On the Absolute, the

Sublime, and Ecstatic Truth

Werner Herzog
(TRANSLATED BY MOIRA WEIGEL)
[This text was originally delivered by Werner Herzog as a speech in Milano, Italy, following a
screening of his flm essons of !ar"ness# on the fres in $%wait& He was as"ed to spea" abo%t the
'bsol%te, b%t he spontaneo%sly changed the s%b(ect to the )%blime& *eca%se of that, a good part
of what follows was improvised in the moment&]
*
The collapse of the stellar %niverse will occ%r+li"e creation+in grandiose splendor&
Blaise Pascal
The words attributed to Blaise Pascal which preface my
flm essons of !ar"ness are in fact by me. Pascal himself could not
have said it better.
This falsifed and yet, as I will later demonstrate, not falsifed
uotation should serve as a frst hint of what I am tryin! to
deal with in this discourse. "nyway, to ac#nowled!e a fa#e as
fa#e contributes only to the triumph of accountants.
$hy am I doin! this, you mi!ht as#% The reason is simple and
comes not from theoretical, but rather from practical,
considerations. $ith this uotation as a pref& I elevate
[erheben] the spectator, before he has even seen the frst
frame, to a hi!h level, from which to enter the flm. "nd I, the
author of the flm, do not let him descend from this hei!ht
until it is over. 'nly in this state of sublimity [,rhabenheit] does
somethin! deeper become possible, a #ind of truth that is the
enemy of the merely factual. (cstatic truth, I call it.
"fter the frst war in Ira, as the oil felds burned in )uwait,
the mediaand here I mean television in particularwas in
no position to show what was, beyond bein! a war crime, an
event of cosmic dimensions, a crime a!ainst creation itself.
There is not a sin!le frame in essons of !ar"ness in which you can
reco!ni*e our planet+ for this reason the flm is labeled
,science fction,- as if it could only have been shot in a
distant !ala&y, hostile to life. "t its premiere at the Berlin .ilm
.estival, the flm met with an or!y of hate. .rom the ra!in!
cries of the public I could ma#e out only ,aesthetici*ation of
horror.- "nd when I found myself bein! threatened and spat
at on the podium, I hit upon only a sin!le, banal response.
,/ou cretins,- I said, ,that0s what 1ante did in his Inferno, it0s
what 2oya did, and 3ieronymus Bosch too.- In my moment of
need, without thin#in! about it, I had called upon the
!uardian an!els who familiari*e us with the "bsolute and the
4ublime.
The "bsolute, the 4ublime, the Truth . . . $hat do these
words mean% This is, I must confess, the frst time in my life
that I have sou!ht to settle such uestions outside of my
wor#, which I understand, frst and foremost, in practical
terms.
By way of ualifcation, I should add at once that I am not
!oin! to venture a defnition of the "bsolute, even if that
concept casts its shadow over everythin! that I say here. The
"bsolute poses a never5endin! uandary for philosophy,
reli!ion, and mathematics. 6athematics will probably come
closest to !ettin! it when someone fnally proves 7iemann0s
hypothesis. That uestion concerns the distribution of prime
numbers+ unanswered since the nineteenth century, it
reaches into the depths of mathematical thin#in!. " pri*e of a
million dollars has been set aside for whoever solves it, and a
mathematical institute in Boston has allotted a thousand
years for someone to come up with a proof. The money is
waitin! for you, as is your immortality. .or two and a half
thousand years, ever since (uclid, this uestion has
preoccupied mathematicians+ if it turned out 7iemann and his
brilliant hypothesis were not ri!ht, it would send
unima!inable shoc#waves throu!h the disciplines of
mathematics and natural science. I can only very va!uely
be!in to fathom the "bsolute+ I am in no position to defne
the concept.
The Truth Of The Ocean
.or now, I0ll stay on the trusted !round of pra&is. (ven if we
cannot really !rasp it, I would li#e to tell you about an
unfor!ettable encounter I had with Truth while
shootin! -itzcarraldo. $e were shootin! in the Peruvian 8un!les
east of the "ndes between the 9amisea and :rubamba
rivers, where I would later haul a hu!e steamship over a
mountain. The indi!enous people who lived there, the
6achi!uen!as, made up a ma8ority of the e&tras and had
!iven us the permit to flm on their land. In addition to bein!
paid, the 6achi!uen!as wanted further benefts; they wanted
trainin! for their local doctor and a boat, so that they could
brin! their crops to mar#et a few hundred #ilometers
downriver themselves, instead of havin! to sell them throu!h
middlemen. .inally, they wanted support in their f!ht for a
le!al title to the area between the two rivers. 'ne company
after another had sei*ed it in order to plunder local stoc#s of
wood+ recently, oil frms had also been castin! a !reedy eye
on their land.
(very petition we entered for a deed vanished at once in the
labyrinthine provincial bureaucracy. 'ur attempts at bribery
failed, too. .inally, havin! traveled to the ministry responsible
for such thin!s, in the capital city of <ima, I was told that,
even if we could ar!ue for a le!al title on historical and
cultural !rounds, there were two stumblin! bloc#s. .irst, the
title was not contained in any le!ally verifable document, but
supported only by hearsay, which was irrelevant. 4econd, no
one had ever surveyed the land in order to provide a
reco!ni*able border.
To the latter end, I hired a surveyor, who furnished the
6achi!uen!as with a precise map of their homeland. That
was my part in their truth; it too# the form of a delineation, a
defnition. I0ll admit, I uarreled with the surveyor. The
topo!raphic map that he furnished was, he e&plained, in
certain ways incorrect. It did not correspond to the truth
because it did not ta#e into account the curvature of the
earth. In s%ch a little piece of land. I as#ed, losin! patience. /f co%rse, he
said an!rily, and pushed his water !lass toward me. ,ven with a
glass of water, yo% have to be clear abo%t it, what we0re dealing with is not an even s%rface& 1o%
sho%ld see the c%rvat%re of the earth as yo% wo%ld see it on an ocean or a la"e& If yo% were really
able to perceive it exactly as it is+b%t yo% are too simple2minded+yo% wo%ld see the earth
c%rve& I will never for!et this harsh lesson.
The uestion of hearsay had a deeper dimension and
reuired research of an entirely di=erent #ind. ["r!uin! for
their title to the land] the Indians could only claim that they0d
always been there+ this they had learned from their
!randparents. $hen, fnally, the case appeared hopeless, I
mana!ed to !et an audience with the President, [.ernando]
Bela>nde. The 6achi!uen!as of 4hivan#oreni elected two
representatives to accompany me. [In the President0s o?ce
in <ima] when our conversation threatened to come to a
standstill, I presented Bela>nde with the followin! ar!ument;
in "n!lo54a&on law, althou!h hearsay is !enerally
inadmissible as evidence, it is notabsol%tely inadmissible. "s
early as @A@B, in the case of 'ng% vs& 'tta, a colonial court in the
2old 9oast Ctoday 2hanaD ruled that hearsay could serve as a
valid form of evidence.
That case was completely di=erent. It had to do with the use
of a local !overnor0s palace+ then, too, there were no
documents, nothin! o?cial that would have been relevant.
But, the court ruled, the overwhelmin! consensus in hearsay
that countless tribesmen had repeated and repeated, had
come to constitute so manifest a truth that the court could
accept it without further restrictions. "t this, Belaunde, who
had lived for many years in the 8un!le, fell uiet. 3e as#ed for
a !lass of oran!e 8uice, then said only 3ood god, and I #new that
we had won him over. Today the 6achi!uen!as have a title to
their land+ even the consortium of oil frms that discovered
one of the lar!est sources of natural !as [in the world]
directly in their vicinity respects it.
The audience with the President !ranted yet another odd
!limpse into the essence of truth. The inhabitants of the
villa!e of 4hiva#oreni were not sure whether it was true that
on the other side of the "ndes there was a monstrously lar!e
body of water, an ocean. In addition, there was the fact that
this monstrous water, the Pacifc, was supposedly salty.
$e drove to a restaurant on the beach a little south of <ima
to eat. But our two Indian dele!ates didn0t order anythin!.
They went silent and loo#ed out over the brea#ers. They
didn0t approach the water, 8ust stared at it. Then one as#ed
for a bottle. I !ave him my empty beer bottle. Eo, that wasn0t
ri!ht, it had to be a bottle that you could seal well. 4o I
bou!ht a bottle of cheap 9hilean red, had it uncor#ed, and
poured the wine out into the sand. $e sent the bottle to the
#itchen to be cleaned as carefully as possible. Then the men
too# the bottle and went, without a word, to the shoreline.
4till wearin! the new blue 8eans, snea#ers, and T5shirts that
we had bou!ht for them at the mar#et, they waded in to the
waves. They waded, loo#in! over the e&panse of the Pacifc
'cean, until the water reached their underarms. Then, they
too# a taste of the water, flled the bottle and sealed it
carefully with a cor#.
This bottle flled with water was their proof for the villa!e that
there really was an ocean. I as#ed cautiously whether it
wasn0t 8ust a part of the truth. Eo, they said, if there is a bottle
of seawater, then the whole ocean must be true as well.
The Aau!t of "#rtua! Rea!#t$
.rom then on, what constitutes truthor, to put it in much
simpler form, what constitutes realitybecame a !reater
mystery to me than it had been. The two intervenin! decades
have posed unprecedented challen!es to our concept of
reality.
$hen I spea# of assaults on our understandin! of reality, I
am referrin! to new technolo!ies that, in the past twenty
years, have become !eneral articles of everyday use; the
di!ital special e=ects that create new and ima!inary realities
in the cinema. It0s not that I want to demoni*e these
technolo!ies+ they have allowed the human ima!ination to
accomplish !reat thin!sfor instance, reanimatin! dinosaurs
convincin!ly on screen. But, when we consider all the
possible forms of virtual reality that have become part of
everyday lifein the Internet, in video !ames, and on reality
TF+ sometimes also in stran!e mi&ed formsthe uestion of
what ,real- reality is poses itself constantly afresh.
$hat is really !oin! on in the reality TF show )%rvivor% 9an we
ever really trust a photo!raph, now that we #now how easily
everythin! can be fa#ed with Photoshop% $ill we ever be
able to completely trust an email, when our twelve5year5old
children can show us that what we0re seein! is probably an
attempt to steal our identity, or perhaps a virus, a worm, or a
,Tro8an- that has wandered into our midst and adopted every
one of our characteristics% 1o I already e&ist somewhere,
cloned, as many !oppelg4nger, without #nowin! anythin! about
it%
3istory o=ers one analo!y to the e&tent of [chan!e brou!ht
about by] the virtual, other world that we are now bein!
confronted with. .or centuries and centuries, warfare was
essentially the same thin!, clashin! armies of #ni!hts, who
fou!ht with swords and shields. Then, one day, these warriors
found themselves starin! at each other across canons and
weapons. $arfare was never the same. $e also #now that
innovations in the development of military technolo!y are
irreversible. 3ere0s some evidence that may be of interest; in
parts of Gapan in the early seventeenth century, there was an
attempt to do away with frearms, so that samurai could f!ht
one another hand to hand, with swords a!ain. This attempt
was only very short5lived+ it was impossible to sustain.
" couple of years a!o, I came to !rasp how confusin! the
concept of reality has become, in a stran!e way, throu!h an
incident that too# place on Fenice Beach in <os "n!eles. "
friend was havin! a little party in his bac#yardbarbecued
stea#it was already dar#, when, not far away, we heard a
few !unshots that nobody too# seriously until the police
helicopters showed up with searchli!hts on and commanded
us, over loudspea#ers, to !et inside the house. $e sorted out
the facts of the case only in retrospect; a boy, described by
witnesses as around thirteen or fourteen years of a!e, had
been loiterin!, han!in! around a restaurant about a bloc#
away from us. "s a couple e&ited, the boy yelled, This is for real,
shot both with a semi5automatic, then Hed on his s#ateboard.
3e was never cau!ht. But the messa!e [*otschaft] of the
madman was clear; this here isn0t a video!ame, these shots
are for real, this is reality.
A%#o& of 'ee!#ng
$e must as# of reality; how important is it, really% "nd; how
important, really, is the .actual% 'f course, we can0t
disre!ard the factual+ it has normative power. But it can
never !ive us the #ind of illumination, the ecstatic Hash, from
which Truth emer!es. If only the factual, upon which the so5
called cin5ma v5rit5 f&ates, were of si!nifcance, then one could
ar!ue that the v5rit5the truthat its most concentrated must
reside in the telephone boo#in its hundreds of thousands of
entries that are all factually correct and, so, correspond to
reality. If we were to call everyone listed in the phone boo#
under the name ,4chmidt,- hundreds of those we called
would confrm that they are called 4chmidt+ yes, their name
is 4chmidt.
In my flm -itzcarraldo, there is an e&chan!e that raises this
uestion. 4ettin! o= into the un#nown with his ship,
.it*carraldo stops over at one of the last outposts of
civili*ation, a missionary station;
.it*carraldo; 'nd what do the older Indians say.
6issionary; We simply cannot c%re them of their idea that ordinary life is only an ill%sion,
behind which lies the reality of dreams&
The flm is about an opera bein! sta!ed in the rainforest+ as
you0ll #now, I set about actually producin! opera. "s I did,
one ma&im was crucial for me; an entire world must under!o
a transformation into music, must becomemusic+ only then
would we have produced opera. $hat0s beautiful about opera
is that reality doesn0t play any role in it at all+ and that what
ta#es place in opera is the overcomin! of nature. $hen one
loo#s at the libretti from operas Cand here Ferdi0s -orce of
!estiny is a !ood e&ampleD, one sees very uic#ly that the story
itself is so implausible, so removed from anythin! that we
mi!ht actually e&perience that the mathematical laws of
probability are suspended. $hat happens in the plot is
impossible, but the power of music enables the spectator to
e&perience it as tr%e.
It0s the same thin! with the emotional world [3ef6hlswelt] of
opera. The feelin!s are so abstracted+ they cannot really be
subordinated to everyday human nature any lon!er, because
they have been concentrated and elevated to the most
e&treme de!ree and appear in their purest form+ and despite
all that we perceive them, in opera, as natural. .eelin!s in
opera are, ultimately, li#e a&ioms in mathematics, which
cannot be concentrated and cannot be e&plained any further.
The a&ioms of feelin! in the opera lead us, however, in the
most secret ways, on a direct path to the sublime. 3ere we
could cite ,9asta 1iva- in Bellini0s opera 7orma as an e&ample.
/ou mi!ht as#; why do I say that the sublime becomes
accessible to us [lit. ,e&perience5able-+ erfahrbar] in opera, of all
forms, considerin! that opera did not innovate in any
essential way in the twentieth century, as other forms too#
its place% This only seems to be a parado&; the direct
e&perience of the sublime in opera is not dependent on
further development or new developments. Its sublimity has
enabled opera to survive.
Ectat#c Truth
'ur entire sense of reality has been called into uestion. But I
do not want to dwell on this fact any lon!er, since what
moves me has never been reality, but a uestion that lies
behind it [beyond+ dahinter]; the uestion of truth. 4ometimes
facts so e&ceed our e&pectationshave such an unusual,
bi*arre powerthat they seem %nbelievable.
But in the fne arts, in music, literature, and cinema, it is
possible to reach a deeper stratum of trutha poetic,
ecstatic truth, which is mysterious and can only be !rasped
with e=ort+ one attains it throu!h vision, style, and craft. In
this conte&t I see the uotation from Blaise Bascal about the
collapse of the stellar universe not as a fa#e
[,counterfeit-+ -4lsch%ng], but as a means of ma#in! possible an
ecstatic e&perience of inner, deeper truth. Gust as it0s not
fa#ery when 6ichelan!elo0s PietI portrays Gesus as a JJ5year5
old man, and his mother, the mother of 2od, as a @K5year5
old.
3owever, we also !ain our ability to have ecstatic
e&periences of truth throu!h the 4ublime, throu!h which we
are able to elevate ourselves over nature. )ant says; The
irresistibility of the power of nat%re forces %s to recognize o%r physical impotence as nat%ral
beings, b%t at the same time discloses o%r capacity to (%dge o%rselves independent of nat%re as
well as s%perior to nat%re . . . I am leavin! out some thin!s here, for
simplicity0s sa#e. )ant continues; In this way nat%re is not estimated in o%r
aesthetic (%dgment as s%blime beca%se it excites fear, b%t beca%se it s%mmons %p o%r power
8which is not of nat%re9 & & &
I should treat )ant with the necessary caution, because his
e&planations concernin! the sublime are so very abstract
that they have always remained alien to me in my practical
wor#. 3owever, 1ionysus <on!inus, whom I frst came to
#now while e&plorin! these sub8ects, is much closer to my
heart, because he always spea#s in practical terms and uses
e&amples. $e don0t #now anythin! about <on!inus. (&perts
aren0t even sure that that0s really his name, and we can only
!uess that he lived in the frst century after 9hrist.
:nfortunately, his essay /n the )%blime is also rather fra!mentary.
In the earliest writin!s that we have from the tenth century,
the 9ode& Parisinus LMJB, there are pa!es missin!
everywhere, sometimes entire bundles of pa!es.
<on!inus proceeds systematically+ here, at this time, I cannot
even start in on the structure of his te&t. But he always
uotes very lively e&amples from literature. "nd here I will,
a!ain, without followin! a schematic order, sei*e upon what
seems most important to me.
$hat0s fascinatin! is that, ri!ht at the be!innin! of his te&t,
[<on!inus] invo#es the concept of (cstasy, even if he does so
in a di=erent conte&t than what I have identifed as ,ecstatic
truth.- $ith reference to rhetoric, <on!inus says; Whatever is
s%blime does not lead the listeners to pers%asion b%t to a state of ecstasy: at every time and in
every way imposing speech, with the spell it throws over %s, prevails over that which aims at
pers%asion and gratifcation& /%r pers%asions we can %s%ally control, b%t the in;%ences of the
s%blime bring power and irresistible might to bear, and reign s%preme over every hearer . . .
3ere he uses the concept ofe"stasis, a person0s steppin! out of
himself into an elevated statewhere we can raise ourselves
over our own naturewhich the sublime reveals ,at once,
li#e a thunder bolt.-
@
Eo one before <on!inus had spo#en so
clearly of the e&perience of illumination+ here, I am ta#in! the
liberty to apply that notion to rare and Heetin! moments in
flm.
3e uotes 3omer in order to demonstrate the sublimity of
ima!es and their illuminatin! e=ect. 3ere is his e&ample from
the battle of the !ods;
'idone%s, lord of the shades, in fear leapt he from his throne and cried alo%d, lest above him the
earth be cloven by <oseidon, the )ha"er of ,arth, and his abode be made plain to view for mortals
and immortals+the dread and dan" abode, wherefor the very gods have loathing= so great was the
din that arose when the gods clashed in strife&
<on!inus was an e&traordinarily well5read man, one who
uotes e&actly. $hat is stri#in! here is that he ta#es the
liberty of weldin! to!ether two di=erent passa!es from
the Iliad. It is impossible that this is a mista#e. 3owever,
<on!inus is not fa#in! but, rather, conceivin! a new, deeper
truth. 3e asserts that without truth [Wahrhaftig"eit] and !reatness
of soul the sublime cannot come into bein!. "nd he uotes a
statement that researchers today ascribe either to
Pytha!oras or to 1emosthenes;
-or tr%ly bea%tif%l is the statement of the man who, in response to the >%estion of what we have in
common with the gods, answered= the ability to do good ?Wohlt%n@ and tr%th&
$e should not translate his e%ergesia simply with ,charity,-
imprinted as that notion is by 9hristian culture. Eor is the
2ree# word for truth, alAtheia, simple to !rasp. (tymolo!ically
spea#in!, it comes from the verb lanthanein, ,to hide,- and the
related word lAthos, ,the hidden,- ,the concealed.- '2lAtheia is,
therefore, a form of ne!ation, a ne!ative defnition; it is the
,not5hidden,- the revealed, the truth. Thin#in! throu!h
lan!ua!e [im sprachlichen !en"en], the 2ree#s meant, therefore, to
defne truth as an act of disclosurea !esture related to the
cinema, where an ob8ect is set into the li!ht and then a
latent, not yet visible ima!e is con8ured onto celluloid, where
it frst must be developed, then disclosed.
The soul of the listener or the spectator completes this act
itself+ the soul actuali*es truth throu!h the e&perience of
sublimity; that is, it completes an independent act of
creation. <on!inus says; -or o%r so%l is raised o%t of nat%re thro%gh the tr%ly
s%blime, sways with high spirits, and is flled with pro%d (oy, as it itself had created what it hears&
But I don0t want to lose myself in <on!inus, whom I always
thin# of as a !ood friend. I stand before you as someone who
wor#s with flm. I would li#e to point out some scenes from
another flm of mine as evidence. " !ood e&ample would
be The 3reat ,cstasy of Woodcarver )teiner where the concept of ecstasy
already shows up in the title.
$alter 4teiner, a 4wiss sculptor and repeat world champion
in s#i5Hyin!, raises himself as if in reli!ious ecstasy into the
air. 3e Hies so fri!htfully far, he enters the re!ion of death
itself; only a little farther, and he would not land on the steep
slope, but rather crash beyond it. 4teiner spea#s at the end
of a youn! raven, which he raised and which, in his loneliness
as a child, was his only friend. The raven lost more and more
feathers, which probably had to do with the feed that 4teiner
!ave him. 'ther ravens attac#ed his raven and, in the end,
tortured him so fri!htfully that youn! 4teiner had only one
choice; Bnfort%nately, I had to shoot him, says 4teiner,beca%se it was tort%re to
watch how he was tort%red by his own brothers beca%se he co%ld not ;y any more. "nd
then, in a fast cut, we see 4teinerin place of his raven
Hyin!, in a terribly aesthetic frame, in e&treme slow motion,
slowed to eternity. This is the ma8estic Hi!ht of a man whose
face is contorted by fear of death as if deran!ed by reli!ious
ecstasy. "nd then, shortly before the death *onebeyond the
slope, on the Hat, where he would be crushed on impact, as if
he had 8umped from the (mpire 4tate Buildin! to the
pavement belowhe lands softly, safely, and a written te&t is
superimposed upon the ima!e. The te&t is drawn from the
4wiss writer 7obert $alser and it reads;
I should be all alone in this world
6e, 4teiner and no other livin! bein!.
Eo sun, no culture+ I, na#ed on a hi!h roc#
Eo storm, no snow, no ban#s, no money
Eo time and no breath.
Then, fnally, I would not be afraid any more.
Note
@. ,4ublimity Hashin! forth at the ri!ht moment scatters
everythin! before it li#e a thunderbolt- C@.ND.