Friday, May 15, 2009

the jungle is obscene


a print from ernst haeckel's 1905 wanderbilder (travel pictures) series, image from ragesoss on flickr

iquitos, december 8, 1980
a still day, sultry. inactivity piled on inactivity, clouds staring down from the sky, pregnant with rain; fever reigns; insects taking on massive proportions. the jungle is obscene. everything about it is sinful, for which reason the sin does not stand out as sin. the voices in the jungle are silent; nothing is stirring, and a languid immobile anger hovers over everything. the laundry on the line refuses to dry. as a part of a conspiracy, flies suddenly descend on the table, their stomachs taut and iridescent. our little monkey was wailing in his cage, and when i approached, he looked and wailed right through me to some distant spot outside where his little heart hoped to find an echo. i let him out, but he went back into his cage, and now he is continuing to wail there. 

— by werner herzog, excerpts from his diary entries from the forthcoming book, conquest of the useless: reflections from the making of fitzcarraldo.

1 comment:

Viva said...

i love the jungle painting- what is the location? I want to go there, but it probably looks very different now.