If we fear ourselves unworthy of the sublimities glimpsed at the summit of art, what relevance does such exalted stuff have to our grubby lives? Conversely, if on investigation such works, and their makers, are revealed as ordinary, subject to the same provisions and defects as the rest of what we’ve plopped onto the planet - all these cities, nations, languages, histories - then why get worked up in the first place? Perfect or, more likely, imperfect, we may suspect art of being useless in either case. Or has the preserving machine revealed true essences - irregularities, ferocities - disguised within the classical pieces to begin with?ĭick’s parable evokes the absurd yearning embedded in our reverence toward art, and the tragicomic paradoxes “masterpieces” embody in the human realm that brings them forth and gives them their only value. Alas, the musical-animals become disagreeable and violent, turn on one another and, when the inventor attempts to reverse-engineer his creations in order to prove that the music has survived, reveal themselves as a barely recognizable cacophony, nothing like the originals. Outfitting the classic pieces in this manner, then setting them free, the inventor means to guarantee their persistence beyond the frailties of human commemoration, to give them a set of defenses adequate to their value.
Dick’s 1953 short story “The Preserving Machine,” an impassioned inventor creates a device for “preserving” the canon of classical music - the sacred and, he fears, impermanent beauties of Schubert, Chopin, Beethoven and so forth - by feeding it into a device that transforms the compositions into living creatures: birds, beetles and animals resembling armadillos and porcupines.
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