One of Handke’s Formulations

The fiction that photographs can “tell us” anything—but isn’t all formulation, even of things that have really happened, more or less a fiction? Less, if we content ourselves with a mere record of events; more, if we try to formulate in depth? And the more fiction we put into a narrative, the more likely it is to interest others, because people identify more readily with formulations than with recorded facts. Does this explain the need for poetry?

A parenthetical comment by Peter Handke in A Sorrow Beyond Dreams. And relevant to what will follow… for Anna.