Dresden, a Contradiction

Dear God! the very houses seem asleep, wrote William Wordsworth as he stood on Westminster Bridge in London at dawn over 200 years ago. Standing on a bridge over the river Elbe in Dresden at sunset on Saturday, the exact opposite seemed true. The statues of the Baroque old town, silhouetted against the glowing sky, appeared to be coming to life. The blackened forms of the startled seagulls or darting swallows became indistinguishable in colour and tone from the frozen human forms that tower above the riverbank. They became part of the city, their raised hands and open books seemed suddenly urgent and contemporary. The ghosts of Dresden were among us, talking to us, preaching and arguing.

At least that's the way it seemed to me. The world has always been pervaded by a sense of timeless historical dialogue. Just because Plato, or St. Thomas Aquinas, Nietzsche or Albert Camus are no longer living does not keep them out of the public domain. We are free to attack them, defend them, disagree with them or develop their ideas. And in Dresden as night settles onto the city, I have to wonder whether it was the sculptors' original intention that the birds and the sunset should somehow awaken their creations in the ambiguity of darkness. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk, Hegel told us. That is, knowledge (the owl) comes always after the event (the day). But in Dresden it seemed like an illustration of that truth. The representatives of history, knowledge and wisdom, like Hegel's owl, come alive only as the sun begins to set.

Dresden was once one of the most beautiful cities in Europe before it was destroyed by controversial Allied bombing raids towards the end of World War II. It has been impressively rebuilt and is once again a wonderful, if scarred, place. The lovely old town was bombed into near oblivion, but has been painstakingly reconstructed. So, too, has the Church of the Three Kings. The next afternoon we climbed to the very top of the rebuilt church to get a view of the city. Sprawling before us against the lush green backdrop of the Elbe valley and the Saxon Wine Road were resurrected Baroque masterpieces next to the East German high-rises, and the still-recognisable zig-zag layout of medieval street plans leading to the gleaming glass constructions of post-1989 capitalism. And yes, there they were, my statues. Frozen still and a stony grey in the early autumn sunlight, their voices had dimmed since the previous evening.

After 20 minutes or so staring out at 'the Florence of the Elbe', we climbed back down through the clock tower. Casting a last glance at the three giant bells in the steeple, motionless and silent, I descended the next flight of stairs. And then there was a sudden, frightening explosion of sound. An apocalyptic racket was raging and shaking the tower; the bells had started up. Instead of escaping the deafening noise, I hurried back up into the tower, where I found Olya, Spider and Debby standing by the bells, their fingers jammed tightly in their ears as they stood on the trembling wooden floor. It was beautiful; it annihilated all other thoughts and words, an extreme silence that shook us to our very bones.

Another Dresden contradiction was in full swing. This was no historical dialogue with the statues; this was the voice of unconquerable Time, drowning out mortal words and deeds as it rang its wrought-iron truths across this strange city. Sometimes, the bells told me as their violent, beautiful cacophony echoed through our bodies and vibrated in our toes, history isn't a dialogue at all. Sometimes history is just telling us to shut up for a minute and listen.