“Yo sola soy tres caminantes” De la triple narración “adaptada libremente de Wolfram von Eschenbach” en La ladrona de fruta de Peter Handke

Abstract

This essay aims to carry out a close reading of an image from Peter Handke’s 2017 epic text The Fruit Thief: Or One-Way Journey into the Interior: in it, Alexia, the heroine of the story, is accompanied on part of her journey by a dog carrying a raven in its mouth; both animals symbolize different aspects of the narrative. Alexia drives the dog away and frees herself with the words, “I alone am three walkers” she says to the narrator and follows the raven. Alexia’s phrase is an allusion to Wolfram von Eschenbach, who in his prologue to Parzival claimed himself as narrator, with the words “now let me be a three”, the image of the divine Trinity. Handke develops this Trinity for his narrator at the beginning of his The Fruit Thief, which is taken up in the image of the dog and the raven. The author interprets this image and shows how small fragments of text already contain the whole poetics of the author, how they develop and apply it. This, through Handke’s varied, symbolic and self-referential narrative style, which alludes to his own texts and those of others.