The Arcades Project - Operi

These originally untitled texts (Gesammelte Schrifien, vol. 5, [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982], pp, 1044-
1059), written on loose sheets of expensive handmade paper folded in half, date from 1928 or, at the
latest, 1929, when Benjamin was planning to write an essay entitled HPariser Passagen: Eine dialek­
tische Feerie" (Paris Arcades: A Dialectical Fairyland) . In the manuscript they are followed by
citatioru which were largely tTansferred to the convolutes and which therefore are not reproduced in
the Gennan edition at this point. The ordering of the entries here is that of the Gennan editor, who
also gives their original order in the manuscript:
Ms. 1154 recto: aO, I; aO,3; bO,I; bO,2.
Ms. 1154 verso: cO,3; eO,L
Ms, 1155 recto: cO,l; cO,4; dO,I; dO,2; cO,2,
Ms. 1155 verso: hO,5.
Ms. 1160 verso: hO, l; aO,2; ro, l; hO,2; hO,3; hO,4; aO,5.
Ms. 1161 verso: ro,2; eO,2; f',3; aO,4; gO,l.
These texts were among those from which Benjamin read to Adomo and Horkheimer at Konigstein
and Frankfurt in 1929. Prominent correspondences to entries in the convolutes and to the essay
''Arcades'' are indicated in cross-references.
"In speaking of the inner boulevards;' says the Illustrated Guide to Paris, a com­
plete picture of the city on the Seine and its environs from the year 1852, "we
have made mention again and again of the arcades which open onto them. TI,ese
arcades, a recent invention of industrial luxury, are glass-roofed, marble-paneled
corridors extending through whole blocks of buildings, whose owners have
joined together for such enterprises. Lining both sides of these corridors, which
get their light from above, are the most elegant shops, so that the arcade is a city,
a world in miniature, in which customers will find everything they need. During
sudden rainshowers, the arcades are a place of refuge for the unprepared, to
whom they offer a secure, if restricted, promenade-one from which the mer­
chants also benefit." The customers are gone, along with those taken by surprise.
Rain brings in only the poorer clientele without waterproof or mackintosh.
These were spaces for a generation of people who knew little of the weather and
who, on Sundays, when it snowed, would rather wanl1 themselves in the winter
gardens than go out skiing. Glass before its time, premature iron: it was one
single line of descent-arcades, winter gardens with their lordly palms, and
railroad stations, which cultivated the false orchid "adieu" with its fluttering
petals. They have long since given way to the hangar. And today, it is the same