The Machines — Poem and Comment

As a poet and philosopher Lars Gustafsson (1936−2016) inhabited the worlds of Swedish literature as well as analytic philosophy of language. He was professor at the University of Texas and a writer of world-renown, with translations of his novels, short stories, essays, and poems in many languages. Among his collections of poetry the one revolving around the theme of machines gained special prominence. It is anchored by «The Machines» which occasioned also an essay by Gustafsson in which he explores the background and philosophical implications of that poem. The poem is therefore here presented right along with a new translation of that essay by John Irons — who had already created one of three English translations of the poem. — When Gustafsson in 1966 took archetypical mechanical devices as a poetic cipher for human self-reflection at the intersection of technology and language, the machines of his day were conceived cybernetically: They were thought to be mechanisms with feedback that were driven and controlled by servomotoric electric power. The mecatronic fusion of the computer and the machine did not yet occupy a place of prominence in reflections about technology. This is one of the reasons why a fresh reading and new assessment of Gustafsson"s texts is called for — how do they speak to contemporary readers? This publication is therefore accompanied by three philosophical responses.