The line of grace in Peter Handke’s 'Essay on the Successful Day'. With an excursus on Hogarth’s reception in German-speaking areas

Peter Handke’s 'Versuch über den geglückten Tag' (1991) occupies a unique position in the historyof the reception of Hogarth’s work in germanophone literature. The presence of Hogarth in this literary essay is much more than that of a passing figure, and it deserves a degree of attention it has never so far enjoyed. To help the reader understand how Handke retrieves a certain idea of beauty and grace with explicit reference to the British artist and theorist, the first part of this essay briefly addresses the intricacies of how Hogarth’s treatise and work were taken up in the aesthetics and literature of the German- speaking world from the eighteenth century to the twentieth. This makes a useful background, as the next part of the essay highlights the hermeneutic knot underlying the ideal dialogue that Handke establishes between the eighteenth century and the contemporary age. The focus then moves on to the Versuch and to the structural and aesthetic role that the ‘line of beauty and grace’ plays in the text. There is then a discussion on the value and function of the unexpected quotations from St Paul’s letters. Reading Handke’s Versuch in the context of Hogarth’s German reception shows how the recovery of the Hogarthian serpentine line defines and enhances the highly idiosyncratic approach taken by the Austrian writer.