Paul Scheerbart’s Kaleidoscopic Fantasies

Susana Martins Oliveira

doi:10.5565/rev/brumal.414

Abstract

The work of the German polymath Paul Scheerbart is attracting a renewed attention in recent years. During his prolific career, his unconventional fiction, art and poetry influenced a range of intellects, from architect Bruno Taut to Walter Benjamin, who even quoted his ideas on glass in his Arcades Project. Scheerbart wrote dozens of outer-space novels and utopian stories, plus articles and reviews, always about things like glass architecture, perfect outer-worlds and realities, reflecting extreme dreams, ambitions and fears. In this essay I will revisit Scheerbart’s various writings with an emphasis on the book Glass Architecture (1972) and the novel The Gray Cloth and Ten Percent White: A Ladies’ Novel (2001), in order to understand the metaphor of glass and colour that shaped the fantastic dimension of his work while, at the same time, reveal a myriad of ambivalent, and often opposed, meanings.

Highlights

The work of the German polymath Paul Scheerbart is attracting a renewed attention in recent years. His unconventional fiction, art and poetry influenced a range of intellects, from architect Bruno Taut to Walter Benjamin, who even quoted his ideas on glass in his Arcades Project
In this essay I will revisit Scheerbart’s various writings with an emphasis on the book Glass Architecture (1972) and the novel The Gray Cloth and Ten Percent White: A Ladies’ Novel (2001), in order to understand the metaphor of glass and colour that shaped the fantastic dimension of his work while, at the same time, reveal a myriad of ambivalent, and often opposed, meanings
Durante a sua prolífica embora curta carreira, no início do século passado, a sua ficção literária, poesia e arte pouco convencionais influenciaram uma variedade de intelectuais seus contemporâneos, do arquitecto Bruno Taut a Walter Benjamin, que chegou a citar as suas ideias sobre as construções em vidro no seu projecto Arcades

Summary

Introduction

The work of the German polymath Paul Scheerbart is attracting a renewed attention in recent years. Scheerbart wrote dozens of outer-space novels and utopian stories, plus articles and reviews, always about things like glass architecture, perfect outer-worlds and realities, reflecting extreme dreams, ambitions and fears.

Results

Conclusion