Vita brevis, ars longa

Abstract

The article deals with collecting in Utz (1989), by Bruce Chatwin. I read the fascination with collectors and collecting in the novel from and across two theoretical questions: (1) can objects enfold both a material status and an intangible effect as well as create an alternate narrative that would draw us away from commodification, objectification, and pathology? and (2) can the object confront us more with remnants of human life, with fragments of the representation of desire, and less with the residue of human labor? Kaspar Utz is a great collector of Meissen porcelain who the adverse events of history lead to living in Prague with his fragile treasures, under the malevolent eyes of a police state. Utz knows that a collector is almost an occult “theologian”, and his relationship with the Harlequins and the Colombines of Meissen has something idolatrous. Utz wages a silent war against the enemies that surround him, against the background noise of history, which would like to swallow forever these object-figures made of a substance refined by time. Utz’s lonely and manic life will become a game against the enemies, whose stake is the collection itself, an army of beings that must be removed from the brutal fingertips of tyrannical authority.