Years ago, on a student excursion, I was walking down one of Barcelona's tree-lined avenues, flanked by Housmann-esque residences when all of a sudden one of the buildings seemed to have melted before me.
"Oh!" said my Russian Jewish English teacher,"you must see Gaudí's basilica, to the Sagrada Familia."
I had seen more than enough of cathedrals, but "there's nothing like it anywhere" impelled me forward.
And, standing there, eyes wide and mouth agape, there was nothing like it anywhere.
The spires looked like towering, elongated ears of corn, a green Christmas tree with white doves stood over the main entrance, the roots of trees turned into gothic arches, mis-shapen cornices turned out to be faces -- everything grew out of, blurred into, melted away from, and spiraled upwards from everything else.
In what would become the leviathan space of the interior cave-like vaultings rose into the open air.
Although the church is dedicated to the Holy Family, it struck me more as a monument to God's Creation. Not depicted on many easily available photographs are the lizards, fish and animals the creep out of strange places along the exterior facades. It is a mistake to think of the cathederal as "futuristic" -- it is rather medievalism gone prophetically space age. It was hard to believe that this stunning vision dates from 1882 -- the height of the Beaux Arts epoch.
Alas.... it did not seem to me that it would ever get finished. Franco's catholicism was not interested in such an embarrassment and Spain was poor. Construction on the cathedral had been at a virtual standstill since the Civil War and large parts of the structure were roofless and exposed to the elements. "Such a pity" I thought as my mind tried to imagine what the completed marvel would look like if effort ever replaced neglect.
This Sunday, Pope Benedict dedicated the substantially completed (still abuilding) edifice. As with any project a century in the making, there have been revisions to original scheme, but now we know.
ARRIVAL & GREETING BY KING & QUEEN
ENTRANCE PROCESSIONAL
In dedicating the church, Benedict remembered its creator, Antoni Gaudí who "who kept the torch of his faith alight to the end of his life" and noted wryly that he had never wavered in the conviction that St Joseph "would finish this church".
Gaudí's work, he said, was proof that "beauty is one of mankind’s greatest needs; it is the root from which the branches of our peace and the fruits of our hope come forth."
The edifice manifested Gaudí's desire to bring together the "three books" which inspired him as a man and as an architect: "the book of nature, the book of sacred Scripture and the book of the liturgy." In this way "he made stones, trees and human life part of the church so that all creation might come together in praise of God" At the same time he faced the church with sacred images that revealed to the world outside the beauty of God's sacrifice for Man.
In this sense, "Beauty also reveals God because, like him, a work of beauty is pure gratuity; it calls us to freedom and draws us away from selfishness."
The Day of the Jackal (1973) follows the planning and progress of a killer who is hired by the terrorist O.A.S. to kill President Charles de Gaulle. Although the movie has some mannered moments it holds up well to the test of time and remains rivetting even though the ultimate outcome is perforce known.
The scenematography did well in capturing the ambience of a post war Europe that was becoming modern while still having a foot decidedly planted in the old world. It was refreshing to see memories of a France that was not yet Global.
The old ways were interesting for another more relevant and non-nostalgic purpose as well; they teach us what exactly is involved in “fighting terrorism.”
Although, in the wake of 9/11, there was a certain amount of confused palaver among the ignorant, the definition of terrorism is and always was rather simple. It is the unofficial resort to violence for political purposes. Violence is resorted to by different actors for different purposes. The execution by the state of a convicted criminal is a homicide as much as that criminal’s killing of another human being but it is not murder because it is undertaken in accordance with the law and not against it. It is not merely the official status of the executioner that distinguishes the homicide from murder or terrorism but also the fact that the act is done according to law. In contrast, the violence of the criminal is, by definition, undertaken contrary to law. Traditionally, therefore, the terrorist has been regarded as a criminal because he acts in no official capacity, on behalf of no State, and contrary to law. For this reason, terrorists have been pursued and punished like criminals and have not been treated with that deference accorded to soldiers and other agents of a government.
However, in terms of addressing the causes of terrorism, it has always been recognized that the difference between an ordinary criminal and a terrorist criminal lies in their respective motivations. The typical criminal acts for private motives of gain, vengeance or satisfaction. The terrorist criminal on the other hand acts pursuant to a political agenda and perceived political wrongs. In a sense, the terrorist is “altruistic” whereas the criminal is merely “selfish”.
These distinctions were always understood well enough until a sociologically debased education hopelessly addled the minds of most people and of the more educated the most.
In the early 1960’s the O.A.S. was a terrorist organization comprised of former French colonialists, renegade members of the army and ultra right nationalists. They were bound and determined to de-legitimise the De Gaulle government on account of the fact that it had recognized the inevitability of Algerian independence. In addition to various bombings undertaken to supposedly “prove” that the government could not maintain law and order, the O.A.S. also undertook to assassinate Charles de Gaulle. In response, the French Securité undertook to infiltrate and incapacitate the O.A.S, and it was here that The Day of the Jackal began.
In order to assassinate DeGaulle, the O.A.S. leaders resolved to hire an “untraceable” foreign killer. Enter Edward Fox as Her Majesty’s not-so-loyal subject, Charles Calthrop. For the astronomical sum of $500,000.00 dollars [ah those innocent times!] Calthrop undertakes the murderous task. What the movie traces, in fascinating detail, is the multi layered deception Charles Calthrop -- Cha-Cal -- undertakes while playing chess with the multi-level investigation of the French security service. It is classic Mouse and Cat.
What is remarkable today is the ease with which Calthrop can obtain multiple fake identities, the sine qua non of his game-plan. Equally fascinating is the difficulty the security services have in detecting anything in the pre IBM 8088 era. We are in a universe where a birth certificate can be obtained merely by rummaging around in the musty library of the Civil Record Section and where the Homeland Securité is reduced to rummaging through 3x5 inch index cards, calling up other police departments to rummage through their index cards and asking train-station police to keep their eyes open. We are taken, in short, to a world which is primitive and charming.
An example will suffice to illustrate the point. In Europe, in those days, it was customary for the police to pick up daily hotel registration cards. Just as the paper boy daily delivered his papers, so the police couriers daily picked up the registration cards which were then filed away somewhere and, typically, forgotten. Thus, part of the drama, in Jackal, is the extent to which Calthrop can keep ahead of the daily pickups and, conversely, how quickly the police -- all over France -- can gather them up, spread them out on a table, rummage through them and call up the results to inspectors in Paris who then pass on the information to Chief Inspector.
Within this retro fitted world, the movie treats us to the multifarious minutiae of crime. To carry out his assignment, Calthrop needs a made to order weapon, which can be disassembled and concealed in such a way that it can be stuck into the underbelly of a car and not be detected while crossing a border. For this alone he needs: a special (“non commercial”) gunsmith, the materials for the special ammunition, and a place to modify the chassis of the car unbeknownst to anyone else.
Of all this, Securité knows absolutely nothing and in the days before EFT’s and X-ray scanners can know nothing. There are 300 million European denizens “out there” anyone one of whom could be the terrorist in the crowd. Securité suspects something is afoot, but a suspicion is all it has. To get a grip on things, it resorts to torturing the life out of a “likely” suspect. From the garbled groans and shrieks of the "interrogee” our intrepid pain inflictors gleen the sound of “Jackie...” And on that slim reed, index card by index card, they build a likely identity of the likely “suspect”.
Although it was not the movie’s intent, the immense difficulty of building a profile was illustrated by scenes depicting the delivery of intra-ministerial messages. Because the French government cannot be sure that it is not being spied upon (i.e. “leaked”) it eschews the phone wires for ultra sensitive communications. There is a kind of irony here; but in all events we are treated to scenes of motorcycled couriers managing Parisian traffic to deliver an “eyes only” envelope from Minister A to Minister B. It is utterly charmant; and we have to remark here, although it is beside the point, that apparently the French moto-couriers all used BMWs. Pas des deux chevaux, hein?
What all this too’ing and fro’ing shows is how complicated and difficult it is to “combat terrorism”. At the same time, by illustrating the impediments then the movie shines a light on the dragnet means available now. Scene by scene, the viewer in 2010 cannot but be “critiquing’ the past with his present knowledge of data mining, full body scanning, electronic snooping, and multiple layers of barriers and impediments to obtaining any information, including one’s own birth certificate. Thus, what the movie ends up illustrating, in an inverse way, is the depth and pervasiveness of the police surveillance and control needed to combat terrorism and how pervasive and all encompassing our Security State has become.
The movie deals with ferreting out one man. Our present security forces must deal (so they say) with the task of ferreting out any number of men anywhere, any time. To do that they need and want total surveillance of all movements in life.
For Charles De Gaulle, Richard, for Charles de Gaulle?
Europa is the story of an American deserter who, a month or two after the defeat of Germany, lands a job as a conductor on the "Europa" line of the Reichsbahn. The job allows him to see the devastation of Germany. It also allows him to meet, fall in love with and marry the daughter of the line's owner as well as to come into contact with partisan nazi resistance to the occupation.
The mostly black and white film is annoyingly narrated by a "hypnotist" who can't decide whether he his hypnotizing us the audience or the hero of the film. The real role of the hypnotic voice over is to bridge the gaps in a movie that can't decide if it follows a thriller story line or a surreal Kafka-esque dream sequence. What is certain is that, minutes into the interminable two and half hour film from which there is no escape, the viewer is left staring desperately at a clock with no hands.
The only good feature of the film was some of the scenes of life amid the devastated ruins of the Third Reich. One scene in particular showing Christmas midnight mass in the snowy open air husk of a church starkley conveyed the harsh and primitive conditions to which people had been pathetically reduced.
Otherwise, the film falls into the "European films are obtuse and dull" category.
Burnt Money "tells the true story of Angel and Sam, two gay lovers who turn to bank robbery and murder holding Argentina and Uruguay in suspense as they lead the authorities on a two month long manhunt." But the tale is something more than a gay-hispano Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Although the movie has lite moments (as well as a couple of transitional rough spots), it is almost unremitting in its claustrophobic depiction of estrangement and existential isolation.
Sam and Angel meet in a public restroom. Angel warns Sam that he hears voices but Sam takes him home anyway. The two become inseparable and, in the underworld in which they live, are know as "The Twins". The pair are brought in on an inside job involving millions of pesos, but as the heist involves higher ups and officials it quickly turns into a saga of betrayal, distrust and and multiple levels of solitude.
As the thieves band of five makes it over into Uruguay, Angel becomes more withdrawn and estranged from Sam who in turn becomes increasingly devoted to caring for Angel who mutters that he is saving Sam from himself. Their solitudes are not a question of not loving. Each is driven to his own distraction as Sam prouls restrooms while Angel haunts pews. Sam takes up with a whore who, as it turns out, has access to a safe-house on the Brazilian border while Angel, mutters through a Spanish-English dictionary as if it were a prayer book, explaining that he and Sam must speak English flawlessly in order to pass undetected when they make it to New York.
Meanwhile, the more the whole world looks for them, the more the group is cut off from the world. The crime boss who facilitated the their escape from Argentina advises the band's nominal leader that it will be impossible to do more given the international media and police focus on the case. He tells him that in Africa they catch monkeys by enticing them with a banana inside a box, so that to get free, all the monkey has to do is let go of the banana. One is left to think of the parable, Where your hand is, so there is your treasure.
But Sam and Angel are nothing if not professionals. As the police close in, the possibilities of escape become narrower, making greater demands on Sam and Angel's collaborative cunning and prowess until, in the end, they reclaim their bananas.
The cinematograpy is competent albeit prosaic. The acting is good. There is one scene-change in particular that is not only abrupt but a non-sequitur, leaving one to film-in the blanks and pick up where we are.... The movie's main defect is its failure to fully explain Angle's alienation and, with that, to inter-connect (or distinguish) the various levels of solitude that are going on.
Sin Nombre is a movie about people trying to get to the United States. The title refers to the nameless thousands that make it or don't across the Mexican border.
From an American perspective, the movie is another tale in the immigrant genre portraying the hardships and determination required to arrive in the New Jerusalem of the promised land. Elia Kazan's lyric America! America! from several decades ago comes to mind.
From an Hispanic perspective, however, the movie is another saga in the genre of pilgrim tales recounting the haphazard encounters of humans with evil and good and good mixed with evil at the hands of fellow men as in John Sayle's Hombres Armados or Motorcycle Diaries.
I do not mean to suggest that the movie presents an interpretative choice. Every destination implies a pilgrimage as every pilgrimage seeks a destination. From both perspectives the story is one of survival -- the difference in accent depends on whether one thinks success lies in the travelling or in the arrival.
El Caspar is a young gang member who has been to the United States -- where he apparently earned his "tear drop" -- and who is now having second thoughts about the career path he has chosen. A flickering love of woman is casting a different light on the shadowy bondage rituals of men.
Sayra is a young woman whose father by a previous marriage convinces her and her cousin to make the trip back to the New Jersey where he has left his wife and children. For Sayra's father, the quest is as much aimed at re-uniting his family as getting back to it.
As an immigrant story, the hardships are real and appalling, engendering disgust at those arm chair xenophobes who disparage them "illegals" while stuffing their faces with Cheez O's.
The disgust goes deeper when it is remembered that the squalour these people are fleeing is the direct result of the policies of the country they are fleeing to. There is a vicious circle here. Not only does the United States plunder Hispanic America, what it gives back in return is brutality be it in the form of thug dictatorships or gang violence. Criminals have existed always everywhere, but the gang culture now rife in Mexico and Central America is a direct export from American inner cities. In this sordid dynamic, the United States perpetuates a double-despoliation.
The despoliation has in fact become environmental, although it is probably not so shocking to those who never knew how Mexico was. Poverty too has always existed in Mexico and like poverty everywhere it shows a harsh and ugly face, classically captured in Luis Buñuels Los Olvidados. But it was one of Mexico's many existential paradoxes -- which had to be suffered through like some sort of school drill -- that there was beauty in poverty. That phrase inescapably suffered the embarrassment of a moral piety, until one saw with one's own eyes that poverty could be not only beautiful but was, at times, aesthetically exquisite.
However, poverty and squalor are not the same thing. Today what metastasizes from the Rio Bravo to the Panama Canal is just an unremitting, garbage strewn squalor in which it is a godsend -- like a cloud burst in the dusty heat -- to come upon occasional pockets of the old style poverty.
For those who get their messages from movie trailers, the moral of this story might be that those who perservere are rewarded with finding their "better life". One can do better ... The moral lesson of this social and environmental despoliation is that what goes around comes around. The vintage is always trampled out, eventually. "What shall sinful men be pleading when the just are mercy needing?
The moral lesson from the hispanic pilgrimage is something else. There is no reason for any good to come out of this cultural, economic and environmental wasteland where everything from music to water is a species of sewage. And yet, somehow, in this wasteland and even while pursuing their own desperate self-interests, people do manage to escape -- not to America but into helping someone else at cost to one's self.
It is this kaleidoscope of human selfishness and generosity, softness and brutality, tumbling together amid mixed and pure motives that comprises the pilgrimage of the movie. The tumblings occur both inexplicably and expectedly as when in one scene children run alongside the train and pelt the migrants huddled on the roofs with free oranges while, quite naturally and seamlessly a few scenes later, Mexican police drive by and just as pointlessly spray the train with bullets.
Driven by their respective journeys, El Caspar and Sayra encounter one another on the train. One might say that Caspar befriends Sayra but, just as truely, she befriends him, as the two, their fates entwined, make their way north.
The moral lesson here is not that good wins out in the end but that whether it does or doesn't, whether one arrives or not, amidst all the despoliation and evil, there was still self transcendence and good, like those pockets of old time impoverished beauty.
"Das Wesen des Menschen vervollkommnet sich nur in Gemeinschaft, in der Einheit des Menschen mit dem Menschen"
The other day we stumbled into a video clip of Solti's 1964 recording session of Gotterdammerung. Needless to say, the sound coming through a compressed file on a desk top computer was less than full force and purity.
Nevertheless, from the outset, we were astonished by the sheer sym-phonization of human endeavour. To be sure, such coordination of effort is something that takes place even in a quartet, but the sheer size of romantic orchestras renders the synchronization an immensely complicated and astonishing event.
As we watched these rehearsals we kept on thinking of "sinews... sinews..." Every individual musician, with his piece, was a sinew of the whole who had to be integrated flawlessly and cooperatively into a sonic organism. The result was beauty.
Oddly enough it was the cymbalist, in a related clip, who brought this realization home. Such a simple and singular thing a cymbal, and yet there was, in fact, nothing very singular about it. We watched as the cymbalist stood intent and imminent, his ears, eyes, and nervous reflexes attuned to make the crashing gong at just the right moment with just the right reverberation. Watching him, tense and poised to make the perfect klang, we glimpsed an internal coordination of sense and synapse that was an equally amazing correlative of his external coordination with the whole.
If the cymbalist illustrated what it means to integrate, Solti's conducting provided a visual impression of what it means to draw out a consensus. Because this was an in-studio work-session, Solti's body language was much more demonstrative than would he would allow in a public performance and his body became an incorporation of the orchestra's members.
I was fascinated at how physical gestures in space reflected tonal modulations in time -- how Solit's torso said "lunge," how his arms said "full" or how his fingers said "tremolo" and his wrist, "gentle fade and ...lift off lightly" -- in short, how these sights matched the sound and made sense.
And so, we were brought to think of something Pope Benedict said recently, this past April, when he referred to the study of music as a "gymnasium" which exposes students to the challenges of interacting collectively, not only on an artistic or professional plane, but as human beings.
Speaking to a visiting youth orchestra, Benedict pointed to their "constant practices carried out with patience; the exercise of listening to the other musicians; the commitment not to play 'in solitude,' but to do so in a way that the different 'orchestral colors' -- while maintaining their own characteristics -- were established." Such exercises, he said, reflected a "common search for the best expression" with implications that went beyond just making music. Music, the Pope said, is "capable of opening minds and hearts to the dimension of the spirit and of leading persons to raise their gaze on High, to open to absolute Goodness and Beauty, which have their ultimate source in God."
From a pontiff who does not shy away from reminding Christians of their Greek roots, it was hardly surprising that he should consider musical practice to be an exercise in political formation; and from an academic steeped in the heritage of Christian thought it was no surprise to hear that, ultimately, the political city should be ordered toward reflecting Truth, Beauty and ultimately God.
At the same time, one could not but hear echoes of Hegel in the Pope's remarks; for, at the core of Benedict's orchestral metaphor was the what Germans call the Gemeinschaft.
In its more modern signification "gemeinschaft" means little more than community, association, a working-together. But within the tradition of German idealism, the word denotes that vision of society as a living organism -- not a collection of individuals pursuing their happinesses but a living, dynamic union in which and through which the individual is allowed to discover and express his individuality. As Ludwig Feuerbach put it,
"Isolated man by himself has not the essence of man in himself, the essence of man is contained only in the community, in the unity of man and man, a unity, however, which depends only on the reality of the difference between I and you. Man by himself is man (in the ordinary sense), man and man, the unity of I and you, is God"
... or at least Gotterdammerung.
This is a theme Benedict had repeatedly returned to in his papal writings. In his first encyclical, Spe Salvi, he drew a sharp distinction between faith as a social reality and as a subjective experience. Taking a swipe at Luther's "I saw, therefore I am saved", Benedict asked, "are we not in this way falling back once again into an individualistic understanding of salvation, into hope for myself alone, which is not true hope since it forgets and overlooks others?"
Benedict answered: "Within Catholic teaching, salvation has always been considered a “social” reality. The Christian message was not only 'informative' but 'performative'."
One might paraphrase: " It is not enough to say 'I believe', the true believer says 'We do!'"
More recently, in his encyclical on Social Justice, Caritas in Veritas, the Pope wrote that "Every Christian is called to practise [a public ] charity, in a manner corresponding to his vocation and according to the degree of influence he wields in the pólis." This institutional or political form of charity was, he said, no less excellent than personal acts of charity. On the contrary,
"Man's earthly activity, when inspired and sustained by charity, contributes to the building of the universal city of God, which is the goal of the history of the human family. In an increasingly globalized society, the common good and the effort to obtain it cannot fail to assume the dimensions of the whole human family, that is to say, the community of peoples and nations, in such a way as to shape the earthly city in unity and peace, rendering it ... an anticipation and a prefiguration of the undivided city of God."
Clearly, Benedict is working on a theme. In the passages we have cited , the words "music" and "charity" could be substituted and the "score" would still make sense. Benedict most emphatically espouses the view that the best way to kill beauty is to reduce it to a question of aesthetics -- the what do "I" see. But if beauty becomes a mode of action, in music, in sport, in charity and in politics, then we get a panoramic intuition of God's Gemeinschaft so that contemplating Solti's recording sessions becomes a way of meditating on Aristotle's dictum that "man is a social animal".
Looking at the "orchestral gemeinschaft", the first thing we notice is that it consists of an inter-locking of sounds and it is readily apparent that no one instrument could itself produce the whole-sound. But does the whole diminish the part? In the final scene of Gotterdammerung the horns appear subordinated to the whole-sound. One would think that the full expression of what it means to be a horn (or a violin or flute) would take effect in a solo composition. But if Feuerbach is right, a horn only becomes fully a horn in differentiation with a violin.
What individuality, exactly, does man discover in gemeischaft with his others? Anything else other than that he discharged the function of a timpano or a meister shoemaker? What creative scope does such an individual member have? Benedict, at least, is quite clear that there is a script to perform.
"Without truth, without trust and love for what is true, there is no social conscience and responsibility, and social action ends up serving private interests and the logic of power, resulting in social fragmentation ..."
When he speaks of "Charity in Truth", Benedict emphatically means that there is a truth which must inform charity just as charitable disposition must inform truth.
So too Wagner. Watching Solti makes it clear that there is a responsibility to the score; one that allows for subtle interpretations, perhaps, but which unmistakably requires an immense amount of discipline. This social working together is no ad hoc jam session.
The Enlightenment Mind protests: Is it not totalitarian for every member to play from a dictated script, as interpreted in details by the conductor? Each musician may be singular but where does his uniqueness shine out and fulfill itself? It is true that the a "con"cert by a cymbal solo would consist of several klangs... spaced 15 or 37 minutes apart. But if such roles are meaningless "on their own" they have been made so by the script for the whole.
One is left not with "I have performed." but rather with "I have participated."
There arises then, an opposed view; one that is characteristically American and which holds that the good of all comes from the individual pursuit of happiness.
It goes without saying, that such a paradigm easily lends itself to mere individual gratification. But the Framers of the America polis weren't laying the foundations for a desert. They intended a gemeinschaft but one, which in their view, was to be driven and shaped by indiviudal pursuits. What shape such a society would take was impossible to say precisely because the individual pursuits are random. One is left to believe in an invisible hand or, in the manner of Tolstoy, a divine calculus of history, in which "strategies" are displaced by the unfathomable and unpredictable flowing together of individual impulses.
What would such a polis sound like? Not surprisingly, a typically American jazz session comes to mind, although the contrast is perhaps illusory given that even "free form" jazz entails adherence to chord structures and rythmic rules. It seems to us that the sound of such a polis (as opposed to the spontaneity of its becoming) is more likely to be something like Putnam Camp by Charles Ives,
Is cacophony symphonic? The answer is not clearly, no. At least Ives heard symphonies in nature and in the discord of man. And, this view leads to a third spiritual alternative: faith as acceptive which posits a beauty beyond perception.
What kind of orchestration is required of us as humans? A chipster brain is not big enough to encompass an answer. And perhaps there is no answer other than that there are many ways to make music. But it does seem to us that observing how musicians co-ordinate and don't, how they are at one and in many and what is required to make music together is a living metaphor for what is entailed in being human.
The other week, while shopping at our local organic and sustainable coop, we came across a nut n' berry bar called Chipmunk Chewie. We looked at the ingredients and discovered that they consisted of everything a right proper chipmunk would chew on. How could we refuse?
The chipmunk chew was so delicious we could hardly wait to go back to the store for more. As we were piling chewies into our basket one of the store attendants walked by and said, "They are good, aren't they?" We got to talking and the result was the recipe for Chipmunk Chewies
9 cups walnuts whole (they seem cut up to me) 5 cups pecans roasted and salted 5 cups hazelnuts 4 cups sesame seeds 4 cups apples diced 2 cups cranberries 2 cups sunflower seeds 4 cups coconut chips
3 cups rice syrup 1 cup corn starch 1 Tbs vanilla
Get some gloves ready. In a large pot place syrup, cornstarch & vanilla. Heat on high stirring to break up cornstarch. Bring to a ull and vigorous rolling boil.
Continue to boil for 1 minute or slightly more, stirring constantly Look for a caramel color when ready.
Turn off heat and add nut/fruit mix. Stir fast and hard. Keep stirring until everything is coated
Turn out onto the sprayed sheet pan(s). Press down with gloved and oiled hands until even
Cut while still warm 6x8. Place in cooler / refrigerator.
Sixty five years ago this night, Churchill and Morgenthau's plan to decimate Germany reached its infernal climax with the firebombing of Dresden. This eighteenth century gem, was not the only architectural wonder to be reduced to smouldering rubble. A month before "Bomber Harris" had sent his crews into the clear winter skies to wreak devastation on the medieval treasure of Nuremberg.
Eighty percent of all German cities were fifty percent destroyed. Dresden and Nuremberg where annihilated almost in their entirety.
It was all part of a plan -- as Morgenthau swore -- to reduce Germany to a permanent cow pasture; and with it, to erradicate forever and for all generations to come, some of the fairest lands in Europe and a thousand years of artistic achievement.
Since then, brick by blackened brick, the Germans have patiently sought to reconstruct the devastation and to give back to future generations some of Germany's mutilated beauty.
This patient labor works on two levels: the reconstruction of renown works of art, such as Dresden's Fraunekirche and the recreation of an urban ambience -- a medieval mileu in Nuremberg's case, baroque grandeur in Dresden's.
However, while we can be grateful, Germans did not entirely resign themselves to the cultural defeat of malls and modernism, the result of their labors seems to me to have produced, on the urban landscape, much the same effect as reconstructive plastic surgery produces on a face.
The pieces are there, but they are too smooth, too linear, too lacking in patina and naturality.
At times, one feels one has gone to a DisneyLand version of Alte Deutschland
Daniel Liebeskind, the American Jewish architect, is critical of Dresden's attempt to recreate "the past". In an interview given to Der Spiegel , Liebeskind says,
"I can understand the impetus of the city wanting to retrieve its past. People want to have something of the city's glory days. But even if you rebuild the Frauenkirche and the city's other great buildings, you cannot bring back the history. The city has been fundamentally altered. The events from the past are not just a footnote, they are central to the transformation of the city.... Sentimentality is not a foundation on which you can build a new city."
Liebeskind believes "recreating the past" ignores the "discontinuity" with the past that is part of true history. In his view, the past was irremediably interrupted. Liebeskind was asked to participate in the reconstruction of Dresden's neo-classical Military Museum. His contribution reflects his perspective.
click to enlarge
Liebeskind explains:
"The triangular structure on the front of the arsenal points to the direction from which Dresden was bombed. It also interrupts the smooth flow of that big arsenal. It creates a question mark about the continuity of history and what it means. It gives people a point of reflection."
Liebeskind has a legitimate point, although what he calls "recreating the past" I have called "reconstructive surgery" -- the aim of which is precisely to pretend the awful accident with it's disfiguring third degree burns never happened.
But I disagree with Liebeskind to the extent that he assumes "recreating the past" can actually succeed in ignoring the "interruption". It cannot. Howsoever "successful," plastic surgery is always a failure and always reflects the discontinuity it seeks to embalm over. Therein lies its pathos.
Accepting the "interruption" and moving on to live in rebuilt modern cities does more to obliterate the discontinuity because literally nothing is continued on --rather a space is simply refilled with newness and "memory" becomes a bronze plaque or footnote to the effect that "a baroque city once stood here."
"Recreating the past" actually does more to underscore the fact that the past was destroyed and therefore needs to be recreated, even though the need will fail in the attempt. Without the too smooth, too new, "old" facade of the Military Museum, Liebeskind's cutting triangular section would be just another instance of glassy geometry in a landscape of impersonal forms. Together with the plastic act of rememberance, we are reminded of history's loss.
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