After seeing Rosemarie Trockel’s piece “A Famous Problem” (1992) in an exhibition catalog, I wrote the following text which then became the basis for the competing narrative voices in my 2009 film, Young Americans. “Such is the heart” is a line I stole from René Char in his poem, “The Swift” from 1948.
[A FAMOUS PROBLEM]
Reader 1: Okay, you start.
Reader 2: Okay. Here is how the story goes:
At first everything was fine. The trains arrived and departed in time, the crowds moved through the corridors and yielded to each other like dolphins. A fiddler stood in his circle asking well dressed women to take a turn on the strings and outside the station each doorframe, each window, knob, hinge, awning and scaffold, each departing glass swelled and retreated as on any warming day.
Okay. Now you start.
Reader 2: Okay. Here is the story:
And then all at once everything turned backwards. The faucets spoke cold. Breath turned inward. The flies froze, and the carp died, singing. The weather spoke too – the sky is rising, it said, higher and more like silk on a line than any weight, than any weight like a sky.
Reader 1: Okay. Continue the story.
Reader 2: When I left he spoke to me— you have raised the summit, he said, and when you come back I will still know you. I told him when I come back, if I come back, he would make me like one of his hired men, a dawn breaker to work in the fields, and I left. And I walked and looked back expecting him to be watching after my steps but instead he'd turned away, into the house, and closed the door to me.
Reader 1: No, that is not the way it goes. Here is the story:
Two circles on a clean sheet of paper, one white and one red. The red circle is larger. A stranger hands you the paper and says, here is the famous problem: which circles the house and which the world? And you reply to him: The red circles the house because it is the color of anger, and the white the world, because like a ghost it disappears on the page. And the stranger says, no, the white circles the world because like a ghost it opens the earth, and the red circles the house because like the color of anger it opens the earth. Such is the heart.
Reader 2: No, that is not the famous problem. Here is the problem:
Two circles on a clean sheet of paper, one white and one red. Your neighbor hands you the paper and says, which is larger? And you tell her, the red is larger, and she says, no, the red is denser, like smoke, or the ring a glass makes on the table, but the white is larger, as a room is larger when it is full. Such is the heart.
Reader 1: Okay, you start.
Reader 2: Okay. Here is how the story goes:
At first everything was fine. The trains arrived and departed in time, the crowds moved through the corridors and yielded to each other like dolphins. A fiddler stood in his circle asking well dressed women to take a turn on the strings and outside the station each doorframe, each window, knob, hinge, awning and scaffold, each departing glass swelled and retreated as on any warming day.
Okay. Now you start.
Reader 2: Okay. Here is the story:
And then all at once everything turned backwards. The faucets spoke cold. Breath turned inward. The flies froze, and the carp died, singing. The weather spoke too – the sky is rising, it said, higher and more like silk on a line than any weight, than any weight like a sky.
Reader 1: Okay. Continue the story.
Reader 2: When I left he spoke to me— you have raised the summit, he said, and when you come back I will still know you. I told him when I come back, if I come back, he would make me like one of his hired men, a dawn breaker to work in the fields, and I left. And I walked and looked back expecting him to be watching after my steps but instead he'd turned away, into the house, and closed the door to me.
Reader 1: No, that is not the way it goes. Here is the story:
Two circles on a clean sheet of paper, one white and one red. The red circle is larger. A stranger hands you the paper and says, here is the famous problem: which circles the house and which the world? And you reply to him: The red circles the house because it is the color of anger, and the white the world, because like a ghost it disappears on the page. And the stranger says, no, the white circles the world because like a ghost it opens the earth, and the red circles the house because like the color of anger it opens the earth. Such is the heart.
Reader 2: No, that is not the famous problem. Here is the problem:
Two circles on a clean sheet of paper, one white and one red. Your neighbor hands you the paper and says, which is larger? And you tell her, the red is larger, and she says, no, the red is denser, like smoke, or the ring a glass makes on the table, but the white is larger, as a room is larger when it is full. Such is the heart.
related
A Famous Problem, 1992
From Rosemarie Trockel, Post-Menopause, W. König 2005