The Arcades Project - Operi

with and finally overgrown by quotations and bibliographic notes, and in places with
commentary. Both the "Convolutes" and the "First Sketches" are published in extenso as
they are found in the manuscript, but "The ATcades of Paris" is treated in a different
manner. TIle notes and quotations in this manuscript were never really worked out: they
must have either been transferred to the "Convolutes" or been discarded. They have
therefore not been included in this edition. Only fully fonnulated texts have been publish­
ed; their order has been established by the editor. These texts, among the most important
and, in may say so, the most beautiful of Benjamin's texts, surface again at vaTious places
in the "Convolutes." Published as a whole, however, they convey an impression of the
essay Benjamin mulled over but never actually wrote. The last text, "The Ring of Saturn,
or Some Remarks on Iron Construction," also belongs to the first phase of his project. It
may, in fact, be a jounlal or newspaper article, an offshoot of the Passagen-Wed which
never made it into print.
'"The fragments of the Passagen-Werk can be compared to the materials used in building
a house, the outline of which has just been marked in the ground or whose foundations
are just being dug. In the two exposes that open the fifth volume of the C(:sammelte
Schrfften, Benjamin sketches broad outlines of the plan as he had envisaged it in 1935 and
in 1939. The five or six sections of each expose should have corresponded to the same
number of chapters in the book or, to continue the analogy, to the five or six floors of the
projected house. Next to the foundations we find the neatly piled excerpts, which would
have been used to constnlct the walls; Belalnil1's own thoughts would have provided the
mortar to hold the building together. The reader now possesses many of these theoretical
and interpretive reflections, yet ill the end they almost seem to vanish beneath the very
weight of the excerpts. It is tempting to question the sense of publishing these oppressive
chunks of quotations-whether it would not be best to publish only those texts written by
Benjamin himself. These texts could have been easily arranged in a readable format, and
they would have yielded a poignant collection of sparkling aphorisms and disturbing
fragments. But this would have made it impossible to guess at the pluject attempted in the
Passagen-Werk, such as the reader can discern it behind these quotations. BeIamin's
intention was to bring together theory and materials, quotations and interpretation, in a
new constellation compared to contemporary methods of representation. '"nle quotations
and the materials would bear the full weight of the project; theory and interpretation
would have to withdraw in an ascetic manner. Bel31nin isolated a "central problem of
historical materialism," which he thought he could solve in the Passagell-Werk, n31nely:
In what way is it possible to conjoin a heightened graphicness to
the realization of the Marxist method? TIle first stage in this undertaking will be to
carry over the principle of montage into history. That is, to assemble large-scale
constructions out of the smallest 311d most precisely cut components. Indeed, to
discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event.
(N2,6)6
The components, the structural elements, are the countless quotations, and for dus reason
they carmot be omitted. Once familiar with the architecture of the whole, the reader will
be able to read the excerpts without great difficulty and pinpoint in almost every one that
element which must have fascinated Belamin. TIle reader will also be able to specify
wluch function an excerpt would have served in the global construction-how it nugbt
have been able to become a crystal" whose sparkling light itself reflects the total event.
The reader will, of course, have to draw on the ability to "interpolate into the infilutesi­
mally small;' as Benjamin defines the imagination in Einbalmstrasse (One-Way Street)'?