VV(18): Automata

[Dave Monroe]

"A remarkable innovation would be the use of automata, to play Su Feng's 
handmaidens.  'A German engineer is building them,' said Itague.  'they're 
lovely creatures: one will even unfastened your robe.  Another will play a 
zither--although the music itself comes from the pit.  But they move so 
gracefully!  Not like machines at all." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 396)

"The woman sat [....]  Itague [...] scrutinized her, looking for some such 
betrayal.  He'd observed the face some dozen times.  It had always gone 
through conventional grimaces, smiles, expressions of what passed for 
emotion.  The German could build another, Itague thought, and no one could 
tell them apart." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 400)

"Suddenly one of the automaton handmaidens seemed to run amok, tossing 
itself about the stage.  Satin moaned, gritted his teeth.  'Damn the 
German,' he said, 'it will distract.'" (V., Ch. 14., Sec. ii, pp. 413-4)


Keep in mind not only those other two "rude mechanicals" in V., SHOCK and 
SHROUD, but also note that Stravinsky's Petrushka (1911), the ballet he 
composed betwixt L'Oiseau de Feu (1910) and Le sacre du printemps (1913), is 
named after an animate puppet of Russian folklore.  The title character of 
his operatic followup to Le Sacre, La Rossignol (1914), is a Japanese 
nightingale automaton.  See, e.g., ...

http://www.geocities.com/Vienna/1807/strav.html

Note also that both Jacques Offenbach, in Les contes d'Hoffmann (completed 
posthumously, post-1880) and Leo Delibes, in Coppelia, composed ballets 
depicting the female automaton, Olympia, of E.T.A. Hoffmann's tale, "The 
Sandman," a reading of which features prominently in Sigmund Freud's 
formulation of "The Uncanny" (1917) ...

Freud, Sigmund.  "The Uncanny."   Standard Edition, Vol. XVII.
   Ed. and trans. James Strachey.  London: Hogarth, 1955: 217-256.

"When we proceed to review things, persons, impressions, events and 
situations which are able to arouse in us a feeling of the uncanny in a 
particularly forcible and definite form, the first requirement is obviously 
to select a suitable example to start on.  Jentsch has taken as a very good 
instance ‘doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or 
conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate’; and he 
refers in this connection to the impression made by waxwork figures, 
ingeniously constructed dolls and automata. To these he adds the uncanny 
effect of epileptic fits, and of manifestations of insanity, because these 
excite in the spectator the impression of automatic, mechanical processes at 
work behind the 'ordinary appearance of mental activity.'"

For E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman," see ...

http://www.vcu.edu/hasweb/for/hoffmann/sand_e.html

And note as well ...

"The theme of the ‘double’ has been very thoroughly treated by Otto Rank 
(1914). He has gone into the connections which the ‘double’ has with 
reflections in mirrors, with shadows, with guardian spirits, with the belief 
in the soul and with the fear of death; but he also lets in a flood of light 
on the surprising evolution of the idea. For the 'double’ was originally an 
insurance against the destruction of the ego, an ‘energetic denial of the 
power of death’, as Rank says; and probably the ‘immortal’ soul was the 
first ‘double’ of the body. This invention of doubling as a preservation 
against extinction has its counterpart in the language of dreams, which is 
found of representing castration by a doubling or multiplication of a 
genital symbol. The same desire led the Ancient Egyptians to develop the art 
of making images of the dead in lasting materials. Such ideas, however, have 
sprung from the soil of unbounded self-love, from the primary narcissism 
which dominates the mind of the child and of primitive man. But when this 
stage has been surmounted, the ‘double’ reverses its aspect. From having 
been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny harbinger of 
death."

http://www.english.upenn.edu/~tabitham/uncanny.html

Hm ...

"'No.  No, it is merely being reflected.  The girl functions as a mirror.  
You, that waiter, the chiffonier in the next empty street she turns into: 
whoever happens to be standing in front of the mirror in the place of that 
wretched man.  You will see the reflection of a ghost.'" (V., Ch. 14, sec. 
i, p. 399)

"Who knew her 'soul,' Itague wondered [...].  It was her clothes, her 
accessories, which determined her ..." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 400)

Anyway, on the female automata, see ...

Miller Frank, Felicia.  "Edison's Recorded Angel."
   The Mechanical Song: Women, Voice and the Artificial in
   Nineteenth-Century French Narrative.  Stanford, CA:
   Stanford UP, 1995.  143-71.

As well as ...

Lathers, Marie.  The Aesthetics of Artifice: Villiers's
   L'Eve future.  Chapel Hill: U of NC P, 1996.

Michelson, Annette.  "On the Eve of the Future:
   The Reasonable Facsimile and the Philosophical Toy,"
   October 29 (Summer 1984): 3-21

Which I obviously never tire of bibliographizing.  A question, though: why 
"a German engineer"?  Certainly not Mondaugen, but ... and note not only the 
technology "run amok" theme at chapter's end, but also the virgin (La 
Vierge/Su Feng/La Jarretiere/Melanie l'Heuremaudit) and the dynamo 
(automaton handmaiden) ((c) Henry Adams) as well.  Now on that "grace" thing 
...
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