(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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KARL IVAN SOLIBAKKE
when individuals as collectors begin to accumulate vast repositories of
objects within their private domains. In both his 1935 and 1939 exposés
to the Arcades Benjamin lingers on this trend:
Unter Louis-Philippe betritt der Privatmann den geschichtlichen
Schauplatz. . . . Der Privatmann, der im Kontor der Realität Rechnung
trägt, verlangt vom Interieur in seinen Illusionen unterhalten
zu werden. . . . Diese Notwendigkeit ist umso dringlicher, als er seine
geschäftlichen Überlegungen nicht zu gesellschaftlichen zu erweitern
gedenkt. In der Gestaltung seiner privaten Umwelt verdrängt
er beide. Dem entspringen die Phantasmagorien des Interieurs. Es
stellt für den Privatmann das Universum dar. In ihm versammelt er
die Ferne und die Vergangenheit. Sein Salon ist eine Loge im Welttheater.
(GS V.1:52)
[Under the reign of Louis Philippe, the private individual makes his
entry into history. . . . The private individual, who in the office has
to deal with reality, needs the domestic interior to sustain him in his
illusions. This necessity is all the more pressing since he has no intention
of allowing his commercial considerations to impinge on social
ones. In the formation of his private environment, both are kept out.
From this derive the phatasmagorias of the interior — which, for
the private man, represents the universe. In the interior, he brings
together the far away and the long ago. His living room is a box in
the theater of the world. (AP 8–9)]
Transforming private space into a theater of illusions, the individual hoards
articles that are divested of their commodity character and invested with
the devotional value more appropriate to cultural or religious icons. Icons
induce reminiscences of a utopian world spatially and temporally removed
from the chaotic forces governing urban reality. They also transmit hidden
expanses of history within an artificial and finite space, one that has for all
intents and purposes been compressed to the dimensions of a box. An allegory
for the apprehensions and vulnerabilities posed by capitalism, life in
the city banishes individuals into museum-like cubicles filled with props and
accoutrements, all of which have intuitive value. Given that they encapsulate
the spoils of human remembrance, these spaces are as much monads as
they are phantasmagorias, that is, architectural and other urban manifestations
of collective illusions or dreams, capable of evoking bygone eras and
nostalgia for the primordial as well as invalidating the logic of spatiotemporal
distances. According to Benjamin, the objects even detach themselves
from any claim to biographical or utilitarian significance. Instead, they
come to materialize the dialectical images and receptacles of communal
remembrance, even though the memories they call to mind are more apt
than not to be subverted when confronted by reality. Given the elasticity