(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

PARIS ON THE AMAZON?
243
Amazonas is very prosperous, but a plague menaces it from time
to time, called nerysm [probably a reference to Silvo Nery, governor
of the State of Amazonas from 1900 to 1904]. When it attacks,
it chupes [sucks] all its money. Away from this, the Estade of Amazonas
goes forward. (FL, 108–9).
The discourse of the cocotte, with all its naiveté, draws our attention
to an important motive of world history: the idea that the source of wealth
consists of the “Ausbeutung der Natur” (“exploitation of nature”) by
humankind. Benjamin criticized this idea as “mörderisch” (“murderous,”
J75a) — which, however, did not prevent him from seeing the “primeval
forest” as the symbol of a locus horribilis instead of intact nature. The evolution
of capitalism since then has presented certain motifs of the Passagen-
Werk in an infernal crescendo, insofar as a positive attitude toward the
“exploitation of nature” has become alarmingly widespread in our present
time. Since the 1960s the axes that hit the rubber trees around 1900 have
been replaced by thousands of chain saws cutting the rainforest down.
When we look at the present state of primeval forests on our planet, we
are told by specialists that the largest one, the Amazonian rain forest, will
have been destroyed by approximately 2080. 33 Benjamin’s concern that
we “not succumb to the horror that beckons from deep in the primeval
forest” will then lack its object. The soil will then be cleared, if not of
myth and delusion, definitely of the jungle and its undergrowth, in the
full sense of the word. What the author of the Passagen-Werk intended
to do with the soil of the nineteenth century is actually being done with
that of the twenty-first century. The primeval forest (Urwald) is being
cultivated (urbar gemacht) and finally being urbanized. The civilization
of concrete cement is about to take the place of the forest. So — after all,
we finally have reached — Paris on the Amazon?! Yes, but in a sense quite
different from the dreams of the rubber-boom times. The primeval forest,
fortunately, still exists; it is time to dialogue with it and to include it in
our reflection about the shaping of our urban civilization. 34
Notes
1
See also the contribution of Karl Solibakke in this volume.
2
Walter Benjamin, Passagens, ed. Willi Bolle, trans. Irene Aron and Cleonice
Mourão. (Belo Horizonte and São Paulo: EdUFMG and Imprensa Oficial do
Estado de São Paulo, 2006).
3
Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, eds., De la comparaison à l’histoire
croisée (Paris: Seuil, 2004), especially 15–49.
4
Frantz Fanon, Les damnés de la terre (1961; repr., Paris: La Découverte, 2002;
in English, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Constance Farrington (New York:
Grove, 1963).