Raymond Roussel, Mark Polizzotti (translator) · 1910 · EPUB · Calibre ID 772
Resurfaced in Without Aid or Supervision (2026-10-05).
Role in the triad
Practice: the performing machine
Why this book
Technical ekphrasis at Heronian density for machines that exist only in prose and were generated by puns; self-running machines built for an audience; the novel structured like an automaton theatre, performance (I–IX) before mechanism (X–XXVI).
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “Manufactured in situ by an anomaly of this extraordinary machine, which was specially designed to perform for an attentive audience” (ch. VI)
- “the machine could reproduce the same design indefinitely, without aid or supervision.” (ch. X)
- “Despite the absence of an actual lens, the polished surface, owing to its extreme sensitivity, received extremely powerful impressions of light” (ch. IX)
- “Louise watched joyfully over the operation of her machine, which so far had functioned without accident or error.” (ch. IX)
- “The work must contain nothing real, no observations on the world or the mind, nothing but completely imaginary combinations.” (Janet, quoted in Polizzotti’s Introduction)
Themes
audience and mechanism · automata · Flood · language as generator · loom · machines · painting machine · procédé · shipwreck · spectacle