TE15 Lithuanian Honey Cake

Monologues

Hannah Arendt is reporting on the trial against Eichmann Jerusalem, Israel, May 1962 Poetry won’t do.

Several thousand pages of reports. Each word is preceded by a name. Each name is a human being: a body and a spirit. Let everyone account for what they said and did. Not in front of God, but people. In front of the judges. There’s no room for poetry here. There are rules and regulations, article by article. Laws, constitutions, resolutions, amendments. A desperate attempt – the only one that matters – to perceive evil, to link it with a name, to link the name with the person, to put the person in court. To patiently follow each curve of the letters without losing meaning from sight. To forget about one’s own pain. To limit evil. Merely this. No, poetry won’t do. But it’s precisely poetry, this source of light, that can turn evil visible. It’s its exactness that allows

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