The Arcades Project

544 Pages·2002·91.76 MB·English

by  Walter Benjamin

Translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin Mclaughlin
PREPARED ON TIlE BASIS OF TIlE GERMAN VOLUME EDITED BY ROLF TIEDEMANN
THE BELKNAP PRESS OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIIlGE, MASSACHUSETTS, AND LONDON, ENGLAND 1999
CONTENTS
Copyright 0 1999 by the Praidcnt and FdIows oJ HlJ"\IWd CoIkgl: Translators' Foreword '"
All righu rcscrvro
Printed in the Uniled SCites of America
Thi" work iJ a lr.lIUlation of Walta Benjamin, Dtu PaJ.Sagt'n.WtTA:, edited by RolfTICdauann, copyright Exposes
o 1982 by Suhrbmp \Ulag; volume 5 of w.aJta" Benjamin. Guammdu Sdtrijtnt, pttpan:d with the co "Paris, the Capital or the Nineteenth Century" (1935) 3
opention ofTheodor W. AdQmo and Gcnhom Scholan, alitcd by RolfTw:douann and Hermann
14
SchwqlpenhiU5Cl". wpyrigI:u 0 1972, 1974, 1977, 1982, 1985, 1989 by Subrkamp Verlag. "Diakctia 11.1 a "Paris, Capital or the Nineteenth Century" (1939)
~till.ft by RQlfTlCdauann. wall fint publilhed in EngIiID by MITPr-eu. copyright 0 1988 bytbe
Mauach.usetu Institute ofTcchnology. 27
Convolutes
Publicatioo of this book has been 5Upponed by a grant from tht-National Endowment for the Humani· 29
Overview
ties, all indepcndcnt fcdcral agalC)·.
Coo,.-c-photo: Wailer lkJ~amin, ca.. 1932. PhOtographer unknown. Courtesy of the Thcodor w: Adorno 827
Arch.iv, Frankfurt am Main. Firs1l Sketches
FronliJpiccc: Pam~JOtIITroy, 1845-1847. Photographer unknQ .... n. Courtuy MUJ~ Camavalct, Paris.
Photo copyright C PhOlotheque des MusCa dt b. V.ue o:k Paris. Early Oraf18
871
Vignette.: pages i, 1, $25, 891. 1074. [mliml Frru>¢s d'Archilecture: pa~ 21, Hans Mcyu-Vedcn: "Arcades"
873
pagt: 869, Robert DoUna.u. "The Arcades or Paris"
885
"The Ring or Saturn"
Library of Congress C3taloging.in·Public:a.oon Data
~amin, Waiter, 1892-1940. 99201 75 Addenda
[Pauagcn-\lkrk. English]
893
l1w: an:ada ptqca I Walter Benjamin: Expose of 1935, Early Version
899
lraluiated by How:W Eiland and K£vin McLaughlin: Materials ror the Expose or 1935
p~ on the ~is of the Germa.n mlume edited 1:.)' RolfTl<!:dcmann. 919
Materials ror "Arcades"
p. 011.
IndudC:l inde.x. ,-
ISBN 0~74-{)432&X (alk. paper) I
I. liedernann. Rolf. II. Tlll~ "Dialectics at a Standstill," by RolfTtcdemarut 929
PT2603.E4551>'33513 1999 J
946
944' .361081--dc21 99-27615 "The Story of Old Benjamin," by Lisa Ftttko
955
Translators' Notes
Designw by Gwc:n Nefsky Frunkfcldt 1016
Guide to Names and TemlS
lOSS
lndCJt
nIustrations
Shops in the Passage Vero-Dodat 34 A page of Benjamin's manuscript from Convolute N 457
Class roof and iron girders, Passage Vivienne 35 A gallery of the PaIais-Royal 491
The Passage des Panoramas 36 A panorama under construction 529
A branch of La BellcJardinierc in Marseilles 47 A diorama on the Rue de Bondy 534
TIle Passage de l'Opera, 1822-1823 49 Self-portrait by Nadar 680
Strtet scene in from of the Passage des Panoramas 50
Nadar in his balloon, by Honore Dawnier 682
Au Bon Marchi: department ston: in Paris 59 17It Origin of Painting 683
I.e Pont deJ ploniteJ, by Grandville 65
Rut 7'mnmonain, It 15 avril 1834, by Hanori Dawruer 717
Fashionable courtesans wearing crinolines, by Honore Daumier 67
Honore Dawnier, by Nadar 742
Tools used by Haussmann's workers 134
Victor Hugo, by Eticlme Catjat 747
Interior of the Crystal Palace, London 159
L'Artiste et {'amateur dll dix-neuuieme J;e&
~750
La Ca.sJt-tift-omanit, ou La Fureur dujollr 164
L'Homme de I'arl danJ l'nnbaTTaJ lk Jon m/Ii" 751
The Paris Stock Exchange, mid-nineteenth century 165
Alexandre Dumas ~rc:, by Nadar 752
The Palai.s de I'lndusttlc at the world exhibition of 1855 166
L'Efrangomanie blamie, 011 D'Em Franfilu if n 'y a pa.s d'~nl 783
I.e Triomphr du knllid()Jcope, ali I.e tombeau dujeu (hinou 169
Actu(J/iti. a caricature of the painter Gustave Couroet 792
Exterior of the Crystal Palace, London 185
A barricade of the Paris Commune 794
Charles Baudelaire, by Nadar 229
The Fourierut missionary JeanJoumet, by Nadar 813
The Pom-Neuf, by Charles Meryon 232
Theophile Gautier, by Nadar 242 Walter Benjamin consulting the Grand DictiormoiT( univuJeI 888
The scwcrs of Paris, by Nadar 413 Walter Ikojamin at the: card cataJogue of the Bibliothtquc Nationale 889
A Paris onmibus, by Honore Oaumier 433 TIle Passage Choiseul 927
Translators' Foreword
T
he materials assembled in Volume 5 of Walter Benjamin's Gesammelle
&hrjflen, under the: tide Dill PtUJagen-W"* (first published in 1982), repre
sent research that Benjamin carried out, over a period of thirteen years, on
subject of the Paris arcades-les pa.ssagt.s-which he considered the most
imponant architectural form of the nineteenth century, and which he linked with
a number of phenomena characteristic of that century's major and minOT preoc
cupations. A glance at the overview preceding the "Convolutes" at the center of
the work reveals the range of these phenomena, which extend from the litaary
and philosophical to the political, economic, and teclmological, with all sOrtS of
intennediate rdations. Benjamin's intention &om the first, it would seem, was to
grasp such diverse material under the general category of Urgtschichtt; signifying
the "primaJ history" of the nineteenth cenrury. 1bis was something that could be
realized only indirectly, through "cunning": it was not the great men and cele
brated ev(~ts ofD'aditional historiography but rather the "refuse" and "detritus"
of history, the half-concea1ed, variegated traces of the daily life of "the collective,"
that ''VaS to be the object of study, and with the aid of methods more akin-above
all, in their dependence on dwtcc:-to the methods of the nineteenth-cenrury
collector of antiquities and cwiosities, or indeed to the methods of the nine
teenth-ttntury ragpicker, than to those of the modem historian. Not concepcu.aJ
analysis but something like dream interpretation was the model. The nineteenth
century was the collective dream which 'We, its heirs, were obliged to reenter, as
patiencly and minutely as possible, in order to follow out its rammcations and,
finally, awaken from it. TIlls, at any rate, was how it looked at the outset of the
project, which wore a good many faces over time.
Begun in 1927 as a planned collaboration for a newspaper article on the
arcades, the project had quickly burgeoned under the influence of Surrealism, a
movement toward which Benjamin always maintained a pronounced ambiva·
lence. Before long, it was an essay he had in mind, "Pariser Passagen: Eine
clialektische Feerie" (Paris Arcades: A Dialectical Fairyland), and then, a few
years later, a book, Paris, die Hauptsladt ,us XIX. ]alzrhundulJ (Paris, the Capital
of the Nineteenth Century). For some two-and-a-half years, at the end of the
Twenties, having expressed his sense of alienation from contemporary ~
writers and his affinity with the French cu1rural milieu, Benjamin worked inter
mittently on reams of notes and sketches, producing one short essay, "Der
,.
Satumring oder Etwas vom Eisenbau" (!be Ring of Saturn, or Some Remarks work on it in the spring or 1940. when he was forced to Dee Paris berore the
on Iron Construction), which is included here in the section "Early Drafts." A advancing Genoan army. Did he leave be1Und anything more than a large-scaJe
hiatus of about four years ensued, until. in 1934, Benjamin reswned work on the plan or prospecrus? No, it is argued, 17Ie Arcade; Project is just that: the blueprint
arcades with an eye to unew and far-reaching sociological perspectives." The for an unimaginably massive and labyrinthine arch.itecrure-a dream city, in
scope of the undertakillg, the volume of materials coUected, was assuming epic effect. This argument is predicated on the classic distinction between research
proportions, and no less epic was the manifest intenninabili~ ?f the task, which and application, FOrsr:llung and DarsJdlung (see, for example, entry N4a,5 in the
Benjamin pUJ'5ued in his usual fearless way-step by step, nsking engulfment- "Convolutes"), a distinction which Benjamin himself invokes at times, as in a
beneath the ornamented vaulting of the reading room of the Bibliotheque Na letter to Gershom Scholem of March 3, 1934, where he wonders about ways in
tiona.le in Paris. Already in a lena of 1930. he refers to The AmuUs Project as "the which his research on the arcades might be put to use, or in a letter or May 3,
theater of all my struggles and all my ideas." 1936, where he tells Scholcm that not a syUable of the actual text (eigroJlichtTI
In 1935, at the request of his coUeagues at the Institute of Socia.I Research in 1ixt) of the Pa..uagroarb~;t exists yet. In another of his letters to Scholem of this
New York, Benjamin drew up an expose, or documentary synopsis, of the main period, he speaks of the future construction of a literary fonn for this text. Similar
expose,
lines of The Arcades Proj({J; another based largdy on the first but more statements appear in letters to Adorno and others. Where 17re A1'CiUks Projut is
exclusively theoretical, was written in French, in 1939, in an attempt to interest conlXrned, then. we may distingui.sh between various stages of research, more or
an American sponsor. Aside from these: remarkably concentrated essays, and the less advana:d, but then: is no question of a realized work. So runs the lament.
brief text ,;The Ring of Saturn; the entire Arcades complex (without definitive Nevertheless, questions remain, not least as a consequence of the radicaJ starus
tide, to be sure) remained in the fonn of several hundred notes and reBections of of "study" in Benjamin's thinking (see the Kafka essay of 1934, or Convolute m
varying length, which Benjamin re~d and grouped in sheafs, or "con~lutes," of the Arcades, "Idleness"). For one thing, as we have indicated, many of the
according to a host of topics. Additionally, from the late Twenties on. It ~u1d passages of reHection in the "Convolutes" section represent revisions of earlier
appear, citations were incorporated intO these materials-passages drawn mainly drafts, notes, or letters. Why revise for a notebook? The fact that Benjamin also
from an array of nineteenth-century sources, but also from the works of key transferred masses of quotations from acrual notebooks to the manuscript of the
contemporaries (Marcel Proust, Paul Val~ry, Louis Aragon, Andre Breton, Georg convolutes, and the elaborate organization of these cited materials in that manu
Simme1, Emst Bloch, Siegfried Kracauer. Theodor Adorno). These proliferating soipt (including the use of numerous epigraphs), might likewise bespeak a com
individual passages, extracted from their original context like collectibles, were positional principle at work in the project, and not just an advanced stage of
eventually set up to communicate among themsdves, often in a rat!ter subterra research. In fact, the montage fonn-with its philosophic play of distances, tran
nean manner. The organized masses ofhistoricaJ objects-the partirular items of sitions, and intersections, its perperually shifting contexts and ironic juxtaposi
Benjamin's display (drafts and excerpts)- together give rise to "a world of secret tions-had become a favorite device in Benjamin's later investigations; among
affinities," and each separate article in the collection, each entry, was to constitute his major works. we have examples of this in EjnbalmsJra.ue (One-'Way Street),
a "magic encyclopedia" of the epoch from which it derived. An image of that Ikrlitlt'r Kindh~;1 um Neunulmhuntkrt (A Berlin Childhood around 1900). "Dba
epoch. In the background of this theory of the historicaJ image, constituent of a den Begriff der Geschichte" (On the Concept of History), and "Zenttalpark"
historicaJ "mirror world," stands the idea of the monad-an idea given its most (Central Park). What is distinctive about 17u: .Arcade.; ProjecJ-in Benjamin's
comprehensive fomlUlation in the pages on origin in the prologue to Benjamin's mind, it a1ways dwdt apan-is the working of quotations into the frame\\'Ork of
book on German tragic drama, Ursprung rkJ deutschen rrauerspiels (Origin of the montage, so much so that they eventually far outnumber the commentaries. If
German Thuerspid)-and back of this the doctrine of the re8ective medium, in we now wen: to regard this ostensible patchwork as, de facto, a determinate
its significance' for the object, as expounded in Benjamin's 1919 dissertation, literary fonn, one that has effectively constructed itself (that is, fragmented it
"Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romanek" (The Concept of Criti self), like the Journaux inljmes of Baudelaire, then surely there ",,"'Ould be sig
cism in Genllan Romanticism). At bottom, a canon of (nonsensuous) similitude nificant repercussions for the direction and tempo of its reading, to say the leasr.
JUles the conception of the ArcaMs. TIle transcendence of the conventional book foml would go together, in this
Was this conception realized? In the text we have before us, is the world of case, with the blasting apart of pragmatic historicism-grounded, as this always
secret affinities in any sense perceptible? Can one even speak of a "world" in the is, on the premise of a continuous and homogeneous temporality. Citation and
case of a literary fragment? For, since t.he publication of dIe Pa.su:gen-Werk, it has cOlmnentary m.iglu then be perceived as intersecting at a thousand different
become customary to regard the text which Benjamin himself usually called the angles, setting up vibrations across the epochs of recent history, so as to effect
Pasjag~Ulrhl:it, Or just the PasJagen, as at best a "torso," a monumental fragment "the cracking open of natural teleology." And all this would unfold through the
or ruin, and at worst a mere notebook, which the author supposedly intended to medium of hints or "blinks"-a discontinuous presentation deliberately opposed
mine for mort' extended discursive applications (such as the carefully outlined to traditional modes of argument. At any rate. it seems undeniable that despite
and possibly half-completed book on Baudelaire, which he ",,"'Orked on from 1937 the infomlal, epistolary armounec.ments of a "book" in the works, an eigenllidufTl
to 1939). CertainlYI the project as a whole is unfinished; Benjamin abandoned Buch, the resc.a.rcll project had become an end in itself.
Of course, many ruders will cono.Jr with the German editor of the PaJJagrn The German edition of the PaJJagtn'Wa-~ contains-besides the two uposb we
Wa-k, Rolf TIedemann, when he 3peak.s, in his essay "'Dialectics at a Standstill" have mentioned, the long series of convolutes that foUow, the "Erste Nonzen"
(fint published as the introduction to the German edition, and reproduced here. (here translated as '"FIrSt Sketches") and "Friihe Entwiirfelt ("Early Draftslt) at the
in trallslation). of the "oppressive chunks of quotations" filling its pages. Part of end-a wealth of supplementary material relating to the genesis of 7M. AruukJ
Benjamin's purpose was to document as concretely as possible, and thus lend a Projut. From th.is textual-critical apparatus, drawn on for the Translators' Notes,
<'heightened graphicness" to, the scene of revolutionary change that was the we have exttacted three additional sets of preliminary drafts and notations and
nineteenth century. At issue was what he called the "conunodification of things." tranSlated them in the Addenda; we have also reproduced the introduction by the
He was interested in the Wlsettling effects of incipient high capitalism on the most German editor, Rolf Tiedemann, as well as an account of Benjamin's last days
intimate an:as of life and work--especially as reflected in the work of an (its written by Lisa Fittko and printed in the original English at the end of the
composition, its dissemination, its reception). In this "projection of the historical GcmWl edition. Omitted from our volume are some 100 pages of excerpts from
into the intimate," it was a matter not of demonsttating any straightforward letters to and from Benjanlin, docwnenting the growth of the project (the major
cultural "decline," but rather of bringing to light an uncanny sense of crisis and of ity of these letters appear elsewh~ in English); a partial bibliography, compiled
security, of crisis in security. Particularly from the perspective of the nineteenth· by TIedemann, of 850 works cited in t.he "Convolutes"; and, finally, precise
century domestic interior, which Benjamin likens to the inside of a mollusk's descriptions of Benjamin's manuscripts and manuscript variants (see translators'
shell, things were coming to seem more entirely materia] than ever and, at the initial note to the "Convolutes"), In an effort to respect the unique constitution of
same time, more spectral and estranged. In the society at large (and in Baude these manuscripts. we have adopted Tiedemann's practice of using angle brack
laire's writing par excellence), an unflinching realism was ru1tivated alongside a ets to indicate editoriaJ insertions intO the texL
rhapsodic idealism. 1bis essentially ambiguous siwation--one could call it, using A salient feature of the German edition of Benjamin's "Convolutes"
the term favored by a number of the writers studied in 1ht ArwdtJ Project, ("Aufzcichnungen und Materialicn") is the use of two different typefaces: a larger
"phantasmagorical"-scts the tone for Benjamin's deployment of motifs, for his one for his reflections in Gennan and a smaller one for his numerous citations in
recurrent topographies, his mobile cast of characters, his gallery of types. For French and German. According to Tiedemann's ina-eduction, the larger type was
example, these nineteenth-century types (fi1neur, collector, and gambler head the used for entries containing signilicant commentary by Benjamin. (In <;FtrSt
list) generally constinne figures in the middle-that is, figures residing within Sketches," the two differmt typefaces are used to demarcate canceled passages,)
as weU as outside the marketplace, between the worlds of money and magic 'Tb.is typographic distinction, designed no doubt for the convenience of readers,
figures on the threshold. Here, funhermore. in the wakening to crisis (crisis although it is without textual basis in Benjamin's manuscript, has been main
~ked by habiwal complacency), was the link [0 present-day concerns. Not the tained in the English translation. We have chosen, however, to use typefaces
least CUIUting aspeCt of this historical awakening- which is, at the same time, an differing in style rather than in size, so as to avoid the hierarchical implication of
awakening to myth-was the critical role assigned [0 humor, sometimes humor the German edition (the privileging of Benjamin's reflections over his citations,
of an infernal kind. This was one way in which the documentary and the artistic, and, in general, of German over French). What Benjamin seems to have con
the sociological and the theological, were to meet head-on. ccived was a dia1ectical reIation-a formal and thematic interfusion of citation
To speak of awakening was to speak of the "afterlife of works," something and commentary. It is an open, societary relation, as in the protocol to the
broUght to pass through the medium of the "dialectical image." The latter is imaginary world irm (itself an unacknowledged citation from Baudelaire's
Benjamin's ceno-al tenn, in 'fht Arcades Projtd, for the historical object of inter Paradis o.rtificitls) mentioned in the "Convolutes" atJ75,2.
pretation: that which, undcr the divinatory gaze of the coUector, is taken up into As for the bilingual character of the text as a whole, this has been, if not
the collector's own particular time and place, thereby thro'A-mg a pointed light on entirely e.liminated in the English-language edition, then necessarily reduced to
what has been. \-\'doomed into a present moment that seems to be walUng just merely the citation of the original titles of Benjamin's sources. (Previously pub
for it- Ioactualized." as Benjamin likes to say- the moment from the past comes lished translations of these sources have bee:n used. and duly noted! wherever
alive 3$ never before. In this way, the <;now" is itsdf e.:{perienced as prefomlcd in possible; where two or more published translations of a passage are available, we
the <;then," as its distillation- thus the leading motif of "precursors" in the text. have uied to choose the one best suited to Benjamin's context.) In most cases we
'The historical object is reborn as such into a present day capable of receiving it, have regularized the citation of year and place of book publication, as well as
of suddenly "recogn.izing" it. TIlls is the famous "now of r« ogniz.ability" atai volume and issue number of periodicals; bits of information, such as first names,
da- Erknwharluit}, which has the char.acter of a lightning flash. In the dusty, have occasionally been supplied in angle brackets. Otherwise. Benjamin's irregu·
cluttered corridors of the arc.;\des, where street and interior are one,.ruslOrical lar if relatively scrupulous editorial practices have been preserved.
time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions and momcntary come-ons. A5 a further aid to ruders. the English-language edition of 1"h.t AraukJ ProjUl
myriad displays of ephemera, thresholds for the passage of WlllU Gerard de includes an extensive if not exhaustive "Guide to Names and Terms"; tranSlators'
Nerval (in Aurilia) calls "the ghOSts of matcrial things_" Here, at a distance from notes intended to help cOlllexrualize Benjamin's citations and reflections; and
what is nonnally meant by "progress,'" is the ur-historica1, coUective redemption cross-references serving to link panicular items in the "FlI'St Sketches" and "Early
of lost time, of the times embedded in the spaces of things. Drafts" to corresponding entries in the "Convolutes."
Translation duties for this edition ~ divided a.o; follows: Kevin McLaughlin
translated the Expose of 1939 and the previously untranslated French passages
in ConvolUt'es A-C. F. H, K, M (second half), 0 , Q;I, and p-r. Howard Eiland
tranSlated Benjanrin's German throughout and was responsible for previously
untranslated material in Convolutes 0 , E, G. I,j, L. M (firslhalf), N, P, and m. as
wcll as for the Translators' Foreword.
In conclusion, a word about the tranSlation of &nuo/ut. A5 used for the grouping
of the thirty·six alphabetized sections of the PasJogen manuscript, this tenn, it
would seem. derives not from Benjamin himself but from his friend Adomo (this
according to a communication from Rolf Tiedemann, who srudied with
Adorno). It was Adamo who first sifted through the manuscript of the "Aufzeich·
nungen und Materialien," as TIedemann later called it, after it had been hidden
away by Georges Bataille in the Bibliotheque Nationale de France during the
Second \-\brld War and then retrieved and delivered to New YOrk at the end of
1947. In Germany, the term Klmvolut has a common philological application: it
refers to a larger or smaller assemblage-literally, a bundle-of manuscripts or
printed materials that belong together. The noun "convolute" in English means
"something of a convoluted form." VW: havt: chosen it as the translation of the
German term over a number of other possibilities, the most prominent being
"folder," "6Ie," and "'sheaf." The problem with these more common English
terms is that each carries inappropriate connotations, whether of office supplies,
computerese, agriculture, or archery. "Convolute" is strange, at least on first
acquaintance. but so is Benjamin's project and its principle of sectioning. Aside
from its desirable closeness to the German rubric, which, we ha~ suggested. is
both philologically and historically legitimated, it remains the most precise and
most evocativt: term for designating the daboratdy intertwined collections of
"notes and materials" that make up the central division of this most various and
colorful ofBenjaminian texts.
The translators are gratefu1 to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a
rwo-year grant in support of the translation, and to the Dean of the Graduate
School of Brown University, Peder Estrop, for a generous pUblication subven
tion. Special thanks are due Michad w.Jennings for checking the entire manu'
"*-
script of the translation and making many valuable suggestions. are Cunher
indebted [0 Wmfried Menninghaus and Susan Bernstein for reading portions of
the manuscript and offering excdlent advice. Rolf Tiedemann kindly and
promptly answered our inquiries concerning specific problems. The revic\\"t.rs
enlisted by Harvard University Press to evaluate the tranSlation also provided
much hdp with some of the more difficult passages. Other scholars who gener·
ously provided bibliographic information are named in the relevant Translators'
Notes. Our work has grearJy bene..6ted at the end from the resourceful. vigilant
editing of Maria Ascher and at every stage from the foresight and discerning
judgment of Lindsay Waters.
Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century
<Expose of 1935>
The waters ilK blue, the plants pink; the evening is SWttt to
look on;
One goes for a walk; the granMJ damts go for a w-.uk; bdtind
them stroU the !Jenus dames.
-Nguyen Tmng Hiep, Parir, tspitak de fa Fronct; RtctleiJ de UtrS
(Hanoi. 1897), poem 2S
I. Fourier, or the Arcades
The magic columns of these palaces
Show to lhe amateur on all sides,
In the objcc15 their porticos display,
That industry is the rival of the ans.
- N'IlIwaux iabka,," de /tuiJ (Paris, 1828). vol. 1, p. Xl
Most of the Paris arcades come into being in the decade and a half after 1822.
The firSt condition for their emergence is the boom in the: textile trade. Magasiru
d~ nouvcautiJ, the first establishments to keep large stocks of merchandise on the
premises, make their appearance, They are the forerunners of department
I
stores. This was the period of wbich Balzac wrote: "TIle grt:at poem of display
chants its stanzas of color from the Church of the Madeleine to the Porte Saint
Om.is." 1 The arcades art a center of commerce in luxury items. In fitting them
out, an enters lhe service of the merchant. Contemporaries never tire of admir
ing them, and for a long time they remain a drawing point for foreigners. An
flltHirated Guide 10 Paris says: "These arcades, a recent invention of indusO"ial
luxury, are glass-roofed, marble-panded corridors extending through whole
blocks of buildings, whose owners have joined to~ther for sudl enterprues.
Lining both sides of these corridors, which gel their light from above, are the
most elegant shops, 50 that the jJaJsagr is a city, a world in miniature." The
arcades are the scene of the first gas lighting_
The second condition fOT the emergence of the arcades is the beginning of iron
construction. TIle Empire saw in this technology a CQmribution to the revival of
-
a:rc.hitecrure in the classical Greek sense. The architectural theorist Boetticher trace in a thousand configurations of life, from enduring edifices to passing
expresses the general view of the matter when he says that. "with regard to the fashions.
art fonDS of the new system, the fonnal principle of the Hellenic mode" must These relations are discernible in the utopia conceived by Fourier. Its secret cue
come to prevail.! Empire is the style of revolutionary terrorism, for whicll the is the advent of machines. But this fact is not directly expressed in the Fouricrist
state is an end in itself. just as Napoleon failed to understand the functional Iiterarure, which takes, as its point of departure, the amorality of the business
nature of the state as an instrument of domination by the bourgeois class, so the world and the fals(' morality enlisted in its service. The phalanstery is designed to
architects of his time failed to understand the functional nature of iron, with restore human beings to re1ationsrups in wruch morality becomes superfluous.
which the consauctive principle begins its domination of architecrure. These The highly complicated organization of the phalanstery ap~ as machinery.
architc:Ct5 design supports resembling Pompeian columns, and factories that imi· The meshing of the passions, the intricate collaboration of paJSion.J mialni.fleJ with
tate residential houses, just as later the first railroad stations will be modeled on the jm.JJiml cahalute, is a primitivt: contrivance formed-on analogy with the
chalets. "Construction plays the role of the subconscious.''' Nevertheless, the machine-from materials of psychology. This mechanism made of men pro
concept of engineer, which dates from the revolutionary wars, starts to gain duces the land of milk and honey, the primeval wish symbol that Fourier's utopia
ground, and the rivalry begins between builder and decorator. &01(' Polytech has 6lled ,,,tith new life.
nique and Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In the arcades, Fourier saw the architectural canon of the phalanstery. Their
For the first time in the history of architecture, an artificial building material reactionary metamorphosis with him is characteristic: whereas they originally
appt'ars: iron. It undergoes an evolution whos(' tempo will accc:Jerate in the serve commercial ends, they become, for him, places of habitation. The phaJan·
nus
course of the century. development enters a decisive new phase when it Stery becomes a city of arcades. Fourier establishes, in the Empire's auster(' world
becomes clear that the locomotive-on wruch cxpt'riments havt: been conducted of forms. the colorfu1 idyll of Biedenneier. Its brilliance persists, however faded,
since the end of the 1820s-i5 compatible only with iron tracks. The rail be up through Zola, who takes up Fourier's ideas in his book. Trauail, just as he bids
comes the first prefabricated iron component, the precursor of the girder. Iron is fareweU to the arcades in his 1htrtJe Raquin.-Marx came to the defense of
avoided in home construction but used in arcades, exhibition halls, train sta Fourier in his critique of Carl Grun, emphasizing the fonner's "colossal concep
tions-buildings that serve transitory purposes. At the same time, the range of tion of man."l He also directed attention to FOurier's humor. In fact,jean Paul, in
architectural applications for glass expands, although the social prerequisites for his "Levana," is as closely allied to Fourier the pedagogue as Scheerban, in his
its widened application as building material will come to the fore only a hundred GiaJ.s Architecture, is to Fourier the utopian.-
years later. In Scheerban's Glasarchitdtur (1914), it still appears in the context of
utopia.J
U. Daguerre. or the Panoramaa
Sun. look. out for youndf!
Each epoch drearw the one to foUow.
-Michdct, ~AYCnir! AYCnir!'" -A.J. WICItt, DnwreJ littiraim (Paris, 187()), p. 374
just as architecture, with the first appt'arance of iron construction, begins to
~rrc::spo~ding to the fonn of the new means of production, which in the begin outgrow an, so does painting, in its tum, with the first appearance of the pano
nmg L'l still ruled by the form of the old (Marx), are images in the collective ramas. The high point in the diffusion of panoramas coincides with the introduC-I
~ns~ousnes~ in which the old and the new interpenetrate. These images are tion of arcades. One sought tirelessly, through tedmical devices. to make
:ro>h urta.ges; m them the collective seeks both to lM:rcome and to transfigure the panoramas the scenes of a pt'rfect imitation of nature. An attempt was made to
unmatunty of the social product and the inade(luacies in the sociaJ organization reproduce the changing daylight in the landscape, lhe rising of the moon, the
of production. At the same time, what emerges in these wish images is the msh of waterfalls. ~acques-Louis) David counsels his pupils to draw from nature
resolute effon to distance oneself from all that is antiquated- which includes, as it is shown in panoramas. In their attempt to produce deceptively lifelike
however, the recent past. These tendencies deflect the imagination (which is changes in represented nature, the panoramas prepare: the way not only for
given impetus by the new) back upon the primal past. In the cUu.m in which each photography but for (silent> 6lm and sound 61m.
epoch entertains images of its successor, the latter appears wedded to clements of Contemporary with the panoramas is a panoramic literature. Le Liure deJ
primal history f Urgmn;(hie->-mat is, to elenlents of a classless society. And the crnt-et-un [The Book of a I-Iundred-and-Onel, UJ Frall(au peillu par eux-mimtJ
a
experiences of such a society-as stored in the unconscious of the collective [TIle French Painted by Themselves], LL Diabie Paro rnle Devil in Paris], and
engender, through interpenetration with what is new, the utopia that has left Its La Grande Ville [TIle Big City1 belong to this. lbese book3 prepare the belletristic
m.
collaboration for which Girardin, in the 18305, will create a home in the feuille Grandville, or the World Exbibiliom
ton. They consist of individuaJ sketches, whose anecdotal fonn cOlTesponcis to
~. when all the world from Paris to China
the panoramas' plastically arranged forrground, and whose infonnational ~
Pays heed to your doctrine, 0 divine SaiJu-5imon.
corresponds to their painted backgrowld. l'b.i! literature is also socially pano
The gloriow Colden Age will be reborn,
ramic. For the last time, the worker appears, isolated from his class, as pan of the RiVl!fS will Bow with chocolate and tea,
~tting in an idyll. Sheq> roasted whole will frisk on the: plain.
Announcing an upheavaJ in the relation of an to technology, panoramas are at And !3utttd pike will swim ill the: Sc:ioe.
the same time an expression of a new attitude toward life. The city dwci1er, FricasSttd spinach will grow on the growld.
who~ political supremacy over the provinces is demODSD'ated many times in the Garnished with crushed Cried croutons;
course of the century, attempts to bring the countryside into town. In panoramas, The treC5 will bring forth apple compotes,
And fanners will harvest boots and coats.
the city opens out to landscape-as it will do later, in subtler fashion, for the
Bineurs. Oaguerre is a student of the panorama painter PrevoSt, whose estab It will snow~, it will rain chickens,
And ducks cooked with turnips will fall from the sky.
lishment is located in the Passage des Panoramas. Description of the panoramas
of Prevost and Daguerre.1n 1839 Daguerre's panorama bums down. In the same -LangL! and Vanduburth, LAuiJ-Bronu et" Soint-Simonial
(Tbd.tfC du Palais-Royal, February 27, 1832)10
year. he announces the invention of the daguerreotype.
(Fran~ois) Arago presents photography in a speech to the National Assembly.
I
He assigns it a place in the history of technology and prophesies its scientific \r\brld exlubitions are places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish. "Europe is
applications. On the other side, artists begin to debate its artistic value. Photogra off to view the merchandise," say:. Taine in 1855. II The world exhibitions art:
phy leads to the extinction of the great profession of portrait miniaturist. This preceded by national exhibitions of indusay, the first of which takes place on the
happens not just for economic reasons. The early photograph was artistically Champ de Mars in 1798. It arises from the wisb "to entertain the working classes,
superior to the miniature portrait, The technical grounds for this advantage lie in and it becomes for them a festival of emancipation."I! The worker occupies the
the long exposure. time, which requires of a subject the highest concentration; the forrground, as rustomer. The framework of the entertainment indusay has not
social grounds for it lie in the fact that the lirst photographCJ3 belonged to the yet taken shapej the popular festivaJ provides this. Chaptal's speech on indusay
avant-garde, from which most of their clientele came. Nadar's superiority to his opens the 1798 exhibition.-The Saint-Simonians, who envision the indusaiali
colleagues is shown by his attempt to take photographs in the Paris sewer system: zation of the earth, take up the idea of world exhibitions. Chevalier, the
for the first time, discoveries were demanded of the lens. Its importance becomes first authority in the new field, is a student of Enfantin and editor of the Saint·
u
still greater as. in view of the new technological and social rrality, the subjective Simonian newspaper Globe. The Saint-Simonians anticipated the development
strain in pictorial and graphic information is called into question. of the global economy, but not the class struggle. Next [0 their active participa·
The world exhibition of 1855 offers for the firSt time a special display called tion in industrial and commercial enterprises around the middle of the century
"Photography." In the same year. Wiertz publishes his great article on photogra· stands their helplessness on all questions concerning the proletariat.
phy, in which be defines its task as the philosophical enlightenment of painting.9 \r\brld exhibitions glorify the exchange value of the commodity. They create a
llis "enlightenment" is undCJ3tood. as his own paintings show, in a political framework in which its use value rrcedes intO the background. They open a
sense. Wienz can be characterized as the first to demand, if not actually foresee, phantasmagoria which a person enters in order to be distracted. The entertain
the use of photographic montage for political agitation. With the increasing \ ment industry makes this easier by elevating the person to the level of the
scope of communications and transport, the infonnationa1 value of painting di· commodity. He sUITt.nders to its manipulations while enjoying his alienation
minishes. In reaction to photography, painting begins to stress the elements of from himself and others.- The enthronement of the commodjty, with its luster
color in the picrure. By the time Impressionism yields to Cubism, painting has of distraetion, is the secret theme of Grandville's an. 1bis is consistent with the
an.ted for itself a broader domain into which, for the time being, photography split between utopian and cynical dements in his work. Its ingenuity in repre
cannot follow. For its pare, phOlography greatly extends the spherr of comrnodjry I senting inanimate objects corresponds lO what Marx calls the "theological nice
exchange, from mid-century onward, by ftooding the market .... ith countless im ties" of the commodity.'3They are manifest clearly in the spicia'jt~a category of
ages of figures, landscapes, and eventS which had previously been available goods which appears at this time in the luxuries industry. Under Grandvill~'5
either not at all or only as pictures for individual customers. To increase turnover, I pencil, the whole of natut(' is transfonned into specialties. He presents them U1
it renewed its subject matter through modish variations in camera technique the same spirit in which the advertisement (the term ridame also originates at this
innovatiuns that will detemu.ne the subsequent history of phOlography. point) begins to present its articles. He ends in madness.