Loneliness

I'd like to talk about loneliness. I don't believe it exists. It's more of an artificial feeling engendered from outside. Once, I felt in this room a profound idiocy. Cigarette stubs from the evening before lay in ashtrays. So I sat there yesterday evening as idiotically as today, I thought, yesterday I sat there, today here. And this vision of myself, touched me so much that I felt myself caressed. That, then, was loneliness. I was proud with loneliness, carried away with it, drenched in loneliness. I produced a similar loneliness one night while sitting on the terrace outside. I drank a bottle of wine and time passed easily. People strolled along the woods and looked across at me. 'How lonely I must seem to them,' I thought. At once I was cradled again in artificial, manipulated loneliness. It's just a theatrical state which arises the moment you wallow in your own theatricality. And yet, its these moments of hypocritical loneliness that make me feel reborn. Its the paradox of loneliness. The overwhelming feeling of security that I then experience. 

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I'd just like to talk about loneliness in Germany. I think it is more hidden and more painful than elsewhere. Maybe the history of ideas here is responsible, which makes people seek a way of life that could help overcome fear. The propagation of virtues like courage, fortitude was meant to distract attention from fear. Let's say it was that way. More than anywhere else, philosophy could be used as an ideology so that the necessary criminal methods for overcoming fear could be legalised. Fear was considered vain and shameful. That's why loneliness in Germany is masked by all those revealing soulless faces that haunt supermarkets, recreational areas, pedestrian zones and fitness centres. The dread souls of Germany. 'A boy should know no fear,' my parents told me. I refuse to overcome my fear.

Excerpt from Handke's script for The wrong move.