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APPENDIX A :
The Power of Language: Texts and Translations
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^1 Commissioned by the Electrical Company to accompany a more technical brochure meant to convince architects to think about putting in electricity in their buildings when they are drafting |
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To conform ourselves to a style which has been ours since the electrical current was placed at our disposal, we shall immediately establish contact and suddenly throw light on our intentions. After all, why should our intellectual moves be so different from those that we are in the habit of executing everyday in our daily lives? The first homage to electricity seems to me to speak about it in terms other than formal academic ones, and, in brief, to treat it intellectually in the same way we use it on a practical level. As for our readers, equally accustomed to these new ways of living, we should not suppose a priori that our ways will shock them. And why should anyone wish to enter a book as if it were some kind of dark apartment or secret labyrinth: feeling around, and held by the hand, like a child or an invalid? We cannot believe that our reader wants to be treated in this fashion, and we are convinced, on the contrary, that he will be grateful for our frankness. Neither do we have in mind some future of vaguely defined reader. We are looking at someone, or rather, someone is looking at this book in his hands. He has opened it. His eyes are now running over these lines, and, in all probability, he is beginning to wish that he could grasp something, something clear, that immediately makes an impression on his mind, and that he could, just as easily, store in his memory: that is, something already resolved, if this can be said. Here goes. This book is addressed to architects,^1 but it has been conceived in two installments. This is the first. Furthermore, the first one is distinct from the other. Why? Because the second one, wholly technical, will only interest that part of the architects' mind (or those who are closely associated with that art) that functions professionally during workshop hours in offices or on a construction site. Whereas this first brochure, although it shouldn't in any way appear to them to be unequal or without relationship to the second (but should, on the contrary, from the beginning, as in the long run, appear to them as happily complementing it), should, however, touch in them the other man, I mean the one who is still an architect, of course, but also a man of leisure, a man whose mind and taste are receptive to many other things, a man who would like to leave on his table -- in his office or in the living room --a handsome book, --who would like to show it to his wife, to his wife's friends, to his own friends, Is that clear? It seems clear to me. Now, I have to be even a bit more frank and explain why we are offering such a book to architects, their wives, and their friends. It is obvious (how could it be otherwise?) that our enterprise is not entirely without design. Our business is with electricity. For the man in the street, there are two aspects to electricity. On the one hand, production and electrical mains (these mains are practically all built in France). On the other hand, there are the machines, the appliances, the orchestra of appliances that use electricity. But among them, if I can express it this way, there are the dwellings that contain these appliances; there are the homes and the offices of the men who use them. And since there are buildings, there are architects who build them, and there are also the clients, the wives, the friends of these architects who commission these constructions, and in general, confide in them, as they rightly should. Now, and however curious this may appear in an a priori manner, but there are explanations for it (we shall speak about them later on), it seems that some architects still forget about electricity at times. I mean, that some still do not account for it --that is, as being of an importance equal to that of either air or daylight --when they draft their plans. This work has only one aim: and that is to be, I do not say convincing --but rather unforgettable, so that not a single one, as readers, will ever forget that electricity exists, that appliances exist, that they can be found or will be found (in greater and greater numbers) in each building, in each house, and that, consequently, when plans are being conceived for a building, one must arrange for the outlets, the "circulation," and the availability at the maximum number of places, of one or more currents placed at everyone's disposal. Is that clear? I believe it is. And now, we are going to turn off the ceiling lights on this book and on our intentions and instead, turn on the desk lamps or the bedside ones, and, with your permission, we are going to become more intimate, and have a more familiar conversation, in a slightly lower voice. Isn't it already evident, in parenthesis, how pleasant it is thus to vary the lights instantaneously according to our state of mind, or according to the setting, the atmosphere or, as the saying goes, the ambience that one wants to create? Why should I, at this time, introduce this aside? Believe it or not, simply as a question of modesty on my part. Because I am going to speak about myself about the person who was asked to write this text and given the job of seducing you. We are going to ask ourselves why. Continuing in this same spirit of frankness, but frankness excludes neither diffidence ... nor modesty, which so agreeably precedes intimacy, as you shall see, and diffidence on all sides, of course. And so, a layman was called in. Yes, a layman, I must admit it. But a layman or a particular kind. In short, as certain category of (intelligent) technicians having to address themselves to another (equally intelligent) category of technicians, chose a third kind of person as an intermediary, a perfect layman in one and the other or the two techniques. This might give rise to a number of speculations. I will not spare you all of them. It is true that this layman is himself a technician in another field. Which one? Language, quite simply. When I say quite simply, that is a manner of speaking. We shall attend to this simplicity in a moment. For the time being, let us not complicate matters. There are several types of writers. Among those who might interest technicians in their contacts with a general audience, one finds public relations men, journalists, popularisers, then writers strictly speaking, that is to say, those for whom the perfection of the literary work seems to count more than anything else, even more than the content of the work itself. But perhaps there is still another type of writer, the one who is concerned not only with internal perfection, and that which determines it, but also with a particular relationship between the work, its object or its content. It is among this latter group that I have always wished to be placed, and undoubtedly I must have succeeded in some way since I have had the honour of being chosen. Nevertheless, one should not hide the fact that choosing any man of art involves a certain risk. Which one? Let us see. Introducing a third technique, one ran the risk of a new specialised language. Why indeed, should technicians of language be the only ones to escape a law that now seems to apply to all other techniques? Why shouldn't they also not sink deeper and deeper into their speciality, into their problems, leaving to some intermediary category (let us say, critics, for example) the task of introducing them to the public? Do we believe they are incapable of recognising that need, and couldn't that need, in turn, prove to be legitimate, since they also encounter many difficulties in their technique --difficulties, that is to say, satisfactions? One would be rather imprudent not to think so, and, dare I say, rather ill advised. And yet, why did this risk have to be taken? Why was it an intelligent one to take? Because, all things considered, our language is the only one that has, in the Tower of Babel of techniques, some chance of being understood by one and all. Its materials, in fact, borrowed from the common good -- Speech -- are at least as intelligible as they are sensitive: on the condition of being well handled. I doubt whether the previous paragraph could have been read without some impatience, and yet, it had to be written. Because of our three techniques have something noble in common, that I had to clarify, and that is, they are all indispensable to all the others. Architecture houses all the techniques. Electricity sheds light on them and animates them. And Speech? Well, Speech (in another sense, it is true) houses them, animates them and sheds light on them, all at once. Electricians, o laymen! You had instinctively understood this. |
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And now I must go on, that is, I refuse to keep on going solely in my own direction. I must suddenly turn aside and
dig in: I must go back to my plan. According to my plan, at this moment, speaking in a lower voice, lower still, I must still call myself a poet. What does that mean? Well, a layman, but lay in all things, systematically. That's right, and in a paradoxical manner, because in all things he detects, inhales, and profanes the sacred. Because, charmed by all things, or rather, each one in its turn, he only rests satisfied when he has succeeded in showering down his intimate resources on them for the enjoyment of his readers. Now you understand why I had to speak in a low voice, intensely low. Let me cut this short. You are prepared. Or perhaps only bothered. Desirous (in any case) that something else occurs immediately . ... And now, the moment has suddenly come to switch the ceiling lights back on. Be reassured, I only did that to turn them off just as soon. But you felt, didn't you, how it is marvelously within our power to throw, alternately on you, on myself, within the locus of the evidence and activity, a strong, vivacious and pitiless light, and then to plunge us again into the night. And you will now taste the night, and you will taste the poetry that will come from it, with a wholly different violence, a wholly different voluptuousness. A short paragraph here (but a moment, if you please) -- to remind myself in my personal notebook to ask my architect, in the house he is designing for me, to put in light switches near the windows (and not just close to the doors and beds) so that I can better savour the night. |
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Here we are, then, in the night, and here is the open window. Whether the sky is overcast, as the saying goes,
whether the darkness is without a break, and we should, for
example, expect a storm, or that myriad stars, on the
contrary, appear in the firmament, our basic feeling remains
the same: we are placed, all of a sudden, and once again, in
the presence of natural forces, and the infinite -- spatial
and temporal at the same time. If we were, first of all, going to feel spatial infinity, the astronomical one, we now know that it is only a matter of electricity. Our knowledge is not very old but Henri Poincare having written on this subject beautiful and striking formulas, we are now thoroughly persuaded. However, with your permission, let us put that aside for the moment, and let us rather plunge into temporal infinity, in to the Night of Time. The transition is easy, operating, for example, through the intermediary of the notion of light years, and through the idea (now a true cliche) that one of those brilliant stars emitting light, might have been dead at the time the Chaldean astronomers were observing the same sky, at the time when Thales, a student in the Egyptian sanctuaries, had already discovered, through other sources, the electrical properties of yellow amber. "Through other sources," I have said, and why did I put it that way? Because, all the entries in dictionaries dealing with electricity, all the manuals and all the histories of sciences have accustomed us to mark the beginning of electricity with Thales, and with yellow amber -- it being understood that one had to wait for Gilbert, Queen Elizabeth's physician, for electrical properties to be attributed to all terrestrial bodies, and Franklin, who established the relationship between these phenomena and those of atmospheric electricity. Of course, the best among these manuals tell us (almost immediately) that certain laws pertaining to atmospheric electricity seem to have been known well before Franklin, even before Thales himself, by certain priests or initiates, such as Moses, Solomon, Numa, and even the Gauls. It doesn't matter: everything always begins with Thales, and in Thales,, with yellow amber, and it is always claimed that no relationship had ever been made, before the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, between the phenomenon of thunder and the attraction of light particles by sticks of amber that have been rubbed. Nevertheless, I must admit, that here I am disturbed by something that irresistibly leads me to doubt. Being, as I am (as is everyone) sensitive to the great, and so to speak, superior beauty of the things of ancient Egypt, of the ancient East, of ancient Greece -- and when I say things, I do not only mean sculpture or architecture but fables and mental constructs (Greek geometry, for example) -- I cannot easily accept the idea that in the area of scientific knowledge, were considerably inferior to us. I am slightly embarrassed when I have to accept the idea that modern man any way superior to the man of these epochs. Instinctively, I challenge that claim. Then, other things come to confirm my intuition. Here they are. All the dictionaries and manuals that I have already mentioned also say that the phenomena in question were given the name electricity because succin or yellow amber was called Electron in Greek. Well! all that is quite plausible. But I am surprised that no one wants to know why yellow amber had been specifically called Electron. Forgive me, but my curiosity goes further. No doubt because words, and this is an odd fact, interest poets even more (that's apparent) than those who compile dictionaries. And that may be because I can find them all past sensitivity and knowledge. To such an extent that I readily associate (in my turn) Electron with Electra, the one in ancient Greek mythology. And immediately I go back to Electra, and I go back to the origins of Electra. Daughter of Atlas, about whom we know, moreover, that he carried heaven on his shoulders. And thus, grand-daughter of Japet, and niece of Prometheus (ravisher of fire). Also, sister of Cadmos (and let us note in parenthesis, primo, that Thales himself descended from him, and secundo, that he represented, in central Greece, what Danaos represented in Argos, that is, Egyptian influences). One of the Pleiads, and therefore a suicide, as they all had committed suicide, in despair over the death of their sisters, the Hyades, in whose collective name the word rain can be found, and who, in turn, committed suicide when their father Atlas dies. And finally, among the Danaids, because she is also related to them, why shouldn't she be the same as Hypermenstra, the only one not to have killed her husband, Lynceus, he who had the gift of such piercing sight that it could even go through fortified walls? In any case, it was she who brought the Palladium to Troy, but what do we mean by "brought"? since we know that the idol fell from the sky near Ilos' tent. So much for Electra's ancestry. Furthermore, if indeed Thales, in refusing to limit himself to the properties of yellow amber, knew through some other sources, how to make himself famous in predicting the solar eclipse of the year 610 before Jesus Christ, I would like someone to tell me. by virtue of what decree disregarding all these indices, one could not accept that he (and all our ancestors of those ancient Mediterranean civilisations) knew about the relationship between amber and thunder, and had some vague idea, as correct as ours, of what we call (after them) Electricity? A moment ago, I specifically mentioned Moses and the names of other persons whom it does not seem absolutely absurd that they might have been initiated to certain of these phenomena, even though they may have only used them to increase their own prestige. It would seem that the famous Tabernacle of the Jews, the Holy Vessel, built by Moses, given its description as it figures in Chapter XXV of the Book of Exodus, might be considered as a very clever condenser. Built, according to the Lord's commandments, of shittin wood (insulating), covered on both its sides, interior and exterior, of gold leaves (conductors), further topped by a gold crown, destined, perhaps, thanks to the classic "power of the points," to provoke a spontaneous charge of the machine in the atmospheric field, which, in those dry regions can, it is said, reach up to hundreds of volts, two to four feet off the ground -- it is not surprising that this Holy Vessel, always ready to strike the impious, could only have been approached without danger by the great priests such as Moses or Aaron, about whom, we are told, elsewhere in the Scriptures, that their clothes were "entirely woven of gold threads and decorated with gold chains that hung down to their heels." The patient commentator, from whom we have borrowed this hypothesis, adds that this clever "grounding" allowed them to discharge the condenser without harming their persons. Following this same trend of thought, and in the same religion, one also knows that the historian Josephus describes the Temple of Jerusalem as being wholly surrounded by gold-tipped rods, while a German scholar observed that, during a period of a thousand years, the Temple was not even struck once by lightening. One merely has to conjecture, as our strong minds do without hesitation, that these rods had been anchored to the ground by metallic conductors, destined, for example, to drain water, in order to credit Solomon with a knowledge that, certain comments from the Scriptures seem to indicate, in fact, was not second to Moses'. Needless to add, because everyone knows it, that Moses left Egypt, where he lived, between the sixteenth and fifteenth century before our era. But Lucan, in his Pharsalia, devotes a few lines to a haruspex from Etruria by the name of Aruns, who, living at the same time, knew how to bring together the scattered fires of thunder and bury them in the ground with a sinister noise. Datque locis numen: thus he consecrated sites. Much later, Numa, one of the first kings of Rome, knew how to invoke Jupiter's fire. And I was informed, by one of the best sculptors of our time, that an open grotto existed beneath the Capitol where new bronze statues of the Gods were exposed, so that during one of the storms, so frequent in Rome around five o'clock in the afternoon, they might be lucky enough one day to be consecrated by thunder, at the risk of melting some part of them, thus, in a way, being signed by it. |
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I do not know if my readers will appreciate as truly poetic all that has just been recalled in the preceding
lines. A few might, unjustly, disdain it as a decadent
taste for archaeology; other, equally unjustly, might
judge, on the contrary, that is it exactly here, in fact,
that poetry is to be found, and even, that it is exclusively
here that it is to be found but on the condition that it be
written according to ancient forms. As for me, I share neither
the first or the second view, and knowing why I take pleasure
in it, I hope to shed some light on this later on. Be that as it may, much has really changed since then, and another concept of man has prevailed, as well as a new concept of his relationship to the universe. Just as we did not discuss civilisation, or the magma of preceding civilisations, we will not treat this one exhaustively, although in some ways, this would be more meritorious, since we could do it for this one. Let us remain in the night for a while longer but let us once again become aware of ourselves, and of the very instant, this instant of eternity through which we are living. Let us gather together, in this type of musing, the most recent knowledge that we possess. Let us remember all that we were able to read last night. And let it no longer be at this moment of musing the (slight) expert in ancient civilisations but someone who is acquainted with Einstein and Poincare, Planck and de Broglie, Bohr and Heisenberg. How should I then consider the spectacle that night offers to my eyes? In ways that are yet unclear, I do understand some of the things about it; and in my mind I do have certain general notions concerning it. For example, I was deeply impressed by the very striking image, suggested by Henri Poincare, who, bringing the two infinities closer together, made us conceive of the atom as a solar system and its free electrons as comets. And, indeed, I am no longer ignorant of the fact that electrical phenomena are now interpreted on the basis of the constitution of matter itself. And though I am loathe to consider it as a new example of that Illusion of Totality recently brought to light by an illustrious logician friend of mine, I am willing to concede for a moment that everything is an electrical charge, and electrical field, etc. So far so good. Neither have I forgotten Planck's law, not so difficult to "accept" as one might imagine, nor the principle of uncertainty, and the relativity of Space and Time, and the notion of curved Space, that is, the hypothesis of the indefinite extension of the universe. But, in the final analysis, if I must admit it, it is the resemblance of that figure of the world with the one that had been presented to us by Thales and Democritus that impresses me's rather than its novelty. When I look, for example, at a model of the path followed by free electrons, their unpredictable zigzags and their slow incorporation into what we call an electrical current, there is nothing there that does not remind me, given the quantum notion of action and of the principle of uncertainty (which only confirms it), of the famous clinamen of Democritus and Epicurus, applied to the corpuscles that they had so clearly understood. And, of course, I admire Planck for having calculated the "h" constant; and I admire the "progress" in mathematics, as I had already admired, I ask you to believe it, the slightly older calculations that were confirmed one day by the discovery of Neptune at the very place it had been expected. But then, how could I forget that Thales had predicted the eclipse of the year 610 before our era, and how could I stop wondering, if by chance, he might not have calculated it, and if the means to do so had not precisely been there in those Egyptian sanctuaries? And then, I reread Lucretius and I said to myself that nothing as beautiful has ever been written; that nothing that he had put forth, in any discipline, seemed to me to have been seriously questioned, but that, rather, everything he said had been confirmed. And I know that he has been described as an anxious person, and as a madman, and some people have claimed (and that would suit them) that he eventually committed suicide. But since we are still on our balcony, with the lights out, looking at the nocturnal sky, I can also maintain, remembering Electra, that one might find in it an example of divine behaviour; and further observe, as it had happened to Electra and her sisters, that he too had been placed among the stars, except that this had only occurred in th memory of man, where his light had not yet distinguished. And now, considering the consequences on the mind of these last hypotheses, incomprehensible to us except through the most advanced mathematics, and that seem to plunge physicists, or at least the philosophers in their wake, into a touching dizziness, if not (and I congratulate them on it) into the slightest repentance -- I am beginning to see, although still indistinctly, a few reasons that had prevented me from explaining them up to now. Note that we still haven't turned the lights back on. I have a feeling that this will soon occur but I must benefit a little longer from the darkness and, in a psychiatric sense, the possibilities of "constructions" that it contains; the monstrous abstractions that it allows. Here, I would say, we are back at a time very similar to that of the Cyclopes, far beyond classical Greece, far beyond Thales and Euclid, and almost at the time of Chaos. The great goddesses are sitting, once again, undoubtedly conjured up by man, but he is terror stricken when he imagines them. They are Angstrom, Light-Year, Nucleus, Frequency, Wave, Energy, Psi-Function, Uncertainty. Like the Summerian divinities, they too stagnate in a fantastic inertia but approaching them makes one dizzy. And in their aprons, written in abstract script, formulas are inscribed in advanced math. No hymn, in everyday language, could ever reach them. It would not even reach their knees. And that is why we cannot hear any of them (that is a fact), nor be tempted to compose a fitting one. Our forms of thought, our rhetorical figures, actually date from Euclid: ellipses, hyperboles, paraboles, are also figures of that geometry. What would you want us to do? Well, exactly what we are doing, we artists, we poets, when we work well. And I do not pretend, in my case, that this has just happened. Assuredly not. It happens when we too dig into our matter: into meaningful sounds. Heedless of ancient forms and melting them back into a mass, as it is done with old statues, in order to make cannons out of them, ammunition . . . and, when necessary, new columns according to the demands of the Times. Thus, we may perhaps, one day, create new Figures that will allow us to put our trust in the Word, in order to traverse curved Space, non-Euclidean Space. |
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Not bad at all. We have become as fat as a bull. Under cover of the limitless night, we have blown up our gold-
beater's skin. And, if we hadn't been a poet, as of that
moment, I think now we have become one. I must admit there
is something agreeable about all that. But to tell the
truth, knowing myself as I do, if I have indulged in this
fantasy, It was only because I knew how to suppress it
instantaneously. What did I have to do? Well, suddenly
switch the lights back on. And here I am, without delay, back on my feet in the visible world. And as I had better savoured the night, by eliminating dusk, so the slow and sanguine dawn, I prefer the rush of morning reason. At that instant, in the glare of the electric bulbs, I see how wrong I had been about several things the night had led me to construct. First of all, the evident difference between the laymen that we are and those of different religions. And then, that scientific progress does not have to be proven by formulas. Look at the way myriad students, and technicians, scholars and handymen, as well as youngsters of all ages-- easygoing or scrupulous, careless or cautious, taciturn or boisterous -- have climbed on the knees of those colossal goddesses. And there, they have not only scribbled all over them but have placed a thousand machines on them, a thousand marvellous appliances. Admittedly, at times, this can be rather unpleasant: a short circuit or an atom bomb. But we shall take it in stride, with indulgence, philosophically. To tell the truth, other things concern us, and we know exactly what we need in the store that one day will be built. As soon as it is "tested," we adopt it. We have now adopted washing machines, tape recorders, and electric razors. Why not? We would be foolish to get along without them. However, we will neither be the last ones to use them, nor the first, definitely not the last -- which makes more sense than one suspects. I seem to be joking, and perhaps this is scandalous, but let me have my say -- that's how people think in general. Electricians have understood this well, they have observed, for examples, that just for domestic needs, electrical consumption has practically doubled every ten years. Or that the development of television, in the United States alone, has raised the consumption to a quality equal to that required by the combined needs of France, both industrial and private. Yes, including all our large factories, and the electrification of our transport systems! Electricians have understood this. Isn't about time architects understood it, too? However, I spoke about reciprocal modesty, and so I must once again speak about myself. The way that man presently feels about electricity not yet produced any major work, and major poetic work. Couldn't this lag, among architects and poets, be due to the same causes? Architects like poets are artists. As such, they see things in eternity rather than in the temporal. For all intents and purposes, they are wary of fashion. I speak of the best of them. Wouldn't the very speed of the progress of science prompt architects, like poets, to a certain resistance insofar as their deep commitment, their affiliation, their "connection" is concerned? I am here reminded of what happened when I was quite young -- seven or eight years old-- and lighting was modernised in our large house in the suburbs of Avignon. The "hanging lamp" in the dining room was equipped with a classic heavy oil-burning lamp. This lamp was modified so that an "Auer" gas outlet could be fitted on it; as a result, there was a much whiter and more brilliant light -- that was "gas." But two years had hardly elapsed when the workers were back. Here and there, lead pipes were ripped out, elsewhere, they were crushed. And thus came electricity. Switches were installed, and from that time on, the hanging lamp was never lowered or raised again. But, to tell the truth, I have never forgotten all that ripping and crushing. Everyone can remember an anecdote of this kind, and I was sufficiently troubled by this to cross the whole of Paris in order to question, in the laboratories of the rue Lord Byron, a friend of mine who is solely concerned with the new form of fashionable energy, I mean, nuclear energy. And I asked him whether electrical wiring would soon be ripped out, if the counters would be taken away, in order to install some cyclotron in their place, in a house or on a floor. Well, believe me, I left reassured. I had only needed a single comment, and it seemed to me that I had already made it, and that was that electricity was still necessary to disintegrate matter and connections were still useful. Out in the street once more, I was stunned by all sorts of lights. I then went to the home of a duchess friend of mine where I dined by candlelight. Because of this, I soon became aware of a new fact. Electricity is a lasting marvel, not only because it determines our conquest of the future but because it does not, in any way, stop us from appreciating the pleasures of the past, and perhaps makes us more sensitive to them. There were thirty-six guests at our duchess': pilots, surgeons, stage directors, but frankly speaking, I could no longer see them except for their halo of electricity. I saw those projectors with their pinpoint beams aimed, some of them, on a cloud in order to measure its distance, others on a sick organ or on an operating table, and still others, on that part of a scene that had to be lit up at a specific moment. And I said to myself that I too could aim those beams on the pediment of a monument in order to bring out, as never before. a particular detail. or to beg them, in the jewelled nocturnal foliations, to give me the diamond of their concerted volume. I said to myself that thanks to them, I could dazzle an assailant or fascinate a prey. And, further, as a contemplator of things, use them to double or multiply my observations. Finally, to direct it al will and provoke scandals or surprises, amazement or those grimaces that sometime accompany the revelation of a truth. These games, I said to myself, depend on my will, and they are endless. |
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Coming back home in a mental state you can imagine, I felt simultaneously spurred on by emulation, an imperious
need to sit down at my desk and finally write a worthy hymn
to Electricity, but also, and such are the contradictions
in nature, a need, no less imperious, for coolness, for
silence and meditation in the night. So much so that, switching off the lights, I went out on the balcony again. I asked myself where I had left my goddesses and their knees? But right away, all things mingled and I saw these goddesses sitting on mountains near Truyere, or in the caverns of Brommat. I heard the thirty tons of water per second tumbling down at Mareges. I imagined the millions of volts, the giant transformers, and did not forget the danger; and as of that moment, it no longer seemed impossible for me to begin writing my hymn, writing a certain type of poetry. Did you know that men died at the moment they so much as touched those Hindu princesses, those untouchables? Well, I find that rather to my liking. Electricity is indeed a princess, and the fact that she has a copper complexion does not displease me. Exactly. Nevertheless, would you believe it, she has blue eyes, or rather, a particular blue reflection on the surface of her copper skin. Very well. That even agrees with what we know -- that ionised copper molecules are blue, whereas in their neutral states they are red. But this princess is also a maid: how will I explain that? I realise that here I will have to turn the lights back on. Yes, I've only to put my hand near the switch and the solution is instantaneously found. One only has to grasp between the thumb and the index the little cold ear of this child when, on the spot, stripping off its showy silk dress, its wings spread out, on the walls and on the ceiling -- there is a dazzling person, its mother. Is it our Hindu princess, a thousand of them, a thousand naked slaves that rush forward to serve us? What nobility, what pleasure such domesticity procures! What a luxury to be served by this great metaphysical figure, clothed in rustling and shimmering silks, and naked besides, coiffed with aigrettes, adorned with rivers of diamonds! Yet so agile! so zealous! Ah! zealous forces me to reject all those metaphor and chose instead the firefly, and, in fact, turning on the switch, it seemed to me at times that the approach of this stunning person was a bit fearful, even shocking. She attracts then repels. She does not allow the slightest familiarity. One says of the best maids that they are pearls, but this one, is she not a diamond, all the diamond mines in the world? Not quite, for all that is also crystalline, sparkling and also much more fluid -- that quality must be added. All the rivers, then, all the rapid and oxygenated rivers of the world! All the trout rivers, with trout fleeing below! Thus, clothed like a maharani, in evening clothes, but naked also, sparkling and bejewelled -- ah! I would only live at night for the pleasure of being served by her! Brusk, elegant, proud, magnetic: a maid with a princess' character. Her origins are of the noblest, and she never degenerates. I am told that she serves me the way she does everyone, and that any peasant can afford her. To tell the truth, she is a prostitute, but what do I care since she never loses her distinction, since she keeps her distance as a matter of principle. She isn't a part, in any way, of what she lights. Wind or orgy may blow: she neither staggers nor blinks. And neither her body nor her soul is ever perturbed. Were one to touch her, the untouchable does not bite back like the flame, that savage! As a reminder, she jolts you or kills you. |
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Having such resources in one's apartment, such an eagerness to serve and such a discretion at the same
time, how wouldn't one want to make it go through a
thousand tests, invent a thousand toys for it, offer
her a thousand instruments? If only to make her change
and rejoice in that. I would readily become a collector
of the instruments of her zeal. Better still, an inventor.
What's more, she suggests some to you . . . . With that in mind, I began dreaming a lot. I invented a thousand appliances . . .. But, finally, I said to myself, the day will come when everything, not only pertaining to universal actuality but to intemporality (the planetarium is a good example) will automatically be recorded, in order to become (I am not the only one thinking about the visual) a perceptible pleasure, even if they don't want it, for all those who would not have experienced it directly. Thinking about that, I stared dumbly at my bulb whose impassibility suddenly struck me. I was immediately afraid that I had allowed myself to be carried away by some lyrical excess, or that well-known illusion of totality. I became very dissatisfied with my hymn and, had I written it, I would have torn it up. In the end, I said to myself, because I was tired, I think that electricity has acted in a rather negative manner on poetry and art. We experience its influence in a general modification of taste. I mean to say that it has contributed in making us prefer clarity to the penumbra, perhaps pure colours to subdued ones, perhaps speed to casual manners, and perhaps a degree of cynicism to effusion. All that has a part, in all the arts, in shaping a certain type of rhetoric: one marked by a spark leaping between two opposite poles, separated by a hiatus in the expression. Only the elimination of the logical link allowing the spark to flash. Poetry and electricity accumulating from that moment on, and remaining unknown until the lightning: that seems to go hand in hand with quanta aesthetics. And, of course, how could anyone write a hymn or a speech in the sustained manner, after the discontinuous has triumphed in physics? Such is the state of things that must surely be taken into account by architects, because there is no turning back: taste has now been irreversibly modified . . . Now, I ask myself if I haven't been fooling both myself and the reader. All those affirmations, in all directions, so contradictory . . .. It is late. Let us take a mirror. In front of my face, a powerful lamp . . .. A thinker, finger on the temple? Or a clown, putting on his make-up? Why, both of course -- an old man who has understood. At this point, I started to laugh, feeling young again. I rose, and pirouetting, spoke to myself once more, taking up the tone of the beginning. It seems to me that we have indeed shown in everything that we've just said, although in our own way (and how could we have done otherwise, without becoming inauthentic and losing all our capacity of persuasion), shown, I say, the importance of electricity in dwellings, the function or rather the functions of the greatest importance that it performs, and further, the mark of nobility that it brings to life in the home. To be sure, man still remains the protagonist. A new man, it is said, and I am partially in agreement with that. In fact, a renewed man; younger, cleaner, smoother, freer (as one says of a disengaged wheel) and, on the whole, more detached. I dare not, and yet I should say, a man better differentiated. What I would really like to show, in conclusion, is that such a man is all the more valuable in that this transformation operates in accordance with his true nature, that is, with that part which has always been responsible for his difference among beings in the world. I speak of difference, purposely eliminating, as one can see, the world superiority. And I hope that this nuance will be given its proper due. As for those to whom the idea of superiority is necessary, who need it in order to live, and even to stand up, let them be free to adopt it, since there is nothing in what I have just said, neither in what I am about to say that can stop them from doing it. As for me, the idea of my difference is sufficient, and the most important seems for to be for me to accept, to be familiar with, and, finally, to live one's difference, to want it. In my opinion, it alone suffices to justify us; to make of us, in the order and the harmony of the world, or if one prefers less laudatory terms, in the machine, in the clockwork of the world. a perfectly indispensable gear. Connected to others but as important as any of them, and thus, without any need to suffer any complex (inferiority or nonjustification). I would even say that a sense of vanity in one's superiority would seem to me to be not only slightly ridiculous but even slightly dangerous. After all it may not be a good thing for a gear to consider itself the principal gear. It might then run away, spin at too fast a rate, wearing and tiring itself We're familiar with that, aren't we? Those depressions that follow exaltations! Why should we put ourselves in such a situation? Why would we want to risk, singing too loudly our own superiority and our glory, see ourselves forced to stop singing one day, demean ourselves, wallow in our feeling of helplessness; and, take off a bit too rapidly down the stairs that lead to the cellar . . . (toward taboos!) In the end, you've got to choose for yourself That will not affect what I have to say. Whether, in fact, one considers it as a superiority or simply as a difference, his difference, it seems clear that throughout history, man's nature has been able, thanks to certain faculties (pertaining to the mind) to evolve, to adapt, and to perfect himself, all the while, staying simple and naked. More to the point, capable of making tools, weapons, armour, instruments of detection, for war, for transportation; capturing devices; making his food easier to digest: truly an endless series of appliances, increasingly numerous, varied, and perfected, but all of the absolutely free of his person. Isn't it evident that he has managed to adapt himself in comparison to other species, and let us say to mammals (the same thing holds true for fish, reptiles, or birds). If a pig has to live in the forest, it must completely change itself; its tusks must grow, etc. If a horse must feed itself in a region where there is less grass to eat than leaves, bananas or dates place don a high branch, then it is forced to lose many qualities of the horse in order to become a giraffe. Elsewhere . . . but then I would never finish .... Let us just conclude that man can be forced to live under this or that latitude; he will not be forced to lose any of his qualities. He will invent the tools and the weapons appropriate to his new condition in the world, and to the dangers or the resources inherent to it. And when I say that he has managed to perfect his equipment, the easiest thing to do is to compare him to those anthropods which, by the way, it would not be a waste of time to observe, in order to invent better appliances. Look at lobsters or shrimp for example. Isn't it marvellous to admire their armour, their reckoning and detecting systems, their combat and capturing devices? And yet! how very inconvenient it must be never to leave one's armour, or any of one's other weapons, or any of one's devices and always live with that equipment on ones back! What am I saying! Not only on one's back but intimately part of one's flesh, and thus of one's psyche, and, therefore, forcing one to become wholly different, a destroyer, for example, or a periscope, etc. How awkward, if one wanted a better vision, and a rather free and easy walk, a degree of control over the situation! One might say, in all the various meanings implied in the word, including the slang meaning, that, what became a lobster, was monstrously refashioned by Nature, both in its general and in its specific aspects. Man has been spared such transformations! What is man? A lobster that can check its shell in the cloakroom, its periscope, its hand-vices, its fishing rods. A spider that could put its web in a hangar and repair it with e tips of its fingers, instead of having to abandon it in order to weave another, or more exactly, to slaver out a new one. One can imagine how many examples I could find in nature to add to these. The point has been made. I think you've understood. Besides, all you ye got to do is look at the first arrival. Stepping out of his plane or his car his car which he leaves in the garage, dressed in his suit which he leaves in the bathroom, he appears to us just as he was on the first day: as naked, naked as a worm, as pink, as integrally clean and free as possible. With the exception of angels, I do not know of any animal that is as naked. Wait a minute! I'm sure that none of you architects have overlooked the fact that I have constantly brought into play the notion of cloakroom, hangar, workshop, closet. That is because, when one has tools, there must necessarily be a place to put them; and when one is naked, there must be some house, some cavern or palace to provide needed shelter. And that is the reason why man, from the beginning, has had to find shelter, not only to nestle his companion and his offsprings, but to put his detachable members in a place where he could find them again when he needed them. True, there have been, and there still are nomadic populations, but they are generally followed by carts -- and after all, it must be admitted that the future does not lie in that direction. I myself have seen, in the Mediterranean region, fishing boats decline in number while fishermen's installations on shore have become, year by year, more important. |
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It also appears -- and here I introduce a third element in my
argument -- it further appears that man no longer wanted to
provide all or part of the necessary power needed to assure
the functioning of these appliances, that is to say, of his
members or independent organs. To that end, he ingeniously
used either (keeping to his muscular power) animals trained
or domesticated for this purpose (cattle, deer, or horses);
or, observing the impetuosity of wind and water (and always
keeping tot he mechanical level), utilising their energy to
make his mils go round, and even his elevators. He then
discovered the resources of the elasticity of metals and
springs, and from that, the movements of the clock. Since
then, he has gone a little farther still. The kinetic energy
of gas and steam has provided him with many new types of
machines. Ultimately, he succeeded in mastering electrical
energy and he was able to foresee, to such an extent, the
ways it was going to applied, to such an extent observe its
power, that now, his major appliances use this form of
energy. They in turn naturally suggest others at every
moment. Curiously enough, this is true to such an extent
that the need for electricity does not increase as fast ion
the most undeveloped nations that are just beginning to
equip themselves, as it does among those nations that are
already the most accustomed to its use because they have
fallen under the spell and, one might even say, that they
have been converted to it. I will not insist on the marvellous advantages of appliances that work in this way; I think I have said enough about that. In this final chapter I only wanted to show that their discovery and their constant development fit perfectly well in the order of the differential characteristic. in fact, in what is perpetual in man. I said that man was an animal with independent members and organs that he could leave or take up again, and in which he did not want to entangle himself. He will, therefore, always prefer to command form a distance, and in the least complicated manner. Well, electricity has no peer in this regard, since it is the power that is transmitted the fastest, with the least loss, and through the least cumbersome wires, the thinnest and probably the least visible ones. But obviously it must have a readily accessible "outlet." From this point forward, it seems to me that the conclusion is evident since I have brought all the elements together. You have guessed it, dear architects, those appliances man has invented must be attached not to himself, thank God, but to his dwelling. These appliances are now electric. Conclude for yourselves. If you want man to remain true to his marvellous detachment, and enjoy all those tools and instruments that he has made without being hampered by their proliferation, well, since he began to free himself by using electricity, and since all appliances have become, step by step, electric, conclude for yourselves. If you want to contribute to his becoming that angel, all pink and naked that was put here by Nature, and who, in the end, will never change again, despite the proudest metaphysical musings, or the nostalgia he feels at times for the state of nature -- but he will no longer have anything to regret, and on this point all the pessimists will be in error; If you want him to be that angel and athlete, both naked and armed, witty and strong, innocent and malicious, airy and dreamy, friend of the organ and of the circus, in a nutshell, the Shakespearian Ariel that he is; The answer is easy. Build him his dwellings, and at the very moment of conceiving them, think about electricity. All the electrical mains have been foreseen. All the symphonic instruments are in place. What am I saying, all? A thousand others will be added on. All you have to do is provide for the path of pleasures in our dwellings. Help us make him again that Ariel. We are counting on you. So be it. But I realise that I am speaking to technicians who are perhaps slightly suspicious of this lyricism and will not really appreciate this prayer assimilating them to the gods. Consequently, I will find another way of ending, rather like the way I began. I had opened my folder in a bright light to define my intent. To close my folder, in the same light, I must sum up what I have said. I think I have shown that electricity has its titles of nobility, and even of royalty: yes, its deeds are very ancient. I think I have dashed all hope that it might be dethroned. I have shown several ways that it gives us a chance to conquer the future, while allowing us to better appreciate the past. Also shown that it has unquestionably upset our ways of living and modified, in an irreversible manner, our tastes. But it has done so by placing us once again in our true state of nature, in such a way that no moralist could ever find fault with it. Finally perhaps, and in the process, I have explained why, as to electricity, poets (and architects as well) have lagged behind. These reasons are inherent in the nature of shadows. All that was needed, I dare say, was to throw some light on them in order to disperse them . . .. So be it. |