I've posted your comment meanwhile, Elarelis
The Heine Preis was a funny one.
First of all Handke said quite a few years ago that he would accept no further prizes.
On the other hand, there has rarely been a both grosser and cleverer and needy publicity hound
than Handke. This creates conflicts in him, such as accepting the Thomas Mann Preis
recently, he happens to dislike Thomas Mann, he gave the money back to the Bavarian
Academy which had renamed its Preis so people would pay more attention to it.
Then after accepting the Preis he called it "a shit Preis"
thus: he [and the Preis] got three times their money's worth in publicity:
a] with the announcement
b ] with Handke returning the money [which he doesnt need and usually gives to a needy case]
c] by actually appearing for the ceremony, and seeing some friends in Munich on the way
d] by then calling the Preis "shit."
There are so many prizes in Germany meanwhile that they have a hard time finding someone famous
to give it to, to call attention to the Preis! The Preis decorates itself with the name of the Preis Winner.
Somehow the Heine Preis is also not fitting, since Heine was a political poet also of the
enlightenment... one could argue that position anyhow.
Handke's chief backer for the Preis was Sigried Loeffler, a close friend and backer of his
who quite rightly sees him as an author of world importance.
I even had a cousin by marriage of mine on that Jury, Gabriele von Arnim
who has not divulged the jury's consideration to me.
Then the idiots of the City of the so well named provincial village of "Düssel" doof [a pun on Dorf/ village + doof=moron/ ultra stupid], as a double pun it means a kind of absentminded idiot who is ultra stupid. I expect the kids in that town can do better than I in this respect.
do him the favor of objecting by not releasing the money
Handke withdraws....
The Mayor apologizes...
Peymann who knows how the game is played as well as anyone...
creates the Berlin Heine Preis in the same amount of 50 K Euro...
And the traveling circus then goes to Kosovo and Handke gives the money to a Serbian enclave...
"Play the game... Stay in the Picture." and that is the Oracle of Dordonna Handke speaking.
And besides, overall on Yugoslavia he had it right, and was and is the better Marxist
than either Enzensberger or Habermas, so he can sleep with an easy conscience,
not that we have to worry too much about agenbite's of inwit in his case!
This entire episode is part of the fall out from Handke's appearance at the Milosevics funeral...
He knew very well that this would cause a huge publicity stink...
He had been a friend of the family for a long while, had enjoyed the favors
of having his work performed in Belgrade, but had refused to testify as a character
witness in De Hague, yet went to the funeral, just a brief appearance instead of protracted testimony and
being exposed to counter testimony which might prove that the big bad wolf was also a criminal....
at the funeral he could play mourner to the hilt... and does he ever.....of course this kind of grandiosity
also takes a certain amount of guts... and on the part of someone who is actually
easily frightened who use to call himself "the new Kakfka"...
The fallout from the funeral appearance was that his greatest play "The Art of Asking" was cancelled by the Comedie Francaise...
That a 100 stupid frogs signed a statement in support of that decision...
The last thing you want to do is fall into the hands of those humanity hyenas
who will imprison you for denying..... what? ... the Armenian genocide....
not any of the French collaborationist or colonialist crimes.
The quacking Frogs upset me more than anything else,
I was just trying to figure out why yesterday, and concluded'
that it probably was because they launched the first Jew murdering crusade
from Paris around the year 1000... I think they got bogged down on their way to Jerusalem... those amazing Christians!
"Art of Asking" can wait, if Peter Brook had guts he would do it at the Buffe du Nord
but Brook hasn't had any guts for many decades now... and hasn't done the
great contemporary playwrights...
The fallout chiefly was several million dollars worth of publicity
assuring the brand name Handke will live on, and what he sells you in the form
of most of the books and plays is the real thing, it's the best medicine
available. And he knows that too.
