Peter Weiss

Peter Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was a German-born Swedish writer, painter and filmmaker.

Quotes

I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted. … That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country.
- Vanishing Point (1962)

In Dante the hero would rather flee
and renounce the tempting embrace
instead of yielding to his desires
and enduring the attendant dangers.
- Dante (written 1963, published 2003)

Only in his poetry did he have the courage to love.
- Dante (written 1963, published 2003)

Marat/Sade (1963)

Full title: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade) English version by Geoffrey Skelton. Verse adaptation by Adrian Mitchell. Music by Richard Peaslee. Atheneum, 1981, ISBN 0-689-70568-9

We've got rights the right to starve
We've got jobs waiting for work
We're all brothers lousy and dirty
We're all free and equal to die like dogs
- Patients, act 1, scene 6 (p. 11)

Charlotte Corday walked alone
Paris birds sang sugar calls
Charlotte walked down lanes of stone
through the haze of perfume stalls
Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene
Heard the singing guillotine
- Singers, act 1, scene 10 (p. 19)

Don't soil your pretty little shoes
The gutter's deep and red
Climb up climb up and ride along with me
the tumbrel driver said
But she never said a word
never turned her head
Don't soil your pretty little pants
I only go one way
Climb up climb up and ride along with me
There's no gold coach today
But she never said a word
never turned her head
- Singers, act 1, scene 10 (pp.19-20)

Every death even the cruellest death
drowns in the total indifference of Nature
Nature herself would watch unmoved
if we destroyed the entire human race
I hate Nature
this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face
that can bear everything
this goads us to greater and greater acts
- Sade, act 1, scene 12 (p. 24)

Against Nature's silence I use action
In the vast indifference I invent a meaning
I don't watch unmoved I intervene
and say that this and this are wrong
and I work to alter them and improve them
The important thing
is to pull yourself up by your own hair
to turn yourself inside out
and see the whole world with fresh eyes
- Marat, act 1, scene 12 (pp. 24-25) QOTD 2007·11·08 Sound file

And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice
and they turned away their faces and said
Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world
Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage
The soul lives on humility and patience
at the same time screwing from the poor their last centime
They settled down among their treasures
and ate and drank with princes
and to the starving they said
Suffer
Suffer as he suffered on the cross
for it is the will of God
- Marat, act 1, scene 13 (p. 28)

So the poor instead of bread made do with a picture
of the bleeding scourged and nailed-up Christ
and prayed to that image of their helplessness
- Marat, act 1, scene 13 (pp. 28-29)

We're all so clogged with dead ideas
passed from generation to generation
that even the best of us don't know the way out
We invented the Revolution
but we don't know how to run it
Look everyone wants to keep something from the past
a souvenir of the old regime
This man decides to keep a painting
This one keeps his mistress
He [pointing] keeps his garden
He [pointing] keeps his estate
He keeps his country house
He keeps his factories
This man couldn't part with his shipyards
This one kept his army
and that one keeps his king
- Marat, act 1, scene 15 (p. 34)

Singers: We've got nothing always had nothing
nothing but holes and millions of them
Kokol: Living in holes
Polpoch: Dying in holes
Cucurucu: Holes in our bellies
Rossignol: and holes in our clothes
- act 1, scene 16 (p. 35)

Once and for all
the idea of glorious victories
won by the glorious army
must be wiped out
Neither side is glorious
On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants
and they all want the same thing
Not to lie under the earth
but to walk upon it
without crutches
- Roux, act 1, scene 19 (p. 45)

Marat
Today they need you because you are going to suffer for them
They need you and they honour the urn which holds your ashes
Tomorrow they will come back and smash that urn
and they will ask
Marat who was Marat
- Sade, act 1, scene 20 (p. 46)

And now Marat
now I see where
this revolution is heading
To the withering of the individual man
and a slow merging into uniformity
to the death of choice
to self denial
to deadly weakness
in a state
which has no contract with individuals
but which is impregnable
- Sade, act 1, scene 20 (p. 49)

Don't be deceived
when our Revolution has been finally stamped out
and they tell you
things are better now
Even if there's no poverty to be seen
because the poverty's been hidden
even if you ever got more wages
and could afford to buy
more of these new and useless goods
which these new industries foist on you
and even if it seems to you
that you never had so much
that is only the slogan of those
who still have much more than you
- Marat, act 1, scene 23 (p. 55)

What has gone wrong with
the men who are ruling
I'd like to know who
they think they are fooling
They told us that torture
was over and gone
but everyone knows
the same torture goes on
- Singers, act 1, scene 24 (p. 58)

Long ago I abandoned my masterpiece
a roll of paper thirty yards long
which I filled completely with minute handwriting
in my dungeon years ago
It vanished when the Bastille fell
it vanished as everything written
everything thought and planned
will disappear
- Sade, act 2, scene 28 (p. 82)

What's the point of a revolution
without general
copulation copulation copulation
- Chorus, act 2, scene 30 (p. 92)

Fight on land and sea
All men want to be free
If they don't
never mind
we'll abolish all mankind
- Singers and Patients, act 2, scene 31 (p. 98)

We can say what we like without favour or fear
and what we can't say we can breathe in your ear
- Singers, act 2, scene 33 (p. 100)

Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits
Great propositions and their opposites,
See how they work, and let them fight it out,
To point some light on our eternal doubt.
Marat and I both advocated force
But in debate each took a different course.
Both wanted changes, but his views and mine
On using power never could combine.
On the one side, he who thinks our lives
Can be improved by axes and knives,
Or he who, submerged in the imagination,
Seeking a personal annihilation.
- Sade, epilogue

I've twisted and turned them every way,
And can see no ending to our play.
- Sade, epilogue

External links

Wikipedia

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Peter Weiss