Handke triumphs

So Peter Handke has received the Heine-Preis despite the distortions of the herd. Gilles d'Aymery provides an excellent report of the farce. He also translates the words of the great author himself in a conveniently delayed correction to the factual errors spread by the French press:

I have not laid a red rose on the hearse of Slobodan Milosevic. I did not touch the hearse. I did not wave the Serbian flag. And I have never approved "the Srebrenica massacre and other crimes done in the name of ethnic cleansing." I've never considered the Serbs as "the real victims of the war."

We even get a glimpse of what that infamous speech at the funeral consisted.

The world, the so-called world, knows everything on Yugoslavia, Serbia. The world, the so-called world, knows everything on Slobodan Milosevic. The so-called world knows the truth. For that, the so-called world today is absent, and not only today, and not only here. I know that I do not know. I do not know the truth. But I look. I feel. I remember. For that, I am present today, close to Yugoslavia, close to Serbia, close to Slobodan Milosevic.

The speech might be present in full and in German on Michael Roloff's unique Handke site but I can't find it.

I hope this tiresome controversy at least has the virtue of prompting more English-speaking interest in Handke's work, particularly those transcendent novels of not knowing, of looking, of feeling and of remembering Across (which I actually saw in a bookshop recently!!), Repetition and The Afternoon of a Writer. Maybe someone might even translate and publish Der Bildverlust and Don Juan. In the meantime we can make do with other necessary volumes such as Jade's My Autobiography (as if she could write anybody else's).