Conferenza a Firenze su P.A. Florenskij, "il Leonardo da Vinci della Russia"

"Nulla si perde completamente, nulla svanisce, ma si custodisce in qualche tempo e in qualche luogo."

Pavel Aleksandrovič Florenskij

L' Associazione Eumeswil di Firenze propone una conferenza su:

Pavel Aleksandrovič Florenskij

Relatore: Alessandro Giovanardi

Sabato 3 Dicembre, ore 17.00 

Hotel Croce di Malta

via della Scala, 7 – Firenze

CONFERENZA EUMESWIL: "Grandi scrittori perseguitati: Bulgakov e Solženicyn"

Relatori: Gabriella Elina Imposti e Giovanni Antonucci.

Sabato 7 maggio - ore 17
Hotel Croce di Malta
Via della Scala 7
Firenze

Programma

La censura e il rapporto tra scrittore e potere è uno dei temi che percorrono come un filo rosso il romanzo Il Maestro e Margherita, che è uno dei più celebri della narrativa mondiale del Novecento. Non è difficile vedervi chiare allusioni autobiografiche al sofferto e contraddittorio rapporto dello scrittore con la sua "arte" da un lato e il potere dall'altro. Come il Maestro, Michail Bulgakov in un momento di disperazione distrusse una prima versione del suo romanzo per poi "resuscitarlo" dalle fiamme e completarlo poco prima di morire di una grave malattia che lo aveva privato della vista.

"Ich hätte wie Jünger gehandelt" - Volker Schlöndorff

Interview aus "Die Welt", 15.02.2012. Autor: Heimo Schwilk | 06:39

"Ich hätte wie Jünger gehandelt"

Volker Schlöndorff über seinen Film "Das Meer am Morgen", der die Geschichte einer Geiselerschießung zur Zeit der deutschen Besatzung in Frankreich erzählt.

Als Volker Schlöndorffs Film "Das Meer am Morgen" erstmals beim Filmfestival in Biarritz gezeigt wurde, löste er beim Publikum Erschütterungen aus, es gab Tränen und danach stehenden Applaus. Der Film erzählt die Geschichte des jungen Kommunisten Guy Môquet, der 1941, zur Zeit der deutschen Besatzung in Frankreich, zu den 50 Geiseln gehörte, die nach einem Attentat auf einen deutschen Offizier zur Vergeltung erschossen wurden. Die Filmhandlung erhält eine pikante Note dadurch, dass Schlöndorff den Schriftsteller Ernst Jünger, von 1941 bis 1944 als Offizier im deutschen Militärhauptquartier in Paris tätig, auftreten lässt (gespielt von Ulrich Matthes). Jünger hatte auf Anordnung des Militärbefehlshabers von Stülpnagel eine Dokumentation der Geiselerschießungen verfasst und die Abschiedsbriefe der Hingerichteten übersetzt. "Das Meer am Morgen" wird bei der Berlinale außerhalb des Wettbewerbs gezeigt.

Aus "One Man's War" (La guerre d'un seul homme, 1983)  - von Edgardo Cozarinsky.

Die Welt: Herr Schlöndorff, was halten die Franzosen davon, dass ausgerechnet ein deutscher Filmregisseur die Geschichte der Geiselerschießungen erzählt?

Volker Schlöndorff: Es war ja ein französischer Journalist, der mir ein Buch zu diesem Thema gegeben hat mit der Bitte, ich soll etwas darüber machen. Ich war sofort emotional gepackt und habe entschieden, den Film zu drehen. Ich wollte die Geschichte allerdings erst einmal den Deutschen erzählen. So wie Marc Rothemund den Fall Sophie Scholl den Ausländern nahebringen wollte, so möchte ich, gerade als Partner des deutsch-französischen Senders Arte, den Fall des jungen Kommunisten Guy Môquet den Deutschen erzählen. Es gibt eine psychische Energie, die von starken Emotionen ausgeht, die sich dann im Film wiederfindet. Diese Energie hat die Lektüre des Buches bei mir ausgelöst.

The anarch - a wolf, a master spy?

It occurs to me that one could explain and differentiate the Anarch and the Waldgänger with at least a couple of analogies ....

One could bring the old English expression "a wolf in sheep's clothing" to bear on the Anarch, who appears to be like the masses around him but underneath is not at all. He can be social but he is not socialized. Unlike the socialized beings around him, he remains fundamentally a free loner, even with his sheep's clothing on. He has strong, sharp teeth, which he hides, so they are not pulled "for the common good of the herd" - he may need them in an emergency.

But the analogy only goes so far and the differences are equally revealing. The anarch's relationship to the sheep around him is not predatory - this wolf's enemy is the shepherd and his dogs, not the sheep. When he is smelled out, he is forced to throw off his disguise, run for the cover of the woods, use his teeth if necessary in defense - in short, become a Waldgänger.

Another analogy - this time not mine but Jünger's - is the master spy, who disguises his true nature and loyalties and lives smoothly integrated into a world that is essentially foreign to him. Like the Anarch, his true mission remains his secret and it is entirely different from those around him. Like the Anarch, he puts on a false mask, a foreign uniform and he must resist identifying with those around him and their causes - when the mission is a very long one, this difficulty is not to be taken for granted - spies are turned, as free souls are lost to the world. Lastly, the ordinary people around the spy are not his enemies but rather their master and his watchdogs. An Anarch with philanthropic tendencies, may even, like certain spies, come to empathize with the ordinary innocents around him, secretly feel that in his small way he may be helping to free them from a bad master.

As with the wolf analogy, the differences are also important to note here. The master spy knows from the start who he is and what his mission is; the Anarch has first to lose himself to society and then laboriously to rediscover his true identity, his true heimat, his mission in life. The Anarch has no aspirations to contribute, however indirectly, to the defeat of the society he is embedded in - he is not an anarchist. Though he may go to great lengths to serve an external cause, if his own integrity or the challenge appeals to him, he will not ultimately martyr himself to it. And finally, the Anarch works for no other master, he is his own.

Reality and ideals

"Playing the gentleman here would be possible only for actors; nor would anyone consider doing it anymore. Rather, people, such as my genitor and my brother, feel like martyrs. Half of Eumeswil is inhabited by types who have suffered for an idea or at least claim to have done so. They stood true to the flag, offered heroic resistance – in short, the worn-out military claptrap has reawakened. Upon taking a closer look, one sees that, with rare exceptions, they tried to save their hides just like anybody else. But one turns a blind eye to all that, as long as they do not over-do it.

The anarch sticks to facts, not ideas. He suffers not for facts but because of them, and usually through his own fault, as in a traffic accident. Certainly, there are unforeseeable things – maltreatments. However, I believe I have attained a certain degree of self-distancing that allows me to regard this as an accident.” Eumeswil, Page 113

COMMENTARY

The anarch, as Ernst Jünger envisions him, is not an idealist but a realist, a student of the world and not a world improver. He does not bemoan reality but attempts to deal with it “as a man”. Thus he concerns himself not with what should be, not with“it would be nice if”, but simply with what is and how to best move within those given constraints. The anarch has definitively renounced social progress and thus does not martyr himself attempting to “create better facts”, which according to his view is pure vanity on the social level - rather he suffers because of the unchangeable reality of what is.

Naturally, he prefers not to suffer because of these facts – there is no virtue in unproductive mechanical suffering - but he accepts that it may happen from his own inadequacy, through his own mistakes. From this he tries to learn.

Finally, he accepts that certain things are not predictable and thus not avoidable – injustice, pure chance exists, like it or not. When the anarch is unjustly treated, when something happens to him that he simply could never have anticipated under any circumstances, he regards and accepts it as an accident. He is able to see himself from a distance, as a character of history, and thus does not take it personally.

(In the first paragraph of the quote, Jünger describes others who, in contrast to the anarch, do see themselves as martyrs, even when this stance is not self-sincere. He equates this to a revival of the “old military claptrap”, which derogatory phrase should indicate to any lingering admirers or critics of the militaristic, war-glorifying Jünger before WWII how superficial their outdated conceptions of him are.)