(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

PARIS ON THE AMAZON?
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historiography intended by the author of the Passagen-Werk: instead of
an “abstrakte Konfiguration der Geschichte in den ‘Epochen’” (“abstract
configuration of history in its ‘epochs’”), he seeks concreteness and a
“Pathos der Nähe” (“pathos of nearness,” S1a,3), which allows us to perceive
the physiognomy of objects and people. Thus we are transported
to the places where diamonds are mined by slaves, as in the district of
Diamantina (Tijuco), minutely described by travelers such as Johann B.
von Spix and Carl Friedrich von Martius in Travels in Brazil in the Years
1817–1820 and by Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege in his book Pluto
Brasiliensis (1833).
Still in London, the Crystal Palace (see the photographs in AP, 159
and 185) is the major symbol of the world exhibitions, which started
there in 1851 and were realized then alternately in the French and the
British capitals. It is worth noting that in the name “Crystal Palace” there
is a superposition of the spheres of mythology and of political-economic
history, whose imbrications Benjamin proposes to decipher: on the one
hand, the palace entirely made of quartz glass suggested a world of fairy
tales and fairyland (cf. F5,4; G6/G6a,1); on the other, that colossal building
served the practical purpose of exhibiting a wide range of commodities
for the world market.
The world expositions, as “Wallfahrtsstätten zum Fetisch Ware” (GS
V.1:50; “places of pilgrimage to the commodity fetish,” AP, 7), presupposed
the existence of a world market, which began to constitute itself half
a century before. After Napoleon’s return from the Egyptian campaign
(1798–99) — a milestone of French colonial expansion — the Passage du
Caire was constructed (A10,1). In a watercolor of another passage constructed
in the same period — the Passage des Panoramas around 1810
(AP, 36) — we observe people wearing Napoleonic hats walking through
a profusion of commodities that evokes an oriental bazaar. Is this not a
dialectical image: the oriental market under western domination?
French colonial expansion is quite well documented in the Passagen-Werk.
First it is reflected by fragments that speak of the appeal of
commodities. One example is the fashion of shawls: “Die ersten Shawls
tauchen in Frankreich im Gefolge des ägyptischen Feldzugs auf” (“The
first shawls appear in France in the wake of the Egyptian campaign,”
O9,5). Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, the arcades of
Paris make evident a political project that was given impetus by the world
exhibitions since the middle of the century. As the journalist and novelist
Karl Gutzkow reports, their salons were “voll orientalischer Szenen, die
für Algier begeistern sollen” (“full of oriental scenes calculated to arouse
enthusiasm for [the colonization of] Algiers,” I2,2).
Reinforcing these economic enterprises, several journals launched
direct political appeals for colonialism. An example is the poem of F. Maynard,
“À l’Orient,” published in 1835 in the periodical Foi Nouvelle: