A Wooden Computer: Presentation of the Kuhlmann Sonnet Machine
In this paper I shall
try to describe and introduce the circumstances of the birth of a special
object and its elements and to discuss the theoretical questions emerged. The
object is a composite work of art including more pieces of art – that is how we
shall try to fit up the machine after taking it into pieces, that is the basis
of our approach; both in theory and in practice.
I did take part in
the story as well, or at least I was a close beholder. I am one of the few who
brought the reproduction of the Kuhlmann-machine into being in the autumn of
1999. And please do not forget to put a question mark in your minds after the
words above.
The sonnet called The
Change of Humane Things is a highly important piece from an early book of
verses of a Silesian German poet, Kuhlmann. The original German version and the
Hungarian translation make the textual surface of the machine. The strange
mental world of Kuhlmann did involve doubts as to his healthy mind. In 1679 he
travelled to Constantinople to convert
the Turkish Sultan Mohammed IV in order to attain world unity. Ten years
later he was burnt at the stake said to be a heretic. This sonnet was planned
by Kuhlmann himself to be rotating, combinatory machine which reveals all the
wisdom of the world. He thought that all knowledge is in vain except for the
statements composed of given elements put together accidentally the vocabulary
of which including the combinatory instructing lines was supposed to be the
extremely dense and mystical form of all knowledge.
If a poem-writing
machine had been made anyway whatsoever, we do not have the traces. The
Hungarian translation on the machine was made by László Márton revised by Péter
Benits and Tünde Tóth.
The charge to make
the multimedia part of 1999 Frankfurt Book Sale Hungarian pavilion was laid on
Iván Horváth and his team. This is where the reconstruction of the poem-writing
machine was made as an exhibit.
I got hold of the
joiner and I had to explain him what the machine was like. The job was
undertaken by a young enterpreneur Gábor Molnár with a profile of building,
repairing and transporting of furniture. His creativity was challenged by the
undoubtedly strange task. This was not the first thing to justify his fantasy,
as earlier on he made table-clocks and hall-clocks wit wood covering and a
special exterior.
The inscriptions and
the letters on the machine were painted by Viktória Földi artisan and painter.
The machine was taken
to Molnár for maintenance after returning from Frankfurt as the vicinity of
several people of Hungarian, German and other nationalities left their
fingerprints on it and one of the rolls of the inner moving machinery broke
down.
So much for the
credits, let us now take the machine into pieces.
This peculiar poem
was found in a printed version from 1671, a volume by Kuhlmann called
Himmlische Liebesküsse. Kuhlmann says the poem is a sonnet and adds that the
reader can make up an endless number of poems with the permutation of the words
in the middle thus making the sonnet work. He explains that “not even the most
diligent scribe who writes down more than a thousand words a day could get to
the end of taking down this unbelievable amount of substitutions in less than a
hundred years.” The number of poems is of course not infinite but there is
indeed a lot of them. There are twelve lines with thirteen one-syllable words
in each and combining them in a discretionary way they can make up different
poems.
What is the general
principle of operation that makes the machine work? The poem consists of
fourteen lines out of which the last two are utterly set resulting in a
constant close. The beginning and the end In the first twelve lines are also
fixed, so the rhymes do not change, and there are thirteen one-syllable words
in the middle out of which one is chosen into the poem at a time. Let us look
at the first line for the sake of simplicity as an example: “Pest and … are
gone” is the is the set part, the three
dots make up the space for the words in between (night, mist, fight etc.) So
the first line can be “Pest and night are gone”, Pest and mist are gone”, Pest
and fight are gone” etc.
This is the way the
machine en masse produces pieces of art. However, surely enough, the idea of
Kuhlmann has incomprehensible mistakes in order to achieve an unclear purpose,
mistakes that makes us angry by virtue of their being too obvious and
meaningless. Let us look at these first.
The first thing to
say is that the created poems are each separate pieces of art logically and
methodically but they are quite similar and when comparing them, they can be
taken for variant readings of each other in the philological approach.. We
should also not forget the fact that the author’s name, the title the last two
lines and all the rhymes always remain the same. It is worth to think about a
literary tradition in which these poems of the same author, title and rhymes
are separate members so all the possible versions are autonomous pieces of art.
These would form a considerable quantity in the literary tradition and only
other combinatory pieces could be peers of them. This literary canon could
easily be identified with the Kuhlmann-sonnet itself which would not be very
different conceptually from understanding all the variations of the sonnet as
one single piece of art.
The summary-like
truth subject of the last two lines is completely independent of the possible
previous twelve lines or at least of their varying components. This is
extremely strange as these would be the factors that make the difference
between the variations. Kuhlmann says that no matter how we change the words,
the contents are not impaired, which means that he himself did not consider
these changes important as to meaning. So we get a lot of different (?) poems
with the same message. But a close that contains a constant moral that can be
put after anything with anticipatory artistic truthfulness also arouses
suspicion as being deliberately true for everything it is a public place rather
than a great revelation. The last two lines being too maxim-like exclude the
possibility of considering poem-generating as a constant re-interpretation and
confrontation of the plastic ending with the previous combinatory parts of the
poem, as the changes are too small. To sum it up we can say that the poem
textually represents the same meaning or its absence disregarding the
variations.
In my opinion one of
the most important values of the text is that it uncovers our own concept of
value. First of all it does not make up and finishes the piece just gives rules
and it has a strong necessity of the contribution of a present creator thus not
letting itself to be concerned as part of the past and at the same time it
mocks the exceptional status and mystical solemnity of art and the person of
the artist. The poem given through the cranking exists for the present beholder
and a new beholder erases it with a single movement so no-one can read that one
deliberately due to the great quantity of variations. By leaving the meaning
the chance the sonnet refers to the fact that it would be a mistake to
interpret it as an authentic and responsible product of one author’s
personality. All these concepts of us, the author in particular is made
relative as an objectisable different ego. Our machine can be taken for an ironical
game. As Barthes puts it about modernism: “Any time the writer takes down a
word-complex, the existence of Literature is questioned.” Is it?
We cannot believe
seriously that this skeleton of a sonnet jointly with the set of words could
make the man of that age feel that it is a machine, an authentic poem-creating
medium. This machine is an example of everything promised to the literary
thinker: humane creativity cannot be substituted by simple formulas and that
modelling of the language and art is impossible no matter that there are
certain structural grounds and fixed points the concrete meaning of which being
disregarded exist as a universal collection of branch pictures. One can notice
the mental process of generative grammars, the theory of non-finite realisation
of elements of finite number, understanding the sonnet as an artificial
language the competence of which is restricted to these few words and the
performance of which to an irreproducible permutation. So generativity is
interpreted with ironic scepticism and we cannot take this hollow and very
faulty Kuhlmann-machine for anything else but the triumphant parable of its own
failure. It is somewhat like those toy-books which contained human faces cut
into three so that eyes, noses and mouths could be turned over separately thus
creating queer, weird faces. In these books the phenomenon of different
elements not fitting together became a source of humour. Sometimes I feel that
the sonnet could lead to the same result.
I myself made up two
versions. In one of them I consciously tried to create generally comprehensible
metaphors which can be understood pair by pair and so it represents some of the
great interrelations of life with its conventional visualisation. In the other
I chose the words randomly and so it became an example of nonsense verse with
its hardly decipherable statements representing the machinations of chance.
If we want to examine
the text of the poem, we do this willy-nilly without taking the varying parts
into consideration saying that they do not change the meaning fundamentally. If
a man of letters was willing to take a close look at each word and their
relations with the other words, he would have to deal with every variation
which would probably take him a whole lifetime.
Strikingly enough the
words offered for choice represent the basic qualities and feelings of the
world, with denoting the poles and pairs of opposites defining the world or
ranks and objects important for the man of the age. So this series of words
give us a mirror of the world. The last two lines deal with the inevitable
meaninglessness and mutability of accidental selection of words, opposites and
the falseness of appearance, and that understanding this constant turning
around and changing is essential for understanding life. The repeated opposing
of the fixed beginning words in the first four-line section can also refer to
an organising principle which keeps the things of the world in constant going
and disorder. This secret organising principle is benign according to the moral
of the closing lines, even if we only see the incomprehensible evil in the
details: everything loves though everything seems to hate. All knowledge of
Kuhlmann is restricted to a knowledge of mutability of all human things and a belief
in its final meaning.
Kuhlmann does not use
the bound and closed sonnet form in a bound and closed way (his poem is a
mixture of the Petrarchan and Shakespearean sonnet) as if he wanted to aim at
our comfortable literary custom or everything that wishes to be seen constant
and immobile.
The two orderly
finishing lines of the sonnet are as long as the first twelve lines but with
each of the including all the words for choice. Thus the first twelve lines
have 13+4 or 13+5 syllables while the last two have 16 syllables. After
choosing the length of first twelve lines decreases to 5-6 syllables which
really stands out against the 16 syllables of the last two lines. So the form
might imply that this choosing one out of thirteen is not that unambiguous as
the harmony of the number of syllables would demand the presence or virtual
presence of the words not chosen therefore not included according to the rules.
So how it is going with these one-syllable words? They are there and not there
at the same time? The answer is yes. This means that the acceptor has to crank
out more versions until he or she becomes aware of the fact that the words are
accidental and there can be 12 different ones there and their opposites of
course now, then, and in the future.. This knowledge about the constancy of
changes acquired through the work of art will be the competence which will show
itself in performative acts.
The different
versions can create different atmosphere and meaning, but this is not
sufficient reason to treat them as separate poems. Looking at more versions
after each other however, can induce the feeling of a complete poem in us, the
one poem which by itself (without selection) cannot be summed up. The different
versions give us the literary mean of the main text, as if the reader averaged
them.
Theoretically I find the most problematic the
question of the relation of the original Kuhlmann-work and our machine, a
question which perhaps did not receive enough attention at the time of the
building of the machine and it was neither a task of mine to think of.
The lack of en masse
materialised Kuhlmann sonnet writing machines can be explained by obtuseness or
absence of interest; this enterprise has never been an urgent problem, it is
not a great deal or challenge technically to be really inspiring. We can also
say that the social class that was aware of the description of the
Kuhlmann-machine was not the potterer type.
So the problem is
whether what we have done is a part of the Kuhlmann-machine or not. If it is,
then we cannot take the machine finished only in the autumn of 1999, and the
subsistent Kuhlmann-text is only a fragment no matter how complete its from and
meaning is. This being a fragment is not anything like I tried to expound
previously (that is, the inevitable step of actualising the very text of the
poem, the permutation and cranking out the words as a meaningful part of the
original piece of art), but something which is not intentional. And if bringing
it into being is not part of the work, why do we bother? This is supported by
the argument of reference to fiction in fiction, that is, if we read about some-one painting a picture
in a piece of literature, we do not necessarily have to paint the picture in
question after reading it. We can do it but by doing it we also create a piece
of art which belongs to us although it contains a strong allusion to that
other, previous piece of art. There is an obvious difference of levels between
referring to something and carrying something out.
Both answers are
possible, I think that the Kuhlmann-machine was just as ready in its written
form as it remained by building our machine. That is why there is a bit of
confusion about calling our enterprise reconstruction, representation,
reproduction or production, presentation and/or construction without the ‘re’?
I do not know.
To avoid confusion I
think of our activity as interpretation. Some explanations have surely been
bereft of freedom by our one as the nature of interpretation implies it. (For
instance the machine looks like as it looks like, and Kuhlmann is also possible
not to have thought of anything like this. We might as well did good to the
text, as the sonnet at issue is not a very tempting one to read in its text
form with those plenty of separated words. The Kuhlmann-machine made by us
which is going to be dealt with from now on is a pro-user one, it makes the
original piece legible.
Originally the
machine would have been made of bicycle wheel spokes which could have led to
very different associations as the present one so this plan ended up in smoke
in the August of 1999. A joiner was made looked for by Horváth and I found one.
Our expectations could be summed up in the machine’s looking good.
As a definition we
can say that the articles for personal use that have a further value from their
appearance, other than their value in use look good. They also call this
aesthetic value, and sometimes certain furnishings are said to be aesthetic by
interior designers on certain points of the house. This not quite a quality of
fine arts, it can rather be explained by some fin-de-sičcle theory of art
trans-aesthetising reality. Although we should beware of references to these
big but doubtful tendencies, we should also denote to what class we should put
this phrasing. I believe that every object, be it of use-value or artisan work,
having the traces of striving for trans-aesthetising the existing functions
should be considered according to rules made for pieces of art.
The Kuhlmann-machine
wants to be a piece of art, there are traces of the creator’s effort to
trans-aesthetise the functions. And this is the point which no-one counted on:
the maker of the machine wanted and did more than artisan work.
Please take a close
look at the photo and then let us carry on. The machine was made by Molnár of a
man’s height (approx. 6 feet high, 15 stones), its lower half parallels the
legs, its function is a supporting one built together with the mechanism. The
machine itself is from waist to head. The appearance is somewhat like the trunk
of a tree. Stability is achieved by ballast put in the bottom to bring the
centre of gravity down towards the bottom. This was necessary because to make
the machine work the viewers have to be near to it and create physical contact.
The current text of the poem can be seen front-wise, but as you can walk around
it, Molnár made the inner metal bar and the wooden rolls visible by covering it
with sawn pieces of wood so you can seen into the machine between them onto the
hidden words. The inscriptions are bilingual, there is the German original and
the Hungarian translation painted in blue and green, written in Gothic letters.
Twelve rolls can be turned around on a bar inside the trunk and the words to
choose are painted on the edge of them. The opening on the wooden face with the
fixed parts of the lines lets us see one word which is one-thirteenth of the
rolls turned around by our hands inside the artificial trunk. The rolls move on
the roller bearings separating them, precise stopping at the given word is achieved
by ballast. The rolls are made out of ash-tree, the covering plates out of
beurré-tree, the pedestal out of pear-tree.
As this is a
composite piece of art, the poem being painted on an object, we can witness the
mixing of fine arts and language. Although most of the pieces of fine art also
referred to some kind of text or historical, mythical or religious tradition
(the text or story recalled by the picture or statue), this relationship was
not represented by linguistic marks (the cultural hypertext was made of the
invisible words of competence). The Kuhlmann-machine is special from this point
of view, too: the text out of which it evolved remained there written on it.
The copyright
recognises the proprietary rights of the author disregarding the medium – no
matter in what form and in what fonts it gets published, the text remains its
author’s. However, a text rarely receives such a stressed medium as the
Kuhlmann-sonnet, and we can rarely say that the medium is a separate piece of
art (like we can in the case of the Kuhlmann-machine). The object perhaps
overshadows a bit the Kuhlmann-text as a meaningful, separate experience of a
poem. Irnerio, the cicisbeo of the heroine in Calvino’s If a traveller at a
winter night says: We make up objects out of books. Yes, pieces of art:
statues, pictures, all the same how we call them. I glue some books together
with resin and that is all, they remain like that. Closed or open. Sometimes I
even carve them, bore holes into them. It is good material, books that is, good
to work on. We can wonder how much the quotation is applicable to our case.
The gush-like object
made out of wood is almost like an ironic glance for the strange, provocative
text. Trash is a constant moving between originality and banality inside the
arts and this could be involved in the moving of the rolls. This kind of
burnished wood appearance mounts validly that kind of universally sage
(although querying it in the background) Kuhlmann-text, while it turns its own
being worked out into the interlocutor of a message of three hundred years. The
well fashioned wooden form recalls the wall-guard texts written on wooden
sheets (like Tidying up is a mania of the forgotten man. The genius sees
through chaos.) and this also make the meaning of the interpretation richer.
The work of Molnár is
worth a thought as a working piece of art. This thing only existing in
interactions and provoking the activity of the viewer gives its own
presentation a happening kind of character especially in such an exorbitantly
visited place as the Hungarian pavilion of the book sale was. However strange
it may sound, the original intention for interactive creating of a text and the
call for poem writing with dice, that is, the material realisation, both refer
to a happening. And the feature-likeness ends up in an unintended punch-line:
the machine does outrage anybody, no-one’s conventions are made fighting
opponents. It rather shows temporal distances and ones in thinking: the
secondary provocative character is only tertiary in the machine of Molnár. One
of the reasons for this could be that this piece of art as an exhibit only
makes its own reception possible in a common space, and so it contradicts the
contemplative reading strategy which combines the reception of the text with solitude,
seclusion, leisurely and tranquil interpretation and thinking which is regarded
to be ideal nowadays. So by writing the Kuhlmann-sonnet on an exhibit we
fundamentally change the rules of its reception and perhaps we get the receptor
out of the rut.
The machine has gone
through the triumphal march and returned home after fulfilling its duty of
fidelity: it symbolised a convincing relationship between the German host and
the Hungarian guest (because of its creators), and it was also bilingual. We
were exposed to the public gaze.
It is not easy for
the contemporary pieces of art. No-one is quite sure about the criteria based
on which we keep the objects, pieces in 2000 and after. The odds are against
the machine as its creator is not famous in artist-critic circles. This is also
hindered by the fact that Molnár is not qualified or well-informed about
artistic life, and the critic by defining the intention of the creator with the
qualifications of the creator can get to a negative conclusion. Although I think
of Molnár’s creation as an interesting enterprise in cultural history, he is
more or less not the one who deserves credit for it, he only carried out a
commission. What is more, there is not much chance for his continuing his life
as an active artist and creating his oeuvre. To cut it short, our executor does
not fit to what can be expected from an artist, and it would be hard to make
accept that a piece of art was born without a single artist contributing to it,
and the only thing we have is the credits. The Kuhlmann-machine is not adequate
for our author-principled canon.. It would be worth to weigh the pros and cons
of a title-principled or subject-principled approach.
After all this and on
top of all this it is enough to say that the Kuhlmann-machine calls us to play
and it encourages every-one to think. And let me warn you that the story of the
machine is not yet finished! What if a painter paints a picture about Molnár’s
Kuhlmann-machine or some-one writes a poem of praise about it?
As Irnerio finishes
his monologue in Calvino: All of my works are put in a book now. So it will be
a book with the photos of all my books. And when it is published, I will make
sculptures of it, many a many.
Thank you for your
attention.
Thanks to András Márton Baló,
for his contribution and help in the
english version