A sinking ship in a dark room

Walter Benjamin

XI

Benjamin has taken us for a walk and now we turn away from our stroll. Perhaps the gamblers were meant to shock us with their dubious behavior and the mechanical actions that lead us to look inward.

Looking is taking very literally and we first examine the photograph. It mimics memory except for it's refusal to drench the image with human consciousness. It is like a window into the past but one that is separate from memories that are more part of us than the actual past.

Not putting value on memory and seeing the world how we would like to see it is seen as a base affair. The camera is proposed as a device that takes this lack of concern for memory and symbolises it. It's alienation from the human mind imbues a quality of a machine on it. A painters mind on the other hand shows itself in the markings and as if he is looking at us through his work.

But we know Benjamin loves alienation so he proposes what he detests in the camera and develops a thought about vision's place in the big city. Vision is othered as a tool for vice and seeing vice and alludes to prostitutes looking for customers and police. And here we find that looking inwards is a way to bypass the sense of sight's predilection for horror by taking mind the garden of thoughts that grow from within and not from what is around us.

March 8 Fasti Ovid

This day celebrates the transformation of Corona's love. First it is Theseus who is heroic and uses a token of her love to get out of a maze with dangerous beasts. But his love is also heroic and ends just as a heroic deed ends. The next lover she has is one of drunkeness and revelry who leaves for a woman who is exotic.

Her last lover swoops in as she is getting the grief of her past loves off her chest. It is the god of freedom similar to Bacchus who had just deserted her. The festival ends with their love being brought together and it seems like that means the two will be happily wed, but maybe Corona's streak of abuse will continue.

If the love is in concord then the tale suggests one honest in heart but free of expression will not find their partner in a hero or a horny drunkard but one that is dedication to expression of one's will.

Gambling alone

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin 

VIII and IX

In the first part we develop further the idea of walking in a crowd and how to be part of this crowd requires adaptations rending a person a robot. Although there doesn't seem to be a paranoia of a mastermind--this all seems to happened collectively.

Then in the next part gambling is discussed which seems abrupt as previously the idea of walking in a crowd was gradually developed but now isn't mentioned. What might be the case is we are no longer conceptualizing walking but are now in the process of doing so and the first thing we are aware of besides a nebulous mob are people playing games of chance.

Like ambling, gambling is described in the guise of mechanized labor extracted from our capacity to experience things. The games rely on impulsive behavior such as flipping a card and since the game is surrounded by chance there is little incentive to remember much more than the hand currently dealt.  

But just as we conceive gambling as this artless pastime, Benjamin sees glimmers of myth in it's lure. The gestures of flipping a card may not grounded in meaning of any sort but once one puts this activity to the unconscious it can be associated with all sorts of things like shooting stars. 

The Dog that Holds Your Hand and Leads You Outside

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin 

VI and VII

Benjamin first starts as if to develop a genealogy of liturature's capturing of the crowd. He starts with Poe and a character that recovers from an illness and finds himself behind a cafe window watching people pass by. Benjamin says this man ultimately gets drawn into the crowd but maybe still possessing this sense of an individual in this sea of other people. There are some other examples sited where a character is struck dumb by the flow of strangers.

Much like how the ocean has this sense of calm the flowing of strangers makes this nauseating feeling. And we progress from someone who observes from behind a window to one who walks among them. This is some dialectic relationship of being alienated but being part of the crowd. This person himself takes the position of the moving observer but of course someone else viewing him moving about would feel the same way--like a french new wave film where two lovers become partners in crime.

St. Thomas, Apostle The Golden Legend Jacobus De Voragine

These folk tales are constantly neurotic--a god that nurtures a chosen one but assures his gruesome death, weddings and people deserting their husbands for god, and at the same time dogs carrying severed hands. All these peculiarities seem to converge as if one thing because it is more or less a myth. A myth that has an over all sense of aggression to it and despite it's badge of piety it contains mostly sadism.

The strangest theme is also the most interesting. The image of a dog carrying a severed hand closely followed by a lecture in earthly possessions being inadmissible to heaven. The dog here is some guide to the underworld who is wild but relating a message. This message is also a contrary message to a wedding that is celebrating the joining of people rather then the severing of one particular person. The sense is the God of this story is not in defence of order but one whose word is chaos.

At what time did I look straight ahead?

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin 

V

The sonnet To a Passer-By takes on a goddess that is left out of the Greek pantheon--she is the embodiment of the nebulous crowd. She stimulates but also brings pain from her vanishing. Benjamin notices this mythologising of city crowds and alienation in Baudelaire's work and it relates to what he spoke of earlier in the essay regarding memory, experience, and consciousness. The setting of the crowd as a myth keeps it from being datafied and clumped in a way that can be easily ignored.

We also know that Baudelaire isn't only known for describing crowds but also sexualizes it and an air of unavoidable vice. Baudelaire suggests this is cultivated and that Baudelaire was so surrounded by sleaze that he doesn't even register it like a foul smell on one's body. He contrasts Baudelaire's relation to the Parisian crowd with Hegel's impression while visiting. Hegel simply suggests that the people are the same as in Germany but more in number without any insinuation with vice and immorality. Also in this sense, maybe Hegel has a mechanism to feint the terror caused by a mob of people. He describes them in rational terms as in their number and is not aroused by them. He is conscious of them but not experiencing them as Benjamin would posit.

At this point of the essay some of the themes Benjamin spoke of earlier are present but not spoken plainly much like the mythologising of Baudelaire's crowds. The terms of memory and conscious slip into our unconsciousness as we lead to this visceral realizations of Baudelaire's haunting, erotic crowd.

Abraham Yaakov of Sadagora Tales of the Hasidim Later Masters Martin Buber

The Wandering Light

This passage deals with people who are promised a sense of salvation that coinsides with particular dates that have passed. And the rabbi's reply is slightly condescending and states that this redeeming light exists at eye level and every one is looking down. 

The use of light and vision is interesting and suggests that his sense is important in plainly observing things without much intuition other than directly looking at something and knowing where to look. In this case all that is needed is a posture that conforms to an upright person and we further see the theme that God offers this simple guide to salvation and idea of heaven on earth. It also implies our despairs are often when we lose our basic human form or don't see much value in cultivating it. These rabbis are suggestors of this.

This message does mirror church homilies I've heard in the past. However it is packaged in this book that implies this surly notion of opening eyes. The front cover shows this figure looking up but straining. One eye is open and the other is grimacing and nearly sliding off his face. The message of the writing seems to mask sadness and make us feel guilty being in despair in a situation where despair might be reasonable based on our life situations. Possibly adding more burden to what is already making us look down. But the illustration makes plain he struggle of opening our eyes and how gnarly it can be.it now seems like a blues song and a sadness that feels good. 

Being attacked by a Slab of Words

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin

IV

Benjamin takes anxiety, memory, urbanity, consciousness, and creativity together and places all these within Baudelaire's poetry. Starting with the theme of consciousness being at odds with memory and experience we consider the role of a poet.

The euphemised poet quoted here screams before he is battered causing us to think his art causes him to flirt with the processes we have to keep intense experiences away from ourselves and causing us to be overwhelmed by the world we live in.

One of the mechanisms Benjamin gives is pinning traumatizing events to a point in time. But at what time does a poem take place? Poems do have measurments in rhythm and feet but even Baudelaire fantasied about a rhythmless prose that still read like poetry. Here Benjamin might pin these meters of poetry as dubious like the faces in a crowd of some busy part of a city.

The attempt to bring beauty in a work of art can hold many assumptions. It can be alluded to nature and it's foreign but self-generating beauty. But when it falls into the city and cultivation it takes on a ghostly dress and a necklace that is heavy on the neck. Nature seems comfortable when we don't know it well. It in fact seems bizarre and extraordinary to have a profound understanding of it. But when the unconscious is married to city life we are sceptical about all the strangers we have around us.

Isreal of Rizhyn Tales of the Hasidim Later Masters Martin Buber

The right kind of Alter

So far these tales of Hasidim reflect people who do action and turn their attention to god. It is a collection of modesty and listening to this intense urge that informs our actions. This is an interesting combination as this can be a recipe for tragedy but I guess these rabbi's piousness is unusual and they are celebrated because they can follow both morality and muse.

In this short tale there is an aversion to craft or taking something and monkeying with it. The first example is strange request by god to use an alter out of unchiselled stone. This almost seems to imply that God of the nature of stone, which is timeless but inert which doesn't seem right.

Then the request seems to fall in place as the table made of stone conflates with words that seem to be called to a person from above. It illustrates their relationship to the intellect being not as acute as say a brilliant philosopher but simple and shrouded with mystery that should not be expounded on. A philosopher might go further but at the expense of evaporating the religious experience and put God to the guillotine and examine his head. But in this light both options seem dubious--either being ignorant or being soulless.

Lost in thought while taking a vow of nudity

Collected works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9 (Part II)

Gnostic Symbols of the Self--1

Jung brings forth several things to think about--gnostic christianity, magnetism, and symbols for this archetype that is personified in Jesus and symbolized in water, snakes, and the 'logos'.

We contemplate gnosticism as this movement desiring to take separated things and mix them together, and it is put in light of alchemists who would come later. Both seem to be transfixed on transformation and the philosophic attention given to an idea that generates out of a substance that is primary and morphs into something later. This substance is often a visceral sense of awareness of its presence and instils a sense of fear or at least something that is sharp and important.

This might be a precursor to what science is today but different in how it is connected with the unconscious and how the conscious mind is connected to it when it assigns meaning. While today science if filled with symbols but they are like those of a math equation. It feels like they are abstract symbols of something abstract. Even particles that are too small to be seen even by the senses no mater how much the are magnified--they are conceptualized mainly so they can be talked about but are not drenched in the human psyche and certainly do not lend themselves to myths although it surprisingly seems like the big bang comes eerily close as a creation story.

Jung also is tracking how the gnostics viewed Jesus. They seem to decentralize the human part of God and treat it as the human manifestation but also see God manifested in serpents and water and thought. While God is expressed in ways that are related to the human form, the psyche also recognizes thought that seems outside of this human form. The snake seems to cultivate this in animal form. An there is also this attraction that is seen in magnets that represent this erotic cling in which a new idea generates and sparks an emotion or something that causes us to act. But all these view points are symbolized by something real that is brought into relation with abstract thought which then exist without tension.

At the end of this passage Jung theorizes all these concepts are for the purpose of decentralizing the ego and our conscious minds. This way of thinking gives credit to the unconscious as a generative thing that is part of us but may also seem surprising and of a nature we don't understand. Not only does it decentralize our consciousness but it directs our attention towards what it is not.

February 15 Lupercalia Nefastus Publicus Fasti Ovid

The festival of the Luperci happens during month of February which is not named after a god but a month that celebrates purification. 

Clothes are seen as deceptive so these festival goers are nude. This pure form that stands for the human being grown by nature and processes not fully understood by us but create who we are.

The god celebrated by the Luperci is deceived by a man who is dressed as a woman. The god's intention was to have his way with a woman who did not love him. The man in drag also is dressed that way because of his murderous passion. His dress came as a punishment that caused his enslavement to a woman who dressed him as such. In this carnival of libido we have a dubious glimpse of sobriety that suggests celebrating nakedness so we can satiate our desires without any nastiness impated unto ourselves. Since this is being deified we should also assume this decption is familiar and its followers have no intention for moderation--and are in fact taking vows of nudity.

Involuntary Bees

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin

III

The next passage builds from the last one that was about whether memory is voluntary or involuntary. The focus here surrounds what happens to involuntary memory and it seems to arise from a suspicion and unfurls.

As this happens we start to consider memory and Baudelaire side by side. Memory and consciousness are set in opposition and Benjamin brings in Freud claiming that consciousness' role is to suppress memory of stimuli. Senses are overbearing and dominate our mind and it is in one's interest to focus on as little of them as possible.

This sounds like a puritan talking but then we focus on what eventually overwhelms are ability to ignore and we relate memory to neurosis. Memory is a recollection of what we fail to be conscious of. Something anarchic to our minds that try to instil a sense of order and serenity.

St. Ambrose The Golden Legend J. De Voragine

These myths are a bit of a mixing pot compared to ancient greek ones. They also are seem to be active and almost in the middle of a sport where energy is moved from one side to another and a farce where the ending is always god's glory.

His tale starts with bees. I'm not sure if the bees are augers of his holiness or some sort of test he over comes. To be sure, he is fated to become great but he does not feel this way and even rejects a crowd of people who seem to recognize his uniqueness at sight. Curiously he starts misbehaving to prove he's sleazy but his plan doesn't work and it's not quite clear why he resists becoming bishop and why he eventually decides to follow through with it.

Also contrasting with their greek counterparts in this role as a human messenger and relatively inactive role they play. It seems like when they do spark into action it involves people in a state of disbelieving or in a state of nearly being executed. The situation is written and resolved breifly and harshly.

The Singing Pastry

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin

II

This passage deals with the past and how we recollect it. It calls into mind whether this process is started by the intellect or by experiencing things in the present that activate something long ago. He brings into the discussion the philosopher Bergson and a writer who is influenced by him, Proust. There is also a familiar theme of the story teller and the journalist. Curiously enough there isn't any connection made here to Baudelaire or his poetry. We have almost forgotten the subject of the essay in part where Benjamin discusses memory.

Here we consider the past as something that is alien to us and how we reconnect with something we can not experience again. Proust was interested in his childhood and whether the something like a taste of a pastry can unlock memories of that taste as it was experienced in the past. The debate of whether it is a physical or intellectual thing is brought up but I'm not sure what Benjamin's preference is or how it relates to Baudelaire's poems celebrating sensual experiences.

The theme of newspapers bearing information so bright it causes us to wince again is called forth. He's interested in how newspaper articles are written about things that happen yet this activity of reading the article is so alien from the actual experience that it does not properly engage our mind as if we actually experience what is being written about. The story teller is more preferable to Benjamin who claims this figure relates experiences beyond information and places a human touch to a list of facts. Perhaps making it more decadent and delicious in it's absorption into memory.

I think it's important to consider the role in memory here as something that gets variated. It's role in recollection is necessary but how it is treated is different. A story teller celebrates it and makes it develop who they are. A journalist takes it for granted and treats it as an impersonal storage for a mass stamp of facts.

The Singers Imagines Philostratus

The singers are pastoral choir of beauty in harmony. Aphrodite is called in as woman who is ageing yet still beautiful like she was young. The blending of opposites in a way that is beautiful is a task that is delicate and there needs to be a constant retuning of all the notes to keep beauty from slipping into disorder.

Baudelaire in the American Midwest

Response to Jay and Sustar & Bean Nonsite.org Adolph Reed, Jr.

Chicago politics concern this article and it is a polemic against a mayoral candidate Karen Lewis. She became known for her leadership that resisted the  current mayor's neo-liberal education policies.

The two criticisms the author finds distasteful involves infighting in progressive circles that fear her progressive politics are diluted by her choice to run as a democrat rather than an independent. They believe the Democratic Party is neo-liberal and using her to appear progressive while carrying the same agenda.

The criticism is that they are naive and basically philosophizing about purity myopically. There is also a criticism that they falsely believe there is an already mobilized movement that only needs an elected official to enact it. The momentum builds toward the election but sense the priority is the election the energy loses momentum regardless of how pure the candidates politics are.

The author lampoons this by relating their argument to a 1979 movie called Hardcore where a wholesome Midwest girl rebels becoming a pornstar whose path quickly falls from grace and appears in snuff films. Her father is obsessed with purity but also has a quick temper and he  compromises his religious beliefs to produce pornographic films in hopes the will lead him to his daughter. Obviously the snuff film and religious porn director are campy and so, the author thinks, that progressives should divorce themselves from the Democratic Party. 

On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Illuminations Walter Benjamin

I

What Benjamin is at first ruminating about is Baudelaire's intended readers. Not only is the poet being isolated from society, the poetry that is now resounding appeals to a population that cherish revelry to an afternoon with a book.

Benjamin is convinced Baudelaire foresaw his poems would be devoured slowly--he is isolated from poetry as a tradition and the audience that will celebrated his poems. Benjamin also claims the end goal of the poetry is to show man who he really is behind the veneer of civilization and he does this by alienating oneself from virtue and focusing on the carnal.  

Drive-through Garden

Chapter 3 The Secret Life of Paintings R. Foster & P. Tudor-Craig

La Primavera by Sandro Botticelli

Harmony and love are central to this painting. It was painted just as the early renaissance was interested in neo-platonic thinking. While there is one focus on relearning ancient Greek thought it was also mixed with Christianity that was  prevalent. In this way we have a curious mixture of figures of Venus and Mary.

In a world where Satyrs chase after fleeing figures of beauty we also have a symbol of fertile virginity. And the subject of the painting is the idea of Eros--the drive in us that provides us aesthetic energy while at the same time something that is not represented in actuality.

The figures in the painting are also noted for being parts of a musical scale. The embodiment of Eros is venus and whom is in the center and the domniant not of the scale. The other characters are placed accordingly to the idea of harmony and the characteristic disharmony that some notes sound. What is harmonious is sensuously depicted but directed towards at goal of the soul. The dissonant characters are that who direct their longing towards the physical and away from the soul. However, all the figures are depicted as young beauties and their longing is generative and does not lead to being motionless.

They style of the painting was promoted by the Medici family who were still interested in the aims of Christianity but were at odds with it's puritanism and aversion to the idea of beauty. The idea of blending sensuous beauty with the altruistic notions of virtue. This is the Renaissance that we celebrate and are familiar with but the notion at the time was volatile and not readily accepted. In this case it was nurtured by a wealthy merchant family but even this allegiance was fragile. Which is curious because the underlying theme here is a sensuous idea of beauty and attention to the soul that is generative--contentiously causing motion through harmony and attention to flourishing nature in the midst of it blooming.

Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)

This movie main themes were violence, brash machismo, and inklings of morality that are quickly averted by a distraction. The movie also briefly courts a opposition of tradition and science framing it in regards to purity and the unknown consequences of creating something that has been cultivated slowly in the same fashion but in a new way.

The aggressive male served as the archetype for this movie and all the events seemed to generate from this mind set and obey its rationale. Its central tenant is that all things are in constant transformation and idealizes things that mechanical sources of motion and all this is wedded to violence that relies on impulse.

The idea that a machine is alive seems to form this deep familiarity and suggests a unity. This unity is also in peril from the dubious character played by Kelsey Grammer who see's the mingling of man and car as impure and seeks to divide this curiously by allying with a shadow version of this love--blindly falling in love with the darker version he dislikes.

Architecture also is an important but abused character in the film. Buildings ferociously become bystanders in the fight between moving machines and their lack of movement causes them to bear punches rather than skilfully moving out the way. While the end goal of the fighting is to save the city, it is often neglected in particulars seeming to be vulnerable to bouts of aggression. The city's dependency and abuse is also mirror with the daughter who takes on a role of being in distress and being controlled by an dominating father.

The film seems to emphasize briefly with the daughter. The barn in which her father tinkers is set in relation to the space craft with the collection of heroic robot cars. It is an enclosure that wouldn't nurture life. Although it is othered as some alien space craft it mirrors the psychological reality of her fathers barn which is filled with objects of sentiment and feel familiar but terrify with sentiment and uselessness.

A Farce in a Picturesque Hell

What is Epic Theater? Illuminations Walter Benjamin

The Actor/Theater on a Dais picturesque 

The actor is set up as a real person playing a role and part of the play. This to me is like some strange love affair where two who are meant for each other are cast away from each other. The are aware that they should love but do not commune. Benjamin brings back the theme of empathy and describes how it is avoided by creating tension that involves spontaneity not only in plot but the fabric of the play in general. The play becomes mercurial and constantly announcing itself steaming with anxiety and scientific farce.

The idea that the stage is a 'dais' brings us back to the Middle Ages where people are asked to step up and be distinguished which is theatrical but the illusion is not as fantasy as a play that tries to contain the meaning in itself rather than relate to the audience that it is not fully real.

The Great Beauty (2013)

The main character and Rome are intertwined--so much so that I don't remember his name but remember his love interest, Ramona. 

The character thinks himself an artist but he is no muse but merely a mercurial figure. He knows all the important figures and can get into the choicest places but he is at a loss to weave his experience into a satisfying story.
 

One wonders if his disenchantment comes from chaotic lifestyles people adhere to as a regular carnival that is their afternoon or if he is too much apart of what he wants to bring to life like one who struggles to see how others view them.

He seems, at times, to be some mythological figure leading us through death. One scene in particular stands out as he gets private access to a museum housing iconic roman art. The lady he's with named after the city they are in does not receive a long speech about the statues. He simply exists as a connected person that takes people to places. Even as the viewer we have this relationship and depend on him to take us to the next spot on the way.

Flying a Gondola

Epic Theater Illuminations Walter Benjamin

The didactic play

This segment Benjamin telescopes out to the wider aim of epic theater which is to teach. But his way to explain this is first to explain the nature of the audience and the actors as equal participants--all striving for the same goal.

Then we turn to airplanes and heros. Shamefully Brecht wrote a play in which there is a hero but he gets redacted. We then hear Benjamin compare pilots to monks and end with a allusion to Brecht speaking about a hypothetical and alienated struggle.

Don't Look Now (1973)

The city of Venice is set in relation to an art restorer’s dead child. Water is also a frequent theme and in many ways the source of motion of the drama. Along with the sense of loss and uneasiness we also contemplate high class and treating Venice as a giant tomb.

Venice is treated very much as the city of the 'others.' There is a language barrier but what is strange is this is usually a trope given to people in society that are immigrants or people generally stereotyped as degenerate. There is a language barrier and we are suspicious of whether the people are actually demons and consider that the place might be haunted. On top of this, the city generally bears in mind it's intense ties to culture but the movie seems to question it's place in the contemporary and treats it so frigid that psychological archetypes can be a serial killer.

The trouble begins after a randy display of sex between the posh couple shortly after arriving in Venice. It is not certain what sparks this passionate coupling--they just lost their daughter and are grieving, the mood of the film is foreboding, they are in luxury but it is some what truncated and dangerous. This love making seems to give birth to a phantom that makes the rest of the film a garish farce. The city realizes itself as a decaying but picturesque maze and we struggle with love and alienation as well as truth and paranoia.

Gesturing in the Backyard

What is Epic Theater? Illuminations Walter Benjamin

The quotable gesture

After being confused in the last segment I looked up epic theater and found this was not something observed by Benjamin. Once again wikipedia was much more straight forward about it. Or at least it was more sincere that it was an actual 'thing' as opposed to Benjamin's way of speaking which also seems to take into account that it might not actually be a thing. But after doing this I'm somewhat resolved at the moment to take into account Benjamin's description and not to search for a satisfying explanation for epic theater.

The quotable gesture is again masked with confusion. It's not clear to me what it encompasses. Benjamin seems to set it in opposition with the written text of a script. I don't know if this is explicitly like hand gestures, or even intonation of voice, or if it refers to gestures that come from gimmicks of the play in a elevated vaudeville shtick.

But these gestures are described by Benjamin as 'interruptions'. And this is imperative to the weaving of the play which the viewer is conscious of in the way he has described the epic audience. Perhaps it is more simply, and less interestingly, put as a device to promote thoughtfulness in a way that appears destructive.

It Always Rains on Sunday (1947)

In a gritty but vibrant English city we circle through love affairs, market places, domestic life, and crime. In people's houses there are cosy decorations but also psychological tension. He marketplace is a carnival scene where prices are negotiable and goods are have a tincture of desire. The goods themselves are produced from innocent urges but their circulation combines as we contemplate people's complicated life that is a combination of wanting a stable domestic life and giving way to bacchanal urges.

People are trying to live life to match their dreams but they are also poor and have obligations to support a family. They are bound by money but also neglect the parts of life that aren't influenced by cash. The characters that are more pure in their heart have trouble navigating the corrupt world around them while those who chase pleasure see corruption with clarity and try to find their niche in the traffic of nastiness being directed around them.

The mother figure seems to be the most complex. See is wise but aggitated. Her conflict comes from the backyard as a old lover tempts her to obstruct the family she also yearns for. Her presence disturbs the daughters she married into. The daughters also unknowingly become part of her complicated love life.

When the rouge lover is recaptured from his escape from prison, it is not sure if he'll stay behind bars or if his precence will  divide the family order again while the father seems devoted ambiguously not letting us know he is aware of the affair or not. The movie ends in a chase in a coal yard and in a hospital leaving us with a lingering grit and sense that we are ill and recovering from desire's nature to get the best of us.

Come on in, Brecht

What is Epic Theater? Illuminations Walter Benjamin

The Interruption

It is now clear that when Benjamin asks what is epic theater he is rhetorical. He knows what it is and Brecht is it's figure head. In this section we notice a theme from past essays--particularly the one where he collects books. I'm not sure why this section is called the 'interruption' but Benjamin favors a story in which one reflects on instances of plot rather than emphasise emotionally with characters in the story.

A developing current of rationalism which is curious because Benjamin has been described to me as a marxist and lover of myth. He even uses the word alienation and this seems in line with the dispassionate coupling of numeric value to the exchange of goods. Certainly myth involves this deep identification with something that is human that almost goes without explanation or value.

Benjamin's relationship to a story does not seem to be familiarity but intense observation that is brought about by considering something from outside oneself.

And based on how Benjamin trounces through this essay these observations can be fleeting and don't have to agree. For instance in the previous section he was relating how classical literature possessed epic theater but now in this section takes a philosopher from that period and delclares Brecht, illuminator of epic theater, goes beyond Aristotle and his 'empathy with the stirring of fate'.

Now I am at a familiar impasse with Benjamin's writing. I seem to find it a little distasteful but after reading it and observing life, I feel like it's a merited observation and perhaps a little something I've always done but not conscious of it because I find it distasteful. But this way of thinking does seem to be haunting and related to anxiety. And partially I feel my impasse is the very thing being described and now I'm cross eyed. But at this point it's hard to reconcile how a mind can be opposed to newspapers while at the same time championing a style of writing that turns people into reporters.

Benjamin seems to be set up as a film noir sleuth. He has this dedication rational clues and has this energy that propels him but in a way that is disguised and only revealed to use when he's ready. It is uncertain if he will meet a chance love in his search and if that will cause any trouble.

Xenia Imagines Philostratus

Xenia is the term for hospitality in greek but here there are no people. It is just a landscape but one that is breaming with delectable food. The fruit is presenting itself to us and practically eats itself on our behalf. Not only is there fruit budding in the peak of it's deliciousness there is promise of more fruit still becoming. But we are in a state of just viewing this unpicked paradise and also encouraged to partake.

This sense of pleasure and welcomening seems to contrast starkly to film noir hospitality where the action of the plot activates as a guest stops by to rent a room. This character is often confused with a murderer or is the murderer. Instead of this image that appeals to our appetites we are left with terror and uncertainty. The sense of welcoming or terror stems from either excepting someone in a way that is overwhelmingly part of us or othering them and making them opposite of us.

Behorsing

What is Epic Theater? Illuminations Walter Benjamin

The Untragic hero

Brecht is in the mind of Benjamin throughout the essay so far. And here we are introduced to the untragic hero. This hero does not seem very clearly established. He gives one example of french nobility sitting in designated chairs. Another is dying Socrates and Jesus.

We contemplate the idea of a philosopher or person of wisdom. Benjamin treats this character as someone who was embraced in past times and then became neglected. He sees Brecht as the playwrite transforming this character in the present.

This detached person seems suspect. The idea of a character alienated from the subject seems like shadow psychology. Rather than being described as opposite from the plot this person is being described as absent from it--severed rationalism.

Pelops Imagines Philostratus

Pelops is depicted here getting his gift from Poseidon which are four horses. These horses will later be used to win a race that will convince a stubborn father to let him marry his daughter. However, we are before the race and the Pelops is being described as just maturing to an adult in the sense he's just growing a beard.

The imagery that is marvelled here isn't the mythological figures but the horses. They are painted active close and do not blur into some heard of horses. And the over all idea of this painting is depicting the a hero who's body is preparing himself to be passionate for women. The transformation from adolescent to a man is characterized but a blessing of energetic beasts. This blessing is harnessed to the person and will give him what's necessary to be bold and a lover rather than be struck down in defeat

Galileo lost in a garden

Chapter 3 The Secret Life of Paintings R. Foster & P. Tudor-Craig

Introduction: St. George and the Dragon by Paolo Uccello

Compared to the previous painting of chancellor Rollin and Mary, this painting receives a lengthy introduction. At first it might be tempting to say the painting of St. George is less a product of fancy because the characters are more knowable, but this is not true. It involves myth and almost entirely fancy. The scene with chancellor Rollin was a commission that mythologised himself while st. George is gently steeped with time and was probably unaware of the future his life would form.

We learn that this painting is somewhat quirky and incorporates ideas of mythical dragon slayers that came from outside of the Christian sources of his day: the dragon is slayed in the eye, there are strange clouds and a forest, and peculiarly the dragon has a manicured garden out side his lair.

The book is not interested in retelling the story of st. George but does so very briefly. We also get background information about the world his myth flourished in. He was a widely popular symbol for the Middle Ages, and one that was embraced by warring societies. He was said to have been championed by crusaders giving a religious stamp to their violence.

The garden fascinates the writers and the believe it to reference a maze. This might be a stretch from my perspective. And speaking of perspective Uccello was fascinated with it in his work, and he also admired mathematics. In my view the parterre garden maybe a transition from the nature imagery above George and the non-living, motionless cave. The idea of a parterre garden interest me and I read else where that these gardens often used patterns that decorate the house and extend them to nature as well.

This looks like the meat of the analysis of the painting. The remaining sections are brief and focus on particular things like the time it was made a a section that highlights the Kaiden's clothes. 

What is Epic Theater? Illuminations Walter Benjamin

The Plot

Benjamin examines an epics plot and from this realizes it is not so much about the passage of time. I was thinking he was referring to a form.
 

Since the story has no definite shape but is told from stories familiar to us we are then interested in the details of certain things rather then the suspense of how the story ends. Although I am baffled by his reference to a Brecht play about Galileo; it makes no sense to me. 

Relaxing in the sewer

What is Epic Theater? Illuminations Walter Benjamin

The relaxed audience

The audience is set up in two ways: Relaxed and 'rapt'. Also these two levels of engagement are caused by whether media is consumed alone or in a group. Being alone we are relaxed but also more prone to contemplation while in a group we are activated but tend to be impulsive--this is as seen by Benjamin.

Also, we hear about epic theater which is a complex term. My guess is it combines the arts capacity to be thoughtful with the perplexing task of being viewed in a group.

The Third Man (1949)

In this film noir we go to Austria in the aftermath of world war two. It is a dishonest place in which the honest protagonist appears and tries to set it straight. Like the Hitchcock film noir, it sets death in relation to love. But in this case the protagonist's sanctity is not in question but we have to question whether this sanctity is naivety and will it be his tragic flaw.

The plot starts when the main character arrives thinking he has job working for a friend. We quickly learn that this friend is dubious and has been pronounced dead. The movie combines farcical elements with a more or less straight forward love story. Strangely enough the love interest is first met at a funeral. The two are very different in that the man is mediocre and brash and the woman is sophisticated and reposed. They are both linked to their relationship with their shadowy friend. They both describe him as a person who is sly and willing to bend rules but are surprised he is wrapped up in a caper.

As the story unwinds we find the man is more dedicated to truth even if that means severing a past relationship while the woman is truthful in her own way to the one she loves. This all happens in a background of confusion with authority and in a city that is one way functional but in other parts destroyed. The part of the city that is the most pristine is essentially the most filthy sewer system that lies underground.

The most underlying current in the film is what happens when people bypass legitimacy for necessity. In this way we have to contemplate whether people really are acting out of necessity or on an impulse that is pleasurable--whether this is creating an illicit blackmarket syndicate that denies children medicine or perusing a love interest that is linked to a once dear friend.