Persona

Was ich am Studieren mag? Wenn es Früchte trägt. Wenn die ganze Leserei und Lernerei und Schauerei dazu führt, dass sich im Kopf eigene Gedanken bilden. Wenn man merkt, dass man sehr wohl schon in der Lage ist, eine ausgereifte, vielleicht sogar "professionelle" Antwort aus dem im Hirn Vorhandenen zu bilden, ohne vorher tagelang recherchieren zu müssen. Und ja, es ist ein gutes Gefühl, wenn es einem gelingt, den/die Prof zu überraschen.

Gestern, während der Diskussion nach dem Film "Persona" (Bergman, 1965) war so ein magischer Moment. In meinem Kopf war hängengeblieben, dass der Charakter der Elisabeth Vogler (die das Sprechen verweigert) das Sprechen während einer Vorstellung aufgibt, bei der sie die "Elektra" spielt. Das wird nur ganz kurz erwähnt, man könnte es fast überhören. Und der Punkt auf den ich hinauswollte, war die Parallele zwischen Elektras Schicksal (a-lektra bedeutet "vom Bett (der Eltern) Verstoßene") als ungeliebtem Kind, ihrer Verhärtung und Rachsucht, ihrer Sehnsucht nach dem verlorenen Vater - und den Frauen in diesem Film, die ihre Kinder verlieren, verloren haben, von sich stoßen... Es ist sogar Elisabeths Sohn, der namenlos bleibt und nur einige kurze Minuten lang gezeigt wird, der das Hauptmotiv der Verschmelzung der Persönlichkeit einleitet: er übernimmt die Rolle der Elektra, wird aber nicht von Sehnsucht zum verstorbenen Vater getrieben, sondern von Sehnsucht nach der Mutter, die ihn verstoßen hat - damit wird er zu Elektras männlichem Gegenstück, Ödipus. Das Motiv der Eltern-Kind-Beziehung (wer schützt/ernährt wen?) wird in diesem Film also erst dann deutlich erkennbar, wenn man die Geschichte der "Elektra" näher betrachtet.
Ha, und das alles auf Englisch auszuführen, vor einer riesigen Klasse und einem wirklich kompetenten Prof. war schon nicht so einfach- und dann dessen erstaunte Reaktion... Hm, ja, ein absolutes Glücksgefühl!
Es geht nicht nur ums Angeben! Geht auch darum zu erkennen, dass die Kohle, die in mich investiert wird, nicht umsonst ist.

Und übrigens: ich habe trotzdem recherchiert. Auf die Idee, die Geschichte der Elektra im Zusammenhang mit diesem Film näher zu durchleuchten, bin ich nicht als Erste gekommen, natürlich. Aber die meisten Analysen sehen darin eine Vorgeschichte der Elisabeth Vogler, nicht ein Hauptmotiv des ganzen Films.

*°*°*

What I like about being a student are the moments when you realize that your work is actually leading somewhere, moments in which you discover that all this reading, learning and peering is leading you to new thoughts of your own. You suddenly see that you are perfectly capable of giving well-thought, "professional" answers to maybe difficult questions with what you already have in your head and without needing to camp in the library for days. And of course, moments in which you succeed in surprising your teachers.

My time came during the discussion on the film "Persona" (Bergman, 1965). It struck me that the charakter of Elisabeth Vogler (who refuses to speak and is therefor in therapy), stops talking durin a stage performance in which she plays the part of "Elektra". This is mentioned very briefly at the beginning of the film, but I constantly had to think of it. So during the discussion I tried to explain my instant association between Elektra's fate and some main motives of the film. Elektra (which means "the one pushed away from the - parents' - bed") is an unloved child driven by a burning love for her dead father and overwhelming hatred for her mother who she kills. Once you think of her story, the motive of children longing for their parents and parents losing or casting away their children in "Persona" really begins to stick out. Especially Elisabeth's son, who is just shown for a few minutes during the film and doesn't seem to be very important, initiates the main motive of the fusion of personality: he is a kind of Elektra, but not longing for a dead father, but for the unreachable mother. By this, he becomes Elektra's male counterpart, Oedipus.

Phew, wasn't easy to explicate all of this in front of a huge class and our very competent teacher in English - but, well, his amazed reaction made me feel so happy!
This is not about showing off (not only...) It's about realizing that all the money put into my education is worth something...

Oh, and of course I went to the library to do some research: in fact, I wasn't the first one to think about the meaning of Elektra's story in "Persona", of course. But the other authors generally interprete it as Elisabeth's previous history. Just so you know...

say: "ayashpise"

jessassna, de is jo gonz zaschossn!

Einer guten alten Tradition folgend, die der Herr H. ins Leben gerufen hat, habe auch ich meine Eierspeis heute fotografiert und stelle die Ergebnisse ins Netz.
Damit das jetzt nicht allzu uninteressant wird - ich war heute außer Haus. Ja, da draußen in der großen weiten Welt!!! Bin bis zum Supermarkt gekommen (wo ich für Dava und mich Essen erlegt habe). Was für eine Aufregung. Muss wieder schlafen gehn.

***

Following a good old tradition iniciated by Mister H. I took a picture of my food today (Omelette, of course, which we call "Eierspeis" in Austria).
To make this post a bit more informative I'll tell you I went outside today. Yes really, I walked out into the great wide world with people, and dogs, and cars and everything. I got as far as to the supermarket (where I slayed a lot of food for Dava and myself). How exciting, I think I need a nap soon...

thinking about...

You maybe wonder if I quit my mission (fighting the bacteria). Well, there's a wild party going on in the appartment keeping me from falling asleep. Doesn't matter, I'm not tired anyway *uaaaaaah* Time to crack my little brain open and show you what was going on in there for the last few days (besides: "uahhhbrbrbrbrbrHOT!").

I was thinking about responsability. Why? Because I was reflecting on my illness and came to the result that if I have the power to make me sick, I have everything I need to go the other way round. This is a notion quite close to something simple that is called personal responsability - and it's in fact one of the hardest things I know...

But now comes the interesting part:
I was thinking in German (forgive me, but hey, at least I thought, hugh?) and the word that came to my mind was Verantwortung, which contains the word Antwort. I checked and it's the same for all other languages I'm (quite) familiar with at the mom': responsabilité and réponse in French, responsability and response in English; ansvara and svar in Swedish (which is of course very close to answer and also made me think of the German schwören; to vow or swear).

It may seem very evident and uninteresting to you, but I was struck by the fact that there seems to be a very common definition of this notion and that it has to do something with an answer, a reaction; a response - but it has to be made in a very specific way, obviously. I didn't see the connection first and it made me all nervous, then I couldn't find anything about the ethymologie of these words and then finally I decided to use my brain:

Good, so responsability doesn't always come naturally although it's necessary if you want to survive, I guess. It is said that children have to learn responsability and there have always been different ways to teach them (e.g.: in the middle-ages litte children were given birds to take care of, at least I know it was so in Burgundy). Taking responsability for others is always a risky thing (because no-one can tell you if your efforts will be acknowledged) but it's sometimes necessary. Taking responsability for yourself is also a risky undertaking, but in a different way: your efforts will always be acknowledged, but you will loose the comfort of imaginary leaning on someone else's shoulder. But no matter what we are taking responsability of/who we do it for: it does never appear suddenly but is developed in the personality while we are dealing with challenges.

When we take responsability, we answer a challenge. That means that we must have heard it's call first. We didn't ignore it and pretend it wasn't there so someone else would have to take charge.
Conclusion: responsability has to do with communication (call & answer), listening, making a commitment and making yourself heard in some way by this. It's about answering the phone and not hanging up when life is calling, or something like that *please take out your hankies*

Phew, another problem solved. And now I'm quite astonished how satisfying answers I'm able to give myself without having any "Mag" or "Dr" or "Prof" in front of my name (YET!)... But if you, by some reason, know the correct ethymological answer to this mystery, please tell me!

***

And now that I finished writing this down, the awful party-crowd finally got their asses out of the door and into town so I'll be able to sleeeeeeep... YIPIIIE! (You just assisted at my definite metamorphosis into a REAL, boring humanist, good night)

38.5° im Schatten

In der Susa ihren Nieren tanzen seit neuestem die Bakterien Samba. Und überhaupt herrscht im ganzen Susa-Körper tropisches Klima.

Weil aber die Bakterien keinerlei Aufenthaltsgenehmigung vorweisen können und der Susa mit ihrer ausgelassenen Feier auch ziemlich weh tun, hat die Susa sich mit einem antibiotischen Sondereinsatzkommando aufgemacht, die Wichte schnellst möglich vor die Tür zu setzen.

Um den Erfolg der Mission zu gewährleisten, wird die Susa ihren Körper die nächsten Tage in den Untiefen ihrer Matratze vergraben. Deswegen wird es hier ein bisschen still werden - die Frau K freut sich aber über Aufmunterung in jeglicher Form! :)

cultural studies

Bin wiederhergestellt und habe einen guten Teil des Nachmittags mit Bernd im zweiten Stock des wunderhübschen Café Emma zugebracht. Unsere Hauptbeschäftigung war es, wiederkehrende Muster im Auftreten der Passanten auf der Straße zu erkennen, wobei wir allerdings kläglich gescheitert sind. Zum Beispiel ist das von uns herausgefilterte Muster Auf Vater mit Kind von links folgt automatisch Leggings-bekleidetes Mädchen von rechts nur genau 4x (in Worten: vier mal) eingetreten. Außerdem musste ich eine andere, schon früher von mir aufgestellte Theorie als falsch anerkennen, nämlich dass schwedische Männer sich von weiblichen Reizen jeglicher Art völlig unbeeindruckt zeigen. Seht selbst im folgenden Video:

***

I'm fit again and spent the whole afternoon with Bernd in a charming café watching people walking by on the street. We were very busy trying to detect recurring sequences in their movements but we didn't really succeed. For instance, the rule "father with child coming from the left is always followed from girl wearing leggings from the right" actually occured only four times. In addition to this I had to find out that my theory of "The non-responding behaviour of Swedes to any heterosexual impulse" was not true. Check out the following video: