Turin Horse Quotes

Another image comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman’s very eyes, put his arms around the horse’s neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse of Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse.

Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump petting Karenin’s head and ruminating on mankind’s debacles. Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman’s very eyes, put his arms around the horse’s neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had removed himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse. And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head on her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, “the master and proprietor of nature,” marches onward.

Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turin. Seeing a horse and a coachman beating it with a whip, Nietzsche went up to the horse and, before the coachman's very eyes, put his arms around the horse's neck and burst into tears. That took place in 1889, when Nietzsche, too, had re-moved himself from the world of people. In other words, it was at the time when his mental illness had just erupted. But for that very reason I feel his gesture has broad implications: Nietzsche was trying to apologize to the horse for Descartes. His lunacy (that is, his final break with mankind) began at the very moment he burst into tears over the horse. And that is the Nietzsche I love, just as I love Tereza with the mortally ill dog resting his head in her lap. I see them one next to the other: both stepping down from the road along which mankind, the master and proprietor of nature, marches onward.

The performance of the actors falls within the province of this same “realism.” They are neither traditional actors, nor individuals living their own story on the screen. It hardly matters, however, if they are career actors like János Derszi, the young man of Almanac of Fall who became the old man of The Turin Horse, or amateurs like Erika Bok, little Estike of Satantango who became the daughter of the old coach driver. They are, in the first place, “personalities,” says Béla Tarr. They have to be the characters, not play them. We must not allow ourselves to be tricked by the apparent banality of the prescription. Their task is not that of identifying themselves with fictional characters. No realism in their words, which punctuate a situation without intending to translate the particularity of the characters. But no need to adopt a “neutral” tone, à la Bresson, either, in order to make the hidden truth of their being appear. Their words are already detached from their bodies, they are an emanation of the fog, of repetition, and of expectation. They circulate throughout the place, are dispersed in its air, or they affect the other bodies in it and arouse new movements. The realism is in the manner of inhabiting situations. Amateurs or professionals, what counts for actors is their capacity to perceive situations and to invent responses, a capacity formed not by classes on the dramatic arts, but by their experience of life, or by an artistic practice forged elsewhere.