The big social utopias — Communism, Fascism — have led to incredible disasters. Overpopulation of our planet. You just name it. Destruction of what n… - Werner Herzog

Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle

Of course, we are challenging nature itself...
and it hits back.
It just hits back. That's all.
And that's grandiose about it.
And we have to- to accept that
it is much stronger than we are.

Kinski always says it's full of...
erotic elements.
I don't see it so much erotic.
I see it more full of obscenity.
It's just-
Nature here is vile and base.
I wouldn't see anything erotical here.
I would see fornication
and asphyxiation...
and choking
and fighting for survival...
and growing and...
just rotting away.

Of course, there's a lot of misery.
But it is the same misery
that is all around us.
The trees here are in misery,
and the birds are in misery.
I don't think they- they sing.
They just screech in pain.

It's an unfinished country.
It's still prehistorical.
The only thing that is lacking is-
is the dinosaurs here.

It's like a curse
weighing on an entire landscape.
And whoever...
goes too deep into this...
has his share of that curse.
So we are cursed
with what we are doing here.

It's a land that God,
if he exists...
has-has created in anger.

It's the only land where-
where creation is unfinished yet.

Taking a close look at -
at what's around us...
there - there is
some sort of a harmony.
It is the harmony of...
overwhelming and collective murder.
And we in comparison to
the articulate vileness...
and baseness and obscenity...
of all this jungle -
Uh, we in comparison to that
enormous articulation -
we only sound and look like...
badly pronounced
and half-finished sentences...
out of a stupid suburban... novel -
a cheap novel.

And we have to become humble...
in front of this...
overwhelming misery and...
overwhelming fornication...
overwhelming growth...
and overwhelming lack of order.

Even the- the stars up here
in the-in the sky look like a mess.
There is no harmony in the universe.

We have to get acquainted to this idea that...
there is no real harmony
as we have conceived it.

But when I say this, I say this all
full of admiration for the jungle.

It is n

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.