vendredi 28 novembre 2014

Chistoph SCHLINGENSIEF : cancer, films, and redemption



Not long before his death, Chistoph SCHLINGENSIEF was interviewed by Florian Malzacher. Here he is talking about his cancer, films, and redemption :

Florian Malzacher : Your work always builds on itself and develops further certain themes, motifs, and also aesthetic approaches. Mea Culpa has now become the third part of a trilogy about your illness with cancer. 
 
     I have certainly produced work that was deliberately and purposefully

     developed to attract attention and nothing more. But sometimes that was
     a mistake because doing that turned out to be completely uninteresting.
     The best things were those that developed unintentionally, where the
     work, for example, came into being as a result of an invitation out of the
     blue. That is even more clearly the case with the three pieces about
     cancer. They came out of nowhere – out of the shock that came with this
     illness. And, of course, it turned everything upside down. Suddenly all of
     my 350 kilometre-per-hour plans—my life at the time was super fast—
     were brought to a halt. But at the same time I didn’t see any reason to
     brake because cancer has to do with death and with the limitations of
     time that one has, but that wasn’t really clear to me at the time. It was
     actually a massive disruption. Like something that wants to prevent you
     from doing the work that is pulling at you. When I looked at the X-ray, I
     suddenly became very hot, as if I had made a huge mistake. The first
     thing I felt was a certain sense of guilt. In that moment, I probably
     already sensed: This is really such an insane rupture it is almost
     impossible to imagine. And then a flood of questions followed: What
     happens now? Operation? Radiotherapy? Chemotherapy? Will I still exist
     after the operation? And will I still have a voice afterwards? Because the
     doctor thought that he might have to remove my vocal nerves. And then
     you wake up and you can speak—that was really such a relief. Then my
     appetite returned and I came to terms with the whole situation, so I was
     optimistic. That is something that has remained with me. That is to say: I
     always have moments when I think: This is great, things go on. And then
     I fall to pieces again, you know: A complete nervous wreck, with
     absolutely no idea about how to cope with it, and I just think: It’s all
     over. And there is no way of driving a wedge between myself and it, or of
     flinging open a window.
     It was thus pure expediency to say: good, if you have fear, then talk
     about fear. So the old automatism returned: If you have a problem, don’t
     think it away, deal with it. Then use it, grab it, and channel your sorrow
     into a comrade-in-arms. So I had to give form to it, create images, in
     order to cope with it and at first I thought: We will make a film as soon
     as I get out of hospital. A comedy about someone who has cancer and
     who only meets crazy people. Then I thought: That would just be the old
     sales and suppression strategy, i.e. how do I give form to it in a way that
     people notice that I’m in control—and of course I’m not in control of it at
     all! It’s the complete opposite. It is probably the hardest experience of
     my life. In this case, I can stand neither above nor below it. This time I
     have definitely landed somewhere else. I am in it.
       
Florian Malzacher : You made notes with the help of a dictaphone…
 
     Yes, even in the first weeks, I recorded nearly every day what I
     experienced there and what happened when the doctor or the palliative
     nurse came etc. And in the evenings, I didn’t listen to it again. I did,
     however, cry and talk into the device, when nobody was there. It wasn’t a
     speech, or material, at that stage, for a book. It was simply a collection of
     everything that was racing through my head at the time. And then I had
     the idea of making a piece out of it—which I began to rehearse in the
     flat… from an automated bed with a remote control from the hospital.
     That was immediately a flop because, as a result of the Chemo, I wasn’t
     able to continue. Aino, my girlfriend at the time and now my wife1, tried
     to reconstruct the material that I had worked on laboriously in the flat, on
     the rehearsal stage of the Maxim Gorki Theater. That resulted in the first
     performance of Zwischenstand der Dinge ( The Current State of Things)
     which took place in a very intimate atmosphere with no press allowed. I
     made it while still in shock. Guests were invited solely via a text message
     —no other announcement was made. We had sixty or seventy seats for
     people including neighbours and friends, but also Bob Wilson and Volker
     Spengler, Werner Schroeter, who has cancer himself, Martin Wuttke…
     And because it was an evening without pressure and without a discussion
     afterwards, it was an incredible source of power for me: We pulled it off.
     Somehow it worked.
     At that point I thought: Stick with this theme. And Zwischenstand was
     further developed into Kirche der Angst ( A Church of Fear for the
      Stranger in Me) for the Ruhr-Triennale, as a sort of requiem or ‘cancer
     mass’. It was a huge success yet a different kind of success than
     previously. Something really happened between the audience and us – it
     was sincere and, to a certain extent, tragic. I also appeared in a short
     scene at the end of the performance that utilized the liturgy of a Catholic
     mass. But on the fifth or sixth evening, I thought: That’s enough. I don’t
     want to make touring theatre, or something, for people with cancer. That
     can’t be the case and it has no future. And then came the third part in the
     Burgtheater Vienna and, with it, the risk that people would perhaps think:
     Yeah, yeah, here he goes again about his illness… But then the situation
     changed again. The metastasen suddenly disappeared as a result of a
     tablet, something which, according to the doctors, wasn’t really possible
     in that period of time. After four or five weeks, I had a CT scan in which
     none could be found! How does that come about? The third part of the
     trilogy is concerned with life going on. What do you do, when you step
     back into reality, but you can’t perceive it as real because you previously
     thought you were already dead?
           When someone dies, it is the loneliest path there is. It is not about
     hand-holding or whatever: My father smiled at the end. That was,
     however, a smile that I couldn’t understand. Was it, perhaps, the smile of
     someone face to face with a secret society that had taken him in? To see
     that was a heavy burden for me because he also told us that, in two weeks,
     he would be dead. And in two weeks he was dead. They are exceptional
     circumstances and we lack the criteria for working through them.

Florian Malzacher : Can one actually grasp something like that in a production?
 
     It can only function via music, and perhaps also via beliefs, i.e.
     individual beliefs. One couldn’t go further with some sort of objective
     realism. Only through that which is ritualistic, almost sacred can one
     produce something that is befitting and moving. And the third part Mea
      Culpa was perhaps the most difficult: an uncertain resurrection, a
     celebration of life in the face of the inevitability of death.
     In the middle of the stage, almost invisibly, I presided over the church,
     that is, the Kirche der Angst. Within it the ritual continues and someone
     there celebrates a requiem while outside are the treatment rooms and life
     follows its normal course… It is once again an argument
     [ Auseinandersetzung] with the realization that redemption is actually a
     concept that is completely misunderstood, and which one connects with
     something great and sublime. But redemption is the most individualistic,
     small, and awful step that there is. Because he who is done for, who seeks
     only to be redeemed gives himself over to total loneliness and surrenders
     everything that makes him who he is. That he is then told that everything
     will be fine and that he can cope—this is not really what is on his mind…
     If one has been through such a situation and come through it, one has
     more interest in people than before. One sees them differently. I look at
     them as if I were already standing a step outside of them. One looks at
     them perhaps not more exactly, not analytically, but longer. Humans and
     human life gain a different value. Everything is no longer taken for
     granted.
     Sometimes of course, I slip into old mechanisms in my work, but they
     don’t really come through. It doesn’t become a show, because I don’t
     want that anymore. The distance is greater.

Florian Malzacher : Previously you were always on stage and committed to being involved. It was precisely this lack of distance that defined your work. From the earliest theatre productions on, you had to be able to join in, because otherwise you couldn’t respond to the reactions of the public and the actors’ routines. And now suddenly this composure? 
 
     Yes. I already had that with Kirche der Angst, when I simply pull back
     and my team reconstructs the work. And then I say, let’s put that in for
    now, and I lean back and look at it. Previously I didn’t permit such a
     situation. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want anything finished which is
     why I hesitated until the premiere. I was downright afraid that it would be
     finished. Now I mould the ‘sculpture’ more in my mind, and no longer
     believe that I have to work on it with an axe, hammer and a chisel. Now I
     can turn off more quickly. I am more interested in the total composition,
     which means that I need to be able to observe everything. And I also
     don’t fiddle around with the actors’ bodies as I used to and flip out in
     front of their faces, so that they no longer know how they should act. In
     the past, I always had muscular pain in the evening, because I actually
     wanted to play all of the roles. And now I just write the texts and
     concentrate more on looking. That is my job.

      ...
  
Florian Malzacher : So the step into the specifically political and the step into the performative went hand in hand? 
 
     I can’t really explain how that happened. However it has to do with the
     fact that I did not do it out of resolve. It simply turned out that way. Also,
     the motivation to found a political party arose only because I simply
     thought: that’s quite enough of Kohl now. How does one found a political
     party? And above all, the slogan ‘Vote for yourself’—I found that
     interesting! Beuys had previously come up with the slogan, but I didn’t
     know that…Perhaps I was always already political but just from an
     aesthetic point of view. And what I am doing now is perhaps even more
     political because it assumes that the individual can’t deal with himself.


Florian Malzacher The move out of film and into the performative—can you describe why film was no longer sufficient? What made you seek out the live event and direct contact with the audience? 
 
     It was already the case for me while making films as a youngster:
     When I got a helicopter to fly up and down in front of a bank with the
     camera trained on it and actors from the Oberhausen City Theatre running
     around under it—and we were sixteen or seventeen years old—it was
     naturally a sensation for the place! The moment was priceless; one was
     suddenly a film director! I think that for me the film work was about the
     adventure of shooting. The greatest thing—including the crises and so on
     —was that one was really trembling and shaking. It nearly made you an
     addict, the shot of adrenalin you got when there was a bit of fluff on the
     film or when material was returned that was out of focus or developed
     incorrectly. 


Florian Malzacher : Nonetheless you stopped making films for a while. 
 
     The free form of working that I had envisioned simply didn’t work out.
     I thought that the funding bodies would gradually realize that I was
     serious and would finance my projects, but it became more and more
     difficult. Then – at some point – they said yes, they would give me
     money again, but I would have to promise not to make any more films.
     That was meant humorously, the way everything is always supposed to be
     funny. But it hit me rather hard. So, nothing worked anymore, although
     the Terror film was coproduced, it wasn’t shown on television. Not even
     now! So I sort of gave up and worked on films for schools.

Florian Malzacher : So you stopped making films more for financial reasons and not out of the desire for another medium. Rather a less-than-ideal solution? 
 
     Yes, after I shot Terror 2000  in 1993, the Volksbühne called. Terror
      2000 was a very important film for me. It also resulted in punch-ups in
     the cinema. The Berlinale turned it down and so people showed the film
     in rented cinemas. My films were considered scandalous anyway—and I
     liked playing along with it. It was fun for me because I found the films to
     be honest—they really portrayed how Germany was at the time. Frank
     Castorf, head director of the Volksbühne, and dramaturge Matthias
     Lilienthal liked the film, and Lilienthal phoned and asked if I would like
     to come. I didn’t know the Volksbühne and so I called friends who said:
     ‘you have to go, that is the theatre’ and ‘wow, crazy, insane’. So I went
     there and saw Clockwork Orange4 where Herbert Fritsch was hanging on
     a plank that rose up higher and higher and he hung on—three metres, four metres 

and, at some point, I left the room because I thought: ‘I can’t
     watch that anymore’. The guy is half mad and I am absolutely not
     interested in seeing whether he falls down. And then Lilienthal caught me
     in the stairwell and asked me where I was going, and I said to him quite
     openly that that wasn’t for me. But then he started yacking away…
     anyway I said to him I must have my team with me. At the time, they did
     all that stuff. We were all living in a huge flat in Charlottenburg. There
     were, I think, fifteen of us and a tiny toilet. Actually it was pretty bad but
     it was, of course, a great space to try things out in. And the production
      100 Years CDU came out…and in fact only Marianne Hoppe thought it
     was great. She thought it was like theatre in the twenties, a revue. The
     others ripped it to shreds and I was actually disappointed as well, but
     Lilienthal wanted me to continue. 


Florian Malzacher : Making theatre is always for the moment. Was it sometimes too ephemeral for you? 
 
     I always have the feeling that film people know that films can also be
     seen later. One can get hold of them in ten or in fifty years. A film critic
     knows that when he writes something now, he has to stand by it or admit
     that his opinion changed over the course of time. Film people have a
     different rhythm in consideration to, and in defence of, their work. And
     theatre people know; ah well, fine. If it’s crap today, then tomorrow
     there’ll be Hamlet, and then that and then that…that’s the difference. In
     theatre I grasped more and more that it only made sense if I could take
     something away with me, if I developed myself. I certainly believe, and
     one can see it in my work more and more, that I am a repeat offender. 


Florian Malzacher : During that period, you deliberately expanded your stage activities to include the press. Sometimes one had the impression that you were playing with the media more than they were playing with you. 
 
     That appeared to be the case at the time, above all in relation to the
     party Chance 2000. There I obviously pulled out all the stops that I could
     think of. We would laugh ourselves silly at night about the reports that
     came out and stuff that was printed. But in other respects, I am still
     surprised at how some things were blown up out of nothing. Sometimes I
     hadn’t done anything at all except that destiny had perhaps sorted the
     cards that way. For example, some years ago, Der Spiegel wrote an article
     saying how dilapidated, washed up, and lacking in ideas I was. That came
     out the week before I did the container in Vienna [ Please Love Austria].
     And afterwards, everybody wanted to hug me; people turned up at the
     airport and wanted autographs. And today, in regard to my illness, one
     sees people who celebrate me because they can suddenly find a way to
     understand my work and recognize something in it…like honesty and so
     on—but I was always honest. They are only noticing it now. Only when
     one has had a syringe in the arm or has gone through three withdrawal
     treatments is one considered to be a decent person. In any case they,
     themselves, are the purest. And now the Bild Zeitung [tabloid newspaper]
     wants to do home stories and talkshows are calling me up…and
     everything I say is blown up and turned into a political issue, even when
     I’m just being silly. I think to myself: What a shame, I can no longer say
     nor do something simply normal. And then I just shut up and don’t do
     anything. My illness gives me the advantage of saying: I don’t want to
     talk to you, or, I am tired. That is also different from before.
     But in contrast, critics or journalists feel themselves to be part of the
     production—as if there were no outside perspective from which to report
     about the work… That is a great effect because the boundaries between
     art and non-art, between production and reception are fluid. I like the
     notion that everyone is contributing to my artwork, including the critics
     and journalists and also the audience, so that it assumes its own
     independent existence. 


Florian Malzacher : When your work is discussed, mention is soon made of the way in which boundaries between art and life are blurred. When you were directing in Bayreuth, an analogy was made—by the media, but also by you yourself —between Parsifal and Schlingensief. When you became ill, that was taken to a new level. It actually seemed as if the narrative were scripting your life and not the other way around, as if your life were retrospectively heading towards this moment,   were a novel. 
 
     I often thought in terms of film when I was young—a walk with my
     parents through the forest in Duisburg existed only insofar as I
     considered possible plots and characters. Then, things partially began to
     take on a life of their own and something would occur that I had
     previously seen in a dream or fantasy, but only because the possibility
     already existed anyway. That is not artificial—and it is simply logical
     that such things happen. But this Bayreuth story is more difficult—also
     for me personally—to comprehend. I had dreamt of the phone call asking
     me to direct. Then it actually happened. I thought that it was somebody
     playing ‘Candid Camera’. And now with the illness, I sometimes think
     that perhaps I instigated it somehow. That I was really thinking of Heiner
     Müller’s fate, or said at some stage: ‘After this it’s all over, then I will
     get cancer’5. But this illness is not just my concern. Rather, it is also
     related to society and not only because we are all breathing in the same
     toxins, but also because we don’t know what we have to defend anymore.
     Our immune system is—and here I am not being esoteric—one body and
     in itself has to be very finely calibrated. The human being must be
     considered in its entirety. And one forgets that when he allows himself to
     be constantly distracted and has to permanently enact a role as if he were
     somebody that he is in fact not, then, he cannot protect who he really is.
     He just lets it all go and loses himself—and that paves the way for such
     low immunity problems. I fear that that is what I practised myself: All
     doors wide open and we are producing the greatest things the world has
     ever seen! And, to top it off, the Parsifal material; I wasn’t the right
     person for it until I got myself so worked up about it. And out of the
     wound of Amfortas came my illness. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe that
     itself is the old megalomania, if I think that even the illness is my fault. 


Florian Malzacher : Alongside actors, you have always included lay people in your work. How did that come about—did you want more ‘reality’ on stage? Or did their disruptive presence interest you, as counterparts to the more routine actors? 
 
     The so-called lay people play themselves rather than roles on stage. It
     is always exciting to watch them and they are also a challenge for the so-
     called profis. There are professional actors who can’t stand being
     together with lay people on stage. It plunges them deep into self-doubt… 


Florian Malzacher : For a long time now Africa has also been a recurring motif in your work. Is that an exotic place of longing or is it somewhere that really exists, somewhere that you really found on your travels? 

     For a long time now I have felt deeply connected to Africa. I have shot
     films in different African countries and I frequently feel more at home
     there than I do in familiar Europe. The idea for an opera house with a
     school and a church and a hospital ward is moving closer to being
     realized in Burkina Faso. The money and the support are there. I am
     obsessed with this anti-colonial cultural exchange of life forms. But that
     is a big topic and we will have to speak about it another time …

Translated by Anna Teresa Scheer and Tara Forrest

     Endnotes
     1. Translators’ Notes:  Schlingensief and Aino Labarenz were married
     in August 2009.
     2. Dietrich Kuhlbrodt was a lawyer at the Hamburg District Court for
     the persecution of crimes under National Socialism. In addition to
     working as a film and theatre critic, he has also performed in many
     of Schlingensief’s films and stage productions.
     3. Schlingensief is referring here to his 1990 film The German
      Chainsaw Massacre: The First Hour of Reunification.
     4. Clockwork Orange (1993) based on the novel by Anthony Burgess
     (1962), was directed by Frank Castorf and featured a scene in which
     actor Herbert Fritsch (known for his risk-taking) was suspended on a
     plank that was raised 5 metres above the stage with no safety net or
     railings to grasp.
     5. Dramatist and director Heiner Müller directed Wagner’s Tristan and
      Isolde (1995) at Bayreuth and subsequently died of cancer in the
     same year.
     6. Here Schlingensief is referring to the unconventional film Menu
      Total, Meat Your Parents  (1986), which he made with German
     comedian Helge Schneider in the main role as a crazed character who
     kills his parents.
     7. Mensch, Mami, wir dreh’n ’nen Film (1977) was a humorous short
     film made by Schlingensief.


Christoph Schlingensief:
     Art Without Border
s, 2010
     Edited by Tara Forrest and Anna Teresa Scheer


dimanche 20 juillet 2014

Les curieuses fleurs de Goliarda Sapienza




Dans "L'université de Rebibbia", Goliarda Sapienza raconte un "un milieu vivifiant d’échanges intellectuels et de méditations": la prison, où elle est entrée en 1980 pour un simple vol. Dans ce "monde d’apparitions et de disparitions", elle rencontre de "curieuses voyageuses – avatars modernes des ménestrels" et trouve, grâce à elles, "une voie différente pour exister avec soi-même et avec les autres", loin du "dehors".


Quelques moments inoubliables : 
Je profite du silence respectueux  qui m’entoure pour bien me fixer dans la tête cette leçon que l’homme connaît depuis des siècles, inscrite dans sa biologie : ne jamais se coltiner les désirs inconscients des autres, pilotés par le génie maléfique de la centrifugeuse... Les détenues elles-mêmes, moi comprise, sont les agents inconscients du génie de la centrifugeuse, comme à l’extérieur le sont tous les citoyens. Sauf que dehors tout est plus caché.


Entre nous, ectoplasmes du dehors, commence même à se murmurer que les classes n’existent plus. Pauvres rêveurs ! Que ne donnerai-je pour les traîner tous voir ici à Rebibbia – ne serait-ce qu’une semaine - la synthèse claire et sans appel du monde du dehors avec, heure après heure, son éternelle reproduction du jeu du vaincu et du vainqueur, du serviteur et du maître... Ici on sait tout de suite qui on sera dans la vie, il ne vous est pas permis de vous prélasser dans le faux problème de savoir qui l’on est, de chercher « votre identité », comme on dit depuis quelque temps.

Je me suis depuis si peu de temps échappée de l’immense colonie pénitentiaire qui sévit dehors, bagne social découpé en sections rigides de professions, de classes, d’âges, que cette façon de pouvoir brusquement être ensemble  - citoyennes de tous milieux sociaux, cultures, nationalités - ne peut que m’apparaître comme une liberté folle, insoupçonnée.

Dehors, après des décennies fondées sur la notion abstraite de liberté, d’abolition des clases, sur le droit de tous à tout avoir, est-ce que ce ne sont pas eux, justement – les agents imprudents de ces idées – qui isolent, mettent en prison et poussent au suicide  le peu de disciples acquis à leurs idéaux ? Au premier avertissement, à la première menace de se voir enlever le pain de la bouche, ils se sont retirés en reniant tout ce qu’ils avaient dit, tout ce à quoi ils avaient hautement appelé pendant des années, peut-être juste pour le plaisir de se croire révolutionnaires.
Et le soupçon me vient aussi que ces professeurs d’utopie ont parlé avec la conviction, dans leur misanthropie, de n’être pas écoutés par la foule, qui, on le sait  n’était pour eux que foule écervelée. Maintenant, se repentant de ce qu’ils considèrent comme une erreur de jeunesse, ils font amende honorable en niant tout : « nous étions dans un amphithéâtre d’université, les enfants, pas dans le réel ! La réalité » est différente, ne plaisantons pas ! » Mais la graine a été semée bien avant votre avènement à vous, petits transformistes de cirque. Elle peut peine à s’ouvrir un chemin parmi les couches de feuilles mortes, mais avec le temps elle plante ses racines. 

La petite chinoise me connaît déjà. Comme toutes celles qui sont là, elle est parvenue au langage profond et simple  des émotions, de telle sorte que langues, dialectes, différences de classes et d’éducation ont été balayés comme d’inutiles camouflages des vraies forces  (et exigences) des profondeurs :  cela fait de Rebibbia une grande université cosmopolite où chacun, s’il le veut, peut apprendre le langage premier.

Ce matin, j’ai compris ce qui ma tenue éloignée des mouvements féministes : leur façon d’insister toujours sur des événements désastreux avec un ton de désastre.  Nous devrions être des porteuses de joie, de vie et pas de mort...
 
La « mémoire de la prison », oralement transmise, est plus parfaite que n’importe quelle loi écrite.

Les gitanes aussi les voilà, là, autour de la grande négresse, toutes occupées à rendre hommage à la volonté victorieuse. Jamais vous ne les trouverez mêlées à une événement collectif dehors, mais ici où règne la loi de l’imagination  de l’expérimentation et du hasard,  elles sont avec quiconque se montre digne de cette liberté d’inventer sa vie.
C’est Ramona qui chante.  "Quand elle est à Rebibbia, les camerotti vibrent toujours comme un grand instrument, soulignant ce qui se passe de joyeux et de triste pour nous toutes. Quand elle n’y est pas, tout reste opaque" chuchote une vieille femme à côté de nous.

Plus que des démons, elles rappellent les premiers chrétiens, résignés à mourir plutôt que de sortir de leur rêve d’amour et de béatitude.

"... au bout de deux ou trois mois de liberté dans l’anonymat – liberté qui a pour seul avantage qu’on vous laisse mourir seul – je sais que me reprendra le désir d’ici. Il n’y a pas de vie sans communauté, on le sait bien : ici on en a la contre-épreuve, il n’y a pas de vie sans le miroir des autres..."

Et de citer la fantastique Nilla Pizzi :



vendredi 4 juillet 2014

L'autre vérité d'Alda Merini, extrait


Illustration : "Ferretine", Claude Garache, 1998

Nous errions de salle en salle comme enlaidis par nos propres pensées, lesquelles nous donnaient la chasse et nous transformaient en proies de nous-mêmes. Nous étions traqués et mis à l'écart par notre amour même. Nous ressemblions aux ombres des cercles dantesques, condamnés que nous étions à une expiation infamante, mais cette expiation n'avait dans notre cas, contrairement à ce qui se passe pour les pécheurs de Dante, aucune faute derrière soi. 
Certains malades, au comble du désespoir, faisaient montre d'acharnement, d'acharnement contre eux-mêmes. On estimait que ce comportement aussi était pathologique. On ne reconnaissait pas au malade son droit à la vie, son droit à la mort. Quand une femme se taillait les veines, on le lui reprochait très vertement et son acte faisait un beau scandale.  Personne ne se donnait la peine de voir quel écheveau de maux ou de douleurs, ou quelle souffrance à l'origine extérieure, l'avait conduite à prendre une telle décision. On le voit, même s'il fallait que nous filions droit, comme de bons soldats, et que nous fassions semblant d'être contents, il n'en reste pas moins que nous mourions à petit feu, jour après jour, et qu'autrui ne s'en rendait pas compte. Nous avions l'impression, j'avais l'impression, d'être dans une longue file de condamnés à mort et de sentir un fouet lourd s'abattre sur notre échine à chaque fois que nous tombions, cependant qu'une voix menaçante disait : "Debout!"  C'est ainsi, en passant notre existence de cette manière si dénuée de raison, que nous nous enfoncions dans les méandres de la folie.


Ce livre est édité par les Editions de la Revue Conférence 
http://www.revue-conference.com/collection-lettres-d-italie/lautre-verite-de-alda-merini.html

lundi 16 juin 2014

Poèmes underwood de Martín Adan, 1971 (extraits)


Quelques vers du Péruvien Martín Adan
découverts  grâce à la lecture d'Alvaro Mutis :


Poèmes underwood (extraits)


Ton coeur est un avertisseur interdit par les règlements de la circulation.


Pourquoi fallait-il que la Tcheka te fusille? Tu n'avais accaparé que ton âme.

Mille choses ont rendu les hommes plus méchants que leurs cultures : les romans de Victor Hugo, la démocratie, l'instruction primaire, et caetera, et caetera, et caetera, et caetera.

Je soupçonne la polis grecque d'avoir été un lupanar où il fallait se rendre avec en poche un revolver. 

Je ne saurais dire avec sincérité ce qu'est le monde et ce que sont les hommes. 

Or j'aime ces milliers d'hommes qu'il y a en moi, qui naissent et qui meurent à chaque instant sans vivre quoi que ce soit. 

La justice : quelques statues affreuses sur les places des villes. 

Je ne veux pas être heureux avec la permission de la police. 

Mâcher des os comme les poètes de Murger, mais avec sérénité. 

Diogène est un mythe - l'humanisation du chien. 

Mais il faut dire ces choses-là tout bas - j'ai peur de m'entendre moi-même. 

Je suis sans passé, avec un avenir démesuré.
Rentrons..."

vendredi 21 mars 2014

Julien Gracq : la maison natale de Gustave Courbet


Dans "Carnets du grand chemin", Gracq écrit :

Ornans : toutes les maisons se serrent pour venir boire ensemble à la rivière, si pure avec ses longues chevelures d'herbes lissées par le courant, comme celles de l'Odet sous les ponts de Quimper. C'est la Loue qui est la rue centrale de cette Venise torrentueuse, toutes ses maisons en vis-à-vis; les venelles latérales ne desservent que des resserres, des hangars, ou des murs aveugles de jardins. L'eau de la Loue, rapide encore mais non bruyante, garde le friselis rêche des torrents de montagne, sans avoir leur clameur. 
Maison natale de Courbet, entre rivière et ruelle. C'est la demeure cossue d'un notable de Maupassant, avec ses glaces à trumeau, son alcôve, et partout - dans la pénombre des pièces, pareille à celle d'une paupière baissée sur les secrets d'un drame de famille - les peintures, ou plutôt les pièces à conviction, du rejeton scabreux et iconoclaste. Et même le bâton d'épine de "La fortune saluant le génie".



La Fortune saluant le génie, ou La Rencontre, ou encore 
Bonjour, monsieur Courbet ! 
(1854, musée de Montpellier)