Meantime, the other Kaspars are producing an infernal noise with their various tools which they have applied to the objects they have brought with them and to Kaspar 1. They are giggling, behave like crowds in crowd scenes in plays, ridicule Kaspar 1 by speaking in the same rhythm as he, etc. Kaspar 1 had also produced a file and makes similar noises by scraping with the file against the microphone while he is speaking his sentences. But now, all at once, an almost complete silence sets in. The Kaspars merely flap their arms about a little and gesticulate. They wriggle a little. They snuffle. Then Kaspar says:
Goats and monkeys With that, the curtain jolts a little toward the center, where the Kaspars are wriggling. The jolt produces a shrill sound. Goats and monkeys With an even shriller sound, the curtain jerks a little farther toward the middle. Goats and monkeys With an even shriller sound, the curtain jerks still farther toward the middle. Goats and monkeys With an even shriller sound, the curtain moves still more toward the center. Goats and monkeys With the shrillest possible sound, the curtain makes one final jerk toward the center, where the Kaspars are still wriggling a little. The curtain slams into them the moment Kaspar 1 says his last word: it topples all of them. They fall over, but fall behind the curtain, which has now come together. The piece is over.
NOTE ON OFFENDING THE AUDIENCE AND SELF-ACCUSATION
The speak-ins (Sprechstücke) are spectacles without pictures, inasmuch as they give no picture of the world. They point to the world not by way of pictures but by way of words; the words of the speak-ins don’t point at the world as something lying outside the words but to the world in the words themselves. The words that make up the speak-ins give no picture of the world but a concept of it. The speak-ins are theatrical inasmuch as they employ natural forms of expression found in reality. They employ only such expressions as are natural in real speech; that is, they employ the speech forms that are uttered orally in real life. The speak-ins employ natural examples of swearing, of self-indictment, of confession, of testimony, of interrogation, of justification, of evasion, of prophecy, of calls for help. Therefore they need a vis-à-vis, at least one person who listens; otherwise, they would not be natural but extorted by the author. It is to that extent that my speak-ins are pieces for the theater. Ironically, they imitate the gestures of all the given devices natural to the theater.
The speak-ins have no action, since every action on stage would only be the picture of another action. The speak-ins confine themselves, by obeying their natural form, to words. They give no pictures, not even pictures in word form, which would only be pictures the author extorted to represent an internal, unexpressed, wordless circumstance and not a natural expression.
Speak-ins are autonomous prologues to the old plays. They do not want to revolutionize, but to make aware.
Peter Handke
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In translating the invective at the end of Offending the Audience, I translated the principle according to which they are arranged — that is, I sought to create new acoustic patterns in English — rather than translate each epithet literally, which would only have resulted in completely discordant patterns.
To the assortment of moral truisms of which the prompters have a choice when they address Kaspar, I have added a number of American platitudes; the imaginative reader will have no difficulty in supplying even more. Certain liberties have also been taken to make Kaspar’s rhymes sort of rhyme. In nearly every other respect, these are translations and not adaptations. Peter Handke himself has cut the last sentence in Self-Accusation and also Kaspar’s final sentence which appeared in the original version.
M.R.