Earlier this month the 2019 Nobel laureate in literature, Peter Handke, gave his inaugural lecture in front of the Swedish Academy. The best-known work from the Austrian author’s vast oeuvre is arguably the film Wings of Desire, for which he co-wrote the script.
However, his award has been accompanied less by discussion of his literary works than by controversy over his politics. Handke is seen by his critics as a genocide denier and supporter of Serb ultranationalism.
Handke’s response to these criticisms in a recent interview is typical of his attitude towards the allegations: “Not one word I have written about Yugoslavia can be denounced, not a single one. It’s literature.” He did not directly address the criticism in his speech, and instead quoted at length from his dramatic poem Walk About the Villages and elaborated on the “Slovenian-Slavic religious litanies” that fascinated him as a child.
The day before his lecture the Swedish Academy held a press conference where he was asked whether he accepted the fact – established by international courts – that genocide occurred in Srebrenica. Handke responded with a provocative stunt: he described an anonymous letter he had received, that included toilet paper with a “calligraphy of shit”. He said he preferred this letter to “empty and ignorant questions” about the Bosnian genocide.
Both the speech and his behaviour at the press conference are consistent with Handke’s general attitude towards the Balkans. In A Journey to the Rivers: Justice For Serbia, Handke suggests that “the detour of recording certain trivialities” is more important for peace and reconciliation than “the evil facts”. He has been distracting from the well-established truths about what happened in the Yugoslav wars, both in his public statements and his literary work, for more than two decades. Denialism is intrinsic to the genocidal process, and thus a central component of Serb ultranationalism.
Handke’s politics, in this regard, are unambiguous. He delivered a eulogy at Slobodan Milošević’s funeral and in a recent, post-Nobel interview, absolves “the butcher of the Balkans” from responsibility for the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent wars. In the 2008 presidential election in Serbia, Handke openly supported the far-right Serbian Radical party, founded by the paramilitary leader Vojislav Šešelj. The party’s newspaper, Velika Srbija (Greater Serbia), used Handke’s endorsement as part of its candidate Tomislav Nikolić’s campaign.
Handke responded to charges of genocide denial and revisionism in a statement. His defenders like to cite the passage where he describes Srebrenica as “the worst crime against humanity committed in Europe after the war”. What they overlook is that he – despite the ruling of international courts – chose not to use “genocide” and instead opted for a different legal term, “crime against humanity”. Furthermore, in the following paragraphs Handke questions the genocidal character of the crime of Srebrenica and paints it as an “abominable” act of revenge.
In an interview he says: “But today ‘relativise’ has become a bad word. I relativise. I say ‘Srebrenica’ was blind and evil revenge for the murder of over a thousand Serbs around Srebrenica in the three years before.” This form of victim-blaming fails to recognise the genocidal intent of the perpetrators, omits the broader genocidal context in eastern Bosnia since 1992, and acts as a dog-whistle that depicts Bosniaks as the embodiment of the Ottoman domination over the Serbs. Ratko Mladić announced the Srebrenica genocide with the words: “The time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region.” In Die Tablas von Daimiel, Handke even goes so far as to describe the victims of Srebrenica as “Muslim soldiers”.
In spite of this, all of Handke’s Balkan-related works were included in the Nobel prize bibliography – a tacit endorsement of genocide denial, revisionism and ultranationalism. In the Balkans, where the memory of the Bosnian genocide continues to be erased, this only helps to embolden nationalists and revisionists. The situation worsened when the Nobel committee responded to criticism by gaslighting the victims of the wars. Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel committee, argues the prize is solely about the “aesthetic evaluation” of Handke’s oeuvre, not about the person or his politics. He suggests “there must be room for different opinions about authors and that there must be space for different reasonable interpretations of their literary works.” Instead of listening to experts on genocide denial or scholars of the Yugoslav wars, the Nobel committee whitewashed Handke’s denial of historical fact by claiming he can be “understood in different ways”. Its attempts to defend its decision have effectively resulted in institutional genocide denial.
The political message of Handke’s Nobel prize becomes even clearer when we look at who it is encouraging. A Serb nationalist association launched an initiative to erect a bust of Handke in Srebrenica. A leading far-right intellectual in Germany, who considers Handke’s Justice for Serbia pamphlets part of the rightwing literary canon, responded to the Nobel award by proclaiming “justice for Peter Handke”. The convicted Holocaust denier David Irving attacked Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt for criticising Handke’s award.
While nationalism, racism and conspiracism are growing in Europe, the Nobel prize is handed to a man who traffics in the ideology that helped fuel the worst crimes on European soil since the second world war. The very Serb nationalist tropes Handke propagates in his public statements and his literary works also inspire the international far right today. By giving the award to Handke, the Swedish Academy has given credence to some of the most destructive forces once again haunting Europe.
• Adnan Delalić is a Bosnian-German sociologist and writer
