The Routledge Companion to Research in the Arts

voi Ces

(Klossowski 1998: 10f.)

With another exceptional artist from the second half of the twentieth century i shall
conclude my argument for the time being, which has travelled like time’s arrow through
the operational anthropologies of the past into the future. in august 1966 pier paolo
pasolini wrote an autobiographical poem during a stay in new York with the title ‘Who
is me?’ at the end of the poem, which he referred to as research, the poet confesses that,
actually:

i want to write music

in the tower of Viterbo, which i cannot buy

in the most beautiful landscape in the world, where ariosto

would have been beside himself with joy to see the resurgent

innocence of oaks, hills, lakes, and ravines,

that i want to write music there,

the only action of the expression

perhaps, sublime and inexplicable like the actions of reality.

(pasolini 1995: 33)^10

and with this we are back with Ritter:

The yearning to achieve insights into things is simply striving after the art of

loving.

(Ritter 1984 [1810]: 626)

Notes

1 zu ende neigte die alte Welt sich. des jungen geschlechts lustgarten verwelkte – hinauf in
den freyeren, wüsten Raum strebten die unkindlichen, wachsenden menschen. die götter
verschwanden mit ihrem gefolge – einsam und leblos stand die natur. mit eiserner Kette band
sie die dürre zahl und das strenge maaß. Wie in staub und lüfte zerfiel in dunkle Worte die
unermeßliche Blüthe des lebens (novalis 1908: Vol.1, 23f.). The english translation above is a
reworking by g. Custance of the english translation given online at projekt gutenberg, hymn 5.
2 Ritter, letter to Christian gottlob Voigt, 26 march 1804, cited in Rehm (1973: 206).
3 This comparison was made already in 1956 by günther anders (anders 1980 [1956]: see
particularly 97–211).
4 in the early cabinets of physics these magic tablets were used to visualize the effects of electricity
in dark rooms at popular demonstrations; cf. the detailed and illustrated account in Figuier
(1868: 485f.).
5 possibly the caliph is the same person as muristos, who described the mechanical universal
organ.
6 in addition to the relevant texts by Wiedemann (1915), the most authoritative source on the
work of the Banu musa is still hill (1979). it also contains biographical sketches of the three
brothers.
7 For further details see the extensive chapter on porta in zielinski (2006).
8 in his most recent artistic research Weiser investigates chemical solutions that separate and
combine through electrolysis. each imaginary pixel is a chemical laboratory in which the changes
of the mixtures are generated as combinations of bright colours. The work is being created in
close collaboration with academic chemistry departments in Korea and europe.
9 The title of the French original of 1994 is la monnaie vivante; i used the first german translation
(Klossowski 1998).
10 pier paolo pasolini, Who is me – dichter der asche (Berlin: hochroth, 1995), p. 33.