Sturm und Drang
As the whole of Germany braced last night for the huge winter storm known here as Orkan Kyrill, I became fascinated with the live television coverage of the gusting winds (over 200 km/h on the north coasts) and heavy rain. First of all, I noticed how it took a local event of this magnitude to feel I was actually in Germany at all (I'm usually mentally in Japan, the UK or the US, selected parts of the city of Berlin, the internet). Secondly, I noticed the silly way all the reporters -- mostly icily sexy blonde madchen -- were shouting into big fuzzy mic shields like enormous ruffling caterpillars, their hair flying out behind them. As the wind buffeted them, each in turn struggled, live on camera, to stay alive. There was something of Munch's "The Scream" about it all. But, in contrast to their usual icy reports on meetings at the Finanzministerium, this storm seemed to be flushing the madchen with an unwonted elan vital. Next I noticed that the flat and banal quality of television video was being transformed, by wind and rain and water on the lens, into something else, something more exciting and artistic, a kind of radical subjectivity that harked back, perhaps, to something in Germany's 18th century past: the movement known as Sturm und Drang -- storm and stress.
Yes, this natural cataclysm seemed to be bringing something out in these "emergency girls": they seemed to be reaching back to the Geniezeit, the "era of genius" -- that part of the German soul best encapsulated in the writings of young Goethe and Schiller. One of the reporters was even called Anke Genius! The Literary Encyclopaedia describes the Storm and Stress sensibility thus:
"In a nutshell, the central concepts of Sturm und Drang are ecstasy of emotion and passion; boundless affirmation of nature; the idolisation of the unique, creative and all-powerful individual (the "genius", the "Faustian" personality); the veneration of art as gospel, i.e. as creation of the genius... There was a strong psychological orientation in the movement: a keen interest in human nature and the passions that cause its triumphs and its downfall. The Weltanschauung [world-view] of Sturm und Drang was essentially tragic: as the Promethean genius it liked to portray is invariably undone by a world of mediocrity, tragic failure appears to be a matter of course for greatness."
A radical subjectivity, a derangement of the senses, a sense of impending crisis, an awe in nature, a fascination with death -- it was all there. Feeling my own genius rising up in me like a storm, I opened up iMovie and set shots of the "Sturm und Drang girls" to one of my own compositions, "I Refuse To Die". Here are the results.