The Paradise Destroyed by the Straight Line

by Friedensreich Hundertwasser

An ecologist without a conscience is doomed
to failure, and the same is true of an artist
who does not bow to the laws of nature.

The world has not improved.
The dangers felt have turned into reality.

Nevertheless, today, although
nothing has been done,
my longstanding warnings are at last
being taken seriously.

Yet there are still no lawns on the roofs,
no tree-tenants, no plant-driven water
purification plants, no humus toilets, no rights
to windows, no duties to the trees.
The essential reafforestation of the town
has not come about.

What we lack is a peace treaty
with nature.

We must restore to nature the territories
we have unlawfully taken from it.
Everything horizontal
under the sky belongs to nature.
Everything touched by the rays of the sun,
everywhere where the rain falls is nature's
sacred and inviolable property.
We men are merely nature's guests.

In 1952 I spoke of the civilisation of
make-believe, the one we must
shake off, myself, the first of all!
I spoke of columns of gray men on the march
toward sterility and self-destruction.

The same year I used the term
"transautomation" to show the way beyond
the rationalism of technocrats
toward a new creation
in harmony with the laws of nature.

In 1953 I realised that the straight line
leads to the downfall of mankind.

But the straight line has become
an absolute tyranny.

The straight line is something cowardly
drawn with a rule, without thought or feeling;
it is a line which does not exist in nature.

And that the line is the rotten foundation
of our doomed civilisation.

Even if there are certain places where it is
recognised that this line is rapidly leading to
perdition, its course continues to be plotted.

The straight line is the only sterile line,
the only line which does
not suit man as the image of God.

The straight line is the forbidden fruit.

The straight line is the curse of our civilisation.

Any design undertaken with the straight
line will be stillborn.
Today we are witnessing the triumph
of rationalist knowhow and yet,
at the same time, we find ourselves
confronted with emptiness. An æsthetic void,
desert of uniformity, criminal sterility,
loss of creative power.

Even creativity is prefabricated.

We have become impotent.
We are no longer able to create.
That is our real illiteracy.