In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

112 ARRAYS
as in the extreme images evoked by Johannes Becher's poetry [see Mountaineering,
Murder]:
Oh,
Melting Love! ... Gramophone-choirs
Whimpering in the wind of chimes! Oh,
Holy song once among them, which
Trilled over the mountains through the shining snow ...
And the companions of the murder victim
Rolled uphill now, with black hats from the pub,
Over the grave dug at the midnight hour
Like a drinking barrel . . .
(Becher, 90, 63)
In contrast, for Thomas Mann, who worries about the amount of time
he spends listening to classical music on the record player, the relation
between death and the gramophone (which he calls "the little coffin
made of violin wood") becomes an object of explicit reflection, in the
early manuscripts for his novel Der Zauberberg, or The Magic Mountain
(Kolbe, 379). And in his novella "Unordnung und fruhes Leid," it is the
sound-and the silence-of the gramophone that structures the young
people's dance party at the home of Professor Cornelius. Their gramophone
plays all kinds of music-with the explicit exception of Spanish
folk melodies. [see Bullfighting, Jazz, Authenticity vs. Artificiality] It may
thus be no accident that Luis Bunuel becomes a record collector only
after moving from Madrid to Paris: "It was in Paris that I really learned
how to dance correctly. I took dance lessons and learned everything ...
Above all, I played jazz, and continued to play my banjo. I owned at
least sixty records, a considerable number at that time" (Bunuel, 75).
Setting the rhythm for styles of dancing and socializing that are no
longer based on the expression of feelings and thoughts, the gramophone
is an indispensable element of modern life. [see Dancing] But as an
emblem of ecstatic modernity, it also provokes resistance which, in turn,
defines the rifts between different generations and cultures. [see Present
vs. Past] "We alone were still dancing, and we kept dancing until Herr
Roux and the Anglo-Saxon Corsican ... not only refused to wind up
the gramophone but insisted that we had to stop disturbing the sleeping
guests with our music" (Schickele, 331). For the philosopher Theodor