Harry´s Blog

Herbert Kuhner

Here’s Hemingway the pugilist: “I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. De Maupassant. I’ve fought two draws with Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobody’s going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless I’m crazy or I keep getting better.”
- Ernest Hemingway, The New Yorker, May 13,1950Believe it or not folks, this statement came from a man of letters, who was a Nobel Laureate, to boot!

He was sort of right - as far as fisticuffs are concerned. But I’d give him even more than he gives himself. He could have knocked out three of the four in a genuine boxing ring. I’m not so sure about Maupassant, who was quite an athlete; I’d place my bets on him.

The bookmaker may be the right address for bets on boxing, but it’s the wrong address for literary evaluation, since the matter of winners and losers is completely theoretical.

Incidentally, Tolstoy made comparisons too. He thought that Shakespeare was dwarf compared to him, and another genius he put down was the great Leonid Andreyev.

Literary merit is always a debatable quality. An author shouldn’t be asked to blow his own horn, and if he blows voluntarily, he’s invariably supercilious. Rating an author is the business of the reader and the critic. Only a fool or a tyro would publicly compare himself to others of the trade. When start to compare, you’re bound to lose.

Let me tack this on! I love Maupassant more than I can say. What would I be without him? And by saying that, I win.

Sharron Angle, Tea-Party Republican candidate for the Nevada Senate, wants to outlaw abortion universally, even in cases of rape and incest. She insists that a young girl raped by her father should know that “two wrongs don’t make a right. “Much good can come from a horrific situation like that,” Angle added. ‘Lemons can be made into lemonade.’”

Yes Sharron, you need lemons for lemonade. And while you’re squeezing them, don’t forget, “If you want to make an omelette, you have to break a few eggs.”

And while Sharron is squeezing and breaking, here’s Bishop Andreas Laun of Salzburg, Austria. If a child is raped and becomes pregnant, the child should have the child. “I would inform the child of the wonder of the new life in her body - that it is partially her child which will long for the love of a mother and that that it would grow up like a brother or a sister. I also say to her: This will enable you to heal wound that you have acquired …”
- Kreuz.net Catholic News, Interview with Bishop Andreas Laun, Sept. 9, 2006

- Herbert Kuhner

Herbert Kuhner

Herr Kuhner, if you do not withdraw your case, we will send the public health officer.
- Anonymous caller

Martin Luksan suggested I tackle this again, so here goes!

Yes, this is a trip down Memory Lane, but there is nothing sentimental about it. These were not the good old days. There’s no dabbing at the edges of your eyes with a hankie when you think back.

I’d like to express my gratitude to all the people I encountered who helped me achieve a better understanding of the past.

My First Experience with Inhumanity:
Let me go back to 1938. I was three at the time. My mother and I were in my grandmother’s apartment in Rueppgasse in the 2nd district of Vienna. The doorbell to my grandmother’s rang. I ran to the door and opened it. It was the SA. They entered to ransack the apartment. One of them, I remember clearly, wore a brown suit and limped. The other wore a grey suit. They searched the apartment. The brown-suited man pushed my grandmother, who was eighty-three away from the sideboard in order to ransack it. And indeed it contained her shopping money.

I see that occurrence as clearly as if it were taking place right now.

My parents left what had become Ostmark with me in 1939. Members of my family who remained at that address, as well as at Kärntnertrasse 28, my paternal grandmother’s address, were deported and murdered. Incidentally the latter address used to be occupied by the Educational Academy of the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party. It is now the home of a trend chain store.

After my return to Austria in 1963, I set about translating and publishing Austrian poets. I considered it my special mission to render those poets who had experienced the Shoah.

The conditions were anything but sanguine and salubrious. It was as if I had never left.

I soon got into hot water. Apparently, I can’t let things be. I simply had to stir the pot. And I seem to keep on stirring and stirring.

I’ve always said that I wanted to have smooth sailing, but I couldn’t help rocking the boat. Rocking seems to be in my genes. Stepping out of line, which is a movement my feet can’t seem to avoid making.

I’ve been termed a troublemaker. Yes, that’s what I am, and that’s what I’ll be as long as I am on this planet.

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Citizen Dichand
A great newspaper magnate has left us. He is irreplaceable. The Austrian media landscape will never be the same without him. His influence with luminaries and notables knew no bounds. Hans Dichand was a Brobdingnagian to their Lilliputians.

Dialogue Between Dichand and Lingens
I gave him (Dichand) a text in which I stated that Israel “targeted” known terrorists, which is preferable to killing innocent civilians at random.

“If you always write against the views of the majority, we will not be able to come to an agreement,” he replied.

“I am aware of that,” I answered, “but I thought that you could accept an opinion that might differ from those views in your voluminous journal.

“That would be contrary to our formula of success.”

- Peter Michael Lingens, Profil, 21, Juni 2010, Nr. 25, S. 113

Otto Mühl’s Credo:
“The Friedrichshof Lord’s Prayer
Long live the whole!
I must resist temptation to sin against the whole
in sex as well as with my belongings
and in thought and deed.
Everything must be for the good of the whole.
I will terminate the program
that has been impressed on me
by strange ethical persons
and transform it into a social program
for the good of the whole.
I think, work, act and feel
exclusively for the whole.
Without the whole I am nothing.”(1)

Roman Polanski
The Pedophile’s Credo:
“Judges want to fuck young girls.
Juries want to fuck young girls.
Everyone wants to fuck young girls!”
- Martin Amis in Tatler and “Visiting Mrs Nabokov,” 1979.

(Right you are but wrong you are, Mr. Polanski.
Not every pedophile has his sights on young girls.)

In these days when superficial apologies by celebrities for indiscretions abound, Otto Mühl and Pope Benedict XVI apologized concurrently on June 11, 2010.

And as a gesture of good will two pedophile priests were reinstated in the Austrian Province of Styria by Bishop Egon Kapellari on the preceding day. (2)

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Herbert Kuhner

There’s a Hollywood myth about Lawrence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman, Hofmann is reputed to have gone without sleep for a whole weekend in order to be convincing in a scene in Marathon Man. Olivier is alleged to have suggested to the dishevelled Hofmann: “Why don’t you try acting, dear boy?!”

Robert Di Niro, Silvester Stallone, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jared Leto, Nicole Kidman, Renée Zellweger, Charlize Theron, Meryl Streep and Megan Fox have something in common. They all put on weight for film roles.

This is sheer and utter madness. Putting on and losing weight drastically a can result in quick or slow death.

Giving your all for a role should be limited to creating an illusion. It should not entail risking your health and life.

Take a look at the stars of black-and-white yesteryear! How about the great toupées and dental work!

Of course an illusion of extra poundage is not so easy to create. But how about letting the make-up man have a go!

An actor can act fat and camera angles can help him along.

“Why don’t you try acting, dear boys and girls?!

From Violence Under the Guise of Art
or Third Reich Recycling.

In 1977 Valie Export was brought to trial for having engaged in cruelty to animals and found guilty of having tied a canary to a perch. However the scalding of the birds with boiling wax, which had been filmed, came under the statute of limitations. (1) This “art object” was on view as part of the Export Exhibition in the Museum of the Twentieth Century in Vienna in March of 1997. On March 17, 1997, in Treffpunkt Kultur, a program devoted to culture on ORF, Austrian State TV, films by Export were broadcast. In one scene Export uses a bloody kitchen knife to slice the neck of a turtle, a mouse and a parrot, but the actual decapitations are deleted by film cutting.(2)

Valie Export “herself”: “A bird is tied to a rostrum with thin cord. I kneel in front of the bird on the rostrum and pour hot liquid wax on it. Then I pour wax on my feet and my left hand; the wax container is knocked over and the bird’s head is covered with wax. I free myself by cutting the cord with a knife which I lifted from the rostrum with my mouth and use it. The rostrum is encircled by nails.” (3)

After Export was invited to submit a design for the monument on Judenplatz some years ago, she had thoughts about the Holocaust. “Not directly or for a specific reason, as happened when I was invited to participate in the competition.” She didn’t win that one, but on August 28, 1999, her anti-fascistic monument in Allentsteig, Lower Austria, was unveiled. She may be able to contribute a valid analysis since violence plays a primary role in her work.

In the spring of 1995, an official Austrian exhibit commemorating prominent Austrians who were forced to emigrate was shown at 565 Fifth Avenue in New York. The organizer of the exhibit and co-editor of the accompanying book, The Cultural Exodus from Vienna (5)  is Peter Weibel, who is also co-editor of the previously-mentioned Wien. Among the highlights of the latter scholarly work are photos of co-editor Export engaging in fellatio with Weibel. Here’s a quote from the horse’s mouth: “When Valie Export is sucking my cock, one can see it.”(6)

Also featured in this volume is the depiction of an event in Cologne organized by Weibel and Export in which bullwhips, coils of barbed wire, beer bottles and ether were used to injure actionists and members of the audience. (7)  One of the most revolting aspects of the book is the juxtaposing of documentary photos of murdered children with photos of Hermann Nitsch actions with innards. (8)  Thus, infanticide too is part of Show Biz. Nitsch: “Killing was and is beyond all moral judgments.”(9)

During the Third Reich children were taught to kill birds
with their hands in a camp called Kinderland,
which translates as “Children’s Land.”(10)

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