Hast Du etwas Zeit fuer mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied fuer Dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
In the opening pages of Iris Murdoch's "A Severed Head", the novel's married narrator, Martin, and his lover Georgie discuss the secrecy of their affair:
"You mean its being clandestine is of its essence," said Georgie, "and if it were exposed to the daylight it would crumble to pieces? I don't think I like that idea."
"I didn't quite say that," I said. "But knowledge, other people's knowledge, does inevitably modify what it touches. Remember the legend of Psyche, whose child, if she told about her pregnancy, would be mortal, whereas if she kept silent it would be a god."
But the question of clandestineness is more than the discretion of an extramarital affair - it is also the presentation of an unmitigated, absolute choice: does one speak, or does one remain silent? And this choice, in turn, transmutes into an issue of integrity: How much should one say? How much should one defend? How much should one shout to the world, to state, vocalise, defend and stand by - one's morals, one's ideals, one's values, one's principles, one's beliefs?
It seems to me that nowhere is the idea of choosing destiny more stark than the choice of keeping quiet or speaking up. You can choose your god or your mortal - the differences between heaven and earth. Antigone, who went against her uncle's, King Creon of Thebes, decision to bury only her one brother, Eteocles, but not her other brother, Polynices, chooses to speak up and as a result casts herself and her tale into tragedy, whose end results not only in Antigone's death but also those of Haemon, her lover, who stabs himself after Antigone hangs herself, and Queen Eurydice, Haemon's mother, who cuts her throat upon hearing about her son's death. And, bizarrely, I also think of Spike Lee's Jungle Fever, where Flipper's (Wesley Snipes) and Angela's (Annabella Sciorra) parallel (though unrelated) decisions to reveal their inter-racial affair leads them into broken, cast out and disgraced lives. They who have chosen to speak.
And myself? How do I choose?
Heute zieh ich meine Runden
Seh' die Welt in Truemmern liegen
Hab' 'nen Luftballon gefunden
Denk' an Dich und lass' ihn fliegen
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