Without Lifting A Finger

Fear, revulsion, and horror were the emotions which the big-city crowd aroused in those who first observed it. For Poe it has something barbaric; discipline just barely manages to tame it. Later, James Ensor tirelessly confronted its discipline with its wildness; he liked to put military groups in his carnival mobs, and both got along splendidly—as the prototype of totalitarian states, in which the police make common cause with the looters. Valéry, who had a fine eye for the cluster of symptoms called “civilization,” has characterized one of the pertinent facts. “The inhabitant of the great urban centers,” he writes, “reverts to a state of savagery—that is, of isolation. The feeling of being dependent on others, which used to be kept alive by need, is gradually blunted in the smooth functioning of the social mechanism. Any improvement of this mechanism eliminates certain modes of behavior and emotions.” Comfort isolates; on the other hand, it brings those enjoying it closer to mechan...

Let us consider the village at the foot of Castle Hill whence K.’s alleged employment as a land surveyor is so mysteriously and unexpectedly confirmed. In his Postscript to The Castle Brod mentioned that in depicting this village at the foot of Castle Hill Kafka had in mind a specific place, Zürau in the Erz Gebirge. We may, however, also recognize another village in it. It is the village in a Talmudic legend told by a rabbi in answer to the question why Jews prepare a festive evening meal on Fridays. The legend is about a princess languishing in exile, in a village whose language she does not understand, far from her compatriots. One day this princess receives a letter saying that her fiancé has not forgotten her and is on his way to her. The fiancé, so says the rabbi, is the Messiah; the princess is the soul; the village in which she lives in exile is the body. She prepares a meal for him because this is the only way in which she can express her joy in a village whose language she...

Almost passed it by (I was heading to the "real" text of Benjamin's Illuminations and it was at the end of the intro): a great (essential) Kafka quote. Can't believe I didn't post it already (maybe I did), can't believe I didn't drown it in yellow or underscore it a score of times in the hardcopy (maybe I'll look eventually). * “Anyone who cannot cope with life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate . . . but with his other hand he can jot down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different and more things than the others; after all, he is dead in his own lifetime and the real survivor.” —Franz Kafka, DIARIES, entry of October 19, 1921

Stated more briefly and dialectically, this means that the sphere of poetry was here explored from within by a closely knit circle of people pushing the “poetic life” to the utmost limits of possibility. And they can be taken at their word when they assert that Rimbaud’s Saison en enfer no longer had any secrets for them. For this book is indeed the first document of the movement (in recent times; earlier precursors will be discussed later). Can the point at issue be more definitively and incisively presented than by Rimbaud himself in his personal copy of the book? In the margin, beside the passage “on the silk of the seas and the arctic flowers,” he later wrote, “There’s no such thing.” * The reader, the thinker, the loiterer, the flâneur, are types of illuminati just as much as the opium eater, the dreamer, the ecstatic. And more profane. Not to mention that most terrible drug—ourselves—which we take in solitude.

The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next. Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion. In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semirelaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an étude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an ...

Still, Marinetti says in his manifesto on the Ethiopian colonial war: "For twenty-seven years we Futurists have rebelled against the branding of war as antiaesthetic.... Accordingly we state:... War is beautiful because it establishes man's dominion over the subjugated machinery my means of gas masks, terrifying megaphones, flame throwers, and small tanks. War is beautiful because it initiates the dreamt-of metallization of the human body. War is beautiful because it enriches a flowering meadow with the fiery orchids of machine guns. War is beautiful because it combines the gunfire, the cannonades, the cease-fire, the scents, and the stench of putrefaction into a symphony. War is beautiful because it creates new architecture, like that of the big tanks, the geometrical formation of flights, the smoke spirals from burning villages, and many others.... Poets and artists of Futurism!.... remember these principles of an aesthetics of war so that your struggle for a new lite...

Reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly colored by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption.

This quote comes from the very end of Benjamin's essay on Proust: As it was, however, this malady was destined to have its place in the great work process assigned to it by the furor devoid of desires or regrets. For the second time there rose a scaffold like Michelangelo's on which the artist, his head thrown back, painted the Creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: the sickbed on which Marcel Proust consecrates the countless pages which he covered with his handwriting, holding them up in the air, to the creation of his microcosm.

     The concept of the aura which was proposed above with reference to historical objects may usefully be illustrated with reference to the aura of natural ones. We define the aura of the latter as the unique phenomenon of a distance, however close it may be. If, while resting on a summer afternoon, you follow with your eyes a mountain range on the horizon or a branch which casts its shadow on you, you experience the aura of those mountains, of that branch. This image makes it easy to comprehend the social bases of the contemporary decay of the aura. It rests on two circumstances, both of which are related to the increasing significance of the masses in contemporary life. Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things "closer" spatially just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction. Every day the urge grows stronger to get hold of an object at very close range by way of its likeness, its rep...

It has quite justly been said of him that he photographed them like scenes of crime. The scene of a crime, too, is deserted; it is photographed for the purpose of establishing evidence. With Atget, photographs become standard evidence for historical occurrences, and acquire a hidden political significance.

Eugène Atget ( French:  [adʒɛ] ; 12 February 1857 – 4 August 1927) was a French flâneur [ 1 ] and a pioneer of documentary photography , noted for his determination to document all of the architecture and street scenes of Paris before their disappearance to modernization. [ 1 ] Most of his photographs were first published by Berenice Abbott after his death. [ 2 ] An inspiration for the surrealists and other artists, his genius was only recognized by a handful of young artists in the last two years of his life, and he did not live to see the wide acclaim his work would eventually receive. [From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Atget ] ***                     [Atget's photos also from Wikipedia] 

Inspired by Benjamin's essay, I will probably read Leskov next (unless the blind librarian hands me another book). * Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov ( Russian : Никола́й Семёнович Леско́в ; 16 February [ O.S. 4 February] 1831 — 5 March [ O.S. 21 February] 1895) was a Russian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and journalist who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Praised for his unique writing style and innovative experiments in form, and held in high esteem by Leo Tolstoy , Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky among others, Leskov is credited with creating a comprehensive picture of contemporary Russian society using mostly short literary forms. [ 1 ] His major works include Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1865) (which was later made into an opera by Shostakovich ), The Cathedral Clergy (1872), The Enchanted Wanderer (1873), and The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea (1881). [ 2 ] Leskov received his formal education at the Or...

From "The Task of the Translator" (a bit wrenched from context): Art, in the same way, posits man's physical and spiritual existence, but in none of its works is it concerned with his response. No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.

Really enjoyed "Scholem on Benjamin" so I've decided to reread Benjamin's Illuminations . Last read it when I was still "tied to paper," but this time I'm taking it on via Kindle. Should "take me home" re the semester finale. * A single clip from Hannah Arendt's Intro re Benjamin: To describe adequately his work and him as an author within our usual framework of reference, one would have to make a great many negative statements, such as: his erudition was great, but he was no scholar; his subject matter comprised texts and their interpretation, but he was no philologist; he was greatly attracted not by religion but by theology and the theological type of interpretation for which the text itself is sacred, but he was no theologian and he was not particularly interested in the Bible; he was a born writer, but his greatest ambition was to produce a work consisting entirely of quotations; he was the first German to translate Proust (t...

Haven't read much of Scholem's text on Benjamin yet, but this is perhaps the most interesting bit thus far: Benjamin conceded that no laws could be observed in history, but he insisted on upholding his definition of history as "the objective element in time, something perceptibly objective." In this he found the possibility of demonstrating such an objective factor scientifically. He admitted that he had not yet succeeded in doing so; for my part, I undertook to demonstrate the impossibility of such an enterprise. At length each of us said, Well, when you have come to the end you will admit I am right.

Gerhard Scholem who, after his immigration from Germany to Palestine, changed his name to Gershom Scholem ( Hebrew : גרשם שלום) (December 5, 1897 – February 21, 1982), was a German-born Israeli philosopher and historian. He is widely regarded as the founder of the modern, academic study of Kabbalah , becoming the first Professor of Jewish Mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . [ 1 ] His close friends included Walter Benjamin and Leo Strauss , and selected letters from his correspondence with those philosophers have been published. Scholem is best known for his collection of lectures, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (1941) and for his biography Sabbatai Zevi, the Mystical Messiah (1973). His collected speeches and essays, published as On Kabbalah and its Symbolism (1965), helped to spread knowledge of Jewish mysticism among non-Jews. [From Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gershom_Scholem#Debate_with_Hannah_Arendt ]

Going through a Cioran withdrawal, but I've pulled myself away to start something new. Still reading the intro but it promises to be a good read (another selection from NYRB), perhaps revealing the author (whom I know next to nothing about) as much as the object of his friendship: Benjamin. * An excerpt from the Introduction (taking a slice which also includes another big name: Hannah Arendt, who apparently also wrote an important essay on Benjamin): Arendt's denial of Benjamin's religious nature was not the only thing that must have incited Scholem. Her insistence on "bad luck" as the guiding force behind Benjamin's life must also have provoked him. Benjamin's idea of history as "one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage" becomes in Arendt's perspective Benjamin's projection of his own unluckiness, the "pile of debris" that fate kept throwing across his path. "Benjamin's suicide," she...

Flâneur ( pronounced: [flanuʁ] ), from the French noun flâneur , means "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer". Flânerie refers to the act of strolling, with all of its accompanying associations. The flâneur was, first of all, a literary type from 19th-century France , essential to any picture of the streets of Paris . It carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure , the idler, the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. It was Walter Benjamin , drawing on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire , who made him the object of scholarly interest in the twentieth century, as an emblematic figure of urban, modern experience. [1] Following Benjamin, the flâneur has become an important figure for scholars, artists and writers. Etymology The terms of flânerie date to the 16th or 17th century, denoting strolling, idling, often with the connotation of wasting time. But it was in the 19th century that a rich set of meanings a...

I've read many of his essays (e.g., on Kafka, Baudelaire) but not this unfinished megawork. Some day. Walking around the Shore today--pics to follow in some other posts--I thought of this work: the sweet dream (delusion) that the sum of the parts equals the whole.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcades_Project * [From the Wikimedia Commons: This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic ] Le passage de Choiseul à Paris (France) - Avril 2007 Photo personnelle (own work) de Clicsouris