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.