The machines
Some of them came early, others late,
and outside the time when it exists
each and every one of them is homeless.
Heron’s steam ball. The Voltaic pile. The ballista.
The great pit winder in Falun. Curiosities:
The ‘pneumatic winnower’
Una macchina per
riscaldare i piedi
We only perceive machines as being homeless
when they belong to a different century.
And then they become distinct, acquire a meaning.
What do they mean? Nobody knows.
The flat-rod system: a device
with two raising rods
that moving in reciprocal fashion
transfer power over large distances.
What does the flat-rod system mean?
die bergwerke im harz anno 1723
The picture swarms with people. Human beings,
tiny as flies, are being hoisted and lowered in barrels
and the object marked ‘j’ in the picture, ‘La Grande Machine’,
at the keen waterfall, drives all the cables.
No one has ever combined,
which would be perfectly possible,
a flat-rod system and a steam engine,
Hero’s steam ball and the Voltaic pile.
The possibility still exists.
A foreign language that no one has spoken.
And strictly speaking:
Grammar itself is a machine
that among countless sequences
selects communication’s strings of words:
the ‘keen instruments’, ‘parts of childbirth’,
the ‘scream’, the ‘smothered whispers’.
When words have passed away, grammar remains,
And it is a machine. That means what?
Nobody knows. A foreign language.
A completely foreign language.
A completely foreign language.
A completely foreign language.
The picture swarms with people. Words,
tiny as flies, are being hoisted and lowered in barrels
and the object ‘j’ in the picture, ‘La Grande Machine’,
at the keen waterfall, drives all the cables.
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