Jay

“Cleopatra: I dreamt there was an emperor Antony.
O, such another sleep, that I might see
But such another man.

Dolabella: If it might please you—

Cleopatra: His face was as the heavens, and therein stuck
A sun and moon, which kept their course and lighted
The little O, the Earth.

Dolabella: Most sovereign creature—

Cleopatra: His legs bestrid the ocean, his reared arm
Crested the world. His voice was propertied
As all the tunèd spheres, and that to friends;
But when he meant to quail and shake the orb,
He was as rattling thunder. For his bounty,
There was no winter in ‘t; an autumn ’twas
That grew the more by reaping. His delights
Were dolphin-like; they showed his back above
The element they lived in. In his livery
Walked crowns and crownets; realms and islands were
As plates dropped from his pocket.

Dolabella: Cleopatra—

Cleopatra: Think you there was, or might be, such a man
As this I dreamt of?

Dolabella: Gentle madam, no.

Cleopatra: You lie up to the hearing of the gods!
But if there be nor ever were one such,
It’s past the size of dreaming. Nature wants stuff
To vie strange forms with fancy, yet t’ imagine
An Antony were nature’s piece ‘gainst fancy,
Condemning shadows quite.”
― William Shakespere, Antony and Cleopatra

“Surely at the very least, the group would have walked past the stump of an old tree near the camp laundry. Today it still sits on the very same spot, ash grey and deeply furrowed. On a recent, visit I found its heartwood almost entirely obscured by stones placed in accordance with the Jewish tradition of symbolically marking the graves of the dead to signal that they had not been forgotten. This stump is what remains of Goethe’s oak. In the end, Metamorphosen’s upwellings of grief, its spiralling of sorrows, its network of links to Beethoven’s sublime music of mourning are all gestures akin to the placing of such stones; for this too is music of farewell, a pebble on the grave of German culture’s utopian dream, adapting the language of the Goethe poem that still beats somewhere far below the rippling surface of this music. What it is, what it was, what it could have been. In memoriam.”
― Jeremy Eichler, Time's Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance

“The man who is to die in front of us today in some way took part in the revolt. They say he had contacts with the rebels of Birkenau, that he carried arms into our camp, that he was plotting a simultaneous mutiny among us. He is to die today before our very eyes: and perhaps the Germans do not understand that this solitary death, this man’s death which has been reserved for him, will bring him glory, not infamy.

At the end of the German’s speech, which nobody understood, the raucous voice of before again rose up: “Haht ihr verst and en?" Have you understood? Who answered “Jawohl?" Everybody and nobody: it was as if our cursed resignation took body by itself, as if it turned into a collective voice above our heads. But everyone heard the cry of the doomed man, it pierced through the old thick barriers of inertia and submissiveness, it struck the living core of man in each of us: “Kamaraden, icb bin der Letzte!" (Comrades, I am the last one!).

I wish I could say that from the midst of us, an abject flock, a voice rose, a murmur, a sign of assent. But nothing happened. We remained standing, bent and grey, our heads dropped, and we did not uncover our heads until the German ordered us to do so. The trap door opened, the body wriggled horribly; the band began playing again and we were once more lined up and filed past the quivering body of the dying man.

At the foot of the gallows, the SS watch us pass with indifferent eyes: their work is finished, and well finished. The Russians can come now: there are no longer any strong men among us, the last one is now hanging above our heads, and as for the others, a few halters had been enough. The Russians can come now: they will only find us, the slaves, the worn-out, worthy of the unarmed death which awaits us.

To destroy a man is difficult, almost as difficult as to create one: it has not been easy, nor quick, but you Germans have succeeded. Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgement.

Alberto and I went back to the hut, and we could not look each other in the face. That man must have been tough, he must have been made of another metal than us if this condition of ours, which has broken us, could not bend him.

Because we also are broken, conquered: even if we know how to adapt ourselves, even if we have finally learnt how to find our food and to resist the fatigue and cold, even if we return home.

We lifted the menaschka on to the bunk and divided it, we satisfied the daily ragings of hunger, and now we are oppressed by shame.”
― Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz

“Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.”
― William Shakespeare, The Tempest