The Arcades Project - Operi

The Ring of Saturn
or
Some Remarks on Iron Construction
According to Gretel Adorno, this text (Gesammelte Schrjften, vol. 5 [Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982],
pp. 1060 1063) was "one of the [u st pieces Benjamin read to us in Konigstein" (cited in
Gesammelte Schrffrell) vol. 5, p. 1350). Benjamin himself filed the text at the begimung of Convolute
G. Rolf Ticdemrull suggests that it may have been intended as a radio broadcast for young people,
but thinks it more likely to have been a newspaper or magazine article that was never published. TIle
piece was written in 1928 or 1929.
The beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed those initial experiments in
iron construction whose results, in conjunction with those obtained frolll experiments
with the steam engine, would so thoroughly transform the face of Europe
by the end of the century. Rather than attempt a historical account of this proc­
ess, we would like to focus SOme scattered reflections on a small vignette which
has been extracted from the middle of the century (as from the middle of the
thick book that contains it), and which indicates, although in grotesque style,
what limitless possibilities were seen revealed by construction in iron. The picture
comes from a work of 1844-Grandville's Another World-and illustrates the
adventures of a fantastic little hobgoblin who is trying to find his way around
outer space: ''A bridge-its two ends could not be embraced at a single glance
and its piers were resting on planets-led from one world to another by a causeway
of wonderfully smooth asphalt. The three-hundred-tlnrty-three-thousandth
pier rested on Saturn. There our goblin noticed tllat the ring around this planet
was notlnng other than a circular balcony on which tlle inhabitants of Saturn
strolled in the evening to get a breatll of fresh air:'
Gas candelabra appear in our picture as well. They could not be overlooked, in
those days, when speaking of the achievements of technology. Whereas for us
gas lighting often has about it something dismal arid oppressive, in that age it
represented the height of luxury and splendor. When Napoleon was interred in
the church of Les Invalides, the scene lacked nothing: in addition to velvet, silk,
gold and silver, and wreaths of the inmlOrtals, there was an eternal lamp of gas
over the resting place. An engineer in Lancaster had invented a device that
people regarded as a veritable miracle-a mechatnsm by which the church clock
over the tomb was automatically illuminated by gaslight at dusk and by winch
the flanles were automatically extinguished at daybreak.