The Arcades Project - Operi

Benjamids in more than mere nuances. In his Kierkegaard book, Adorno equated
the dialectical image with allegory, and later he also seems to liken it to phantasmago­
ria (see N5,2, and 5:1136). Benjamin characterized Adorno's definition of the "antin­
omy of appearance and meaning" as "fundamental" for both allegory and
phantasmagoria, but he found it "confusing" in its application to the "dialectical
image" (1:1174) . The difference might be found in the cOlmection Belamin made
between the dialectical image and elements of messianism-a cOlmection to which
Adorno, the more scrupulous Marxist, could not accede. One may try to put it this
way: the phantasmagorias of the arcade or the collector as such are not dialectical
images in Benjamin's sense; both the arcades and the collector become dialectical
linages only when the historical materialist decip/urs them as phantasmagorias. But in
Benjamin's opinion, the key that allows the historical materialist to unlock the code
remains connected to the discovery of a messianic force in history (see 1:1232).
24. Marx, Capital, p. 20.
25. Adorno, Prisms, p. 233.
26. Marx, Capital, p. 763.
27. See Gershom Scholem, Major Y;'ends in Jewish Mysticism, 3rd ed. (London: Thames
and Hudson, 19.5.5), pp. 283-287; and idem, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans.
Ralph Manheim (New York: Schocken, 196.5), pp. 126ff. See also Tiedemarm,
Dialektik im Stillstand, pp. 102ff.
28. Karl Marx, Brirft aus den 'IDeutsclt-Franziisisclten Jaltrbiichern," in Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, Werke, vol. 1, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Dietz, 19.57), p. 346.
29. Walter Benjamin, "Theologico-Political Fragnlcnt," in Benjamin, Rflections, trans.
EdmundJephcott (New Yo rk: Schocken, 1978), p. 312.
"The Story of Old Benjamin"
1. Walter Benjamin, Bn"eje, vol. 1, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno
(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1966), p. 298. In English: The Correspondence of Walter Ben­
J'unin, 1910-1940, trans. Manfred RJacobson and Evelyn M.Jacobson (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 206 etter of February 24, 1923, to Borens
Christian Rang) .
2. In AgesiiauJ Santander. The translation here is by Lisa Fittko. See GS, vol. 6, p. 521
(August 12, 1933). hl English in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, vol. 2 (Cam­
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), p. 713.
3. Harmah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968),
p. 161.