On Herzog – Georgie Carr in TLS:

‘First published in Germany in 2022, and now translated into English by Michael Hofmann, Every Man for Himself and God Against All has the force of an epic poem in which Herzog is both author and subject. He is not an artist, he says, but a “soldier”, and in heroic style he outlines his enduring qualities: “loyalty, duty, courage”. Raised in poverty in the 1940s, with “hardly any fathers anywhere”, he only saw his first film when a mobile projector was brought to Sachrang, his village in Bavaria. Later he taught himself filmmaking from an encyclopedia. As his oeuvre is shaped by revelations from his life, so his memoir is rendered cinematically. A mountain hike is part thriller, part ballet. Herzog races across a sheet of ice, cracks bursting open beneath him. Falling from a glacier he “flies like a parachutist” to safety, spreading his arms wide to fly.’

(…)

‘He worries that the title of his autobiography “makes me sound like too much of a lone warrior”. But in truth he has many gods. Aged four he “bumped into God” when he was saved from the punishments of St Nicholas. In 1982, walking through the Bavarian countryside, he was followed by two cows, which he recalls as “princesses”, as if they had been transfigured by some deity. But bonds between people can be more powerful than gods.’

Read the review here.

Herzog must have had many gods, and many guardian angels.

For the blessed one cows are princesses. Just find your cow in time. Forswear humans.