Enjoying lunch with the artist Heide Hatry, I am reminded of the so-called German genius; that gewisse Etwas which makes German art, music, literature and philosophy not only so powerful and seductive, but also so queer.
But what is the deutsche Genie?
A few years ago, the intellectual historian Peter Watson published a huge book on this topic - almost a 1000 pages in length - and yet he never quite managed to put his finger on what's so unique about the German spirit.
It seems a little silly, therefore, for me to try and say what it is in a short post like this (written in between courses and whilst Heide has gone to powder her nose). But I think the answer has something to do with the fact that the German word for slug is Nacktschnecke.
There's a beautiful but slightly mad and misleading logic to this compound noun that seems essentially German ...
See: Peter Watson, The German Genius (Simon and Schuster, 2010).
Intrigued of course, but can't really quite see - perhaps it's me - what this is saying. Are you implying that Heide is a slug/denuded snail?
ReplyDelete(Are snails slugs with mobile homes?)
I think Peter Watson's immense thesis was that 'German genius' is a classico-Romantic ghost in the machine - 'queering' it to give it a contemporary brand seems questionable.
As the original post published on TTA re Heide Hatry ('Icons in Ash', 11 June 2017) denounced her work as 'one final opportunity for recrimination' and pronounced emphatically on the futility of discussion with her (and, apparently anyone) - despite, amusingly, subsequently engaging in a five-part dialogue with the artist - I'd be fascinated to know what you talked about over lunch (or, by your own argument, could talk about).