SOURCE: “Question Marks,” in Theater, Vol. 27, Nos. 2-3, 1997, pp. 161-3.

In the following review, Sellar offers a positive evaluation of Voyage to the Sonorous Land and The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other.

Thirty years after his disgust with the straitjackets of language and received ideas led him to write his polemic-based Sprechstücke, Peter Handke has arrived at a surprising paradox. Despite his enduring conviction that language is to blame for the narrow culture of his native Austria, Handke's own poetic gifts have multiplied. Now the most important European writer in any medium, Handke forges exquisite dialogue and turns of phrase, and crafts sensuous, evocative literature—while he continues to discredit language and deny the authenticity of words.

Since publishing The Long Way Round in 1981 (translated in 1989), Handke has produced little new work for the stage, making Gitta Honegger’s fine translations of these two 1992 plays...