The Arcades Project - Operi

slot machines, the mechanical fortuneteller-these guard the threshold. Oddly, such
machines don't flourish in the city but rather are a component of excursion sites, of
beer gardens in the suburbs. And when, in search of a little greenery, one heads for
these places on a Sunday afternoon, one is turning as well to the mysterious thresholds.
P.S.: Automatic scales-the moden1 gnothi seauton.'u Delphi.
The gallery that leads to the Mothers is made of wood. Likewise, in the large-scale
renovations of the urban scene, wood plays a constant though ever-shifting role: amid the
modem traffic, it fashions, in the wooden palings and in the wooden planking over open
substnlCtions, the image of its mstic prehistory.
Threshold and boundary must be very carefully distinguished. The Schwelle
is a zone. And indeed a zone of transition. Transformation, passage, flight are in the
word schwellen , and etymology ought not to overlook dlese senses. On the other
hand, it is necessary to keep in mind the immediate tectonic framework that has brought
the word to its current meaning. We have grown very poor in threshold experiences,
"Falling asleep') is perhaps the only such experience that remains to us. But also the ebb
and flow of conversation and the sexual permutations of love, like the world of figures in
the dream, rise up over the threshold. -Out of the field of experience proper to the
threshold evolved the gateway that transforms whoever passes under its arch. The Ro­
man victory arch makes the returning general a conquering hero. Absurdity of the relief
on the inner wall of the arch-a classicist misunderstanding.
J. W Samson, Die Frauenmode der Gegenwart (Berlin, 1927) (M1-rnarks and images from Ferragus.4-5
Heinrich Mann, Kaiserin Eugenie.'16
The 1roj an horse-as snow , as the imminent awakening steals into the dream.
Dusk: the hour when great works are inspired {inspiration lilteraire}. According to
Daudet, however, the hour when mistakes are made in reading . ,
The indestructibility of the highest life in all things. Against the prognosticators of de­
cline. One can make a film of Goethe's Faust. And yes, isn't it an outrage, and isn't there
a world of difference between the poem Faust and the fihn Faust? Certainly, there is. But