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Abstract:

In the comparative field of research, the contemporary Austrian novels “Measuring the World” by Daniel Kehlmann and “Cox, or the Flight of Time” by Christoph Ransmayr, interpreting the idea of the measurability of space and time, are considered. The object of the study is the phenomenon of measuring the physical and existential space and time of human life. The relevance of the research is determined by the specifics of the sociocultural situation of the 21st century with its blurred geographical and ontologically uncertain time boundaries. There is a need to return “back to reality”, to measure it again in Cartesian coordinates. Austrian authors in a dialogue with the values and achievements of the culture of Modern times and the Enlightenment, ask the question: how applicable to the dynamic space of human life are Cartesian coordinates defining the universal space of calculability and measurability? D. Kehlmann introduces the archetypal figure of the surveyor into the narrative, designating the strategy of “measuring the world” as a way of rational knowledge of the world. His novel characters — the “world measurers” Alexander Humboldt and Karl Gauss in their attempts to measure the world come to the conclusion that it is unknowable and immeasurable. In Ransmayr’s novel the idea of the measurability of time is revealed in the dialogue of two archetypal figures: a master watchmaker and a watch collector. The image of the clockwork mechanism in the novel allows you to designate the subject, bring it into the historical space of memory. Both authors point to the danger of building a digital foundation of modern information culture when a real person is excluded from the process of measuring / cognizing the world.