There’s this cartoon: the king and queen are sitting across from each other at a very, very, very long table. In quite large residences, the furniture is often quite large. There is a salt shaker at each seat. Says the Queen: “I think in a good marriage there should be only one saltcellar.” Is that what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron to understand in terms of interior design? That marriage, as far as tensions in Europe go, isn’t going too well right now? On the other hand, there are no salt barrels on the XXXL table, which can be estimated to be about five to six meters long.
The titanic oval is worn, which the famous ZDF carpenters in Mainz could not have dreamed up more beautifully in their frustration that they the table for today’s Journal recently had to downsize, of three cylindrical components in the circumference of residual waste bins. But they are flanked by daintier blind columns – so that there is no doubt about the presidential assets in the Kremlin. Glare columns, which are also known from the “Chateaus” of German suburbs, are part of the very basics of pseudo-architecture, as are, for example, “marble” columns made of sheet metal that are hollow on the inside (Ritz Carlton, Potsdamer Platz). Or like the globe and the height-adjustable armchair in the realm of Adenoid Hynkel from Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”.
As with Gulliver’s Travels: Overdimensioning quickly has the effect of gigantic comedy
Ever since the artist Pipilotti Rist created “The Room” as a space-filling installation of huge furniture on which both adults and children have to dangle their legs on Gulliver-like chairs, we have known about the art of dimensioning and changing perspectives. Which often ends in comedy. See also the dictator Xi’s Olympic reception at a table the size of an indoor swimming pool with a mock-up of the Olympic landscape in the middle. Of course, the servile Olympic boss Thomas Bach also took part, but you simply don’t see him anymore. This special form of gigantic comedy apparently also lives in the Kremlin, where Macron and Putin sit across from each other, Putin as always in this great, slightly annoyed posture, both dressed in dark, stately, with serious faces, it’s about everything again – and yet: seeing Don’t they look like lost deputies from Lilliput?
Another XXXL table: Chinese President Xi Jinping and his wife Peng Liyuan (left side of table, center) at the welcome banquet to the Winter Olympics on Saturday at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.
(Photo: Shen Hong/AP)
In the film “The Little Lord” there is a scene where eight-year-old Cedric and the Earl of Dorincourt sit across from each other at a huge table (“worlds apart”), which leads to some hearing difficulties at breakfast. Perhaps one can imagine the Putin-Macron talks as being similarly problematic. As you know, they used first names, but that was probably all.
Putin: “So, Emmanuel . . . Ukraine.”
Macron: “What?”
Putin: “Ukraine, Ukraine!”
Macron: “What?”
Putin: “Nato! No! No, NATO!”
Macron: “How?”
No wonder it’s in the daily News sad means: “A lot of respect, but probably no results.” That has to change. It starts with a communicatively effective little table for the hearing impaired. It is not for nothing that one of the oldest elements of living culture also serves as a symbol and furnishes the language. For example, you live apart from the table and the bed (preferably before divorce is imminent), clean the slate, sometimes let something fall under the table, sit down at a table with someone or rip them off. Or says at the end: “Tischlein, cover yourself!” But then you are not in the Kremlin, but in a fairy tale.