Triad 20 of 32 · 2026-10-13 · Difficulty 4 · Shared figure or motif, Conflict, Genealogy/influence
The thread
Who is allowed to hear the siren? Blanchot’s Ulysses hears the Sirens’ ‘song only still to come’ safely, tied to the mast, while the oarsmen have ‘only a right to the pleasure of watching their leader writhe ridiculously’ (Book to Come pp. 3–9). Rancière’s Mallarmé makes the ‘discrete siren’ the emblem of a poem waiting for ‘a crowd still to come’ and refuses the Saint-Simonian hymn of ‘Industry made religious; religion made industrial’ (pp. 5, 28, 33–34). Avraamov’s Baku Symphony of Sirens (7 Nov 1922) carried that hymn out with a whole city’s whistles, foghorns, artillery and choirs, conducted from a tower with flags; he ‘did not want spectators’ (booklet PDF p. 22), yet in Moscow 1923 the melodies were ‘completely unrecognizable to the masses’. Shared figure (siren as lure, poem, factory whistle) + conflict over the one and the many (mast, conductor, tower) + genealogy (Blanchot’s Mallarmé → Rancière; Saint-Simon → Proletkult). Twist: Avraamov’s main instrument was tuned steam whistles (‘Sinfonia Gudki’); ‘sirens do not exist, except in the writings of poets.‘
The three books
- Baku: Symphony of Sirens. Sound Experiments in the Soviet Avant-Garde, Miguel Molina Alarcón (editor), Arseny Avraamov; 1922 (event); 2008 (ReR booklet). Anchor: the industrial hymn carried out — sirens as signal and collective song
- Mallarmé: The Politics of the Siren, Jacques Rancière, Steven Corcoran (translator); 1996. The refusal: the discrete siren and the crowd still to come
- The Book to Come, Maurice Blanchot, Charlotte Mandell (translator); 1959. The myth and its class structure: Ulysses at the mast, the oarsmen who watch
Notebook
- The tower and the mast: Blanchot’s Ulysses ‘held firm in the midst of hearing’ (p. 8); Avraamov conducts from ‘a specially built tower, using signalling flags’ (PDF p. 22); Rancière’s conductor ‘warns the crowd about adoring itself’ (p. 38). The conductor as the one who hears for the others; which of the three is honest?
- The cancelled midday cannon: ‘-The midday cannon has been cancelled.’ (Baku instructions, PDF p. 23); sirens for ‘midday and midnight’ in place of church bells (PDF p. 74); Mallarmé refuses to ‘alight, today already, at some ‘central station’’ (Rancière p. 34). Who owns the city’s noon?
- A siren that does not exist: ‘sirens do not exist, except in the writings of poets’ (Rancière p. 6); ‘Avraamov himself refers to the work as Sinfonia Gudki’ (PDF p. 74); ‘the sound-memory of a recording that was never made’ (PDF p. 62). Write the siren that exists only in translation, reconstruction and poem.
Rabbit holes
Links as checked on the day of the reading.
- Horkheimer & Adorno, Sirens passage (Dialectic of Enlightenment) — https://writing.upenn.edu/bernstein/syllabi/readings/Adorno-Horkheimer_Sirens-passage.html
- Homer, Odyssey (Butler), Book XII — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1727
- Mallarmé, Divagations, trans. Barbara Johnson — https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674032408
- Chevrier, Art and Utopia: Restricted Action (MACBA 2004) — https://www.macba.cat/en/node/23400
- Smirnov & Price, Sound in Z (Avraamov, Theremin Centre) — https://asmir.info/soundz.htm
- Kuzma, ‘Maurice Blanchot’, IEP — https://iep.utm.edu/blanchot/
To carry
“The presence of a song only still to come.” — Maurice Blanchot, The Book to Come, trans. Charlotte Mandell, p. 9
Themes
Avraamov · Baku 1922 · conductor · crowd still to come · discrete siren · Gastev · hymn of spiritual hearts · industrial hymn · Livre · Mallarmé · mast · midday cannon · oarsmen · operator · Proletkult · reconstruction · religion of artifice · restricted action · Saint-Simonians · signal flags · Sinfonia Gudki · siren · song still to come · spectators vs participants · steam whistles · Symphony of Sirens · technique · time signal · translation · Ulysses
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