Peter Weiss

Against Nature's silence I use action
In the vast indifference I invent a meaning
I don't watch unmoved I intervene...

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

• Peter Weiss pages by emmyBCA
• Profile at imagi-nation
• Profile at IMDb
• Review of Marat/Sade at The Complete Review
• Review of Inferno at The Complete Review
• Review of The Investigation at The Complete Review
• "The Political Aesthetics of Holocaust Literature: Peter Weiss's The Investigation and Its Critics" by Robert Cohen, History and Memory Vol. 10, No. 2 (Fall 1998)