„DOK VAS DAN NE RASTAVI“ ILI HANDKEOV HIPERTEKSTUALNI ODJEK BEKETOVE „POSLEDNjE TRAKE“

Abstract

Peter Handke is one of the most widely read and interpreted German-language authors in the world, and his literary influence, alongside that of Thomas Bernhard, has spread to Quebec, leaving its mark on an entire generation of writers. The writer’s debut novel The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty Kick and the play The Beautiful Days of Aranjuez inspired the works of Wim Wenders, an important representative of the New German Cinema movement – with whom he cosigned the scenarios of The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty Kick and Wings of Desire. This is not a surprise given the influence that the (French) New Novel, to which the New Wave of French cinema also owes a lot, had on Handke. This article contains a comparative study of the play Till Day You Do Part, or A Question of Light, considered as a “sequel” that Handke gives to Beckett’s play Krapp’s Last Tape; these two plays were performed together, under the direction of Christophe Perton at the Théâtre de la Ville de Valence in 2008, and by Jossi Wieler at the Salzburg Festival in 2009. Forming a “diptych” of monologues with its hypotext, Handke’s hypertext gives the voice to one of his female characters, a love of youth that Krapp abandoned in the name of a work to come, while his opus magnum turned into a failure. The play Till Day You Do Part is also permeated with intertextual echoes, in which a deep knowledge of Beckett’s work can be discerned, as well as the finesse of mind necessary to perceive his most subtle qualities. By focusing on examining the meaning of the Handkean literary experience, our comparative analysis will take into account the French and English versions of the two plays.