What are bagatelles?
What need for measure, when tolerance prevails?
When the craving for security is provocative,
Stalin’s terror rules
in the head
does not permit
counterforce.
You name it resistance
and liberation.
You name it purification
and obligation.
Yet you
cannot
bear
my breath.
What drives you is not revenge.
What drives you is envy and avarice.
Thus these are trivialities,
collateral damage
of maternal care.
Christopherus Steindor on “Bagatelles”
The poem “Bagatelles” is directed against every form of intellectual domination. It arose from the observation of how easily morality turns into power, and how sensitivity becomes a means of oppression.
Exclusion begins early, long before the open attacks begin. Once the Other can no longer be endured, it is only a short step to the erasure of the Other. This is why the poem addresses the early mechanisms of devaluation and dehumanization, not merely their final, visible forms.
The lines on “tolerance,” “duty,” and “purification” point to ideological rigidity. I refer to wokeness and antisemitism as examples of how convictions can become self-sufficient and serve to justify exclusion.
The name Stalin stands both for historical reality and for the inner censor. It denotes the form of political violence that silences people, as well as the principle that takes hold in thought and behavior when the demand for moral purity becomes absolute.
I reject every ideologization of thought. Language should clarify, not obscure. “Bagatelles” is not a partisan statement in favor of any side, but a warning against the loss of freedom in thinking.
#Pokemonfury 