No More Learning

It remained an impossible wish as long as it depended on the five lines of a musical staff, but that changed in the founding age of modern media. In the beginning there was, as always, Wagner, who, by courtesy of ice-cream poisoning in La Spezia, experienced an acoustic fever delir- ium of "swiftly running water" that suggested to him the Rhinegold pre- lude. 84 Debussy's Sirenes for orchestra and female voices followed in
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1 89 5 , the score o f which n o longer dictated words, o r even syllables or vowels, but sums, as if it were possible to compose the noise of channels or, as Richard Dehmel put it a year later, the "hollow din" of the "tele- graph wires. "85 Between 1903 and 1905 Debussy completed the "sym- phonic poem" which in Renard's tale was named after a Greek sea god- dess but which Debussy simply called La Mer. Finally, in 1907 Wagner's monotonous, ice cream-induced E-flat chord with all its overtone effects became Nerval's unwritten Amphitrite, that "poison for the ear. "
Berliner's gramophone is to the history of music what Edison's phono- graph is to the history of literature. At the price of being monopolized and mass produced by big industry, records globalized musical noise. Edison's cylinders in turn made the storage of speech a daily enjoyment, even if in each case only a very few copies could be made. As a result, literature's letter-filled papers suffered the same crisis as sheet music.
In 19 16, three years before Rilke's "Primal Sound, " Salomo Friedlaend- er delineated the new constellation of eroticism, literature, and phonog- raphy. More than any other writer of his time, Friedlaender, better known under the pseudonym Mynona (a palindrome of anonym), made stories again out of media history. In 1922 he published the novel Gray Magic, which anticipates a technological future in which women are turned into celluloid (and men, incidentally, into typewriters). In 1916 he wrote a short story that conjures up the technological past in the shape of Germany's ur- author in order to predict the transformation of literature into sound.
SALOMO FRIEDLAENDER, "GOETHE SPEAKS INTO THE PHONOGRAPH" (1916)
"What a pity," remarked Anna Pomke, a timid middle-class girl, "that the phonograph wasn't already invented in 1 8001 "
"Why? " asked Professor Abnossah Pschorr. "Dear Pomke, it is a pity that Eve didn't present it to Adam as part of her dowry for their common- law marriage; there is a lot to feel pity for, dear Pomke. "
"Oh, Professor, I would have loved to listen to Goethe's voicel He is said to have had such a beautiful organ, and everything he said was so meaningful. Oh, if only he could have spoken into a phonographl Ohl Ohl"
Long after Pomke had left, Abnossah, who had a weakness for her
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squeaky chubbiness, still heard her groans. Professor Pschorr, inventor of the telestylus, immersed himself in his customary inventive thoughts. Was
it possible retroactively to trick that Goethe (Abnossah was ridiculously jealous) out of his voice? Whenever Goethe spoke, his voice produced vi- brations as harmonious as, for example, the soft voice of your wife, dear Reader. These vibrations encounter obstacles and are reflected, resulting in a to and fro which becomes weaker in the passage of time but which does not actually cease. So the vibrations produced by Goethe are still in existence, and to bring forth Goethe's voice you only need the proper receiver to re- cord them and a microphone to amplify their effects, by now diminished. The difficult part was the construction of the receiver. How could it be ad- justed to the specific vibrations of Goethe's voice without having the latter at one's disposal? What a fascinating idea! Abnossah determined that it was
necessary to conduct a thorough study of Goethe's throat. He scrutinized busts and portraits, but they provided a very vague impression at best. He was on the verge of giving up when he suddenly remembered that Goethe was still around, if only in the shape of a corpse. He immediately sent a peti- tion to Weimar asking for permission to briefly inspect Goethe's remains for the purpose of certain measurements. The petition was rejected. What now?
Furnished with a small suitcase filled with the most delicate measuring and burglary equipment, Abnossah Pschorr proceeded to dear old Weimar; incidentally, in the first-class waiting room he happened to come across the locally known sister of the globally known brother in graceful conversation with some old Highness of Rudolfstadt. Abnossah heard her say, "Our Fritz always had a military posture, and yet he was gentle; with others he was of truly Christian tenderness-how he would have welcomed this war! And the beautiful, sacred book by Max Scheler! "
Abnossah was s o shocked he fell flat on his back. He pulled himself up with difficulty and found lodgings in the "Elephant. " In his room he care- fully examined the instruments. Then he placed a chair in front of the mir- ror and tried on nothing less than a surprisingly portrait-like mask of the old Goethe. He tied it to his face and exclaimed:
"Verily, you know I am a genius,
"I may well be Goethe himself!
"Step aside, buffoon! Else I call Schiller and my prince Karl August for
help, you oaf, you substitute! "
He rehearsed his speech with a deep sonorous voice.
Late at night he proceeded to the royal tomb. Modern burglars, all of
whom I desire as my readers, will smile at those other readers who believe that it is impossible to break into the well-guarded Weimar royal tomb.
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Please remember that a s a burglar Professor Pschorr i s ahead o f even the most adept professional burglar. Pschorr is not only a most proficient engi- neer, he is also a psychophysiologist, a hypnotist, a psychologist, and a psy- choanalyst. In general, it is a pity that there are so few educated criminals: if all crimes were successful, they would finally belong to the natural order of things and incur the same punishment as any other natural event. Who takes lightning to task for melting Mr. Meier's safe? Burglars such as Pschorr are superior to lightning because they are not diverted by rods.
In a single moment, Pschorr was able to give rise to horror and then im- mobilize those frozen in terror by using hypnosis. Imagine yourself guarding the royal tomb at midnight: suddenly the old Goethe appears and casts a spell on you that leaves only your head alive. Pschorr turned the whole guard into heads attached to trunks in suspended animation. He had about two hours before the cramp loosened, and he made good use of them. He descended into the tomb, switched on a flashlight, and soon found Goethe's sarcopha- gus. After a short while he was acquainted with the corpse. Piety is for those who have no other worries. It should not be held against Pschorr that he sub- jected Goethe's cadaver to some practical treatment; in addition, he made some wax molds and finally ensured that everything was restored to its previ- ous state. Educated amateur criminals may be more radical than profession- als, but the radicalness of their meticulous accomplishments furnishes their crimes with the aesthetic charm of a perfectly solved mathematical equation.
After leaving the tomb Pschorr added further elegance to his precision by deliberately freeing a guard from his spell and scolding him in the afore- mentioned manner. Then he tore the mask off his face and returned to the "Elephant" in the most leisurely fashion. He was satisfied; he had what he wanted. Early next morning he returned home.
A most active period of work began. As you know, a body can be re- constructed by using its skeleton; or at least Pschorr was able to do so. The exact reproduction of Goethe's air passage down to the vocal cords and lungs no longer posed any insurmountable difficulties. The timbre and strength of the sounds produced by these organs could be determined with utmost precision-you merely had to let a stream of air corresponding to the measurement of Goethe's lungs pass through. After a short while Goethe spoke the way he must have spoken during his lifetime.
But since it was not only a matter of recreating his voice but also of having this voice repeat the words it uttered a hundred years ago, it was necessary to place Goethe's dummy in a room in which those words had fre- quently been spoken.
? Abnossah invited Pomke. She came and laughed at him delightfully.
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"Do you want to hear him speak? " "Whom? "
"That Goethe ofyours. "
"Of mine? Well, I never! Professor! " "So you do! "
Abnossah cranked the phonograph and a voice appeared:
"Friends, oh flee the darkened chamber . . . " et cetera.
Pomke was strangely moved.
"Yes," she said hastily," that is exactly how I imagined his organ. It is
so enchanting! "
" Well, now, " cried Pschorr, " I d o not want to deceive you, my dear.
Yes, it is Goethe, his voice, his words. But it is not an actual replay of words he actually spoke. What you heard was the repetition of a possibility, not of a reality. I am, however, determined to fulfill your wish in its entirety and therefore propose a joint excursion to Weimar. "
The locally known sister of the globally known brother was again sitting in the waiting room whispering to an elderly lady: "There still remains a fi- nal work by my late brother, but it will not be published until the year 2000. The world is not yet mature enough. My brother inherited his ancestor's pi- ous reverence. But our world is frivolous and would not see the difference between a satyr and this saint. The little people in Italy saw a saint in him. "
Pomke would have keeled over if Pschorr had not caught her. He blushed oddly and she gave him a charming smile. They drove straight to the Goethehaus. Hofrat Professor Bbffel did the honors. Pschorr presented his request. Bbffel became suspicious. "You have brought along a dummy of Goethe's larynx, a mechanical apparatus? Is that what you are saying? "
"And I request permission to install it i n Goethe's study. "
"Of course. But for what reason? What do you want? What is this sup- posed to mean? The newspapers are full of something curious, nobody knows what to make of it. The guards claim to have seen the old Goethe, he even roared at one of them. The others were so dazed by the apparition they were in need of medical attention. The incident was reported to the Arch- duke himself. "
Anna Pomke scrutinized Pschorr. Abnossah, however, was astonished. "But what has this got to do with my request? Granted, it is very strange- maybe some actor allowed himself a joke. "
"Ah! You are right, that is an explanation worth exploring. I couldn't help but think . . . But how were you able to imitate Goethe's larynx, since you could not have possibly modeled it after nature? "
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"That is what I would have preferred to do, but I was unfortunately not given the permission. "
"I assume that it would not have been very helpful anyway. "
"Why? "
"To the best o f my knowledge Goethe i s dead. "
"I assure you, the skeleton, in particular the skull, would suffice to as-
semble a precise model; at least it would suffice for me. "
"Your skill is well known, Professor. But what do you need the larynx
for, if I may ask? "
" I want to reproduce the timbre o f the Goethean organ a s deceptively
close to nature as possible. "
"And you have the model? "
"Here! "
Abnossah snapped open a case. Bbffel uttered an odd scream. Pomke
smiled proudly.
"But you could not have modeled this larynx on the skeleton? " cried
Bbffe! '
"Almost! It is based on certain life-size and lifelike busts and pictures; I
am very skilled in these matters. "
"As we all know! But why do you want to set up this model in Goethe's
former study? "
"He conceivably articulated certain interesting things there; and be-
cause the acoustic vibration of his words, though naturally in an extremely diminished state, are still to be found there-"
"You believe so? "
"It's not a question of belief, it's a fact. "
"Yes? "
"Yes! "
"So what do you want to do? "
"I want to suck those vibrations through the larynx. "
"Pardon me? "
"What I just told you! "
"What an idea-1 apologize, but you can hardly expect me to take this
seriously. "
"Which is why I have to insist all the more forcefully that you give me
the opportunity to convince you of the seriousness of this matter. I am at a loss to understand your resistance; after all, this harmless machine won't cause any damage! "
"I'm sure it won't. I am not at all resisting you, but I am officially
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obliged to ask you a number of questions. I do hope you won't hold it against me? "
"Heaven forbid! "
In the presence of Anna Pomke, Professor Boffel, and a couple of curi- ous assistants and servants, the following scene unfolded in Goethe's study:
Pschorr placed his model on a tripod, ensuring that the mouth occupied the same position as Goethe's had when he was sitting. Then Pschorr pulled a kind of rubber air cushion out of his pocket and closed the nose and mouth of the model with one of its ends. He unfolded the cushion and spread it like a blanket over a small table he had pulled up to the tripod. On this blanket (as it were) he placed a most enchanting miniature phonograph complete with microphone that he had removed from his case. He now care- fully wrapped the blanket around the phonograph, leaving a second opening facing the mouth in the shape of an end into which he screwed a pair of bel- lows. These, he explained, were not to blow air into but to suck it out of the mouth.
When I, as it were, let the nasopharyngeal cavity exhale as it does dur- ing speech, Pschorr lectured, this specifically Goethean larynx functions like a sieve that only lets through the acoustic vibrations of Goethe's voice, if there are any; and there are bound to be. The machine is equipped with an amplifier should they be weak.
The buzz of the recording phonograph could be heard inside the rubber cushion. And then an inescapable feeling of horror upon hearing an indis- tinct, barely audible whispering. "Oh, my God! " Pomke said, holding her delicate ear against the rubber skin. She started. A rasping murmur came from the inside: "As I have said, my dear Eckermann, this Newton was blind with his seeing eyes. How often, my friend, do we catch sight of this when faced with something that appears to be so obvious! Therefore it is in particular the eye and its perceptions which demand the fullest attention of our critical faculties. Without these we cannot arrive at any sensible conclu- sion. Yet the world mocks judgment, it mocks reason. What it, in truth, de- sires is uncritical sensation. Many a time have I painfully experienced this, yet I have not grown tired of contradicting the world and, in my own way, setting my words against Newton's. "
Pomke heard this with jubilant horror. She trembled and said: "Divine! Divine! Professor, l owe to you the most beautiful moment of my life. "
"Did you hear something? "
"Certainly. Quiet, but very distinct! "
Pschorr nodded contentedly. H e worked the bellows for a little while
and then said, "That should be enough for now. "
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He put all the instruments back into his case with the exception of the phonograph. All those present were eager and excited. BbHel asked, "Pro- fessor, do you honestly believe that you have actually captured words once spoken by Goethe? Real echoes from Goethe's own mouth? "
" I d o not only believe so, I am certain of it.
I will now replay the phonograph with the microphone and predict that you will have to agree with me. "
The familiar hissing, hemming, and squeezing. Then the sound o f a re- markable voice that electrified everybody, including Abnossah. They listened to the words quoted above. Then it continued: "Oh ho! So, he, Newton,
saw it! Did he indeed? The continuous color spectrum? I, dear friend, I shall reiterate that he was deceived: that he was witness to an optical illusion and accepted it uncritically, glad to resume his counting and measuring and splitting of hairs. To hell with his monism, his continuity; it is precisely the contrast of colors that makes them appear in the first place! Eckermann! Eckermann! Hold your horses! White-neither does it yield any color nor do other colors add up to white. Rather, in order to obtain gray, white must be mechanically combined with black, and it has to be chemically united with gray to produce the varied gray of the other colors. You will never ob- tain white by neutralizing colors. It merely serves to restore the original con- trast of black and white: and of course white is the only one that can be seen in all its brightness. But I, dear friend, I see darkness just as clearly, and if Newton only hit upon white, I, most esteemed comrade, also hit upon black. I should think that a former archer like yourself would greatly appre- ciate such a feat! That is the way it is, and so be it! From me our distant grandchildren and great-grandchildren populating this absurd world will learn to laugh at Newton ! "
BbHel had sat down while everybody was cheering. The servants tram- pled with delight, like students in the fiery lectures of that upright and de- monic graybeard, the smashingly revolutionary, lordly Reucken. But Abnos- sah sternly said, "Gentlemen! You are interrupting Goethe! He isn't finished yet! "
Silence resumed and the voice continued: "No, Sir, no and again no! Of course you could have if you had so desired! It is the will, the will of these Newtonians, that is pernicious; and a faulty will is a corruptive faculty, an active inability that I abhor even though I catch sight of it everywhere and should be accustomed to it. You may consider it harmless, but the will is
the true contriver of all things great and small; it is not the divine power but the will, the divine will, that thwarts man and proves his inadequacy. If you were able to desire in a godlike way, dear friend, the ability would be
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necessary and not j ust easy to come by, and a lot of what now dare not show its face for fear of meeting hostility or ridicule would become every- day experience.
"Consider young Schopenhauer, a lad of supreme promise, full of the most magnificent desires, but afflicted by the rot of abundance, by his own insatiability. In the theory of colors he was blinded by the sun to the extent that he did not accept the night as another sun but rather deemed it null and void; likewise, he was captivated by the luster of life in its wholeness, in contrast to which human life struck him as worthless. Behold, Sir, that the purest, most divine will is in danger of failure if it is bent on persisting at all cost; if it is not prepared to wisely and gracefully take into account the exte- rior conditions as well as the limitations of its own means! Indeed: the will is indeed a magician! Is there anything it cannot do? But the human will is not a will, it is a bad will. Ha! Haha! Hee! Hee! "
Goethe laughed mysteriously and continued in a whisper:
"Very well then, my dearest friend, I shall entrust, indeed reveal, some- thing to you. You will judge it a fairy tale, but to me it has attained the ut- most clarity. Your own will can vanquish fate; it can make fate its servant provided-and now listen closely-it does not presume that the tremendous and divinely tense creative intent and exertion within should also be clearly manifest without, especially in a most intense display of muscular strain. Behold earth as it is turned and driven! What mundane industry! What ceaseless motion! But mark my words, Eckermann! It is no more than mun- dane diligence, nothing but a fatally mechanical driving-while the vibrat- ing, magical will of the sun rests within itself and by virtue of this supreme self-sufficiency gives rise to the electromagnetism that humbles the whole army of planets, moons, and comets into servile submission at its feet. 0 friend, to understand, to experience and be, in the most serenely spiritual sense of the word, that sublime culprit! -Enough, let us leave it at that. I was accustomed to discipline myself whenever I heard others, and some- times even Schiller, rhapsodize freely, out of love for such a divine activity, in the face of which one should be silent, because all discourse would not only be useless and superfluous but indeed harmful and obstructive by creating a ridiculously profane understanding, if not the most decisive misunderstanding. Remember this, my friend, and keep it in your heart without attempting to unravel the mystery! Trust that in time it will
unravel itself, and this evening go to the theater with Little Wolf, who
is eager to go, and do not treat Kotzebue too harshly even though he disgusts us! "
"Oh, God," Pomke said, while the others eagerly congratulated
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Abnossah, "oh, God! If only I could listen forever! How much Eckermann withheld from us! "
After a long while a snoring emanated from the machine, then nothing! "Gentlemen! " Abnossah said, "as you can hear, Goethe is obviously asleep. It makes little sense to wait around; there is nothing to expect for a couple of hours, if not for an entire day. Staying around is useless. As you no doubt realize, the apparatus adheres closely to real time. In the most fortunate case we might hear something should Eckermann have returned to Goethe fol- lowing the performance. I, for one, do not have the time to wait around for that to happen. "
"How i s it," the slightly skeptical Bbffel asked, "that, o f all speeches, we were able to listen to this one? "
"Pure chance," Pschorr responded. "The conditions, in particular the makeup of the machine and its positioning, happened to correspond to these and no other sound vibrations. I only took into account the fact that Goethe was sitting and the location of his chair. "
"Oh, please, please! Abnossah! " (pomke, almost maenadic, was as if in a trance; for the first time she called him by his first name. ) "Try it some- where else! I can't hear enough of it-and even if it is only snoring! "
Abnossah put away the machine and locked the suitcase. He had become very pale: "My dear Anna-Madame," he corrected himself,
"-another time. " (Jealousy of the old Goethe was eating him up inside. ) "How about Schiller's skull? " Bbffel asked. "It would decide the dis-
pute over whether it is the real one. "
"Indeed," Abnossah responded, "for ifwe heard Schiller, the Swabian,
say in a broad Hessian accent, 'How about a glass of wine? ' it wouldn't be Schiller's skull. -I am wondering if the invention couldn't be refined. Maybe I could manufacture a generic larynx that could be adjusted like an opera glass in order to be aligned with all kinds of possible vibrations. We could listen to antiquity and the Middle Ages and determine the correct pronunci- ation of old idioms. And respected fellow citizens who say indecent things out loud could be handed over to the police. "
Abnossah offered Pomke his arm and they returned to the station. They cautiously entered the waiting room, but the locally known one had already left. "What if she let me have the larynx of her famous brother? But she won't do it; she'll claim that the people aren't mature enough and that the literati lack the reverence of the people, and that nothing can be done. Beloved! Beloved! For (oh! ) that! That is! That is what you are! "
But Pomke wasn't listening. She appeared to be dreaming. " How he stresses the rs ! " she whispered apprehensively.
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Abnossah angrily blew his nose; Anna started and asked him distract- edly: "You were saying, dear Pschorr? ! I am neglecting the master for his work! But the world subsides when I hear Goethe's own voice! "
They boarded the coach for their return journey. Pomke said nothing; Abnossah was brooding silently. After they had passed Halle, he threw the little suitcase with Goethe's larynx out of the window in front of an ap- proaching train. "What have you done? " Pomke shrieked.
"Loved," Pschorr sighed, "and soon I will have lived-and destroyed my victorious rival, Goethe's larynx. "
Pomke blushed furiously; laughing, she threw herself vigorously into Abnossah's tightly embracing arms. At that moment the conductor entered and requested the tickets.
"God! Nossah! " murmured Pomke. "You have to get me a new larynx of Goethe, you have to-or else-"
"No or else ! Apres les noces, my dove ! "
Prof D r. A bnossah Pschorr Anna Pschorr, nee Pomke
Just married
Currently at the "Elephant" in Weimar
This wedding announcement is truly a happy ending: it puts an end to Classic-Romantic poetry. In I9I6 even "timid middle-class girls" like Anna Pomke come under the influence of professors like Pschorr, who as one of the " most proficient" engineers of his day obviously teaches at the new technological institutes so vigorously promoted by Emperor Wilhelm II. Marriage to an engineer vanquishes the middle-class girl's infatuation with Goethe, which lyceums had been systematically drilling into them for over a century. 86 What disappears is nothing less than The Determi- nation of Women for Higher Intellectual Development. Under this title, a certain Amalie Holst demanded in I802 the establishment of girls' schools responsible for turning women into mothers and readers of po- ets. 87 Without the Anna Pomkes there would have been no German Clas- sicism, and none of its principally male authors would have risen to fame.
Consequently, Pomke can only think of the old century when con- fronted with the technological innovations of the new one. As if to prove that the Soul or Woman of Classicism and Romanticism was an effect of automata, she laments the unstored disappearance of Goethe's voice with
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the very same sigh, "oh" (ach), uttered by the talking robot Olympia in Hoffmann's Sandman, a sigh that, though it is the only word it can speak, suffices to underscore its soul. In Hegel's words, a female sigh, or a "dis- appearance of being in the act of being," loves a male poetic capability, or a "disappearance of being in the act of being. " And as if to prove that the voice is a partial object, Pomke praises Goethe's voice as "a beautiful organ. " Which not coincidentally makes the "psychiatrist" and "psycho- analyst" Professor Pschorr "jealous," for all the power Classical authors had over their female readers rested in the erection of that organ.
Not that middle-class girls were able to hear their master's voice. There were no phonographs "around 1800," and therefore none of the canine obedience for a real that became the trademark of Berliner's gramophone company in 1902. Unlike that of Nipper, the dog that started sniffing at the bell-mouth of the phonograph upon hearing its dead master's voice, and whose vocal-physiological loyalty was captured in oil by the painter Francis Barraud, the brother of the deceased, the loy- alty of female Classic-Romantic readers was restricted to the imaginary- to their so-called imagination. They were forced to hallucinate Goethe's voice between the silent lines of his writing. It was not a coincidence that Friedrich Schlegel wrote to a woman and lover that "one seems to hear what one is merely reading. " In order for Schlegel wholly to become an author himself, women had to become readers and "appreciate the sa- credness ofwords more than in the past. "ss
"To the extent that graphism"-that is, in the shape of alphabetic writing-"is flattened onto the voice" (while in tribal cultures "it was in-
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scribed flush with the body" ), "body representation subordinates itself to word representation. " But this "flattening induces a fictitious voice from on high that no longer expresses itself except in the linear flux,"89 be- cause at least since Gutenberg it has announced the decrees of national bureaucracies.
Thus Anna Pomke's loving sigh confirms the theory of media and writing of the Anti-Oedipus.
Once the beautiful and fictitious, monstrous and unique organ of the poet-bureaucrat Goethe, which commanded an entire literary epoch, rose as an acoustic hallucination from the lines of his poems, things proceeded as desired. In 1 8 19 , Hoffmann's fairy tale Little Zaches noted what "ex- travagant poets . . . ask for" : "First of all, they want the young lady to get into a state of somnambulistic rapture over everything they utter, to sigh deeply, roll her eyes, and occasionally to faint a trifle, or even to go blind for a moment at the peak of the most feminine femininity. Then the afore- said young lady must sing the poet's songs to the melody that streams forth from her heart"90 and, finally, in the Anti-Oedipus, reveal the secret of its media technology: that it is a fictitious elevated phallus born from the alphabet.
For timid middle-class girls, however, everything depended on liter- ally going " blind" when faced with the materiality of printed letters; oth- erwise, they could not have provided them with a melody in the imagi- nary (or at the piano) from their hearts. In doing so, they surrendered un- conditionally to the desires of Classic-Romantic poets. "Oh," Anna Pomke sighs from the bottom of her heart, "if only he could have spoken into a phonograph! Oh! Oh! "
A sigh that will hardly reach the ears of engineers. Pschorr can only discern a "groan" in her "oh," mere vocal physiology instead of a heart. Around 1900, love's wholeness disintegrates into the partial objects of particular drives identified by Freud. Phonographs do not only store- like Kempelen's vowel machine or Hoffmann's Olympia-the one signi- fied, or trademark, of the soul. They are good for any kind of noise, from Edison's hearing-impaired screaming to Goethe's fine organ. With the demise of writing's storage monopoly comes to an end a love that was not only one of literature's many possible subjects but also its very own media technology: since 1800 perfectly alphabetized female readers have been able to endow letters with a beloved voice. But tracing primal sounds has, as Rilke put it, nothing to do with "the presence of mind and grace of love. "
As a modern engineer who wants to spread his knowledge using
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everyday language, Professor Pschorr minces n o words: " Whenever Goethe spoke, his voice produced vibrations as harmonious as, for exam- ple, the soft voice of your wife, dear Reader. " However, the fact that what Goethe had to say was "meaningful" enough to fill the 144 volumes of the GroiSherzogin-Sophien edition is irrelevant. Once again notions of frequency are victorious over works, heartfelt melodies, and signifieds. As if commenting on Pschorr, Rudolph Lothar writes at the outset of his The Talking Machine: A Technical-Aesthetic Essay:
Everything flows, Heraclitus says, and in light of our modern worldview we may add: everything flows in waves. Whatever happens in the world, whatever we call life or history, whatever occurs as a natural phenomenon-everything transpires in the shape of waves.
Rhythm is the most supreme and sacred law of the universe; the wave phe- nomenon is the primal and universal phenomenon.
Light, magnetism, electricity, temperature, and finally sound are nothing but wave motions, undulations, or vibrations. . . .
The unit of measurement for all wave motions is the meter, the unit of time is the second. Frequencies are the vibrations registered within a meter per second. The frequencies of light, electricity, and magnetism are taken to be identical; with approximately 700 trillion vibrations per second, their speed of propagation is 300 million meters per second.
Sound vibrations exhibit significantly lower frequencies than those described above. The speed of propagation for sound is 3 3 2 meters per second. The deepest sound audible to human ears hovers around 8 vibrations, the highest around 40,000. 91
The new appreciation of waves, those very un-Goethean "primal and universal phenomena," can even result in a poetry that once more stresses the wavelike nature of all that occurs, as in the sonnet "Radio Wave," which the factory carpenter Karl August Diippengiesser of Stolberg sub- mitted to Radio Cologne in 1928:
Wave, b e aware o f your many shapes,
and, all-embracing, weave
at the world's wheel, entrusted from above, the new and wider spirit of the human race. 92
But engineers like Pschorr are ahead of "other people," even radio wave poets: their "spirits hail"-to quote the engineer-poet Max Eyth-"not from the world that was but from the one that will be. " It is more efficient to use waves "to make things that were never made before"93 than to write sonnets about their many shapes. Pschorr makes use of laws of na-
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ture that, unlike the Panta rei of Heraclitus or of Goethe's "Permanence in Transition, " are valid regardless of the reputation of so-called person- alities, because they are based on measurements. The law of waves does not exclude the author of "Permanence in Transition. " And because the frequency spectrum and transmission speed of sound are so low, they are easy to measure. (To posthumously film Goethe would require technolo- gies capable of recording in the terahertz range. )
With mathematical precision Pschorr recognizes the frequency of hu- man voices to be a negative exponential function whose value, even after centuries, cannot be zero. In the phonographic realm of the dead, spirits are always present-as sound signal amplitudes "in an extremely dimin- ished state. " "Speech has become, as it were, immortal," ScientificAmer- ican pronounced immediately after Edison's invention under the headline, "A Wonderful Invention-Speech Capable of Infinite Repetitions from Automatic Records.