Giovanni de' Dondi 1318-1389

Giovanni de' Dondi
1318-1389
by Hans Magnus Enzensberger

Giovanni de' Dondi of Padua spent his whole life making a clock. A clock like no other, a record which stood four hundred years.

A multiple movement, wheels elliptical, dented, linked only by pairs, turning, sliding, and the first crown escapement: inaudito! Seven hands show the state of the firmament     and the dumb revolution of all planetsAn eighth hand, the most modest, showed the time, the day and the year: A.D.1346.Hand-wrought: a heavenly machine, pointless and profound as the Trionfi, a word-clock, built by Francesco Petrarca.

But why do you waste your time on my manuscript, when you have not the ability to emulate it?Hours of daylight, Corners on the moon's path, Movable feasts.

A calculator, and more: Heaven repeated. In brass, in brass. And we are still here under the same heaven. The Padovani passed the clock by. Coup followed coup. Plague carts pounded the cobbles.

The bankers squared their positions. Food was scarce.The genesis of any machine is problematic. An analog computer. A menhir. A planetarium. Trionfi del tempo. Relics of the bygone. Pointless and profound like a poem in brass.Francesco Petrarca had no cheque From Guggenheim on the first of the month. De' Dondi had no contract with the Pentagon.Other predators. Other £ words and wheels. Yet the same heaven. This middle age in which we still live.

The Dondi Clock in the Paris Observatory.

Watch International No.4 / Winter 2002