angel of history

Angelus Novus by Klee

IX

My wing is ready to fly
I would rather turn back
For had I stayed mortal time
I would have had little luck.
– Gerhard Scholem, “Angelic Greetings”

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair [verweilen: a reference to Goethe’s Faust], to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise, it has caught itself up in his wings and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call progress, is this storm.

- mula sa On the Concept of History ni Walter Benjamin

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tatlong taon na rin pala:

Emergencia Poemas

the weight of history

Natisod ko kanina sa Film Blog ng The Guardian ang kwento tungkol sa paggawad ng Honorary Oscar kay Elia Kazan, direktor ng mga pelikulang A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront at East of Eden. Naging kontrobersyal ang parangal kay Kazan dahil sa protesta ng ilang scriptwriters na na-blacklist nuong McCarthy era. Nagbigay ng testimonya at mga pangalan ng ilang kaibigan si Kazan sa hearing ng House Committee on Un-American Activities na tumugis sa mga hinihinalang miyembro at taga-suporta ng Communist Party. Dahil sa blacklist, maraming mga scriptwriter, aktor at manggagawang sa pelikula at entablado ang nawalan ng trabaho.

Bilang protesta at di pagsang-ayon sa parangal, hindi nag-standing ovation o pumalakpak man lang sina Ed Harris, Nick Nolte at Holly Hunter. Kakatwang isa sa tumayo at masigabong pumalakpak si Warren Beatty na direktor ng pelikulang Reds. Hanggang sa kamatayan niya noong 2003, hindi kailanman nanghingi ng paumanhin si Kazan sa ginawa niya na nagresulta sa pagkakatanggal sa trabaho ng ilang film at stage workers.

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Sa isa sa mga huling eksena sa The Reader, tinanong ni Michael (Ralph Fiennes) si Hannah (Kate Winslet) kung nagsisi ba ito sa nangyari. “It doesn't matter what I think. It doesn't matter what I feel. The dead are still dead,” sagot ni Hannah.

Para kay Ilana Mather (Lena Olin), wala siya sa posisyon para ibigay ang kapatawarn kay Hannah sa pagtanggap sa iniwang yaman ng huli.

pagpuno sa patlang

The Poem that Took the Place of a Mountain
by Wallace Stevens

There it was, word for word,
The poem that took the place of a mountain.

He breathed its oxygen,
Even when the book lay turned in the dust of his table.

It reminded him how he had needed
A place to go to in his own direction,

How he had recomposed the pines,
Shifted the rocks and picked his way among clouds,

For the outlook that would be right,
Where he would be complete in an unexplained completion:

The exact rock where his inexactness
Would discover, at last, the view toward which they had edged,

Where he could lie and, gazing down at the sea,
Recognize his unique and solitary home.