Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo

by Werner Herzog

Is not the ostrich, with wings that cannot carry it, the most unredeemed of all living beings?)

The mournfulness of cardboard boxes soaked through days ago: I sense a great metaphor there.

The banana fronds to the left of my hut are bursting with growth, shamelessly sexual.

The jungle, existing exclusively in the present, is certainly subject to time, but remains forever ageless. Any concept of justice would be antithetical to all this. But is there justice in the desert, either? Or in the oceans? And in the depths? Life in the sea must be pure hell, an infinite hell of constant and ever-present danger, so unbearable that in the course of evolution some species—including Homo sapiens—crawled, fled, onto some clods of firm land, the future continents.

Any concept of justice would be antithetical to all this. But is there justice in the desert, either? Or in the oceans? And in the depths? Life in the sea must be pure hell, an infinite hell of constant and ever-present danger, so unbearable that in the course of evolution some species—including Homo sapiens—crawled, fled, onto some clods of firm land, the future continents.

Several times Kinski threw a tantrum, once because someone touched his hair. Not even my hairdresser is allowed to touch my hair, Kinski screamed,

was reading the translation of Piave’s libretto of Ernani, published in Zurich in 1952, and in the foreword I came upon the breathtakingly idiotic comment that the most blatantly unbelievable passages had been deleted—when in fact it is precisely the incredible elements that account for the beauty of the story, or rather of opera as a genre, because those elements that cannot be accounted for even by the most exotic probability calculations appear in opera as the most natural, thanks to the powerful transformation of an entire world into music. And the Grand Emotions in opera, often dismissed as over the top, strike me on the contrary as the most concentrated, pure archetypes of emotion, whose essence is incapable of being condensed any further. They are axioms of emotions. That is what opera and the jungle have in common.

And the Grand Emotions in opera, often dismissed as over the top, strike me on the contrary as the most concentrated, pure archetypes of emotion, whose essence is incapable of being condensed any further. They are axioms of emotions. That is what opera and the jungle have in common.

Kinski played the suffering invalid to the hilt; supposedly he had a fever and had been vomiting all night, but that is just what he says to call everyone’s attention to himself.

tattered remains of an olive green undershirt and no shoes. No one dared to touch him. A grisly mystery surrounded him. I recall experiencing a similar shiver of awe as a child in Sachrang, when I found a frayed piece of bright blue plastic that had floated down the brook and got caught on an overhanging branch. At the time I had never seen anything like it, and I kept it hidden for weeks, licked it, found it slightly stretchy, full of miraculous properties. Not until weeks later, when I had my fill of owning it, did I show it to anyone. Till and I discovered that when you held a burning match to it, it melted; it gave off black smoke and a nasty smell, but it was something we had never seen before, an emissary from a distant world high in the mountains along the upper reaches of the brook, where it vanished into gorges and there were no people. So where did it come from? Had it been blown into the mountains by the wind? I did not know, but I gave the plastic a name—what I do not recall. I do know it had a nice sound and was very secret, and since then I have often racked my brains, trying to remember that name, that word. I would give a lot to know it, but I do not, and I also do not have that delicate piece of weather-beaten plastic anymore. Having neither the secret word nor the plastic makes me poorer today than I was as a child.

I recall experiencing a similar shiver of awe as a child in Sachrang, when I found a frayed piece of bright blue plastic that had floated down the brook and got caught on an overhanging branch. At the time I had never seen anything like it, and I kept it hidden for weeks, licked it, found it slightly stretchy, full of miraculous properties. Not until weeks later, when I had my fill of owning it, did I show it to anyone. Till and I discovered that when you held a burning match to it, it melted; it gave off black smoke and a nasty smell, but it was something we had never seen before, an emissary from a distant world high in the mountains along the upper reaches of the brook, where it vanished into gorges and there were no people. So where did it come from? Had it been blown into the mountains by the wind? I did not know, but I gave the plastic a name—what I do not recall. I do know it had a nice sound and was very secret, and since then I have often racked my brains, trying to remember that name, that word. I would give a lot to know it, but I do not, and I also do not have that delicate piece of weather-beaten plastic anymore. Having neither the secret word nor the plastic makes me poorer today than I was as a child.

One glance at the script makes it clear that Kinski’s project is beyond repair. There is half a page of fucking, then half a page of fiddling—and so on, for six hundred pages. The whole thing adds up to one enormous Kinski ego trip. He will have to do this one himself.

According to the statistics, 85 percent of all existing species are beetles and insects of various sorts; so where are we on the scale of God’s favor?

Outdoors night was falling. When I stepped outside, it was lurking among the trees.

I am worried about Kinski, because when we are dragging the ship uphill, he will be just a kind of extra, and given his inadequate supply of human compassion and depth, he will use the only means still at his disposal to make himself the center of attention again, which is to get sick. I was betting with myself.

In the evening I finished reading a book, and because I was feeling so alone, I buried the book on the edge of the forest with a borrowed spade.