Sunday, 31 October 2010
Walter appears in the Dictionary of Science, with the following quote: -
With whom [do] the adherents of historicism actually empathize[?] The answer is inevitable: with the victor. And all rulers are the heirs of those who conquered before them. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers. Historical materialists know what that means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.
Thursday, 28 October 2010
Flaubert on happiness
"To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost" - Flaubert
Tuesday, 26 October 2010
Cartoons and Benjamin
Benjamin was fascinated with childhood play and therapeutic laughter. This led him to an interest in mass reception of animated films. Benjamin suggests that cartoons can express the difficult circumstances of modern life, which force the everyday person into a cyclical and mechanized routine, full of bittersweet gags. Animated films “make clear that even our bodies do not belong to us – we have alienated them in exchange for money, or have given parts of them up in war. The cartoons expose the fact that what parades as civilization is actually barbarism”. Yet in highlighting this barbarism, cartoons open up room for therapeutic energy and self-understanding. Moreover, when animated films show disregard for cultural norms and physical laws, they suggest a realm of possible changes and creative combinations, not unlike the imaginative realm of playful childhood.
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Benjamin on Blogging
The blog can be seen as the most recent cultural manifestation of what Benjamin saw developing during the early half of the twentieth century with the popularization of printed media. Benjamin noticed that more and more people started to become “collaborators” in his own time through the rise of the newspaper, when editors created new columns according to the trendy tastes of their readers. These spaces were for the reader to feel in touch with her culture, and in this sense the reader became a type of author. Benjamin saw the reader redefining the literary text; his example is the Russian press:
"For as writing gains in breadth what it loses in depth, the conventional distinction between author and public, which is upheld by the bourgeois press, begins in the Soviet press to disappear. For the reader is at all times ready to become a writer that is, a describer, but also a prescriber. As an expert even if not on a subject but only on the post he occupies—he gains access to authorship."
Today, blogs follow the evolution of the newspaper writer, the newspaper reader, and the rise of the collaborator. Blogs have pushed the idea of the collaborator (as Benjamin saw it) to a new extreme.
"For as writing gains in breadth what it loses in depth, the conventional distinction between author and public, which is upheld by the bourgeois press, begins in the Soviet press to disappear. For the reader is at all times ready to become a writer that is, a describer, but also a prescriber. As an expert even if not on a subject but only on the post he occupies—he gains access to authorship."
Today, blogs follow the evolution of the newspaper writer, the newspaper reader, and the rise of the collaborator. Blogs have pushed the idea of the collaborator (as Benjamin saw it) to a new extreme.
Monday, 4 October 2010
Sunday, 3 October 2010
Saturday, 2 October 2010
Walter's Death - some more details
The Portbou Judge, Fernando Pastor Nieto, claims he heard around 22.35 from the hotel owner that a 'foreign traveller' had died. He went to the hotel and found Benjamin lying on his bed, fully clothed.
The doctor gave Benjamin's cause of death as 'cerebral haemorrhage' dispite having visited Benjamin four times. Did the doctor see the x-ray Walter carried with him? Did he read the medical report in Benjamin's suitcase? It seems that noone thought for a minute that the death was anything but natural. There is no mention of morphine in the doctor's or the judge's report. Could Walter have really died from natural causes; the haemorrhage? Or a heart attack? or exhaustion?
The doctor gave Benjamin's cause of death as 'cerebral haemorrhage' dispite having visited Benjamin four times. Did the doctor see the x-ray Walter carried with him? Did he read the medical report in Benjamin's suitcase? It seems that noone thought for a minute that the death was anything but natural. There is no mention of morphine in the doctor's or the judge's report. Could Walter have really died from natural causes; the haemorrhage? Or a heart attack? or exhaustion?
When Benjamin met Koestler
Where did Walter get the morphine tablets that killed him? Arthur Koestler, author of Darkness at Noon, tells us that when he met Benjamin whilst they were both on the run from the Nazis; "he possessed fifty morphine tablets, which he intended to take if captured. He told me that was enough to kill a horse, and gave me half of his tablets - "just in case"."
Walter's Death - some details
Its difficult to unpick the actual details of Walter's death; information is sketchy, and the accounts of different people do not all add up. His companion at the time, Henny Gurland has been shown to be an unreliable narrator. So, what do we actually know:
A Spanish doctor, Ramon Vila Moreno attended Benjamin on the evening of 25th Sept. We do not know what time it was, and who called the doctor. Some have claimed the doctor was called in the evening, after Walter was found dead, others that the doctor came the following morning.
The doctor's bill shows that he attended Benjamin four times on different days, so it seems that he must have visited initially on the 25th, perhaps when Walter was still alive?
In the bill the doctor charged for several injections, taking blood pressure, and a blood letting, probably fearing Walter was suffering from a heart condition and his blood pressure was high.
To be continued........
A Spanish doctor, Ramon Vila Moreno attended Benjamin on the evening of 25th Sept. We do not know what time it was, and who called the doctor. Some have claimed the doctor was called in the evening, after Walter was found dead, others that the doctor came the following morning.
The doctor's bill shows that he attended Benjamin four times on different days, so it seems that he must have visited initially on the 25th, perhaps when Walter was still alive?
In the bill the doctor charged for several injections, taking blood pressure, and a blood letting, probably fearing Walter was suffering from a heart condition and his blood pressure was high.
To be continued........
Portbou
In 1940 Hannah Arendt visited Portbou looking for Walter's grave. She described the cemetry: "The cemetry looks out over a small bay, directly on the Mediterranean. Its terraces are hewn out of stone, and coffins are also put in these stone walls. This is one of the most fantastic and beautiful places I have ever seen".
The last, bitter irony
The last, bitter irony in Benjamin's story is that immediately after his death the Spanish authorities decided to waive the new regulations which had led to him being stranded in Portbou. His companions were allowed to proceed through Spain, as would Walter have been if he had just held out for one more day.
Benjamin's belongings
Benjamin's final belongings from the leather briefcase 'like businessmen use', were lost in the Figueras archive which was 'visited by water and rats'.
Some speculate that his companion in those final days; Henny Gurland may have even destroyed his belongings for fear that the mysterious manuscript may have fallen into the wrong hands, or been discovered by the police.
Some speculate that his companion in those final days; Henny Gurland may have even destroyed his belongings for fear that the mysterious manuscript may have fallen into the wrong hands, or been discovered by the police.
From The New Statesman
John Ruskin was an enemy of democracy, writes Tim Abrahams.
British Pavilion
Venice Architecture Biennale
Britain's contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale has been praised by critics, with good reason. The exhibition, housed in a small, neoclassical pavilion in the Giardini in Venice, explores the relationship between the Victorian art critic John Ruskin and Venice in a questioning way. Dominated by a huge scale model of the London 2012 Olympic stadium, made by Venetian gondola builders and converted into a drawing studio, the exhibition poses some important questions about Ruskin's relationship with architecture's role in contemporary society.
Venice is a city that the English art critic, who was born in 1819, catalogued assiduously. (A small collection of his notebooks is included
in the exhibition.) With his book The Stones of Venice, published in 1851, Ruskin made an immense contribution towards establishing architecture as an art form. He posits Venice as a text, which he goes on to decipher, with a specific purpose in mind: he uses the city to make an impassioned defence of the Gothic style - at whose heart he places Venice - as the morally superior form of European architecture. Ruskin's argument is that the Gothic is produced by master builders, dedicated in their tasks to a collective sharing of skill (often in directly venerating God, but not exclusively so), and working in semi-autonomous units throughout Europe.
Up until the end of his life, there remained in this favouring of the Gothic - this transmission of God's word through the tactile language of stone - a mistrust of the centralised authority of the papacy. Though Ruskin was raised as a Protestant by evangelising parents in the 19th century, he found the same sense of brotherhood in the work of masons of the late medieval period. To him, the Renaissance was a period in which mankind regressed morally.
Why should this talk of the Gothic and morality engage us in the present day? Because the focus of Ruskin's argument is not ultimately the evils of the Renaissance, nor even Catholicism. The real enemies, for Ruskin, were democracy and industry. Of particular import to his thinking was the essayist Thomas Carlyle's comparison between the Bury St Edmunds of his day and the same town in the 12th century. Through this juxtaposition, Carlyle extrapolates the need for an industrial aristocracy: a noble feudalism that would protect the working man. Ruskin believed in this.
The Stones of Venice, published in the middle of the 19th century, is a late call for a benign feudalism. The Gothic tradition, Ruskin believed, permits the mason to dictate scale and structure, as opposed to the neoclassical approach, which lends itself to political grandstanding and overly ornate detailing.
To Ruskin, the Renaissance was a time of moral turpitude and Venice was more than simply Venice. "Since first the dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones of mark beyond all others have been set up on its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice and England. Of the first of these great powers, only the memory remains; of the second, the ruin; the third, which inherits their greatness if it forgets their example, may be led through prouder eminence to destruction," he wrote.
The Stones of Venice asserts that the British should care for the Italian city or else be destroyed. At the Biennale exhibition, Ruskin's notebooks are contrasted with a photography project by Alvio Gavagnin, a working-class Venetian. There is a tacit proposition here: Britain does not own and define the city of Venice. The drawing studio, which was modelled on the Olympic stadium, was made to be handed to a group of local anarchists called Rebiennale, which recycles art and architecture installations, to be reused by the city.
Liza Fior, who created the pavilion, has suggested that Ruskin was a radical. Fortunately, her installation is more nuanced. Although Ruskin depicted the way in which the industrial age restricted free expression, that does not make him a revolutionary. But what makes the British Pavilion show such a success is that it captures the rigour and brilliance of his observations while setting his more questionable ideas in context.
British Pavilion
Venice Architecture Biennale
Britain's contribution to the Venice Architecture Biennale has been praised by critics, with good reason. The exhibition, housed in a small, neoclassical pavilion in the Giardini in Venice, explores the relationship between the Victorian art critic John Ruskin and Venice in a questioning way. Dominated by a huge scale model of the London 2012 Olympic stadium, made by Venetian gondola builders and converted into a drawing studio, the exhibition poses some important questions about Ruskin's relationship with architecture's role in contemporary society.
Venice is a city that the English art critic, who was born in 1819, catalogued assiduously. (A small collection of his notebooks is included
in the exhibition.) With his book The Stones of Venice, published in 1851, Ruskin made an immense contribution towards establishing architecture as an art form. He posits Venice as a text, which he goes on to decipher, with a specific purpose in mind: he uses the city to make an impassioned defence of the Gothic style - at whose heart he places Venice - as the morally superior form of European architecture. Ruskin's argument is that the Gothic is produced by master builders, dedicated in their tasks to a collective sharing of skill (often in directly venerating God, but not exclusively so), and working in semi-autonomous units throughout Europe.
Up until the end of his life, there remained in this favouring of the Gothic - this transmission of God's word through the tactile language of stone - a mistrust of the centralised authority of the papacy. Though Ruskin was raised as a Protestant by evangelising parents in the 19th century, he found the same sense of brotherhood in the work of masons of the late medieval period. To him, the Renaissance was a period in which mankind regressed morally.
Why should this talk of the Gothic and morality engage us in the present day? Because the focus of Ruskin's argument is not ultimately the evils of the Renaissance, nor even Catholicism. The real enemies, for Ruskin, were democracy and industry. Of particular import to his thinking was the essayist Thomas Carlyle's comparison between the Bury St Edmunds of his day and the same town in the 12th century. Through this juxtaposition, Carlyle extrapolates the need for an industrial aristocracy: a noble feudalism that would protect the working man. Ruskin believed in this.
The Stones of Venice, published in the middle of the 19th century, is a late call for a benign feudalism. The Gothic tradition, Ruskin believed, permits the mason to dictate scale and structure, as opposed to the neoclassical approach, which lends itself to political grandstanding and overly ornate detailing.
To Ruskin, the Renaissance was a time of moral turpitude and Venice was more than simply Venice. "Since first the dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones of mark beyond all others have been set up on its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice and England. Of the first of these great powers, only the memory remains; of the second, the ruin; the third, which inherits their greatness if it forgets their example, may be led through prouder eminence to destruction," he wrote.
The Stones of Venice asserts that the British should care for the Italian city or else be destroyed. At the Biennale exhibition, Ruskin's notebooks are contrasted with a photography project by Alvio Gavagnin, a working-class Venetian. There is a tacit proposition here: Britain does not own and define the city of Venice. The drawing studio, which was modelled on the Olympic stadium, was made to be handed to a group of local anarchists called Rebiennale, which recycles art and architecture installations, to be reused by the city.
Liza Fior, who created the pavilion, has suggested that Ruskin was a radical. Fortunately, her installation is more nuanced. Although Ruskin depicted the way in which the industrial age restricted free expression, that does not make him a revolutionary. But what makes the British Pavilion show such a success is that it captures the rigour and brilliance of his observations while setting his more questionable ideas in context.
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