Jakob Gautel

Life is a Dream

2019-02-01T08:37:47Z

We live, while we see the sun,
Where life and dreams are as one;
And living has taught me this,
Man dreams the life that is his,
Until his living is done.
The king dreams he is king, and he lives
In the deceit of a king,
Commanding and governing;
And all the praise he receives
Is written in wind, and leaves
A little dust on the way
When death ends all with a breath.
Where then is the gain of the throne,
That shall perish and not be known
In the other dream that is death?
Dreams the rich man of riches and fears,
The fears that his riches breed;
The poor man dreams of his need,
And all his sorrows and tears;
Dreams he that prospers with years,
Dreams he that feigns and foregoes,
Dreams he that rails on his foes;
And in all the world, I see,
Man dreams whatever he be,
And his own dream no man knows.
And I too dream and behold,
I dream I am bound with chains,
And I dreamed that these present pains
Were fortunate ways of old.
What is life? a tale that is told;
What is life? a frenzy extreme,
A shadow of things that seem;
And the greatest good is but small,
That all life is a dream to all,
And that dreams themselves are a dream.

Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Life is a Dream, 1635,
Segismond, second day, scene 19, translation Arthur Symons, 1920

Dream and Reality

2019-01-30T16:54:00Z

Rodolfo Llinás and his collegues at New York University, comparing the electrophysiological properties of the brain in waking and dreaming, postulate a single fundamental mechanism for both — a ceaseless inner talking between cerebral cortex and thalamus, a ceaseless interplay of image and feeling, irrespective of whether there is sensory input or not. When there is sensory input, this interplay integrates it to generate waking consciousness, but in the absence of sensory input it continues to generate brain states we call fantasy, hallucination, or dreams.
Thus waking consciousness is dreaming — but dreaming constrained by external reality.

An Anthropologist on Mars, footnote, Oliver Sacks, Vintage Books New York, 1995

Cowboys and Copies

2015-10-31T16:22:20Z

Once, I was in the desert with some cowboys. We came upon a little shack, hardly bigger than this room, that cowboys used to rest. Absolutely nothing within fifty miles, just that one little building, and on the floor there were girlie magazines and some about guitar-playing cowboys too. I discovered they believed those cowboys were real ones, and not them. They were not something called 'cowboys', they were just working men. Reality was in the movies. It was terrible. I remember feeling it was the end of human consciousness that they should devalue themselves and value that nonsense. Because the world didn't respect them, the realities, but respected the facsimilies, they were nothing.

Arthur Miller in an interview with Serge Toubiana about the making of the film The Misfits, 1998, Phaidon Press 2000

The Social Stance of the Artist

2014-07-13T10:04:27Z

1. The talent for self-promotion is a prerequisite for those inclined to pursue the artistic calling.

2. The budding genius must learn above all else to respect money and power.

3. A reverence for critical authority must dominate his life. He must strictly adhere to his subservient standing, and never forget that art is merely an object whose purpose is to facilitate the critic's realisation of his critical potential.

4. The riskiest thing an artist can have is too strong a backbone. Woe betide that miserable creatively inclined creature not able to subdue his obdurate spinal column in the course of daily bowing and scraping.

5. Let him therefore take cognisance of the fact that he is a subservient member of society, nothing more in essence than a slightly better employee. His demands can, of course, be taken under consideration only when society's more essential needs for a family car and a holiday to the Pyramids have been satisfied.

6. The artist may take quiet pleasure in his craft. Let him not, however, forget that fashion changes every five years. He would therefore do well not to indulge in all that much 'quiet pleasure', and stay well informed of every new set of marching orders.

7. Aside from the talent for self-promotion, the most important asset an artist can have is a girlfriend or a beautiful wife. Her utility can be imagined in a variety of ways.
— Who other than the artist's beloved could better soothe the transaction riddled, multinational takeover scheme saturated, cosmic thunder stricken brain of the champagne manufacturer or leather dealer? With her gentle hand she can stroke the mighty one's chaotic brow and, resting him against her soft body, induct him into the mysteries of dreaming and art.

8. The artist can know nothing of religion, politics, and life. He must not forget that sylphlike presence that he is, his only purpose consisting in sprinkling the world with brightly coloured pollen. He must serve the amusement and delight of the mighty.
The 'merry little artist folk' had best keep in mind their humble limitations. It is therefore advised that, should the unfortunate artist have been endowed by nature with a little sense and a modicum of critical faculty, he keep these qualities to himself.
Only insofar as he maintains an aura of artlessness can the artist expect to be recognized by the public.

9. The best thing an artist can do, of course, is to die. Only when the last living vestige of this bothersome personality has disintegrated in his grave can his fellow men take pleasure in his work. Only then does the artist's work truly belong to his contemporaries, for if they buy it at the right time it is as good as if they had made it.
The artist is therefore strongly advised to die at the right time. Only thereby can he put the finishing touches on his work.

10. The artist who follows these fundamental precepts will have a good life. His fellow men will gladly accord this well respected and untroublesome element in the fabric of the state all the love and recognition he deserves.

Max Beckmann, 1927

Waiting for the Barbarians

2013-09-30T05:30:05Z

What are we waiting for, assembled in the Forum?
The barbarians are due here today.

Why isn't anything happening in the senate?
Why do the senators sit there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.

What laws can the senators make now?
Once the barbarians are here, they'll do the legislating.

Why did our emperor get up so early,
and why is he sitting at the city's main gate
on his throne, in state, wearing the crown?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and the emperor is waiting to receive their leader.
He has even prepared a scroll to give him,
replete with titles, with imposing names.

Why have our two consuls and praetors come out today
wearing their embroidered, their scarlet togas?
Why have they put on bracelets with so many amethysts,
and rings sparkling with magnificent emeralds?
Why are they carrying elegant canes
beautifully worked in silver and gold?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and things like that dazzle the barbarians.

Why don't our distinguished orators come forward as usual
to make their speeches, say what they have to say?
Because the barbarians are coming today
and they're bored by rhetoric and public speaking.

Why this sudden restlessness, this confusion?
(How serious people's faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.

And now, what's going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.

Constantin Cavafy 1904, translation Edmund Keeley

The Panther

2013-01-18T09:52:50Z

The Panther
(In the Jardin des Plantes, Paris)

His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars, and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly—. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

(Translation Stephen Mitchell)

Der Panther
(Im Jardin des Plantes, Paris)

Sein Blick ist vom Vorübergehn der Stäbe
so müd geworden, daß er nichts mehr hält.
Ihm ist, als ob es tausend Stäbe gäbe
und hinter tausend Stäben keine Welt.

Der weiche Gang geschmeidig starker Schritte,
der sich im allerkleinsten Kreise dreht,
ist wie ein Tanz von Kraft um eine Mitte,
in der betäubt ein großer Wille steht.

Nur manchmal schiebt der Vorhang der Pupille
sich lautlos auf - . Dann geht ein Bild hinein,
geht durch der Glieder angespannte Stille -
und hört im Herzen auf zu sein.

The Angel of History

2012-10-25T15:02:26Z

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel who seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the Angel of History must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward the sky. What we call progress is this storm.

Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History, IX, 1940 (translation Harry Zohn)

Es gibt ein Bild von Klee, das Angelus Novus heißt. Ein Engel ist darauf dargestellt, der aussieht, als wäre er im Begriff, sich von etwas zu entfernen, worauf er starrt. Seine Augen sind aufgerissen, sein Mund steht offen und seine Flügel sind ausgespannt. Der Engel der Geschichte muß so aussehen. Er hat das Antlitz der Vergangenheit zugewendet. Wo eine Kette von Begebenheiten vor uns erscheint, da sieht er eine einzige Katastrophe, die unablässig Trümmer auf Trümmer häuft und sie ihm vor die Füße schleudert. Er möchte wohl verweilen, die Toten wecken und das Zerschlagene zusammenfügen. Aber ein Sturm weht vom Paradiese her, der sich in seinen Flügeln verfangen hat und so stark ist, daß der Engel sie nicht mehr schließen kann. Dieser Sturm treibt ihn unaufhaltsam in die Zukunft, der er den Rücken kehrt, während der Trümmerhaufen vor ihm zum Himmel wächst. Das, was wir den Fortschritt nennen, ist dieser Sturm.

Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte, IX, 1940

→ Angelus Novus, Paul Klee

Worstward Ho

2012-07-04T20:12:20Z

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
From Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett 1982

- Other Texts

On Photographies

2011-10-19T07:56:41Z

(on the photographies) : They are the proof that something was there and no longer is.
Like a stain. And the stillness of them is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they'll still be there looking at you.
Diane Arbus, from a letter to Davis Pratt, Fogg Museum, Cambridge, March 15, 1971, in response to a request for a brief statement about photographs

- Other Texts

Walking

2011-09-24T15:55:03Z

Whereas, of course, we can observe someone else without his knowledge (or his being aware of it) and observe how he walks or thinks, that is, his walking and his thinking, we can never observe ourselves without our knowledge (or being aware of it). If we observe ourselves, we are never observing ourselves, but someone else. Thus we can never talk about self-observation, or when we talk about the fact that we observe ourselves we are talking as someone we never are when we are not observing ourselves, and thus when we observe ourselves we are never observing the person we intended to observe but someone else. The concept of self-observation and so, also, of self-description is thus false. Looked at in this light, all concepts (ideas) [...] like self-observation, self-pity, self-accusation and so on, are false. We ourselves do not see ourselves, it is never possible for us to see ourselves. But we also cannot explain to someone else (a different object) what he is like, because we can only tell him how we see him, which proabably coincides with what he is but which we cannot explain in such a way as to say this is how he is. Thus everything is something quite different from what it is for us [...]. And always something quite different from what it is for everything else.

Thomas Bernhard, Walking, excerpt, quoted in the programme of Luna Park by Georges Aphergis, IRCAM, 2011, translated by Kenneth J. Northcott, in Thomas Bernhard, Three Novellas, The University of Chicago Press 2003