Walter Benjamin's New York
 
  Paris Capital of the Nineteenth Century (Exposé of 1939)   Convolutes
       

Introduction
By Peter N. Miller
"The subject of this book is an illusion expressed by Schopenhauer in the following formula: to seize the essence of history, it suffices to compare Herodotus and the morning newspaper..."
H. The Collector
By Peter N. Miller
"Broken down matter: the elevation of the commodity to the status of allegory."
"Allegories are in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things..."
  A. Fourier, or the Arcades
By Gabriel Goldstein
"The realization of dream elements in the course of waking up is the canon of dialectics. It is paradigmatic for the thinker and binding for the historian..."

S. Painting, Jugendstil, Novelty
By John Gordon
"There has never been an epoch that did not feel itself to be 'modern' in the sense of eccentric, and did not believe itself to be standing directly before an abyss..."
 

B. Grandville, or the World Exhibitions
By Elisa Niemack
"The trees will bring forth apple compotes,
And farmers will harvest boots and coats.
It will snow wine, it will rain chickens,
And ducks cooked with turnips will fall from the sky..."

m. Idleness
By Elisa Niemack
"The authentic field of operations for the vivid chronicle of what is happening is the documentary account of immediate experience, reportage..."
  C. Louis Philippe, or the Interior
By John Gordon
"To dwell" as a transitive verb-as in the notion of "indwelt spaces"; herewith an indication of the frenetic topicality concealed in habitual behavior. It has to do with fashioning a shell for ourselves..."
 
  D. Baudelaire, or the Streets of Paris
By Margaret Maile
"The Flaneur seeks refuge in the crowd. The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city is transformed for the flaneur into phantasmagoria..."

E. Haussmann, or the Barricades
By Peter N. Miller
"Haussmann gave himself the title of ‘demolition artist’. He believed he had a vocation for his work, and emphasizes this in his memoirs.."
  Conclusion
By Peter N. Miller
"What are phenomena rescued from? Not only, and not in the main, from the discredit and neglect into which they have fallen, but from the catastrophe represented very often by their enshrinement as heritage..."
 
Contact Info: wbny@bgc.bard.edu