Das zweite Schwert

Returned after years of wandering in the area southwest of Paris, the hero feels the urge to set off again just three days later. Unlike previous explorations of the world, this time he pursues an unshakeable goal: "So this is the face of a avenger!" I said to myself as I looked in the mirror on that fateful morning before I set out. Revenge for what? For the mother who had been denounced in a newspaper article for having cheered the annexation of her country to Germany. Revenge on whom? A journalist, the author of these false claims, who lived a day's journey away in the hills around Paris. However, the experiences of all those travelers whom Peter Handke sends off from home are confirmed here as well: "I had no plan devised. It had to happen. On the other hand: There was one plan. But this plan is not my own." And so the quest for revenge culminates in a celebration, a conscious decision by the narrator Peter Handke: Only what has substance in real history is granted access to the written story. And vice versa: Only history that unfolds gains reality if it is worth telling.