Wings of Desire (1987)

Curt Bois: Homer

Photos 

Quotes 

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice]  Must I give up now? If I do give up, then mankind will lose its storyteller. And if mankind once loses its storyteller, then it will lose its childhood.

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice]  What is it about peace that its inspiration is not enduring? Why is its story so hard to tell?

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice]  Tell me, muse, of the storyteller who has been thrust to the edge of the world, both an infant and an ancient, and through him reveal everyman. With time, those who listened to me became my readers. They no longer sit in a circle, bur rather sit apart. And one doesn't know anything about the other. I'm an old man with a broken voice, but the tale still rises from the depths, and the mouth, slightly opened, repeats it as clearly, as powerfully. A liturgy for which no one needs to be initiated to the meaning of words and sentences.

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice]  Where are my heroes? Where are you, my children? Where are my own, the dimwitted ones, the primordial ones? Tell me, O Muse, of that poor immortal singer, who, abandoned by his mortal audience, lost his voice. He who went from being the angel of storytelling, became a organ grinder, ignored or mocked, out on the threshold of no-man's land.

• [last lines] 

  [using English subtitles] 

  Homer, the aged poet : [in German]  Tell me of the men, women, and children who will look for me - me, their storyteller, their bard, their choirmaster - because they need me more than anything in the world.

  Homer, the aged poet : [in French]  We have embarked.

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice - as he walks around a wasteland by the Berlin Wall]  I can't find Potsdamer Platz. Here? This can't be it. Potsdamer Platz is where the Café Josti used to be. In the afternoon I'd go there to chat and have a coffee and watch the crowd after I'd had my cigar at Löhse and Wolff, a famous tobacconist, right around here. So this can't be Potsdamer Platz.

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice]  Only the Roman roads still lead into the open. Only the most ancient traces lead anywhere. Where is the top of the pass here? Even the plains, even Berlin, has its hidden passes. And it's only there that my country, the land of storytelling, begins. Why doesn't everyone see from earliest childhood the passes, portals and crevices, down on the earth and up in the sky? If everyone saw them, history would continue without killing and war.

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice]  The world seems to be sinking into dusk, but I tell my tales, as in the beginning, in my sing-song voice, which sustains me.

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice]  Tell me of the men, women, and children who will look for me - me, their storyteller, their bard, their choirmaster - because they need me more than anything in the world.

• Homer, the aged poet : [inner voice]  No more roaming back and forth through the centuries as in the past. Now I can only think from one day to the next. My heroes are no longer warriors and kings, but things of peace, one just as good as the next. The drying onions as good as the tree trunk that grows in the marsh. But no one has thus far succeeded in singing an epic of peace.