# Peter Weiss

Peter Weiss (8 November 1916 – 10 May 1982) was a German-born Swedish writer, painter and filmmaker.

## Quotes

* I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted. … That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country.
** Vanishing Point (1962)
* In Dante the hero would rather flee and renounce the tempting embrace instead of yielding to his desires and enduring the attendant dangers.
** Dante (written 1963, published 2003)
* Only in his poetry did he have the courage to love.
** Dante (written 1963, published 2003)

### Marat/Sade (1963)

    Full title: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade (Die Verfolgung und Ermordung Jean Paul Marats dargestellt durch die Schauspielgruppe des Hospizes zu Charenton unter Anleitung des Herrn de Sade) English version by Geoffrey Skelton. Verse adaptation by Adrian Mitchell. Music by Richard Peaslee. Atheneum, 1981, ISBN 0-689-70568-9
* We've got rights the right to starve We've got jobs waiting for work We're all brothers lousy and dirty We're all free and equal to die like dogs
** Patients, act 1, scene 6 (p. 11)
* Charlotte Corday walked alone Paris birds sang sugar calls Charlotte walked down lanes of stone through the haze of perfume stalls Charlotte smelt the dead's gangrene Heard the singing guillotine
** Singers, act 1, scene 10 (p. 19)
* Don't soil your pretty little shoes The gutter's deep and red Climb up climb up and ride along with me the tumbrel driver saidBut she never said a word never turned her headDon't soil your pretty little pants I only go one way Climb up climb up and ride along with me There's no gold coach todayBut she never said a word never turned her head
** Singers, act 1, scene 10 (pp.19-20)
* Every death even the cruellest death drowns in the total indifference of Nature Nature herself would watch unmoved if we destroyed the entire human race I hate Nature this passionless spectator this unbreakable iceberg-face that can bear everything this goads us to greater and greater acts
** Sade, act 1, scene 12 (p. 24)
* Against Nature's silence I use action In the vast indifference I invent a meaning I don't watch unmoved I intervene and say that this and this are wrong and I work to alter them and improve them The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes
** Marat, act 1, scene 12 (pp. 24-25) QOTD 2007·11·08 Sound file
* And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned away their faces and said Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage The soul lives on humility and patience at the same time screwing from the poor their last centime They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said Suffer Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God
** Marat, act 1, scene 13 (p. 28)
* So the poor instead of bread made do with a picture of the bleeding scourged and nailed-up Christ and prayed to that image of their helplessness
** Marat, act 1, scene 13 (pp. 28-29)
* We're all so clogged with dead ideas passed from generation to generation that even the best of us don't know the way out We invented the Revolution but we don't know how to run it Look everyone wants to keep something from the past a souvenir of the old regime This man decides to keep a painting This one keeps his mistress He [pointing] keeps his garden He [pointing] keeps his estate He keeps his country house He keeps his factories This man couldn't part with his shipyards This one kept his army and that one keeps his king
** Marat, act 1, scene 15 (p. 34)
* Singers: We've got nothing always had nothing nothing but holes and millions of them Kokol: Living in holes Polpoch: Dying in holes Cucurucu: Holes in our bellies Rossignol: and holes in our clothes
** act 1, scene 16 (p. 35)
* Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out Neither side is glorious On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing Not to lie under the earth but to walk upon it without crutches
** Roux, act 1, scene 19 (p. 45)
* Marat Today they need you because you are going to suffer for them They need you and they honour the urn which holds your ashes Tomorrow they will come back and smash that urn and they will ask Marat who was Marat
** Sade, act 1, scene 20 (p. 46)
* And now Marat now I see where this revolution is heading To the withering of the individual man and a slow merging into uniformity to the death of choice to self denial to deadly weakness in a state which has no contract with individuals but which is impregnable
** Sade, act 1, scene 20 (p. 49)
* Don't be deceived when our Revolution has been finally stamped out and they tell you things are better now Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which these new industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you
** Marat, act 1, scene 23 (p. 55)
* What has gone wrong with the men who are ruling I'd like to know who they think they are fooling They told us that torture was over and gone but everyone knows the same torture goes on
** Singers, act 1, scene 24 (p. 58)
* Long ago I abandoned my masterpiece a roll of paper thirty yards long which I filled completely with minute handwriting in my dungeon years ago It vanished when the Bastille fell it vanished as everything written everything thought and planned will disappear
** Sade, act 2, scene 28 (p. 82)
* What's the point of a revolution without general copulation copulation copulation
** Chorus, act 2, scene 30 (p. 92)
* Fight on land and sea All men want to be free If they don't never mind we'll abolish all mankind
** Singers and Patients, act 2, scene 31 (p. 98)
* We can say what we like without favour or fear and what we can't say we can breathe in your ear
** Singers, act 2, scene 33 (p. 100)
* Our play's chief aim has been to take to bits Great propositions and their opposites, See how they work, and let them fight it out, To point some light on our eternal doubt. Marat and I both advocated force But in debate each took a different course. Both wanted changes, but his views and mine On using power never could combine. On the one side, he who thinks our lives Can be improved by axes and knives, Or he who, submerged in the imagination, Seeking a personal annihilation.
** Sade, epilogue
* I've twisted and turned them every way, And can see no ending to our play.
** Sade, epilogue

## External links

* Peter Weiss pages by emmyBCA
* Profile at imagi-nation
* Profile at IMDb
* Review of Marat/Sade at The Complete Review
* Review of Inferno at The Complete Review
* Review of The Investigation at The Complete Review
* "The Political Aesthetics of Holocaust Literature: Peter Weiss's The Investigation and Its Critics" by Robert Cohen, History and Memory Vol. 10, No. 2 (Fall 1998)