st. stephen--walter benjamin for week of feb 22 2010 2

8/9/2019 St. Stephen--Walter Benjamin for Week of Feb 22 2010 2

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St. Stephen Five & Dime: (or 1 in 10 + 1): [1-5; pp. 200-210]2/21/2010 ABENJAMINIANPROJECT

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Failure, Decay, Music, Architecture (a series, collected):

[H2;7,H2a,1+ One may start from the fact that the true collector detaches the object from its functional

relations. But that is hardly an exhaustive description of the remarkable mode of behavior. For isnt this

the foundation (to speak with Kant and Schopenhauer) of the disinterested contemplation by virtue of

which the collector attains to an unequaled view of the object (p. 207).

*H1,1+ aborted and broken-down matterbetween a discount bookstore, in which dusty tied-up

bundles tell of all sort of failure (p. 200)

*H1,2+ At a certain point, an attempt was made to entice the crowd back by filling the rotunda each

evening with harmonious music, which emanated invisibly from the windows of a mezzanine. But the

crowd came to put its nose in at the door and did not enter, suspecting in this novelty a conspiracy

against its customs and routine pleasures Fifteen years ago, a similar attempt was madelikewise in

vainto books the department store W. Wertheim. Concerts were given in the arcade that ran

through it (p. 200)

[H1,3] [Concerning the artist Zola and what a writer says about their writing dont trust it+, Which

by no accidenttakes place in an arcade. If this book really expounds something scientifically, that its

the death of the Paris arcades, the decay of a type of architecture.

*H1a,2+ What is this completeness? It is a grand attempt to overcome the wholly irrational character

of the objects merepresence at hand[pre-Heidegger, Marx?] through its integration into a new,

expressly devised historical system: the collection. And for the true collector, every single thing in this

system becomes an encyclopedia of all knowledge [Bataille?] of the epoch, the landscape, the industry,

and the owner from which is comes *italics added, with thoughts bracketed], (p. 204-5).

Let us turn to attention to Architecture and Bataille by way of a different dictionary, a Critical

Dictionary, placed in a headless encyclopedia. The definition of architecture begins by positing,

Architecture is the expression of the true nature of societies, as physiognomy is the expression of the

nature of individuals *bolded italics added for emphasis+, *taken from my paper Deconstructively

Teaching] [ George Bataille, et al., The Critical Dictionary, in Encyclopdia Acephalica, compiled by

Alastair Brotchie (London: Atlas Press, 1995), 35-36.]

*H1,5+ Music seems to have settled into these spaces only with their decline, only as the orchestras

themselves began to seem old-fashioned in comparison to the new mechanical music (p. 204).


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*H1,4+ In 1893, the cocottes [women prostitutes] were driven from the arcades (p. 204).

Thats one old *x+ooker! x=h,l-. Yeah, what a classic. Do you have a mirror? Yeah, its

broken [Ode to Medusa]

*H1a,1+ Brittle, too are Mirrors (p. 204)

[R1,3] Brittle, too are the mosaic thresholds that lead youParis is the city of mirrorsBefore any man

catches sight of her, she already sees herself ten times reflected But the man too, sees his own

physiognomyflash byEven the eyes of passerby are veiled mirrors, and over that wide bed of the

Seine, over Paris, the sky is spread out like the crystal mirror hanging over the drab beds in

brothels[italics and bolding added] (p. 537-8)

*H1,5+ Nevertheless, there was music that conformed to the spirit of the arcadesa panoramic music,

such as can be heard today only in old-fashioned genteel concerts like those of casino orchestra in

Monte Carlo: the panoramic compositions of David, for exampleLe Dsert, Christoph

Colomb, Herculanum (p. 204).

*H1,6+ you can hear the music of Saint-Sans (p. 204).

*H1a,1+ follow the trail of the past (p. 204)

Music and Architecture are related in ratio thinking of early pre-Gothic or first gothic cathedral

building in France, The Rheims

*H2,1+ Your understanding of allegory assumes proportions hitherto unknown to you *then makes a

note in passing] illuminated by intoxication. Charles Baudelaire, Les Paradis artificiels (Paris, 1917) (p.

206)

The creepy crack-head friend of mine

The homeless place he calls his heart

The silly putty tinker toy

The mirror ballreflects below

The grazing herd the lemming goat

The move toward the moving from

The winter home upon the hill

The summer shade a caving in


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The psychotronic talking box

The mainstream antidepressant

The laughing dying culture pop

The famous moldyparty pop

Afantasy the way it could

The shaping things aprostitute

A naked mix a magazine

A picture of us in a dream [italics and bolding added] Ohgr, lyrics to song titled, p0re (2001)

*H1a,3+ Extinct nature: the shell shop in the arcades (p. 205), [Shells? Shells! The shells of the

Kabbalah, such that they (first attempt broken them, leaving residue, seeZimZum, and the work of R.

Isaac Luria Ashkenazi of Zfat/Safed School of Kabbalah) are empty, dead, shells, give one pause for

thought. Are we here with the shell of Kafkas K., emptied out, as the house will soon will be, the ending

of the Metamorphosis? The emanation that has passed (past) through, but leaves its aura; what of it?

What of this aura? Is it reproducible, should we care, does it matter? History and its life, plastic copies,

imitations, devoid of the aura or is it just that there aura is less?]

[H1a,5+ (At bottom, we may say, the collector lives a piece ofdream life. For in the dream, too, the

rhythm of perception and experience is alteredin such a way that everything---even the seemingly most

neutralcomes to strike us; everything concerns us. In order to understand the arcades from the

ground up, we sink theminto the deepest stratum of the dream; we speak of them as though they had

struck us) [italics and bolding added] (p. 205-6)

*H2,3+ The true method of making things present is to represent them in our space (not to represent

ourselves in their space) (p. 206)

To understand an ancient question, bring it into present time (William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside,

2002, p. 10, Penguin book edition)

[H2,7;H2a,1] the collector attains to an unequaled view of the objecta view which takes in more, and

other, than that of the profane owner and which we would do best to compare to the gaze of the great

physiognomist? (p. 207)

[H2,7;H2a,1] It must be kept in mind that, for the collector, the world is present, and indeed ordered,

in each of his objects in every single one of his possessions, to form a whole magic encyclopedia, a


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world order, whose outline is thefate of his object. Here, therefore, within this circumscribed field, we

can understand how great physiognomists (and collectors are physiognomist of the world of things)

become interpreters of fate (p. 207)

Magic, encyclopedia, fate, physiognomists, the world is present, the quodlibet, (Heidegger, Marx,Bergson?), these are the terms that catch my eye; moving my fingers to the keys, to repeat by

(re)arranging them. Is fate a thread and/or (both and yet) a casting sea? Nor for Noir, missing the I.

*H2a,3+ With individuals as with society, the need to accumulate is one of the signs of approaching

death (p. 207-8) Primitive accumulation (Marx), La part maudite [The Accursed Share] (1949), by

Bataille

*H2a,3+ But compare collecting done by children! (p. 208) Baby house or Doll Houses, interesting

article at this web address:

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/106261/hobbies/why_children_and_collectors_fall_in_lo

ve_with_dolls_houses.html

[H3a,1] Thepositive countertype to the collectorwhich also, insofar as it entails the liberation of

things from the drudgery of being useful, represents the consummation of the collectorcan be

deduced from these words of Marx: Private property has made us so stupid and inert that an object is

oursonly when we have it, when it exists as capital for us, or when we useit. Karl Marx, Der

historische Materialismus, in Die Frhschriften, ed. Landshut and Mayer (Leipzig ), vol. 1, p. 299

(Nationalkonomie und Philosophie) (footnoted 11) (p. 209)

*H3a,5+ The quodlibet *its French variant,fricasse] has something of the genius of both collector and

flneur (p. 209). Do we see this repeated in the popularity of the mix-taper of the 80s-90s, moving to

the mix-cd, to the present (2010) popularity of the mash-up? And is this conglomeration resembling of

the techniof concrete (Rome)? No to banal. Is it, the techni, rather of that of the Surrealist montage or

scrapbooking? Note from Wikipedia on the key term quodlibet, classical examples and then

contemporary example: A quodlibet is at the end ofBach's Goldberg Variations; The Grateful Dead's

medley The Other One includes the song, Quodlibet for Tenderfeet.

Quodlibet {collector, flneur} (is this matheme quite right?) Does the quodlibet intersect with the

elements collector and flneur? And does, thus, the collector and the flneur comprise part of a set?

Should one go further and enter in that which is a-part of all sets? Quodlibet {,collector, flneur}


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Perhaps not too dissimilar from the motive force that moved Battailles former lover to Lacan, we are to

moving towards both a surplus and a lack. Releasing in decay?

[H3a, 6] To appropriate to oneself an object is to render it sacred and redoubtable to others; it is to

make it participate in oneself

Balzac, The Alkahest; William S. Burrough, The Cat Inside; J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals (The

University Center for Human Values Series) (Princeton University Press, July 1, 2001), each resonate with

fragment *H3a,8+, such that Benjamin notes a fictional character, linage, The ancestors of Balthazar

Clas where collectors (p. 210). Can we also add Giorgio Vasari, encyclopedic work of other painters,

Vite [Lives]? Yes, another collector. Historical fact or fiction, real and imaginary, together in a life

Final stone(s) all selected and noted, only slightly (re)arranged

*H4,3+ Collecting is a primal phenomenon of study: the student collects knowledge (p. 210)

*H4,2+ *Giorgio] Vasari [was a friend of Michael Angelo and a stainer of glass and] is supposed to have

maintained (in his treatise on architecture?) that the term grotesque comes from the grottoes in which

collectors hoard their treasures (p. 210)

Another marvel of malady is found in a letter from Vasari in which he speaks of a drawing made during

an illness in order to regain his health. Described in detail, the drawing, now lost, was a satire, a

delightful grotesque (Paul Barolsky of the University of Virginia, Cellini, Vasari, and the Marvels of

Malady, Sixteenth Century Journal, XXIV/1, 1993, database: jstor, accessed: Feb 21, 2010).

1686 W. AGLIONBY Painting Illustr. Explan. Terms, Grotesk, is properly the Painting that is found under Ground in the Ruines of Rome. 1856RUSKINMod. Paint. III.

IV. viii. 4 A fine grotesque is the expression, in a mo ment, by a series of symbols thrown toget her in bold and fearless connection, of tr uths which it would have

taken a long time to express in any verbal way [etc.]. 1864SALA in Daily Tel. 18 Nov., The great grotesque himself will be in the grave. 1871MORLEYVoltaire iii.

(1872) 120 Some men of true genius seem only to make sure of fame by straining themselves into grotesques. [bolding added] source: OED, key term: grotesque

*H4,4+ What strikes one most about this noteworthy passage is that such a relation to movables would

perhaps no longer be possible in an age of standardized mass production (p. 210).

One passed ten: *H4a1,1+ As far as the collector is concerned, his collection is never complete; for let

him discover just a single piece missing, and everything hes collected remains a patchwork, which is

what things are for allegory from the beginning. On the other hand, the allegoristfor whom objects

represents only words in a secret dictionary, which will make know their meaning to the initiated

percisely the allegorist can never have enough of things. (p. 211)
http://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-r2.html#ruskinhttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-r2.html#ruskinhttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-r2.html#ruskinhttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-s.html#salahttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-s.html#salahttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-s.html#salahttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-m4.html#morleyhttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-m4.html#morleyhttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-m4.html#morleyhttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-m4.html#morleyhttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-s.html#salahttp://dictionary.oed.com.proxy.binghamton.edu/help/bib/oed2-r2.html#ruskin

st. stephen--walter benjamin for week of feb 22 2010 2

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