But showering with a raincoat on can also be quite a fascinating experience: we feel the drops in an unusual, new and, strangely enough, in a more intense way. As if that secondary skin was at the same time cushioning and amplifying the sensation. Maybe it is because the drops as they hit the fabric will make a noise whereas our skin would absorb them silently?

Here is my latest exercise in raincoat-showering: In a letter to my friend Moshe I quoted one of my favorite poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, “Herbsttag”. This is the German original:

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr gross.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren lass die Winde los.
 
Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süsse in den schweren Wein.
 
Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

Moshe has a smattering of German, but I do not think his command of the language is good enough for him to be able to appreciate the subtleties of rhyme and metre in a foreign language. I tried to find an English translation on the Internet, but none of those that I came across captured Rilke’s masterful play with rhyme and alliterations (e.g. wachen, lange, wandern in the last stanza) even remotely. So eventually I slipped on my poetic raincoat and turned on the shower:

Lord: it is time. This summer was immense.
Now on the sundial cast your shadow,
across the meadows loose let winds.

Command to fullness fruit and vine,
grant them yet two more south’rly days,
press them to ripeness and then chase
last sweetness in the heavy wine.

He who without home will himself not build one now.
He who alone alone will long remain,
will stay awake, will read, long letters pen
and in the alleys wander, to and fro
restlessly, as the leaves drift hence

My first meeting with Dino took place at the 1999 ACH-ALLC conference in Charlottesville, Virginia. The conference turned out a memorable event for a number of reasons. Firstly intellectually, because it was at this conference that the controversy on the OHCO- (“ordered hierarchy of content objects”) model of text erupted, a controversy soon to be labelled the ‘Renear/McGann-debate’ after its two American protagonists. Second anecdotally, because John Unsworth, the local host, convinced almost the entire contingent of computing humanists present to float down the James River on car tubes on a sunny afternoon, Dino and myself included. But most of all I remember this as an equally terrific and terrifying experience because of what happened at the very end of the conference, in the final three-speaker slot shared by Dino, Claire Warwick and myself.

Due to a last-minute change in order Dino was appointed as the second-last speaker, and he delivered a paper titled “Text Representation and Textual Models”. It was an excellent paper (more on that in a second) and a hard act to follow, and so I went to the front of the room with some trepidation to deliver my own contribution — as chance had it now the very final paper of the entire conference. I had prepared everything as best I could; my notebook with the PowerPoint presentation was set up, my manuscript lay on the lectern, ready to be read.  Or so I thought – for when I got there the manuscript was: gone. A couple of very frantic moments later it transpired that Dino had accidentally bagged it at the end of his talk, together with his own manuscript… From then on whenever Dino and I met over the course of the following years I reminded him of the moment he stole my manuscript. This frantic moment was the beginning of our friendship, a friendship that lasted for almost quarter of a century.

Let me fast forward to our very last meeting. This happened in 2020, in the historic Aby Warburg-house at Hamburg University where my colleagues bid me farewell on my retirement with a wonderful symposium. Dino was one of four old-school, ‘bedrock’ computing humanists who honoured me with their presence — colleagues who, like myself, were already active in the field in the 1980s and 1990s, when it was still known as Humanities Computing (the other three present that day were Manfred Thaller, Willard McCarty and John Bradley). I was deeply moved, and I still remember the private exchange that Dino and I had after the official part had been concluded.  I remember Dino’s voice, his smile, how he used to raise his eyebrows, everything.

And of course, I do remember Dino for the outstanding philosopher that he was. Like Father Busa and Tito Orlandi, Dino came from an intellectual and cultural background which over the centuries had learned to elegantly and productively bridge a fundamental philosophical divide, namely that between deep theological speculation on the one hand, and Renaissance-inspired methodological curiosity about how one might explore the human condition in novel, undogmatic ways. The paper which Dino presented in 1999 at the ACH-ALLC conference is well worth re-reading in this regard. It was expanded on in his 2002 article in New Literary History titled “Digital Representation and the Text Model” – a seminal publication which I personally consider to be the most thought-provoking and philosophically stringent contribution to the OHCO- and MarkUp-debate to date.  Dino came back to the topic time and again, one instance being a panel discussion with Manfred Thaller at the DH 2012 in Hamburg that had the audience mesmerized. I will never forget the expression of awe on a young colleague’s face who termed the event “the Manfred and Dino Show”.  

Dear Dino, I thank you for your friendship and the stimulating exchanges we had, for the elegance and warmth which you brought to both. Today as in 1999 at our very first meeting it turns out that I am the one who has the last word –  for now.  Because I cannot help thinking of that classic scene in Wim Wenders’ “Wings of Desire” where Peter Falk, munching a greasy burger roll at a Berlin Hot Dog stand, suddenly startles, smiles and then addresses Gabriel, the invisible angle: “I cannot see you. But I know you’re there. Compagnero.”   

Chris

Leg etwas in das Licht und schau,

was das Licht mit dem Etwas macht,

dann hast du den Tag über gut zu tun

und manchmal auch die Nacht:

Sobald du den Wandel nicht nur beschaust,

sondern trachtest, ihn festzuhalten,

reihst du dich ein in den Fackelzug

von Schatten und Lichtgestalten.

Die Fackel, sie geht von Hand zu Hand,

von van Eyck zu de Hooch und Vermeer.

Sie leuchtete Kersting und Eckersberg heim

und wurde auch Hopper zu schwer.

Denn die Fackel hält jeder nur kurze Zeit,

dann flackert sein Lebenslicht.

Doch senkt sich um ihn auch Dunkelheit,

die Fackel erlischt so leicht nicht.

Sie leuchtet, solange jemand was nimmt,

es ins Licht legt und es besieht,

und solange ein Mensch zu fixieren sucht,

was im Licht mit den Dingen geschieht.

Robert Gernhardt, in: Robert Gernhardt, Peter Rühmkorf: “In gemeinsamer Sache.” Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt), 2002, S.27

Das Leiden denkt, es würde ewig währen.

Im Gegensatz zu unserer lieben Lust –

Die ist sich ihrer Endlichkeit bewußt

und andererseits geneigt,

sich mit Bedenken zu beschweren.

So scheint die Welt kein Nervenruhekissen.

Z.B. wo du in Verfolgung eines Zieles

– sagen wir, einer bang begehrten Braut –

bereits im Anflug ahnst, sie würde dir entrissen:

Sie wird! Zu Recht. Und so entgeht dir vieles,

weil aus verzagten Friedhofsaugen angeschaut,

ist die Partie meist schon im vorhinein verschmissen.

Selbst das Gedicht, das sich zu skrupelvoll bedenkt,

führt auf die Stufe zu,

wo sich dem Vers der Fuß verrenkt.

Peter Rühmkorf

in: “Paradiesvogelschiß.” Reinbek bei Hamburg (Rowohlt) 2008, S.110

Nachdem die erste Partie noch relativ nah am Fellini-Original das egomane Kreisen der Kunst um die eigenen Befindlichkeiten analytisch auffächert und den Schauspielern immerhin die Möglichkeit eröffnet, das zum Zustand geronnene Sein mit den ihnen eigenen Mitteln von Sprache, Bewegung, Gestik und Mimik auf dieser weiten Bühne, vor einem großartigen Bühnenbild mit klugen Projektionen im Hintergrund, im Diskurs mit einem subtilen musikalischen Dialogpartner und von der Lichtregie im tieferen Sinne ‘beleuchtet’ im Ensemble auszuloten und ihm so Nuancen abzugewinnen, die dem Zuschauer ein neues Auffassen und Verstehen abverlangen, zieht die Dramaturgie diesem “Schiff der Träume” mit dem Auftritt der fünf Weisen aus dem Morgenland – aka: afrikanischen Flüchtlinge (oder sind es eher Migranten? who cares; Hauptsache, sie sind schwarz) – jäh den Stöpsel heraus.

Und es zeigt sich: das Schiff ist eine Badewanne, in der eine Truppe hip-hoppender Hanswurste, die als mediterrane boat people verkleidet wurden, clash-of-cultures Phrasen zu Betroffenheitsschaum schlagen. Der wird dann mit viel Körperakrobatik und einem gegen Null gehenden Schauspieltalent drei- oder viersprachig ins pflichtschuldigst betroffene Publikum hinein getrötet. Sozusagen als Einladung, jetzt gefälligst selber in die Wanne zu steigen und sich ein wenig darin zu suhlen. Irgendwann (man fragt sich: warum eigentlich? Ach so, ja; wir müssen die ganze Chose, die man uns eigentlich schon hinlänglich qua Publikumsadresse und obligatorisch-interaktiver Einlage im Diesseits der vierten Wand erklärt hat,  auch noch auf der Bühne nachgestellt bekommen. Wir sind doch im Theater – Mensch, fast hätte ich’s vergessen!) tritt dann auch wieder die eigentliche Schauspielkompagnie auf.

Und sie müht sich redlich, mit den uns Europäer endlich, endlich mit der profunden Erkenntnis unserer Bigotterie konfrontierenden und zur Veranschaulichung gelegentlich auch einmal minutenlang schön-schaurig im Trockendock “Schauspielhaus” ertrinkenden, dabei aber insgesamt recht fröhlichen edlen Wilden (sind übrigens alle drahtig, männlich, unter Dreißig. Schade – man hätte sich doch auch noch ein gerüttelt Maß Genderproblematik gewünscht!) ins Gespräch zu kommen. Ein bißchen Karikatur des kulturellen Fremdelns, ein bißchen Begegnung zwischen europäisch-hochkulturellem Menuett und afrikanischem Bass and Drums; am Ende auch gar ein wenig kulturverbindendes Line Dancing. Aber das reißt jetzt selbst ein Charlie Hübner, eine Perle von Rampensau, wie er an zwei, drei Stellen des Stückes zeigt, nicht mehr wirklich.

“Schiff der Träume. Ein europäisches Requiem nach Federico Fellini” in der Regie der Intendantin Karin Beier ist eine plakative Peinlichkeit verklemmter political correctness. Kein Fettnapf des abgestandendsten Gedankenschmalzes, in den hier nicht gesprungen wurde: ästhetizistischer Ennui, Eurozentrismuskritik, Gutmenschenbashing, Schlechtmenschenlob, Schlechtmenschenbashing, Gutmenschenlob. Sehr, sehr viel Vordergrund und einfache Antworten, die gleich wieder zurückgenommen werden. Immerhin; am Ende ein gediegen konfuser, mit Verve vorgetragener Schlussmonolog der Diva vor einem bühnentechnisch schön gemachten Schiffsuntergang des “European Cultural Cruises”-Liners. Das Stück als ganzes jedoch trivialisiert ästhetische wie moralisch-ethische Orientierungslosigkeit in einer konfusen Montage von bereits Gesagtem, Gedachtem und Gesehenem – was nicht ganz das Gleiche ist wie ein “poetisch-dramatischer Aufruf zur Kursänderung”, als den die Ankündigung im Spielplan den Filmklassiker von 1983 immerhin korrekt versteht. Über den schrieb Morando Morandini am 7.10.1983 in “Il Giorno”:

“Fellinianisch ohne Fellinismen (…) alles steht unter dem Zeichen der Trauer, ist jedoch heiter und sanft detachiert; reich an vielen Schönheiten, jedoch ohne inszenierte Übertreibungen; manchmal alarmierend, manchmal beängstigend, aber auch unterhaltsam, lustig, durchdrungen von einer ruhigen und vorsichtigen Liebe zum Leben. (…) Fellini mildert seine Vorliebe für die Karikatur, die scherzhafte Verhöhnung, die Monstrosität: in Bezug auf die Personen ist Zuneigung zu spüren, mit einem kritischen Detachement und vor allem mit Respekt.”

Das wäre in etwa eine Kritik ex negativo der gestrigen Premiere. In Fellinis Film gibt’s übrigens am Ende ein Nashorn im Rettungsboot; zu dieser Reverenz an Ionesco hat’s im Schauspielhaus nicht mehr gereicht. Honi soit qui mal y pense, leben doch die Nashörner in Afrika.

Unfortunately, the DH no longer attracts scholars only. Today I sat in a session that was also attended by a delegate wearing an unconspicously-conspicous affiliation badge identifying him as belonging to “US Government”. That’s a designation commonly known to be long-hand for NSA and the likes. Just ask such a person for a business card or their contact details (though I’m sure that by next year they’ll have resolved that issue as well).

Did this surprise me? Not really. I have myself been contacted twice (i.e., through US academic colleagues) with an offer to consider participation in projects which are funded by the NSA and similar intelligence agencies. And let us not be naive: the more attention DH researchers invest in Big Data approaches and anything that might help with the analysis of human behaviour, communication and networking patterns, semantic analysis, topic modeling and related approaches, the more our field becomes interesting to those who can apply our research in order to further their own goals.

This is the nature and dilemma of all open research: we are an intellectual community that believes in sharing, and so unless we decide to become exclusive, there’s no stopping someone from exploiting our work for other purposes. Moreover, all of us who are on an institutional pay-roll are effectively funded by the same body that also channels funds (and lots of it) to military and defense. But it is one thing to entertain this thought in an abstract manner and quite another to realize how bluntly these agencies have begun to operate within our own community. In this particular instance we witnessed first-hand how the “US Government” labelled delegate immediately engaged with one of the younger presenters. My guess is that one of my colleagues has today lost his research assistant to a better paid job.

It is high time for us to realize that we are now facing the same moral and ethical dilemma which physicists encountered some 70 years ago when nuclear research lost its innocence. What is happening right now, right here is this: our scholarly motivation is being openly instrumentalized for a purpose that is at its very core anti-humanistic. One might of course argue that we need to differentiate between the philosophical and political principles of enlightenment on the one hand, and the necessities of protecting society as well as individuals against acts of crime and terrorism. But even if we decide to adopt such a pragmatist view it is hard to ignore that the apparatus has spun out of control and operates in a fashion that is completely intransparent. What is being presented as a necessary impingement on constitutional rights for the sake of protecting those rights is increasingly drifting towards a neo-McCarthyist attempt at social engineering.

To date all evidence points to the fact that

• the benefits of massive and indiscrimenate surveillance of citizens by intelligence agencies have been marginal;
• the negatives of this activity are being consistently downplayed, if not fully ignored. Perhaps the most alarming of these negatives is the increasingly cynical attitude adopted by us, the victims of these activities, who with absurd pride claim to have been ‘in the know’ anyhow, and who have resorted to downplaying our ethical and philosophical capitualition as a sign of being ‘realists’;
• the political mechanisms to control security agencies and the military have failed, or are at the brink of failing.

In other words: massive surveillance has failed to demonstrate its legitimacy on quantitative grounds, it ignores the qualitative damage to society, and it has begun to circumvent constitutional mechanisms. The security establishment has managed to construe a neat double-bind in which democratically elected governments find themselves entangled – shut-up and be safe.

DH now runs the risk of playing into the hands of those who execute this policy as our community’s research interests have begun to take on a more sociological orientation. In that perspective a DH study into the complete works of Chaucer is of little relevance both in terms of contents and in terms of methodology. But a DH study into the behavioral and sense-making patterns of the community of Chaucer readers is not.

So far we have turned a blind eye on this aspect of our work. The only way in which our community can counter this development is to do the exact opposite: bring the issue out into the open and start a debate. ADHO – the Alliance of Digital Humanities Organizations – has recently adopted a “Code of Conduct” for its conferences which states among other that there

“… is no place at ADHO meetings for harassment or intimidation based on race, religion, ethnicity, language, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, physical or cognitive ability, age, appearance, or other group status. Unsolicited physical contact, unwelcome sexual attention, and bullying behavior are likewise unacceptable.”

I propose that we formulate a similar Code with regard to an activity that is equally unacceptable: the infiltration and weaponizing of the Digital Humanities by government agencies.

Introductory comments in the clip are taken from the announcement on the DH 2014 conference website –  for the full credentials (including photography) please visit   http://dh2014.org/affiliated-events/re-mapping-the-body/

To watch the clip in high resolution, please click the image below. Please note: the mp4 file is 100 MB, so it will take some time to download.

©gert weigelt

For more information see www.linga.ch / +41 21 721 36 03 / info@linga.ch

Many thanks to the local DH 2014 organizers Claire Clivaz and Frederic Kaplan for this wonderful addition to an enriching academic programme!

“Never before had I believed or suspected that I had a soul but just then I knew I had. I knew also that my soul was friendly, was my senior in years and was solely concerned for my own welfare. For convenience I called him Joe. I felt a little reassured to know that I was not altogether alone. Joe was helping me.”
Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman

Flann O’Brien was one of the pseudonyms of Brian O’Nolan (Irish: Brian Ó Nualláin; 5 October 1911 – 1 April 1966)

For a lot of exquisite & hilarious quotes from the novel, see here.

Blank. It takes a couple of seconds to sink in. Last time I saw Edwin must have been about 9 months ago; he was about to move to De Rust after finally loosing the battle over the Karoo family farm Omdraisvlei. It is so remote and in the middle of nowhere that you can actually find it on some old terrestrial globes.  And it is so remote that Google doesn’t know it and I should actually misspell its name here (have I?) to protect a dream from the cognitive fascism of machine learning and the idiocy of recommender algorithms. This is how it works:

Imagine 25.000 hectars of semi desert, with Bushman paintings, the remains of an airstrip and a school house and a train station and  black rocks and table mountains and endless skies and lone sheep and a patch of green grass irigated by wind motors that pump up ice cold water from 80 m below and glistening sheets of corrugated iron on the walls of the barn where the shearers sweat in 45 degree heat and heaps of wool get sorted into huge boxes and Edwin stands outside the farm kitchen the next morning with a mug of coffee in hand and it’s 6 am and he’s smiling and in the evening he will crank the handle of the old lister diesel generator and the machine will hammer through the icy Karoo night and the lights will go on and then eventually they will go off again and we’ll sit around the fire and Edwin will be full of stories, so full of stories, and you listen to him and you realize, this guy is crazy, seriously crazy, crazy in the most heartwarming and inspiring way, and yes, not everything about this is nice and there is quite a bit of collateral damage to come; he and Sue will break up, but for now it is still 1988 and we have just met him and Sue for the very first time on our very first trip from Johannesburg to Cape Town, Johnny told us about Edwin and that we’d be welcome there, and we just popped in without prior notice and even if Johnny did indeed tell Edwin about us coming Edwin had clearly forgotten or didn’t find it important for visitors to be announced – remember, we’re talking 1987: no cell phones, no internet – and in 1994, on our last journey to Cape Town before leaving SA for a couple of years, we’re at the farm again and I see: the huge wind pump next to the garden, a massive thing over 25 meters high, imported from Australia by Edwin’s dad or granddad and apparently once the highest in South Africa, is shattered to bits, the rotor blades flapping aimlessly in the breeze with a creaking, metallic noise, and it was then that I realized: from here on it’s down hill.

But I only realized that I had realized that then quite some years later. All of us kept on living, fighting, marching on with the determination of ants. And who’s to judge; at least we tried and we didn’t whimper either (here’s the connection with German contemporary literature and ‘Stoner’, this touching hymne to the stoicism of deed and language). Edwin in particular didn’t whimper. 15 years ago he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Last time I saw him he was, simply put, frail, no doubt about it. But his mind was not just on fire – it was by then radio-nuclear and he still didn’t know any half-measure in anything. If a candle had three ends instead of two, Edwin would have lit them all. Which, as I said before, was not always nice, let alone fair to those who tried to be close to him. But he had a soul, and best of all: he didn’t need followers. I remember that in his first autobiographical account which he self-published he describes how he enters the dining hall in a Parkinson’s clinic for the very first time and there’s this strange rustling, like a gust of hot air tearing at the corrugated iron sheets of the barn on his farm, and he realizes: it’s the cutlery of the patients clanking on the enamel plates, and so he decides to join the symphony of the shaking limbs.

I sat down (we’re back in Berlin) and wrote an eMail to Angela:

I fall asleep with this image of Edwin, standing at the head of one of the countless dreamlines he explored during his life time.Three hours later I wake up in my 22nd floor East facing hotel room. The sun rises over Berlin, a glowing red eye looks straight at me, inquisitive. And I understand: Edwin’s on the trail of trails

It was a blessing to have met him and to have enjoyed the privilege of a glimpse into his world, contorted and idiosyncratic as it might have been and is destined to remain forever after.
Fare well, Edwin, compagnero: we’re bound to meet on the other side. May your journey be peaceful and fulfilling.

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain
I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end
I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend
But I always thought that I’d see you baby, one more time again…

James Taylor, ‘Fire and Rain’. A line I once wrote under a photograph taken of the broken windmill at Edwin’s farm in 1994.

PS: Who needs ‘teachers’ as long as we have companions?

youth, lust, bewilderment, and trust

the residue of all that was

the foreshadow of all that must

be lived.

In ten years time I will recall

the moment that is now and how

the joy it held has all been sieved.

Good luck, my friend, each one of us

a dweller of his future hell

spellbound to this, the well

of presence and its shining past.

The duskless dawn approaches fast

a flake sinks to the bottom

of my glass.