The topic of the present paper is situated at the crossroads between the fields of visual culture
and media archeology. Both research areas have in common the study of the vision devices
which have determined and conditioned the perception of images. Unlike them however, the
issue of this paper is not an image (as in the case of ekphrasis), but the perception itself and
the structures of narrative derived from it. Indeed, following Harro Segeberg’s perspective,
aerostatic balloons are in my issue considered as media-like vision devices they are compared
with, as they had significant implications with perception (I intentionally do not refer to the
idea of influence) at the turn of the XIX century. This change of perception from a static and
artificial one, in the German prose of the Enlightenment based mainly on the medium of
optical devices, to an open and non linear one is here analysed through the key of the first
balloon flights and on the sample of two writers: Jean Paul with his Des Luftschiffers Giannozzo
Seebuch and Jan Potocki, author of a pioneer novel, Le manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse,
a work-in-progress known in three versions. However, the link between the two authors is not
evident, as Potocki was the only one of them who really flew with a balloon, but his recital has
not been preserved, whereas Jean Paul’s description of a balloon flight was merely a creation
of his imagination. Nevertheless, the comparison between the imagined flight in Jean Paul’s
prose and the narrative structure of Potocki’s novel turns out to be worth of attention, as it
shows the link between movement, gaze, memory and imagination in a sense which goes very
close to the achievements of contemporary neuroscience.
