Miracles of Violence

Benjamin loved Proust, indeed he translated him into German. Proust loved Ruskin, indeed he translated him into French. Or did he?
A new book reveals that a lot of Proust's translations of Ruskin were actually done by his mum. Proust's command of English was nowhere near as good as Mrs Proust's so she did them for him and he just polished them up a bit.

Pseudonyms

We have spoken before about how Benjamin, like Flaubert, wanted to write a book consisting solely of quotes by others. The Arcades Project was to be this book. What many people do not know is that to fill gaps in the content Benjamin would often use self-quotations; he would quote himself. He would not, however reference himself, but would attribute the quote to one of his pseudonyms. Benjamin used pseudonyms frequently in his work and life and seemed to enjoy going under various names, often just rearranging the letters of his own name to make his latest guise. In the Arcades Project we find quotes by Benjamin attributed to "a writer on the left" and "a famous rabbi."

1891

An account from 1891, :-
"Can you even begin to imagine what the living conditions are like in some of those tenement blocks above the Paris Arcades? A consumptive is spitting blood and choking to death in a first floor flat below the glass roof of the Passage Des Panoramas. The window open, a dust saturated with stale cigarette smoke and cold sweat gradually seeps into the room. The sick man complains that he is suffocating and begs for fresh air; someone runs to open the window - but immediately slams it shut. The only way you could begin to help someone in such a condition would be by taking them as far away as possible from the stench of the arcades."

Arcades on Holiday

The Leeds Arcades Projects are now on their official vacation. They will be back to protect the Shopping Arcades of Leeds on the 23rd June, 2008, the official date for the end of all things according to the Astek book of the Dead.

Proust V's Joyce

Whilst in Paris Benjamin befriends the poet, Leon-Paul Fargue. Fargue had been a very good friend of Proust whom Benjamin greatly admired. Here, in an excerpt from Benjamin's Diary, Fargue tells Benjamin the famous story of when Proust met James Joyce at a party:-

He told me of the dinner he had given for Marcel Proust and James Joyce, who met each other then for the first and only time. "To keep the conversation going," said Fargue, "was like lifting a dead weight. And i had even taken the precaution of inviting two beautiful women, to soften the force of the collision. But this did not prevent Joyce from vowing, as he took his leave, that he would never again enter a room where he might risk encountering Proust."

Paris

Benjamin loved Paris, his Arcades were the Parisian Arcades, here he is writing his Paris Diary in 1929:-
"No sooner do you arrive in Paris than you feel rewarded. The resolve not to write about it is futile. You reconstruct the preceding day just like children who reconstruct the table full of presents on Christmas Day. This, too, is a way of expressing your gratitude."

The Leeds Arcades Projects

An early Leeds Arcades Project Cartoon

Datong

It is 23 September 2012, Benjamin is again with Miss Chang, who he met earlier, in the 1980's. He has Time Jumped forward through The Rip a few years. On his arrival on a hillside overlooking Datong, China, he finds a dying Miss Chang by the side of the road. He holds her in his arms cradling her head as her life slowly ebbs away. It is the end of all things as the ground ruptures and the Poison Snow begins to fall. Benjamin and Chang watch the snow fall on the valley below. There are explosions and screaming, the snow falls and covers everything. Benjamin opens the umbrella he has been carrying since Issue 2 when he retrieved it in Portbou, from his belongings found by the border guards after his suicide. Beneath the umbrella, the snow falling, chaos below, Benjamin whispers "Its beautiful". Miss Chang relates what happened to her after Benjamin met her.......

Into the Rip

The Benjamin in the Future spin off series Into the Rip flirted with some pretty daring material. In the notes for issue 7 Salech seems to be telling some kind of personal story, but whose story? and where was this material coming from?

The time traveling Benjamin finds himself in the 1980's, in rural China, where he meets a beautiful young woman, who tells him her tragic story:-

"What can I say, I was younger and a little silly I suppose, I didn't have too many chances when I was younger, I was always looking for ways to get ahead. So one day they just pulled up next to me as I was walking down the street back in my village. I recognised one of them as a police officer and one of them as working in the Mayors office. They were chatting and being quite funny and they asked me to get in the car with them.

I sort of thought they were good, influential people to get in with, they wanted me to go out with them for the night, so i thought yeah, they will be good people to get to know. They will be able to help me get ahead, good people to know. So i got in the car and there were four of them in there, i had to squeeze into the back seat with a couple of guys. We were really sandwiched in but it was ok, and we were all laughing and they were pretty funny. They took me off to a bar somewhere out of town and we had a few drinks. It was mostly just guys there and they all gathered around me quite alot and tried to encourage me to drink. I guess i gave into the pressure as i got pretty drunk. Then we were back in the car and there were five guys now, some of them were new, some the same. I was really sandwiched in there and i think i was sat on one guys knee. Before i knew it there were hands feeling me up and going up my skirt. We were all still laughing though and i guess it was ok somehow. Pretty soon someone was tugging at my knickers and i struggled abit but there wasn't much room to move and he was stronger than me. I started to get abit worried as i realized that i was possibly in a dangerous situation, but if i made a struggle or something they might go against me and it could turn nasty. I decided to just relax and try to go with the flow. They drove up to the mountain and we all got out and looked at the view, the village laid out before us..."

The Path to Success, in 13 Theses. No 1

Benjamin wrote one of the first Self-help works in his Path to Success, in 13 Theses. He outlines various methods for achieving worthwhile success, but this being Benjamin his methods are not quite the same as modern Managment Guru's;

1. There is no success without recognition

Mad Food

Walter quotes the case of a doctor who tried to cure a madman by prescribing for him a diet consisting solely of peas. Walter does not tell us if this treatment was successful.

Mad Books

Walter loved the books of the Mad. Here's some quotes he collected:-
Case 32 - The mill wheel in the hot-air balloon of the church. The red currant.
Case 40 - Lying in the forest stream of the blessing is homologous with sleeping in the bed of the church - the blue rocky pinnacle bathed in light.

Mad Books

Benjamin provides us with more quotes from his collection of Mad Books:-
From 'Body, Brain, Soul, God' by Madman Carl Gehrmann.
Case 1 - The broken reed is raised up again
Case 7 - Stimulation of the nubes - the starting point for perfecting the form of blueberry - stimulation of the mother of God centers - forget me not - the water level of the day of the lord.
Case 13 - Effect of sweaty feet on the sexual and respiratory systems - a cure implies the harmonious unfolding of the stocking centers - the well of the sacraments.

More Mad Books Tomorrow.....

Into the Rip. Issue 3

Miss Lomay Chang has provided The Leeds Arcades Project with more details of the plot lines for 'Into The Rip', the time travelling Benjamin comic book that never saw print due to Salech's untimely and mysterious death. Issue 3 caused concerns about Salech's mental state from his editors, as it featured a storyline where Benjamin got an office job in a Northern English University in the 1990's, where he worked for 13 years before being unceremoniously dismissed. Benjamin, being Benjamin swore to fight the political machinations of the big wigs but of course it all went horribly wrong and he ended up ignored and sidelined until he once again stepped Into The Rip, now, 13 years older.
What caused so much concern amongst Salech's editors was the fact that for the vast majority of the issue, absolutely nothing happened. Benjamin goes to work, comes home. The issue is filled with the minutiae of daily office work. There was speculation that Salech was working out some of his own personal demons but no rational explanation has ever being found.

Mad Books

Everyone knows that Walter collected books, what few know is that he loved to collect books by mad people. Here he documents one such book from his collection, A memoir by someone called Schreber:-
Schreber asserts that:
"Only God might approach corpses without danger"
That most people are "casually improvised men"
He talks about "Miracle Dolls" and people who have been "Magicked away"
He is keen on the "Shouting Miracle" which seems to be basically shouting alot to try to make yourself feel better about stuff.

Tomorrow,
More Mad Books with Walter

Proust and the abyss of solitude

Benjamin on Proust:-
"Western literature has rarely seen a more radical attempt at self-absorption. Proust's writing has, as its centre a solitude which pulls the world down into it's vortex with the force of a maelstrom. And the over loud and inconceivably hollow chatter which comes roaring out of Proust's novels is the sound of a society plunging into the abyss of this solitude."

Proust, Joker

Benjamin Loved Proust, he translated him into German and wrote about him extensively. Here he quotes a famous joke by Proust:
Proust sent a letter late one night to one of the women in his social circle:-

"My dear Madam, I just noticed that i forgot my cane at your house yesterday; please be good enough to give it to the bearer of this letter. P.S. Kindly pardon me for disturbing you; I just found my cane."

Benjamin, going on about Prostitutes Again

Walter seems to be always going on about prostitutes, here he is again, pretending to be writing about Casanova, but really just going on about prostitutes again:-

"A saying of Casanova's. "She knew," Casanova says of a procuress, "that I would not have the strength to leave without giving her something." A strange statement. What strength was needed to cheat the procuress of her reward? Or, more precisely, what is the weakness on which she can always rely? It is shame. The procuress is venal - in contrast to the customer employing her services, who is ashamed. Filled with shame, he seeks a hiding place and finds one in the most hidden place of all: in money. Insolence throws the first coin down on the table. Shame follows it up with a hundred, in order to cloak it."

Hamlet

"The so-called immortal works flash briefly through every present time. Hamlet is one of the very fastest, the hardest to grasp."

Asja's influence on Walter

After completing studies at the University of Frankfurt, Walter planned to emigrate to Palestine in 1924 with his friend Gershom Scholem but was prevented by a love affair with Asja a Latvian actress and Comintern stringer. Lacis whisked him off to the Italian island of Capri, a cult center from the time of the Emperor Tiberius, then used as a Comintern training base; the heretofore apolitical Benjamin wrote Scholem from Capri, that he had found ``an existential liberation and an intensive insight into the actuality of radical communism.''

Later Asja took Benjamin to Moscow for further revolutionary indoctrination, where he met playwright Bertolt Brecht with whom he would begin a long collaboration; soon thereafter, after things with Asja faded out, Benjamin began serious experimentation
with hallucinogens.

Ruskin/May Day

By the 19th century the traditional may dances and maypoles of May Day, had been subsumed into the symbology of "Merry Old England." However there was a movement trying to bring back May Day traditions and update them for the modern world. The addition of intertwining ribbons on the May Pole is one such update. It seems to have been influenced by a combination of 19th century theatrical fashion and visionary individuals such as John Ruskin who was a key figure in the movement to resurrect May Day.

Pairs of boys and girls (or men and women) stand alternately around the base of the pole, each holding the end of a ribbon. They weave in and around each other, boys going one way and girls going the other and the ribbons are woven together around the pole until the merry-makers meet at the base. The result is a complex pattern of interwoven ribbon, which hopefully looks beautiful.

Books and Prostitutes

Throughout his life Benjamin harboured the ambition to write something about the connection (as he saw it) between Books and Prostitutes.
He touched on the subject a number of times, but never wrote the big essay he had planned. Prostitutes and Books keep on reoccurring throughout his work, and not least in The Arcades Project, where Prostitutes have a large chapter all to themselves.
It seems Benjamin was fascinated by women of the street, and indeed, it is rumoured that his first sexual encounter was with a Berlin Prostitute.

Kafka V Lao-tse

In 'Conversations with Brecht' Benjamin imagines what would happen if Kafka and Lao-tse met:-

Lao-tse: "Well now, disciple Kafka, the organisations, the leaseholds and other economics forms in which you live make you uneasy?"
Kafka: "Yes."
Lao-tse: "You can't cope with them anymore?"
Kafka: "No."
Lao-tse: "A stock certificate worries you?"
Kafka: "Yes."
Lao-tse: "And now you are looking for a leader to hold on to, disciple Kafka."