La Por del Porter davant del Penalty, de Peter Handke

(Die Angst des Tormanns beim Elfmeter)
Eds. 62, col. El Balancí
Barcelona, 1974 [1970]

Josef Bloch, exportero de fútbol, es despedido del trabajo. Emprende entonces un vagar que inicia un proceso de autoalienación, de distanciamiento de la realidad. Como si lo que le rodea no fuera sino un mundo irreal en el que se ve inmerso, asesina a una taquillera de cine después de pasar la noche con ella. Acto seguido, emprende la huida hacia el sur, hacia un pueblo fronterizo, donde se dedica a esperar, o más bien, a recorrer este mundo ajeno a él, hasta que se produzca su descubrimiento y arresto, que, trasciende al lector, es inminente.
Esta novela corta solipsista no tiene nada, o muy poco, de criminal, y un mucho de monólogo interior en el que Bloch llegará a un análisis y despiece de la realidad casi obsesivo. Novela en la que todo es imprescindible, incluyendo el título, metáfora de la inmovilidadde la espera del propio Bloch, metáfora también de la distorsión del tiempo y los detalles cotidianos que se produce en esta espera hasta el chut final del penalty, es decir, su arresto definitivo (o incluso, símbolo dentro de símbolo, del final de su vida).
He mencionado el adjetivo "solipsista", y no creo que haya otro más apropiado para El Miedo del Portero al Penalty. Desde luego, no es existencialista, puesto que Bloch ni se plantea la contemplación del mundo desde sus actos. Sólo desde el análisis que realiza él del mundo, de forma cada vez más minuciosa, pero también más desconectada de la realidad y del tiempo. En este viaje interior, Handke nos lleva a un desconcertante a veces, extraño siempre, discurrir de una mente que no nos atrevemos a calificar que haya rebasado el límite de la cordura para entrar en la psicopatía. Tal vez, si acaso, en lo frágiles que son las ataduras que nos ligan a nuestra relación social y al mundo que nos circunda.

Portada y sinopsis

btemplates

10 comentarios:

Magda dijo...

Es curioso que cites que no es una novela existencialista, lo primero que me ha venido a la mente al leer que asesina a una mujer (siendo una persona que nunca ha cometido un delito)es El extranjero de Camus.

Buen año!

SUMMA POLITICO dijo...

LINK OF LYNXES TO MOST HANDKE MATERIAL
AND BLOGS ON THE WEB:

http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html

http://www.handke-nobel.scriptmania.com/


HANDKE LINKS + BLOGS SCRIPTMANIA PROJECT MAIN SITE:

http://www.handke.scriptmania.com
-
and 13 sub-sites
e.g.

http://www.handkeromance.scriptmania.com/index.html

http://www.handkelectures.freeservers.com/

http://www.handkedrama.scriptmania.com/

http://www.handkedrama2.scriptmania.com/

http://handkedrama3.scriptmania.com/

http://handke-drama.blogspot.com/

http://www.handkescholar.scriptmania.com/

http://www.handkebild.scriptmania.com/

http://handke-photo.scriptmania.com/

http://www.handke-nobel.scriptmania.com/

http://www.handkeprose.scriptmania.com/

http://www.handkeprose2.scriptmania.com/


http://www.handkefilm.scriptmania.com/

http://handke-watch.blogspot.com/
[moravian nights discussion]

the newest:
http://handke-photo.scriptmania.com/

contains the psychoanalytic monograph

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/


http://www.handkelectures.freeservers.com
[the drama lecture]

http://www.van.at/see/mike/index.htm
[dem handke auf die schliche/besuch auf dem Moenchsberg, a book of mine about Handke]

http://begleitschreiben.twoday.net/topics/Peter+Handke/

http://handke-discussion.blogspot.com/
[the American Scholar caused controversy about Handke, reviews, detailed of Coury/ Pilipp's THE WORKS OF PETER HANDKE, the psycho-biological monograph/ a note on Velica Hoca/ ]

With three photo albums, to wit:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mikerol

http://picasaweb.google.com/mikerol/HANDKE3ONLINE#

http://picasaweb.google.com/mikerol/HANDKE2ONLINE#

http://picasaweb.google.com/mikerol/POSTED?authkey=YeKkFSE3-Js#

http://www.handke-trivia.blogspot.com
http://www.artscritic.blogspot.co
[some handke material, too, the Milosevic controversy summarized]
MICHAEL ROLOFF

Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
this LYNX will LEAP you to all my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS:

http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html

"MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS!" + MAY THE FIREPLUG OF FILIALITY REINSURE YOUR BUNGHOLE!"" {J. Joyce}

"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhor

Mannelig dijo...

Le tengo una enorme tirria a Handke, qué le voy a hacer...

Carolina dijo...

Saludos y buenos deseos para ti :>

Lluís Salvador dijo...

Hola, Magda:
Pero el ataque y lo que quiere mostar Handke es diferente. El protagonista no es por lo que hace, postulado fundamental del existencialismo (y que lo hizo favorito de la izquierda europea en los años 50-60), sino precisamente es lo que es porque no se comunica, no puede comunicarse, con los demás. La alienación del protagonista es absoluta, de modo que sus supuesto existencial ya no depende (como es forzoso en el existencialismo, de los demás), sino sólo de sí mismo. Handke nos presenta a un personaje, por poner un símil, de esos de planilandia que pasara por nuestro universo bidimensional siendo él tridimensional. Lo veríamos en sus dos dimensiones momentáneas, pero jamás llegaríamos a aprehenderlo edn su totalidad. Por supuesto, el ejemplo es burdo, y sólo aproximativo, puesto que el protagonista es visto y ve: pero nadie lo comprende ni él entiende a los demás, mucho menos, uno sospecha, a sí mismo.
Po este despiece de la persona y del mundo es por lo que es valioso el texto de Handke, aunque sea el de un caso extremo, irreal. Pero filosóficamente alegórico.
Un saludo!

Hola, Summa Politico:
As expressed in my other blog Incitaciones, thank you very much for the links to pages about Peter Handke.
Greetings!

Hola, Mannelig:
Si a lo que te refieres es a las posturas (que me dejaron bastante desconcertado en su momento) del autor sobre la guerra de los Balcanes, estaría muy de acuerdo contigo. Y todavía confío en expresarle mis opiniones al respecto en persona (no tengo costumbre de morderme la lengua en esassituaciones). Pero en cuanto a la obra, no puedo por menos de apreciarla en lo que vale por sí misma. Peter Handke es el ideólogo de una película que me conmueve particularmente, El Cielo Sobre Berlín. Por ejemplo. Y el resto de su obra tiene unos parámetros más que interesantes y coherentes, a mi modo de ver (que, por descontado, no tiene que ser el tuyo, sólo faltaría). Por eso el calificativo de "desconcertante" que he empleado antes es adecuado, porque es lo que sentí cuando se expresó como se expresó en un conflicto ciertamente criminal. Mi juicio definitivo sobre Handke persona todavía está en suspenso, porque las personas siempre pueden cambiar de opinión (y algo, aunque muy leve, se ha producido al respecto). Pero sobre la obra, intentaré que estas cosas no me perturben el juicio. Por mucho que me disgusten.
Un saludo!

Hola, Carolina:
Y enormes, enormes deseos de paz, prosperidad y felicidad para ti y los que te rodean (y para el resto de la humanidad, no vamos a ser mezquinos). Y gracias por acordarte de este lector de tus relatos.
Un saludo!

SUMMA POLITICO dijo...

http://goaliesanxiety.blogspot.com/

is the blog of scott abbott who, too, is a handke translator, most recently of DIE FAHRT IM EINBAUM/ VOYAGE BY DUGOUT, Handke's 1999 play which I discuss extensivel at:
http://www.handkedrama3.scriptmania.com/index.htlm and at the
http://handke-drama.blogspot.com/

Handke mentioned recently in an interview with his friend, the Austrian writer Weinzierl [lovely name meaning something like "delicate wine, or wine that decorates] that at the moment goalie construction worker Bloch is back in his goal, he is NOT anxious: in all of Handke's early work he wrote to the point where anxiety ceases - I as the book's American translator always felt that that was also the moment Bloch was arrested, when the ball, to his surprise is shot directly at him: a cop puts his hand on his shoulder from behind.... after all, Bloch reappears in UEBER DIE DOERFER, which also exists in Spanish, as th construction worker who is still sadistic, etc. xx michael r.

Lluís Salvador dijo...

Hello, Mr. Roloff:
Quite interesting comment, and one that brins a new light to the reading of Goalkeeper. Me too felt that the analogy was in the shooting of the ball and the arresting of Bloch. I was not so clear to define Bloch as "anxious", because he shows and indifferency to the rest of the world, but "tension"... He keeps waiting the arrest, as the goalkeeper waits the shot, but in fact is not clear (nor sure) if he will be arrested. One of the interpretations could be that Bloch continues waiting... and waiting...
Thank you, as ever, for your comment and your links to it.
Greetings!

SUMMA POLITICO dijo...

Lluis,
it's funny. i translated GOALIE into English around 1970. I had already translated KASPAR and read some Chomsky but can't say I gave as much thought to the workings of syntax as we read as I have since I did a psychoanalysis.

GOALIE starts off sort of "normally", deceptively so, like a Raymond Chandler or Hemingway story,but does something very different, grammatically GRABS you, puts you in the state of mind of what is technically called a paranoid schizophrenic
who behaves as you get to know him pretty much like peter handke, misreads the situation, nearly gets run down by a car, his reactions are daft, he's a bit of an idiot. yet he over-reacts! he's irritable as hell. it's hard to say whether the goalie is really fleeing as an ordinary guilty murderer would. he appears to have forgotten what we did. just like handke himself.
handke, prior to the year of writing GOALIE, familiarized himself with the workings of LANGUAGE in schizophrenia, even nominateed one book on the subject as book of the year in germany,
my guess is that fear splits the mind, i.e it splits it vertically - you can of course turn into a pillar of salt or whatever, or part of you goes about your business as though you are not afraid. but these splits do not hold...
the reader, entrapped in language, syntactically, but also by means of the phenomenological
descriptions that Handke uses - he did not write a purely grammatically capturing text until HOUR - of course is not
released from the spell until the end either! one reason the goalie is not anxious once he is in the goal is because
he can see everything that is happening, he appears to be in control! his eyes, he needs a third eye in back! but just as the cab at the beginning... if you see what i mean...xxx michael r.

Lluís Salvador dijo...

Hello, Mr Roloff:
As ever, a very enlighting comment about this work. It's, indeed, true that Bloch is secure once has the control of situation, or, better said, can control all that is happening, in a simple pattern of behaviour. And, yes, he is mentally sick, with a dissociation which brings him to dissociate himself from the reality.
But remains the literature, and the implications in the text are that Bloch is unable to communicate with the others (and even with himself) but tha main point to me is not that we're all in the verge of the psychopathology, but that our world is one of incommunication, of fragilities in our relationship with the others. That, of course, cam put us in the field of the mental illness, but more commonly in a fringe of this illness socially more acceptable, but present, all the same, in society.
For me, literature is exaggeration, or the use of exaggerated cases to make us reflect about ourselves and our society. Handke works this perfectly.
Thank you as ever.
Greetings!

SUMMA POLITICO dijo...

Olah to you, too, Lluis.
GOALIE comes out of the novel called DER HAUSIERER in German, which is not in English, but
I think in Spanish, definitely in Italian, but Handke's first long prose text HORNISSEN I noticed
the other day is in Spanish, and the name is not all that different from the German, Hornica I think!
So the word is probably of Latin origin, or Greek. In HAUSIERER./ THE PEDDLER or PANHANDLER
pure consciousness is terrified by bloody goings on. very short sentences make report of what the consciousness registers. these sections are framed by essayistic descriptions of the progress of what occurrs in the
detective novel, i.e a different kind of ominousness. paranoia, terror rule, but are distanced, separated out
via these hyper intellectual dissertations.
every neurotic has a psychotic core, and homo sapient might be described as the psychotic
animal per se. the idea for goalie, since handke took so much trouble over it what with
looking up texts on paranoid schizophrenic linguistic behavior, must have made him very
hot at the time, and to concentrate all that into such a simple narrative! handke is not
only autistically hypersensitive but his chief way of communicating, and that he wants evidently
to very much, is via literary texts, exhibit too, and during that entire period 1965-1975
he managed to quell control sublimate and ever more virtuoso like great libidinally produced anxiety via writing.... this started to change with MUJER ZURDA as I think LEFT HANDED WOMAN is called in Spanish and definitely with A SLOW HOMECOMING.
Literature is concentration, as in dreams, and in that sense it is an exaggeration. and sometimes it manages to break through the ice! xx michael r.