When Peter Handke published his essays on the violent conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, he unleashed a veritable media war. The responses ranging from outraged condemnation to whole-hearted endorsement fill several edited volumes. In spite of such turmoil, Handke continues to label his essays “Friedenstexte,” texts of peace. Intriguingly, Handke appears to suggest that a text of peace is categorically different from one that critiques war.

Already in his early work, Handke was acutely aware of the difficulties inherent in the attempt to narrate peace. Whereas war gives rise to numerous stories, peace resists representation: “Yet no one has been successful in intoning an epic of peace. What is it about peace that it does not continually excite and seldom allows itself to be told” (Wings of Desire). In order to write an epic of peace, Handke's essays devise a new concept of history; one that focuses on the stuff of our daily lives rather than the defining events and glorious leaders of conventional history writing. Handke's attempt to write a different history also conjures the force of myth. But, unlike Jünger's mythical construct, Handke's use of myth is designed not to renounce agency and encourage fatalistic acceptance of the cosmic maelstrom, but to break out of history's spiral of violence. Handke's essays seek to carve out moments of peace by moving beyond the ravages of war and history toward recognition of the transcendental in the everyday.