But the question that everyone wanted answered was whether I would have the nerve and the strength to start the whole process from scratch. I said ye… - Werner Herzog

Ich las die Übersetzung des Piaveschen Librettos zu Ernani, herausgegeben in Zürich 1952, und im Vorwort steht in atemberaubender Dummheit, man habe die krassesten Unglaubwürdigkeiten ausgemerzt, wo doch gerade das Unfaßbare das Schöne an der Geschichte ist, oder besser: an der Gattung Oper an sich, weil gerade was von keiner auch noch so exotischen Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung mehr erfaßbar ist, in der Oper zu einer machtvollen Verwandlung der ganzen Welt in Musik als das Natürliche erscheint.

Auch die großen Gefühle der Oper, die oft als übersteigert abgetan werden, kommen mir eher in die Gegenrichtung aufs äußerste reduziert vor, auf das Archetypische der Gefühle verdichtet, nicht mehr weiter in ihrer Essenz konzentrierbar. Es sind Axiome von Gefühlen. Das ist es, was Oper und Dschungel verbindet.

I have experienced comparable transformations in the realm of communications, beginning with ancient times. I remember the man working for the mayor's office in Wüstenrot in Swabia, a few hours from Munich and Sachrang, where my brother and I later lived for a year with our father. He was the town crier. There's an archaic German word for it. I heard him make his way through the village up to the Raitelberg, ringing his bell to get people's attention. Every three or four houses, he would stop and call out his "Hear ye, hear ye!" and announce official decrees and deadlines. From my early childhood, I knew what radio and newspapers were even though we didn't always have electricity, but I never saw a film. I had no notion of cinema. I didn't know such a thing existed until one day a man with a mobile projector came to us in our one-room village school in Sachrang and showed us

Truth does not necessarily have to agree with facts. Otherwise, the Manhattan phone book would be The Book of Books. Four million entries, all factually correct, all subject to confirmation. But that doesn't tell us anything about one of the dozens of James Millers in there. His number and address are indeed correct. But why does he cry into his pillow every night? It takes poetry; it takes the poetic imagination to make visible a deeper layer of truth.