The Arcades Project - Operi

down from the arcades in the reading room of the Bibliotheque N ationale in Paris
has spread out over them its dreamy, unlit ceiling. [Nl,5]
The pathos of this work: there are no periods of decline. Attempt to see the
nineteenth century just as positively as I tried to see the seventeenth, in the work
on Ti-auerspiel. No belief in periods of decline. By the same token, every city is
beautiful to me (from outside its borders), just as all talk of particular languages'
having greater or lesser value is to me unacceptable. [Nl,6]
Aud, later, the glassed-in spot facing my seat at the Staatsbibliothek. Charmed
circle inviolate, virgin terrain for the soles of figures I conjured. [Nl,7]
Pedagogic side of this undertaking: "To educate the image-making medium
within us, raising it to a stereoscopic and dimensional seeing into the depths of
historical shadows:' 11,e words are Rudolf Borchardt's in Epilegomena zu Dante,
vol. 1 (Berlin, 1923), pp. 56-57. [Nl,8]
Delimitation of the tendency of this project with respect to Aragon: whereas
Aragon persists within the realm of dream, here the concern is to find the constellation
of awakening. While in Aragon there remains an impressionistic element,
namely the "mythology" (and this impressionism must be held responsible for
the many vague philosophemes in his book),' here it is a question of the dissolution
of "mythology" into the space of history. That, of course, can happen only
through the awakening of a not-yet-conscious knowledge of what has been.
[Nl,9]
This work has to develop to the highest degree the art of citing without quotation
marks. Its theory is intimately related to that of montage. [Nl,lO]
"Apart from a certain haul-goul charm;' says Giedion, "the artistic draperies and
wall-hangings of the previous century have come to seem musty:'
Giedion, Bauen in Frankreich (Leipzig and Berlin