The Arcades Project - Operi

3. Alfred Gotthold Meyer, Eisenbauten: Ihee Geschichte und Asthetik (Esslingen, 1907),
p. 93. [R.T.] Compare F4a,2.
Materials for the Expose of 1935
1. In Etienne Cabet's novel Voyage en lear-ie (1839), the narrator learns that in learia
"fasmon never changes; that there are only a certain number of different shapes for
hats-toques, turbans, and bonnets ; and that the model for each of these shapes had
been . , . decided upon by a committee." Oeuvres d'Etienne Cabel, 3rd ed. (paris :
Bureau du Populaire, 1845), p. 13Z See B4,2.
2. See B2,5. See also section 3 of the " Expose of 1935, Early Version."
3. Presumably a reference to Fourier.
4. See Franz Kafka, "The Cares of a Family Man," in Kafka, The Complete Stones (New
York: Schocken, 1971), pp. 427-429 (trans. Willa Muir and Edwin Muir). Odradek is
a diminutive creature, resembling a flat star-shaped spool for thread, who can stand
upright and roll around, but can never be laid hold of, and has no fixed abode. You
might think he was a broken-down remnant, but in his own way he is perfectly
finished. He can talk, but often remains mute.
5. Could also be construed as lithe knocking that startles us out of sleep."
6. "Fateful date)): possibly an allusion to the dramatic Socialist gains, that year, in the
Chamher of Deputies.
7. "Traumkitsch" (first published in 1927) is in GS, vol. 2, pp. 620-622; in English in
S vol. 2, pp. 3-5. Benjamin is concerned here with "distilling" the l'sentimentality
of our parents.))
8. The second stage of work on The Arcades Prject began in early 1934, when Benjamin
was commissioned to write an article in French on Haussmann for Ie Monde, a
periodical edited at that time by Alfred Kurella. The article was never written, but
Benjamin's preliminary studies remain, in the form of the drafts and outline printed
here as No. 19. TIle first draft is in French; the second and third drafts are in German.
The outline begins in French and switches to Gennan after the second "embellisse­
ment strategique."
9. The schemes printed as Nos. 20 and 21 were preparatory to the drafting of the
expose of 1935. The first is dated by Benjamin himself; the second most likely dates
from the beginning of May 1935. The reflections contained in No. 22 appear to
belong to a more extended scheme, which has not been preserved.
10. Nos. 23, 24, and 25 apparendy date from after the drafting of the expose ofl935. No.
25 was written by Benjamin on the back of a letter of December 22, 1938, addressed
to 1:llin; while clearly connected to central concerns of the Arcades complex, it could
relate as well to the project of a book on Baudelaire or to the theses "Ober den Begriff
der Geschichte" (On the Concept of History) .
"Dialectics at a Standstill"
The following notes are by Rolf Tiedemann. Citations from the "Convolutes;' the "First
Sketches," and the "Early Drafts" are referenced by tags for the individual entries.
1. Translated as ' Portrait of Wa lter Belamin,)J in T. W. Adorno, Prisms, trans. Samuel
Weber and Shierry We ber (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1981), pp. 221-241.
2. See Walter Benjamin, Brieji:, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W Adorno (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1966), passim. In English in The Conespondence qf Walter Benjamin,