Intelligence Is the Art of Remaining Faithful under Shifting Circumstances

Alexander Kluge is one of the major German fiction writers of the late twentieth century and an important social critic. As a filmmaker, he is credited with the launch of the New German Cinema movement. Anselm Kiefer, born in 1945 in Donaueschingen, studied law and Romance languages before turning to painting. A student of Horst Antes and Joseph Beuys, he is known for major works such as Parsifal, Zweistromland, and Mohn und Gedächtnis. In 2015, the Centre Pompidou in Paris dedicated a major retrospective to his work. Alexander Booth is a poet and translator based in Berlin.

“It’s been claimed that Kluge’s work is cold and impersonal. He himself says he writes ‘antirhetorically.’ Yes—but really, no. Intelligence Is the Art—its depths and orbits, elastic latitudes, lived and speculated histories—is supremely thermal. Every page is a construction site where words and images labor together to do justice to the complexity of thoughts being essayed. Rhythm and pulse. Warmth, so much warmth.”

• ForewordSTATION 1: Tractate on Money, Love, Power and Truth / Four Currencies that Rule Our LifespansSTATION 2: The House of Whispers / Anselm Kiefer’s Paintings Accompany Maurice Genevoix into the Panthéon, the Memorial of the Immortals / ‘Dedicated to Paul Celan’STATION 3: Two Very Young Arts: Photography and FilmSTATION 4: Stories of ExodusSTATION 5: Finnegans Wake and the Construction Site of WordsSTATION 6: 30 Films for Anselm KieferSTATION 7: ‘Something that wants to be born already lives amongst us’ / Stories on the Occasion of Anselm Kiefer’s Block of Work / ‘The unborn. Les non-nès’STATION 8: A as in Antaeus / D as in Daphne / ‘I’m going to paint someone from Altdorf’ / ‘Superstrings’STATION 9: Hortus philosophorum / Dr Robert Fludd, OxfordSTATION 10: ‘Building a house of trust’ / Hölderlin’s Pindar Fragments / ‘Time tumbles down from the stars’AcknowledgementsImage Credits