Billiards at Half-Past Nine
04. February 2008 14:20
Interview with Robert Menasse
Michael March: Brecht said, "Whoever is smiling hasn't heard the latest news." What's your latest news.
Robert Menasse: A piece for the theater, called National Theatre, in which I find a legal loophole, a way to assassinate a fascistic leader legally as a prelude to saving lives.
MM: And the necessity of war.
RM: A duel between two concepts of progress: the progress of things and the progress of freedom-- the duality between science and humanism. War is a protean choice in two acts.
MM: And our myth of freedom.
RM: Freedom is the fixed idea of those that have it. It only exists for them.
MM: So why literature.
RM: Back to freedom. I wanted to be able to sleep when I wanted to, and wake up when I was ready. I wanted to sit in a coffeehouse and read a newspaper. To be depressive and not have everyone assume it's because of the stock market.
MM: Free as a bird.
RM: I used to think people instinctively envied birds. But now I know better. Like cockroaches, people only want to survive. Hitler's Reich was to last one thousand years-- and funnily enough-- that was the whole program.
MM: Perhaps society must occasionally self-destruct.
RM: Our roots are plastic roots. We hardly have them. Societies aren't uprooted. They grow entirely new roots.
MM: And fur.
RM: For sex in Vienna.
MM: For the sexually starved facing war in Iraq.
RM: This is the end of U.S. hegemony, the fall of Rome.
MM: Why is Europe unable to stop the unstoppable.
RM: I don't know. At least my lifespan is shorter than the consequences of the decisions of the President of the United States.
MM: Are the orders correct.
RM: Orders are as human as eating and shitting.
MM: And shitting on.
RM: On the level of human achievement, it's a dead loss.
MM: We must bring back the ancient Greek myths to fight against globalization.
RM: The oldest contemporary myth being Marxism. At the moment of its death, it is being recalled to life to support the economy of war. Killing all the slaves to adopt a slave consciousness. Sounds like ancient tragedy.
MM: What's more helpful to culture-questions or answers.
RM: Questions.
MM: Questions destroyed Europe. They are necessary and empty. So permit an empty question: Is man condemned.
RM: It's top secret - takes up space.
MM: So space offers some solace.
RM: I'm my own astronaut. I do it even without oxygen - only with alcohol.
MM: Observable limits.
RM: I don't have limits, I have holes-holes in me to other places. I don't attempt to reach my limits. I try to find my holes.
Vienna, October 2002
