fallen kingdom (feeling so happy to be apart) | Auden / Hölderlin: the eclipse of the european mind

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Our quivering love of gadgets [L'viv, L'viv Oblast, Ukraine]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 19 August 2017

Our quivering love of gadgets [L'viv, L'viv Oblast, Ukraine]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 19 August 2017

Our quivering love of gadgets [L'viv, L'viv Oblast, Ukraine]: photo by Tetyana Bunyak, 19 August 2017

Untitled: photo by yiannis f., 28 April 2018

Salisbury - council workers at the Maltings park and shopping centre. Big moment for city following Skripal attack.: image via steven morris @stevenmorris, 22 May 2018

Donald J. TrumpVerified account @realDonaldTrump

Congratulations to our new CIA Director, Gina Haspel!

Edward Snowden Retweeted Donald J. Trump

Edward Snowden added,

Note: Gina Haspel participated in a torture program that involved beating an (innocent) pregnant woman's stomach, anally raping a man with meals he tried to refuse, and freezing a shackled prisoner until he died. She personally wrote the order to destroy 92 tapes of CIA torture.

image via Edward Snowden @Snowden, 17 May 2018

 

Today’s decision by the @NFL is a win for the fans, a win for @POTUS, and a win for America. Americans can once again come together around what unites us – our flag, our military, and our National Anthem. Thank you NFL. #ProudToStand: image via Vice President Mike Pence @VP, 22 May 2018 

 

UNSTRIPPED VOICE @UnstrippedVoice

On the day @NFL stopped players from protesting police brutality, @MilwaukeePolice released body-cam footage of @Bucks @NBA player #SterlingBrown getting tased. This incident happened back in Jan this year.…

Richard Retweeted UNSTRIPPED VOICE

Richard added,

At least 6 officers responding to a traffic violation. One cop could had just gave him a ticket and left, but those cops decided to escalate this situation. They beat him up and tased him for no reason at all. #SterlingBrown
 image via Richard @richardhtx, 23 May 2018

 

#mpd has brought in mounted police ahead of #SterlingBrown video release: image via Mark McPherson @NewsMarkMcP, 23 May 2018

London, UK. A T-Rex is seen on the River Thames as it is delivered to the Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom event: photo by David Taylor/Rex/Shutterstock, 22 May 2018

 

I feel so happy to be apart of the UK because this is out on The Thames right now. #fallenkingdom: image via #FallenKingdom @Jurassic Nublar, 23 May 2018

#Sri Lanka A Sri Lankan resident makes his way through floodwaters in Kelaniya, on the outskirts of Colombo as monsoon rains lashed large parts of the island. Photo Ishara S Kodikara #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgefffardAFP, 23 May 2018

#Pakistan A Pakistani man baths under a water pipe on a hot summer day in Islamabad Photo @farooqnaeem1 #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgefffardAFP, 23 May 2018

epa editor's choice 23 May 2018: #jetplane #planecrash #runway #ToncontinInternationalAirport #Tegulcigalpa #Honduras #epaphotos Photo epa-efe / Gustavo Amador: image via epaphotos @epaphotos, 23 May 2018 

Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Firefighters spray the wreckage of a plane after it went off the runway at Toncontin international airport and collapsed over a busy boulevard in Tegucigalpa.: photo by Orlando Sierra/AFP, 22 May 2018

Chemi Shalev @ChemiShalev

US Ambassador Friedman poses with photo of Temple Mount in which Jewish Third Temple is superimposed on Muslim Holy Mosque. Cause what’s a holy jihad between friends. Believe it or not.

Joe Retweeted Chemi Shalev

Joe added,

Difficult to overstate how offensive the image is for Palestinians. Implies demolition of Dome of the Rock - one of holiest places.

image via Joe @joedyke, 22 May 2018

The issue isn't whether the Gaza border protests were entirely peaceful (obviously they weren't) but whether the protesters posed an imminent lethal threat requiring well entrenched Israeli snipers to use lethal force that killed 58.: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 15 May 2018

 

What a glorious day.”—Netanyahu. (As US embassy opens in Jerusalem amid Israeli snipers' killing of 58 Palestinians at Gaza border protests).: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 15 May 2018  

What a glorious day.”—Netanyahu. (As US embassy opens in Jerusalem amid Israeli snipers' killing of 58 Palestinians at Gaza border protests).: image via Kenneth Roth @KenRoth, 15 May 2018

 Jared Kushner at Jerusalem embassy: "The pursuit of peace is the noblest pursuit of humankind. I believe peace is within reach if we dare to believe that the future can be different from the past, that we are not condemned to relive history…” Gaza, same day, via @GettyImages: image via Tom Namako @TomNamako, 14 May 2018

Jared Kushner at Jerusalem embassy: "The pursuit of peace is the noblest pursuit of humankind. I believe peace is within reach if we dare to believe that the future can be different from the past, that we are not condemned to relive history…” Gaza, same day, via @GettyImages: image via Tom Namako @TomNamako, 14 May 2018

 Jared Kushner at Jerusalem embassy: "The pursuit of peace is the noblest pursuit of humankind. I believe peace is within reach if we dare to believe that the future can be different from the past, that we are not condemned to relive history…” Gaza, same day, via @GettyImages: image via Tom Namako @TomNamako, 14 May 2018

 Jared Kushner at Jerusalem embassy: "The pursuit of peace is the noblest pursuit of humankind. I believe peace is within reach if we dare to believe that the future can be different from the past, that we are not condemned to relive history…” Gaza, same day, via @GettyImages: image via Tom Namako @TomNamako, 14 May 2018

Deplorable. An early look at Tuesday's front page.: image via New York Daily News @NYDailyNews, 15 May 2018

Replying to @michelleinbklyn So spot on here #ZionistMarieAntoinette #Ivanka #DaddysLittleGhoul #Jerusalem: image via (((DuneMyThang))) @Kris_Sacrebleu, 14 May 2018

Israel's get-out-of-jail-free card: Jonathan Cook, Dissident Voice, 22 May 2018

The silencing of critics of Israel using anti-semitism as the pretext is far from restricted to the current wave of attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour party. It is now used to intimidate anyone who steps out of line on Israel. Once we raged against the conflation of anti-semitism and anti-Zionism. We have so lost that battle that it is now standard operating procedure for Israel’s apologists to conflate anti-semitism with simple criticisms of the current ultra-nationalist Israeli government.

Here is an illustration of our defeat, reported in the Israeli daily Haaretz. It concerns what would in other circumstances be a fairly standard satirical cartoon: this one published by the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung about Israel winning the Eurovision song contest last week. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is shown on stage dressed as Israel’s winning singer, Netta, and proclaiming “Next year in Jerusalem!”.

After the usual outcry, the cartoonist, Dieter Hanitzsch, was sacked. No Charlie Hebdo-style concerns about free speech on this occasion, it seems.

As has become familiar in these cases, Wolfgang Krach, editor-in-chief of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, seemed unsure himself whether the cartoon was actually anti-semitic. But presumably he thought it better to fire the cartoonist just to be on the safe side. Let’s hope Hanitzsch can take Krach and his newspaper to the cleaners at a labour tribunal.

One critic, Jonas Mueller-Töwe, who sounds like Germany’s version of Jonathan Freedland, has claimed that “a Jewish star” – that would be Israel’s emblem of the Star of David – on a rocket held by Netanyahu suggests that “behind every war, Jewish interests are hiding”. Instead we could simply trust our eyes, which provide a different meaning: that Israel, a highly militarised state, won the Eurovision song contest at the same time as it was devastating Gaza – again – and will now be able to use its hosting of a popular cultural event in Jerusalem next year to whitewash its war crimes.

Before we get too exercised about the significance of every detail, we should remember that political cartoons, by their very nature, need to use symbols as shorthand for more complex ideas. We demand the impossible from a cartoonist if we expect them to offer us political satire while denying them the possibility of using symbols.

So what is anti-semitic about the cartoon? It’s not about Jews, it’s about the Israeli prime minister and his war agenda. And Netanyahu’s purportedly “oversized nose, ears and lips” are surely well within the normal bounds of a caricature. Do we really want to impose a unique demand on cartoonists when dealing with Israel’s leaders of drawing anatomically precise images?

The problem here, as with the anti-semitism “crisis” debate about the Labour party, is that it is totally divorced from any sense of proportion or reality. The question we ought to be asking in a case like this is: what kind of satirical cartoon lambasting Israel could ever satisfy the criteria being demanded by the current anti-semitism watchdogs?

And in consequence, what cartoonist is going to dare to deploy their satirical skills against Israel when the response is invariably going to lead to their being accused of anti-semitism and possibly losing their career and their reputation?

That is precisely what weaponising anti-semitism means. It hands Israel a get-out-of-jail-free card. It intimidates opinion formers – journalists, cartoonists, comedians, politicians, civil society leaders, human rights activists – by making the issue of Israel so toxic that none dare touch it. One need only look to the BBC to see the result: a mix of anaemic fence-sitting and outright censorship when covering Israel.

As Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously reminded us: “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” A submission to those who abuse anti-semitism to make Israel unassailable entails terrifying consequences for the Palestinians. It requires that, after decades of betraying them, we in the west once again turn a blind eye to their suffering. And, as was highlighted last week in Israel’s slaughter of Gaza’s unarmed protesters, it clears the path to a future in which Israel can and will commit ever graver outrages against the Palestinians.

 

Soldiers walk past damaged buildings in Yarmouk Palestinian camp in Damascus, as the Syrian army says it has captured the last insurgent area near the capital Photo Omar Sanadiki: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 22 May 2018

SYRIA - Syrian government forces walk down a destroyed street in the Palestinian camp of Yarmuk on the southern outskirts of Damascus Photo Louai Beshara: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgefffardAFP, 23 May 2018
 

 A man gestures as he sits on the rubble of damaged buildings in al-Hajar al-Aswad, Syria. Photo Omar Sanadiki: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 22 May 2018

Paris, France. A wounded demonstrator is surrounded by riot police officers during a protest by French public sector employees: photo by Zakaria Abdelkafi/AFP, 22 May 2018

#Nicaragua A university student fires a hand-made mortar in support of the people of Monimbo, a neighbourhood in Masaya, Masaya, once a cradle of the Sandinista movement, is now a hotbed of resistance to President Daniel Ortega Phto @intiocon#AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018
 
#Thailand Protest greets fourth year of Thai junta rule Photo @TheLilyfish #AFP: image via AFP Photo @AFPphoto, 22 May 2018

epa editor's choice 22 May 2018: #photographers #journalists #ProDemocracy #Protests #GeneralElections #EarlyElections #MilitaryCoup #RatchadamnoenAvenue #Bangkok #Thailand #epaphotos Photo epa-efe / Rungroj Yongrit: image via epaphotos @epaphotos, 22 May 2018

#Somalia About 800 internally displaced people from 8 camps in Mogadishu receive Iftar dinner, the first meal after the daytime fast during the Ramadan, at food distribution centre annually installed during Ramadan by the Qatari international NGO Qatar Charity. Photo @Mo_Abdiwahab #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

#Afghanistan An internally displaced Afghan girl looks on from within her temporary home at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Herat. Photo @hoshang #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

#Afghanistan  An internally displaced Afghan child looks on from a windows in her temporary home at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Herat. #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

Afghan youths play on a swing at sunset on the outskirts of Mazar-i-Sharif. Photo @farshadusyan #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

#India Activists with the Indian Youth Congress stand on a police barricade during a protest against the rise of petrol and diesel prices in New Delhi Photo @sajjadkmr #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

#India A boy collects water from the Brahmaputra river as clouds gather over Guwahati  Photo @BoroBiju #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

GAZA CITY - Palestinians read the Koran, Islam's holiest book, at a mosque in Gaza City during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan Photo @mohmdabed #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

Myanmar youth play soccer on the bank of the Yangon River in Yangon Photo @ye_aung_thu #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

USA  A view of the White House in Washington, DC. Photo @bsmialowski #AFP: image via Frédérique Geffard @fgeffardAFP, 23 May 2018

A Muslim woman reads the Koran as she waits for iftar in Indonesia. Photo Willy Kurniawan: image via Reuters Pictures @reuterspictures, 22 May 2018

 
The early political readout on #SantaFeShooting. Graduating seniors given bibles at memorial service.: image via Reading The Pictures @ReadingThePix, 21 May 2018

 A Muslim woman prays at the Istiqlal Mosque today in Jakarta, Indonesia. Photo Tatan Syuflana: image via AP Images @AP_Images, 21 May 2018

Empress of Darkness signals to us from a Sunken Place 

Hillary Clinton is up 62.7% to 37.8% against Bernie Sanders with 2 percent of precincts counted.: image via Reuters Live @ReutersLive, 19 April 2016

 

WikiLeaksVerified account @wikileaks 
Hillary Clinton's #Libya "Tick Tock" details how she 'led' the destruction https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/emailid/23898#efmARSAR6 … #imwithher 
WikiLeaks Retweeted WikiLeaks 

WikiLeaks added,

Harvard has announced that Hillary Clinton will receive a medal for "transformative impact on society". But there is only one society she truly transformed. Libya--from the most developed society in Africa, into a smoking, ISIS-infested ruin
image via WikiLeaks @wikieaks, 21 May 2018
 

 
LIVE: New Yorkers head to the polls. Follow the action: #Election2016: image via Reuters Live @ReutersLive, 19 April 2016

 

This duck’s bill looks like a smaller, older, less happy duck.: image via Colley @JamColley, 18 May 2018

Friedrich Hölderlin: Griechenland: "Toward wooded Avignon" (Wanderings of the European Mind)

Gotthardpost at Wassen: aquatint by Weber after drawing by Straub, 1845; image by Adrian Michel, July 2007, from Artur Wyss-Niederer: Sankt Gotthard

                                          Ways of  the wanderer!

For                                  Shadows of the trees
And hills, under sun, where
The path leads
To the church, 
.......................Rain
And trees, drowsing
Beneath the heavy tread of the sun,

For even so, even as it burns higher,
Over the steaming cities
Hang curtains of rain
For like ivy it dangles
Down without branches. Beautiful but
Now the ways yield
Fresher blossoms
To the wanderer

  .....all outdoors sways.....as a field of grain. 
Toward wooded Avignon over the Gotthard 
Toils the steed. Laurels 
Whisper above Vergil, so that 
The sun does not  
Unmanfully search out his grave. 

Moss roses
Wax upon the Alps. Flowers start up 
At the city gates, on the level untended paths 
Like crystal growth in fallow wastes of the sea floor. 
Gardens bloom round Windsor. On high 
Arrives from London
The carriage of the King. Lovely gardens 
Relieve the season.  
By the canal. Deep below however lies  
The even sea, glowing.

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843): Griechenland (Greece), Hymnal Draft, first version, 1803, English version by TC

Schifflände Flüelen: colored aquatint by Hürlimann after a drawing by Gabriel Lory, 1820: image by Adrian Michel, June 2007, from Artur Wyss-Niederer: Sankt-Gotthard

                                     Wege des Wanderers!

Denn                        Schatten der Bäume
Und Hügel, sonnig, wo
Der Weg geht
Zur Kirche,
                      Reegen, wie Pfeilenregen
Und Bäume stehen, schlummernd, doch
Eintreffen Schritte der Sonne,
Denn eben so, wie sie heißer
Brennt über der Städte Dampf
So gehet über des Reegens
Behangene Mauren die Sonne

Wie Epheu nemlich hänget
Astlos der Reegen herunter. Schöner aber
Blühn Reisenden die Wege
      im Freien            wechselt wie Korn.
Avignon waldig über den Gotthardt
Tastet das Roß, Lorbeern
Rauschen um Virgilius und daß
Die Sonne nicht
Unmänlich suchet, das Grab. Moosrosen
Wachsen
Auf den Alpen. Blumen fangen
Vor Thoren der Stadt an, auf geebneten Wegen unbegünstiget
Gleich Krystallen in der Wüste wachsend des Meers.
Gärten wachsen um Windsor. Hoch
Ziehet, aus London,
Der Wagen des Königs.
Schöne Gärten sparen die Jahrzeit.
Am Canal. Tief aber liegt
Das ebene Weltmeer, glühend.

Friedrich Hölderlin: Hymnische Entwürfe: Griechenland, Erste Fassung, 1803

The Hölderlinian correspondences, those sudden connections between ancient and modern scenes and figures, stand in the most profound relationship to the paratactic method. Beissner too noted Hölderlin's tendency to mix eras together, to connect things that are remote and unconnected; the principle of such associations, which is the opposite of the discursive principle, is reminiscent of the serial ordering of grammatical parts. Poetry wrested both from the zone of madness, where the flight of ideas thrives, as does the readiness of many schizophrenics to see anything real as a sign of something hidden, to encumber it with meaning.

-- Theodor Adorno: Parataxis: On Hölderlin's Late Poetry, a talk given at the annual conference of the Hölderlin-Gesellschaft, Berlin, 7 June 1963; revised version first published in Die Neue Rundschau, 1964; translated by Shierry Weber Nicholsen in Theodor Adorno: Notes to Literature, Volume Two, 1992

Landscape of the Alps: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1552-1554, pen and sepia ink (Musée du Louvre, Paris)

W.H. Auden: The Fall of Rome

A member of the Gruppo Storico Romano (Roman Historical Group) dressed as a gladiator stands at Circus Maximus as they mark the 2769th anniversary of the founding of Rome, Italy: photo by Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters 25 April 2016



A member of the Gruppo Storico Romano (Roman Historical Group) dressed as a gladiator stands at Circus Maximus as they mark the 2769th anniversary of the founding of Rome, Italy: photo by Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters 25 April 2016

Benitachel, Eastern Spain: photo by Sebastian Vaida, 2008

W.H. Auden: The Fall of Rome
                 For Cyril Connolly

The piers are pummelled by the waves;
In a lonely field the rain
Lashes an abandoned train;
Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;
Agents of the Fisc pursue
Absconding tax-defaulters through
The sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic send
The temple prostitutes to sleep;
All the literati keep
An imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato may
Extoll the Ancient Disciplines,
But the muscle-bound Marines
Mutiny for food and pay.

Caesar's double-bed is warm
As an unimportant clerk
Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK
On a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs,
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.

W.H. Auden (1907-1973): The Fall of Rome, from Nones (1961)

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Caribou (Rangifer tarandus), Suomi, near Ihari, Finland: photo by Lukas Riebling, 2005 
 

Pompeii, Italy. A newly excavated peacock mural at the Roman archaeological site.: photo by David Taylor/Rex/Shutterstock, 22 May 2018

Untitled: photo by Alexandra Anghel, 2 May 2018

Somewhere #7 | ROO32374 copia_1: photo by Roccantica, 25 November 2009

 

A pot over a bonfire was placed on the tracks of a railway station turned into a makeshift camp, crowded by migrants and refugees at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece today. Many thousands of migrants remain at the Greek border with Macedonia, hoping that the border crossing will reopen, allowing them to move north into central Europe.: photo by Gregorio Borgia/AP, 25 April 2016

Fumus: photo by Julie Hrudova, 17 May 2018

Untitled: photo by Alexandra Anghel, 2 May 2018

Untitled: photo by Alexandra Anghel, 2 May 2018

Atardecer sobre el mar Mediterráneo en Gaza #AFP @mohmdabed: image via Agence France-Presse @AFPespanol, 9 March 2017