Heine, "Ich hab im Traum geweinet"

A work ("I had a dream in which I cried") by this German poet.  You can read the original here.

I had a dream in which I cried:             
You lay unmoving in a tomb;                
I woke to find my pain subside,             
My cheeks still wet in tearful flume.   

I had a dream in which I cried: 
You left me in cold solitude;             
I woke to drown in my woe's tide,             
My hours lost to bitter brood.

I had a dream in which I cried: 
You were still true and good and mine;
I woke to find no truth denied,
And tears aflow for all of time. 

Caché

There is a lovely French term, bourgeois-bohème (often abbreviated as "bobo"), used to describe someone of privileged living but rebellious, often intrepid ideals, which can be taken as either a compliment or plain evidence of what happens to people when they become financially successful (an American journalist unwittingly created the same portmanteau). The whiff of money and a carefree life are often enough to corrupt those who were rotten to begin with. But for those of us with no interest in what holes money can punch through the human soul, the price is much greater. Most people will succumb to money as most people will succumb to the allure of sensuality; after all, money and sex are the two easiest things in the world to enjoy. The bobos of the world are, however, caught between what they believe in and what is expected of them given their societal status: they will be sensitive to any charges of selling out, but equally empowered by the thought of using their influence to do good instead of buying furs and patronizing boutiques. In France, a country that still reads and was awarded for its diligence with the latest Nobel Prize winner, television has all the usual farces, police shows, and imbecilic pseudo-news programs, as well as something that the United States lacks – literary debates. As pretentious as they sound and sadistically boring to viewers without a good command of both spoken and written French, these shows are a mainstay of French culture even though many of the works discussed are not worth retaining in the dark forests of our memory (as most books, given the glut of mediocrity on the market, are better left untouched). Yet the mere fact of their existence is a very bobo event: expensive television (often prime) time oddly paired with the highest form of human inquiry. How very telling, then, that the host of such a program is the subject of this remarkable film.

Our hero – if that is really the right word – is Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil), a plain French name for a plain French mind. Georges moderates a very popular literary program on television and his comfortable house in Paris's thirteenth arrondissement has wall-to-wall shelves of those wonderful Gallimard and Minuit editions so familiar to students of France. His wife Anne (a suddenly heavier Juliette Binoche) and twelve-year-old son Pierrot waft in and out of Georges's everyday routine, but his primary focus is the maintenance of his own golden reputation. This is a typically bobo concern: those who believe or once believed in bettering the world often see their success as a justification of their ideals, even if few of those ideals were preserved during their ascent. So Georges and Anne engage in their habitual dinner polemics with their guests – including one friend, Pierre (the late Daniel Duval), who clearly has eyes for Anne – until a strange package arrives. As is common for strange packages there is no return address, nor any clear indication of how it might have arrived on the Laurents' doorstep. Such an event is all the more disconcerting since the package only contains a cassette, and that cassette contains nothing but handheld footage of the house at whose doorstep it was left. Georges is visibly disturbed; Anne thinks one of Georges's loyal viewers has decided to stalk him; Pierrot is nowhere to be found; and nothing more is said until, of course, a second package with more footage appears a few days later. This time we get more information: a child's drawing of a stick figure spitting out what really does look like blood. Anne is confused and now suspects a prank; Georges, however, is terrified. 

Childhood memories swirl and descend upon Georges like some serpentine mist and we begin to peer into his nightmares. He is perhaps six or seven with another boy his age, a boy from North Africa, a boy by the name of Majid. Majid's parents, we learn in snippets, were Algerian farmhands working for the Laurents when they were slain during this notorious Paris massacre. As a last favor, Majid was to be adopted by his parents' employers – something to which Georges, apparently obsessed with his reputation from an early age, was vehemently opposed. What happened then is revealed towards the end of the film, but Georges feels impelled enough by his conscience to track down Majid in his rent-controlled apartment and confront him about the matter. Majid denies any involvement, Georges leaves, and, soon enough, his nightmares become more visceral. A young Majid is now seen spitting blood and beheading a rooster, and in general doing everything he can to seem unadoptable, which makes about as much sense as Georges's claims to Anne that nothing is bothering him and he has taken no action on the tapes. It is here that Georges's true personality emerges. He crosses a street without looking and almost collides with a West African speeding along on his bicycle. Instead of acknowledging their mutual insouciance, perhaps more on his part as the pedestrian, Georges fulminates against this young immigrant who he feels does not belong in his world. Another tape appears and the secret is out: it is a film of Georges and Majid in Majid's apartment. Anne demands details and Georges provides the story of Majid's parents, his threats against Georges, and his eventual placement in an orphanage, all of which doesn't persuade Anne and shouldn't persuade us. Pierrot suddenly goes missing and Georges returns to Majid's apartment to accuse him of kidnapping. How perfect that as Georges's only son vanishes, we finally see Majid's child. A handsome, well-raised, and extremely polite young man, he harbors more than a little resentment towards Georges. Father and son both claim that Georges is way off base even as the son seems to be hiding behind a smirk; Pierrot returns the next day and says he spent the night at a friend's, although his parents never quite ask which friend; then Majid beckons Georges to visit him one last time. And perhaps we should stop our revelations right there.

The brilliance of Caché (for which this earlier Haneke film serves as a study) lies in the confluence of its details and human intentions. Georges and Majid do represent two strands of society, the affluent native (Auteuil, ironically enough, was actually born in Algiers) and struggling immigrant whose only viable chance of advancement resides in his children; Majid's son is a proud North African yet completely French; and the times when Georges could cross a Parisian street and not encounter an immigrant on the other side are long gone. As a survey of what has become of our globalized world the film remains insightful, correct, and admonitory – yet this is all of secondary importance. Its true beauty is reflected in Georges's eyes, the portals to his soul and conscience, portals which his mother (Anne Girardot) knows have not always been the upholders of the ideals he now espouses. Is it a coincidence that, as every review will inform you, caché is French for "hidden"? Or that, in Arabic, Majid means "glorious" or "exalted"? Two highly controversial final scenes that will be discussed for years might suggest otherwise. But then again, only Georges can tell us for sure.

Nerval, "Octavie (part 2)"

The conclusion to a short story ("Octavia") by this French writer. You can read the original here.

"But where before had this image appeared to me? Ah, I have already told you that! It was in Naples, three years ago. I had an encounter one night near the Villa Reale with a young girl that looked like you, a pious creature whose art was to weave gilded embroideries to adorn her church. In spirit she seemed lost; I took her home although she spoke to me about a lover she had in the Swiss Guard and who she was afraid might drop by. Nevertheless she did not hesitate to confess that I pleased her more greatly. What should I tell you? That whole evening I lost myself to reverie and headiness and imagined that this woman, whose language I could barely understand, was actually you come to me in enchanted form from up above. Why should I hush up this adventure and the bizarre delusion that my soul accepted without any pain, especially after a few glasses of foamy lacryma Christi poured for me at dinner? The room which I entered had something mystical either by chance or by the particular selection of objects it contained. A black Madonna cloaked in rags, whose old finery had been entrusted to my hostess for restoration, was sitting on a chest of drawers next to a bed with baize green curtains; a figure of Saint Rosalie wreathed in roses seemed from afar to be protecting the cradle of a child; the walls white with lime were decorated with old paintings of the four elements depicting the mythological divinities. Add to this a fine assortment of brilliant fabrics, artificial flowers, and Etruscan vases; then mirrors surrounding one copper light reflected so splendidly, and a Treatise on divination and dreams that made me think that my companion was a sorceress or at least a gypsy.

"A pleasant old woman with solemn features would come and go, bringing us things. I think it had to be her mother! And I, pensive as ever, never took my eyes off her nor said a word – she who could not stop reminding me of you.

"And this woman kept repeating to me: 'Are you sad?' And I responded: 'Do not talk. I can hardly understand what you are saying.' Both listening to and speaking Italian tired me out immensely. 'Oh!' she said. 'I know how to speak differently.' And suddenly she broke into a language that I had never heard before. Sonorous and guttural syllables, twitterings full of charm; doubtless an ancient tongue: Hebrew, Syriac, I know not. She smiled at my surprise and went over to the chest of drawers. From here she took out some costume jewelry, necklaces, bracelets, a tiara. Putting on the jewelry there, she returned to the table and remained serious for a long time. The old woman came back in and seeing her thus, began laughing vociferously and said to me, I believe, that this what she looked like at celebrations. At this point the child awoke and began to cry. The two women ran over to the cradle, and soon enough the young woman was back with me, this time holding the bambino who had just been mollified.

"She spoke to the child in the language that I had so admired, and she kept him amused with graceful prods and pokes. And I, hardly accustomed to wines burned by Vesuvius, I sensed the room and its contents spinning around. This woman of curious manners and dressed like a queen, proud and capricious, seemed to me one of the magicians of Thessaly to whom one gives one's soul for a dream. Oh, why was I not afraid to relate all of this to you? Because it was nothing more than a dream, a dream in which you alone reigned!

"I tore myself from this phantom that seduced and scared me at the same time and wandered through the deserted city until the first church bells. Then, sensing dawn's rosy fingers upon my neck, I amended my steps through the small streets behind Chiaia and began to climb up Posilippo above the grotto. Arriving at the summit, I walked around gazing at the already-blue sea, the city emitting only early morning sounds, and the islands in the bay where the sun had begun to engild the villa roofs. I was not saddened in the least. I walked with broad strides, rolled in the wet grass, but in my heart sank deeper into notions of death.

"O gods! I know not what profound sadness resided in my soul, but it was nothing more than the cruel thought that I was not loved. I had seen as the phantom of happiness, I had employed all the gifts of God, I was beneath the most beautiful sky in the world, in the presence of nature at its most perfect, at the greatest spectacle that man is allowed to behold, but four hundred leagues away from the only woman who existed for me and who knew nothing of me, not even of my existence. Not loved and without hope ever to be loved! And so it was here that I sought to seek compensation from God for my singular existence. There was but one step to take: at the location where I found myself, the mountain was cut like a cliff, the sea moaned below, blue and pure, and I would only suffer for a second. Oh, the dizziness of that thought was terrible! Twice I hurled myself down and I know not what power returned me alive to land which I grasped. No, my God, you did not create me for eternal suffering, and so I will not offend you with my death. But give me the resolution that leads some to thrones, some to glory, and others to love!"

During this strange night a rather rare phenomenon had taken place. Towards the end of the night all the openings to the house in which I found myself were lit up; a warm, sulphuric dust prevented me from breathing, and leaving my easy conquest asleep on the terrace, I set out through the alleyways which led to Château Elme, and as I clambered up the mountain, the pure morning air came and inflated my lungs. I rested sumptuously on the vine arbors of the villas and fearlessly contemplated Vesuvius, newly bound in a cupola of smoke.

And it was here that I was seized with the dizziness of which I spoke. The thought of the encounter with the English girl roused me from the fatal ideas which I had conceived. After having refreshed my mouth with one of the enormous bunches of grapes sold at the market by women vendors, I headed to Portici to visit the ruins of the Herculaneum. All the roads were sprinkled with a metallic ash. Arriving at the ruins I descended into the underground city and strolled for a time from building to building, trying to extract from each monument the secret of its past. The temple of Venus and that of Mercury spoke in vain to my imagination; they needed to be populated with the living. I went back to Portici, stopped pensively below the arbor and waited there for my stranger to come.

She was not long in coming, steering her father's wretched gait. She seized my hand and said: 'It's alright.' We hailed a small coach and went to visit Pompeii. What happiness filled me as I guided her through the silent streets and the old Roman colony! I had studied the most secret passages in advance, and when we arrived at the small temple of Isis I had the pleasure of explaining to her in faithful detail the religion and ceremonies about which I had read in Apuleius. She wanted to play the role of the Goddess herself, whereas I was tasked with the role of Osiris in which I was to explain the divine mysteries.  

Dreaming, seized by the grandeur of the ideas which we had begun to raise, I dared not speak to her of love ... She thought me so cold that I had to be reproached, and then I confessed that I no longer felt worthy of her. I related to her the story of that apparition which had awakened a past love within my heart, as well as all the sadness which had constricted me that fatal night in which the phantom of happiness had been nothing more than a lie.

Alas, all of this is very distant from us! Ten years ago, coming from the East, I went back to Naples. I went down to the hotel of Rome, and again I found the English girl. She had married a famous painter who had been stricken with complete paralysis shortly after their marriage. Lying on a daybed, he had almost no movement in his facial features apart from his large black eyes, and since he was still young he could not hope that other climes would provide relief. The poor girl had devoted her existence between caring for her father and caring for her husband, and still, her softness and virginal candor could not relieve the atrocious jealousy that seethed in the latter's soul. Nothing could ever bring him to let her go free during their walks, and he reminded me of that black giant who lurked eternally in the cavern of the djinns, with his wife continuously having to stave off sleep. O mystery of the human soul! Should one descry in such a scene the cruel marks of the vengeance of the gods?

I could only endure a day of this anguish. The boat that took me back to Marseilles carried with it like a dream the memory of this cherished apparition, and I thought that perhaps I had forsaken my happiness there. And its secret Octavia will guard with her always.

Nerval, "Octavie (part 1)"

The first part of a short story ("Octavia") by this French writer. You can read the original here.

It was in the spring of 1835 that I was overcome by a lively desire to see Italy. Every day as I rose, I breathed in the bitter scent of the alpine chestnut trees; in the evening, the waterfall of Terni, the effervescent font of the Aniene gushed forth on me alone among the hoarse backstage in a small theater. A delicious murmur like the voice of a siren rustled in my ears, as if the reeds of the Trasimeno themselves had gained sound. I had to quit Paris and leave behind a thwarted love whom I wanted to escape for distraction.

My first stop was Marseilles. Every morning I would bathe in the sea by Châteauvert, and as I swam I could espy elegant isles far off in the gulf. And within this azure bay I would meet daily with an English girl whose slender body split the green waters before me. One day this water girl, who was called Octavia, swam over reveling in the strange catch she had made: in her white hands she held a fish that she gave to me.

I could not but smile at such a gift. Nevertheless, cholera was still sweeping through the city and to avoid the quarantines, I opted for a land route. I saw Nice, Genoa and Florence; I admired both the Dome and the Baptistery, the masterpieces of Michelangelo, and the leaning tower of Pisa. Then, taking the route of Spoleto, I stopped for ten days in Rome. The Dome of Saint Peter, the Vatican, the Colosseum all appeared to be a dream. I rushed to take the post for Civitaveccha, where I would be embarking. For three days the furious sea delayed the arrival of the steamship. On this desolate beach I walked pensively, one day almost getting myself eaten alive by some dogs. On the eve of my departure a French vaudeville was showing in the local theater. A blond and spirited head attracted my attention: it was the English girl who had taken a seat in the forestage box. She was accompanying her father, who looked ill; as a cure doctors had recommended the climate of Naples.

The next morning I gleefully took up my ticket. The English girl was on the bridge which she crossed with long strides, and, impatient with the ship's slowness, she plunged her ivory teeth into a lemon peel. "Poor thing," I told her, "I'm sure you're suffering from angina pectoris and that is certainly not what you need." She fixed her eyes upon me and asked: "Who taught you that?" "The Sibyl of Tivoli," I replied without discomforting myself. "Come off it!" she answered. "I don't believe a word of that."

Saying this she gave me a tender look and I could not prevent myself from kissing her hand. "If I were stronger," she said, "I would teach you how to lie!" And she threatened me, laughing, with a thin golden loaf that she held in her hand.

Our vessel docked at Naples and we crossed the gulf between Ischia and Nisida flooded with the fires of the Orient. "If you love me," she said, "you'll wait for me tomorrow in Portici. It's not every day that I commit myself to such encounters." She disembarked at La Mole square and accompanied her father to the Hotel of Rome, while I took up residence in the Florentin. My day was spent promenading down Toledo and La Mole and visiting the pictures in the museum; in the evening I went to see the San Carlos ballet. There I bumped into the Marquis Gargallo, whom I had known in Paris, and who invited me to accompany him after the show to take tea with him and his sisters. 

I will never forget the sumptuous evening that followed. The Marquise played host to a vast room of strangers and conversation veered towards that of the précieuses, and for a time I believed myself to be in the blue salon of Rambouillet. The Marquise's sisters, as beautiful as the Three Graces, revived in me all the prestige of Ancient Greece. We talked at length about the shape of the Ninnion tablet, whether it was triangular or square. Since she was beautiful and proud like Vesta herself, the Marquise could talk with complete assurance. I left the palace with my head still spinning from this philosophical discussion and could not manage to locate my hotel. By dint of wandering through the city I was finally going to become the hero of some kind of adventure. The encounter I had that night is the subject of the following letter which I later addressed to her from whose love I had thought myself absolved when I quit Paris. 

"I am in a state of extreme inquietude. For four days now I have not seen you, or I have only seen you amidst the swirling rabble. I have something akin to a fatal presentiment. That you were sincere with me, I truly believe; that you have changed in the last few days, I know not but it is this I fear. My God! Have pity on my incertitude or you will bring us into misfortune. Nonetheless, it is I whom I blame. I was meeker and more devoted than a man should be. I surrounded my love with so many reservations; I so feared to offend you, you who had punished me so severely once before that perhaps I went too far in my tact, and perhaps you thought me cold and distant as a result. In any case, I did not spoil an important day for you, I stifled my emotions until it almost cracked open my soul, and my face was covered in a smiling mask, while all this time my heart sighed and burned. Others would not have been so swayed, and yet no one could have shown as much genuine affection nor sensed all that you were worth.

"Let us be frank: I am well aware that there are connections that a woman is loath to break without difficulty, uneasy relationships that can only be severed slowly. Did I ask you for sacrifices that were too great? Tell me your concerns and I shall understand. Your fears, your fantasies, the necessities of your position, none of this can shake the immense affection that I have for you, nor dilute the purity of my love. But together we will see what we can admit and what we must fight, and you can leave it to me to determine whether these are knots that must be cut and not undone. It might be inhuman to be bereft of liberty in such a moment because, as I have said, my life is nothing but your will, and you must know that my greatest wish is to die for you and you alone!

"To die, great God! Why does this idea come to me now and linger as if my death were precisely the equivalent of the happiness that you promise? Death! Somehow that word does not suggest anything somber to my mind. It appears crowned in pale roses just like at the end of a feast. Often I have dreamt that it would be waiting for me at the bedside of the woman I love, after happiness, after intoxication, and it would say to me: 'Young man, you've had your share of joy in this world, now come sleep, come lie down in my arms. I may not be beautiful, but I am good and safe, and it is not happiness that I will bestow upon you but eternal peace.'

Father and Son

Some may impute the twentieth century's unhealthy prurience to what can be loosely termed liberation, to being able to choose one's partner, enjoy her affection before vows are exchanged, and indulge our most vulgar whims for the sake of peace of mind and body – an odd form of liberation to say the least. While romantic flings often remain some of our sweetest memories as we grow old, what this siege upon proper mores involves is a rescindment of moral responsibility. For a little more than one hundred fifty years we have been informed that we are nothing more than advanced mammals empowered to write off our basest thoughts and acts as traces of a more feral past. Now we should not deny the survivalist instincts that grip us when someone or even something we love is endangered; but we also should not forego what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom, namely our imagination. The unimaginative will always see a sexual attraction because they think any interest in the shape and looks of another human being always has to do with sex; to their ears and eyes, compliments by heterosexuals to members of the same gender bespeak hidden desires; and every Romantic poet and his princesse lointaine are for them nothing more than an as yet uncommitted felony (restraint, as it were, that they attribute to cowardice). Which would explain the widespread puzzlement at the behavior depicted in this fine film.

The beginning sets the unusual tone: the Father (Andrei Shchtenin) and his Son (Aleksei Neimyshev) are seen embracing and scantily clothed, but we learn that the Son has had a nightmare and turned to his Father for consolation (the first words spoken are "it's over, it's over"). That the Son is about nineteen or twenty makes the scene less ordinary, although there are few things more everyday than a parent consoling a child. The next scene takes us to a military academy and we remember that Russia a few years ago was still officially at war. Here the Father, a very handsome fellow who was told a long time ago that he had a fantastic smile, drops in on his son for no apparent reason. The strangeness of such a visit, which is much more commonly incident to lovers, feeds the notion that what we are watching has some kind of subliminal incestuous element – which is, it must be said here and now, patently ridiculous. In time we learn why the Father is so obsessed with his Son: he is a widower; his Son, like he once was, is a soldier and about the age at which he became a Father; and this academy comprises the Son's first real time away from home. As they talk the camera switches from one to the other without showing us both at the same time, as if they were the same person on a chronological delay. The Father bids farewell and the Son continues his exercises until he notices an angelic face at the window. He approaches and finds a young woman who is ostensibly the focus of all the romantic urges a man his age could possibly nurture – and again the camera does not let them unite. They peek-a-boo behind the window bars (women in the film are exclusively shown behind bars or balcony rails), exchange mild accusations of deceit, and eventually agree that the girl might be seeing someone else. "Is he older?" the Son asks. "Women are always older," she avers, then tells him: "You always move ahead alone, without me. You're afraid that your father will think he's a bother." Why would he be a bother when he loves his son so much that it kills him to see him leave the house? Wouldn't most sons want such affection and thoughtfulness?

Indeed they would, which brings us to Sasha. A neighbor of sorts whose father and the Father were once army buddies in a different war, Sasha cannot compare to the two strapping, handsome men who do not lack confidence. In Sasha we find their foil, a soft, feminine sensitive type not unlike the kitten he cradles towards the end of the film. "Should I sit at the table by the pictures?" he asks when we first see him, with the pictures suggesting a private shrine. The Father visited Sasha's father last summer, but in the winter he vanished never to return. "He didn't even live with us any more," opines the kitten, who then confesses that his father changed when he came back from the war and took to drink. The Son can empathize to some degree but his military demeanor obliges him initially to treat Sasha like a wimp, entice him to a daring act on a makeshift bridge between two windows (at exactly the film's midway point, the two young men are struggling against a pink sky when a jet passes overhead and the Son says never to be afraid of anything), then evince unilateral kindness in a tram ride all around the small coastal town. One might guess that the Son, who is confident yet scared, fears that without his Father he would be much more like Sasha; perhaps, on the inside, he already is. His love for his Father is always violent, passionate, rough and strained, just like the lovers who cannot live with or without one another. When he disclaims any interest in his own childhood because it involved relying and worshiping his Father, he raises his hands to the heavens only to have them clench still rings; in another scene he spins a ball on his hand then orbits his Father like the moon around the earth. And yet he cannot overcome the feeling that if he loses his Father, he will lose everything. "Nothing compares to my father's disappearance," Sasha admits and the Son thinks about the choices he will have to make.           

The film's title recalls this book (which is more accurately rendered as "Fathers and Children") but makes it clear that there should be two distinct persons who have difficulty in becoming two other distinct persons. The father of a small child is not the same person as the father of a soldier; there are specific fears and doubts. In a way the father is excited about his son's youth and his shape, but there is nothing sexual here: the Father is obsessed with his past and the differences between that and his Son's present; whereas a child will always look upon a parent and wonder whether he will share his fate. Although I am normally loath to admit an author's own observations into a critique of his work for fear of diluting whatever imagery, patterning, and poetry he is trying to convey, sometimes it is better to let people defend themselves. In Sokurov's own words:

On the top floor of an old house, a small family lives under the same roof – a Father and his Son. The Father is no longer on active military duty, having abandoned his beloved air force regiment and unwillingly put an end to his military career owing to the particular circumstances. He was once an active participant in military combat, but just as he reached maturity he was commissioned to the reserves. Training at flight school, he met his one and only love, a young woman who would become his wife, bear him a son, and die only slightly less young. At the time he was only twenty; and this love would remain his secret joy that could never reoccur. His Son grew up just like his Father; he would probably become a soldier as well. In his Son's features he finds a constant reminder of his wife and he cannot separate his Son from his unfulfilled love: his Son and wife are united as love itself. For that reason the Father cannot imagine life without his Son, and his Son faithfully and deeply loves his Father. The Son's feelings, present since childhood, strengthen in time into an instinctive yet not wholly understood moral responsibility subject to life's trials. The Son follows in the footsteps of the Father. Their love is of almost mythic proportions. Such love does not occur in reality; it is the conceit of fairy tales.

Apart from this summary, there is nothing more to Father and Son except the details. Mythic or not, the portrayals are exquisite because there is no role more convincing, no truth that generates more head-nodding than two people who obviously love each other. So when the Father wants the Son to stop being a soldier when he comes home and make him a son again by having him change out of uniform, we should shrug our shoulders in comprehension. When the Son tells the Father that the latter will marry again, we think of the Son's girlfriend and wonder whether this may not be a matter of coincidence. And when we see the Son's springtime dream beginning the film and the winter of the Father's loneliness as it closes, we should not be surprised because real love is not as fickle as the seasons that change our perception of what love can and should be.  And here is where we are reminded that love, among its endless powers, can also crucify and allow to be crucified.