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Walberberg 2008:
Rooted Realities and Maps of Migration |
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I like the parable of the six blind men and the elephant. Each of the men is introduced to a different bit of the beast and comes away with a quite different - and limited - idea of what an elephant is: introduced to the tail, one decides an elephant resembles a rope; introduced to a leg, another decides it’s a tree trunk. The belly is just like a wall, the tusk is a spear, the trunk is a snake, an ear is a fan. Versions vary, and so does the moral, but in each of the versions knowledge is partial, truth relative. I often think I’m one of the blind men, stumbling from elephant to elephant. My life is a succession of elephants. I stumble into them. I get them wrong (or right, in my own way).
Going abroad, I usually feel deaf and dumb too. And homesick.
I was homesick well in advance of Walberberg, which was never in my anticipation ‘Walberberg’ at all, if there is such a place, but ‘Berlin’ or ‘Germany’. I’d never been to Berlin or Germany before, and my expectations were curiously clouded: it would be dark, and cold, unfriendly, a troubling sort of an animal. The kind that finds you out, perhaps.
And now I know. It’s not an animal at all, but a place (a ‘rooted reality’), where one wakes to a lake, trees on the horizon, and breakfasts with poets. At Walberberg, whole days are passed in conversation, listening to writers, talking to readers. In this Berlin, my Berlin, I needn’t apologise for my deaf-and-dumbness, because everyone here speaks my language (and appreciates it often better than I do).
In this Germany, it will be suggested that I resemble J.B. Priestley - in my writing, not my person - but also that I’m the most German of writers. I will be compared, in passing, to Wittgenstein, and it won’t matter that I haven’t read Wittgenstein (or, for that matter, J.B. Priestley). Asked to account for the authority of authors, my confession of lacking all sense of authority will be what allows me authority. Not knowing is fine. In this home from home, my not knowing is my starting point, my introduction. Berlin is Leila Abouleila. It is Alice Oswald, Archie Markham, Stephen Knight. Berlin is Patricia. And Marijke. Germany is a host of fifty others. It’s a welcoming sort of an animal. The kind that helps you out, in fact.
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