Sphinx

Courtesy of Wolfgang Will, another Thucydides quotation from Peter Handke’s journals, that I missed during the research for my paper on the subject (Classical Receptions Journal 4.2, 2012…). From Spuren der Verirrten (2006), pp.24-5:

“Hieβ nicht schon im Altertum Winterende Jahr um Jahr: neuer Krieg, oder weiter im Krieg, und Sommer hieβ: Zeit der groβen Schlachten? ‘Das waren die Ereignisse des Sommers’, so schreibt, Kapitel für Kapitel, der Geschichtsschreiber, und Ereignisse für einen solchen, das sind – wie gesagt… Schon werden die versteckten, nicht abgelieferten Waffen geölt.  Schon erwachen die tausendjährigen Todfeindschaften in alter Frische…”

“Already in antiquity, didn’t the end of winter mean, year after year, new war, or on with the war, and summer meant, time of the great battle? ‘Those were the events of the summer’, so the history writer writes, chapter after chapter, and ‘events’ for someone like that are – as previously noted… Already the hidden, not handed over weapons are oiled.  Already the thousand-year enmities awaken as fresh as ever…”

The good news, from my point of view, is that this doesn’t represent any dramatic shift from Handke’s other references to Thucydides; there’s the same focus on the seasonal organisation of the narrative (“Those were the events of the summer; in the following winter…”), the same sense that history focuses all too often on violence (‘events’ for a historian, or certainly for a historian like Thucydides, mean battles and slaughter) and the same conviction, doubtless fueled by the historian’s own claims, that his account reveals something timeless about human society.