winter palace of the Hohenzollerns, with its topiary garden, its orchard of pear trees, and its many rooms, containing more than three hundred pieces of precise furniture. But when one has done admiring the skill of such miniature masterworks, one cannot fail to be struck by their difference from our automaton theater. In the first place, although it is called a miniature theater, these six-inch figures that lend such enchantment to our lives are virtual giants in comparison with the true masterpieces of miniature art. In the second place, the art of the miniature is in essence a lifeless art, an art of stillness, whereas the art of the automaton lies above all in the creation of living motion. Yet having said as much, I do not mean to deny all relation between the miniatures of our museums and the exquisite internal structures—the clockwork souls—of our automatons.
Although the origin of our art is obscure, and the precise lines ofits development difficult to unravel, there is no doubt concerning the tendency of the art during the long course of its distinguished history. That tendency is toward an ever-increasing mastery of the illusion of life. The masterpieces of eighteenth-century clockwork art preserved in our museums are not without a charm and beauty of their own, but in the conquest of motion they can in no way compare to the products of the current age. The art has advanced so rapidly that even our apprentices of twelve exceed the earliest masters, for they can produce figures capable of executing more than five hundred separate motions; and it is well known that in the last two generations our own masters have conquered in their automatons every motion of which a human being is capable. Thus the mechanical challenge inherent in our art has been met and mastered.
Yet such is the nature of our art that the mechanical is intimately related to the spiritual. It is precisely the brilliance of our advance in clockwork that has enabled our masters to express the full beauty of living human form. Every gesture of the human body, every shade of emotion that expresses itself on a human face, is captured in the mobile forms and features of our miniature automatons. It has even been argued that these finely wrought creatures are capable of expressing in their faces certain deep and complex emotions which the limited human musculature can never hope to achieve. Those who blame our art for too great a reliance on mechanical ingenuity (for we are not without our critics) would do well to consider the relation between the physical and the spiritual, and to ask themselves whether the most poetic feeling in the soul of man can exist without the prosaic agency of a nervous system.
By its nature, then, our art is mimetic; and each advance has been a new encroachment on the preserves of life. Visitors who see our automatons for the first time are awed and even disturbed by their lifelike qualities. Truly our figures seem to think and breathe. But having acknowledged the mimetic or illusionistic tendency of our art, I hasten to point out that the realism of which I speak must not be misunderstood to mean the narrow and constricting sort that dominates and deadens our literature. It is a realism of means, which in no way excludes the fanciful. There is first of all the traditional distinction between the Children’s Theater and the theater proper. In the Children’s Theater we find as many witches, dragons, ghosts, and walking trees as may delight the imagination of the most implacable dreamer; but they are, if I may risk a paradox, real witches, real dragons, real ghosts, and real walking trees. In these figures, all the resources of clockwork art are brought to bear in the precise and perfected expression of the impossible. The real is used to bring forth the unreal. It is a mimesis of the fantastic, a scrupulous rendering of creatures who differ from real creatures solely by their quality of inexistence. But even the adult
Although the origin of our art is obscure, and the precise lines ofits development difficult to unravel, there is no doubt concerning the tendency of the art during the long course of its distinguished history. That tendency is toward an ever-increasing mastery of the illusion of life. The masterpieces of eighteenth-century clockwork art preserved in our museums are not without a charm and beauty of their own, but in the conquest of motion they can in no way compare to the products of the current age. The art has advanced so rapidly that even our apprentices of twelve exceed the earliest masters, for they can produce figures capable of executing more than five hundred separate motions; and it is well known that in the last two generations our own masters have conquered in their automatons every motion of which a human being is capable. Thus the mechanical challenge inherent in our art has been met and mastered.
Yet such is the nature of our art that the mechanical is intimately related to the spiritual. It is precisely the brilliance of our advance in clockwork that has enabled our masters to express the full beauty of living human form. Every gesture of the human body, every shade of emotion that expresses itself on a human face, is captured in the mobile forms and features of our miniature automatons. It has even been argued that these finely wrought creatures are capable of expressing in their faces certain deep and complex emotions which the limited human musculature can never hope to achieve. Those who blame our art for too great a reliance on mechanical ingenuity (for we are not without our critics) would do well to consider the relation between the physical and the spiritual, and to ask themselves whether the most poetic feeling in the soul of man can exist without the prosaic agency of a nervous system.
By its nature, then, our art is mimetic; and each advance has been a new encroachment on the preserves of life. Visitors who see our automatons for the first time are awed and even disturbed by their lifelike qualities. Truly our figures seem to think and breathe. But having acknowledged the mimetic or illusionistic tendency of our art, I hasten to point out that the realism of which I speak must not be misunderstood to mean the narrow and constricting sort that dominates and deadens our literature. It is a realism of means, which in no way excludes the fanciful. There is first of all the traditional distinction between the Children’s Theater and the theater proper. In the Children’s Theater we find as many witches, dragons, ghosts, and walking trees as may delight the imagination of the most implacable dreamer; but they are, if I may risk a paradox, real witches, real dragons, real ghosts, and real walking trees. In these figures, all the resources of clockwork art are brought to bear in the precise and perfected expression of the impossible. The real is used to bring forth the unreal. It is a mimesis of the fantastic, a scrupulous rendering of creatures who differ from real creatures solely by their quality of inexistence. But even the adult
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