{"id":16171,"date":"2024-03-04T15:49:26","date_gmt":"2024-03-04T15:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=16171"},"modified":"2024-03-04T15:49:26","modified_gmt":"2024-03-04T15:49:26","slug":"feathers-for-rosa-a-tribute-to-rosa-luxemburg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2024\/03\/04\/feathers-for-rosa-a-tribute-to-rosa-luxemburg\/","title":{"rendered":"Feathers for Rosa \u2013 a tribute to Rosa Luxemburg"},"content":{"rendered":"

To celebrate International Women\u2019s Week, The New Theatre<\/a><\/span> is presenting \u2018Feathers for Rosa\u2019<\/span><\/a> by No\u00ebl O\u2019Callaghan and Douglas Henderson\u2014an unusual tribute to Rosa Luxemburg. Centring on the poem \u2018Du liegst | You lie\u2019 by German-Jewish poet Paul Celan, it consists of a thirty-minute performance interspersed by three original songs. There is also an exhibition of paintings, an installation of a basket of white feathers from the Berlin canal swans, and a nine-minute experimental film and music video.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The following dialogue is based on the film script: Speakers are No\u00ebl (N) and Douglas (D).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

N<\/strong>: I was once chased by an angry swan twice my size\u2026<\/p>\n

Years and years of painting swans… this flock lives on the banks of the Berlin canal\u2014the same waterway where the body of Rosa Luxemburg was thrown on January 15th<\/sup>, 1919 and lay for four months undiscovered…or was it?<\/p>\n

Did the swans floating above, perhaps the ancestors of this flock, discover it under the ice?<\/p>\n

Did the moorhens and ducks spread the news up and down the banks… there\u2019s something in the weeds… something in the weeds… something\u2019s caught.<\/p>\n

One day, he brought a poem into the studio…to set to music. It was called \u2018Du liegst<\/em> \u2013 You lie\u2019 a poem by Paul Celan… about the murder… and about the body in the canal.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The Flock.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

D<\/strong>: I found this poem in an email from my friend Alex. Its vividness and incantational drive seemed to drag me along in its wake. I was a bit surprised, since I associated this German-Jewish poet with poetry of the Holocaust and thought of him as somewhat impenetrable. Had complexity and interpretation veiled an evidently deep political commitment? Could it make a song?<\/p>\n

Du liegst im gro\u00dfen gelausche, umbuscht, umflockt<\/em><\/p>\n

You lie in the great listening, ambushed, flaked round<\/em><\/p>\n

N<\/strong>. <\/em>A strange and powerful song<\/a><\/span> emerged and, as we played it night after night, a vision projected itself onto the dark, studio walls\u2026 a drowned Luxemburg, disembodied, upside-down, surrounded, Ophelia-like by bushes and waterbirds (umbuscht, umflockt<\/em>), manifested itself as a sort of stained-glass window… and I made the painting \u2018Du liegst<\/em>\u2019. Was I thinking of Harry Clarke? Yes, I think Rosa should have a stain-glass window. Was I also thinking of Millais\u2019s Pre-Raphaelite Ophelia or of Georg Basiliz\u2019s upside-down portraits?<\/p>\n

D<\/strong>: The poem is a retelling of the brutal murder of Rosa Luxemburg and her political ally Karl Liebknecht\u2026 at times mimicking the sadistic language of her killers…Rosa\u2019s body thrown into the Landwehr Canal… her political ally, Karl Liebknecht, riddled with bullets in the Tiergarten…<\/p>\n

der man ward zum Sieb, die Frau m\u00fc\u00dfte schwimmen, die Sau<\/em><\/p>\n

the man became a sieve, the woman had to swim, the pig<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Sieve – screen grab from film.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

N<\/strong>: <\/em>The poem is also an account of Celan\u2019s last trip to Berlin just before Christmas 1967…the city in a state of political turmoil following the murder by police of the student Benno Ohnesorg during protests against the visit of the Shah of Iran. During his visit, Celan walked the banks of the Spree and Havel rivers and along the Landwehr Canal past the site of Luxemburg\u2019s death. Further along the canal from here you reach the Hercules Bridge, and in a park nearby, there\u2019s a statue of Hercules fighting a boar… a pig.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

geh zu den Fleischerhaken,
\n<\/em>zu den roten \u00c4ppelstaken<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

go to the meat hooks,
\nto the red apple candlesticks from Sweden\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

… the Nazi meat-hooks of Pl\u00f6tzensee prison, the Fleischerhaken<\/em>… the apple candlesticks from Sweden seen by Celan at a Christmas market in Berlin, the \u00c4ppelstaken<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Es kommt der Tisch mit den Gaben
\n<\/em>er biegt um ein Eden<\/em><\/p>\n

Here comes the gift-laden table,
\n<\/em>it turns around an Eden<\/em><\/p>\n

…Hotel Eden, where Luxemburg was held and tortured before her murder.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

D<\/strong>: Candles were important for the Roman Saturnalia, the feast of Saturn, the precursor of Christmas. Hercules offered candles to Saturn in place of human sacrifices…honouring Saturn\u2019s altar not by slaughtering a man, but by kindling lights… Sweden \u2013 the refuge of Willy Brandt, the architect of d\u00e9tente in Europe, who once said peace isn’t everything, but nothing is possible without it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

N<\/strong>: Weisestra\u00dfe in the Neuk\u00f6lln district of Berlin is a ten-minute walk from where we\u2019ve both lived for many years. It\u2019s a typical street for this area… many apartment buildings dating from the end of the 1800s… really nothing to distinguish it from other similar streets in the area… nothing that alerts you to the weight of history. It was here at house number 8 that Rosa Luxemburg, together with her political ally Karl Liebknecht, spent some of their last days before their brutal murder… hiding from fascist militias in the apartment of supporters. Here they held political meetings to discuss the failed January uprising, even read bedtime-stories to their hosts\u2019 children, until, fearing discovery, they had to leave…<\/p>\n

D<\/strong>: We did some filming there one day in late December. There was a police raid on a nearby caf\u00e9 because of an Instagram post supporting left-wing Palestinian resistance. We met some activists from the feminist anti-capitalist Zora collective<\/a><\/span> who had been targeted there. They asked about our project and were delighted to hear that their name would be travelling to Ireland.<\/p>\n

N<\/strong>: Banks of feathers like snow (umflockt<\/em>)… I started collecting them… apropos of nothing, really, other than their beauty… then thoughts of Emmeline Pankhurst intruded. Her hateful White Feather campaign to send men to their deaths in World War 1. To turn a thing of such beauty into shame… it\u2019s evil. Luxemburg was so different. <\/em>She urged soldiers to lay down their weapons, to desert\u2026 and to know their real enemy. She paid for this with her life…<\/p>\n

f\u00fcr sich, f\u00fcr keinen, f\u00fcr jeden<\/em><\/p>\n

for herself, for no one, for everyone<\/em><\/p>\n

The time has come to reclaim the White feather, to honour the Deserter\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2018I see them walking,
\nwalking back,
\nback from the front,
\nThe walking wounded,
\nThe walking dead.\u2019<\/p>\n

(from Woman of the Rubble\u2019s speech \u2013 \u2018Feathers for Rosa\u2019 performance).<\/p>\n

Der Landwehrkanal wird nicht rauschen
\n<\/em>Nichts
\n<\/em>stockt.<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Landwehr Canal won\u2019t rush.
\n<\/em>Nothing
\n<\/em>stops.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Feathers for Rosa\u2019 is funded by donations through our gofundme<\/a><\/span> campaign. Donors receive original watercolour sketches of swans made on the banks of the Landwehr Canal.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To celebrate International Women\u2019s Week, The New Theatre is presenting \u2018Feathers for Rosa\u2019 by No\u00ebl O\u2019Callaghan and Douglas Henderson\u2014an unusual tribute to Rosa Luxemburg. Centring on the poem \u2018Du liegst | You lie\u2019 by German-Jewish poet Paul Celan, it consists of a thirty-minute performance interspersed by three original songs. There is also an exhibition of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16172,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2104,2620,3216,3217,3392,3398,5734,6655,7036,7037,7038,7286,7976,7978,9196,9541,10304],"class_list":["post-16171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-culture","tag-douglas-henderson","tag-feathers","tag-feathers-for-rosa","tag-food","tag-for","tag-luxemburg","tag-noel-ocallaghan","tag-paul-celan","tag-paul-celan-poem-about-rosa-luxemburg","tag-paul-celan-rosa-luxemburg","tag-play-about-rosa-luxemburg","tag-rosa","tag-rosa-luxemburg","tag-the-new-theatre","tag-tribute","tag-zora-collective"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}