The Arcades Project - Operi

The idea of eternal return in Zarathustra is, according to its true nature, a styliza­
tion of the worldview that in Blanqui still displays its infernal traits. It is a
stylization of existence down to the tiniest fractions of its temporal process.
Nevertheless: Zarathustra's style disavows itself in the doctrine that IS expounded
through it. [S8,3]
The tlu'ee defining "motifs" of Jug ends til: the hieratic motif, the motif of perver­
sion, the motif of emancipation. They all have their place in Les Fleurs du mal; to
each of them one can assigu a representative poem from the collection. To the
first, "Benediction"; to the second, "Delphine et Hippolyte"; to the third, "Les
Litanies de Satan." [S8,4]
Zarathustr'a has, first of all, appropriated to himself the tectonic elements of
Jugendstil, in contrast to its organic motifs. The pauses especially, which are
characteristic of his rhytlunics, are an exact counterpart to the tectonic phenome­
non so basic to this style-namely, the predominance of the hollow form over the
filled form. [S8,5]
Certain themes of Jugendstil are derived from technological forms. Thus the
profiles of iron supports that appear as ornamental motifs on fa,ades. See the
essay [by Martin?] in the Franlifitder Zeitung, circa 1926-1929. [S8,6]
"Benediction": "So thoroughly will I twist this miserable tree I that it will never
put forth its evil-smelling buds!"'" The plant motif of Jugendstil, and its line,
appear here-and certainly not in a passage more ready to hand. [S8,7]
Jugendstil forces the auratic. Never has the sun worn a more glorious aureole;
never was the eye of man more radiant than with Fidus. Maeterlinck pushes the
unfolding of the auratic to the point of absurdity. The silence of the characters in
his plays is one of its manifestations. Baudelaire's "Perte d'aureole"20 stands in the
most decided opposition to this Jugendstil motif. [S8,8]
Jugendstil is the second attempt on the part of art to come to terms with technol­
ogy. The first attempt was realism. There the problem was more or less present in
the consciousness of the artists, who were uneasy about the new processes of
technological reproduction. (The theory of realism demonstrates this; see S5,5.)
lnJugendstil, the problem as such was already prey to repression. Jugendstil no
longer saw itself threatened by the competing technology. And so the confronta­
tion with teclmology that lies hidden within it was all the more aggressive. Its
recourse to technological motifs arises from the effort to sterilize them ornamen­
tally. (It was tlus, we may say in passing, that gave Adolf Loos's struggle against
ornament its salient political significance.) [S8a,1]