Walter Benjamin’s Archive. Walter Benjamin

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СКАЧАТЬ can throw out, fold, and prepare the bales of cloth according to the rules, so too the gentleman who markets this gaily colored pile, for good or for evil, has to drape himself in the colors of the universe and hold in front of the customer’s nose the world of God which he sells in pieces. All that was necessary was to find the traveling salesman who also had at his immediate disposal the required vim of gesticulation, such as has the journalist with his triply loosened wrist and pen. That the reserve lieutenant was formerly popularly perceived as a traveling salesman is well known. He was easily imported into “better circles.” This is also thoroughly true of Mr von Unruh, who, in 1922, as a traveling salesman going from city to city for eternal peace, processed the Paris position. Of course—and this was accordingly so apt that Mr von Unruh himself bridled at moments—his import into French circles some years ago at Verdun did not occur without furore, not without commotion, not without the spilling of blood. Be that as it may, the report that he presents—Wings of Nike: The Book of a Journey—implies that his contact with his customer base has persisted, even when he presented for inspection peace commodities rather than heavy munitions. It is not equally as certain whether it can be assured that the publication of this travel journal—a list of his customers and done deals—is of use to the broader course of business. For barely had it occurred before the commodity began to be returned from Paris.

      In any case it is extremely instructive to examine Mr von Unruh’s pacifism more closely. Since the supposed convergence of the moral idea and that of right, on whose presupposition the European proof of the Kantian gospel of peace rested, began to disconnect in the mind of the nineteenth century, German “peace” has pointed more and more to metaphysics as the place of its foundation. The German image of peace emanates from metaphysics. In contrast to this it has long been observed that the idea of peace in West European democracies is a thoroughly worldly, political, and, in the final instance, juristically justifiable one. Pax is for them the ideal of international law. To this corresponds, in practical terms, the instrument of the arbitration court and its treaties. The great moral conflict of an unlimited and reinforced right to peace with an equitable peace, the diverse ways in which this theme has been instrumentalized in the course of history, are not up for discussion in Mr von Unruh’s pacifism, just as indeed the world-historical events of this hour remain unaddressed. And “in terms of the philosophical politics of France”—Florens Christian Rang analyzed them for the Germans (in his final work German Shelters, the most truthful critique of war and post-war literature and one of the greatest political works ever, and of which out of the entire German daily press only the Frankfurter Zeitung took note in any sort of adequate fashion): its rigor matched by its humanity, its precision detracting not in the least from its depth—here, though, “philosophical politics” fuses in Unruh’s pathos with idealistic waffle. “Tout action de l’esprit est aisée si elle n’est plus soumise au réel”—that is how Proust phrases the old truth. Mr von Unruh has heroically wrestled himself free from reality. In any case, the great formal dinners are the only international facts that his new pacifism takes into account. His new international is hatched in the peace of the communal digestion and the gala menu is the magna carta of the future peace of nations. And just as a cocky sidekick might smash a valuable vessel at a love feast, so the thin terminology of the Königsberg philosopher dispatches to the devil with the kick of a jackboot, and what remains is the innerness of the heavenly eye in its attractive alcoholic glassiness. The image of the gifted blabbermouth with a teary look, as Shakespeare alone could capture!—The great prose of all evangelists of peace spoke of war. To stress one’s own love of peace is always the close concern of those who have instigated war. But he who wants peace should speak of war. He should speak of the past one (is he not called Fritz von Unruh,¹ the one thing about which he would remain silent), and, above all, he should speak of the coming one. He should speak of its threatening plotters, its powerful causes, its terrifying means. And yet this would be perhaps the only discourse against which the salons, which allowed Mr von Unruh entry, remain completely hermetically sealed? The much pleaded peace, which is already in existence, proves, when seen by daylight, to be the one—the only “eternal,” known to us—which those enjoy who have commanded in war and who wish to set the tone at the peace party. For this is what Mr von Unruh has become too. “Woe” his Cassandra-like gobbledegook clamors over all who have realized at the correct moment—that is roughly between the fish and the roast—that “inner conversion” is the only acceptable revolt and that the

      Fig. 3.2

      Fig. 3.2

      “In speaking of the inner boulevards,” says the Illustrated Guide to Paris, a complete picture of the city on the Seine and its environs from the year 1852, “we have made mention again and again of the arcades which open onto them. These arcades, a recent invention of industrial luxury, are glass-roofed, marble-paneled corridors extending through whole blocks of buildings, whose owners have joined together for such enterprises. Lining both sides of these corridors, which get their light from above, are the most elegant shops, so that the arcade is a city, a world in miniature, in which customers will find everything they need. During sudden rainshowers, the arcades are a place of refuge for the unprepared, to whom they offer a secure, if restricted, promenade—one from which the merchants also benefit.” The customers are gone, along with those taken by surprise. Rain brings in only the poorer clientele without waterproof or mackintosh. These were spaces for a generation of people who knew little of the weather and who, on Sundays, when it snowed, would rather warm themselves in the winter gardens than go out skiing. Glass before its time, premature iron: it was one single line of descent—arcades, winter gardens with their lordly palms, and railroad stations, which cultivated the false orchid “adieu” with its fluttering petals. They have long since given way to the hangar. And today, it is the same with the human material on the inside of the arcades as with the materials of their construction. Pimps are the iron bearings of this street, and its glass breakables are the whores. Here was the last refuge of those infant prodigies that saw the light of day at the time of the world exhibitions: the briefcase with interior lighting, the meter-long pocket knife, or the patented umbrella handle with built-in watch and revolver. And near the degenerate giant creatures, aborted and broken-down matter. We followed the narrow dark corridor to where—between a discount bookstore, in which colorful tied-up bundles tell of all sorts of failure, and a shop selling only buttons (mother-of-pearl and the kind that in Paris are called de fantaisie)—there stood a sort of salon. On a pale-colored wallpaper full of figures and busts shone a gas lamp. By its light, an old woman sat reading. They say she has been there alone for years, and collects sets of teeth “in gold, in wax, and broken.” Since that day, moreover, we know where Doctor Miracle got the wax out of which he fashioned Olympia. They are the true fairies of these arcades (more salable and more worn than the life-sized ones): the formerly world-famous Parisian dolls, which revolved on their musical socle and bore in their arms a doll-sized basket out of which, at the salutation of the minor chord, a lambkin poked its curious muzzle.

      All this is the arcade in our eyes. And it was nothing of all this. They <the arcades> radiated through the Paris of the Empire like grottoes. For someone entering the Passage des Panoramas in 1817, the sirens of gaslight would be singing to him on one side, while oil-lamp odalisques offered enticements from the other. With the kindling of electric lights, the irreproachable glow was extinguished in these galleries, which suddenly became more difficult to find—which wrought a black magic at entranceways, and peered from blind windows into their own interior. It was not decline but transformation. All at once, they were the hollow mold from which the image of “modernity” was cast. Here, the century mirrored with satisfaction its most recent past. Here was the retirement home for infant prodigies …

      When, as children, we were given those great encyclopedic works World and Mankind, New Universe, The Earth, wouldn’t our gaze always fall, first of all, on the color illustration of a “Carboniferous Landscape” or on “Lakes and Glaciers of the First Ice Age”? Such an ideal panorama of a barely elapsed primeval age opens up when we look through the arcades that are found in all cities. Here СКАЧАТЬ