For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.

There are hardly enough superlatives for this amazing collection of essays concerning Baudelaire, Proust, Kafka, messianism and the aesthetic tension between the cultic and the exhibitional. I had read Unpacking My Library a half dozen times previously and it still forces me to catch my breath. The thoughts on Kafka explore the mystical as well as the shock of the modern. The shock of the urban and industrial is a recurring theme in these pieces. Likewise is the dearth of actual experience and the onslaught of involuntary memory. It was a strange juxtaposition that this very morning I put down Illuminations and was enjoying my breakfast. Before me in the recent Bookforum was an article by Geoff Dyer about August Sander's People of the Twentieth Century https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4.... Benjamin's idea of aura has likely morphed into something strange over the intervening 70 odd years.

I'd come across Walter Benjamin mentioned in various non-fiction (e.g In Search of Lost Books: The forgotten stories of eight mythical volumes) and long been fascinated by The Arcades Project. Indeed, I own a copy but haven't yet tackled its immensity. Illuminations seemed like a suitable introduction to Benjamin's writing. It was edited and is introduced at length by Hannah Arendt. As a known sceptic of long introductions to books of theory (which put me off Marx's Capital and Lefebvre's Critique of Everyday Life for years), I was pleased to find Arendt's clear, well-structured, and enlightening. Rather than placing a barrier in front of the book, her introduction enhances the reading experience. It provides a succinct synopsis of Benjamin's life, work, and milieu. Inevitably, there is great emphasis on his extraordinary bad luck. Benjamin's timing was, tragically, always wrong. Arendt wonders whether he was born too late to be a man of letters, whereas I found myself thinking that he could also have been a blogger and contemporary writer of cultural commentary. Indeed, he is apparently the progenitor of those popular montage-style tumblr posts:

The main work consisted in tearing fragments out of their context and arranging them afresh in such a way that they illustrated one another and were able to prove their raison d'être in a free-floating state, as it were. It definitely was a sort of surrealistic montage.

Illuminations collects writing on books, poetry, theatre, historiography, and art. Benjamin was nothing if not eclectic. This makes general commentary on the collection as a whole difficult. My experiences of each essay varied quite a bit. 'Unpacking My Library' was easy to read but surprisingly unmemorable; 'Franz Kafka' was hard to follow and I cannot say I understood much of it. Conversely, I found 'On Some Motifs in Baudelaire' fascinating and 'The Storyteller' full of insight. I also learned two new words: apodictically (expressing certainty/truth) and banausic (mundane, technical).

I wasn't very surprised that the clear highlight of the collection was an essay I've seen cited repeatedly, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. This remains rewarding and thought-provoking in the age of mechanical reinterpretation, when machine learning can be used to remix existing art into seemingly new works (if they can be considered such). Benjamin's analysis of how mechanical reproduction of art changes our relationship with it is of interest both in the historical context when it was written and now, when mechanical reproduction of art has become effectively instant.

He quotes Paul Valéry predicting this very thing: 'Just as water, gas, and electricity are brought into our houses from far off to satisfy our needs in response to a minimal effort, so we shall be supplied with visual or auditory images, which will appear and disappear at a simple movement of the hand, hardly more than a sign.' Just so, a swipe of the finger summons a new algorithmically-chosen selection of static and moving images, with optional sounds. Benjamin's contemplations on film still apply quite neatly to the disorientating, agitating quality of online videos:

Let us compare the screen on which a film unfolds with the canvas of a painting. The painting invites the spectator to contemplation; before it the spectator can abandon himself to his associations. Before the movie frame he cannot do so. No sooner has his eye grasped a scene than it has already changed. Duhamel, who detests the film and knows nothing of its significance, though something of its structure, notes this circumstance as follows, 'I can no longer think what I want to think. My thoughts have been replaced by moving images.' The spectator's process of association in view of these images is indeed interrupted by their constant, sudden change.

This constitutes the shock effect of the film, which, like all shocks, should be cushioned bt heightened presence of mind. By means of its technical structure, the film has taken the physical shock effect out of wrappers in which Dadaism had, as it were, kept it inside the moral shock effect.

The final sentences of this essay seem uncomfortably relevant in a time of neo-fascism: '[Humanity's] self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order. This is the situation of politics that fascism is rendering aesthetic. Communism responds by politicising art.'

Briefer and more fragmentary but equally memorable, my other favourite in the collection was 'Theses on the Philosophy of History'. It too has notable significance to the present, as well as some beautifully chilling imagery:

This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Benjamin turned out to be as intriguingly idiosyncratic as I'd heard. Although the essays in Illuminations are a varied bunch, they all exhibit a striking voice and unusual intelligence. I don't pretend to understand or fully appreciate every one of them, but found all distinctive and several really powerful. I feel a little more prepared for The Arcades Project now.

These are meandering thoughts on the book (especially on Benjamin's Mechanical Reproduction essay). If you have any thoughts, insights, critique on my view I appreciate any comments. The topic of art is something I'm endlessly fascinated by and always love discussing!

I loved the preface by Hannah Arendt, gives insight into mindset and analytical style of Benjamin. Offers perceptive bio framing his life against historical issues and cultural landscape (including situation of Jewish bourgeoisie in Europe at the time which is Benjamin’s background, she also interweaves details from Kafka who also came from this milieu and struggled with similar identity issues facing European Jewish bourgeoisie of that era). The story of Benjamin’s final days and attempt to escape the Nazis from France to Spain is tragic and heartbreaking. I had no idea of this backstory.

There are several essays on Kafka and Proust. Very interesting, Proust is kind of a weird guy but Benjamin offers a lot of insightful commentary on his life and how this influenced Proust's work and his way of dealing with time, memory, past, present, and how this all plays a role in examination of the self. Makes me want to read some Proust but not sure I have the patience for it either, seems very solipsistic and maybe a different time and place in my life I would have been more intrigued... I didn’t realize the extent of Proust’s health issues and suffering which seem to have had a large part in shaping his work. I also enjoyed the essay on Baudelaire which interweaves analysis on modern city life and Baudelaire’s connection and then disillusionment with this situation.

Following paragraphs are my thoughts (like I said meandering) on Benjamin’s essay on Mechanical Reproduction, I will do my best, this would be an essay to reread carefully because there is a lot there, and I don’t doubt I’ve missed certain nuances and points but that won’t stop me from writing about it haha!

This is a very good essay as it hits upon a lot of interesting insights but I have some issues. Let me preface this by saying that I think Benjamin truly knows how to dance around and with a subject, poking and prodding it allowing him to expertly and gradually drill to core issues. So sometimes I disagree with his tone or view, but his insights are keen. It was interesting how he presented the evolution of the purpose of art, how it morphed and changed from cultish function (often times religious/social glue) to more the idea of “art for art’s sake.”

Benjamin delves into issues of who manufactures art and its quality. In this realm he references Alduous Huxley, who brandishes a viewpoint I find mindblowingly elitist and aggravating to my sensibilities. To reduce it, Huxley comes across as the type of guy who thinks only one type of person (genius) is fit to produce art (his example is based on the art of writing), his view is that a greater amount of people creating (due to greater amount of reading public) has led to a high output of garbage art (literally he calls it garbage!) and vulgarity that caters to lowest common denominators. It’s one of the more aggravating excerpts I’ve read, I’ve always had good thoughts about Huxley but this passage was a disappointment for me, smacking of a real aristocratic superiority. It’s a view that not so subtly hints that art should be walled off, and created and consumed by only a specific subset of people. It’s hard for me not to get emotional with such a viewpoint because it touches a raw nerve for me, kind of makes me want to punch people in the face. As if art needs to strive to be only one thing, nestle itself into a small box, and needs to cater to a certain elite “cultured” chosen. Huxley seems to have a narrow definition, that only great art should be made by the men of genius and all else is garbage (I assume garbage is anything that doesn’t speak to him or his particular sensibilities). I don’t even know what good art is! How can one apply such qualitative assessments on what is good and therefore deserves to be made? Is it “mastery” of technique? Style? Universality? Different things appeal to different people which is why I’m happy there is a lot of different kinds of art and diversity of practitioners, creators, and a broad diverse public that consumes the work.

I know there are things I think are good but it doesn't mean it is universally good, it merely means it speaks to me and has some meaning for me. I tend to gravitate towards things that fit my tastes based on style, technique, themes, but I also search for work where the artist seems to have managed to put some truth of their life or experience within their work which I always consider an accomplishment. It doesn’t need to be technically brilliant and mind-blowing, it just needs to communicate to me and make me feel something that I think is important for my life and how I relate to this world, maybe acts as mirror and helps me see things about myself or about others. For me art is about communication, that is broad but I can’t really figure out more specific parameters. Yes it transcends mere passing of information, it is often more ethereal and abstract, nebulous.

Of course I judge art based on my time, place, upbringing, experiences, views, tastes, and am influenced by the people and culture around me, but I will never say something is universally good or great, tastes wax and wane and vary across cultures, all that matters is that something speaks to us. To project one’s personal artistic tastes as being the be all end all definition of what good art is is the height of arrogance and pride imo, so you know I kinda gotta throw Huxley in the doghouse on that one because he might be very brilliant in many ways but from the passage Benjamin quotes he strikes me as the kind of guy who thinks his standard is the only standard (you can tell this is a subject that really riles me up right?! haha)

Benjamin is much more nuanced and doesn’t fall into this elitist trap so easily. Too clever hehe. He is more about looking at issues and stripping the veneer off the subject matter to get a better look at it, look at how the machinery works and how it has evolved. He’s not blindly denouncing anything that doesn’t fit his standard although he is asking piercing questions that hints at some of his uneasiness (some of which is justified for sure). It is a very good essay and hits so many interesting points, and there is just so much to talk about. But one problem is that I feel he has a fetishization of original object (his argument is that reproduction leads to a destruction or “withering of aura” breaking the art away from tradition and history). He seems to place traditional art forms (painting) on a pedestal, I feel he has a lot of nostalgia for this mode. In his eyes the modern art techniques like film are not all bad, in fact they have a lot of potential due to the force of their democratizing possibilities, but they also feature a capacity to exploit, dominate, indoctrinate, and subjugate people. To be fair I think one can make an argument that this is not new at all, for example painting and previous modes of art were exploited in such a manner by the Catholic church, maybe not as broadly due to limitations of the medium but churches and art within them were tools and had broad reach in both physical but also spiritual realms/lives of people living in medieval Europe, certainly exploited to gain greater power and exert social control. In a similar vein in these eras many paintings were commissioned by powerful elites to project power. And acknowledging this doesn't mean I don't like this work, in fact there is a lot of art from this era - most especially the Northern Renaissance - that I love for multiple reasons, including craftsmanship and style of certain works but also the historical and cultural aspects of the works.

And it’s funny because for me my favorite art form is painting, but I don’t attach more significance to it than I do to film or writing or many other forms of artistic communication. It is a tool like all the others and even if I love painting I try my best not to overly fetishize/mythologize the art object. But hey full disclosure I’m not immune to enchantment, I love love love sitting in front of a painting, looking at how it is painted, love knowing the artist’s hand was there because it creates a connection to the original creation point and connection to the artist (or team of artists if they worked in a workshop) that transcends time and space, and there is a meditative quality to looking at the static image. As Benjamin mentions this is in contrast to the moving image which by its constant flood of image after image exacts what he calls a "shock effect" on the viewer, hampering the ability to think and process the constant stream of visual info. I don't think this medium precludes the ability to think deeply on the material but it is easy to get lulled into being a mere receptacle. Anyways yes I like paintings, I like the static image, but sometimes becoming too obsessed with this mythologization of object we paradoxically becoming blinded to it and what is directly in front of us!

In my estimation each medium has its own positive and negative aspects, ultimately it comes down to the creators and their ability to leverage whatever medium they choose. Maybe my thinking is more democratic about art and modern techniques because I was raised with them, I’ve consumed a lot of visual forms and I enjoy film a lot. I don’t come from a world where the artist’s hand is the only avenue for creation so Benjamin sometimes seems a bit quaint to me with some of these arguments. Maybe I miss some of his nuance even though I have to agree that some of his critiques of modern art forms are on point but the negative aspects of the critique are overemphasized vs the positive aspects, while the reverse is true for how he treats the older modes like painting.

Now this obsession with aura… I don’t know, tbh it just straight up annoys me but the discussion is rather fascinating. I find him overly obsessed with the object and its materiality, and while I do think there is importance to seeing a physical piece in the flesh and witness it in its context I think he goes overboard in placing the art object in this mystical realm. He deconstructs film as being too manufactured, too sliced and diced in the effort to create illusion (also there is no actual original object, he really doesn't like this!). But you know, painting is all illusion too, filled with various techniques, color strategies, perspective, composition, all in the effort to create various visual illusions. That film is created via the camera lens is a detriment in his eyes, taking away the human hand. But even more traditional mediums have artificiality and limitations, for instance the painter is often limited by the very nature of the 2d canvas/wood-panel (well that is the preferred format on average), so there is artificiality within this pursuit as well. Sometimes I think the focus on the artificiality of photography and film has more to do with these being new techniques of the modern age, and in a way this newness is frightening to people like Benjamin who were witnessing a flux of new techniques and mediums. But to overlook the artificiality of previous modes of creation is a bit silly to me, even if the human hand was more involved in past times it was still using tricks of technique to create illusion (heck I wonder what he’d have to say about the use of the camera obscura going way back, it’s highly likely that many artists including Vermeer were using this technique to capture greater realism within their work. Does this take away from the paintings so-called “aura” because an artificial lens/lens-like technique was used to create the illusion?).

Benjamin is more balanced than a lot of the other Frankfurt school philosophers who just hate mass culture and see it as a tool of control that flattens and deadens thought. I think Benjamin recognizes both the potential benefits and potential dangers of mass culture and art. Now what he says on the issue concerning concentration of viewer vs distraction is interesting. Why and how we consume art are key issues and I like the exploration of this question. Sometimes if distraction is our only reason for visiting art we become mere receptacles, but if we approach art with concentration we can pierce through content and think through it, more of a meeting in the middle. But even on this issue I think people should consume art however they see fit, whether it be via concentration or the goal of distraction. I prefer the idea of concentration, that’s just my preference but yes I do consume things to distract as well. So it’s not always just one way, it depends.

As Benjamin explains in the essay originally much art served a cultic or religious function. Over time there was a greater shift to the mentality of art for art’s sake (which as an idea I find a bit silly). As I said, to distill my view I see art as a mode of communication that helps us connect with each other and try to better understand this world, life experience, others, ourselves; a conduit to share ideas and experience. To critique the "art for art's sake" I'd say this, I doubt we would make art if we alone existed and no other humans existed. Art is a bridge, and when we are lucky it can help us expand our minds, help us transcend daily reality, allow us to share ideas and experience, make us connect with things beyond ourselves, reveal insights into our own selves and the world we live in.

key moment of frankfurt marxism. well known for "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" as well as the "theses on the philosophy of history." less famous contributions are great, too.

there is of course a mysticism here that is somewhat dangerous, potentially arriere garde. must cogitate further.

These essays have been excellent, especially the Kafka. But my NetGalley approvals have spiked and I need to finish (and start) some time-sensitive ARC arrivals. This is a nice problem to have. The Benjamin essays will be picked up after I’ve caught up my ARC readings. Pausing at 43%.

Finished this one. What a brilliant collection. Literature, Art, Politics and more are discussed in such a wonderfully clear manner. Great stuff.

“The experience which corresponds to that of Kafka, the private individual, will probably not become accessible to the masses until such time as they are being done away with.”

This is my second reading of this absolutely amazing collection of essays. I am even more in awe than I was 20 odd years ago. Review to follow but this must sink in a bit first.

“This storm is what we call progress” Theses on The Philosophy of History

A great collection of essays and reflections on art, literature, philosophy, and politics covering authors ranging from Baudelaire, Kafka, Proust, Valery, and topics such as translation, the modern novel and film, historical materialism, fascism, and mysticism. I have been well acquainted with Benjamin and a number of these essays for quite a few years but what struck me reading this volume front to back is just how deeply concerned Benjamin is with an analysis of “modernity” (in its polyvocal meaning) and a simultaneous 1. critique of our naive notions of progress and 2. search for revolutionary depths beneath the surface. At times I did find that Benjamin’s relentless critique of modernity borders on the verge of becoming “conservative” (take for example his position on film in Mechanical Reproduction) however I find he remains sufficiently dialectical to avoid this trap (probably a risk anyone who sufficiently presses into (1) must remain constantly aware of). Overall a really great volume.

“I remember, Brod writes, a conversation with Kafka which began with present day Europe and the decline of the human race. We are nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that come into God’s head, Kafka said. This reminded me at first of the Gnostic view of life: God as the evil demiurge, the world as his Fall. Oh no, said Kafka, our world is only a bad mood of God, a bad day of his. Then there is hope outside this manifestation of the world we know? Kafka smiled. Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope- but not for us.”

Benjamin's writings on Proust, Kafka, Baudelaire and Leskov are really brilliant and engrossing. I was especially taken with his history of the storyteller in relation to Leskov's stories, how the verbal communication that was the initial component of storytelling dissipated after the fragmenting of human experience that came along with the realities of the industrial revolution and the barbarism of World War I, as if history itself killed mankind's ability to actually feel and process experience, and how this sets the modern novel outside the tradition of storytelling. His essay on Proust inspired me to start in on a second reading of Swann's Way, and his ideas on Baudelaire in relation to Poe and the history of the flaneur have been echoed by numerous critics hence. Really, anyone interested in the art of writing needs to give some time to this collection. The introduction is also a very compelling review of Benjamin's life and thought. And thankfully, at least in this collection (but less so in "Reflections"), he does not siphon his ideas on art through his sometimes annoying Marxist filter. This is essential stuff.

I read some of this for a Lit course but need to go back and read the entire thing.

Rip Walter Benjamin you would have loved Greta gerwig’s “Barbie”

I read the essays on unpacking a library, Kafka and book collecting. It was not my kind of criticism

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