Imagined Walks and Spatial Stories the Realms Between Perception and Representation by Alexandra S. Gamrot

Imagined walks and spatial stories The realms between perception and representation Alexandra GAMROT 2016

I hereby declare that, I have consulted, and understand, the information provided in the University of Brighton's Plagiarism Awareness Pack and the information on academic standards and conventions for referencing given in the module directive. I know that plagiarism means passing off someone else's writings or ideas as if they were my own, whether deliberately or inadvertently. I understand that doing so constitutes academic misconduct and may lead to exclusion from the University. I have therefore taken every care in the work submitted here to accurately reference all writings and ideas that are not my own, whether from printed, online, or other sources. Brighton, 21.01.2016 Alexandra Gamrot

Anonymous, Dans le Passage du Grand Cerf

“There stands Aragon at the very beginning – Le Paysan de Paris, of which I could never read more than two or three pages in bed at night before my heart started to be so strongly that I had to lay the book aside.” - Walter Benjamin

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002

Anonymous, Passage de l’Opéra

Introduction The medium of expression creates dimensions, allowing the experience of illumination and phantasmagoria. Achieved through the exploration of Louis Aragon’s surrealist novella “Paris Peasants” and the accompanying of a series of photographs, creating a parallel to this paper. Although not directly related to the text, the photographs are to create a relationship between the reader and the medium. Creating another dimension, to allow the spectator to be fused within the world of the narrator, subject of the novella or the photographs. The novella and photographs work as spatial journeys; engrossing the observer within the world of phantasmagoria. The idea of walking through “spaces” in order to create illuminations references Benjamin’s theories on the Parisian arcades. The arcades, once light and airy, inhabiting industrial innovation, were rediscovered in 1920. A predecessor of the shopping mall, temples for consumer products of the new era, endowed with rows of windows used to display those goods, only to become the last shelter for outmoded speciality stores and commodities. 2 As time passed the arcades lost the brightness to more innovative “temples” 3 of consumer culture -“dim, dusty and anachronistic”4, they became hollow and run down. On one hand the arcades simulated a city street, on the other an underground “passage”. Forming an eerie subterranean contradiction to Haussmann’s plans for a new Paris5.6

Regarding the architectural style, the design was on the line of traditional and innovative – “mythology and technology”. The interior strived for a graceful neoclassicism, whereas the structure itself, contained of steel and glass frames reflected on the recent innovative development in engineering and use of materiality. Katie Trumpener, „Through the Arcades”, University of Chicago Press, Modern Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (February 1994), pp. 319321 2

Ibid. p.321

As Trumpener visually describes “the passage’s decrepit magic is threatened by a bulldozing modernity”. Baron Haussmann assigned the demolition program, in order to extend the accommodation of the Boulevard Haussmann. Here the tragedy of modernization is being presented. It is not only about the redevelopment of the local environment but about social control and the reorientation of the city around new boulevards. Ibid. p.322

Katie Trumpener, „Through the Arcades”, University of Chicago Press, Modern Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (February 1994), pp. 319325

Anonymous, Passage de l’Opéra

Walter Benjamin’s “Passagenwerk” is seen as an investigation on nineteenth and early twentiethcentury urban culture7. One enters the Arcade Project and transitions into a state of torpor. A place of surreal fantasies and baroque mourning, it is the locus between the dream and dejection. The Arcade Project became an unfinished analysis of modernity.8 Containing concerns such as the phantasmagorical form of the metropolis, the architecture and afterlife of the arcade. Specifically the relationship between nature, mythology and history is discussed and finds a meeting place within the passage as the fetish, the fossil, the ruin and the wish image.9

Aragon and the Surrealist Media Surrealists used the arcades to evoke a dream state, blurring the line between the commerce world, the threshold between the past and present, and the worlds of myth and technology. The surrealist dreamstate embodies the nineteenth century ideology of consumption10, 11 expressing the prospect of urban spaces by allowing the surreal, the extraordinary to be perceived within the ordinary scenes of the city. Spaces described as full of possibilities, revelling the merge of the “boundaries of existence” 12. The surrealist perception of the city, consistently directed by

As Buck-Morss suggests, if the Arcade Project would have been completed it “might now be valued by our generation as[…]the most important cultural commentary on modernity” Containing a thousand pages of notes, pictures and analysis the project started in 1927 as a fifty page long essay. Including layers of images, texts and objects of the past and present. The aim of the Passagenwerk was to create a vision of perspectives. The past is compelled into, and caught by the present. The “Urgeschichte”, prehistory of the modernity is captured within the critic. 7 Therefore, the Passagenarbeit represented Paris as a site of consumer culture and architecture that transforms into a home of radical ideas and revolutionary endeavours. Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, pp.113-118 7

Ibid. pp.113-118

Katie Trumpener, „Through the Arcades”, University of Chicago Press, Modern Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (February 1994), pp.310320

Although it might be misunderstood with the close placed activities of the modern shopper – uncritical and addictive.

Ibid. pp. 319-325

Eugene Brennan, Approaches to Urban Space and the Frmation of Intellectual Identity in Surrealist Paris, University College Dublin, College of Arts and Celtic Studies, USD School of History and Archives, 2010, pp.12-14 12

Anonymous, Passage de l’Opéra

spaces that were fundamentally contradictory13, veiling the delight of irreality.14 Streets were considered the habitats of surreal experiences. The surrealist reality in Aragon, Breton, Boiffard and Atget’s, etc. work can be viewed as an attempt of fusing the fantastical hallucinations and projections into simple urban space.15 Similarly, the approach of expression disguises the margin between artwork and documentary, arousing the desire to hurdle boundaries between “perception and expression”16.17 The view of the city is constantly reflected in those expressions. The transition into the nineteenth century was consistently documented in a method of representation which enabled art to fuse with documentary; realism to fuse with surrealism.18 The residues of the old city where used to protrude the surreal one. The text and the photographs function as a way to fuse documentary with the imagined, suggesting the projection of surreal possibilities.19

Taking position in the history of literature and art, surrealism may be seen as “another aesthetic school”, following Andre Breton manifestos.13 It is assumed that a lot of surrealists decided for secession or were expelled from the group, due to misunderstanding or purposefully distorting Breton’s ideas. Therefore it is essential to distinct two different matters in surrealism. On one hand there are artists following Andre Breton’s theories and writings, those that remained and followed in agreement with Breton. On the other hand there are those who failed to create and follow his ideologies. An excellent example for a character extracting from Breton’s group is Aragon. Leon S. Roudiez, “The Case of Louis Aragon and Surrealism”, American Association of Teachers of French, The French Review, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Dec. 1952), pp.96-104 13

In contempt of contradictions the ordinary takes on the extraordinary.

Ibid. p.49

Ibid. pp.35-49

18 As the transition continued the concern for preservation of the “Old Paris” arouse. Outmoded spaces of Paris through documentary photography were seen in the eyes of the surrealists as spaces of opportunity rather than absence and denial. Besides to distance themselves from whatever they thought was essential, the surrealists saw also possibility in the uninhabited spaces for the superiority of the real and imaginary. Ibid. pp.35-49

Ibid. pp.35-49

Conroy Maddox, Passage de l’Opéra

Paris may seem as a fully inhabited, even haunted city: which streets, clubs, public exposed spaces grow to sites of social meeting, historical alteration and performance. The capital a site for encounters, imaginary as well as physical, political and sexual. A physical journey occurs and insight into to a surreal perception allowed. 20 The method of expression influences the experience of the city, publications were used, compounded with experience. Perception and representation is being linked through records of unconscious desires. Photography and writing has the potential to appeal to these perceptions,21 leading to the possibility of conjunction. Images of: streets, architecture, stores, cafes, markets and subjects passing by; capturing the moment of “psychic intensity”22. Those images, visually or literary, are carrying the perception through the “territory of dreams intoxication, chance, sexual ecstasy and madness”23 of the spectator.24

Paris Peasant Louis Aragon’s novel “Le Paysan de Paris” is enthralled by the Parisian arcades. The key surrealism text, holds the arcades as spaces of similar affect as a contra dictionary site25. Fascinated by his hometown, Aragon saw himself as a practiced flaneur. Aragon chose the debate that had taken over Parisian press, the long delayed reorganization of Paris’ streets. Lead by Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann the completion of the transiting thoroughfares began – the Jonathan P. Eburne, Review of Therese Lichtenstein, ed., Twilight Visions: Surrealism and Paris, H-Urban, H-Net Reviews, March 2011, pp.1-3

Valery Oisteanu, Twilight Visions: Surrealism, Photography, and Paris, The Brooklyn Rail, Critical Perspectives on Arts, Politics, and Culture, (March 2010), http://www.brooklynrail.org/2010/03/artseen/twilight-visions-srrealism-photography-and-paris, 06.01.2016

Department of Photographs, Photography and Surrealism, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phsr/hd_phsr-atm, October,2004

Ibid.

Between June and September of the year 1924, Aragon enabled the first parts of the novella in the magazine La Revue eurpeene.

Anonymous, Saint Petersburg Passage

construction of the Boulevard Haussmann. Piece after piece of the Parisian properties were 26 deconstructed. The practicality of the arcades began to fade away, by the twentieth century the Parisian arcades were a “lacklustre commercial backwater, offering a hotchpotch of humble wared and cheap erotic diversions to middle and lower class customers”27. In the first months of 1925 the suppressed shopping arcade - Passage de l’Opera, was scheduled to be demolished.28 Aragon felt a strong connection to the Passage de l’Opera. Frequently spending time in its “cafes, restaurant, theatres, public baths and its brothels”29. So it became the main character of the first part of his novel. Paris Peasant takes the reader on a journey throughout the Passage de l’Opera, the narrator strolls along the walkway, passing the window’s displays of different department shops, cafes, public baths, etc. he experiences the illumination of “phasmas” 30. Aragon value towards the doomed arcades lies within the identity of the passage as urban space. Further, “the uber-ephemerality of the passage, its uncomfortable proximity to death and decay, and its reputation as a haven of the cheapest forms of the bizarre, the obsolescent and the risqué.”31 Although, Aragon admits the moment of progress, which shows the remains of modernity. The presently passing subjects, accumulated in the awakening of production and consumption in the industrial society.32 The destruction of the passage contributes the idea of the “myth of modernity”33. Everything passes from the state of regency to the pandemonium of age.34 Abigail Susik, “Paris,1924: Aragon, Le Corbusier, and the Question of the Outmoded”, WRECK: graduate journal of art history, visual art and theory, Vol. 2, Nr. 2, (2008),pp.29-44 26

Ibid. p.32

Ibid. pp.29-44

Ibid. p.32

Ibid. p.34

Everything placed within the borders of the passage can be seen as “recently old”32 – fashionable only few decades earlier.

Ibid. p.34

EugĂ¨ne Atget, Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsetsf

The Myth Inhabited Threshold35 Benjamin found it fascinating how the arcades from the beginnings anchored commerce in mythology. Further, continued to retain the early culture of consumerism, only to become a “mythologically distant past”36 later on.37 The charm of “fetishized” industrial goods and consumables inhabited nineteenth-century Paris38 - “the cult of commodity”39. The arcades “were a monument to progress, the myth of modernity”40, home to commodity and fashion, evolving spatially lead deceptions and reversals. 41 Forming the humankind: commodities, buildings and machines within the cityscape. The metropolis is the locus for reconfiguration, mystification, delusion and progression.42 Benjamin saw myth appear in an abundance of appearances: “artefactual (the commodity form), temporal (fashion, repetition and “progress”) and special (the arcade as dream-house)”43. Each represented by a character: the prostitute, the collector and the flaneur. 44

Abigail Susik, “Paris,1924: Aragon, Le Corbusier, and the Question of the Outmoded”, WRECK: graduate journal of art history, visual art and theory, Vol. 2, Nr. 2, (2008),pp.29-44 34

In Walter Benjamin’s eyes the arcades not only enable a surrealist way of glancing through history but a new and politically converting way to see historically. Both ways of viewing history refuse the presence of today’s mythology of development. Katie Trumpener, „Through the Arcades”, University of Chicago Press, Modern Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (February 1994), pp. 319325

Ibid. p.322

Ibid. pp. 319-325

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, p.124

Graeme Gilloch, “Myth & Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City”, Polity Press, 1996, p.104

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, p. 130

Ibid. p. 130

Graeme Gilloch, “Myth & Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City”, Polity Press, 1996, p.103

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, p.125

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, pp.123-125

Eugene Atget

The arcades stood on the line as a threshold between two worlds – the public city and the inside, between the rude public spaces and the arranged private45. It entertained the window-shopping flanéurs, creating a “fairyland of consumer wishes”46. The desires of the collective society were shown, in the materialistic form of commodities.47 Benjamin calls the Arcades the “collective architecture of the nineteenth century”, which “provides housing for the dreaming collective”48.49 The aura is melancholic, becoming a place where the subconscious of collective society and their dreams are preserved, embodying the existence of the myth, the Arcades exist in utopian vitality of the industrial era.50 Benjamin considers the structure of the metropolis, material objects within the environment and social activities. Issues of the so called “phenomenology of the metropolis” are considered properties of experiences51.52 Investigated through architectural spaces, the life in the public realms of the city house individual characters, their everyday routine as well as the impact between the individuals. Elaborating the experience of urban existence, the hastened velocity of the collectivity and the machines together, with the commodification of the spirit of the time.53 The right atmosphere seduces the buying collectivity and succeeds in selling. 54 To do so the shop

Hence it function as both, a modern market and as the capital of the 19th century.

Katie Trumpener, „Through the Arcades”, University of Chicago Press, Modern Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (February 1994), p.321

Ibid.), pp. 319-325

Ibid. p.323

In form of museums, department stores, factories, wax figure cabinets, etc.

Ibid. pp. 319-325

51 As for instance “shock, fragmentation, commodification, interiorization, and marginalization of experience”. Graeme Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City, Journal of Design History Vol. 10 No. 1, 1997, p.101

Ibid. p.101

Jane Rendell, „Threshold, Passages and Surfaces: Touching, Passing and Seeing in the Burlington Arcade”- Alex Coles, “The Optic of Walter Benjamin”, Blag Dog Publishing Limited, pp.168-195 54

Eugène Atget, Avenue de l‘Observatoire

windows were a consistent shape and material. 55 The narrow passageway enables encounters and created possibilities “to touch”. A merged spatial configuration of internal and external parts is experienced. 56 Aragon’s interest in private opportunities within public space is recognizable,57 allowing the merge between public and private, the passage creates the site for subjective surreal experiences, creating a special intimacy- enclosed roofing and narrow walk fares – despite which, the flâneur retains his anonymity within the defined public space.58 Due to the separation of production and consumption, a spatial arrangement between the shops’ interior and passers-by is created. 59 Luxury goods, in order to attract customers, were placed in the external displays of the stores. Glass, being transparent, allowed the display as well as protection of commodities. Not only presenting the goods “commodities could be seen but not touched”60, passers-by could inspect the goods as well as enhancing the narrow passage of the arcade. The shop windows become the boundary between the “outside world” of the passage and the spectacles inside the shops61.62

Ibid. pp.168-195

Particularly notable in the study of public baths and brothels –Aragon describes them as “other places”, zones of mystery and enchantment within the passage.

58 Eugene Brennan, Approaches to Urban Space and the Frmation of Intellectual Identity in Surrealist Paris, University College Dublin, College of Arts and Celtic Studies, USD School of History and Archives, 2010, pp.12-14

Jane Rendell, „Threshold, Passages and Surfaces: Touching, Passing and Seeing in the Burlington Arcade” - Alex Coles, “The Optic of Walter Benjamin”, Blag Dog Publishing Limited 59

Ibid. p.184

61 As a reflective material besides giving the opportunity to see inside the shops and observe the commodities, served as a mirror letting the stroller view themselves as they passed. Benjamin characterises the space where the shop61 window meets the passage as the habitat of the collector, mainly interested in “exchange value” goods rather than “use value”61 goods. Ibid.

Ibid. pp.168-195

Eugene Atget

Within the arcades sexuality is commercialised. For Benjamin there was an evident connection between the threshold and the character of the prostitute. Fetishism is represented “by the whore, who is seller and commodity at once”63. Women in the arcades were placed within shop windows– their bodies working as the representation of commodities on sale64. 65 Subsisting within the thresholds of lust and gratification. 66Pending between dream-world and the awakening. The arcades suggest a difference in social and spatial order are exposed as sites of sensuality and sexuality within the city, including desire and fantasy. Thresholds are perceived in different ways – the city outside, the passage and the shop units – playing a voluptuous choreography “of passing, touching and seeing”67. Inhabited by different “characters”, as the prostitute, the collector and the flaneur.68

Sigrid Weigel, Body- and Image-space: Re-reading Walter Benjamin, Translated by Georgina Paul, Routledge, 1996, p.96

Aragon repeatedly calls the importance of women within the passages: “This place is ruled over by[…] women”. Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, translated by Jonathan Cape Ltd, Pan Books Ltd, 1980, p.32

Jane Rendell, „Threshold, Passages and Surfaces: Touching, Passing and Seeing in the Burlington Arcade” - Alex Coles, “The Optic of Walter Benjamin”, Blag Dog Publishing Limited 65

Occupying the threshold, the prostitute similar to the arcade itself was a “wish image”. “She occupies a pivotal position, she is an allegory, both old – as part of the oldest profession – and new – as a commodity.” Ibid. 66

Ibid. p.169

Embodied by figures from the public and private, the dreamscape is completed.

Brasaii

Commodity fetishism and awakening of the dreaming collectivity69 Commodity fetishism is part of the city’s phantasmagoria, referring to phantasm of the living object. Arcades and boutiques housed the mass produced commodities and distractions. 70 Commodities are seen in Benjamin’s eyes as indications of “dream consciousness”71 and “wishimages”. Individual’s desires reappear as symbols in dreams, evidence of the “fantastical emanations of the so called dreaming collectivity”72. These wishimages are less illusions as impulses, lying in the architecture, fashion and commodity of the recent past – “the phantasmagoria of modernity”73. A landscape of consumption where the dreaming collectivity would pass, the Arcades are seen as dream like spaces, connected with fantasy, urge and creating an atmosphere of otherworldliness. enticement74 The arcade was a space of stimulation, intoxication and desire; promising satisfaction through the purchase of luxury commodities. 75 Benjamin’s methodology describes the arcades as placed in the threshold between space, time and consciousness –“internal-external, past-present, dream-

As Gilloch describes Benjamin’s idea of the world of commodity a “source of infinite variety and diversity, as the focus of new tastes and styles, innovation and invention” 69 . Markets of capitalist economy had to grow constantly, consumption of the society had to be kept stimulated, and new “innovative” products were introduced. These goods became quickly outdated and replaced by newer “innovative”. Hence the word “innovative” is being forced into an endless repetition.69 Benjamin is critical of the industrial culture, as it betrays itself in the name of “progress”. The constant change “process” takes place in the “lieu” of breakthroughs and social change. 69 As Trumpner explains this the modern metropolis full of monuments, boulevards and stores is “built in the suppression of the forces of history and of the attempted social revolution of the nineteenth century”. Katie Trumpener, „Through the Arcades”, University of Chicago Press, Modern Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (February 1994), pp.322323 69

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, pp.125-128

Ibid. p.127

In Paris Peasant the landscapes of the arcade are described as “The sanctuary of a cult of the ephemeral…the phantomatic landscape of cursed pleasures and progressions.” Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, translated by Jonathan Cape Ltd, Pan Books Ltd, 1980, p.32

75 Jane Rendell, „Threshold, Passages and Surfaces: Touching, Passing and Seeing in the Burlington Arcade” - Alex Coles, “The Optic of Walter Benjamin”, Blag Dog Publishing Limited, pp.168-195

Brasaii

awakening”76 – public as well private, within the past, present and future, representing the dream landscape containing the everyday.77 The city78 might be considered full of stimulations and insanity of the modern. The magic and mysteries of the landscape is thrilling the city with the allure of a metropolis of lust and deflection. The city is a dreamscape reflecting desires and lust images of the collectivity.79 Another aspect of commodity fetishism would be the transformation of living bodies into products for sale and purchase – the prostitute’s influence is essential, embodying the commodity.80 The prostitute is the highest expression of commodity81. 82 The city is seen as both the site and the production of the dormant collectivity’s unconscious fantasies. Buildings and objects of the metropolis are, for Benjamin, desires and wish images; representations of unfulfilled true wants and longings83. 84 Benjamin sees the abstraction of desires as deviation. He calls for the awakening of the collectivity from its longings.85 Sleeping, dreaming and awakening became the phrases Benjamin looks to with the help of the Passagenwerk. Desires and wishes are fused and repressed within the “waking life”86 of individuals, Jane Rendell, „Threshold, Passages and Surfaces: Touching, Passing and Seeing in the Burlington Arcade”- Alex Coles, “The Optic of Walter Benjamin”, Blag Dog Publishing Limited, p.171 76

Ibid. p.171

As a site full of different perspectives in different lights and noises, with a series of diverse artefacts and deflections.

Graeme Gilloch, “Myth & Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City”, Polity Press, 1996, p.103

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, pp.125-128

“[...]prostitute as the counter part of the worker and as the embodiment of commodification[…]herself, she becomes the commodity and takes on the character of a mass-produced article” 81

Graeme Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City, Journal of Design History Vol. 10 No. 1, 1997, p.102

Here the fetishist and neurotic desires are still visible in utopian form.

Ibid. p.104

Katie Trumpener, „Through the Arcades”, University of Chicago Press, Modern Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (February 1994), p.324

Graeme Gilloch, “Myth & Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City”, Polity Press, 1996, p.104

Hans Bellmer

only to be reinvented in obscure forms in dreams during sleep87. “Paris is nothing other than a teeming city, a city full of dreams”88 Gilloch explains, and the passages “dream houses of the 90 collectivity”89, home to phantasmagoria.

Phantasmagoria and illumination Benjamin views Paris as a dreamscape and site of phantasmagoria. 91 The use of glass within the arcades’ design causes transparency and reflection, the interplay of phasma and “fata morgana”92. 93 Gilloch describes “a giant metallic spider’s web, into which vital images and impressions are drawn”94, giving illuminations a body, creating phantasmagoria. The arcade often casts a “submarine light”, described as a “human aquarium”, “underwater world”. 95 Paris Peasant evolves a strong awareness of an otherworldliness within the arcade. “A glaucous gleam, seemingly filtered through deep water, with the special quality of pale brilliance of a leg suddenly revealed under a lifted skirt.”96 Shrouding the reader’s imagination in mystery and secret. 97 The aim of the Arcade Project was to create an introduction into Paris as a “Zeitraum” (a “time-space”) and a “Zeit-traum” (a “dream-time”) where the consciousness of the entire society deepens into sleep. This may be used as a prehistory of the past which gives insight into the senses of the “dreaming collectivity”.

Graeme Gilloch, “Myth & Metropolis: Walter Benjamin and the City”, Polity Press, 1996, p.104

Ibid. p.104

Greme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, pp.130-133

Ibid. pp.123-125

Walter Benjamin, “Das Passasgenwerk”, translated by Howard Eiland and Kevin McLAughlin, The Belnkap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1999, p.538, R1,6 92

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, pp.130-133

Ibid. p.121

Ibid. pp.130-133

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, translated by Jonathan Cape Ltd, Pan Books Ltd, 1980, p.14

Boiffard

The only windows of the arcade were inside – belonging to shops. Those presented the commodities not as products but as “spectacles”98, objects of unrebutted desire. 99 Separation between subject and object fades – till it collapses; boundaries blur, generating the phasma100.101 Aragon projects the surreal. An uneventful evening in the Passage spent at the Café du Petit Grillon, a prime example. A quiet evening is halted by a hallucination. The relator faces a supernatural light in the appearance of a prostitute in a shop window. The narrator is fascinated by the illusion, getting closer. Looking into the shop the phantom disappears, leaving the reflection of streetlamps. “The only glimmer of light now to be seen came from the dim reflections on its windows of the streetlamps outside”102. In this setting reality is fused with the imaginary, making the arcade a subjective environment103.104 “Two universes begin to fade at their

Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002, p.131

Ibid. pp.130-133

This is not only evident throughout Paris Peasant but the surrealist usage of the city and obsolete spaces. The surrealist goal is lying in the ground breaking potential of the experience within the everyday. The use of the arcades does not only suggest the relationship between surrealism and the outdated spaces but the conjunction with the cognitive identity. Eugene Brennan, Approaches to Urban Space and the Formation of Intellectual Identity in Surrealist Paris, University College Dublin, College of Arts and Celtic Studies, USD School of History and Archives, 2010, p.18 100

101

102

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, translated by Jonathan Cape Ltd, Pan Books Ltd, 1980, p.23

Repeatedly this style of scene is being produced throughout the book. For Aragon the passage is not forced onto anyone, it is a place of choice and the narrator can be viewed as a visitor, a promenade inspiring mental projections.

103

104

Nush Eluard

point of contact.”105 The subjective reality in the Passage opposed to the objective reality in the city outside of the arcade. 106 Aragon gives detailed narration of the atmosphere developing “from realism to absurdity”107. Through intense descriptions of the passage, an evolution of hallucinatory visions and phantoms is taking place. Concerned with the idea of fusing reality and illusionary are being displayed to achieve the rise of a “phantasmagorical breakdown of subject-object distinctions”108.

Conclusion Calling the modern metropolis a phantasmagoric site, representing the city as an important “locus” of the modern capitalist approach, as well as disguising the human perception within the space. Benjamin’s interest lies in the complexity of the urbanism. The peripheral characters: the collector, the prostitute, and the “flâneur” hold the definition to comprehend the perception of modernity. As the most important architecture of the nineteenth century, the arcade as the myth inhabited threshold was home to the fetishized commodity, fashion and the dreams of the collectivity. Also the site was inhabited by the phantasmagorical recent past and time-space. Making the arcade the mythical form of Benjamin’s prehistory to modernity. Embracing the possibilities of public buildings Aragon perceived the extraordinary within the ordinary taking place in the arcades. An urban space fusing fantastical projections and conceptions, allowing the stroller to experience hallucinations and phasmas, fusing the reality with the imaginary and creating a subjective environment. In opposition the “outside” world – the city 105

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant, translated by Jonathan Cape Ltd, Pan Books Ltd, 1980, p.47

106 Eugene Brennan, Approaches to Urban Space and the Frmation of Intellectual Identity in Surrealist Paris, University College Dublin, College of Arts and Celtic Studies, USD School of History and Archives, 2010, pp.12-14

107

Ibid., p.13

108

Ibid. p.13

Boiffard

is being perceived as objective. Enabling the fusion of the subject-object disparity in between the thresholds. The method of expression, whether literary or visually blurs the line between imagination and documentation. Overcoming the boundaries between perception and expression. In conjunction with Benjaminâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s study and the surrealistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s theorise the idea of walking through spaces is of importance. Visualising the photographs, as well as reading the novel becomes a journey for the spectator altering their perception of their surreal and objective environment, creating phantasmagoria.

References - Graeme Gilloch, “Walter Benjamin Critical Constellations”, Polity, 2002 - Katie Trumpener, „Through the Arcades”, University of Chicago Press, Modern Philology, Vol. 91, No. 3 (February 1994)

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