Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

by Werner Herzog

I received a telex describing what a cherub is. Then I realized that I was developing a high fever and lay down upstairs in Gisela’s bed, hoping she would let me rest there. She made a poultice for my calf, and I started taking antibiotics. I was sick all day, and then the fever began to subside. I had received another telex, monosyllabic, saying it was the twilight of the gods, and I knew who had sent it and what the code meant. Then I was in the high mountains, Hindu Kush or the Himalayas, and at a great altitude I had to fight my way forward, sunk up to my chest in powder snow. I was going downhill to reach an enormous gorge where a stream was roaring. Two mountain climbers were roped below me and did not want to believe that I was following alone. The stream had eleven waterfalls. You could grope your way toward the first ones along a layer of ice, down the middle of which, a sort of groove, roared an open, foaming rivulet.