In February, Alexander Kluge celebrated his 90th birthday – “supposedly”, as Svenja Flasspöhler said with a smile at the start of Saturday evening at the Lit.Cologne, the prolific author and filmmaker’s old age is hardly noticeable. For the third time in its 22-year existence, Kluge was a guest at the Cologne Literature Festival. The honoree, who also invented various cultural formats for private television in the late 1980s, choreographed the evening in his honor himself. Between short films and readings, mainly from his new work, the “Book of Comments”, Flasspöhler, the editor-in-chief of the philosophy magazinemainly on two subjects: culture and war.
Kluge impressively describes how, as a 13-year-old, he witnessed the bombing of Halberstadt in World War II and fled from the flames into a swimming pool with his little sister. “I’m extremely interested in how to end war,” explains the Adorno student. With a view to the war in Ukraine and the possibilities for solving it, however, reflections are sometimes rather sparse. Kluge even slipped the euphemism that the war was “something disappointing”.
Do not think and act with the creative will of a tamer, but with the respect of a gardener
More convincing is the discussion of fundamental questions, for example when Flaßpöhler connects the phenomenon of armouring, of external and internal hardening, with a “killing of the imagination” in relation to society as a whole. Kluge declares that it is an “illusion” that armouring can be permanent and bring success and adds stories of tanks being transformed into “iron coffins” under the influence of fire. Instead, the two place their hope in the effort of understanding, emphasizing the importance of cultural and philosophical reflection. Referring to Hannah Arendt, Flasspöhler says on the Putin case: “Understanding doesn’t mean justifying.”
For his part, Kluge identifies the moment of mutual weakness and withdrawal as a window of opportunity for peace. A central element of his poetics is also evident here: not to proceed with the creative will of a tamer, but with the respect of a gardener who gives his plants their time to grow. Instead of linear narration, Kluge wants to dwell on one thing in the format of the commentary and dig deep, “like a mole”. However, just as this constantly raises new hills and surprisingly steps into the unconcealed, Kluge moves as a polymath apparently erratic and associative even on Saturday evening, comes from works with his companions Helge Schneider and Michael Haneke to films assembled from three screens about Kafka, Jimmy Carter and chinese monkey.
Even if you can’t always follow him straight away, the ninety-year-old’s witticisms and powerful ingenuity stick in your mind. This intangibility is programmatic for Kluge, who sees himself “on the bed crack between book and film”. And so the evening becomes a border crossing: between culture and war.