ELEGY Hans Magnus Enzensberger A PARTING FROM MAX SEBALDHe who was close to usfrom far off seemed to have comeinto our uncanny homeland.Only a searching for traceswith a divining rod of wordsthat quivered in his hand.Across conflagration sitesand burying placeshe followed it,through to raving madness on Suffolk heaths.Is this the promised land?Earlier the dark had encroached,but he moved on,through all those nightmaresundaunted made his way.That dust became light for himwe know from three lines alone:So soundless I glided scarcely stirring a wing high up above the earth . . .Translated, from the German, by Michael Hamburger.An essayist as well as a poet, Hans Magnus Enzensberger is one of Germanys most important writers.The latest English edition of his nork is Lighter Than Air: Moral Poems, translated by David Constantine (Bloodaxe Books, 2002)Source: Irish Pages, Vol. 1, No. 2, The Justice Issue (Autumn - Winter, 2002/2003), p. 136 Pandora's BoxAdam Curtis, 19926. A is for AtomPANDORA'S BOX[From unidentified 1950s promotional film featuring father and soncharacters looking across a bay at a city] [Son:] "When did all this begin, Dad?" [Father:] "Well, son, it's a very old story; it's... so old, it's hard tosay when it really began... Could've beenback in 1540, when Copernicus identified the Earth as a speck of dust moving in an orbitaround the Sun... or it could've been in 1905, when a young [Swiss] German physicist arrived at afundamental truth that matter could be converted into energy and expressedit in theequation E = mc2. Then there were other dates... 1937: the firstindustrial atom-smasher; 1942: thefirst nuclear chain reaction; 1945: the Bomb. Somewhere in the course of theseevents, the dawn cameup on the atomic era. It's going to have a tremendous effect on our town down there, son...It'll be felt in every town in America. And it won't matter whether they makeships or shoes orsealing wax; with atomic power will come benefits to mankind that we can as yet onlyimagine."A is for ATOMIn 1945, in the aftermath ofwar, scientists were heroes particularly the physicists, who had built theatomic bomb. "They are men", said Life magazine, "whowear the tunic of Superman and stand in the spotlight of a thousand suns."In the public imagination,atomic scientists had harnessed a terrifying power which could literallyreshape the world.[From footage of] Robert Oppenheimer, chief scientist, Manhattan Project [in The Decision to Drop the Bomb (1965)?] "I knew the world would not be the same. Iremembered the lines from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: "NowI am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." "I suppose we all thought that, one way oranother."Many of the scientists whohad worked on the atomic bomb felt a deep sense of guilt about what they haddone. They were convinced they now had a moral duty to use the immense forcesthey had unleashed [for] better, peacefulpurposes. What they did not foresee were the demands that would be made of themwhen their science came out of the laboratory and into the world of politicsand big business. They would lose control and be forced to compromise and todeceive.Dr. Chaunc[e?]y Starr, physicist, Manhatt[a]n Project 19431946 So, all of