Leeds Arcades has been at the crayons again

The LeedsArcadesProjects draws Walter

Genre

Every great work dissolves a genre or founds a new one. - WB

History

The nature of this melancholy becomes clearer, once one asks the question, with whom does the historical writer of historicism actually empathize. The answer is irrefutably with the victor. Those who currently rule are however the heirs of all those who have ever been victorious. Empathy with the victors thus comes to benefit the current rulers every time.

* Theses on the Philosophy of History, VII (1940; first published, in German, 1950, in English, 1955)

Mouse-mountain

I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.

* Protocols to the Experiments on Hashish, Opium and Mescaline (1927-1934, English translation 1997)

The Storm

What we call progress, Benjamin calls "the storm".

Walter sees the Angel of History (Klee's Angelus Novus)as a figure intently staring at something he is moving away from. "Where we percieve a chain of events he sees one single catastrophy which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. What we call progress, Benjamin calls the storm."

The Leeds Arcades has a go at sketching Walter

The Aura and Hashish

Walt no doubt hit on something with his theory of the aura, but it seems that alot of his ideas of the aura emerged from his drug taking, i mean we've all seen a few lights and shapes when off our heads, but we haven't extrapolated it into a theory of art/culture/mass production.
Here's a lovely early reference to auras from an article on Hash: "Perhaps nothing gives such a clear idea of aura as Van Gogh's late paintings, in which one could say that the aura appears to have been painted together with the various objects."

Proust Vortex

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

Technical First Aid

"There is nothing more wretched than a truth expressed as it had been thought. In such a case, its being written down is not even a poor photograph. IN fact, truth (like a child, like a woman who does not love us) refuses, when confronted with the lens of writing, once we have crouched down under the black cloth, to keep still and smile........" - WB
Ah, and Walter, always with the women who no longer love us, always heartbroken, always inadequate, it's no wonder you inspire such devotion.

Images of Walter

Walter has a headache

Finding a brothel

Discussing Proust and his unorthodox technique for giving directions Benjamin compares Prousts rambling style thus: "Anyone who has tried to get the address of a brothel in a strange city and has recieved the most long-winded directions, everything but the name of the street and the house number, will understand"

Try to ensure that everything in life has a consequence

" 'Try to ensure that everything in life has a consequence' - This is without doubt one of the most detestable of maxims. It is the imperative of progress in its most dubious form. It is not the case that the consequence leads to what is fruitful in right action, and even less that the consequence is its fruit. On the contrary, bearing fruit is the mark of evil acts. The acts of good people have no 'consequence' that could be ascribed to them." - WB

Do not seek to dissuade

"Anyone who is asked for his advice would do well to begin by finding out the asker's opinion and then endorsing it." - WB

Benjamin the gambler

April 1927 and Walter's gambling in the casinos of Monte Carlo led to him winning a substantial amount of money. He spent most of this on a holiday for himself in Corsica.

Benjamin and the world of fashion

In 1926 Walter's wife, Dora had become the editor of a Berlin fashion magazine.

Benjamin the player

On his return from Moscow in 1927, after his failed attempt to get with Asja, Walter moved straight back in with his wife and son in his parents villa.

Thanks Holland