Rilke, "In einem fremden Park"

A work ("In an unfamiliar park") by this Austrian poet.  You can read the original here.

Two paths exist, but neither ends.
Yet, in your thoughts, one may well lead
On further, as if you misstepped,
If caught within a rondel's cleft,
Alone again, that stone to read: 
The Baroness below subtends
Our Brite Sophie. Now caress
These fingers years long past, long gone:
Why does this pain not evanesce?

Like that first time you won't go on, 
Expectant on this elm-bound square, 
So moist and dark, where no one treads. 

What counter-urge has made you dare, 
To search among the sunny beds, 
As if they named a rosebush bloom?  

What sounds recur as you stand here? 
Why do you see, flickering near,  
The moths now lost where tall phlox loom?

In unserer Synagoge

A short story ("In our synagogue") by this German-language writer. You can read the original as part of this collection.

In our synagogue lives an animal roughly the size of a marten. It can often be quite clearly observed and it tolerates human proximity at a distance of about two meters. Its color is a light bluish-green. No one has ever stroked its fur, so little can be said in that regard; one might even claim that the fur's natural color is unknown. Perhaps its visible color comes from accumulated dust and grout, since the color also resembles the plaster work of the synagogue's interior, only a bit lighter. Apart from its timorousness, it is an immensely calm and sedentary beast. If it did not get roused quite so often, it would hardly change position at all.  

Its favorite place to stay is near the grates to the women's section. With visible pleasure it crawls into the grates' mesh, stretches itself out, and casts its gaze down towards the prayer area. Such an audacious position seems to please the animal, yet the temple's maintenance worker is commissioned to make sure the animal is never on the grates because it would soon accustom itself to this place, which we cannot allow because of the women who are afraid of the animal. Why they are afraid of it, however, remains unclear. Admittedly, it looks rather scary upon first sight: one may find the long neck, triangular face, almost horizontally-protruding upper teeth, and the seemingly hard, light kemp-hair protruding past the teeth, a row longer than the upper lip, particularly frightening. Nevertheless, we are soon forced to conclude how obviously harmless this whole scary business is. First and foremost, the animal stays away from humans; it is shier than a forest animal, and this seems to have nothing to do with the building. In fact, its personal misfortune consists of the fact that this building is a synagogue, which means it is occasionally a very bustling and lively place. If one were able to communicate with the animal, one could at least comfort it by mentioning that our community is getting smaller and smaller with every passing year and is already struggling to secure enough money to maintain the synagogue. One cannot rule out the possibility that sooner or later a silo or something of that nature will be made out of this synagogue, and the animal will get the peace and quiet it so sorely lacks.  

It is in any case only the women who fear the animal, as the men have long since grown indifferent to it: one generation showed it to the other; again and again was it seen; and in the end, one no longer looked in its direction. Even children seeing it for the first time are no longer amazed. It has become the pet of the synagogue, and why shouldn't the synagogue have its own, unexampled pet? Were it not for the women one would hardly know of the animal's existence. Yet even the women are not really afraid of it; it would be too odd to fear such an animal, day in and day out, for years and decades. They defend their position, however, by saying that the animal is much closer to them than to the men, and this is true. The animal does not dare approach the men; no one has ever even seen it on the floor. If one didn't let it near the grates to the women's section, it would still settle at an equivalent height on the opposite wall. There one finds, hardly the width of two fingers, a narrow ledge circling three sides of the synagogue. On this ledge the animal sometimes scampers here and there; most of all, however, it sits calmly in a specific spot across from the women. It is almost inconceivable how easily it can make use of this narrow path, and the way in which it turns back around once it has reached one of the ends of the ledge is well worth seeing. It is, after all, a very old animal, yet it does not hesitate to take the most daring leaps and, what is more, it also never fails. It spins in midair then goes back the other way. Nevertheless, when one has seen this several times one is sated and no longer has any incentive to keep staring.  

It is also neither fear nor curiosity that keeps the women moving; if they stuck to their brooms a bit more they would completely forget about the animal. The pious women would do the same if the others, who happen to comprise the majority, allowed it; these others, however, like drawing attention to themselves and the animal for them is simply a welcome excuse. If they could and if they dared, they would certainly have lured the animal closer to themselves just to be able to get more frightened. But in reality the animal does not approach them at all; when it is not attacked it is as unconcerned about the women as it is about the men. It would probably prefer to remain hidden, in those places it inhabits when there are no services, in all likelihood in some hole in the wall that we have yet to discover. Only when one begins to pray does it appear, frightened by all the noise, wishing to see what has happened, wishing to remain awake, wishing to be free, able to escape, running before us out of fear, making its little capers out of fear, and not daring to retreat until the services are over. It prefers heights, of course, because there does it feel safest, and the grates and ledge offer the best opportunities to flee. Yet in no way does it stay there all the time; sometimes it climbs down, closer to the men. The curtain of the ark of the covenant is borne by a shiny brass rod that seems to attract the animal; often enough it creeps down to it but always sits there calmly. Not even when it is right beside the ark of the covenant can one say that it disturbs us, its blank, always open, perhaps even lidless eyes seem to take in the community members, without, of course, looking at anyone in particular. Instead it only stares at the dangers from which it feels threatened.

In this regard it has seemed not much more comprehensible than our women, at least until recently. What dangers does it have to fear? Who has any intention of doing anything to it? Hasn't it been left utterly to its own devices for many years? The men do not worry about its presence and the majority of the women would likely be unhappy if it were to disappear. And since it is the lone animal in the building, it also has no enemies. It should have very nearly been able to detect this fact from all its years here. And although the services and their noise may be frightening for the animal, they occur every day in such modest intervals, somewhat more often during holidays, with such regularity and always without interruption, that even the most craven of beasts would have long since grown accustomed to such services, especially when it sees they comprise not the noise of persecutors, but that which has nothing at all to do with the animal. And yet this fear. Is it the memory of things long past or the premonition of days to come? Does this old animal perhaps know more than the three generations gathered at any one time in the synagogue?

Many years ago, it is said, one would have really tried to banish the animal. This may well be true; more likely is that we are merely dealing with invented stories. What we can show, however, is that the religious point of view, that is to say, whether one should tolerate such an animal in a house of worship, was investigated at the time. The attestations of various well-known rabbis were collected, and the views were split: the majority wanted the animal's expulsion and a new consecration of the house of worship. But this was easy to declaim from a distance. In reality, of course, it was impossible to drive out the animal.  

The Lives of Others

The grass, we are told, is always greener somewhere else; a less philosophical slant to that old adage summed up most concisely by this French poet in the phrase la vie est ailleurs. Yes, in a way, life is always elsewhere. When we choose to live in one city, love one woman, read one book, befriend one colleague, we necessarily forsake all other cities, women, books, and colleagues, at least for some period of time. There are many among us who do not have broad selections in these categories; many more privileged persons can only lament their destinies and look upon the choices of others with the greenest of eyes (the coincidence of color is striking). The higher we get on the totem pole of privilege and ease, the more likely we are to second-guess what we have made of our allotments – such is the luxury of having too much time and too many competing brands and alternatives. Not so in most countries of the world. Despite our amazing industrial advances in the last hundred years, most countries are still limited in what they can offer their citizens, both commercially and socially. Most people still marry partners from the same region in which they were born; most people, in fact, do not spend appreciable amounts of time far from that selfsame region. This rule of thumb used to apply to Europe, albeit less so, before the advent of the European Community, which has been slackening controls on labor mobility little by little. Now a forty-year-old computer programmer from Kaunas can pack up his things and move to Paris with nary a thought about visas, permits, and other obstacles of immigration – and for that reason alone, he will be less likely to immigrate. Less likely because regardless of his degree of Gallicization, he will ultimately miss home, the home that he was not really allowed to leave for at least half of his life, and those memories, however austere, will propel him back to the cultural milieu in which he feels most comfortable. But what if the culture of both countries were once identical? What if there were two realities, the open, liberal, creative culture you had always known, and another reality – directed, Spartan, ruthless – a mockery of the first culture aimed at some untenable goal in some unthinkable future? Such is the conundrum of the protagonist of this glorious film.

The original German title would translate as The Life of Others, suggesting a Boschian gaze on the entirety of alternatives to your own existence. But in the plural, we get the sense of tangible life, of individual fate and collective oppression. Our hero, if we can call him that, is Gerd Wiesler (the late Ulrich Mühe), a career Stasi officer who is so regimented as to be unable to enjoy any of life's details except the precision of his routine. Were Wiesler's face a true reflection of his soul, we would be worried that his body might contain nothing more than rotting bones and flesh. His assignment as one of East Germany's most devoted agents is to sit patiently and collect incriminating information on anyone who could possibly betray the socialist cause. I suppose the bulk of intelligence legwork involves trials of patience; but when you factor in stereotypical German thoroughness and diligence you have quite a project. Wiesler's current quarry is playwright Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), who embodies that most feared enemy of totalitarian regimes, the artistic intellectual. Dreyman's résumé includes a series of successful publications and a coveted actress, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck), as his girlfriend. Still, something is missing in Georg's life. His creative potential has not been fully achieved, although these thoughts plague any artist of merit from adolescence to the grave, and Dreyman is said to have started looking to the emerald fields of his Western confederates for inspiration. West Germany's economic renaissance was one of the more extraordinary turnarounds in modern history and the details of its resurgence, despite efforts to gag the actual figures, were well-known to citizens of East Germany. In lieu of speaking out against the regime, which would spell an end to his burgeoning career, Dreyman tries to enjoy his status as a semi-celebrity with witticisms and hints at the power and value of artistic expression regardless of the politics of one's country. Dreyman is an East German citizen, but his lineage is to German artists of all times.

These ingredients sound like a plausible defection case to Wiesler, who has little appreciation for the arts since they tend to entail rather impractical matters. He will watch some television now and then, in between sessions with paid escorts, but his mind is focused on the Darwinian struggle to survive and protect – and in this respect, he is the fittest sort of predator. Dreyman's apartment is quickly tapped and Wiesler settles into his listening post at clockwork shifts with the facility of someone for whom spying comprises more muscle memory than thought. Wiesler reports to his superior (Ulrich Tukur) that he has yet to find any evidence incriminating Dreyman, but then again the Stasi could probably drum up something untoward against even an automaton like Wiesler. And here is where we suspect a twist will occur, and it most certainly does. Wiesler discovers a piece of information to which the audience has already been privy: that a filthy hog of a government official by the name of Hempf  (Thomas Thieme) wants Christa-Maria all to his greasy self. Consequently, Dreyman must be found guilty of harboring pro-Western sympathies. Most drones in a police state of this caliber and unscrupulousness would emit a chuckle and carry out the order thinking lasciviously of their own past and future conquests. But not our Wiesler. Wiesler is, you see, the ideal Stasi member, completely incapable of contravening socialist concepts of equality and fair play even in favor of some bloated cadre's lusty whims. Since tales like these either have characters who never change and slowly become symbols for whatever ideals they cherish, or feature an unexpected change in a person captive to antiquated missions, we sense that Wiesler will do something dramatic. Could Wiesler even regain the soul he forsook years ago when he bought into the artificial brotherhood of man based on its least impressive commonality, money? What could he, a mid-range officer with little pull apart from local operations hope to achieve against Hempf, the epitome of all totalitarian regimes at all times, a man gorged on money, power, and, from the looks of it, an ungodly amount of Bratwurst?

What Wiesler does and, specifically, what he doesn't do, will not be revealed here. The viewer who craves a happy ending may take solace in the fact that the two Germanies reunified into the Mecca of culture and artistic genius for which they were once exclusively known. This same viewer may be informed in his readings about the film that there never was a Wiesler, or a Dreyman, or an actress as enchanting as Christa-Maria Sieland, and that these bare facts reduce the validity of such an enterprise, reserving it for pure fiction, which as we all know has little to do with reality. But in essence, Wiesler, Dreyman, and Sieland all existed in exactly the form you see on the screen; their thoughts, concerns and hopes were all the same; only their actions and fates may not have been accurately portrayed. Maybe one day a file will surface from the bottomless trench that was East Germany's database in which all three of these characters will be clearly alive, Wiesler perhaps under his code name HGW – Hauptmann (Captain) Gerd Wiesler – XX/ 7; maybe Dreyman will indeed have a copy of a Sonata of a Good Man; perhaps Sieland will be allowed to be with whom she wants and not have to cheat death by cheating on her beloved. Until then, you can enjoy one of the most spectacular films in recent memory.                         

Barbara

Until telepathy becomes a human trait, we will always retain the freedom to think of whom and what we choose. We can be restricted in where we go, what we read, even to whom we speak; but no oppressive government – and the history of human governance is merely the chronicle of these tyrannies’ demise – has as yet succeeded in fully breaching our inner securities. We have assisted them, however, by doing it ourselves: we have succumbed, and compromised, and relented, all for the sake of the thin hope that the future couldn’t possibly be as grim (as some, unfortunately bereft  of irony, have commented: we have helped lay the bricks to our own prisons). But like in any unholy cult of personality or citizenship, sacrifices for some preposterous common aim are expected, sacrifices which oftentimes assume the shape of our nearest and dearest. And soon we find we have betrayed our most intimate circles solely to elude our own destruction. An appropriate preamble to this fine film.

The year is 1980 and our titular female is Dr. Barbara Wolff (Nina Hoss), late of Berlin’s renowned Charité hospital and now ensconced in a less glamorous, rural setting not far from this city. Our first glimpse of Dr. Wolff is on a lonely bench, smoking as she always seems to be doing (in one scene she studies a serum beneath a microscope while still holding a gasper aloft), her eyes determined not to divulge their inklings. “She’s always like that,” says an unmistakable voice. “If she were six years old, you’d say she was sulky.” The you invoked is Dr. André Reiser (Ronald Zehrfeld) who, while casually spying on his newest physician, is also considering other matters: her intelligence, her vulnerability, and, of course, the fact that, despite her jagged edges, she is gracile and pretty. The unmistakable voice belongs to a beady-eyed man called Schütz (Rainer Bock), and his agenda will resemble the agendas of so many other unmistakable operatives who bide their time waiting, as it were, for others to make mistakes. A wrinkle in his otherwise straitlaced story will surface much later on, one which might explain why so many characters in the credits share his surname. For the nonce, however, his purpose is clear: Barbara Wolff is under surveillance for having sought work in the West, a crime whose punishment will not involve a conventional jail, but the isolation and obscurity of the country doctor. Schütz burdens Reiser with this information and in so doing makes him an accomplice – although in East Germany the number of such abettors was so enormous that Reiser is in no way remarkable. Furnished with this subterfuge from the opening scene, we have few illusions about what Reiser may or may not suspect; but like so many others recruited or press-ganged into intelligence work, he develops a certain sympathy towards his mark. That is why when Barbara glides by a cafeteria table in utter ignoration of her colleagues, he decides to give her a ride home and explain the lay of land. "You shouldn't cordon yourself off that way," he tells her (Sie sollten sich nicht so separieren), as people here are "very sensitive," especially towards someone once employed at the most famous hospital of the most famous divided city in the world. Compared to such a person "they would feel second class" (Sie fühlen sich bald zweite Klasse), to which Barbara inquires whether Reiser's opting for the bourgeois separieren (instead of, say, the proletarianly Teutonic trennen) comprises his own attempt not to sound "second class." That Reiser also finds her house without having asked for directions disabuses Barbara of any last hope that an unmistakable plan is afoot.  

While references to class distinctions and the so-called "second world" are hardly coincidental, mere minutes into Barbara two potential storylines have already been eliminated: the boilerplate melodrama of a shy and successful outsider pigeonholed by locals as a snob, and the cloak-and-dagger oneupmanship of the standard issue spy thriller. Instead, we are obliged to examine closely our two protagonists, who are both caregivers and victims – as well as in each other's way, if you know what I mean. Barbara withdraws to her modest abode complete with untuned piano, a shortcoming not lost on Reiser, who uses his connections to send for a tuner. With that tuner comes a written report that might terrify the average burgher; at least, so we think given the previous scene's confession as to how Reiser, a gifted physician in his own right, came to this hinterland. Barbara listens with like incredulity to this story and Reiser's dilettantish theory about this much-discussed painting; only this Russian tale will finally convince her of her colleague's desires, and at this point it might be all too late. Too late? It gives nothing away to reveal that Barbara is precisely what she appears to be: that is, a flight risk. She has burn-upon-reading notices and other sensitive materials which she hides in her stovepipe, a series of remote drop-off points, and, most importantly perhaps, a lascivious and affluent boyfriend, Jörg (Mark Waschke), who cannot wait to export her into his Western world where she no longer has to play doctor and "can sleep in every day." During a hotel tryst with Jörg, the latter's fellow interloper beds Steffi (Susanne Bormann), a young East German whose cries of lust literally come from the other side of a wall – behind which, of course, lies paradise. As Steffi asks Barbara her tastes in a wedding ring catalogue – Jörg's friend has already made promises of the unkeepable kind – Barbara cannot help but stare at this simple, desperate girl who would love to sleep in every day, provided that day does not rise too far to the East. There are also the ethical diversions supplied by two sick teenagers, Stella (Jasna Fritzi Bauer) and Mario (Jannik Schümann), one of whom is suicidal and likely brain-damaged, the other bent on escaping a work camp that cannot possibly exist anymore in the great civilization called Europe. That bedside Barbara reads to Stella from this book instead of this one should tell us all we need to know about their relationship.

The brilliance of Petzold’s film lies not only in the two protagonists’ mutual misgivings, but in how their intuitions continue to twist their fate. Privy to Dr. Wolff’s plans, as they are slowly unfurled, and to the fact that Reiser knows of her past indiscretions, we still sense that Barbara very slowly comes to trust or at least to understand her colleague. Yet it is Reiser who remains the unknown quantity. Blubbery, fuzzy-featured, and all too keen on impressing a Berliner, his acts of kindness may be more acting than beneficence (at junctures we also wonder whether he knows too much about Stella's personal history). In one scene, as Barbara appears to be asleep, he scrutinizes her Western cigarettes, and we cannot tell whether fear, admiration, or duty to report such contraband brings a smile to his face. Then at the very middle of Barbara, Reiser will deride her West German currency, leading to their first joint bout of laughter: they have become allies, even if the goal of their alliance is not yet clear (at another confederative moment Reiser will switch, likewise without precedent, to the informal du). They pedal their bikes together just like you're supposed to do in a romance and briefly seem far away from their drab reality; he invites her to "the most beautiful place I know," male shorthand for a proposition; and claiming she hates the sea, she retreats to her piano and her effortless talent. But it is another scene, one in which Barbara finds Reiser with a very unexpected patient, that shunts her down a track of fateful decision. And what about that odd gift, a bountiful basket of vegetables, which all tidily resolve into one tasty dish? Perhaps pure chance, even if chance may be minimized in a realm of unmistakable aims. And after all, what is life if not a few too many coincidences?

Rilke, "Eva"

A variant of a sonnet ("Eve") by this Austrian poet.  You can read the original here.

She stands beside Cathedral step,                 
Reflected in rose window's glare;           
In apple pose, an apple's stare,                      
Guiltless and guilty, as time wept.                 

She stands beside the child she bore,                                
Since she in love slipped from the ring                                
Immortal, for her fight to sing
And like young year through earth to soar.

O in this land she would have stayed              
And lingered on in unity,                                  
In empathy with beasts that roamed.  

But as she found Man's mind was made,                          
She went with him their death to seek,
And God had she yet hardly known.