The Arcades Project - Operi

Bilanz der preussischen Revolution, in Gesammelte Schrifien von Karl Marx und Friedrich
Engels, vol. 3 [Stuttgart, 1902], p. 211.)" [mla,l]
In the figure of the dandy, Baudelaire seeks to find some use for idleness, just as
leisure once had a use. The vita contemplativa is replaced by something that could
be called the vita contemptiva. (Compare part 3 of my manuscript .) [mla,2]
Experience is the outcome of work; immediate experience is the phantasmagoria
of the idler." [mla,3]
In place of the force field that is lost to humanity with the devaluation of experi­
ence, a new field of force opens up in the form of planning. The mass of un­
known uniformities is mobilized against the confirmed multiplicity of the
traditional. To "plan" is henceforth possible only on a large scale. No longer on
an individual scale-and this means neither fir the individual nor by the individ­
ual. Valery therefore says, with reason: "The long-hatched enterprises, the pro­
found designs of a Machiavelli or a Richelieu, would today have the reliability
and value of a good tip on the Stock Exchange." Paul Valery, Oeuvres completes,
J « Paris, 1938), p. 30>. [mla,4]
The intentional correlate of "immediate experience)) has not always remained the
same. In the nineteenth century, it was ('adventure!' In our day, it appears as
"fate;' Schicksal. In fate is concealed the concept of the "total experience" that is
fatal from the outset. War is its unsurpassed prefiguration. ("I am born German;
it is for this I die" -the trauma of birth already contains the shock that is mortal.
This coincidence defines "fate:') [mla,S]
Would it be empathy with exchange value that first qualifies the human being for
a "total experience"? [mla,6]
With the trace , a new dimension accrues to "irnmediate experience." It is
no longer tied to the expectation of "adventure"; the one who undergoes an
experience can follow the trace that leads there. Whoever follows traces must not
only pay attention; above all, he must have given heed already to a great many
things. (The hunter must know about the hoof of the animal whose trail he is on;
he must know the hour when that animal goes to drink; he must know the course
of the river to which it tums, and the location of the ford by which he himself can
get across.) In this way there comes into play the peculiar configuration by dint of
which long experience appears translated into the language of immediate experi­
ence.5 Experiences can, in fact, prove invaluable to one who follows a trace-but
experieuces of a particular sort. The hunt is the one type of work in which they
function intrinsically. And the hunt is, as work, very primitive. The experiences
of one who attends to a trace result only very remotely from any
work activity, or are cut off from such a procedure altogether. (Not for nothing do
we speak of "fortune hunting.") They have no sequence and no system. They are
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