Peter Handke was deeply influenced by Kafka in his writing during the 1960s and 1970s. Starting from his essay collection "Welcome Words from the Supervisory Board" in 1967, he rewrote and delved into Kafka's works. Handke imitated Kafka's exploration of existence in his narrative texts of the 1970s, and demonstrated the individual's crisis perception in the presence of exceptions in "The Anxiety of a Goalkeeper Facing a Penalty". In his diary "The Weight of the World" from 1975 to 1977, Handke repeatedly mentioned Kafka's influence on his writing, but his attitude began to change. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Handke gradually left the Kafkaesque writing practice. This article analyzes Handke's imitation, rewriting, and critical negation of Kafka, explores the transformation of intertextual writing paradigms in practice, and Handke's deconstruction and repetitive writing of Kafka.

1、 Handke's lawsuit against Kafka: a questioning of modernity in existence

Handke rewrote Kafka's "Lawsuit" and created "Lawsuit (Dedicated to Franz K.)", exploring the issue of modernity in existence. He linked Kafka to the protagonist Joseph through the abbreviation of K.'s surname, and the subtitle directly asked Kafka about the reason for K.'s throwing state. In Handke's rewriting, K. refuses to commit suicide, demonstrating his subjectivity, while Kafka's K. accepts his own fate. Handke's narrator maintains a distance from the narrated object, inserts objective comments, and creates a field between the reader and the author to debate who falsely accused Joseph K. Handke emphasizes the individual's free will and agency, believing that writing/narration may become the escape line for the subject. He focuses on Kafka's questioning of existence, the internal pressure in the process of individual socialization, and the significance of writing for individual existence.

2、 Handke's Imitation of Kafka: Transformation, Suspension, and Breakthrough of Existence

In his works in the 1960s, Handke explored whether the subject could break free from the rigid conceptual language order through radical language experiments and self referential meta drama. In speech dramas such as "Swearing at the Audience" and "Self Accusation", he resists and deconstructs the drama itself in a dramatic form, where the individual is both a character, an audience, and a playwright. The novel "The Anxiety of a Goalkeeper Facing a Penalty" from the early 1970s is an imitation of Kafka, similar to "Metamorphosis", both starting with the protagonist's accidental changes. Handke emphasizes the dislocation relationship between individual perception and thinking objects in a state of alienation. The two works reduce the narrative perspective, allowing readers to focus on the protagonist and eliminate the intermediary between the character and the reader. Under the dual influence of limited narrative perspectives and the surreal nature of event development, this sense of reality often becomes distorted and exhibits characteristics of temporality and contingency. The anxiety and unease of individuals in a state of alienation are constantly deepened in this dislocation. Samsha in "Metamorphoses" focuses on the impact of accidental events on his own environment, rather than the reasons that lead to such changes. He almost accepted the fact as soon as he realized he had become a bug. What he was considering was not why the transformation occurred, but how he should deal with himself after it happened. Bloch in 'The Anxiety of a Goalkeeper Facing a Penalty' often observes something first before realizing and understanding what he is observing. Bloch's actions themselves constitute the dynamics of the text, indicating that he has a certain degree of autonomy. Although Handke's individual experienced a suspended state of existence during the process of alienation, he did not die alone and sadly at three o'clock in the morning like Samsha, but instead had the possibility of life. At the end of the story, Bloch had already realized that he was trapped in a closed linguistic order, and his existence and the things he observed were dominated by linguistic symbols, so he tried his best to avoid using similar expressions. This indicates that Bloch consciously detached himself from this prior order. At the end of the story, Bloch discussed the game with the sales representative and mentioned his experience watching forwards attack: as an audience member, you can try to only watch the goalkeeper and not the forwards, which means you have to detach yourself from the ball. In this way, the audience can instead use the goalkeeper's perspective to feel a state of freedom that is not predetermined or pushed by others. Goalkeepers may experience anxiety when facing penalty kicks, precisely because the shooter can kick in any direction that the goalkeeper cannot anticipate. From this perspective, the goalkeeper is the individual who has stripped away the predetermined order. Anxiety means that individuals can break free from the state of alienation and gain freedom.

3、 Handke's Reading of Kafka: The End of Strolling

Handke abandoned Kafka's self doubt and negative worldview in the process of imitating him, and his diary "The Weight of the World" published in 1977 is closely related to Kafka's diary, recording the similarity of self observation. Handke expressed a change in attitude towards Kafka in his diary, no longer interested in Kafka's complaints and self accusations, but focused on his descriptive style. Handke gradually liberated himself from Kafka's influence through writing, approaching the authenticity shaped by literature. He believes that literature should not only be satisfied with describing existing difficulties, but should use imagination to create a "seemingly" world, freeing the subject from the constraints of the prior order of the real world and showcasing the possibilities of different ways of survival. Handke summarized and ended his symbiotic relationship with Kafka in 'The End of the Stroll'.

4、 Intertextuality between Handke and Kafka: The Carnival of Reading

Handke attempted to go beyond Kafka's textual realm and challenge modernity by imitating, rewriting, and reading Kafka's works in the 1970s. He shifted from avant-garde discourse games to focusing on individual existence experiences, placing individuals at the center of narration, emphasizing their true feelings in the current environment, and practicing the possibility of individual self redemption. Handke inherits Kafka's third person perspective while distancing the narrator from the protagonist, allowing readers to observe the integration of the protagonist's inner consciousness and the external world within a rational range. His works create individuals' understanding of the dilemma of closed language order through distance, enabling them to explore new possibilities of existence. Handke's quotations, imitations, and rewrites of Kafka are rhetorical in meaning, aimed at transcending, resisting, and eliminating pre textual traces. The meaning of individual existence and the relationship between individuals and the external world are first and foremost topics at the level of linguistic symbols. The individual's search and questioning of existence means the individual's writing of themselves. As a reader, Handke's reading experience constitutes the grammar of the writing process; As an author, he utilizes the distance between the narrator and the narrated object to present the process of individual self writing and invites readers to participate. Handke's text is an open field, and its meaning is accomplished by the interpretive community composed of the author and the reader. His writing and reading possess a duality in the Christian sense, surpassing Bakhtin's theory of dialogue, meaning that the text is open to all outside of the text and accepts all external factors. Handke's rewriting and rewriting of Kafka is an attempt to transform, replace, and shift the influence of the pre text, forming a familial archival relationship. The significance of Kafka's text lies in the reader's intention, that is, the correction and misreading during the reading process. Handke's repetitive writing has aesthetic value and reading significance, aiming to authentically display the subject's perceptual experience and conscious activities through language, forming a community that is chosen by readers themselves.