View transcript: Rigor Was His Mark of Quality

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Ovid’s Metamorphosis talk about transformations / Cruel fates force gods and humans to change their appearance / Heiner Müller calls the texts, in which Ovid describes the harsh fate of the defeated Trojans, dramatic / How did the odd intergenerational contract that lets 2000 years old texts still seem up to date, develop?

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Rigor was his mark of quality! / Heiner Müller about Stoa, anarchy, experiences with drugs, and the four elements

Alexander Kluge

What do people mean when they say stoic? “Stoa” means hall … a foyer, where philosophers stride. That is the concept, but not the content. It is a school that sets itself apart from politics, from the state, that has a certain continuity and adopts some things from Greece, but not the anarchic part, right?

Heiner Müller

Maybe it is rather the technique of dealing with the anarchic?

Kluge

With the state, [unverständlich, 1:41] with the changing fates …

Müller

Yes, the anarchic is a precondition for the Stoa, and the Stoa is a …

Kluge

… an answer.

Müller

… an answer, an attempt to deal with it.

Kluge

And a basic quality is ataraxia: unshakable calm. How do we have to picture this? Honecker at the prison in Brandenburg shields himself against any kind of bribe by prison guards.

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Heiner Müller, playwright

Müller

Well, of course it was easier for Honecker in Brandenburg and also in Moabit.

Kluge

He was turned stoic.

Müller

He was turned stoic and it was easier for him because he did not know very much. He had a basic framework and something that he …

Kluge

… a bias that he could not shake off.

Müller

Something that he considered a firm conviction, and he could not shake it off, and he measured everything against it. Although there was a strange comment of his that I actually found kind of likeable. For instance: You heard and saw him speak, and it was incredibly difficult for him to speak in public, and apparently that had to do with … if he had to talk for half an hour, he spit blood. That was the result of solitary confinement in Brandenburg, apparently there are complications with the voice, to deal with the own voice if you have to suffer that for a long time. And Hermlin once told me that he went to see Honecker for some reason and Honecker suddenly said: You know, Stephan, when we stood in front of the hotels as young communists, and there were the bellboys – proletarian boys, more or less, in uniforms, who had to open doors and carry luggage and so on, and we thought, this is going to be different when we own the hotels.

Kluge

Oh, so he used to stand there? Like Felix Krull in Thomas Mann…

Müller

Yes, yes.

Kluge

…in front of the Grand Hotels, the luxury before his eyes.

Müller

And when we have the power, then everything will be different, and our proletarians will live in those hotels. And now, what do we have now?

Kluge

That is being ready for action, not stoic.

Müller

Obviously. And now, what do we have now? And that was sad, because it was around the time when the corruption started, with a second currency and “Devisenhotels” and so on … wherever the proletarians, the GDR citizens, stood outside the window and weren’t allowed in. I mean, technically I really share Goethe’s point of view. I’m sure you know this great quote by Goethe: May God save me from self-awareness! I mean, you can, but I don’t care about it. And maybe that is stoic too, it’s possible. That would be my definition of stoicism.

Kluge

Could you tell me: of what are you a patriot? I’m going to give you two words: one is patriot, which sounds kind of like father but does not have much to do with father, but with something I rely on, something that I want to be certain will be acknowledged for generations, something that I would even give my life for, if necessary. And the second is Matremäeut (?), which has little to do with self-sacrifice, it is Socrates, the midwife. I can also become active as a midwife, or a paramedic. And the two things can also be combined, but one question: man can be a patriot, it is a state of being – of what are you one?

Müller

In the end it comes down to the question: what would I be willing to risk my life for?

Kluge

Yes, exactly.

Müller

That is the only question.

Kluge

Just like for Kleist.

Müller

Unfortunately, I cannot think of anything but my daughter. That is stupid, but that’s how it is.

Kluge

But consequently, to ensure that she doesn’t go down in 2014, you would easily become active.

Müller

Yes.

Kluge

Despite the pessimist conviction that nothing can be done, you would become active. And the midwife-artist, Matremäeut? You cannot be that for your daughter anymore …

Müller

That is true, yes. But I can be that for many others, I think. I think that I care a lot about … for instance in theater, that I don’t want to do everything by myself. And I don’t want to keep anything to myself and I want others to continue, that others do what I won’t be able to do anymore one day … to enable them to continue …

Kluge

… to influence them, so that their interests are integrated and so on … don’t you find it bad at all when they instrumentalize you, steal your time, your time of life?

Müller

That’s okay.

Kluge

… it is okay, they act through you.

Müller

Of course.

Kluge

… you offer yourself as a membrane.

Müller

Yes, that is also very important, yes. But a patriot in the sense you are talking about, I can only be one in very limited contexts, not in a bigger one.

Kluge

…. a homeopathic patriot…

Müller

Yes, maybe …

Kluge

In one cell, an extremely cantonal constitution, patriot of a sentence.

Kluge

There are many officers in the National People’s Army that have been dismissed. They get kidney problems, high blood pressure, insufficient heart capacity, that means they become physically ill as a result of the loss of a fatherland, if you want, a responsibility for their home country. To what extend, would you say, are there tragedies in the East that only ever happen on a physical level anymore? And how can you express something like that? Because if the tragedy cannot be expressed publicly anymore, the body will express itself …

Müller

That is a problem, sure.

Kluge

And theater cannot save them, and the hospital cannot really save them either, because it cannot do what theater can.

Müller

But what is interesting is the connection between body and idea in what you are describing. As long as they had an idea, or an illusion, they did not even notice their bodies. Now they are alone with their bodies and cannot tell them anything anymore.

Kluge

Two leftover bodies were those of criminals escaped from prison, who originally were on the GDR SWAT team, hurried across the FDR and could only be captured in a forest in a moment of exhaustion. That was the rest of the body.

Müller

There is also an aspect of that in Ovid, I think, to come back to that: those transformations, transformations into …

Kluge

… other bodies, no bodies, trees, rocks …

Müller

… other bodies, no bodies, and so on. That is also an attempt to solve this problem.

Kluge

So there is not just death and birth, but there is transformation in the sense that I become sick or I change, that I either fixate the impossible place, in a stoic manner, open in the expectation to find a place – that would be the philosophy of the East, of our East; or that I have a place in life.

Müller

But that has also to do with the fact that the relatively simple structures in the East, compared to the more complex structures in Western industrial countries, often lead to, produce a different attitude towards the body. Probably a more direct one, so that the body reacts immediately, faster to crisis in the environment.

Kluge

That means we don’t have a real full industry, but a defense industry, a strained industry, an attempted industry.

Müller

Yes. I once noticed – maybe a stupid observation, it was eight or nine years ago. I was pretty stoned, I think I had smoked pot or something in West Berlin and took the S-Bahn home, very late, and then the subway to Friedrichsfelde. There were … I remember the walk to Bahnhof Zoo, for instance, where I suddenly felt like people were moving on rails …

Kluge

Not you are moving, the people are moving …

Müller

People move past me on rails. Everyone has their own rails, and there is no connection between them. And in the S-Bahn, I also had the feeling that everyone is sitting on their rails, or in their seat, and there is no connection. Suddenly I did not know anymore: Am I moving westbound or eastbound? It was very confusing. But I was already on the subway, I think, via Alexanderplatz to Friedrichsfelde, and suddenly there was a completely different feeling, it was something vegetative, a connection between people: a somewhat threatening heat.

Kluge

They merged.

Müller

Yes. It was warm but threatening, because there were contacts, so unnoticeable that it was impossible to pin them down …

Kluge

Membranes, but more in the heads.

Müller

But there was something. It was very strange. I think it has to do with the following: there was a different relationship between the bodies, just because …

Kluge

What kind of drugs have you tried in your life?

Müller

Really, not many. There was marijuana, hashish, and I once took LSD. Sometimes cocaine, but that was a very long time ago. LSD was interesting, I kind of liked that, but I only took it once and that was in Bulgaria, in the country, in the countryside, and we lived in a house that we had to ourselves. It was somewhere in the landscape, and we took the stuff, then we went outside – there were mountains and hills and also some forest. The first sensation was a changed bodily perception, that is, heat, and I suddenly did not have skin anymore, but fur, a feeling of fur, and I didn’t have flesh anymore, only muscles, and my walk changed and my perception was like this [Müller gestures], an animalistic perception, not like this anymore, so 180 degrees …

Kluge

Could it be that you were regressing?

Müller

Probably. And I felt like I was a big cat or something, judging from my walk. The problem was that at every somewhat steeper slope, there was the temptation to fly, but I had it under control. But the feeling that I could do it. And then there was a moment, there was a small waterfall and we stood in it and suddenly, it is a stupid association, but … I was there with my Bulgarian wife … that we are two Roman legionnaires, marching across this landscape, that we’ve been there before and so on. Really stupid, but that’s our education, which …

Kluge

Something like time travel.

Müller

And then underneath this waterfall …

Kluge

She confirmed it …

Müller

Yes, yes.

Kluge

… that means it wasn’t just your idea, but …

Müller

No, we talked about it, yes. And underneath the waterfall suddenly she got scales, and changed into an animal. The next thing was: I was at the house, she was sleeping, I think, and I – I wrote it down, but you probably know it, those “tragic summers” … doesn’t matter, anyway, there was a laundry room in the basement of the house, there was a small radio, and I turned on the radio, and there was Arabic music and a cat that belonged to the house. And while listening to the Arabic music, I saw a pretty big locust sit on the door frame, and I pointed it out to the cat and I was aware what I was doing. Of course at some point the cat caught the locust, of course, even if she couldn’t get up there, but with incredible patience, and suddenly she got it down. I didn’t see how she did that. And then the cat slowly killed the locust, up the basement stairs, across the garden and so on … and I watched, completely fascinated. All that accompanied by the Arabic music, which was very loud, and it was a bit unsettling, the pleasure I got out of watching this: she kept biting off a piece of the locust and then let it go, then pounced again and so on …

Kluge

Is this state something real or unreal?

Müller

It was pretty real. I mean, the effect is simply the temporal expansion, the expansion during the perception. And in between I kept seeing an anthracite forest underneath random animal heads and so on. And dozing – and I will never forget that, but never mind, I have also written this down once before – I saw the image of a scarp slope, a very steep slope, a very steep rock face with traces of humans, who had clung to it, or climbed it, hands, the imprint of thighs and so on. That was probably the strangest image.

Kluge

What means rain to you, for your life? Can you remember a particular situation?

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Heiner Müller, playwright

Müller

Yes, a very recent one even, it was strange. I stood in the door of the pub downstairs from our place, and there was this sudden downpour, it was the day before yesterday, I believe. A horrible downpour, and suddenly I remembered – it had been very humid before – suddenly I remembered a scene from the Sartre play “Huis Clos”, “No Exit”, where the Resistance people kill this boy, so that he won’t betray them, or maybe it is after a torture scene, I’m not sure anymore what it was. Either way, there was the rain, and the smell of rain, and I remembered this scene and the spooky thing about it was: suddenly a man came to stand next to me, someone I have known quite well for a while, who lives in the area. A former physicist who worked in Göttingen, and a great IT specialist, he was friends with Raspe, and when he heard about Raspe’s death, he destroyed the entire computer system in his institute and had to go to prison for two years. And he was suddenly standing next to me and told me about that scene from the Sartre play, while I watched, and listened to the rain. I found that very strange!

Kluge

Wind. When and where in your life have you experienced wind?

Müller

The strongest I experienced wind at the Grand Canyon, of course. This USA trip in general, it was in 1975, ‘76, the first one, I was in the US for 9 months.

Kluge

It’s when you came to the US as a GDR poet with a special permission. Because Mayakovsky had studied there as well and brought back good poetry, you were …

Müller

And I stood at the Grand Canyon at night, and I won’t forget the wind, of course it is very different. And anyway, during this trip – we went everywhere, from Mexico to the Canadian border – it was the first time, it was really my first impression of landscape, and the importance of scenery. Simply because it cannot really be domesticated, it cannot be civilized, there is always a rest.

Kluge

So you cannot compare it to Saxon Switzerland …

Müller

You cannot compare them, it is a question of dimension, right.

Kluge

How come? Asia is fairly big, isn’t it?

Müller

But I was never in Asia. I was in Japan. Japan is … there is no landscape anymore, it is one big city. That was also impressing, but the second time it was actually already frightening. I was there twice. The first time I really found it impressing. New York is a village compared to Tokyo, that is the first impression, but the second time it is unsettling, it becomes termite-like.

Kluge

You could not make out the impression of wind?

Müller

Not in Japan, no. There were too many vehicles, and they kill the wind. You are always somehow in a container that is driving somewhere.

Kluge

Fire. When have you experienced fire directly?

Müller

I can … I don’t know how old I was, six or seven, maybe, in my home town … I was walking home from the public pool, and there was a thunderstorm, and those storms in the mountains are much heavier than elsewhere, and it was a row village, with farm houses on the borders, on the hills, and the village in the middle. And up there I was walking in the rain, and there was a downpour and thunder … and 100 or 200 meters away from me, lightning struck a barn. It was a common occurrence, it happened now and then. That was my first impression of fire.

Kluge

And it burned?

Müller

It burned, yes. It was great.

Kluge

And about how old are you?

Müller

I was six or seven. Seven, I think, seven years.

Kluge

You are strolling, like a dog, let’s say, kind of in a jog, you want to get home. And now you are staring at this fire.

Kluge

Think of the starry sky. When in your life have you encountered it, as a child or a grown-up? You stare up into it, and if we were shepherds, 6000 years ago, it would be an element of life for us. In the city you cannot see the sky at all.

Müller

Well, in the village you can see it. And I have seen it very early. I remember that my first idea of the world was – totally primitive – that there’s a fence and behind it is the end. That was my first image.

Kluge

Could you squeeze through it?

Müller

No, you could only climb across.

Kluge

Climb across …

Müller

But you weren’t allowed to cross, because there was nothing behind it. That was the first image I had, and you could always see the starry sky. There were outhouses behind the house, and whenever you went to the latrine in the dark, you were exposed to the starry sky.

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Rigor was his mark of quality! / Heiner Müller about Stoa, anarchy, experiences with drugs, and the four elements