Dissolving cities and panting beauties

Some Reflections on Kafka Illuminations Walter Benjamin

A noticeably briefer essay on Kafka following the last one. It is themed similarly but more to the point with less allusions to figures outside Kafka's writings and contains less obscurity.
 

He first posits tradition with the modern city and pairing them as opposites--and this is the setting he places Kafka in. He is the irrational median between these. Benjamin illustrates his idea in a different way calling to mind how modern physics has atomized matter that would otherwise be considered a solid thing. Considering the world in this way makes walking on the ground an anxious affair. The possibility for the ground to dissolve is a ticklish notion once knowing it made mostly of empty space.

Benjamin describes Kafka as someone who is not foreign from the ways of tradition but is alienated from it and is a prophet for disaster. Even though he is intelligent he is a failure, Benjamin's description, but in a tragic way because of the sum of his parts leading him towards his own disillusion that he writes so clearly about. 

Perseus Imagines Philostratus

Perseus travels far away to slay a monster and rescue a beautiful woman. There is a combination of terror and elation, exhaustion and passion. There is a sea filled with the blood of the slayed beast and a population of othered people who none the less benefit from the passing of the monster.

Eros also arrives as Perseus calls out to him. It really isn't clear if Perseus needed the help or if his presence just fitted the situation. It is Eros that takes Andromeda, the captured lady, and takes her from her frightened entrapment and lets her begin the lure of her hero.

Andromeda's beauty is not cultivated from a city. She has all the traits collectively while a city of Athens would cultivate a sense of stateliness. She has that as well as all other admirable traits women would posses. He pale complexion does not change even in the land where darked skinned people live.
 

The Ethiopians are grateful for Perseus' conquest and shower him with gifts almost as if it were a wedding ceremony.