A R N O   H O L Z
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from PHANTASUS

 

Translated by Eugene Jolas

 

 

n e x t

 

 

Holz not only replaced rhyme with a number of acoustic effects; he also asked “why the eye should not have its particular pleasures in the printed type of a poem.” These pleasures are not miniature images of Man and World, but rather (as if they were calculated on the tachistoscope) ergonomically optimal uses of reading time. Beginning in 1897, Holz typographically centered the lines of his poetry for physiological reading ease. “If I left the axis at the beginning of the line, rather than in the middle, the eye would always be forced to travel twice as far.” What the verses have in view, then, are not readers and their understanding, but eyes and their psychophysics, in other words: “Movements of matter, which are not subject to the laws of intelligence and for that reason are much more significant.” Holz’s Phantasus, rather than addressing fantasy as the surrogate of all senses in the finest romantic manner, reckons with unconscious optokinetics.

-- Friedrich Kittler (Discourse Networks, 1800/1900 -- tr Michael Metteer)

 

 

 

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