November 9th, 2010 / 6:14 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Mike Young—
How do million dollar math prizes, kids with semi-automatics, a wine bottle full of ocean water, and a sculptor’s pet raven raise themselves in unison? In Werner Herzog’s eloquent and stirring remarks on sublimity is how.
Re: “No storm, no snow, no banks, no money”
Ich sollte eigentlich ganz allein auf der Welt sein, ich, Helbling, und sonst kein anderes lebendes Wesen. Keine Sonne, keine Kultur, ich nackt auf einem hohen Stein, kein Sturm, nicht einmal eine Welle, kein Wasser, kein Wind, keine Strassen, keine Banken, kein Geld, keine Zeit und kein Atem. Ich würde dann jedenfalls nicht mehr Angst haben. –Helblings Geschichte (1913)
Not actually the end of the story, which continues:
Keine Angst mehr und keine Fragen, und ich würde auch nicht mehr zu spät kommen. Ich könnte die Vorstellung haben, dass ich im Bett läge, ewig im Bett. Das wäre vielleicht das Schönste!
Middleton:
No more fear and no more questions, and I should not be late any more, either. I could imagine that I was lying in bed, everlastingly in bed! Perhaps that would be the best thing.
Middleton, for comparison: “I ought really to be quite alone in the world, me, Helbling, and not a single living being besides me. No sun, no culture, me, naked on a rock, no storms, not even a wave, no water, no wind, no streets, no banks, no time, and no breath. Then, at least, I should not be afraid anymore.”
huh, so herzog is taking some liberties with his translation, then? that’s funny, very in the spirit of what he’s talking about
Not that many (save subbing Steiner for Helbling) and he catches an ecstatic truth that (it could be argued) Middleton (ever the master) misses. But, yeah, totally. Helbling’s Story is one of my favorites, but I guess I hadn’t read it yet the last time I saw The Great Ecstasy…I always loved that he concocted that Pascal tho, ala Marcus’ Emerson epigraph (“Every word was once an animal.”), which is ecstatically truer than, say, “Language is fossil poetry.”
An aside: a stranger was telling me he got a DVD at the NY Art Book Fair of Herzog, called something like “The Ecstasy of Skiflying”, a talk he gave in Phila, I think…anyone?
Not that many (save subbing Steiner for Helbling) and he catches an ecstatic truth that (it could be argued) Middleton (ever the master) misses. But, yeah, totally. Helbling’s Story is one of my favorites, but I guess I hadn’t read it yet the last time I saw The Great Ecstasy…I always loved that he concocted that Pascal tho, ala Marcus’ Emerson epigraph (“Every word was once an animal.”), which is ecstatically truer than, say, “Language is fossil poetry.”
An aside: a stranger was telling me he got a DVD at the NY Art Book Fair of Herzog, called something like “The Ecstasy of Skiflying”, a talk he gave in Phila, I think…anyone?