Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12.04.2005

Will the revolution bring democracy to Kyrgyzstan? Russian journalist Vera Tokombaeva has her doubts. "Most Kyrgyzstanis see politics above all as the possibility of controlling different branches of society. When the biggest piece of the pierogi belongs to the former ruler, then redistribution is a serious threat. To put it another way, chances are good that the republic will repeat its mistake." For Tokombaeva, Kyrgyzstan is different from the Ukraine in that it has no political or intellectual elite, and an ideological vacuum. "There were slogans about democracy and the market economy, but nothing more. Now new ideas could flare up – liberalism, nationalism, religion. Today small leaders are keen to establish their own rule. Moreover, there is the danger that a new, revanchist opposition of former 'Akayevists' will emerge, who would have to give back their property, or replace what they have squandered. In past weeks it has become only too clear that the new rulers have neither a concrete programme, nor an ability for compromise, nor even the readiness to give up their own ambitions in favour of a constructive solution. Never was Kyrgyzstani society so near to clan war - a war over land and pastures, as the nomadic tribes have been waging since time immemorial."

In an interview with Olga Grimm-Weissert, opera director Peter Sellars, whose "Tristan and Isolde" appears tonight in the Paris Opera, talks about the composer Richard Wagner. "Tristan was an orphan, he had no home, was touched by nobody. If someone approached him affectionately, he shrank back because his mother had never touched him. He is a stranger everywhere he goes, he thinks he has to tell everyone that he's OK. In the second act, Isolde tells him that he's no longer alone, that it's 'Tristan AND Isolde' now and that they can die together. Here we don't have the romantic Wagner but rather the Wagner who sees relationships between adults as hard work."


Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 12.04.2005

Giorgio Agamben, one of today's most renowned philosophers, writes about the black-red-gold-haired naked women recently displayed in Vanessa Beecroft's performance VB 55 in the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. In fact they are not naked, he says, for "according to the axiom based on the Christian theology of clothing, human nakedness, if at all, is only possible in a provisional, negative manner. For one thing, this is true because in Eden the creatural body is immediately covered by divine grace, and for another because this body is clothed after the fall in a gown whose necessity is the basis for the christening; and finally, because in Paradise, the blessed will receive a new robe of glory which cannot be cast off."

Marta Kijowska explains why, after the deaths of Pope John-Paul II and Nobel Prize winner Czeslaw Milosz, the time that Polish national consciousness fed on literature and Catholicism has come to an end. "Recent Polish history could have been very different, had Karol Wojtyla not been elected head of the Catholic church (1978) and Czeslaw Milosz not won the Nobel Prize (1980). The years before that were marked by struggle and deprivation. Some national myths were destroyed and the patience of the Poles was put to the test. Their collective power could not possibly have sufficed for a new uprising. But these two events were a signal that their two sources of Polish identity had not yet run dry."


Die Tageszeitung, 12.04.2005

In her column on theory and technology following the papal burial, Isolde Charms considers whether the general trend to confess in the sexual realm has been transferred to religion. Foucault would see another way of interpreting the phenomena. According to his analysis, bodily desire is our innermost core; but now it seems that metaphysical desire is taking its place. "Formerly the most significant medium of confession was the church, with its sophisticated confessional practices. Then came a series of other media: medical, scientific, literary – in the first line, however, psychoanalysis. Today we have a privileged medium of confession in the media public and religion has become its most recent focus. Religion has gone from being a medium of confession to its most 'obscene' object."


Frankfurter Rundschau, 12.04.2005

Systems theorist Peter Fuchs reflects in an essay on why passion has become suspect and unmodern. "Living spontaneously is no longer considered legitimate; at best, it is a socially acceptable way of describing artists who are missing something: ironic realism seems to be the clearest effect of post-modernism. Passions have become strange – if they are to be shared, then only with dampened enthusiasm. To burn with passion, to decay from passion, to desire everything, to tremble, lament and scream, the wailing and the teeth grinding, lust and all the other seven sins, in short: the frenetic-panic in all its manifestations... We have for such phenomena 'limited generosity' (and a little humour) – perhaps in Salzburg at 'Jedermann'. In everyday life, they would simply terrify us and cause us to question whoever demonstrated them." Fuchs suggests going at the problem "with verve".