End of Literary Criticism
Bratu, Horia
VERY SOON AFTER the mass production of literature-writing machines began and started working with high efficiency, it was noticed that with every passing day critics were disappearing. The...
...Accordingly, the criticizing machines began to effect the extrapolation of artistic intentions...
...The phenomenon had an immediate and easily perceptible cause: the trade of the literary critic had become practically impossible...
...The only system that proved more productive returned to the old idea of the critical act, meant as a shortened remaking of the creation in its essential elements, indicating the virtualities left unexplored by the author...
...From one novel they made thousands...
...According to certain approximate estimates (the history of this moment was traced back later and its concrete details have remained obscure, for they are still based on indirect sources), a machine managed to compose a piece of poetry in less than two minutes...
...Plugged in at the literature writing machines, they succeeded in a very short time in systematically studying the production of fiction...
...The last critic died of brain fever in his own library one May morning, actually buried under a heap of books (he had been reading uninterruptedly for 26 hours), A LITERATURE LACKING CRITICAL COMMENTARY, however, was unimaginable...
...The electronic brains that were to effect the operation were quickly achieved and put into operation...
...The machine builders had to rack their brains in order to draw up the programs for these types of machines...
...The commentator was asked to examine, first and foremost, to what extent the artistic intention had been carried through...
...The press of the time carried even the accounts of a few resounding cases: the head of a great financial group found himself charged with incestuous inclinations, present in the 12604th Antigone conceived by a machine built by a firm dependent on his bank...
...No one was capable of reading even a small number of all the books that were being brought out...
...Existentialist criticism, under electronic form clashed with the paradox of the literature produced by machines...
...The machine critics would have to run through all the works produced by the machine writers and classify them according to genre, species, themes, subject, artistic formula, publishing for the moment brief bulletins for the readers' guidance...
...The electronic brains of writers and critics were thus compelled to consume their production mutually...
...What program should they assign them...
...Then somebody had a revolutionary idea, which solved the problem for good...
...The critical systems practiced in the age of literary handicraft (that was how they called the period when books were written by people) led, in turn, to unforeseen results...
...As everything developed with consuming violence, in a closed circle as suggested above, the rest of the people were able to go about their business peacefully and quietly...
...The two types of machine were plugged in a close circuit...
...In this way Lima alone brought out 1,012 volumes a year, while the profits of the publishing concerns went up rapidly...
...From the very first, the builders encountered a great difficulty...
...Thus for the exegete, the literary work was to remain a spiritual stimulant that should stir him to infinite poetical hypotheses...
...Then one of the most reputed philosophers of the time set forth the proposition that criticism was indeed doomed to disappear, since machines could create only perfect things, considering the aim they had in view...
...As the discouragement of the critics menaced to rob literary life of its essential pigment, someone had the idea of scheduling a few cheap books, otherwise there would be nothing against which to match the merits of masterpieces...
...This was the moment when it was considered necessary to build machines for assessing books...
...A novel of less than 300 pages took 18 minutes, while the time required for the writing of a play amounted, quite unaccountably, to almost one hour...
...From one play, millions of better variants...
...So, after lengthy debates there was a return to explanatory criticism...
...The result was an astounding reversal...
...But the church objected, so the analogy was considered diabolical...
...VERY SOON AFTER the mass production of literature-writing machines began and started working with high efficiency, it was noticed that with every passing day critics were disappearing...
...Their volume became so great that no one could make head or tail of them...
...Now, the machines did not stray from their program a single whit, and in fact created masterpieces, so that an estimate of their value was, ab initio, superfluous...
...Literary production experienced an unprecedented flourishing...
...If they couldn't examine the great majority of the books issued, the object of their activity became nonsensical...
...Even if they had deliberately given up the ambition of making a selection according to the importance of the books issued (there was absolutely no way of knowing if among the numberless unread volumes they had not overlooked essential works), another major difficulty had seemed to them unconquerable...
...Even the most extravagant tastes had been provided for, in the initial statistical calculations, so they could not fail to react the way they were expected to...
...But according to what criteria...
...Was it the document of a life experience...
...In their turn, the machines designed to write unsuccessful books fulfilled their task faultlessly...
...The demonstration was rather intricate and got lost in metaphysical mist, but the conclusion asserted itself intuitively with great force and very soon gained almost unanimous approval...
...No matter how hard they worked, they could not manage to read even 0.0001 percent of the works turned out...
...When the plan was put into application it was found that the vicious circle could not be broken...
...Naturally, first came the problem of ele NOTEBOOK mentary information...
...The claimant declared he did not even know the original piece, but the argument met with serious theoretical objections...
...However, the results proved to be ridiculous, because the bulletins obtained in this way were unserviceable...
...There should have been other machines that would read all the lists and make a new selection...
...It was also found that, practically, works of criticism had altogether ceased to appear, for the machines designed to produce them were also turning out novels, poems, and plays, while the advertising agencies, unable to introduce in the papers at least a book review, were threatened with bankruptcy...
...From one poem, whole cycles...
...There came a time when the novel, the play, or the poem developed symmetrically in opposite directions, with equal perfection, so that the result was a complete annihilation of the initial artistic effects...
...Pres ently the newspaper critics gave up too...
...The texts they turned out were of perfect mediocrity and stupidity, thus acquiring mechanically an unvaluable aesthetic value...
...Everyone seemed content, but in a few years it was noticed that the machine-writers were showing signs of irritation...
...As they turned out only the type of work for which they had been devised, the machines ruled out any critical remark...
...nay, even of the managers of the various industrial enterprises that supplied electronic brains designed to produce various literary works...
...The answer to that is yes and no, as the works it started discussing actually expressed a life experience (their program included so many possibilities that the results became actually unpredictable and echoed exactly the ineffable throb of life), but the machines remained only enormous heaps of filaments, levers, and networks that when a button was pressed became completely inert...
...If the machinecritics discovered they had a secret vocation for becoming writers, the machine-writers betrayed their undeclared passion for writing criticism...
...the former started frantically passing judgment on the works produced by the latter...
...Discordant effects made their appearance at the end of the works, on purpose, as it were...
...The machines worked uninterruptedly for about 90 days, after which they required a stop for a check up...
...They were assimilated with the former human creatures whom the God-creator inspired with the gift of creation...
...The first to give up their mission were the literary historians...
...A disease appeared, "self-annulment" or as some historians call it "aesthetic suicide...
...For a time the machines scheduled on a theological basis enjoyed a certain amount of success...
...Psychoanalytical criticism as usual gave rise to rows, especially as it prolonged its deductions into the subconscious of the designers...
Vol. 18 • August 1971 • No. 4
