Walter Benjamin’s Archive. Walter Benjamin

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      Fig. 2.11

¹“Disjointed scribbling” is the Jacobsons’ translation of verzettelter Schreiberei, heading of this chapter. I have chosen “scrappy paperwork” instead.

²Translation amended (from “frustrated book projects”) to convey sense in this context.

       3

       From Small to Smallest Details

       Micrographies

      Walter’s teeninesses do not allow my ambition to rest. I can do it too […]. As you see my writing is getting bigger again, a sign, I suppose, that I should stop writing such nonsense.

      Dora Sophie Benjamin to Gershom Scholem, GB II, p. 198

      I’ll bring with me a new manuscript—one, tiny, book—that will surprise you.

      GB IV, p. 144

      He who has once begun to open the fan of memory never comes to the end of its segments. No image satisfies him, for he has seen that it can be unfolded, and only in its folds does the truth reside—that image, that taste, that touch for whose sake all this has been unfurled and dissected; and now remembrance progresses from small to smallest details, from the smallest to the infinitesimal, while that which it encounters in these microcosms grows ever mightier.

      SW 2:2, p. 597

      Memory does this: lets the things appear small, compresses them. Land of the sailor.

      Ms. 863v

      For Benjamin, writing was not only a means of securing his thoughts, but also an object and theme of theoretical reflection. Perfect writing should flow as if from itself: “If the smoke from the tip of my cigarette and the ink from the nib of my pen flowed with equal ease, I would be in the Arcadia of my writing” (SW 1, p. 463). High-quality paper, particular pens, ink, and nibs, and, furthermore, specific spatial preconditions were important prerequisites for a non-resistant and smoothly running flow of writing. In a letter to Siegfried Kracauer, for example, Benjamin reports on the acquisition of a new fountain pen, an “enchanting creation, with which I can fulfill all my dreams and develop a productivity which was impossible in the days of the now desiccated—nib” (GB III, p. 262).

      But in order to aid the cogitations in finding their way to an appropriate realization on paper, some resistance is necessary. The route from inspiration to thought to phrasing to writing is to be hindered. The writer, according to Benjamin, should keep the “pen aloof from inspiration,” and “it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself” (SW 1, p. 458). Flow and delay must coincide, in order both to satisfy dreams and propose ideas.

      Benjamin’s characteristically small handwriting, his graphic minimalism, which compelled him to concentration, deliberateness, and exactness, can be located within this context. His miniaturized script is reminiscent of Robert Walser’s “pencil system,” which he used to help him write again, once his abilities had dwindled. From 1924 Walser began “to jot in pencil, to sketch, to dilly-dally” (Walser, cited from Morlang, p. 58) his first intuitions, prior to writing his texts cleanly in pen. He tried to solve his “writer’s block” by a resistance-less pencil gliding on paper, forming quite blurred, almost illegible characters. Benjamin’s manuscripts, despite similarities in appearance, are the expression of a diametrically opposed method. While Walser learnt “to play, poeticize” once more (Walser, cited from Morlang, p. 58) in the small and the smallest details, attempting to unlock the open space of childish light-heartedness, so as to allow script and language to flow, for Benjamin it is a matter of the “placing” of script, the composition of thoughts. The small here is not childhood re-attained and imitated, but, rather, a product of adult reflection and concentration. Even in the choice of writing implement—Benjamin wrote mostly with a fountain pen—this other face of writing is expressed. Jean Selz recalls “such a small handwriting that he never found a pen that was fine enough, which forced him to write with the nib upside down” (Selz, p. 355)—such a posture in writing is directed against the stroke and flow of script.

      The manuscripts in Benjamin’s bequest document how up until around 1917–1918 his writing was somewhat larger and using wider swings than in later periods. But it is not really possible to date his manuscripts from the size and style of the script. Benjamin’s handwriting does not develop in a uniform way. It varies. It is almost always precise and fine; even in notes that were intended only for his own eyes he rarely renounced “definition or accuracy” (Scholem, Benjamin, p. 177). In spite of the density of script, the compressing together of signs in the smallest space, he hardly ever wrote carelessly. The letters measure between one and around 7mm. Benjamin’s penchant for small script developed in particular in the 1920s. One example is a sharp polemic against Fritz von Unruh’s Wings of Nike (1925) titled “Peace Commodity,” which appeared on May 21, 1926 in the Literary World. With each letter measuring from one to 1.5mm, the fair copy is difficult to decipher with the naked eye (fig. 3.1). The same is true of an early draft of The Arcades of Paris (1928/1929), which Benjamin jotted on a sheet of fine handmade paper of an exceptionally lengthy format and folded in the middle (fig. 3.2). The 22cm of sheet allowed him to write eighty-one lines. Scholem has already noted Benjamin’s “never-realized ambition to get a hundred lines onto an ordinary sheet of notepaper” (Scholem, “Benjamin,” p. 177) and reports on how his fascination was aroused by two grains of wheat in the Museum СКАЧАТЬ