vonundzuMierendorff / Handke 1975

For the German speakers out there: The YouTube channel of user vonundzuMierendorff is a real goldmine of German cultural talkshows. Heaps of episodes of nachtstudio, Das literarische Quartett, Das philosophische Quartett, hour-long interviews with Enzensberger, RFA terrorist Peter Klar, and more.

Non-German speakers may even appreciate the following gem from a 2008 nachtstudio interview with Peter Handke. Volker Panzer plays a clip from a 1975 talk show, with Handke in discussion with a group of writers, including the playwright Franz Xaver Kroetz.



Handke gives his avowedly pessimistic view of political history: "I hope that there always remains much that is accidental, and which never looks political in hindsight—that always remains accidental.  Because I believe the great strain in writing is to retain the accidentalness. And to show that whenever an alliance or a harmony occurs, that it is always accidental. And that is my pessimistic view of all of history." Kroetze takes issue with Handke's statement, and offers a fiery response, attempting to embarass Handke and turn the crowd against him: "That is this elite standpoint, that one says 'yes, it's accidental, sorrow happens accidentally, happiness happens accidentally'. That is a standpoint that despises humanity, and which has never encountered sorrow. I can't identify with that, and I reject it. And I would be ashamed if I had to say that as a writer that is active... that it's accidental when harmony occurs in the world. That is nonsense." As the applause dies down, and Kroetze begins to step onto his soapbox once more, Handke gestures to Kroetze's right, saying "Da ist die Kamera."-"The camera's over there." As Panzer clarifies: "Kroetz held a speech, if you will, for the public, the public applauded, but you pointed out to him that he should speak towards the camera [not towards Handke], that he is an agitator, not an author."

Werner Riegel (1925-1956)

Werner Riegel, around 1953.

Zwischen den Kriegen der organisierten Barbarei halten wir eine kleine Zisterne offen für ein paar hundert Dürstende, mehr können wir nicht tun.

Between the wars of organized barbarianism we hold a small cistern open for a few hundred thirsty, we can't do anything more.

Werner Riegel was a writer, poet, and journalist from Hamburg who self-published a literary journal entitled Zwischen den Kriegen from the years of 1952-1956. Together with Peter Rühmkorf (his partner in publishing Zwischen den Kriegen) Riegel formulated a literary program called Finismus, which can be partly understood as an attempt to resuscitate the corpses of pre-WWII German Expressionism and Activism in post-WWII Germany. Riegel operated independently of the literary establishment which was quickly forming in these years, shunning the opportunity of being printed by a major publisher, preferring the DIY hectograph production with which he printed ZdK.

Zwischen den Kriegen 9, 1953.

Zwischen den Kriegen 10, 1953.

In the following two excerpts (from “Vorwort zum Finismus”, Zwischen den Kriegen 9, September 1953) Riegel clarifies the origins of Finismus, and describes the program of aesthetic rapprochement which would be its intended goal:

[Finismus] handelt sich um den aktivistischen Tendenzexpressionismus deutscher und um den nihilistische-apokalyptischen Destruktionsformalismus französischer Provenienz. Es handelt sich um die Bemühung der Heinrich Mann, Sternheim, Rubiner, Hiller, Hasenclever, Toller bis hin zu Brecht oder Kesten einerseits und um die aus prälogischen Schichten des Hirns steigende Verzweiflung der Heym, Trakl, Lichtenstein, Kafka und Benn anderseits.

Finismus deals with the activistic-tendential Expressionism of German provenance, and the nihilistic-apocalyptic destruction-Formalism of French provenance. It deals with the endeavor of Heinrich Mann, Sternheim, Rubiner, Hiller, Hasenclever, Toller up to Brecht or Kesten on the one side, and on the other side the despair, rising from the pre-logical layers of the brain, of Heym, Trakl, Lichtenstein, Kafka and Benn.

[...] 

Zwiefach gespeist von den Elektroden des Expressionismus, von der Anode des Aktivismus, von der Kathode der Normenverneinung, beginnen [die Finisten] in der Nachfolge Tollers u n d Trakls, Brechts u n d Benns die Synthese von Kampf und Trauer, Ja und Verneinung, Bruch und Bindung, Tat und Trauma, Arche und Flut.

 Dually fed from the electrodes of Expressionism, from the anodes of Activism, from the cathodes of norm negation, [the Finisten], in the footsteps of Toller and Trakl, Brecht and Benn, begin the synthesis of battle and mourning, affirmation and negation, break and binding, action and trauma, ark and flood.

Riegel's campaign to renovate what he sees as the withered trails of the pre-war German avant-garde is thus set against the contemporary literary situation, which he sees as dominated by kitsch and low quality literary replicas. The political situation of post-war Germany inspired a kind of reactionary, restorative moralism in many parts of the field of literary production, something which upset writers like Riegel. In the following passage (excerpted from the same essay) Riegel paints a symbolic landscape to represent the ruins of the pre-war avant-garde as they existed in the cultural milieu of his time:

In der Mitte des Jahrhunderts stehen wir vor dem gigantischen Torso, vor dem unvollendeten Kolosseum einer mit ungeheurer Vehemenz begonnen ‘neuen’ Dichtung, vor einem Trümmertrakt, mit dem niemand etwas anfangen kann, nicht einmal seine Urheber, sofern sie überlebten. Eine allgemeine Lethargie, Müdigkeit, Lustlosigkeit, Verächtlichkeit senkt ihren Staub auf das Amphitheater, die Düne deckt den Marmor zu, die Distel krönt den Sarkophag. Die Pyramiden werden ausgemessen, beklopft, beschrieben, man trägt sie mit Sternchen in den Poesiebaedeker ein. Am Rand der Wüste hockt ein Volk von Fellachen und verscheuert den nach großem Vorbild geschusterten Abklatsch.

In the middle of the century we stand before the gigantic torso, before the unfinished colosseum of a "new", begun with tremendous vehemence, before a ruined apparatus, with which no one can do anything, not evening its progenitors, provided they survived. A general lethargy, tiredness, listlessness, contempt drops its dust upon the amphitheater, the dunes cover the marble, thistle crowns the sarcophagi. The pyramids are measured, tested, described, and are entered with star-ratings in the poetry-Baedeker [a travel guide]. At the edge of the desert squat a population of fellahin, who peddle imitations, based on the grand prototype.

Riegel died of cancer in 1956, at the age of 31. The volume shared with Rühmkorf below was the only proper book he published during his lifetime. The edition of selected works below that, edited by Rühmkorf, was published after his death, in 1961. There have been two four-volume editions of Riegel's selected works: one published by a Swiss press in 1988, and then a nice but strange edition put out by Stuttgart publisher Literarisches Bureau Christ & Fez in 2006. His Nachlass, which I had the opportunity to peruse this summer, lies at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach.

Heisse Lyrik, Limes Verlag, 1956. (Cover design by Hans Arp)

Gedichte und Prosa, Limes Verlag, 1961.

Gustav Leonhardt RIP

1928-2012

Cosas

First off, a stunning bit of ignorant, self-absorbed buffoonery from the master of such things, Bernard-Henri Lévy. In an aggravatingly uncritical article by Benjamin Wallace-Wells about his role in the Libyan intervention in New York magazine, BHL drops this clanger attempting to explain his aggressive defence of Dominique Strauss-Kahn after his arrest:

One day in Paris, when we are sitting in the lobby bar of the Right Bank five-star Hotel le Bristol, I ask Lévy what had motivated this response. “Principle,” he says, gravely. “Principle.” I ask what the principle was. He sighs. “Class justice,” he says. “Twenty years ago, class justice was to be gentle with the rich and terrible with the poor. This was a problem. When you are a rich man, you can escape justice. When you are a poor man, stealing a fruit—how do you say, a ­pomme?—you went to jail. Today there is a reversal of the process. You have a lot of people who, if you are rich, powerful, and white, do not care if you are guilty or not guilty—you are guilty by principle. It is exactly the same but reversed. And for me, I cannot, I cannot—it is as unbearable as the other one.” 

First off, if BHL really thinks that the situation has been reversed in the last twenty years, that rich people no longer escape justice, and poor people no longer go to jail for stealing apples, he deserves to be deprived of the power of speech. Is this really what European pseudo-leftist neoliberals believe, that twenty years of their own tireless political posturing has successfully solved the problems of "class justice" to such an extent that things have gone too far, necessitating a movement of class justice in defense of the rich? If this really is his view of "class justice," we should consider it terrifying that his dysfunctional moral compass is allowed to exert such an influence on public discourse.
This is also exactly what Brecht was thinking about in his comments on Grosz that I quoted earlier, where he speaks of the common tendency shared by himself and Grosz to more readily forgive injustice perpetuated by the proletariat rather than by the bourgeoisie. BHL shows his roots here: his inability or unwillingness to transcend his own privileged economic position, to see the full social schematic that is class relations. We see here only the myopia of contemporary humanitarian discourse, a misguided faith in the rights of the individual, regardless of class or social situation. This course of thinking serves and has always served to cloak an underlying ideology in defense of capital.
___________

Secondly, some wisdom from Fidel Castro, one of the few to be honest regarding yesterday's national holiday:

"The dreams of Martin Luther King Jr. are thousands of light years further away than the nearest inhabitable planet."

He also bemoans the inability of today's technological advances to solve the most pressing problems:

"Is it not obvious that the worst of all is the absence in the White House of a robot capable of governing the United States and preventing a war that would end the life of our species?"

___________

Finally, let it all float away with the art of Ann Steel:

Standing in my own way

“This is not a competition”—Words to live by. An unwillingness to compete. Sports are the only real competition. Life is meant to be lived together, a communal effort. I isolate myself from a culture of individualism. The true communal culture will be the one that brings me out of my shell. The communal culture is built on humility. Life is not a competition, except when it is, and usually these moments are preceded by the statement “Get ready for the competition.” There is an ethical function in this.

My boss tells me “Sie stehen sich selbst im Weg,” which translates to “you are standing in your own way.” My instantaneous response: that’s a great saying, “Ich fühle mich, dass ich mein Leben lang so gelebt habe,” I feel like I have stood in my own way for my entire life, whereupon she answers, “Das kann ich wohl glauben,” I can believe it. She says this frowning, whereas my response was said through a smile, reflecting a bliss which relates to the joy of Emil Cioran when he remembers what he already knows:

‘Tout est démuni d’assise et de substance’, je ne me le redis jamais sans ressentir quelque chose qui ressemble au bonheur. L’ennui est qu’il y a quantité de moments où je ne parviens pas à me le redire. [‘Everything is without firm basis, without substance’: I never repeat it to myself without feeling something resembling happiness. The trouble is that there are many moments when I do not repeat it to myself.] (Œuvres 1314)

Later, on the bus home, I glance at my reflection (I am wearing a hat with a brim and grasping a canvas strap to maintain my balance) and think of a response (too late, as is often the case): “Aber das ist ja la condition humaine, sich selbst im Weg zu stehen,” but that is indeed the human condition, to stand in one’s own way (and it should not be any other way).
We stand in our own ways on two different levels: the physical and the spiritual (understood in the broadest sense). When our bodies stand in our ways we are reaching the limit of our agency, the limits of our own control over our various body parts. To cross this line condemns us to injury or death. It is inhuman to cross the line set before us by our own body. Spiritually the situation is similar: when our spirits stand in our ways we are reaching the limit of our aspiration, the limits of our own ambitious strivings. To cross this line condemns us to cynicism or sin. It is unethical to cross the line set before us by our own spirit.

TB Wave / Kleiner Österreichischer Staatspreis

Es ist nichts zu loben, nichts zu verdammen, nichts anzuklagen, aber es ist vieles lächerlich; es ist alles lächerlich, wenn man an den Tod denkt. [...] Die Zeitalter sind schwachsinnig, das Dämonische in uns ein immerwährender vaterländischer Kerker, in dem die Elemente der Dummheit und der Rücksichtslosigkeit zur tagtäglichen Notdurft geworden sind. Der Staat ist ein Gebilde, das fortwährend zum Scheitern, das Volk ein solches, das ununterbrochen zur Infamie und zur Geistesschwäche verurteilt ist. Das Leben Hoffnungslosigkeit, an die sich die Philosophien anlehnen, in welcher alles letzten Endes verrückt werden muß. Wir sind Österreicher, wir sind apathisch; wir sind das Leben als das gemeine Desinteresse am Leben. [...] Wir haben nichts zu berichten, als daß wir erbärmlich sind, durch Einbildungskraft einer philosophisch-ökonomisch-mechanischen Monotonie verfallen. Mittel zum Zwecke des Niedergangs, Geschöpfe der Agonie, erklärt sich uns alles, verstehen wir nichts. Wir bevölkern ein Trauma, wir fürchten uns, wir haben ein Recht, uns zu fürchten, wir sehen schon, wenn auch undeutlich im Hintergrund: die Riesen der Angst. Was wir denken, ist nachgedacht, was wir empfinden, ist chaotisch, was wir sind, ist unklar. Wir brauchen uns nicht zu schämen, aber wir sind auch nichts und wir verdienen nichts als das Chaos. 

____________ 

There is nothing to praise, nothing to damn, nothing to accuse, but much that is ridiculous; everything is ridiculous, when one thinks about death. [...] Our era is feeble-minded, the demonic within us a perpetual national prison, in which the elements of stupidity and carelessness have become a daily need. The state is a construct which is forever condemned to miscarriage, the people one that is endlessly condemned to infamy and feeblemindedness. Life is a hopelessness, on which the philosophies are dependent, in which all must finally become insane. We are Austrians, we are apathetic; we are life as the general disinterest in life. [...] We have nothing to report, except that we are pitiful, brought down by the imaginative powers of a philosophical-economic-mechanical monotony. Means to a destructive end, creatures of agony, everything is explained to us and we understand nothing.  We populate a trauma, we are frightened, we have a right to be frightened, we see already, if only as dim shapes in the background: the giants of fear. What we think is already thought, what we feel is chaotic, what we are is unclear. We don't need to be ashamed, but we are nothing and we deserve nothing other than chaos.

Excerpted from the acceptance speech for the Österreichischer Staatspreis, 1968.

Translation altered from that of Carol Brown Janeaway in My Prizes.

Berlin nach Bamberg, 14. Juli 2011

[English translation follows below]

Ich fühlte mich schlechter als erwartet nach 5 Biere und 5 Stunden Schlaf. Vielleicht war das kanadische Pizza daran schuld. Das Wasser mit Kohlensäure war mir übel. Die Karbonisation brachte nicht das gewöhnliche Gefühl der Erleichterung. Nur Caspars afrikanische Disko half. Ich könnte gar nicht essen. Der Birnesaft war aber gut.
Ich war sehr überrascht, dass ich pünktlich am Nikolassee angekommen war. Ich kaufte ein Ciabatta-Brötchen, obwohl das Essen noch völlig undenkbar war. Herr Kajawski und die zwei Mitfahrer waren da. Wir stiegen in das alte Mercedes hinein und ging los.
Endlich: Erleichterung, wie es mit jeder Abfahrt gibt. Besonders mit Zug oder Bus, ein unsinniges Glück, nur weil man sich in eine geplante Richtung bewegt. Es ist ja gerade in diesem Augenblick, dass man sich glaubt, ein “Mann der Welt” zu sein. Dieses Behagen mit dem endlichen Abfahrt dauert aber immer nur kurz.
So dachte ich, als wir die A9 entlang, weg von Berlin fuhren. Und natürlich, ging es mir bald wieder übel. Das Gefühl der erleichternden Bewegung war wegen der im Wagen wachsenden Hitze durchaus ausgelöscht. Ich trank kleine Schlückchen Wasser, und schaute auf den unbeweglichen Horizont. Meine Lust auf Bewegung war mit einer Lust auf Unbeweglichkeit ersetzt.
Mein Körper war heiß. Ich saß neben mir. Ich versuchte, nichts zu denken, aber fehlte. Ich schloss die Augen. Eine ganze Reihe von Bilder kam mir vor meinem inneren Auge vor, ohne dass ein einziges Bild mir gefiel. Ich versuchte, etwas Musik anzuhörzen, aber war ebenso enttäuscht. So wie die inneren Bilder, passte eine Reihe von Lieder, ohne dass ein einziges Lied mir gefiel. Das einzige Vergnügen, das ich da im heißen Auto kriegte, war von einem Lied dem nächsten Lied zu springen. Anstatt an etwas Vergnügen zu finden, war es für mich nur möglich, eine Möglichkeit des Vergnügens zu entdecken, und gerade an dieser Entdeckung eine Art Vergnügen zu finden, noch wenn das ursprüngliche Vergnügen nie verwirklicht wurde. Wenn man neben sich steht, wie ich auf diesem Morgen, versteht man nicht das Vergnügen, sondern nur die Möglichkeit des Vergnügens. Plötzlich sagte der Kajawski, dass wir 200 km gefahren seien, welche die Hälfte der Reise sein soll. Ich antwortete rasch, dass ich das Fenster aufmachen wollte.
Der frische Luft tat mir endlich gut. Die Landschaft war bayrisch geworden, und das heisst, dass es hübsche, grüne Hügeln gab, welche sehr erfrischend nach brandenburgischer Flachheit waren. Ich hatte dann ein plötzliches Gefühl der Südlichkeit, das für mich eine Erleichterung war, obwohl es noch heiß im Wagen war. Ich atmete tief, aber sehnte noch nach Stillsein. Ich aß ein Hüstenbonbon, das Caspar mir früher gegeben hat, und schaute wieder auf den wellenförmigen Horizont.
Als die Kräuter des Bonbons zu wirken begann, und als ich danach endlich ein bisschen Hunger kriegte, kamen wir plötzlich zum absoluten Halt. Wegen eines Unfalls gab es unbeweglichen Stau. Die andere machten ihre Fenster auf, und ein kühles Lüftchen strömte durch den Wagen. Ich fühlte mich endlich in Ordnung, und aß mein Ciabatta-Brötchen mit erneute Energie. Mein Verlangen nach Stillsein und Kühlsein, welche mich für 2 Stunden ununterbrochen gequält hat, war endlich befriedigt. Mit den offenen Fenstern fühlt es sich wie ein Picknick.
Um den Stau zu vermeiden, stiegen wir am nächster Ausfahrt aus, und fuhren durch kleine bayrische Landstraßen. Es kamen mir im Kopf wunderschönen Gedanken. […] Alles, was ich dachte, gefiel mir, noch wenn es später als Unsinn vorkamen. Ich wurde glücklich. Glücklich werden heisst Unsinn wieder Bedeutungsvoll zu finden.
Glücklich sein heisst unsinnig sein. Wenn es einem übel geht, kommt einem alles als Unsinn vor. Unglücklich sein heisst nüchtern sein. Wenn man wieder unsinnig wird, kommt einem alles wieder als sinnvoll vor.
Man entkommt diese Nüchternheit nicht nur mit Alkohol, sondern auch mit Kultur, und das heisst auch mit der Vernunft. Die Vernunft setzt man wieder in die Welt des Unsinns ein. Philosophie war nie ein Versuch, nüchtern zu werden, sondern das Versuch, den Unsinn gesetzlich zu ordnen. Die Philosophie hat den Unsinn zum Gesetz erhoben. Sie hat das mit der Sprache gemacht.
Glücklich werden—und das heisst die Nüchternheit zu entkommen—heisst in die Sprache wieder einzutreten. So trat ich auf den bayrischen Landstraßen wieder in die Sprache ein. In der Sprache kommt der Unsinn als sinnvoll vor. Nüchtern werden heisst aus der Sprache hinaus zu treten, und dann wird es einem übel.
Nur in der Sprache geht es einem besser. Wir stürzen in die Sprache hinein, aus der Nüchternheit hinaus, und alles kommt es wieder sinnvoll vor. Nur im Betrug entkommen wir den Unsinn.

__________________


I felt worse than expected after five beers and five hours of sleep. Maybe it was the fault of the Canadian pizza. The mineral water did me no good. The carbonization didn’t bring the normal feeling of relief. Only Caspar’s African disco helped. I couldn’t eat at all. The pear juice, however, was good.
I was extremely surprised that I arrived at Nikolassee on time. I bought a ciabatta roll, even though eating was still out of the question. Herr Kajawski and the other two passengers were there. We stepped into the old Mercedes and took off.
Finally: relief, as accompanies any departure. Especially by bus or train, a nonsensical happiness, just because one is moving in a planned direction. It’s exactly at this moment that one believes oneself to be a real “man of the world.” Yet this satisfaction that one feels when finally departing always lasts only a short time.
These were my thoughts as we headed along the A9, away from Berlin. And of course, I soon started to feel bad again. The feeling of alleviating movement was fully extinguished due to the rising heat in the car. I drank small sips of water, and looked at the unmoving horizon. My joy at movement was replaced by a longing for stillness.
My body was hot. I sat next to myself. I tried to think nothing, but failed. I closed my eyes. A whole series of images flashed before my inner eye, without a single image appealing to me. I tried to listen to some music, but was similarly let down. Like the inner images, a whole series of songs passed by without a single song appealing to me. The only pleasure that I had in the car was skipping from one song to the next. Instead of finding pleasure in something, it was only possible for me to uncover a possibility of pleasure, and thus to find pleasure with this uncovering, even when the originally anticipated pleasure is never realized. When one stands next to oneself, like me on this morning, one doesn’t understand pleasure, rather one understands only the possibility of pleasure. Suddenly, Herr Kajawski tells us that we’ve gone 200 kilometers, which is half of the distance of our journey. I answered abruptly that I wanted to open the window.
The fresh air finally did me good. The landscape had become Bavarian, and that means that there were pretty, green hills, which were very refreshing after the flatness of Brandenburg. I had then a sudden feeling of southernness, which was a relief for me, even though it was still hot inside the car. I breathed deeply, but I yearned for stillness. I ate a cough drop, which Caspar had given me, and looked again at the undulating horizon.
As the herbs of the cough drop began to work, and as I finally got a bit hungry, we came suddenly to a total stop. Due to an accident there was unmoving traffic. The others opened their windows, and a cool breeze streamed through the car. I finally felt alright, and I ate my ciabatta roll with renewed energy. My desires for stillness and coolness, which had tormented me uninterruptedly for two hours, were finally satisfied. With the windows open it felt like a picnic.
In order to avoid the traffic, we took the next exit, and continued along small Bavarian country roads. Wondrous thoughts came to me in my head. […] Everything that I thought appealed to me, even when it later appeared to me as complete nonsense. I became happy. Becoming happy means once again finding nonsense meaningful.
Being happy means being nonsensical. When one feels unwell, nothing seems to make sense. To be unhappy means to be sober. When one becomes nonsensical, everything seems to make sense again.
One escapes this sobriety not only with alcohol, but also with culture, and that means with reason. Reason sets one once again into the world of nonsense. Philosophy was never the attempt to become sober, but rather the attempt to statutorily organize nonsense. Philosophy elevated nonsense to the level of law. It did this using language.
Becoming happy—and that means escaping sobriety—means entering once more into language. In this way I entered once more into language on small Bavarian country roads. In language nonsense appears sensical. Becoming sober means stepping outside of language, and then one feels unwell.
Only in language does one feel better. We plummet into language, out of sobriety, and everything seems to make sense again. Only in delusion do we escape nonsense.

Notes to Robert Kramer's Berlin 10/90

Titles: Une Emision proposée par Philippe Grandrieux / Berlin 10/90 / Filmé par Robert Kramer / Berlin, 25 Octobre 1990, 15 h 15 > 16 h 15

Opening shot: Bathtub faucet, dripping slowly, Kramer narrates “25 October 1995, Berlin… Berlin…” Camera pans down towards water in tub. “I was thinking about Ezra Pound, thinking of him in his hut, his cage, in the plain underneath the mountains at Pisa. ” Camera starts to pan left. “Those ridiculous radio programs supporting Il Duce”… “Came to Europe to find cultural leadership, cultural integration, the new renaissance that he lacked so much, in the States. Deathly illusion-- he’s not the only one to have slipped that way. Misunderstood, he came looking for something, made this terrible, criminal error”…“I can imagine Ezra in the toilet of the Italian embassy [in Berlin], so proud…” Camera pans to single black chair. RK briefly walks in front of camera, visible only between knees and stomach, then returns behind camera. “Nothing matters but the quality of affection, nothing matters but the feeling. I shore up these fragments against my ruins”…“Thomas Mann was in Los Angeles. Just the American took the plunge into madness. Into some kind of terrible misunderstanding of the difference between art and politics.”
Music begins playing offscreen. “These are the kinds of things which turn around and around in my head in Berlin. This is what Berlin is for me, the crossroads of the whole thing, everything we’ve lived in the past century.” Camera pans left, passing window, down to a television on the floor of the bathroom, playing a video of a horn band playing by the Brandenburger Tor. “The Brandenburg Gate. That was the day after the reunification. Coming at me through the television, my images through the television … Here in this huge apartment …  my spoils of war.” Video of Kriegsschatz, spoils of war being sold at the Polenmarkt. “Sold by the Russians who have nothing as they try to survive. Sell their Kalashnikov machine guns to the skin-heads in East Berlin. This is gonna be a violent place.”
“Crossroads of world history, and of my phantoms.” Video shows Museuminsel, Spree river. “My father was a medical student here for ’30 to ’33 at the Charité. A big hospital, it must be 5 minutes from here, on foot.” Video shows walls with bullet holes. RK narrates simultaneously with his own voice on video. “Bullet holes, all the walls here have bullet holes.” “Traces of history, bullet holes… The real history. Bullet holes everywhere…Bullet holes… My body.” -- Real history marked by physical violence, not by the historical narrative established by political institutions.
The Reichstag… “That’s when he knew it was time to leave.” (the Reichstag fire) “The code of these friezes, that have been done and redone, to know what the layers of history are that you’re looking at.” Buildings: “like animals in the city, lurking among the banal modernness.”
Video playing on television shows shots of RK’s temporary apartment in Berlin. “Haven’t seen space like this since my parent’s house. That’s it. Berlin is the continuation of all these traces back towards that past…” Shot of wife: “and it’s true for Erika too.. who is at home here in a way that surprise both of us” Video pans down to shot of Erika’s breasts, hidden behind folds of kimono. RK speaks of reignited passions during stay here. “The time running out away from us, so fast. Because Berlin is about the sense of loss. It’s about how totally and absolutely one can disappear.” “The fragments which need to be shored up against the ruins, because the mind is a wizard, dashing through time and space.”

Screen shows shots of two men holding books, having a discussion, camera pans right, away from television, back to black chair. “Yeah, different ways of coming home. It’s a strange idea that I’ve never been to Berlin, and Berlin is coming home. Erika feels comfortable, is learning the language.” RK walks in front of camera, sits in chair, facing camera for the first time. “These three people, three militants and their books. They belong to an organization. One of them has fixed up his apartment… and he finds that he doesn’t have much space for the books, only a small place for a bookshelf. And so he invited over his friends to sort through the books, sort through their past… Marx, Brecht, Marcuse, Schiller… Each book was already a piece of a scene that they had played… I thought I would use this as a focus, another crossroad like Berlin, for my plan-séquence, a plan-séquence of one hour, a continuous shot. And trying to have the meanings explode from this one situation. But the situation that you could see was nothing compared to the situation that we were living, because we were bringing with us each a complete package of history, of subjectivity… These people [the other two militants] felt an absolute rupture with that past, they felt definitively separated in some way. In a way that I feel only the continuity of the desire. Only the continuation of the same intention, made all the more clear, more poignant by the collapse and evaporation to the east, whatever this was, this Eastern-European socialism, this communism, this sinister perversion of a real desire: for another way.”
“What was this Buchenwald story?”…“The [Buchenwald] monument looks out on the Weimar value, the very cradle of high German sensibility and spirituality. Intelligence, clarity, Goethe. So we left, and [story of car crash…]”
And so I also wonder what it was like for my father to be brought by history to the acknowledgement of his Jewishness, as an American moving away from all of that, into the modern world, away from the shtetl of his parents… Then here, 30-33, the flames bursting out of the cupola of the Reichstag. Sort of saying: whatever you think, this is the way it is.”
“Life in New York was a sort of fabrication, an invention based on some idea of German culture. Buddenbrooks, restraint, a mannered, intelligent distance to terrible passions and darkness in each social situation and in each person. A Thomas Mann universe of bourgeois values and bourgeois decorum as the only restraint to the dark, demon-infested, demonic, unbearable yearning for destruction. I was choked with it, I was suffocated by the books, by the sense of greatness. Beethoven is great, Mahler is great, Rilke is great, Kafka is great. This idea of greatness is a killing idea, is another form of the authority that says: “Things must be this way.” “Es muss sein.” “To each his due.” [inscription from Buchenwald] It made me afraid to work, to explode, to try my way… The same people… Heavy, well-cut fabric, solid shoes, warm coats—and authority. Not [wags his finger] that kind of authority, but [cross his arms awkwardly, extends fingers of hands] Knowledge of the world, as it is— it is.” Grimaces, punches wall twice, then slaps wall violently with right hand, grimace fades. (As if expressing frustration at not clearly expressing ideas, or maybe fluffing the take, trying to decide whether to stop and start again or to continue, finish hour-long take) Sits facing camera for another minute, then stands up, pans camera back to screen, where conversation between three militants continues.
Men compare Marxist pamphlets, The Mass Psychology of Fascism. “National self-feeling.” Bobby Seale. RK in video “You know Bobby Seale just published a cookbook? A barbecue cookbook. He’s an expert in barbecue…” Camera pans slowly back to chair. RK, from behind screen “It’s been very hard to film and talk at the same time…” RK paces back and forth in front of camera, visible only between knees and stomach, as if gathering courage to sit and talk again, facing camera.
As soon as he sits down he stands up again, walks of screen, towards the right. “Here’s something that Wittgenstein wrote: ‘If I wrote a book called “The World as I Found It” I should have to include a report on my body, and should have to say which parts were subordinate to my will, and which were not, this being a method of isolating the subject, or rather of showing that in an important sense there is no subject, for it alone could not be mentioned in that book.’ … That which can never be spoken about is the very receiver, the lens that organizes and analyzes, the bedrock of each of us.”

“Filming yesterday… I returned to a way of working that felt comfortable, interesting, right. It corresponded to the way I see, in fragments and pieces, and frequently led from one piece to another by association. Both by chance and by being there at that moment, in that angle of vision, etc. The discovery of the pieces and the tension between them—like words in a sentence, like sentences against one another, like whole ideas colliding—corresponds also to the discovery of a place, and a feeling. And another reason: almost like a story, a fragment of a story, a fact in the mosaic of facts. It is important in all this that the shots are not one shot, one feeling, idea, breath, fluid happening, but many pieces brought together by will. It is in the bringing together that the violence is done. And the obligation put to live it through also, you, the watcher. These are leaps, they have to be made… I hate gumming this all together. I hate this false fluidity. This appearance of ‘it has happened,’ ‘it is flowing,’ or ‘I just happened to be there.’” RK sits facing camera again. Two minutes of silence pass.
RK speaks of his first thoughts of filming in the Gulf, Egypt, Israel, or Romania. “No, go to Berlin. Film in Berlin.” Another long silence.
“The quality is that it’s so hard to express, to convey, to share, and love like this. Flashes of radiant heat that you feel on the hairs of your arm, your cheeks.” Another long silence. His wife can be heard laughing on the video. RK stands up, camera pans back to television. Shots of the Jewish cemetery in Berlin.
Shots of Berlin wall. “Wall, wall, Wall Street, wall. Cutting through the city.” Shots of Martin-Gropius-Bau, Topographie des Terrors exhibition, statue of Bismarck. “Bismarck, his back turned, as if just by coincidence, his back turned. Topography of terror, which you can only show with champ-contrechamp, the park, the luxury houses, the Gropius-Bau, which is also the Jewish museum. This juxtaposition, this compression of history and of sense, right here, across one small street, the Wall was there, Bismarck’s back is turned, the net is spread.”

Shots of Topology of Terror exhibit. “Downstairs where the interrogations took place, perhaps that’s why I’m here in this white-tiled bathroom — or not.”
Shots of bathroom itself, the tiles, the chair. “Not just talking to myself.” Shot of dot-matrix printer printing words: FRAGMENTS / EXPLODING / OUTWARD / MONTAGE / NO / TIME / TO / WASTE / NOW /ROBERT / WASTE
Shots of his wife bathing in the bathtub. “I guess that love is only, or is not only, is only, or is not only—is: is what we have to hold us back from this slow slide. Slow slide… terrible feeling.” Camera pans back towards the right, past shower and chair, radiator. “Perhaps I filmed to fight…” Returning to bathtub faucet, continuing to slowly drip. “Perhaps I filmed to fight against… Perhaps I filmed to fight.”
Pan down to water in tub. RK’s hand dips into water, lifts water, (offscreen) slurps water noisily.