The Arcades Project - Operi

Concretion extinguishes thought; abstraction kindles it. Every antithesis is ab­
stract; every synthesis, concrete. (Synthesis extinguishes thought.)
Formula: construction out of facts. Construction with the complete elimination
of theory. What only Goethe in his morphological writings has attempted.
On gambling. There is a certain structure of fate that can be recognized only in money,
and a certain structure of money that can be recognized only in fate.
The arcade as temple of Aesculapius. Medicinal spring. The course of a cure.
Arcades (as resort spas) in ravines. At Schuls-Tarasp, at Ragaz. The gorge as
landscape ideal in our parents' day. As with the impact of very distant
memories, the sense of smell is awakened. To me, as I stood before a shop
window in Saint-Moritz and looked on mother-of-pearl pocketknives as "memo­
ries;' it was as though at that moment I could smell them.
The things sold in the arcades are souvenirs . The "souvenir" is the
form of the commodity in the arcades. One always buys only mementos of the
commodity and of the arcade. Rise of the souvenir industry. As the manufacturer
knows it. The custom-house officer of industry.
How visual memories emerge transformed after long years. The pocketknife that
came to me as I chanced upon one in a shop window in Saint-Moritz (with the
name of the place inscribed between sprigs of mother-of-pearl edelweiss) had a
taste and odor.
Rather than pass the time, one must invite it in. To pass the time (to kill time, expel it): to
be drained. Ty pe: gambler, time spills from his every pore.-To store time like a battery:
the type, flaneur. Finally, the synthetic type (takes in the energy "time" and passes it on in
altered fonn): he who waits.
"Primal history of the nineteenth century" -this would be of no interest if it were W1der
stood to mean that forms of primal history are to be recovered among the inventory of the
nineteenth century. Only where the nineteenth century would be presented as originary
form of primal history-as a form, that is to say, in which the whole of primal history so
renews itself that certain of its older traits would be recognized only as precursors of these
recent ones-only there does this concept of a primal history of the nineteenth centmy
have meaning.
All categories of the philosophy of history must here be driven to the point of
indifference. No historical category without its natural substance, no natural
category without its historical filtration.
Historical knowledge of the truth is possible only as overcoming the illusory
appearance . Yet this overcoming should not siguify subli-