The future is Evil

A bleak and fragmented vision of history: power and the human condition. Published already at the end of his life, the text follows the experimental logic that characterizes much of his writing: poetic images and abrupt cuts, where the discourse is as important as the "scene". In this edition, some interviews too. Lucidity.

The text (or the play, or the essay) does not follow a linear narrative. It seems more like a collision of fragments, monologues and dialogues. The language is laden with historical and cultural references, going from mythology to the totalitarianism of the 20th century, anticipating the 21st Century.

The title, The Future is Evil, is a warning: the idea of the future, colonized by ideologies or hermetic utopias, becomes an instrument of oppression.

It is an uncomfortable work rather than a comforting one. Bad for bad, if you are looking for comfort, skip this book. In fact, skip Heiner Müller and that's it. 

Heiner Müller (1929–1995) poet, playwright, director. He is often described as “the most important German-language author after Brecht”. I am not given to hyperboles. But he is the one I turn to when I need a dose of lucidity in the midst of catastrophe. And it is "his" one of my greatest regrets: never having been able to see, live, any play staged by him. It was close.