Hansel and Gretel are alive and well
And they’re living in Berlin
She is a cocktail waitress
He had a part in a Fassbinder film
And they sit around at night now
drinking schnapps and gin
And she says: Hansel, you’re really bringing me down
And he says: Gretel, yu can really be a bitch
He says: I’ve wasted my life on our stupid legend
When my one and only love
was the wicked witch.
She said: What is history?
And he said: History is an angel
being blown backwards into the future
He said: History is a pile of debris
And the angel wants to go back and fix things
To repair the things that have been broken
But there is a storm blowing from Paradise
And the storm keeps blowing the angel
backwards into the future
And this storm, this storm
is called
Progress
文句注釋 1. Hansel and Gretel Fairy Tale by the Grimms
Brothers;two children are sent into the forest by a wicked stepmother
and a weak father. 2. Fassbinder 導演，「德國新電影」。 3. schnapps 一般的烈酒 4. debris 破片 5. cocktail waitress 雞尾酒女侍 6. had a part; play a part. 擔任一個角色。 7. bringing sb down: cause somebody to fall in
position; 讓我丟臉。 8. our stupid legend: 也就是漢斯和小凱莉在森林迷失的故事。 9. the wicked witch: 用糖果屋迷惑他們的女巫。
10. History is an angel being blown backwards into the future:
班雅民對歷史天使的看法。歷史天使面對過去，被風往未來吹。而這個暴風，就是進步班雅民看了Paul Klee 的畫，就說 "An
angel looking as though he is about to move away from something
he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is
open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel
of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive
a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps
piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.
The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole
what has been smashed. . . . But a storm is blowing from Paradise;
. . . irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back
is turned, This storm is what we call progress.”(Walter Benjamin,
“Theses on the Philosophy of History”)
