‘Those who read own the world. Those who immerse themselves in the internet or watch too much television lose it. Our civilisation is suffering profound wounds because of the wholesale abandonment of reading by contemporary society.’ (Werner Herzog)
Above is Werner Herzog in conversation with Robert Harrison asserting that artists – of all kinds, writers, painters, film-makers, architects and so on – if they want to produce good art, art beyond the mediocre, should read books.
As a film-maker, Herzog says, he maybe watches only three to four films a year, but he reads incessantly. Indeed, as a writer himself, of prose and poetry, he expects that his writings will outlive his films, of which he’s made more than 50.
However, for Herzog, it’s not just that aspiring artists should read, it’s that they should read the most serious and challenging literature.
Above is Werner Herzog in conversation with Robert Harrison asserting that artists – of all kinds, writers, painters, film-makers, architects and so on – if they want to produce good art, art beyond the mediocre, should read books.
As a film-maker, Herzog says, he maybe watches only three to four films a year, but he reads incessantly. Indeed, as a writer himself, of prose and poetry, he expects that his writings will outlive his films, of which he’s made more than 50.
However, for Herzog, it’s not just that aspiring artists should read, it’s that they should read the most serious and challenging literature.
Thus, Herzog starts off talking about Livy’s account of the Second Punic War, in which Herzog identifies as one of his all-time heroes the figure of Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus (Cunctator) who defeated Hannibal and, according to Herzog, saved Occidental civilisation. Despite all the ridicule and opprobrium he received for refusing to engage the North African invaders in pitched battle, suffering slanders of cowardice and hesitation, preferring instead hit-and-run, guerrilla tactics, Fabius’ steadfastness, certainty in his tactics, stubborn solitariness, disdain for demagogic opinion, appeals to Herzog, who sees making films as a similar war of attrition.
Herzog goes on to praise Virgil but not for The Aeneid, which he disparages as a nationalist tract celebrating the Julio-Claudian dynasty, but for the Georgics, Virgil’s depiction of life on a Roman country estate and the struggles of man against nature, a work Herzog admires for its knowledge of rural life and powers of observation and precision.
Herzog proceeds to talk about travelling on foot – ‘the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot’ – and his love of Hölderlin, who travelled by foot and whose poetry records his solitude and creeping insanity.
To the Fates
Grant me just one summer, powerful ones,
And just one more autumn for ripe songs,
That my heart, filled with that sweet
Music, may more willingly die within me.
The soul, denied its divine right in life,
Won’t find rest down in Hades either.
But if what is holy to me, the poem
That rests in my heart, succeeds –
Then welcome, silent world of shadows!
I’ll be content, even if it's not my own lyre
That leads me downwards. Once I’ll have
Lived like the gods, and more isn’t necessary.
But at the heart of Herzog’s discussion with Harrison is JA Baker’s The Peregrine.
Herzog says the book suggests to film-makers how they should see reality – in loneliness, enthusiasm, rapture and passion – and describes a world of poetry, dreams, ecstasy and illumination – which, Herzog says, is what films should try to convey.
There are moments, Herzog notes, ‘where you can tell that [Baker] has completely entered into the existence of a falcon. And this is what I do when I make a film: I step outside of myself into an ekstasis; in Greek, to step outside of your own body’.
Herzog maintains that The Peregrine contains the greatest prose since Joesph Conrad and writers should learn the book by heart.
‘I shall try to make plain the bloodiness of killing. Too often this has been slurred over by those who defend hawks. Flesh-eating man is in no way superior. It is so easy to love the dead. The word ‘predator’ is baggy with misuse. All birds eat living flesh at some time in their lives. Consider the cold-eyed thrush, that springy carnivore of lawns, worm stabber, basher to death of snails. We should not sentimentalise his song, and forget the killing that sustains it.’ (JA Baker, The Peregrine).
Herzog concludes his book recommendations by asserting the importance of the Poetic Edda, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain and the Warren report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy – ‘a wonderful crime story, which has a logical conclusiveness that is staggering’.
Herzog goes on to praise Virgil but not for The Aeneid, which he disparages as a nationalist tract celebrating the Julio-Claudian dynasty, but for the Georgics, Virgil’s depiction of life on a Roman country estate and the struggles of man against nature, a work Herzog admires for its knowledge of rural life and powers of observation and precision.
Herzog proceeds to talk about travelling on foot – ‘the world reveals itself to those who travel on foot’ – and his love of Hölderlin, who travelled by foot and whose poetry records his solitude and creeping insanity.
To the Fates
Grant me just one summer, powerful ones,
And just one more autumn for ripe songs,
That my heart, filled with that sweet
Music, may more willingly die within me.
The soul, denied its divine right in life,
Won’t find rest down in Hades either.
But if what is holy to me, the poem
That rests in my heart, succeeds –
Then welcome, silent world of shadows!
I’ll be content, even if it's not my own lyre
That leads me downwards. Once I’ll have
Lived like the gods, and more isn’t necessary.
But at the heart of Herzog’s discussion with Harrison is JA Baker’s The Peregrine.
Herzog says the book suggests to film-makers how they should see reality – in loneliness, enthusiasm, rapture and passion – and describes a world of poetry, dreams, ecstasy and illumination – which, Herzog says, is what films should try to convey.
There are moments, Herzog notes, ‘where you can tell that [Baker] has completely entered into the existence of a falcon. And this is what I do when I make a film: I step outside of myself into an ekstasis; in Greek, to step outside of your own body’.
Herzog maintains that The Peregrine contains the greatest prose since Joesph Conrad and writers should learn the book by heart.
‘I shall try to make plain the bloodiness of killing. Too often this has been slurred over by those who defend hawks. Flesh-eating man is in no way superior. It is so easy to love the dead. The word ‘predator’ is baggy with misuse. All birds eat living flesh at some time in their lives. Consider the cold-eyed thrush, that springy carnivore of lawns, worm stabber, basher to death of snails. We should not sentimentalise his song, and forget the killing that sustains it.’ (JA Baker, The Peregrine).
Herzog concludes his book recommendations by asserting the importance of the Poetic Edda, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain and the Warren report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy – ‘a wonderful crime story, which has a logical conclusiveness that is staggering’.