In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

DURS GRÜNBEIN Flame and Wood A Speech on the Occasion of the Unveiling of a Giordano Bruno Monument in Berlin Mysterious are the ways of artists. What might make a young Berlin-based sculptor anno Domini 2008 honor the philosopher Giordano Bruno with a sculptural monument? You quickly realize, when talking to Alexander Polzin that this cannot just have been about commissioned art. The lonely Dominican monk must have pulled him in with a great force of attraction. It is quite possible that Bruno reminded Polzin of the cosmic loneliness of mankind in the endlessness of space; a certain nerve of his will have been tweaked. Otherwise, he would not have journeyed to Nola, a small town within seeing distance of Mt. Vesuvius. This is where Bruno was born and it is here that—at Polzin’s supplication and with the blessings of the local authorities—the unique archetype of the wooden sculpture in memorial of the town’s great lost son has been erected in the town hall. Also playing a part in the genealogy of Polzin’s project is the Central European University in Budapest, the educational institute founded with aid from the billionaire financial trader George Soros. They approached the artist with an open request for a freestanding, eye-catching sculpture which they intended to erect in a prominent location at the university. Polzin said he did not have to think long at all; indeed, Giordano Bruno occurred to him spontaneously. Overwhelmingly unerring and yet unusual enough, the heretic easily serves also as emblematic figure of a young, independent Europe. And because we are dealing with mysterious ways, we discover that Polzin was encouraged to pursue his project by none other than the playwright Heiner Müller, who himself had intended to write a play about Giordano Bruno but died before having the chance to do so. The dramatist’s fantasy was very much taken with the notorious Renaissance figure: this man who had once scraped around Shakespearian London, applying in vain for a teaching position at Oxford. You slip easily into daydreams when you imagine the philosopher in his cilice cowl on his way to the Globe Theatre “passing taverns, whorehouses, murderers’ dens,” as Müller wrote. We know that Bruno was in Wittenberg, the center of the 252 Visibility of the Invisible Reformation, where he eulogized Luther. In Prague, he communicated his theses against Euclidian geometry to Emperor Rudolf II, Patron of the arts and science. He traveled to Toulouse, Avignon, Paris, Zurich, and Geneva. Strangely, it seems it is only from Budapest (come to think of it, Berlin, too), a collection of muddy huts on the edge of the great thoroughfares at the time, for which we do not have documentary evidence of his having passed through. This itinerant monk crisscrossed a Europe divided by confessionalism as never before, ever wary of all local strains of Christian faith—for it was perilous being a Christian back then. He traveled thousands of kilometers of road, mostly on foot, up to the point they locked him up in a cage in Venice. Thus, marked the beginning of his eight-year long battle with the forces of the Inquisition; a battle that he could not, and indeed did not want, to win. This fiery, early enlightener’s quiddity is captured in his statement to the cardinals: “You pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it.” In the jubilee year of 1600 Anno Domini, Bruno was burnt at the stake in a public event; the proceeding serving as salutation from a victim of the raging Counterreformation to the new century. Was it the legend of the heretic and heroic intellectual that attracted the sculptor? Or, rather, was it the life of the poet and the brilliant natural philosopher? I will not pester Polzin for a definite answer. I am simply content with the chronicle of his European-wide project. His act of memorialization was for a very solitary mind behind which no institution ever stood, no alma mater, no academy of sciences. Yes, there is a rather forceful monument to Bruno in Rome and tourists cannot help but notice it. It stands on the Campo de’ Fiori, the site of Bruno’s execution, where there is still today (just as in those time), a flower market. Bruno’s hooded head hanging, his penetrating gaze falls down on the uninvolved around his feet. The statue speaks to the mute protest against the prevailing...

Share