Short answer: you’re probably responding less to how mystical they are, and more to how that mysticism is metabolized on the page—and that difference maps loosely (very loosely) onto MBTI-style temperaments.
Longer, juicier answer:
Fosse vs. Handke: two kinds of inwardness
Both writers are mystical, but they practice different spiritual postures.
Jon Fosse
Mysticism as surrender
Language as prayer / tide / erasure
Meaning arrives by withdrawing the self
The voice dissolves into repetition, silence, God, death
Peter Handke
Mysticism as attention
Language as walking, naming, lingering
Meaning arrives by dwelling inside perception
The self stays present—quiet, but alert
If Fosse feels like kneeling in a dark chapel, Handke feels like standing very still in a field until the field begins to speak.
Both are mystical. Only one keeps you company.
The MBTI lens (with a big grain of salt 🧂)
MBTI isn’t science, but it is a useful metaphor for styles of consciousness.
Why Handke might feel more “INFP-compatible” to you
INFPs tend to resonate with:
Inner immediacy (“this is what it feels like right now”)
Moral/aesthetic intuition rather than doctrine
A self that feels its way toward meaning
Language as a private ethical act
Handke’s writing:
Honors subjective perception
Trusts the felt sense over conclusions
Lets ambiguity stay alive
Feels like someone thinking alongside you, not above you
That’s very INFP-friendly.
Why Fosse may feel less accessible—even if he’s mystical
Fosse’s mysticism:
Moves toward transcendence and negation
Often bypasses psychology
Asks the reader to submit to rhythm rather than participate in inquiry
That can feel closer to an INFJ or even INTJ mystic mode:
Vision-led
Architectonic
Oriented toward ultimate unity rather than lived texture
An INFP reader may admire this—but not inhabit it as comfortably.
A key distinction that matters more than type
This might be the real divider:
Handke mysticizes experience.
Fosse dematerializes it.
If your mysticism is:
Immanent rather than transcendent
Rooted in sensation, walking, weather, time
About being faithful to inner life rather than escaping it
…then Handke will always feel closer to your nervous system.
You’re not choosing the “better mystic.”
You’re choosing the mystic who lets you remain yourself.
One last thought
Many mystical INFPs actually struggle with writers like Fosse because his work enacts the very thing they fear losing:
the fragile, morally charged inner voice.
Handke preserves that voice—even when he pushes it to its limits.
If you want, I can:
Compare a specific passage from each
Map other writers onto this same spectrum
Or talk about your mysticism and what kind of language it wants
Just say the word.
Messages beyond this point are only visible to you
Alright, let’s build the spectrum properly—and then place some writers on it so you can feel where your gravity probably is.
I’ll frame this as a continuum of mysticism and inwardness, not a value judgment.
The Spectrum: Immanent Attention → Transcendent Dissolution
Think of it as how the self is treated.
🟢 LEFT: Immanent / Attentive / Companionable
(The self stays intact; meaning emerges through perception.)
These writers walk beside you.
Peter Handke (anchor here)
– Mysticism of seeing, naming, walking
– Ethical attention to the world as it is
– The “I” remains fragile but present
Marcel Proust
– Memory as revelation
– Time recovered within consciousness
– Almost sacramental attention to sensation
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
– Nature as text
– Awe without surrendering agency
– The watcher matters as much as the watched
Robert Walser
– Smallness as spiritual posture
– Humility, play, inner freedom
– Mysticism of the marginal
Virginia Woolf (The Waves, late essays)
– Moments of being
– The self thins, but does not vanish
– Consciousness as shimmer, not doctrine
If you love this zone, you likely want mystery without annihilation.
🟡 MIDDLE: Liminal / Ritualized / Unstable
(The self flickers—sometimes guide, sometimes obstacle.)
These writers test your footing.
Rainer Maria Rilke
– The self as vessel
– Angels, terror, beauty
– Oscillates between inward lyricism and metaphysical command
W.G. Sebald
– Memory, ruin, ghostliness
– The narrator is present but haunted
– Mysticism via history and melancholy
Clarice Lispector
– Radical interiority
– Consciousness cracking itself open
– Sometimes intimate, sometimes alien
Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha, Steppenwolf)
– Spiritual seeking dramatized
– The self must fracture to learn
– Explicit metaphysical arc
This is often the INFP–INFJ overlap zone.
🔵 RIGHT: Transcendent / Apophatic / Self-Erasing
(The self is to be surrendered; language becomes rite.)
These writers ask you to kneel.
Jon Fosse (anchor here)
– Repetition as prayer
– Silence as meaning
– God, death, negation
Samuel Beckett (late prose)
– Voice without owner
– Consciousness stripped to residue
– Anti-self as revelation
Georges Bataille
– Ecstasy through excess and rupture
– Transgression as spiritual method
– The self is broken open
Simone Weil
– Attention as self-emptying
– Grace arrives only when “I” disappears
– Severe, radiant, merciless
This zone can feel sublime—or emotionally uninhabitable—depending on your temperament.
A quick diagnostic (for you)
Notice which sentence feels truer:
“Meaning appears when I pay exquisite attention to my inner life.”
“Meaning appears when I dissolve into something larger than myself.”
If you hesitate on #2, you’re probably left-leaning on this spectrum—and that explains Handke.
One subtle but important distinction
Some writers protect the reader’s interiority.
Others override it.
Handke, Woolf, Walser → protect
Fosse, Beckett, Weil → override
Neither is better.
But only one feels like home.
If you want, next we could:
Place your own writing on this map
Compare two writers you’re conflicted about
Or identify the bridge writers who might ease you toward Fosse without losing yourself
I’ve got time.
----------------
Yes, you do have more time than I do. I will fix lunch now, Bela on the piano. Pablo canceled, getting his immigration papers further in order with his immigration lawyer. David said yesterday they were all going in the evening to see Eliot in his class's production of musical Oliver Twist.
Today is Wednesday, Jan 28. Waiting for Apple to deliver new big screen Mac.
The Chat responses are so good and so creepy. Do they give you a language for what you think you are wanting to think about, or do they mimic the search for such language? Auerbach on Mimesis vs Chat GPT. How one could go over the text provided and ask further questions about the words used. And how one could embroider upon it as an attempt to rescue one's voice, self, mind, existence away from the bots.
Recall how the "answer" really just spins out from the initial language of the prompt/question, in rather perfect demonstration of all that Burke and others in mid-century (Barthes) said about language.
Is Chat pure logologic divorced from reality?
Called Salud dentistry and got an appointment for next week. Will Bela accept it?
All of this because yesterday felt so very strange. Reading Fosse, the same book of his I read at this time last year here in Abq, in the same frame of mind of also shopping for shoes that would give more cushion against the concrete floors, and setting up for the ladies lunch. After lunch with the Longenbachs whom we haven't seen since they visited us when we were in Bear House. Bela forgot that Patti did indeed know both Lou and Barbara. She later told us she had dated Patti's brother. Did he just die or was it a cousin?
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