Dom lalek. Zegar i to, czego nie wiemy o czasie

Abstract

Jean Jacques Rousseau in his praise of Geneva notes that the most flourishing industry in this town is watch- and clock-making, the source of income of nearly one fifth of the inhabitants. As we read on, it turns out that what is at stake is not only manufacturing of mechanical chronometric devices but twisting together of social and economic life with technology and, interestingly enough, establishing an extraterrestrial, although lay, horizon for the human life. A clock did not only measure hours of our mortal existence but also remained related to the rhythms of cosmic movements of planets. Hence, starting from Tadeusz Różewicz’s poem “Dolls’ House” we are trying to demonstrate that what matters is not only the very fact of being able to survive, go on living according to the measurements of the clock, like Swift’s Gulliver who “seldom did any thing without consulting it”; what we focus on is, rather, the ability to live in a more profound way which implies a different relation with time and man’s temporality.

Keywords

• time
• clock
• machine
• labour
• life