Shangri-La

It was 5 years before the end when Benjamin and Lomay first travelled to Shangri-La. It was not an easy journey; A plane to the province's capital. An overnight train to the last major town. A tiny, rickety old bus the rest of the way. By the time they got there, the journey had been so long, and so treacherous, that Benjamin couldnt face the return journey and just wanted to stay there forever. He almost got his wish.

The Autumn of Central Paris (after Walter Benjamin) by R. B. Kitaj



Reader, literary critic, translator of Proust, Baudelaire, and Balzac, philosopher, radio broadcaster, and fanatical archivist - Walter Benjamin - kept notebooks as the home for his thoughts, Esther Leslie tells us in her fascinating critical biography Walter Benjamin:


When he was without a notebook his thoughts were 'homeless.' Seven of his notebooks and three notepads still remain. These are crammed with drafts of articles and letters, ideas, diagrams, quotations to be used as epigraphs, bibliographies and diary entries, and often every single centimeter of their pages is covered with tiny handwriting. These books were portable. With them he could indulge his inclination to write on the move, in cafes across Europe. He fostered a cult around his notebooks, relishing in particular those with thin and translucent leaves and supple vellum covers. They survive for, once complete, they were placed with friends, with the request 'please store the manuscript carefully,' and the proviso that they could be recalled at any time by the author.

Harewood House

TheLeedsArcadesProjects spent today visiting Harewood House near leeds. Here it is by Turner

Venice, Turner, Fuck, theres nothing better

Ace-Electric

That takes the fuckin biscuit

Fuckin Hell

There's a fair few different styles there

Hot Dog

Fuck, look at this one

Turner, Venice, motherfucker

Valery

Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry (1871 – 1945) was a French poet, essayist, and philosopher. His interests were sufficiently broad that he can be classified as a polymath. In addition to his poetry and fiction (drama and dialogues), he also wrote many essays and aphorisms on art, history, letters, music, and current events.
He refused to collaborate with the Vichy governemt and was the man who got Benjamin relaesed from the concentration camp at Nevers.

Vampires in Venice

Rome Italian researchers believe they have found the remains of a female “vampire” in Venice, buried with a brick jammed between the jaws to prevent her from feeding on victims of the Black Death, which swept the city in 1576.

The plagues that ravaged Europe between 1300 and 1700 contributed to the belief in vampires, mainly because the way that corpses decomposed was not well understood, said Matteo Borrini, an anthropologist at the University of Florence. Gravediggers would find bodies bloated by gas, hair still growing and blood seeping from their mouths, and believe them to be still alive.

The shrouds on their faces would be decayed by bacteria in the mouth, revealing the corpses’ teeth. “To kill the vampire you had to remove the shroud, which was its food – like the milk of a child – and put something uneatable in there,” Mr Borrini said.

The skeleton was unearthed on Lazzaretto Nuovo, an island used to quarantine plague victims.

Robert Eisler

Robert Eisler (1882, Vienna 1882 – December 1949, Oxted, Surrey) was an Austrian Jewish art historian and Biblical scholar. He was a follower of the psychology of Carl Jung. His writings cover a great range of topics, from cosmic kingship and astrology to werewolves.

He advanced controversial theses on Jesus. These have for the most part been rejected by other scholars, though some have agreed with or developed them. One is about the concept of a political, rebellious and eschatological Jew as Jesus, in relation to the Zealot movement.

He survived concentration camps (Buchenwald and Dachau) before the outbreak of World War II, moving to the United Kingdom, where he died.

The University of Muri

The University of Muri is the fictional creation of Benjamin and Scholem. It is presumed to be located in Muri, Switzerland and though it was shut down by Benjamin and Scholem a number of times it is, or was at last report, still "open."

In his essay Walter Benjamin and his Angel Scholem writes, "The guardian angel of the Kabbalah from the year 1921 has become the guardian angel of the University of Muri, in whose Transactions a "philosopher" and a "kabbalist"-- who in a traditional sense were neither a philosopher nor a kabbalist-- made the traditional university and its scholars the object of their derision."

While a complete course offering was never really available, Scholem does report that he and Benjamin mutually agreed to put Robert Eisler in charge of a course titled, "Ladies' coats and Beach Cabanas in light of the History of Religion."

Angelus Novus

In 1921, Benjamin obtained Angelus Novus, a painting by Paul Klee. It would remain his most precious possession for the next 20 years. As early as July 1932, when he considered taking his own life, Benjamin bequeathed that picture to Scholem. According to Scholem, it represented more than an object of meditation, or memento of a spiritual vocation: "… the Angelus Novus also represented something else for him: an allegory in the sense of the dialectical tension uncovered in allegories by Benjamin in his book about tragic drama." Benjamin spoke and wrote about the picture often. "If one may speak of Walter Benjamin's genius, then it was concentrated in this angel," remarked Scholem.

Death

Benjamin was a solitary individual. On september 27, 1940 in that Port Bou hotel room as he had lived his life in seclusion, so, too, did he die - without hinting to the others of his intentions.