In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

PRESENT VS. PAST 315
something has materialized. Then we begin to understand how insignificant
our effect on the world is, how things grow out of the depths
and enter the realm of being, where they stay for a short while-only to
disappear again" (Junger, 5). But how can "time-objects proper"
(Husserl, 3-93)-whatever is by definition in continuous flux-acquire
shape or form? The general, and historically specific, answer to this
question lies in the concept of rhythm. "Rhythm" here means the way
in which time-objects achieve form: by passing repeatedly through recurrent
patterns, in a process of continual change (Gumbrecht, 170-182).
Thus, the intense efforts to describe and analyze the phenomenon of
rhythm-efforts manifest in books like Charles Diserens' The Influence
of Music on Behavior (Golston, 9), or Andre Coeuroy and Andre
Schaffner's Le Jazz, which discusses topics such as "rhythm and percussion"
and "rhythm among the blacks"-are the obverse of a general
reluctance to describe and analyze the Present through large philosophico-historical
comparisons. Once a rhythmic pattern has been identified,
it can serve to characterize specific moments in the flow of time.
It is thus that the fascination with rhythm becomes a part of the Present's
self-reference. Jazz music and modern forms of dance, but also the labor
of office and factory workers, are performed "to a frenzied rhythm"
(Lang, Metropolis, 30). [see Assembly Lines, Dancing, Employees,
Gramophones, Jazz] Rhythm is not only Authenticity and Artificiality;
it also makes possible the coupling of systems to systems and of people
to systems. [see Elevators, Authenticity = Artificiality (Life)] William
Butler Yeats uses the contrast between rhythm and content to distinguish
the cultures of different generations: "The realists turn our words into
gravel, but the musicians and the singers turn them into honey and
oil ... You at any rate cannot sympathise with a horrible generation that
in childhood sucked Ibsen from [William] Archer's hygienic bottle ... 'I
find my parents detestable,' said the young woman, 'but I like my grandparents'"
(Yeats, 34-35).
In connecting the concept of "rhythm" to the notion of "generation,"
Yeats brings together two dominant responses to the crisis in the philosophy
of history. The process of defining the Present as a generation inevitably
involves comparisons with an immediately preceding Past; but it
also overlaps with the idea of rhythm in at least three ways. First, it
hardly ever extends back to a very remote Past; second, it allows for
repetition and recurrence; and third, it normally does not develop long-