Friday, July 12, 2024

Lacrimosa

Requiem for the West

Giorgio Agamben, Quodlibet, July 11, 2024

Towards the end of the 19th century, Moritz Steinschneider, one of the founders of the science of Judaism, declared, not without scandal among many right-thinking people, that the only thing that could be done for Judaism was to ensure it a worthy funeral. It is possible that since then his judgment will also apply to the Church and Western culture as a whole. What has in fact happened, however, is that the worthy funeral that Steinschneider spoke of has not been celebrated, neither then for Judaism nor now for the West.
An essential part of the funeral in the tradition of the Catholic Church is the mass of Requiem, which opens in the Introit with the words: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Furthermore, until 1970, the Roman missal prescribed recitation in the dies irae sequence for the mass of requiem. This choice was perfectly consistent with the fact that the very term that defined the mass for the deceased came from an apocalyptic text, the Apocalypse of Ezra, which evoked both la pace and the end of the world: requiem aeternitatis dabit vobis, quoniam in proximo est ille, qui in finem saeculi adveniet, “he shall give you eternal peace, for he is near, at the end of the world to come”. The abolition of dies irae in 1970 goes together with the abandonment of any eschatological instance by the Church, which has in this way completely conformed to the idea of infinite progress that defines modernity. What is dropped without the courage to explain the reasons — the day of wrath, the last day — can be picked up as a weapon to be used against the cowardice and contradictions of power at the moment of its end. This is what we intend to do here, trying to celebrate without parodic intent, but outside the Church, which belongs to the number of the deceased, a sort of abbreviated funeral for the West.

Dies irae, dies illa
solvet saeclum in favilla,
teste David cum Sybilla.


Day of Wrath,—that Day of Days,—
When earth shall vanish in a blaze,
as David, with the Sibyl, says!

What day is it? Certainly the present, the time we are living in now. Every day is the day of wrath, the last day. Today the century, the world is burning, and with it also our house. We must be witnesses of this, like David and the Sibyl. Whoever remains silent and does not bear witness, will not have peace either now or tomorrow, because peace is just what the West cannot and does not want to see or think about.

Quantus tremor est futurus
quando iudex est venturus
cuncta stricte discussurus.


What a trembling will come o’er us,
When the Judge shall be before us,
For every hidden sin to score us!

Terror is not future, it is here and now. And that judge is us, called to pronounce judgment, the krisis on our time. We give back the word “crisis”, which one does nothing but talk about to justify the state of exception, its original meaning of judgmemt. In the vocabulary of Hippocratic medicine, krisis designated the moment in which the doctor must judge whether the patient will die or survive. In the same way we discern what in the West is dying and what is still alive. And the judgment will be severe, nothing will be overlooked.

Tuba mirum spargens sonum
per sepulchra regionum,
coget omnes ante thronum.

Mors stupebit et natura,
cum resurget creatura,
iudicanti responsura.


The trumpet with its wondrous sound,
Piercing each sepulchral mound,
Shall summon all, the throne around.

Nature and death will stand aghast,
When those who to the grave have past,
Come answering to the judge blast!

We cannot resurrect the dead, but we can at least prepare with all care the marvelous instrument of our thought and our judgment and, then making it resonate without fear, free nature and death from the hands of the power that governs us with them. Feeling the amazement of nature and death in us, foreseeing here and now another possible life and another death, is the only resurrection that interests us.

Liber scriptus proferetur,
in quo totum continetur,
unde mundus iudicetur.

Iudex ergo cum sedebit,
quidquid latet apparebit,
nil inultum remanebit.


The Written Book shall be unrolled,
Wherein the deeds of all are told,
And shall the doom of all unfold.

For when the Judge shall be enthroned,
No secret shall be left unowned,
No crime or trespass unatoned.

The written book is history, which is always history of lies and injustice. There is no history of truth and justice, but an instantaneous appearance in the crucial krisis of any lie and injustice. At that point the lie will no longer be able to cover reality. Justice and truth actually manifest themselves, showing falsehood and injustice. And nothing will escape the force of their revenge, provided that this word is given back the etymological meaning it has in the Roman trial, in which the vindex is the one who vim dicit, who shows the judge the violence that was done to the one whom only in this sense he “avenges”.

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,
quem patronum rogaturus,
cum vix iustus sit securus.


When for a guilty wretch like me,
What plea, what pleader, will there be,
When scarcely shall the just go free!

The just who lends his voice to the judgment is somehow involved in the judgment and cannot call others to his defence. No one can testify for the witness, he is alone with his own testimony — in this sense he is not sure, he is inside the crisis of his time — and nevertheless he pronounces his own testimony.

Confutatis maledictis,
flammis acribus addictis,
voca me cum benedictis...

Lacrimosa dies illa,
qua resurget ex favilla
iudicandus homo reus


When the accurst, from thy face driven,
With bitter pangs of Hell are riven,
Oh! call me with the blest to Heaven.

Oh! The day of mournful gloom!
When man, from Nature’s ashy tomb,
Shall rise to meet his Maker’s doom.

Although the hymn on the day of wrath is part of a mass that asks for peace and mercy for the dead, the distinction between the cursed and the blessed, between the executioners and the victims is maintained. On the last day, the excutioners, as they are now doing without perhaps realising it, actually refute themselves, they drop the masks that covered their injustice and lies and throw themselves into the flames that they themselves lit up. The last day, the day of wrath, every day is a day of tears for them, and it is perhaps just because they are aware of it that they pretend to be so cheerful. Only the consensus and fear of many keeps that day in suspense. For this, even if we know we are powerless in the face of power, our judgment must be all the more implacable, which we cannot separate from the requiem we are celebrating. Lord, do not give them peace, for they do not know what it is.

(Dies irae’s English translation by Robert C. Winthrop)
(English translation by I, Robot)

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel, Salieri pours poison into a Mozart’s glass, 1884. Courtesy of WikiArt.

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