Obviously, if you didn’t follow the war closely and the declarations in France about what was happening in the Balkans, you cannot see this aspect.
I am not forgetting that we are speaking about censorship, but actually, I am already speaking about it. Because censorship, in the sense I’m taking it now, is necessarily applied to a kind of truth which is disturbing. It may be disturbing for the political powers, it may also be disturbing for your own mind and the way you are used to thinking. In this respect, I would introduce a distinction between censorship, self-censorship or repression on one side, and, on the other side, legal prohibition concerning historical facts like crimes against humanity and genocide. This distinction seems to be crucial precisely because for fifteen years we have been confronted, and especially in this war, with different variations of negationism which render the debate very difficult.

So, I will not take this Affair as most of the media do, like a celebrity Affair, I will take it as seriously as the subject deserves to be taken. And I will give you some of my clues to open the door… if you dare to, I mean, if you are not too afraid of the truth of literature.
I said this Affair was a symptom. I will remind you of the facts. On 18 March 2006, Slobodan Milosevic was buried in Pozarevac. Peter Handke went there and gave a speech on his tomb. He could have gone there without saying anything. I can imagine somebody going there because he was very glad that Milosevic, who was responsible for this dreadful war, was dead. But as you probably know, those who were glad were the same day in Belgrade with yellow balloons and the inscription: “Spring came three days early”. And Peter Handke at the same time was close to the Tchetniks and publicly saying the following words: “The world, the so-called world knows all about Yugoslavia, Serbia. The world, the so-called world knows all about Slobodan Milosevic. The so-called world knows the truth. Because of that, the so-called world is today absent, not only today, not only here. I know that I don’t know. I don’t know the truth. But I look. I listen. I feel. I remember. Because of that, I’m here today, close to Yugoslavia, close to Serbia, close to Slobodan Milosevic.”

The German press related this speech, and few days later, Ruth Valentini in Le Nouvel Observateur, wrote three lines under the title “sifflets”, which means “boos”. In those three lines, not all the facts were confirmed, some details seem to be inaccurate - in particular the supposed kiss to the Serbian flag and the rose thrown on the coffin - anyway Peter Handke snapped up the opportunity to argue that Ruth Valentini was lying, but the main fact remains that Handke said what he said. And when after that he declared he wanted only to be there as witness (as published in Libération on 4 May 2006), it is another example of Handke’s rhetoric. Speaking publicly, Handke was not only a witness but an actor, saying that he doesn’t know the truth about this war and Milosevic’s responsibility.

Reading those lines, Marcel Bozonnet, administrator of La Comédie française, the most symbolic French theatre, decided to take Handke’s play, which had already been scheduled, off the agenda. This removal gave rise to the “Affair”, starting with a petition published in the French newspaper Le Monde on 3 May 2006 and signed by the Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek and other artists, denouncing the “censorship” Handke was a victim of. If you do not know or do not want to know or put aside recent history and the events, you may wonder and ask: Why this decision? Handke is a great and well known writer. What can justify such a decision in a democratic country?
First, it is important to pay attention to the words Marcel Bozonnet used. He specified that the decision was his own, an individual one, and that he assumed all the responsibility for it. I attended the press conference he gave on this occasion. Bozonnet was perfectly clear: he had known from the beginning the pro-Milosevic positions Handke had taken during the war, and in spite of these positions he did not agree with, he accepted at first to program Handke’s play because he thought anybody could be wrong and Handke would probably shift his position in the end. But when he heard what Handke said at Milosevic’s funeral, he was deeply shocked and changed his mind. As he said, hearing Handke, all the memories of this war came back to his mind, the mass murders, the crimes against humanity, the genocide in Bosnia, the trials in the Hague, and he thought he could not, in this context, receive Handke in his theatre, he would not be able to work with him, to shake hands with him. Because he thought - and I agree with him - that in 2006, after all the trials and enquiries and documents we have, it is inadmissible to deny the facts of what happened in Yugoslavia, it is also inadmissible to deny Milosevic’s responsibility - even if he is not the only one to bear the responsibility for this war and even if we may discuss the meaning and the interpretation of those facts.
Of course, when you read the petition entitled “Don’t censor Handke’s work”, written by Anne Weber and signed by Elfriede Jelinek and several intellectuals, you understand pretty well that they do not look at the problem in the same way. I quote: “Peter Handke went to Milosevic’s funeral. It’s not about deciding whether he was right or wrong to go there. It’s about knowing whether this fact must justify or not re-establishing a form of censorship in France exerted by those who go with the flow.” (“Peter Handke est allé à l'enterrement de Slobodan Milosevic. Il ne s'agit pas ici de décider s'il a eu tort ou raison d'y aller. Il s'agit de savoir si ce fait doit justifier ou non le rétablissement en France d'une forme de censure exercée par les bien-pensants. ») Of course, for Bozonnet and his supporters, the problem was precisely, after years of confusion in France, to take a clear position regarding Milosevic’s responsibility.

This first petition is interesting because the text does not mention what actually caused Bozonnet’s decision, I mean Handke’s declaration. This petition only mentions Handke’s presence at the funeral but not his words. When you analyze and think through the situation precisely, it is comical, because of course, if Handke had been talking another way, saying for instance at the funeral: “Milosevic was a big criminal and a catastrophe for Serbia, and I hope Serbia will judge him in its own memory as Germany judged Hitler”, this Affair would not have taken place. But it was impossible for Handke to say that - and it is precisely what I read in his work. Actually, my publisher sent him my book in 2003. I know he knows my work. And in spite of this, three years after, he went to Milosevic funeral and talked like that. It shows exactly what I wrote three years before : this unconscious necessity is stronger than himself and he does not want to know anything. Handke is blind, and behaving, regarding this war, like an impostor, as shown by Yves Laplace in Geneva.

If Handke is blind, the author and signatories of this first petition are deaf in considering that Handke’s declaration does not count or mean anything. Moreover, defining this clear engagement against Milosevic as a way of going with the flow is rhetorically amazing. Indeed, for more than ten years, French public opinion and politicians - François Mitterrand first off - supported Milosevic and his Serbia as our historical friends. This propaganda apparently shocked neither Anne Weber nor Elfriede Jelinek. And her petition was signed by those who supported Milosevic and Karadzic during the war, which is not surprising. For these people crimes against humanity and genocide are apparently what Jean-Marie Le Pen calls ‘details’ of history. (For instance, we find among those signatures Vladimir Dimitrijevic, well known publisher under the name ‘L’Age d’homme’ who supported Milosevic from the beginning of the war; Patrick Besson, French writer and journalist who openly supported Radovan Karadzic during the war ; Emir Kusturica, famous movie director who supported Bosnian Serbs and recently converted himself to Orthodoxy, changing his first name so as to go on supporting the nationalist Serbian cause.) I suppose that some of those who signed this text did not understand very well what the question was exactly. But broadly speaking, to describe the political sensibility of those who support Peter Handke, we find exactly what historians call the “red-brown”, this dreadful alliance between extreme-left and extreme-nationalist-right, historically embodied in the pact between Stalin and Hitler.

As you may suppose, the Affair did not stop with this first text supporting Peter Handke. Being attacked as censors gave rise to a strong reaction - maybe stronger than Anne Weber and their friends could have imagine: on 10th May, Le Monde published another petition entitled “The right to say No”, led by the author and actor Olivier Py supporting Bozonnet’s decision. More then one hundred and fifty personalities signed it, among them another Literature Nobel Prize-winner, Gao Xingjian, the writer Leslie Kaplan, and the theatre director Ariane Mnouchkine. Many papers were published on this occasion, speaking about censorship in the name of freedom, free expression, opinion, etc. In the meantime in Germany, for the same political reasons, a quite similar affair was taking place, with Heine’s prize in Düsseldorf.

If you analyze the arguments, those who have taken Handke’s defence and speak about censorship in the name of free expression are often the same as those who took Milosevic’s and Karadzic’s defence, and they pay attention neither to the historical facts nor to the way Handke is still speaking in 2006, after years of war and crimes against humanity. When you read what they write, you observe that they speak about “opinion”, “free opinion”. In their mind, the evidence which has been collected for years, the evidence we have now concerning the camps, the sterilizations, the systematic rapes, the mass murders, does not count. For them, it is still a matter of “opinion”. For them, there is no truth of history. The facts do not exist in themselves, as a matter of thinking. Truth and lie are put on the same level. The reality principle does not function in their minds as a reference point to think through and try to understand history and especially the mechanism of genocide and the repetition of genocide. And because this dreadful reality is denied or reduced as a matter of “opinion” - as the negationists always do, for instance the French historian Faurisson who dares consider that the gaz chambers did not exist, and as you know, in the name of free expression, Noam Chomsky took his defence, which seems at least paradoxical, when Faurisson was attacked in France for denying the Holocaust - because this reality is denied, it is very difficult to speak with these people. The denial of reality functions like a gap, an abyss, in their mind but also in the dialogue. The question is: what is liberty? What is free expression? Are we free to deny what happened? In the name of liberty, are we free to deny mass murders, systematic extermination, or even genocide? Does our liberty have a limit? What is the frame of our liberty? If you remember Spinoza, you know that there is no liberty without necessity. And what is the necessity of your way of speaking and writing, what is the secret frame of your discourse? This is a very deep question for each of us.

To conclude by trying to answer the question posed by this short contribution, I shall say that France is a true democratic country where free expression is possible for everyone who works, even if it is not easy because of the ignorance and strong prejudices shared by many people, even in the media, as in all democratic countries. Those who deplore the strong criticism concerning Handke’s discourse actually do not tolerate the contradiction between their own love for the work and the way they should look at the man if they admit the secret meaning of his discourse and behaviour. To save their blind love, to save their own pleasure in looking themselves in the mirror of Handke’s writings, they suspend their own judgment and deny the aching truth hidden in the text, this audible truth which could break the mirror, or even the mirror of their own language. And because they can’t see the true meaning of the historical reality they have witnessed without understanding, they cannot hear any strong criticism concerning their idol, Peter Handke. I remind you that for having cancelled the play, Marcel Bozonnet was fired one month after - officially for other reasons, of course. And I remind you that our Minister of Culture received Peter Handke - which was not necessary in this context and could be heard as an ambiguous message to the French public.
I remind you also that Peter Handke’s books are in all bookshops that want to sell them in France and that all theatres who want to out on his plays are free to do so. All this facts show that qualifying Bozonnet’s decision as a matter of censorship depends on a kind of language abuse - a kind of language abuse and manipulation which is pretty common both among the extreme left and the extreme right, both among former communists and strong nationalists. In this respect, Bozonnet’s decision was a political signal and a courageous act. After all, he lost his job while Peter Handke remains free and continues to be loved, which shows that history is both ironic and immoral. Well, I am glad Peter Handke is free, it is the honour of a democracy to protect the freedom of all its artists and writers. But I think that is also our responsibility to fight a famous writer, when he uses his notoriety to support an indefensible cause.
As a parenthesis, if I have time to, I would like to remind you of an interesting detail, showing the paradoxical way Peter Handke thinks and speaks. During the Affair, a paper signed by Jacques Blanc, director of the National theatre in Brest, was published by Libération on 4th May 2006 under the title “The Dishonour of the European Theatre”. In the text, Blanc specifies the meaning of the title by qualifying Handke himself as “the dishonour of the European Theatre”. A few weeks later, Gunter Grass confessed he joined the Waffen-SS when he was seventeen years old. As you know, this surprising declaration gave rise to several reactions in Germany, in France and also in the United States. All his life, Grass has fought for responsibility - and we may suppose that this adult concern and engagement was partially determined by this tragic error when he was teenager. Without entering into this other debate which is - following my point of view - radically different - I only want to share with you the surprise and, to truth be told, the laughter which was mine when I read Handke’s reaction about Grass’s declaration. This reaction was published by an Austrian Magazine called News in September 2006, and was quoted by René Solis in Libération on 20th September. According to Solis, Handke declared that Grass’s confession was “a shame for the whole community of writers”, and he said also that the “the worst thing is to justify [this engagement in the Waffen-SS] by saying that at seventeen one does not know anything”. If I have correctly understood the way Handke reasons, a seventeen year old guy has to know what he is doing, but a sixty-five year old famous writer may declare publicly that in spite of all the documents and evidence collected and published over fifteen years, he does not know what the truth is concerning Milosevic.

Beyond this Affair, beyond Handke as an individual who is also, like all of us, a symptom of his own history, the question is: how was a new genocide possible, in Europe, after the destruction of the Jews during WWII? What interests me is literature’s ability to sometimes mask the reality happening under our eyes, as Handke actually masks it with an apparently style clear and a very sophisticated and subtle rhetoric, and to sometimes reveal the same reality thanks to the use of a new form and a simple language, making the same reality suddenly comprehensible for everyone. It is what I tried to do, and if I have succeeded as I hope and think I have, because people in Croatia and in Bosnia do agree strongly with my interpretation, and because the historical facts confirm also this troubling interpretation, it is paradoxically thanks to Peter Handke: because the Freudian mechanism audible in his texts actually functioned at a collective level in the Serbian propaganda. During the Affair, I tried to open this larger debate, much more important than the isolated case of Peter Handke. But it remained impossible. Was it because of censorship? If I were a little bit paranoiac, maybe I would be speaking like that. But fortunately for me, I am not. Actually, I prefer to consider that it is a matter of prejudices and psychic repression. The way I read Peter Handke is pretty disturbing. As disturbing as the way I interpret the war in Yugoslavia in its entirety. It is disturbing, but it is also constructive. Because of that, I hope that this new approach will forge its path in people’s minds. In this regard, Handke’s Affair was the first step. I hope it has helped to stimulate a kind of new historical conscience and to open people’s minds to a question we cannot avoid when we write and speak about events happening in the world around us: what is our responsibility as writers? If we are free to keep quiet, are we free to deny the truth of events by replacing it with a fantasy of our own, maybe troubled mind? How are we to know whether what we call truth is imaginary or not? How are we to be sure that the language we use is adequate or not to the events? Answering those questions supposes working in the disciplines of others, like history and psychoanalysis. Working in these three fields makes it possible to understand what the truth of literature is. Having worked hard in these three fields for many years, I understand pretty well why people, and maybe writers more than the rest, are afraid of the truth of literature.