(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

THE PASSAGEN-WERK REVISITED
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revolution initiated by linking vistas, panoramas, and visionary cityscapes
to nineteenth-century advancements in engineering. The Ring of Saturn
or Some Remarks on Iron Construction (AP, 885–87), originally filed
under Convolute G and among the drafts forming the early sketches
for the Passagen-Werk, is Benjamin’s remarkably cogent appraisal of the
unlimited opportunities for iron construction. 3
Second, as prototypes of department stores or latter-day shopping
malls, the arcades were lined with textile stores and elegant shops that
tantalized the eye, whetted consumer appetite, and aroused the yearning
to acquire. In a society rapidly giving way to pecuniary temptation
and fiscal fervor, they become socio-cultural signatures sanctioned by
sacred implications. Benjamin reaffirms Heinrich Heine’s commentaries
on the inviolability of bourgeois prosperity when he sees the arcades
forming one of the sources for the “ivresse religieuse des grandes villes”
(“religious intoxication of great cities”), triggering Baudelaire’s observation
that “die Wa renhäuser sind die diesem Rausch geweihten Tempel”
(“the department stores are temples consecrated to the intoxication of
the masses,” A13). Undeniably, the concept of an all-pervading commercialism
rooted in the lure of the object had begun to permeate the
psychosocial underpinnings of modern bourgeois societies; however,
these objects of desire are “wish images,” which have signifiers conveying
latent layers of historical subtexts reminiscent of a righteous and classless
society. Their contribution to cultural memory was to elicit “das nachdrückliche
Streben . . . , sich gegen das Veraltete — das heißt aber: gegen
das Jüngstvergangene — abzusetzen. Diese Tendenzen weisen die Bildphantasie,
die von dem Neuen ihren Anstoß erhielt, an das Urvergangene
zurück” (GS V.1:47; “the resolute effort to distance oneself from all that
is antiquated — that is, however, the recent past. These tendencies deflect
the imagination (which is given impetus by the new) back upon the primal
past,” AP, 4, translation modified). Seeking out sociocultural origins or
plumbing the depths of collective semiotics required “reading” forgotten
traces of time, even within the newest articles of production. Located at the
focal point of this practice of exhuming cultural artifacts from uncharted
repositories of collective memory is the written word, which as an archive
is flexible enough to resonate with the past even as the act of writing transforms
the present into an enduring form of temporal suspension.
Third, the spatiotemporal liminality evoked by the arcades becomes
a factor in Benjamin’s evaluation of modern individuals and their dependence
upon the sanctuary provided by private and public interiors as well
as the scores of objects gathered or exhibited there. These “wish images”
are instilled with deep-seated, mythical connotations, implying that they
offer consolation and respite from the pressing challenges of social commerce.
In view of that, the reign of Louis Philippe between 1830 and
1848 is generally recognized as a turning point in sociocultural history,