It's next Friday. It's then that our ancient town of Thuringen will astonish several thousand visitors who will come to see the Thuringen statue move as if by some miracle. The statue, fashioned by the late 18th Century genius Keppler is better described as a marvellous curiosity. It has been constructed to move, to change its pose, once every century using some unknown device within its body, and next Friday will be only the second of the 'Miracles Of The Moving Statue'. The first, in the late 1800s, saw a few ladies swoon quite away, caused many to cross themselves in confusion, and set up a loud nervous and long-lasting hubbub that sometimes bubbled over into anger. This time, the town administrators have humorously ordered smelling-salts and Bibles to be on hand, more in a self-mocking spirit of gentle atheism and clownish advertisement for the town than for any practical purposes.
The statue is fashioned as a knight of indeterminate rank and unclear nationality, who wears a plain medieval bascinet helmet, a breast-plate, tight breeches, and boots with spurs which leads the beholder to suppose that a horse is nearby and the knight, temporarily on foot, is addressing some imaginary townsfolk. He wears no weapon and in fact carries a book in one hand, which no-one has cared to fathom the meaning of, while the other arm is slightly inviting - at least this is the knight's current aspect. Come Friday of course everything will change. Probably.
The dates on which the tidy knight will move are engraved on a small plinth upon which the figure stands. And we have carefully inspected, cleaned, and scraped the figure in the weeks leading up to our 'miracle,' and taken care to search out joins where movement might take place (elbows, knees, wrists, the hip, shoulder, and neck) which we have scooped out as best we could and eased with oil, though whether this will help the figure 'work' we have no idea. This build-up has heightened the excitement of the Thuringen locals amongst whom, of course, the main question being asked is 'What will the statue do?' For example my assistant hopes for a metallic groaning kneel while an arm stretches out as if to pick something up from the floor of the town square.
To be honest I am less enthusiastic than my fellow townspeople, but that's my nature anyway. Rather than being worked up with a feverish anticipation about the figure, I feel perplexed about the people who will come to see the 'trick'. The statue isn't a work of art. It's not supposed to be. It's a 'device'. People are not coming to admire an artist's skill - it's a piece of middling quality municipal statuary. The genius, if there is any, is in the internal mechanism.
Why are so many people coming? And come in thousands, we know already, they will, even I am guessing some of the elitists who normally would steer themselves away from anything drawing 'the herd'. Why are they coming? The answer is connected to time, I can see that, but I can't pin-point it. We like to feel 'a link with the past' and this phenomenon is connected to time in that way, yet it doesn't explain anything. It doesn't explain the numbers of people coming. People enjoy touching a letter sent by a sailor to his family during the 16th Century sea wars; but not this much. Besides, people can visit early automata in the specialist museums, and better ones than our statue too, yet the galleries ring hollow.
No. No. I believe that it's a simpler matter of 'time'. It fascinates so many because someone has set a mechanism two centuries ago, and it's going to activate next Friday. But why should that fascinate us?
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