The Utopian Space between Mitteleuropa and the Balkans in Handke’s Travelogue Once again for Thucydides

Abstract

This article discusses the utopian space between Mitteleuropa and the
Balkans in Handke’s travelogue Once Again for Thucydides. Unlike
historians and writers who aspire to cast light on the idiosyncrasy of
either the one or the other space, Handke creates an in-between space
with its own laws and peculiarities, indeed a dynamic space in de
Certeau’s sense, filled with manifold external and internal relations.
Handke reveals the idiosyncrasy of this space through metonymy, depicting
all the historical layers as coordinated and simultaneous. At
the same time, the text teaches its readers to experience the stations on
their journeys as dynamic spaces, and to interact directly with the text,
to always read it anew, and to pursue new meanings.