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Op-Ed

Requiem for the West

Towards the end of the 19th century, Moritz Steinschneider, one of the founders of the science of Judaism, declared, not without scandalizing many right-thinking people, that the only thing that could be done for Judaism was to ensure it a worthy funeral.

It is possible that his judgment has since then also applied to the Church and to Western culture as a whole.

What has in fact happened, however, is that the worthy funeral of which Steinschneider spoke has not been celebrated, neither then for Judaism nor now for the West.

  • An essential part of the funeral in the tradition of the Catholic Church is the so-called Requiem Mass, which opens in the Introit with the words: Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis .

Until 1970, the Roman Missal also prescribed the recitation of the Dies Irae sequence for the Requiem Mass . This choice was perfectly consistent with the fact that the very term that defined the Mass for the dead came from an apocalyptic text, the Apocalypse of Ezra , which evoked both peace and the end of the world: requiem aeternitatis dabit vobis, quoniam in proximo est ille, qui in finem saeculi adveniet ,

  • “he will give you eternal peace, because he who comes at the end of time is near”.

The abolition of the dies irae in 1970 went hand in hand with the abandonment of every eschatological instance by the Church, which in this way completely conformed to the idea of ​​infinite progress that defines modernity. What is allowed to fall without the courage to explain the reasons for it – the day of wrath, the last day – can be picked up as a weapon to be used against the cowardice and contradictions of power at the moment of its end. This is what we intend to do here, trying to celebrate without parodic intention, but outside the Church, which belongs to the number of the deceased, a sort of abbreviated funeral for the West.

Dies irae, dies illa
solvet saeclum in sparkle,
test David cum Sybilla.

Day of wrath, that day
will destroy the world in ashes,
as David and the Sibyl testify.

What day is this? Certainly the present, the time we are living in. Every day is the day of wrath, the last day. Today the century, the world is burning, and with it also our house. We must be witnesses of this, like David and like the Sibyl.

Those who remain silent and do not testify will have no peace now or tomorrow, because it is precisely peace that the West cannot nor wants to see nor think.

Quantus tremor est futurus
qua iudex est venturus
cuncta stricte discussurus.

How much terror there will be
when the judge comes
to strictly judge everything.

Terror is not the future, it is here and now.

And that judge is us, called to pronounce judgment, the krisis on our time. To the word “crisis”, which is constantly spoken of to justify the state of exception, we restore its original meaning of judgment. In the vocabulary of Hippocratic medicine, krisis designated the moment in which the doctor must judge whether the patient will die or survive. In the same way, we discern what is dying in the West and what is still alive. And the judgment will be severe, it will not let anything escape.

Tuba mirum spargens sonum
per sepulchra regionum,
coget omnes ante thronum.

Mors stupebit et natura,
cum resurget creature,
iudicanti responsura.

A trumpet that spreads a wonderful sound
in the tombs of the whole world,
will call everyone before the throne.

Death and nature will be astonished,
when the creature will rise again,
to answer the judge.

We cannot resurrect the dead, but we can at least carefully prepare the marvelous instrument of our thought and judgment and, by making it resonate without fear, free nature and death from the hands of the power that governs us with them. To feel nature and death astonished within us, to foresee here and now another possible life and another death, is the only resurrection that interests us.

Liber scriptus proferetur,
in quo totum continetur,
unde mundus iudicetur.

Iudex ergo cum sedebit,
quidquid latet apparebit,
nil inultum remanebit.

The book will be opened,
in which all things are contained,
and from it the world will be judged.

As soon as the judge is seated,
what is hidden will appear,
nothing will remain unavenged.

The written book is history, which is always the history of lies and injustice.

Of truth and justice there is no history, but an instantaneous appearance in the decisive krisis of every lie and every injustice. At that point the lie can no longer cover reality.

Justice and truth in fact manifest themselves, manifesting falsity and injustice.

And nothing will escape the force of their vengeance, provided that this word is restored to the etymological meaning it has in the Roman trial, in which the vindex is he who vim dicit , who shows the judge the violence that has been done to the one who only in this sense he “avenges”.

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus,
quem patronum rogaturus,
cum vix iustus sit securus.

And what shall I say, who am wretched?
Who shall I call into my defense,
if the just man is scarcely safe?

The righteous man who lends his voice to the judgment is somehow involved in the judgment and cannot call others to his defense. No one can testify for the witness, he is alone with his testimony – in this sense he is not safe, he is within the crisis of his time – and nevertheless he pronounces his testimony.

Confutatis maledictis,
flammis acribus addictis,
voca me cum benedictis…

Lacrimosa dies illa,
qua resurget ex spark
iudicandus homo reus

The cursed are condemned,
thrown into the living flames,
call me among the blessed…

A day of tears that day,
when
the guilty man will rise from the ashes to be judged.

Although the hymn on the day of wrath is part of a mass that asks for peace and mercy for the dead, the distinction between the cursed and the blessed, between the executioners and the victims is maintained. On the last day, the executioners, as they are now doing without perhaps realizing it, in fact refute themselves, drop the masks that covered their injustice and their lies and throw themselves into the flames that they themselves have lit. The last day, the day of wrath, every day is for them a day of tears, and it is perhaps precisely because they are aware of it that they pretend to smile so much. Only the consensus and fear of the many keeps that day in suspense.

For this reason, even if we know ourselves powerless in the face of power, our judgment must be all the more implacable, which we cannot separate from the requiem we are celebrating.

Lord, do not give them peace, for they do not know what it is.

  • July 11, 2024

Source:Giorgio Agamben – Quodlibet