Peter Handke’s Kaspar and They Are Dying Out;

The Role of Language in the Construction

Of a Social Self

Peter Handke (1942- ) is considered to be one of the most influential European

playwrighters of the 20th century. His play Offending the Audience had sparked
controversies over the theatrical world and has been the first of a series of
‘Sprechstücke’ (‘speech plays’), a new kind of theatre that consists only of ‘linguistic
acts’ that the actors address directly to the audience. Kaspar (1967) is Handke’s most
discussed and widely acclaimed play, characterized by Tom Kuhn as ‘his own 20 th
century masterpiece’.1 With it, he makes a shift towards more conventional theatrical
forms; the play has a setting, a character, and dramatic action. Kaspar Hauser and his
enigmatic story, that had dominated the intellectual investigations of the romantic
Europe, is treated here as a symbol of every individual entering the world of language.
They Are Dying Out (abbreviated from this point as TDO), written in 1973, describes
the existential crisis of Hermann Quitt, a capitalist businessman that tries to fall out of
his role, only to realise that he himself is the role. In this essay, I will firstly explore
the relationship, in Handke’s theatrical universe, between language and the formation
of the self within a social order, and then I will concentrate on how it unfolds
specifically in the two plays.
The constant preoccupation of Handke with language has to be put in context
and stressed out, as it is the core around which his artistic endeavours revolve. The
use of language for advertising and political purposes has been a recurring theme in
the politically engaged German literature of the sixties; language was accused of
being an efficient means for imbuing the public conscience with the dominant values
of capitalism and the preservation of hierarchy. The literary practices of the
prestigious Vienna Group and its unofficial successor, the Gratz Group (in which
Handke belonged) aimed at revealing the power relations behind the everyday
discourse; they used the element of play and parody against the conventional
linguistic forms and they were experimenting with new ones.2 These practices are in
alignment with the purpose of art itself, which is, according to the writer, to expose
and undermine all signs of social and linguistic authority and to constantly renew our
perception about ourselves and the world; for this reason, every artistic act should
ideally be made once, as repetition would place it in the existing structure and would
then transform it into a new ‘authority’.3
Wittgenstein’s influence upon Handke has been much discussed among critics
and is crucial in understanding the line he constantly sketches in his works between
language and order. The linguistic positivism expressed by analytic philosophy is
treated ironically in a historical context of growing distrust in language, since it has
been shown to function in dishonest and propagandistic ways. Language is powerful,
1
Peter Handke, Plays (Great Britain: Methuen Drama, 1997), p. xv. All further references
incorporated in the text.
2
June Schlueter, The plays and novels of Peter Handke (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
1981), pp. 7-10.
3
Michael Linstead (Outer world and inner world. Socialization and Emancipation in the works of
Peter Handke, 1964-1981 [Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988]) criticizes Handke at that point. He
claims that language does not have the inherent qualities of good or bad, but it is a ‘tool’; its value lies
in the way that it will be used, therefore it should not be condemned altogether (p. 22, 24).

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as it creates the world and also the subject, which assumes his role in a passive way. 4
Kaspar is a nightmare, an artistic representation of the ‘speech torture’ that every
human being has undergone in order to achieve language and subsequently his role
within it and within society. Handke explains in the introduction that the play is not
about a person, but it shows what is possible for a person (p. 53); it acts as a ‘dramatic
metaphor’. As M.Read has observed,5 the style of the text recalls the style of
Tractatus, the broom and the chair are objects used by Wittgenstein to explain his
ideas, and the stages that the hero goes through follow the learning processes that he
has described; moreover, some parts of the play (and of The ride across Lake
Constance) could be viewed as the artistic embodiment of Wittgenstein’s ideas in the
form of drama.6
Furthermore, there is no space in the denotative, operational, politically-correct
discourse of the prompters in Kaspar for irrationality, which is what the writer
demands to be acknowledged as a sign of the genuinity of the self and as basic
parameter of the human condition. Under this light, the subjective, inward poetic
language of the past and present is not only an escape from the occidental rationalism,
but also an act of resistance against the social order. Genuinely imaginative discourse,
according to Handke, has the element of novelty and unfamiliarity; it helps us see the
world again and not merely recognize it. This is the main reason why Handke’s
theatre has never been political in the strict sense. Even TDO, that has been
characterized the most ‘political’ piece among his works, does not aim to a rejection
of capitalism, as it would be easy to assume by its surface, but to the exposure of the
broader framework of modernism, that encourages the denial of the irrational, the
personal and emotional element, both in language, as literature’s importance within
society has been diminished, and in our way of perceiving the world.7 Expressing
sociopolitical ideas through theatre would mean for Handke, as we have discussed
before, not only that he holds fixed views of reality, but also that his work assumes an
authoritative role. In this important extract from an interview for The Drama Review
in 1970, he explains his personal view on the ‘morality’ and subsequently the politics
(once more inextricably linked with language) in theatre:

If the theatre makes us aware that there are functions of man’s

power over man that we did not know about, functions that we
accept by force of habit; if these functions suddenly strike us as
man-made; and if through theatre, through revelation in
language, we are suddenly shown, by grammatical derivations,
that the functions of mastery are neither God-given nor given by
the state, then the theatre can be a moral institution (…).8

4
We are reminded of the power/ knowledge relationship according to Fouccault; language, that is used
to transfer both, is dominant upon the subject, because the subject has been created by language inside
its dimension (Michael Shapiro, ‘Towards a politicized subject: Peter Handke and language’, boundary
2, 13.2/3 [1985], p. 400).
5
M.Read., ‘Peter Handke’s Kaspar and the power of negative thinking’, Forum for Modern Language
Studies, XXIX(2) (April 1993), pp. 128-9.
6
Schlueter, p.11.
7
Schlueter, pp. 107-113. As she writes: ‘he sees it [modernism] as a nearly unbridgeable schism
between the individual and the world’ (p. 113).
8
Artur Joseph, Peter Handke, E.B.Ashton, ‘Nauseated by language: From an interview with Peter
Handke’, The Drama Review, 15.1 (1970), pp. 56-61.

2
 The political element in Handke can be more safely found in his methods of
engaging the audience in the play. In terms of his theatrical practices, he has shifted
from making the actors address directly the spectators in the Sprechstücke to
increasing the level of complexity of the play; in this way, spectators are bound to pay
attention and concentrate more intensely in order to keep up with what is happening
on stage.9 Another way to achieve engagement is to turn the attention of the audience
away from the message, to the code, to the medium used. Most of the time, this is
mainly language, as it is especially true in the Sprechstücke and Kaspar. Since
Handke perceives conventional theatrical forms as authoritative, he often stresses the
theatricality of the event unfolded in front of the eyes of the audience. The notion of
theatricality for Handke does not refer to the theatre’s inherent or supposed capacity
to imitate reality, but to the element of unfamiliarity, absurdity, the sense that what
goes on on stage is independent from reality, that it is a reality of its own. This way,
he creates an effect of detachment that helps the recipient stand critically, with an
open mind, against what seems to be not an extension of reality, but a fictitious story.
Kaspar’s setting underlines that ‘the stage represents the stage’, as it is stated in
the introduction. The objects are put around in a way that has nothing to do with how
they are usually situated in a room; half of the sofa is behind the curtain, showing that
there is a ‘backstage’, and the broom and shovel have the inscription ‘STAGE’ or the
name of the theatre on them. Kaspar’s appearance is overly ‘theatrical’ too; his
clothes are not matching, he is wearing a mask that shows confusion and surprise, he
is the protagonist of a strange masquerade (Kasper in German means clown, and
Kasperle is a traditional Viennese puppet show 10). He is not perceived by the audience
as a realistic personality, but as a theatrical, constructed, unreal character. TDO’s Act
One begins in a realistic setting and furniture is arranged in an ordinary way, but in
Act Two the stage is filled with objects relevant to the course of the action and the
key themes of the play; the punchbag has been replaced with a slowly deflating
balloon, the armchair and table with a block of ice under a spotlight, there are
children’s drawings around, short phrases appear and disappear slowly in a boulder in
the background, there is a glass trough with dough slowly rising and a piano. These
choices all stress the passing of time and an ominous feeling of anguish and upcoming
danger.
Moreover, it would be interesting to point out and discuss images of
representation and spectatorship within the plays. The intermission text in Kaspar,
although it is prompted during the break, is part of the play; the audience maintains its
role even outside the room and it becomes, like Kaspar, subject to extracts of
authoritative discourse. These phrases complete one another in a growingly irrational
and disturbing way, as the raising of the volume of the voices and the various sounds
match the harshness of the statements and the appearance of violent images. In TDO,
the celebration of the agreement is sabotaged by Kilb, who teases everyone and acts
provocatively (‘Action! Lights! A little circus atmosphere!’, p. 255); the businessmen
ignore him, until Quitt starts doing the same in more violent and sexual ways, until
Kilb tells him that ‘his madness’ is ‘unaesthetic, vulgar, formless’ and that he must
‘know his limits’(pp. 255-6). In this scene we have actors (Kilb, Quitt), audience (the
rest of the group) and something like a theatrical event gone bad or crossing the line
between game and reality. Also, throughout the play, the idea of insincerity and
distortion of truth in front of a crowd appears several times. Quitt invents sentimental
stories about himself when he has guests (p. 238), his wife is uncomfortable in that
9
Shapiro, pp. 407-8.
10
Schlueter, p. 47.

3
role and finds excuses to leave (p. 239), Lutz claims that the ‘true’ nature of a person
is revealed in a group, inferring that everyone is a liar and that it is more difficult to
perform in front of an audience than in front of just one person (p. 244).11
Relevant to this and central to both plays is the relationship between feelings
and fluency. The world of TDO is the postmodern environment of sophistication,
hyper-articulation and refinement of speech. Quitt and the businessmen, having
perfected their linguistic skills, make witty comments on one another and are capable
of undermining or presenting in a different light, with a few well chosen words,
everything someone or themselves have said before. They are aware of that powerful
capacity of language to create the truth; they are subjects (like the prompters in
Kaspar) of this procedure when they deal with advertising, but both subjects and
objects when they talk about themselves.12 With their self-referential comments and
thoughts, they resemble snakes biting their tails in a cynical game where language is
used to continuously establish, expose and undermine the feelings of the individual
(Hans’s warning towards Quitt: ‘Watch it out, if you say it once more you’ll suddenly
really mean it’, p. 241). Quitt wishes he could be less articulate, so that his feelings
could be acknowledged as true by himself and others: ‘I would much prefer to express
myself inarticulately (…). Then you would finally pity me. This way I suffer from my
articulateness being part of my suffering’ (p. 274). His wife is the most sensitive and
honest character in the play, and the only one that possesses the ‘gift’ of stuttering and
speaking in fragments.
The same concern appears in Kaspar. In the beginning, the protagonist’s
personal phrase (‘I want to be someone like somebody else was once’) is sufficient to
express all feelings produced by his interaction with the environment. When he learns
how to speak, he tries to reduce this chaotic, inexplicable and phenomenal world by
forming generalizations and self-made rules from every single experience, thus
gaining control over it (‘Now I know what I want: I want to be quiet and every object
that I find ominous I designate it as mine so that it stops being sinister to me’,
p.111).13 Towards the end he suddenly understands that his feelings are, too, a product
of language and that he does not really know what he is feeling (‘When I did not
know where to turn next, it was explained to me that I was afraid when I did not know
where to turn, and that is how I learned to be afraid’, p. 136). In this way, he has
managed to make meaning out of his surroundings, but not out of himself. Language
mediates experience, but language itself is a necessary distortion, and as a result the
individual cannot use it to access his ‘true’ feelings or self.
The above are particularly ironic, since Kaspar achieved his identity in the first
place, according to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, through his entrance to the
symbolic realm of language. His sentence is gradually broken, first syntactically, then
grammatically, and the first coherent phrase he utters is “Fallen down”. This signals
the once and for all loss of the primitive state of complete unity with the world and his
ascendance and ‘rebirth’ to the world of logic and meaning. 14 From that moment
onwards he starts to form self-consciousness and acquires the ability to distinguish
11
We are reminded here of the question posed by the critic Stanley Cavell in his theoretical
examination of Shakespeare’s King Lear; are feelings and thoughts honest when they are addressed to
someone with a motive (here, amusement, influence, and in the case of theatre in general, the motive to
‘educate’ or ‘show the truth’)? (‘The avoidance of love. A reading of King Lear’, Must we mean what
we say? [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002], pp. 267-309).
12
Collette Brooks, ‘Talk is Cheap: A review of Peter Handke’s “They are dying out”’, Theater, vol.8
no 1 (1976), pp. 86-87.
13
Linstead, p. 57.
14
Read, p. 130.

4
things, to identify causes, to have a personal history. Kaspar’s confusion and
irrationality towards the end of the play should not be considered as a sign of
psychosis; as Read explains, ‘ego is only a symbolic form in language. So, primal
alienation is not pathological, it is the only possibility there is’ (p. 132). There is no
self other than the one we give a name to inside language, and this is a social self, a
construction within language. Kaspar’s last sentence in the first form of the play, ‘I
am only me by chance’, shows more explicitly the fragility and conventionality
behind a formulated identity.
Bearing the above in mind, we understand why Kaspar’s and Quitt’s attempts to
escape from themselves are futile. Quitt starts to acknowledge feelings that destabilize
his sense of identity and personal achievement; he experiences in observable, specific
ways a conflict between his social ego and an unknown, ‘true self’, supposedly
oppressed by his social role, that he attempts to uncover. But this dilemma is
unsubstantial and anachronistic, since he himself is and has always been a product of
his time, and that means there is nowhere for him to return outside this framework.
Even his revolutionary effort to liberate himself is happening in the same terms with
his role; he breaks the business agreement. What Michael Linstead has written for
Hans applies for Quitt as well: “His ‘emancipation’ is only a change of position
within the same structure” (p. 148).15 The only possible way for the protagonist to get
rid of himself is to commit suicide hitting his head multiple times in the boulder; this
solution, alluded from the first pages of the play when Quitt hits his head in the
punchbag, is comical, with no signs of nobility or catharsis. 16 This conflict between
the man and the social world, which is the core element of tragedy, is undermined as
everything else in the play; Handke has said in an interview for Die Zeit in 1974 about
the characters of TDO that ‘They play as if they were tragic figures. But they remain
in the shadow of a parody’.17 The preface to the play, spoken out by Quitt,
summarizes the irony of his struggle: ‘It suddenly occurs to me that I am playing
something that doesn’t even exist, and that is the difference. That’s the despair of it’
(p. 235).
In Kaspar, this tension is developed in a different way, as the play itself is not
situated in specific social conditions and it is far more abstract. The notion of the
divided self prevails in the form of the many Kaspars that make their appearance in
the middle of the play. Soon after the hero utters the almost biblical statement “I am
the one I am”, expressing tautologically a newfound and self-validated sense of
identity, another Kaspar and then another enter the stage and interact with themselves
and the objects. The original Kaspar does not become aware of their presence
immediately. When he does see one Kaspar, he starts chasing himself (p. 108).
Towards the end of the play, the hero is ordered by the prompters to ‘educate’ the
other Kaspars, but he is unable to do so, because they are not separate beings but
extensions of himself that he cannot control. Kaspars make noises and behave in a
strange way, and Kaspar joins them at times as his madness progresses, until the point
when they completely take over the stage, making more noise and ridiculing him.
Kaspar, whose training we have witnessed during the play, came not to be a separate
15
Hans, Quitt’s confidant, is one of the most important characters in the play; he functions as Quitt’s
‘Doppelgänger’ (Schlueter, p. 114) and he evolves in an inverse way. In the beginning he has no sense
of self; like Kaspar, he wants to be ‘someone like somebody else was once’, and his reactions and
words are servilely depended on his master. Hans’s quest for his true self fails too, as he keeps defining
himself in relation to Quitt, even when he believes he has become stronger than him (Linstead, pp. 147-
148).
16
Linstead, pp. 136-148.
17
Schlueter, p. 110.

5
and whole self. This multiplication reveals the illusion of self that language has
created and shows the individual’s psychic fragmentation, intensified by the
repression of the unconscious in the name of linguistic order. Under this light, his
personal phrase sounds extremely ironic in the end, since this is what happened to
Kaspar; he lost himself and gained an identity, like every other person within society.
Although the social, outward language in both plays does not allow the
expression of the unconscious, the latter emerges in other ways. Quitt’s ‘blues’ and
self-doubt lay the ground for a feeling that he is unable to control himself. Quitt’s
relationship with Kilb is complex, triggers demonstrations of the irrationality of the
protagonist and seems to be based on an exchange of mutual, contradictory
tendencies; Quitt expresses his admiration towards Kilb in the beginning of the play
(p.243),18 Kilb is less insulting towards Quitt, Quitt uses him as a tool to divert the
attention of the group when he ‘crosses the limits’ (p. 252), and Kilb, although he
finds Quitt in the end with a purpose to kill him, sits and listens to his thoughts (pp.
297-301). Logical gaps, irrational sentences in the middle of a coherent thought and
contradictions occur frequently when the hero is speaking, as he recalls fragmented
memories in a way that at some points reminds us of ‘stream of consciousness’; in the
end his speech is inverted, and he loses connection with the environment, as violent
feelings overwhelm him to the point of accidentally killing Kilb and committing
suicide. In Kaspar, towards the end of the play, we have fragmented thoughts,
unfinished phrases, repetition of words and sounds, and an utterance that could be a
sign of regression to the Oedipal stage (‘monce mamin m:m:m’, p.138).19 The
wardrobe door, that Kaspar tries to close all the time, but opens slowly in the empty
stage just before the intermission text, functions as a symbol of the unconscious and
reveals the delusion of control.
Moreover, it has been observed that throughout Kaspar’s words we can find
fragmented verses or echoes from poets like Shakespeare and Goethe. 20 This is not
irrelevant with Handke’s view of the poetic language that has been discussed earlier.
These lines in Kaspar, as well as the extract from Adalbert Stifter in TDO, are
remnants of another world; they are part of the ‘collective unconscious’ in which the
human civilization is rooted, and come up always in fragments, in short enlightening
moments.21 Poetic language has the power to eternally create the world, through its
liberating acceptance and encouragement of subjectivity. Inside art, the individual
becomes ‘whole’ again and communicates with the part of himself that has not been
represented by language and is therefore believed to be unnatural or, in the worst case,
as we have seen in the two plays, nonexistent. As Hans says, ‘(…)poetry as we know,
produces a sense of power that oppresses no one- but rather dances the dance of
freedom for us, the oppressed’ (p. 274). It is this faith in the transcendental quality of
the poetic language that Handke maintains throughout his work, believing that this is
where the lost coherence of the individual and the world can be found.

18
In this scene, Kilb responds to Quitt’s words by kissing him mockingly, causing Quitt to kick him,
‘so as to reestablish the previous state of affairs’ (p. 243). Throughout the play, every expression of an
honest feeling is followed by similar reactions; this pattern is characteristic of the cynical and parodic
nature of TDO.
19
Read, p. 130.
20
His final repeated words, “Goats and monkeys”, taken from Othello, are a primitive expression of the
sexuality, a name that is given to the ‘object of desire’ of the unconscious (Read, p. 131).
21
The defamiliarization of the poetic language and the faith in the fragmented memory can be traced
back to the work of Russian formalists like Schlovsky and to the Romantic movement; Handke has
affinities with both (Schlueter, pp. 3-16).

6
 Kaspar and TDO, however different they may seem in terms of historical setting
and style, are both infused with the problematization of the everyday language as a
valid medium to answer the basic human questions about selfhood and experience of
the outer world. The theatrical form is for Handke the best means to expose, as Tom
Kuhn has succinctly stated, the ‘unconscious dramaturgy of convention’ (p. xii) that
dominates the social world and the consciousness of the individual; Handke questions
the recipients’ views on language and identity and proposes, through his work, an
intellectually challenging and revolutionary way of writing and positioning oneself
within society.

7
Bibliography:

Read, M., ‘Peter Handke’s Kaspar and the power of negative thinking’, Forum for
Modern Language Studies, XXIX(2) (April 1993), pp.126-148.

Brooks, Collette, ‘Talk is Cheap: A review of Peter Handke’s “They are dying out”’,
Theater, vol.8 no 1 (1976), pp. 86-87.

Shapiro, Michael, ‘Towards a politicized subject: Peter Handke and language’,

boundary 2, vol.13 no 2/3 (1985), pp. 393-418.

Handke, Peter, Plays (Great Britain: Methuen Drama, 1997).

Schlueter, Jane, The plays and novels of Peter Handke (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1981).

Linstead, Michael, Outer world and inner world. Socialization and Emancipation in
the works of Peter Handke, 1964-1981 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1988).