Yet more Handke

Author Martin Mosebach writes on the Peter Handke affair (more here, here and here): “Too bad the American ambassador who encouraged Slobodan Milosevic to wage war in Bosnia didn’t come to his funeral in Belgrade. Someone like Handke who remained faithful to the dead Milosevic is much more worthy of admiration than all the Western politicians who made it possible for Milosevic to commit his crimes while he was alive.”

In an exclusively online answer to writer Botho Strauß‘ general amnesty for geniuses in the Peter Handke affair (text in German here), Jörg Lau puts the two Peter Handkes back together: “Why do we get so upset at Handke’s kitsch rendering of Serbia and things Serbian, why does his coquettishly playful relativisation of the facts annoy us so much, why do our hackles rise when he appears at the funeral of mass murderer Slobodan Milosevic? It’s because he’s a major poet, whose novels and diaries continually provide us with ‘moments of true experience.’ When we attack Peter Handke the politician, we defend Peter Handke the poet.”