Information about the author:

Abstract:

The story “Don Juan” / „Don Juan (erzählt von ihm selbst)“, 2004, in terms of the historical-contextual approach is considered as a form of the writer’s reaction to the dominant ideological atmosphere in the Western European culture at the time of writing this work. To understand the author’s intention, individual artistic fragments of the plot are compared with the ideas expressed by the writer in his Nobel speech and in his interview to the German newspaper „Zeit“, which clarifies Peter Handke’s views on man’s image in modern Western society. The protagonist’s frank story about his actions is interpreted in the article as an effort to overcome the degradation of the personality in the atmosphere of an “entertaining game of buying and selling”. Peter Handke’s Don Juan, who internally resists his pseudo-existence, providentially finds himself in Port-Royal on the ruins of the former Cistercian monastery, which reveal the apostolic Christian life in France in the 17th century. The model of a two-tiered picture of the world is a feature in the interpretation of the work. From this point, metaphorically mediated signs of the presence of mystical reality and the protagonist’s actions within it are interpreted in the light of the Christian worldview.