Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s “Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch”(1801).

Kathrin Maurer Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s “Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch” (1801) Ever since the first hot air and hydrogen balloons rose into the sky in late eighteenth-century Europe, writers have been fascinated with these aerial spectacles. In France, Britain, and Germany literary artists wrote about how they witnessed such events or how they poetically imagined these journeys over the clouds. Previous research has focused on balloons in literature from a thematic, discursive, and poetic perspective.1 This chapter, however, investigates ballooning as a technology of seeing. This topic raises a number of questions: How does the technology of ballooning stimulate new forms of visual perception?2 What is the relation between the balloon and the viewing subject? How does ballooning shape the human (visual) sensorium? To address these questions, this chapter focuses on Jean Paul’s (1763–1825) work “Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch” (“Aeronaut Giannozzo’s Voyage Diary”) (1801).3 Jean Paul’s fictive travelogue about an imagined balloon journey is an excellent source for understanding how modes of seeing are intertwined with balloon technology. In fact, its title, “Seebuch,” is a pun with visual implications: The work could be understood to be a journal about nautical 1 Heinz Brüggemann, “Luftbilder eines kleinstädtischen Jahrhunderts: Ekstase und imaginäre Topographie in Jean Paul: Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch,” in Die Stadt in der europäischen Romantik, ed. Gerhard von Graevenitz (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000), 127–182; Jürgen Link, “Literaturanalyse als Interdiskursanalyse: Am Beispiel des Ursprungs literarischer Symbolik in der Kollektivsymbolik,” in Diskurstheorien und Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Harro Müller and Gerhard von Graevenitz (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), 284–307; Florian Welle, Der irdische Blick durch das Fernrohr: Literarische Wahrnehmungsexperimente vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2009), 123–144. 2 My research emphasizes the connection between vision and the balloon as a technology of seeing in Jean Paul’s writing. For research on seeing and perception, see Victoria Niehle, “Die ästhetische Funktion des Raumes: Jean Paul Des Luftschiffer Giannozzo Seebuch,” in Raumlektüren: Der Spatial Turn und die Literatur der Moderne, ed. Tim Mehigan and Alan Corkhill (Bielefeld: transcript, 2013), 69–85, and Monika Schmitz-Emans “Über Bilder und die bildene Kunst bei Jean Paul,” in Jean Paul und die Bilder: Bildkünstlerische Auseinandersetzungen mit seinem Werk: 1783–2013, ed. Monika Schmitz-Emans and Wolfram Benda (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2013), 19–64. 3 Jean Paul, “Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch,” in Jean Paul: Sämtliche Werke, vol. 3, ed. Norbert Miller (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000), 925–1010. All translations from the German into English are mine. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110696448-003 18 AU: Please provide missing opening quote. Kathrin Maurer (die “See” = the sea”) experience (transposed into the sky), and also as a ‘SehBuch,’ (seeing or sight-book) a book about new modes of seeing, perceiving, and understanding the world from above. A close reading of Jean Paul’s “Seebuch” reveals that the technology of ballooning serves as an affective medium that brings about a psychological state of ecstasy in the fictive balloonist. This affective mode introduces new forms of visual perception in Jean Paul’s text, and, further, it steers processes not only of seeing, but also of writing. By utilizing theories of technology and vision (Jonathan Crary) and theories of affect (Brian Massumi), as well as recent discussions of the aerial view, this chapter shows that ballooning was not just a discrete technological invention that impacted travel and the vantage points of individual passengers; rather, it played a powerful role in shaping the human sensorium, creating imaginaries, and generating new modes of aesthetic representation. To demonstrate how ballooning can be understood as a technology of seeing, I begin with a brief overview of late eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury balloon technology and its appearance in literature. 1 Ballooning, visual culture, and literature Only a few years before the French Revolution, France served as the stage for realizing the ancient human dream of flying. The Montgolfier brothers, sons of a paper manufacturer, launched their first hot air balloon on 5 June 1783. Lifted by buoyant gases, the balloon demonstrated the viability of ‘lighter-than-air’ flight and was certainly one of the most important inventions of the time. This first hot air balloon marked a new phase in history: the human exploration and conquest of the aerial sphere by manned flying ships. Since then, engineers, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs experimented with, improved, developed, and wrote about balloon flying technology. To test the possibility of human survival at such atmospheric heights (approximately 5,200 and 6,600 feet), the first passengers sent up on balloons were animals (sheep and chickens), but, soon, fearless humans took to the air as passengers and captains.4 The French were hot air balloon aficionados, and in the late eighteenth century such flights became a spectacle for the rich aristocrats at Versailles, who could afford to watch ornamented and Rococo-styled balloons lift into the air. Soon, however, 4 For an historical overview of the early ballooning, see Wolfgang Behringer und Constance OttKoptschalijski, Der Traum vom Fliegen: Zwischen Mythos und Technik (Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1991), 320. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 19 a mechanic who was not of noble birth, the aeronaut Jean-Pierre Blanchard (1753–1809), changed ballooning from an elitist spectacle into one suited for the general public. Blanchard’s sensational crossing of the English Channel in 1785 made him world famous, and ballooning became an entertainment for a mass bourgeois audience.5 Later in the 1860s, Félix Nadar (1820–1910) became ballooning’s popstar; his spectacular journeys and failures still fascinate us today.6 In Germany, balloon expeditions, while not as highly developed as in France, and often associated with private and commercial enterprises, also became popular. In the mid-nineteenth century, Wilhelmine Reichard (1788–1848), one of the few female aeronauts, ran a lucrative ballooning business, and anyone with money to spare could book a tour with her.7 This ballooning craze, which started in the late eighteenth century and lasted well into the nineteenth century, was documented in pamphlets, caricatures, paintings, newspaper articles, treatises, and theories about ballooning. Some early essays about ballooning, such as Thomas Baldwin’s Airopaidia (1786) addressed the technical, physical, and aesthetic aspects of this technology. Recounting his balloon flight over the British countryside, Baldwin provides scholarly observations about heights, geography, clouds, and vegetation while also describing flying as something utterly sublime and beautiful.8 Balloons even inspired fashion trends, influencing the design of clothing as well as fine china and porcelain figurines.9 But most interestingly for my exploration of the balloon as an aesthetic medium, ballooning inspired works of imaginative literature.10 Whilst in the air, balloonists recited poems and sang hymns about the greatness of ballooning as well as about the generosity of the noblemen above whose properties they sailed. Literature of all kinds about balloons proliferated. Even writers who had never sailed in a balloon, nor seen one with their own eyes, wrote about balloons. An early German author whose reflections on ballooning were particularly influential was Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813). Wieland praised the new flying 5 See discussion about Blanchard in Eckert, “Zur Geschichte der Ballonfahrt,” 80–83. 6 For a history of Nadar’s ballooning adventures, see Adam Begley, The Great Nadar: The Man behind the Camera (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2017). 7 See reference to Wilhemine Reichard in Eckert, “Zur Geschichte der Ballonfahrt,” 106–110. 8 See discussion about Baldwin in Caren Kaplan, “The Balloon Prospect: Aerostatic Observation and the Emergence of Militarized Aeromobility,” in From Above: War, Violence, and Verticality, ed. Caren Kaplan and Lisa Parks (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 19–40. 9 See reference about balloon fashion in Eckert, “Zur Geschichte der Ballonfahrt,” 47–62. 10 Eckhard Schinkel, “Der Ballon in der Literatur,” in Leichter als Luft: Zur Geschichte der Ballonfahrt, ed. Bernard Korzus and Gisela Noehles (Münster: Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, 1978), 200–236. AU: We have shortened the running head. Please check and confirm. 20 Kathrin Maurer technology as a product of rational progress in the Teutsche Merkur, but also adopted a skeptical attitude towards its popularization. He coined the satirical term ‘Aeropetomanie’ to describe the public’s obsession with balloons during his time.11 Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811), Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) also wrote diary entries, letters, and essays about ballooning. In fact, the last once wrote that he regretted not having invented ballooning himself.12 In addition to authors of classical German literature, other intellectuals of the eighteenth century, such as the theologian Daniel Jenisch (1762–1804), the priest and poet Michael Denis (1729–1800), and the writer and etiquette expert Adolph Freiherr von Knigge (1752–1796), also participated in popularizing ballooning as a theme.13 These authors, however, frequently expressed skepticism about ballooning, denouncing it as a modern technology that enabled humans to compete with God. Others, such as Karoline von Günderrode (1780–1806) praised the cosmic power of the eternal sky and lamented human bondedness to the earth in her poem “Der Luftschiffer” (1804). Ballooning also played a central role, in conjunction with gender roles and emotions, such as in Adalbert Stifter’s (1805–1868) famous novella Der Condor (1840). Most interesting in the context of this article is the work of Jean Paul, since in comparison to other authors, his writing on ballooning strongly highlights the affective and visual experience of flying. In doing so, Jean Paul shows how balloon technology can shape the human sensorium and even facilitate specific forms of poetic ‘balloon-writing.’ His writing on ballooning has to be seen in the context of a whole discourse of balloon literature that emerged after the first balloon ascents as well as an extension of his deep interest in vision, image, and seeing.14 2 Ballooning and ecstasy Jean Paul’s work “Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo Seebuch” (1801) is an appendix to his novel Titan (1800–1803), a 900-page work about the life of the Spanish aristocrat Albano de Cesara. Whereas Titan contains some classical elements of 11 Schinkel, “Der Ballon in der Literatur,” 201–202. 12 Schinkel, “Der Ballon in der Literatur,” 203. 13 A discussion about ballooning as a fashion see Schinkel, “Der Ballon in der Literatur,” 204–210. 14 For discourse on ballooning, see Schinkel, “Der Ballon in der Literatur,” 200–236, and for Jean Paul’s interest in the visual, see Sabine Eickenrodt, Augen-spiel: Jean Pauls optische Metaphorik der Unsterblichkeit (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2013), 254–268. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 21 the traditional Bildungsroman, its appendix, the “Seebuch,” adheres fully to Jean Paul’s romantic, highly self-reflexive style of writing, which uses irony to create ambivalences and double meanings.15 Titan tells the story of the sentimental education of Cesara, and the appendix’s retelling of Giannozzo’s catastrophic life provides a mirror for the main novel’s ironic reflection on the genre of the Bildungsroman, although Giannozzo does not appear as a character elsewhere in Titan or in other works by Jean Paul. The “Seebuch” has been compared to Laurence Sterne’s (1713–1768) ironic novel Tristram Shandy (1759–1767), because of Jean Paul’s use of puns, digressions, and exaggerations, and his work’s embeddedness in the satirical and picaresque tradition.16 The “Seebuch” takes on the form of a travelogue, with references to actual places (such as small German duchies and city-states), historical figures (Frederick II), and historical events. The protagonist Giannozzo is the fictive author of this travelogue, while Jean Paul inserts himself into the narrative as an editor figure, named Jean Paul Fr. Richter, who comments on Giannozzo’s story from time to time and inserts footnotes in the main text. At the same time, the “Seebuch” interweaves fantastical elements describing the dreamlike and paradisical environment the balloon is traveling through. When the protagonist Giannozzo hovers in his balloon over the small duchies of Germany, he issues a scathing critique of bourgeois society and its narrowminded view of life, its religious rituals, and its lack of intellectualism. Research often highlights this rather misanthropic perspective from which Jean Paul’s text articulates a social and political critique of contemporary Germany.17 While criticizing society from above, the balloonist enters into a state of ecstasy, which Jürgen Link considers in his work on ballooning a collective symbol.18 When Giannozzo flies above the clouds, he, not unlike Icarus, is thrilled 15 For more information on Jean Paul’s self-reflexive style of writing by using humor, irony, and satire, see for example Paul Fleming, The Pleasures of Abandonment: Jean Paul and the Life of Humor (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006). For the concept of romantic irony, see Ernst Behler, Ironie und Literarische Moderne (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1997). 16 James Vigus, Shandean Humour in English and German Literature and Philosophy (London: Taylor and Francis, 2017). 17 Florian Welle, Der irdische Blick durch das Fernrohr: Literarische Wahrnehmungsexperimente vom 17. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 2009), 123–144; Gerald Bär, “Poetische Perspektiven aus dem (Fessel) Ballon: das Jahrhundertereignis als Eventcharakter und seine Fiktionalisierung,” in Transit oder Transformation? Sprachliche und Literarische Grenzerfahrungen: Yearbook of the German Studies Association in Ireland, ed. Sabine Egger (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre Verlag, 2016), 29–48. 18 Jürgen Link, “Literaturanalyse als Interdiskursanalyse: Am Beispiel des Ursprungs literarischer Symbolik in der Kollektivsymbolik,” in Diskurstheorien und Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Harro Müller and Gerhard von Graevenitz (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988), 284–307. 22 Kathrin Maurer with this new aerial experience of heights, and, for him, the view from above is intertwined with intense affects. Brian Massumi defines affect as a “non-conscious experience of intensity,” which refers to a pre-discursive and unstructured form of experiences as well as visceral responses and reactions in the subject or viewer.19 For Giannozzo the sky becomes a wide ocean embodying a type of primordial soup, which puts him into a state of pre-rational trance.20 The following passage aptly describes this state of ecstasy: I glided on, warmly, on an immense silver sea, gathering from the soft foam of fallen stars within a sea, a sea soft and white, like snow-mist, like the scent of light-all the windows of my hut were shimmering – I was completely illuminated. I sailed over the nightearth covered by the cloudy sky, in whose flood the risen moon stood like a swan with its shiny plumage radiating all the waves, before it flew out into the blue.21 In this passage, the protagonist elevates himself into the blue sky and has a kind of out-of-body experience, as boundaries and restrictions dissolve. How can one interpret this affective state of ecstasy? In many ways, this moment of elevation is reminiscent of the experience of the sublime, an important aesthetic category we know from philosophers such as Edmund Burke (1729–1797) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804).22 Ballooning, for Giannozzo, is literally an “elevating” experience of incomparable and overwhelming beauty. In his writing about ballooning, Wieland had already discussed the sublime aspects of such aerial travel, linking the aesthetic beauty of the view to human progress and the triumph of reason.23 Jean Paul’s aesthetics of ballooning, however, transcends the Enlightenment concept of the sublime. Although ballooning represents an elevating experience for Giannozzo, this aesthetic moment contains no 19 Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 30. 20 See the references in German in Jean Paul’s “Seebuch” that were rephrased in the sentence in the main text: “weite lebendige Nachtmeer” (966), “Rausch des Äthers” (961), and “sonnentrunkene Perspektive” (967). 21 “Ich glitt warm angeweht auf einem unabsehlichen silbernen, aus dem zu zarten Schaum geschlagenen Sternen zusammenwallenden Meere weiter – ein Meer, weich und weiß wie Schneenebel, wie Lichtduft – alle Fenster meiner Hütte schimmerten – ich war ganz erleuchtet. Ich schiffte über die Nachterde hingedeckten Wolkenhimmel, in dessen Flut der aufgegangene Mond wie ein Schwan mit seinem Glanzgefieder alle Wogen durchstrahlend stand, eh’ er herausflog ins Blaue,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 967. 22 Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Immanuel Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft, ed. Karl Vorländer (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1990). 23 For a discussion on the sublime, ballooning, and Wieland, see Schinkel, “Der Ballon in der Literatur,” 201. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 23 traces of reason or rationality. Rather, being aerial in Jean Paul’s texts generates in the protagonist a pre-reflective state of affective intensity. Giannozzo does not equate the thrill of heights with a form of rational sublimity. Instead, Giannozzo views this experience of ecstasy as a prime source of imagination, poesy, and creativity. Referencing Wolfgang Iser, Heinz Brüggemann interprets this moment of ecstasy in Jean Paul’s “Seebuch” as a key that unlocks the power of imagination. Through Giannozzo’s out-of-body-experience, he gains the freedom and autonomy to generate aesthetic products. Brüggemann comments on this state of ecstasy in the following way: The overcoming of gravity, the ascent from the earth in the airship, appears to him [Giannozzo, KM] as a mirror, as a medium, as a condition of the possibility of another form of overcoming confinement, of stepping out of oneself, of outward feeling, and it is realized for him in an ecstatic state, as Iser has called it, to be both in the person and outside of this person, a condition that requires form, in the mask, in the play, in the selfpresentation.24 Whereas Brüggemann describes the moment of ecstasy as entirely rooted in Giannozzo and his power of imagination, I would like to shift the attention to the role of technology. It is not Giannozzo as the viewing subject who controls the aesthetic process, but rather the technology of ballooning that stimulates the aesthetic and visual sensorium and triggers the process of writing. Thus, the moment of ecstasy and the technology of ballooning are not two different entities, but rather are deeply intertwined. As we shall see, they constitute an entanglement, in which the technology generates modes of experiencing, perceiving, and representing the world. 3 Seeing the world via ballooning In Jean Paul’s “Seebuch,” the balloon itself, the so-called envelope, already reminds us of an artificial replica of a human eye because of its rounded shape. But beyond this, the text provides many more connections between the balloon and the human eye. For example, the protagonist notes that the balloon eyeball 24 “Die Überwindung der Schwerkraft, die Auffahrt von der Erde im Luftschiff, erscheint ihm [Giannozzo, KM] als Spiegel, als Medium, als Bedingung der Möglichkeit für eine andere Form, Eingeschlossenheit zu überwinden, aus sich selbst heraus zu treten, der AußerhalbBefindlichkeit, und sie verwirklicht sich für ihn im ekstatischen Zustand, wie Iser das genannt hat, zugleich in der Person und außerhalb ihrer selbst zu sein, ein Zustand der der Form bedarf, in der Maske, im Spiel, in der Selbstinszenierung.” Brüggemann, “Luftbilder,” 141. 24 Kathrin Maurer is covered with a leathery tissue.25 This tissue is reminiscent of the sclera, the dense skin around the human eye-ball to which the muscles that move the eye are attached. Projected onto the balloon as an artificial eye, these muscles are represented by the ropes fastened to the balloon’s basket. Giannozzo describes the basket as a “leathery cube, which has windows on all six sides, including on its floor.”26 Within the balloon’s basket the windows constitute the multifacetted lens through which the world can be observed. This lens opens up a panoramic view (through the side windows) as well as bird’s-eye view (through the vertical window on the floor). In other words, with its windows as a lens, basket as the posterior chamber, and ropes as the optic nerve, the balloon reflects the physiological mechanisms in the human eye. Furthermore, depending on the position of the balloon and the surrounding atmospheric conditions, the lens can adjust its visual acuity. Sometimes the view can be crystal clear against the blue sky; at other times, when it is cloudy and foggy, visibility is low.27 Giannozzo, as the balloon’s captain, seems to be an integral part of this balloon eye. The text references him as the “black head in a green coat.”28 Translating this image into the aesthetics of the artificial balloon eye, this black dot, often described as jumpy and jittery, embodies a twitching black pupil surrounded by a green iris. This merging of physiological metaphors of seeing and balloon construction highlights the idea that the balloon embodies a technology of seeing, which is able to perceive the world in ways similar to the human eye. This conceptualization of Giannozzo’s balloon, thus already anticipates Odilon Redon’s painting The Eye like a strange Balloon mounts towards Infinity (1882), a visual representation of this idea that would not appear until more than eighty years after Jean Paul’s novel. This function of the balloon is amplified by the fact that Giannozzo’s own eyes do not play the main role during his aerial journey, rather his eyesight is overtaken by the giant artificial balloon eye as an instrument or a kind of prosthetic enabling a type of hyper-visibility. As in Odilon’s picture, the balloon in Jean Paul’s work is portrayed as one gigantic eye dissociated from its physiological situation of seeing and placed into a superhuman context by means of optical technology. To be sure, Redon’s eye-balloon is looking upward towards the sky, whereas Jean Paul’s balloon-eye is directed downwards (through the view of the floor bottom of the basket) and panoramic (through the view over the 25 “mit feinem, aber unbekannten Leder mit Seide überzogen” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 928. 26 “Lederwürfel, der auf allen sechs Seiten Fenster hat, auch auf dem Fußboden,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 928. 27 “Ich trat jetzt trübe und wild auf den Brocken hinaus,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 965. 28 “Schwarzkopf in grünem Mantel,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 928. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 25 Figure 1: Odilon Redon’s painting The Eye like a strange Balloon mounts towards Infinity (1882). Permission granted by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. railing of the basket sides), but in both cases the technological construction of the balloon itself becomes the instrument of seeing. How does Jean Paul’s balloon perceive the world then? In theories about the aerial, the view from above is often associated with an imperial master gaze, such as in the context of modern warfare. Peter Sloterdijk’s theories on verticality and war as well as the most recent discussions about the politics of verticality by Eyal Weizman are examples of this interpretation.29 However, 29 Peter Sloterdijk, Terror from Air (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009); Eyal Weizman, Forensic Architecture: Violence at the Threshold of Detectability (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2017). AU: Please provide missing citation for Figure 1 and 2 in text. 26 Kathrin Maurer AU: Please Figure 2: provide missing caption for Figure 2. Jean Paul’s balloon-eye does not follow a stable vertical perspective, which in turn could be read as a symbol for social and political superiority. Instead, the balloon’s mode of seeing perceives the world through three, rather unstable, visual registers: 1) flexible perspective of the observer, 2) flattening, and 3) microand macro-vision. In this context, the work by Gerhard Neumann on perceptual techniques is crucial.30 Neumann focuses on several media (binoculars, microscope, balloon) and their respective effects of distorting a central perspective. My analysis builds on Neumann’s work, expanding it by concentrating on the balloon as a technology of seeing that not only distorts the central perspective. 30 Gerhard Neumann, “Fernrohr, Mikroskop, Luftballon: Wahrnehmungstechnik und Literatur in der Goethezeit,” in Spektakuläre Experimente: Praktiken der Evidenzproduktion im 17. Jahrhundert, ed. Helmar Schramm (Boston: Walter De Gruyter, 2006), 345–377. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 27 It disorients the observer, flattens the represented space, and confuses the focus of seeing. Let us explore the first visual register of the balloon’s mode of seeing: the flexibility of the observer. In Giannozzo’s fourteen chapters about his aerial journeys it soon becomes evident that the aeronaut’s ability to control the flight path is severely limited. In fact, the balloon itself and its position in the air have a much greater influence on the route than the navigator. And what is seen from the balloon is often highly contingent on how the wind blows; whether the balloon sails south or north is not up to the pilot. Therefore, when describing his experience, Giannozzo often describes his experience as passive: “by unstable blows I let myself sway back and forth over Saxony.”31 The swaying of the balloon produces an unstable, shifting vision. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, hot air balloons’ unsteerability was seen as their greatest problem. Pioneers of ballooning struggled to control their balloons’ routes, and their trips often ended in disaster, as did the final trip of Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier (1754–1785), who died when his balloon crashed near Wimereaux in the Pas-de-Calais during an attempt to fly across the English Channel.32 In addition, the visual prospect from the balloon is not only unstable and uncontrollable, it also has a kind of flattening effect. Giannozzo describes the view from the balloon as a “surface that extended into infinity.”33 As seen from the balloon the earth appears as flat, suggesting a map-like and topographical representation of the world. The text notes that Giannozzo “maps,” i.e., he measures and makes cartographic observations.34 In fact, the topographical flatness of the view from the balloon had already been beautifully shown in the writings of Thomas Baldwin, in Aeropaidia. The illustrations as well as Baldwin’s descriptions of the ground and the clouds were devoid of spatial depth and horizon. Jean Paul’s text likewise eliminates depth, and the earth becomes an endless two-dimensional surface. Four and a half thousand feet deep the wide earth – I thought I floated – ran under me, and its broad plate came towards me, whereupon mountains and woodworks and monasteries [. . .] were so wildly confused that a reasonable man above must think that this may only be loose building materials, which you first have to pull apart into a beautiful park.35 31 “vom unsteten Wehen ließ ich mich über Sachsen hin- und herwürfeln,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 931. 32 See Eckert, “Zur Geschichte der Ballonfahrt” 13–128. 33 “Fläche, die ins Unendliche hinausfloß,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 959. 34 “mappiert,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 959. 35 “Vierhalbtausend Fuß tief rannte die weite Erde – ich glaubte festzuschweben – unter mir dahin, und ihr breiter Teller lief mir entgegen, worauf sich Berge und Holzungen und Klöster [. . .] 28 Kathrin Maurer This passage highlights the flatness of the view from the balloon, the earth looks like a broad plate. And yet, there is no order on this map; the topographical phenomena are chaotically placed and seemingly provisional. From the perspective of the balloon, the known horizon that ordered the world when percieved at ground level according to a vanishing point is dissolved. Lastly, the balloon view also has a distorting effect since it can minimize and enlarge the phenomena of the world. That is the third aspect of the visual register of the balloon: the micro- and macro-vision. Giannozzo mentions the miniature cities that can be seen from the balloon.36 This miniaturization of the world was certainly a revolution in perception. Although one could have had similar visual experiences from towers and mountains or through inverted telescopes, the view from a balloon provided a shrinking effect that was unprecedented and not otherwise available in the early nineteenth century. The minimizing impression in Jean Paul’s text also has another side: the miniature landscape takes on new shapes and forms that make some objects appear out of proportion. Mountain formations, for example, can look like a giant snake.37 This shift between micro- and macro perspectives is further enhanced by the fact that Giannozzo uses binoculars, yet another prosthetic that can alter human vision. The binoculars make it possible for him to see things that otherwise would remain invisible from the balloon’s gondola. For example, Giannozzo uses the binoculars to spy on a couple, whose courtship he disturbs when he accidently lands his balloon on the rotunda where they are meeting.38 Besides using them to snoop on lovers, Giannozzo labels his binoculars an instrument of war.39 In fact, he observes a battle, during which the Castle of Blasenstein is about to be attacked by French troops, which works as a reality effect in this rather imaginary and unbelievable story. Giannozzo tries to exchange messages with the French infantry, throwing down letters affixed to stones.40 On the one hand, this scene points to military discourse about ballooning. Already during ballooning’s early phase, there was speculation that balloons so wild und eng durcheinanderwarfen, dass ein vernünftiger Mann oben denken musste, das seien nur umhergerollte Baumaterialien, die man erst zu einem schönen Park auseinanderziehe.” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 959. 36 “Zwergenstädte,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 927. 37 Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 927. 38 Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 948. 39 “Kriegsperspectiv,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 945. 40 Giannozzo calls this message form: “letter-stone or letter-quail” (“Brief-Stein oder BriefWachtel”), Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 982. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 29 could be useful in waging war.41 In fact, in 1806 Napoleon used balloons for aerial reconnaissance during the Napoleonic Wars – the painting by Francisco Goya (1746–1728) The Balloon (1813–1816) aptly captures this militarization of ballooning.42 On the other hand, the absurd scene of stones falling from above in an attempt at communication in Jean Paul’s text exemplifies and ironizes the notion of ballooning as a military technology. Giannozzo himself does not engage in militaristic or nationalistic ambitions, rather he is relieved when his balloon pivots away from the firing battalions. The troops become seemingly invisible and insignificant as the balloon moves off into the endless sky. These three aspects of the balloon view – the flexible observer position, the flattening, and macro- and micro perspectives – suggest that, in Jean Paul’s work, ballooning’s primary feature is its irritating dislocation of the human eye by means of technology. The balloon view no longer represents the world within the tradition of a central perspective, which, in broad strokes, organizes and guides the view according to one vanishing point and gives the impression of threedimensional space. Rather, through the balloon itself, the world is expanded and flattened into an indefinite and diffused space with no clear boundaries. How can we interpret this change of vision that I observed in my close reading of Jean Paul’s work within a theoretical framework of visual studies? According to Jonathan Crary, the early nineteenth century was a decisive time for the construction of new forms of seeing and observers. Technological inventions such as the stereoscope (invented in 1820s and 1830s) and the panorama (the first already constructed in 1787), destabilized the concept of a linear and stable vision. Following Crary implies that the dissolution and critique of the central perspective did not begin first with the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century; the break in classical representation had already begun much earlier.43 Crary explains that the camera obscura, despite its closeness to the human eye, does not guarantee a transparent, realistic representation of reality. Although, the camera obscura is often regarded as an instrument of visual truth, Crary makes the point that it is an example of subjectivized vision since it executes a fusion between the photographic apparatus and the observing subject.44 In fact, he calls the camera obscura an “assemblage,” “an object about which something is said 41 On the military use of balloons, see Walter Locher, “Zur militärischen Nutzung des Ballons,” in Leichter als Luft: Zur Geschichte der Ballonfahrt, ed. Bernd Korzus (Münster: Landesverband Westfalen-Lippe, 1985), 238–250. 42 Walter Locher, “Zur militärischen Nutzung des Ballons,” 238–250. 43 Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1992), 30. 44 Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 30. 30 Kathrin Maurer and at the time an object that is used.”45 The impact of this human-machine assemblage suggests that there are no fixed boundaries between the perceiving subject and the machine (for example the apparatus of a camera).46 In other words, for Crary the physiological observer comes into the camera obscura as an autonomous producer of visual experiences. In similar ways, the optical configuration of Jean Paul’s balloon eye, although differing from those of a stereoscope and the panorama (Crary’s examples), suggests a technology of seeing that also embodies this element of subjective vision as well as an entanglement between the material object and sensing human. In fact, the balloon and its de-centering modes of vision can be read as another example of Crary’s idea of subjective vision. Jean Paul’s balloon is reminiscent of an eyeball and prescient of a camera, but it does not provide an “objective” representation of the world. Instead, the balloon is a seeing-machine in Jean Paul’s story that illustrates the configuration and subjectivization of human vision by technology. In this regard Crary is in line with Walter Benjamin, who maintained that technology has subjected the human sensorium to a complex kind of training, and that technology can shape our modes of reception, sensing, and experiencing reality. During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well.47 The balloon in Jean Paul’s text precedes Benjamin’s thoughts about the technological shaping of perception as well as the historical construction of vision, since the balloon determines the modes and even contents of perception. The balloon in Jean Paul’s text becomes an optical instrument that fuses the subject with the machine. Within this machine-human assemblage, the viewing subject is no longer “alone” in control of sight but is, rather, marginalized and decentralized. Not only can the aeronaut not control how he moves and what he sees, his vision is actually replaced by that of the machine. In fact, this de-centering of the subject is amplified in the plot of Jean Paul’s travelogue by the main character’s and narrator’s death. The story ends in a catastrophe. Giannozzo’s balloon is caught in two thunderstorms above the Swiss Alps 45 Crary, Techniques of the Observer, 31. 46 The term assemblage has its theoretical background in the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993). 47 Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt and trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), 222. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 31 and ultimately crashes into the mountains, causing a terrible inferno. Giannozzo dies not only because his balloon falls from the sky, but also because he is gazed upon by two kinds of super-human eyes. On the one hand, he is subject to the deadly and petrifying gaze of a super-human creature, the basilisk.48 This deadly gaze is also a part of the monstrous balloon: “I opened the airshafts and buried myself in the steam, in which only the basilisk eye of death blinked.”49 On the other hand, he is eliminated by the eye of the sun and its cold and ruthless gaze [“so calm and cold.”]50 These two eyes – the mechanical and the godly – annihilate Giannozzo, whose charred corpse (as the editor J. Richter reports in the last paragraph) is discovered in the mountains. Scholars have interpreted this ending as Jean Paul’s anti-idealistic critique of Enlightenment ideas about progress, autonomy, and freedom.51 The crash of the balloon, and, by extension, the failure of ballooning, can be seen as symbolic of the collapse of the free will of the human subject. These interpretations draw on the text’s explicit and scathing critique of Enlightenment philosophy. Giannozzo frequently makes fun of Enlightenment thinkers, such as Schiller and Kant: “enlightened eighteenth-centurists – they embodied Frederick the Great.”52 However, in addition to highlighting the dethroning of the subject, my reading suggests that the subject’s sensorium and modes of visual perception cannot be understood as controlled and steered by the individual. This portrayal of the balloon as a technology of seeing in the “Seebuch” contends that the subject is part of a human-machine assemblage that registers a much more significant and farreaching crisis of perception and representation. 4 Ballooning as Poiesis From the very beginning, Giannozzo’s ballooning enterprise is also a literary endeavor. Not only does he call his writings “air-ship-diary” (“Luft-SchiffsJournal”),53 but each of the fourteen chapters in the diary is devoted to a distinct 48 “Basiliskenauge des Todes,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 1007. 49 “Ich riss die Lufthähne auf und vergrub mich in den Dampf, worin nur das Basiliskenauge des Todes seine heissen Silberblicke auf und zutat,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 1007. 50 “so ruhig und kalt,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 1007. 51 Welle, “Der irdische Blick,” 123–144; Link, “Literaturanalyse,” 284–307; Brüggemann, “Luftbilder,” 127–182. 52 “aufgeklärte Achtzehnjahrhunderter – sie standen ganz für Friedrich II, Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 950. 53 Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 927. AU: Please provide missing closing quote. 32 Kathrin Maurer balloon trip. As a result, the sequence of flights structures the literary text. Giannozzo frequently says that he has to record his experience of being in the air (“I begin again”)54 or that he has to stop recording when his travels have ended for the day.55 In a meta-reflexive gesture, even the balloon journal’s editor is mentioned. The editor appears directly in the main text, which is quite typical for Jean Paul’s style of writing: “Now it is enough. As far as the editor is concerned.”56 Thus, the “Seebuch” is not only a private endeavor; it is a literary text intended for an audience. This becomes particularly evident when the literary censor is spotted down below. His name is “Mister von Fahland (indeed a fatal name).”57 Ironically, the censor carries a book by Jean Paul in his pocket. In this way, the balloon journal is deeply entrenched in the politics of publishing, the literary market, and literary audiences. This literary self-reflexivity is in many ways a common trope in Jean Paul’s writing. However, it is interesting that in the “Seebuch,” this self-reflexivity is not only connected to textual production, but also to a discourse about seeing, visual perspective, and images. In this context, the image of the balloon simultaneously registers and illustrates a discourse about the possibilities of vision. Aside from these references to the context of literary production, the balloon journey as a literary endeavor also steers the writing process itself. As shown in the previous section, the balloon, as a type of artificial eye, can perceive the world, which in turn decenters the perspective as well as the visual authority of the subject. This de-centering mode of perception also evokes a specific mode of writing and literary representation, as the following quote demonstrates: “My first thought during the flight up was triggered by the word: révénant. One of them happened to say it to me: I thought of the heavenly happiness of being a ghost – then a pandora’s box, an Aeolian wind harp [Äolsschlauch] of fantasies opened.”58 A révénant is someone who comes again; a mythological figure of a ghost or an undead person, that haunts the living. Besides this rather demonic connotation, the idea of the révénant also evokes the artificial construction of reality through the process of writing. In Jean Paul’s work the balloon as a révénant is present and absent at the same time. 54 Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 943. 55 Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 943. 56 “Aber nun ists genug. Soweit der Herausgeber,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 928. 57 “Herr von Fahland (schon ein fataler Name),” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 944. 58 “Auf den ersten Gedanken der Auffahrt brachte mich das Wort: révénant. Einer sprach es zufällig vor mir aus: ich dachte an das Himmelsglück, ein Gespenst zu sein – da tat sich eine Pandorabüchse, ein Äolsschlauch von Phantasien auf,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 929. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 33 The reconstructed world is present in a literary text through signs, words, letters, and the reader’s imaginative power. At the same time, the world in poetic discourse is also absent; it is only there in the form of representation through language. In other words, the balloon as the reappearing révénant instantiates a process of poiesis and constructs a writing scene (“Schreibszene”), to use Rüdiger Campe’s term.59 It is important to understand that the source of this poiesis is not the human subject, the individual author, or Giannozzo as the literary protagonist. Rather, the poetic process is offset by the balloon’s sensory capacities. Giannozzo notes that the balloon enables him to shift into different roles and play different characters. The protagonist and narrator Giannozzo can change masks and play charades60; the balloon inspires his poetic dreams,61 such as his absurd fantasy of being a tender and tired beast of prey: “soon I would yawn like a tender shark.”62 Giannozzo’s slipping in and out of fictional identities and realities is less steered by the individual, but rather controlled by the balloon, which he frequently refers to as a superhuman aesthetic observer that sees the world from a godly point of view: “Brightly descends the genius from heaven, and the clouds gleam far, when he permeates it and the etheric spirit touches the earth.”63 In other words, the creative subject determining the literary process is not Giannozzo, but the balloon itself. Giannozzo frequently notes that he does not have the power to steer the balloon in his desired direction. Rather the balloon “rolls back and forth,”64 and, as in a throw of the dice, can land either here or there. This aerial journey’s contingent nature is also reflected in the poetic configuration of Jean Paul’s text. The descriptions and observations of life on earth (the observed scenes of the lovers, the parade, life in the small towns) are only possible because the wind has blown the balloon to places from where one can observe them. Thus, the balloon is a sensorial technology of writing that triggers forms of automated subject-less writing, since it controls topics, perspectives, time, the setting, and even the mood. Just as the aerial maneuvers are bumpy and uncoordinated, so too is the text rhapsodic and disorderly. The events narrated in the aeronautic journal are 59 Rüdiger Campe, “Die Schreibszene: Schreiben,” in Paradoxien, Dissonanzen, Zusammenbrüche: Situationen offener Epistemologie, ed. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and Ludwig Pfeiffer (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1991), 759–772. 60 “Geister-Maskenfreiheit,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 929. 61 “Idyllen-träume,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 929. 62 “bald würd ich als ein sanfter Haifisch gähnen,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 929. 63 “Hell steigt der Genius vom Himmel nieder, und das Gewölk erglänzet weit, wenn er es durchdringt und der ätherische Geist berührt die Erde,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 949. 64 “würfelt hin und her,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 931. 34 Kathrin Maurer marked by multiple digressions, which seem to be randomly placed; no linear narrative or chronological structure orders the individual journeys’ events. The poetic language often zig-zags, winds, and features numerous abbreviations, a staccato rhythm, and fragmented sentences and thoughts. As if the too-thin air makes the traveler gasp, the text also seems breathless at times: “Brother Graul – this name is much better than your last [. . .]: you certainly opened wide the lax doors of my air cabin and held out the arms in the cold ether bath and the eye in the gloomy blue – heaven!”65 Giannozzo frequently laments the disorder of his notes, observations, and records, and the difficulty of keeping up with the task. His description of the aerial view is fragmented, fractured into small incoherent images: “In air-ship diaries there has to be order; I begin again.”66 Giannozzo depicts the earth as seen from above as a type of “theater of the world,”67 However, this theater does not encapsulate the world as a whole, rather, it opens up many individual perspectives. The mode of seeing changes all the time, from telescopic zooming, micro- and macro perspectives, to a panoramic standpoint, or bird’s-eye view. Giannozzo notes: “I was enroute within a turbulent change of scenes.”68 The topics and phenomena he records are not ordered or connected in any logical, causal, or linear fashion, a dissociation that is reflected in the open and disjointed type of writing. With its break from a classical visual perspective, Jean Paul’s balloon-text no longer represents the world as something that can be conveyed in transparent language according to universal, realist parameters. Although the balloon-eye is prescient of a camera, Jean Paul highlights the distortion and instability of such a concept of vision. This destabilization must also be understood as a reflection of broader social-historical processes. In many ways, it becomes clear that the balloon-eye’s registering of the world signals a crisis of the subject. De-centered by the flying machine, the subject is no longer in control. Giannozzo occupies the position of an outsider who, looking down with contempt on life in small towns, does not belong there. As Welle has pointed out, the name of Giannozzo’s 65 In German: “Bruder Graul – dieser Name ist viel besser als dein letzter, Leibgeber – du machtest gewiss die Sänftetüren meiner Lufthütte weit auf und hieltest die Arme ins kalte Ätherbad hinaus und das Auge ins düstre Blau – Himmel!” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 927. 66 In German: “In Luftschiffs-Journalen muss Ordnung sein; ich fange wieder an,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 931. 67 In German: “Welttheater,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 959. 68 In German: “allein da ich im wilden Szenenwechsel so hingefahren war,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 961. Ballooning as a Technology of Seeing in Jean Paul’s 35 balloon, “lazar house” (“Siechkobel”),69 referring to a place where sick people are isolated and quarantined, symbolizes his outsider position, which recalls what Foucault termed the “bannopticon.”70 From there the balloonist can no longer make sense of the world, there is no “collective singular,”71 a common denominator that gives the world meaning. Religion is portrayed in Jean Paul’s text as pointless and the sky as empty: “No, no, do not believe that there are paternoster ropes from worlds above me.”72 Idealist moral philosophy does not replace the loss of belief in God, and even the empathic aesthetic moments of the sublime are also ironized as merely hollow echoes of something that has been lost long ago. In other words, all concepts of meaning become empty free-circulating tropes during the balloon’s capricious journey. The balloon travels in a diffuse in-between space, which in many ways approximates the transitional period of modernity and the critique of the Enlightenment subject. This reading of the balloon agrees with Link’s research about the balloon as a collective symbol of crisis, but it expands this critique by focusing on how the balloon as a technology of seeing highlights a/the crisis of perception and seeing. The Apollonian gaze from above, as Daniel Cosgrove has called this god-like view founded in power, is destabilized and irritated in Jean Paul’s “Seebuch.”73 These observations about Jean Paul’s aesthetic representation of the balloon-eye should not be read as a turn towards media theories influenced by Friedrich Kittler or recent post-humanist accounts about media, affects, and literature, such as in works by Katherine Hayles.74 Kittler’s and Hayles’s radical expulsion of the subject in light of technology does not quite match my reflections about ballooning and vision as a sensorial assemblage. As noted above, in the stereoscope (and other optical media), Crary locates the break with classical modes of visual representation long before the avant-garde movement. My investigation aims to point to another “optical” technology, namely, ballooning, and its significant role in distorting and eroding the conditions of possibility for a central perspective. In reckoning with this loss, balloon literature (here, specifically 69 Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 931. 70 Welle, “Der irdische Blick,” 30. 71 Reinhart Koselleck. “Geschichte: Historie,” Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, Vol. 2, ed. Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck (Stuttgart: Klett, 1972), 647–652. 72 “Nein, nein, glaubt nicht, Paternosterschnuren von Welten über mir,” Jean Paul, “Seebuch,” 961. 73 Daniel Cosgrove, Apollo’s Eye: A Cartographic Genealogy of the Earth in the Western Imagination (Baltimore: The John Hopkins UP, 2001). 74 Friedrich Kittler, Aufschreibesysteme 1800/1900 (Wilhelm Fink: Munich, 1985); Kathrine Hayles, Writing Machines (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002). 36 Kathrin Maurer Jean Paul’s work) goes even further. It experiments with aesthetic and poetic categories, such as authorship, narrative, and realist representation. Ballooning and its literary representation also open up a new dimension in the discourse of the aerial that has been understudied in recent research on the view from above: that is the dimension of the aesthetic-sensorial. In his book Aerial Life (2010), Peter Adey explores the aerial as an ontological mode of existence similar to Heidegger’s “being in the world.”75 Using a materialist and phenomenological approach, Adey shows how the meaning of being aerial is constructed by modern technology, urban space, airports, and aviation. A central concern for Adey is the militarization of the aerial. The discovery of the vertical embodies the imperial and aggressive gaze; a connection that has been discussed in works by Cosgrove and in Sloterdijk’s writings on verticality. Ballooning is often seen as a predominantly military technology, which was utilized for warfare in the nineteenth century. Kaplan, in noting that early aerostatic experiences triggered affects of enthusiasm and delight, also mainly approaches ballooning from the prospect of warfare.76 Although Mark Dorrian, in his writings about the aerial, warns against an oversimplified equation of the aerial with the imperial, he nevertheless embeds the aerial view within a military discourse.77 Adey, Kaplan, and Dorrian taken together pay little attention to the balloon’s modes of vision that go beyond the scopic regime, a term used by scholars of visual studies and that is based on a military and hierarchical gaze from above.78 It is this aspect of a disorienting and non-scopic flattened vision I have highlighted in the context of ballooning. This chapter has shown that literature about ballooning can register changes in the human sensorium and that the aesthetic discourse about ballooning opens up an epistemological prism. Literature of ballooning shows that the affective experience of being aerial is not exclusively about power fantasies and military strategies, but rather can demonstrate how technology extends the human sensorium and creates new affective modes of perceiving the world. Thus, balloons should not be seen just as another nineteenth-century technological innovation, but also as generators of perceptive modes, imaginaries, and aesthetic discourses about vision and visuality. 75 Peter Adey, Aerial Life: Spaces, Mobilities, Affects (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons), 2010. 76 Kaplan, “The Balloon Prospect,” 1–28. 77 Mark Dorrian, “The Aerial View: Notes for a Cultural History,” Strates 13 (2007): 1–17. 78 Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, trans. 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