Last Tuesday I was supposed to speak and discuss at the Salzburg Festival symposium; unfortunately the event was cancelled because both invited philosophers were unable to attend. “Revolt and resignation” was the topic, and since the columnist does not feel drawn to resignation, he is at least publishing his introductory statement here. He has written it in hexameters in order to create some distance from a task that is tricky in many ways, from the framework of the whole and also from the background in the first part of the symposium, which he refers to in Part 1.
Salzburg Festival, dactyls two, how could I resist the charm?
Stand? Isn’t it the wettest dream of the local journalist that
Salzburg Festival at the podium, the Federal President
Denten before, albeit with deeper meaning and higher
Claim? I now confess, I also dreamed it, the dream, and
I agreed all too quickly when Hinterhäuser answered the phone
Invited me to speak in a hospitable atmosphere. Revolt and
Resignation, with Camus as the framework and Hannah Arendt
And smiling profoundly. How can I avoid the consecration
To go against the grain? Why should I do it? And is it not
Duty of a writer like me to put my finger on the conflict,
To set the consecration game and the revolt against each other, the
To clear the fog, to clear the ship for the protest?
Woe betide you if it is not that easy. Because even if I protested here,
Will the protest only be part of the game with the consecration, the stage of the
Festival envelops him in fog, as always meant, he degenerates into
Gesture. Doron Rabinovici, here you suffered this
Fate; but I, I escape it by making use of the oldest
Formalities of the six-beat verse, although they are not
Protect against imperial wrath and banishment, we know it. –
It remains exciting until the end: will the podcast be affected by the scandal that
Waves, currently on ice, ever sent from here?
As a writer I am of simple mind and understanding, but so much
Do I know that against the mechanism of the stage revolt only
Little can do; the magic of the first transforms the second into
Cringe, as cringe as it seems to us. And vice versa, the revolt also knows the
Magic of the theatrical show and stages itself in
Images, inside of which there is a black mirror, the reaction.
Counter-Enlightenment with its baroque, its propaganda from
Stein, from opera and from Jesuit festivals, still works today
Stronger on us than the images of the aristocrats before the
Guillotine. Or just as strong; who knows the meaning of
Saint Nepomuk? Who still recognizes the statues of Victory
Signs of triumphant Catholicism? And Habsburg?
Lenin statues, Stalin busts, everyone knows the case, even
Southern generals are no longer well-liked on
Their podiums; Karl Marx is controversial, Guevara is out of the question,
The epitome of revolt and protest until recently.
The image of revolt is always under suspicion, climate
Glue and shaker in galleries: Not only commuters
If it happens, aesthetes in the safe territory of culture will too.
Protest and revolt always violate convention, show
Bad taste, shows little regard for circumstances.
Always unfair, brutal and inhumane, and in extreme cases
The revolt then becomes a massacre. But there is revolt
Without violence? Not least because they are against violence
So it always depends on what you are revolting for,
Or against what. But then the revolt is defeated,
In the true sense, it is subject first to itself.
What is currently against the rule of
Revolt. The bleak dialectic of enlightenment devours them
All the beautiful revolts and their protagonists,
Later admired as dictators and potentates.
“Revolt constantly encounters evil, from where it
You can only make a new start.” Camus knew it.
But Camus also has other sentences. One who
No says that be the human being in the revolt. I take that and believe it.
Resistance is too pretentious a word for me; but contradiction is
Duty. One must object while there is still time; that objection
Remains possible, saves the revolt. That is why we should exercise leniency
against hotheads; because often the truth sounds quite cheap,
Often what is cool and differentiated is way off the mark.
It is a disaster when criticism is no longer subject to criticism,
Immunized against objection. The identity politics of the
The left thus becomes the Achilles heel, politically. Revolt
Means being able to contradict and still tolerate contradiction.
World language intolerance – what is it that breaks out in anger without
Language and anger without ears? It is a principle, a new one –
Great danger and reason for revolt. The commercial
Our language now speaks, now speaks from all and every
Communication. And speaking freely, probably
We need a free space, a sphere where we can freely express ourselves.
Revolutions fought for him, but some things revolve around
Breastfeeding. We are all advertising machines of ourselves and
Advertising for other purposes, and what we say is not for the
speakers, but those who, while he is speaking, are already deciding
How much attention is paid to it. And other, hidden purposes
Control the flow of talk; tech companies occupy the
Free space, and this is never public, and always more unsafe
Will the truth escape us, since we are losing the means to understand it?
Voices. – Counter-enlightenment in the false name of scepticism,
Mass fraud as a sham of a mass digital
Freedom. No resignation is permitted,
Against this, there is a need for opposition, rebellion, revolt.
Demanding from slaves who know nothing about their slavery.
Dialectics here too: the freedom of the entrepreneur, the powerful
“Freedom of speech”, free speech, becomes the sharpest weapon against the
Freedom. And yet it is the free world in which such contradiction
Possible; tyrants are elsewhere. Against the power and hubris of the
We have to defend ourselves against digital capitalists.
Clean revolt that can’t think of anything better than institutions!
Against the clear-cutting of public broadcasting. For the consecration
Festival spaces as places of refuge for free speech.
For the objection against fascists probably also; we are already
Further than Nineteen Sixty-Eight, than in the lecture hall
One with “Art and Revolution” Actionists and artists
Left-wing students embarrassed and disavowed and a
Press, depraved like no other, the protagonists
The post-war revolt, the Weibel and Wiener, the Brus, Otto Mühl also
Driven to prison, into exile in Berlin. – And today,
Salzburg Festival, what a contrast. The protagonists –
They are all dead, the picture has changed. The Free
The world is threatened from within, it is threatened from without, in
Everything is becoming more and more Biedermeier, and I, I
Deprive me of the chance to ever speak at the consecration festival.
*
Critical journalists are like that, they contradict each other,
Opposes everything, including himself.
Revolting against oneself is the goal, and the beginning
Any uprising. Only those who take themselves so seriously that they
Only those who revolt against themselves can do something for freedom.
One hopes, and would have to deny this too, that everything would not be so
Horribly positive. So let’s say a fresh no to ourselves
Even, maybe it will suddenly become a yes to each other.
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The author by email: thurnher@falter.at
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