The Philosophy of the Object, Geometry, and Physics: Constructivism

Abstract

This article deals with the time and space issues of Srečko Kosovel’s conses and shows that Kosovel used them to accomplish literary constructivism in Europe. This is evident from a “geometric”, engineering, physics, and Einsteinian analysis of “Sferično zrcalo” (“The Spherical Mirror”). In the mirror, words are floating in space and are no longer geocentric. In other words, mirrors change the spatial dimension of the Euclidian object, which in this way “grows into space”. Kosovel’s engineer-like sketch of the letter “K” is final and two-dimensional, and is thus a part of the picture. As such, it simultaneously reaches across the edge because it creates an infinite space through mirroring. The poem’s white background alternates with the space of the letter “K”. The pictorial effect of the “K” is actually an effect of the construction lines used by the poet to achieve the depth of space. It is here, but at the same time also part of the continuum outside the poem. The poem thus has no end; it reaches out into infinity or space. Through this, Kosovel achieved a Bauhausian synthesis of art within architecture. The construction of new spatial structures was accompanied by several basic principles, the interaction of planes, and the tension of space obtained by using the right angle and the diagonal, which resist closed surfaces, volumes, and the laws of static matter. This involved a process of structuring space using the principles of a dynamic interaction of elements. Velimir Khlebnikov’s bidirectional poems, as a unique poetic pictorial model of a non-Euclidian conception of space, were also like this. They defied the logical categories and manner of thinking inherited from the Greeks. In his “Spherical Mirror”, Kosovel tells a story of what happened outside the mirror—or in reality—thus confirming the basic constructivist fact that the conses are built from real “facts” that chase away art. This also confirms the authorship in cases in which the lyric subject is banished from the poem but enters it as a constructor. In Kosovel, “K” as konstruktor (“constructor”) and “K” as Kosovel the poet happen to overlap in an ideal way.