#semprún

[dissidentaspid]

-¿Se acuerda de Wittgenstein? -me ha preguntado, tras un prolongado silencio. Yo estaba contemplando el cielo azul del mes de agosto sobre el cementerio de Montparnasse. Sí, habría podido, esforzándome un poco, acordarme de Wittgenstein, de nuestras conversaciones al respecto. Pero estaba agotado, no tenía ganas de acordarme de Wittgenstein, de hacer ese esfuerzo. Yo pensaba en César Vallejo. Siempre he tenido suerte con los poetas. Quiero decir: mis encuentros con sus obras siempre han sido oportunos. Siempre me he topado, en el momento oportuno, con la obra poética que podía ayudarme a vivir, a hacerme progresar en la agudeza de mi conciencia del mundo. Así me sucedió con César Vallejo. Y también, más adelante, con René Char y con Paul Celan. En 1942 lo que descubrí fue la poesía de César Vallejo. No había sido agradable ese aquel año. Me había visto obligado a abandonar el curso preparatorio de la École Normale en el liceo Henri-IV, para ganarme la vida. La supervivencia, más bien: algo con lo que subsistir con estrecheces. Apenas lo conseguía dando clases de español a alumnos de todas las edades, de latín a jóvenes calamidades hijos de buenas familias, que a veces resultaban odiosos. Sólo comía caliente una vez cada dos días, más o menos. A menudo, me alimentaba de bolitas de alforfón que compraba sin cartilla de racionamiento en una panadería que existía entonces en el Boulevard Saint-Michel, donde convergen las Rue Racine y la Rue de la École-de-Médecine. Pero había descubierto la poesía de César Vallejo. Me gusta la vida enormemente pero, desde luego, con mi muerte querida y mi café y viendo los castaños frondosos de París… Claude-Edmonde Magny acababa de invocar a Wittgenstein, me guardé para mí el poema de César Vallejo que me había vuelto a la memoria. No se lo traduje.

La escritura o la vida, Jorge Semprún.

[pornosophic]

Δεν ξέρω, είχε πει ο Γέρος, αν αγαπάτε πραγματικά τη ζωγραφική, ή αν αισθάνεστε απλώς την επιθυμία να πλουτίσετε τις γνώσεις σας, δεν ξέρω αν είναι μια ανάγκη για σας, πραγματικά μια ανάγκη, […] μα αν σας αρέσει πραγματικά η ζωγραφική, σταθείτε και κοιτάξτε αυτόν τον πίνακα […] κοιτάξτε τον, αν ξέρετε να κοιτάτε, ξεχάστε θέλω να πω το βλέμμα σας, ξεχάστε όλα όσα φορτίζουνε πιθανόν το βλέμμα σας κι επιπλέον, δεδομένου ότι ο πίνακας δεν είναι παρά μια αντιπροσωπευτική στρουκτούρα ενός ορισμένου κόσμου, αφήστε αυτόν τον κόσμο του Βερμέερ να κοιταχτεί μοναχός του, μέσο του βλέμματος σας, αφήστε τον απλώς να δείξει τον εαυτό του.

[suboptimalwords]

The platonic idea of friendship lives at the edge of darkness

No film maker could produce a darker scene, than what we witnessed today in Austria, close to Slovak borders. Fifty dead bodies of refugees crammed into a locked abandoned truck that previously belonged to a Slovak poultry producer. Policemen in the white suits collecting forensic evidence that could help catch the driver who in on the run. No series as dark as True Detective could produce the following pun – few months ago the same company run an advert that prayed on the current widespread fears of refugees and where their chicken were contrasted to “illegal immigrant” imported chicken.

After reading this story and seeing some disgusting comments spreading over Facebook, I thought immediately of the Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “homo sacer”. Prisoners in concentration camps or inhabitants of slums are homo sacer and represent a human being in its universality. A person, who has only his bare life and is in a state of “ex-ception”, both outside and inside of the law. San Francis became such person, when he abandoned the worldly glory and all his possessions. Anyone can become homo sacer due to unfortunate events such as war or natural disasters.

What makes us human is the ability to feel compassion to people in these dare circumstances. It is a privilege to feel human these days, not a precondition. People wrongly assume that being barbaric is something alien. What is a human? Can you locate her kernel in brain, in synapses, in the abstract notion of soul? It is only the thin skin that separates us from the flesh. Humanity is just a delicate veil.

Another thought that immediately appeared was the memory of platonic idea of friendship that arises from the darkest of all places. Slavoj Žižek in the interview with Michael Hauser titled Humanism is not enough explains what he means by a platonic idea of friendship. I will quote it in full because I worry I couldn’t reproduce it better:

“Recently I read Jorge Semprún, the Spanish writer. He was in the concentration camp Buchenwald. He wrote in his memoirs a wonderful story. It is very pathetic, it will sound like poetry but for me it’s ontology. He says, once he was in a camp and he saw a train with 180 Jews and since it was winter they were all frozen. Only in the middle when prisoners were dying, they were in the train for two days, they put children in the middle. So they were all frozen horribly, in the middle 18 children survived. The German guards took them out and shot them, only two children there remained. One boy a little bit older, six years, another four years. And then they let the dogs run after the boys to amuse themselves. And what happened is that two boys, one six, the other four, started to run away with the dogs behind them. The smaller boy fell down. Heroically, the big boy returned and grabbed his hand. And at that point they were attacked by the dogs and killed.

But Semprún says very nicely “Their hands were joined for eternity.” That was for me the moment where this totally absurd gesture, you know you die. This is honor worth dying for. It has no substance but this is the moment of ethical eternity for me, clasped hands, as Semprún says very precisely. I even imagine how this scene should be filmed, the image should be frozen, on the soundtrack you hear the children are dying, the dogs are tearing them apart, but the image is the platonic idea. It stands there.”

So today when I see examples of horrible comments on the tragic fate of those 50 refugees and the utmost surreal context of the poultry corporation, I think of those barbaric trolls on Facebook as those concentration camp guards from Semprún’s story, who now metaphorically send virtual dogs to kill the spirits of already dead children. But they shouldn’t kill our spirits too. Because the idea of human friendship is eternal and universal. And it appears when the Reality cracks and the beauty of the Universal beams through the heroic acts of people, who are not afraid to put their skin into the game. The game is called being human. It is a privilege, not a requirement.

[darthcolombus]

"Talán csak az éjszaka mozog, a föld forog ziháló mozdulatlanságunk körül."

Jorge Semprun, A nagy utazás

[meltemslonate]

“Simdi anlıyorsundur muhakkak, bütün çabalarıma rağmen gerçek roman olan romanları yazmada ne kadar zorlandığımı; çünkü her adımda, her sayfada kendi hayatımın gerçekliğine çarptığımı; kişisel deneyimlerime, anılarıma..Uydurmak neden, sonsuz sayıda anlatılacak malzemenin olduğu roman gibi böyle bir hayat sürmüşsen? Oysa gerçek roman gerçekliği aydınlatan, taşıyan ve belki de değiştiren bir yaratma eylemi, sahte bir evrendir. İnsan Boris Vian gibi “Bu kitaptaki her şey gerçektir, çünkü hepsini ben uydurdum” diyebilmeliydi. Ben de hepsini uydurabilmek isterdim...”

Jorge Semprún, '20 yıl ve bir gün'

"Jetzt verstehst du bestimmt...warum es mir trotz aller aller Mühe so schwerfällt, Romane zu schreiben, die wirkliche Romane sind: weil ich bei jedem Schritt, bei jeder Seite auf die Wirklichkeit meines eigenen Lebens stoße, meiner persönlichen Erfahrung, meiner Erinnerung: Warum erfinden, wenn du ein so romanhaftes Leben gehabt hast, in dem es unendlich viel erzählerisches Material gibt? Der echte Roman ist aber ein Schöpfungsakt, ein falsches Universum, das die Wirklichkeit erhellt, trägt und vielleicht verändert. Man müßte wie Boris Vian sagen könnten: In diesem Buch ist alles wahr, weil ich alles erfunden habe. Auch ich würde gerne alles erfinden..."

Jorge Semprún, Zwanzig Jahre und ein Tag, Frankfurt am Main 2006, S. 252f.

[naranjitoo]

Los amigos de Semprún, entre ellos Javier Pradera, fallecido hace unos días, han organizado un homenaje al escritor y político en la localidad fronteriza que inspiró un poema de otro desterrado: Unamuno