Walter Benjamin’s Archive. Walter Benjamin
and the ink from the nib of my pen flowed with equal ease, I would be in the Arcadia of my writing” (SW 1, p. 463). High-quality paper, particular pens, ink, and nibs, and, furthermore, specific spatial preconditions were important prerequisites for a non-resistant and smoothly running flow of writing. In a letter to Siegfried Kracauer, for example, Benjamin reports on the acquisition of a new fountain pen, an “enchanting creation, with which I can fulfill all my dreams and develop a productivity which was impossible in the days of the now desiccated—nib” (GB III, p. 262).
But in order to aid the cogitations in finding their way to an appropriate realization on paper, some resistance is necessary. The route from inspiration to thought to phrasing to writing is to be hindered. The writer, according to Benjamin, should keep the “pen aloof from inspiration,” and “it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself” (SW 1, p. 458). Flow and delay must coincide, in order both to satisfy dreams and propose ideas.
Benjamin’s characteristically small handwriting, his graphic minimalism, which compelled him to concentration, deliberateness, and exactness, can be located within this context. His miniaturized script is reminiscent of Robert Walser’s “pencil system,” which he used to help him write again, once his abilities had dwindled. From 1924 Walser began “to jot in pencil, to sketch, to dilly-dally” (Walser, cited from Morlang, p. 58) his first intuitions, prior to writing his texts cleanly in pen. He tried to solve his “writer’s block” by a resistance-less pencil gliding on paper, forming quite blurred, almost illegible characters. Benjamin’s manuscripts, despite similarities in appearance, are the expression of a diametrically opposed method. While Walser learnt “to play, poeticize” once more (Walser, cited from Morlang, p. 58) in the small and the smallest details, attempting to unlock the open space of childish light-heartedness, so as to allow script and language to flow, for Benjamin it is a matter of the “placing” of script, the composition of thoughts. The small here is not childhood re-attained and imitated, but, rather, a product of adult reflection and concentration. Even in the choice of writing implement—Benjamin wrote mostly with a fountain pen—this other face of writing is expressed. Jean Selz recalls “such a small handwriting that he never found a pen that was fine enough, which forced him to write with the nib upside down” (Selz, p. 355)—such a posture in writing is directed against the stroke and flow of script.
The manuscripts in Benjamin’s bequest document how up until around 1917–1918 his writing was somewhat larger and using wider swings than in later periods. But it is not really possible to date his manuscripts from the size and style of the script. Benjamin’s handwriting does not develop in a uniform way. It varies. It is almost always precise and fine; even in notes that were intended only for his own eyes he rarely renounced “definition or accuracy” (Scholem, Benjamin, p. 177). In spite of the density of script, the compressing together of signs in the smallest space, he hardly ever wrote carelessly. The letters measure between one and around 7mm. Benjamin’s penchant for small script developed in particular in the 1920s. One example is a sharp polemic against Fritz von Unruh’s Wings of Nike (1925) titled “Peace Commodity,” which appeared on May 21, 1926 in the Literary World. With each letter measuring from one to 1.5mm, the fair copy is difficult to decipher with the naked eye (fig. 3.1). The same is true of an early draft of The Arcades of Paris (1928/1929), which Benjamin jotted on a sheet of fine handmade paper of an exceptionally lengthy format and folded in the middle (fig. 3.2). The 22cm of sheet allowed him to write eighty-one lines. Scholem has already noted Benjamin’s “never-realized ambition to get a hundred lines onto an ordinary sheet of notepaper” (Scholem, “Benjamin,” p. 177) and reports on how his fascination was aroused by two grains of wheat in the Museum Cluny in Paris, “on which a kindred soul had inscribed the complete ‘Shema Israel’” (Scholem, “Benjamin,” p. 177). In many cases it looks as if he intended to completely cover the page with writing (fig. 3.3). On the other hand, “giant letters” can be found in Benjamin’s hand too (GB II, p. 446). Some letters and work manuscripts are even composed within “normal” dimensions. But these are exceptions.
Like Walser, Benjamin is an aesthetician of the written sheet; the manuscript should appeal to the eye as a textual image. The manuscript of the gloss Dream Kitsch, a “short consideration of the Surrealists” (GB III, p. 116), from 1925, which Benjamin thought was too difficult to be published in the Literary World, is remarkable both for the small size of the writing and for the format of the sheet: the text, which is separated into narrow columns, is strikingly reminiscent of a newspaper layout (fig. 3.4). The visual aspects of a manuscript of an early sonnet on the death of Christoph Friedrich Heinle (1894–1914) convey an expression of the contents. In the contrast between the small script and the size of the sheet, Benjamin’s grief at the loss of his friend, and the loneliness and abandonment of those left behind, is graspable in the form of an image (fig. 3.5).
The spatial density of what is written corresponds to the economy of expression, a precise, laconic style. In this is expressed an ethic of “creative modesty typical of the person who lives wholly inside his subject and who is utterly incapable of viewing it complacently from the outside” (SW 1:1, p. 131).
Benjamin’s small handwriting acts as a restriction, but with positive intent—for the writer as much as for the reader. Just as the writer is forced to attend to each letter, so too for those who are addressed “this objectionable writing style is like nothing else an expression of my most friendly disposition” (GB II, p. 399). But it is not simply an expression of this ethos, but also a claim to it and on it. Benjamin expects of readers such a great deal of concentration and effort that they might well object. He places objects in the way of a too rapid reading. But finally (also) in return he promises objects that impel readers to new thought. Benjamin’s micrographies do not open up to casual readings—and he self-consciously inscribed in them recognition of their magnitude and significance.
Benjamin had a predilection for “the unassuming, the tiny, and the playful” (SW 2:1, p. 114). The world of experiences and things familiar to childhood, including his own memory of these, apparently trivial and marginal themes, the small format of the gloss, thesis, miniatures, puzzles, reports, and aphorisms—all these are manifestations of the small thematized over and over again in Benjamin’s work. In these Benjamin achieves his ambition “to present in the briefest literary utterance something complete in itself” (Scholem, “Benjamin,” p. 177). His aesthetic of the small is aimed at the particular, which “carries the whole in miniature form” (GS III, p. 51). Only “in the analysis of the small individual moment” might the “crystal of the total event” be discovered (AP, p. 461).
On June 9, 1926 Benjamin wrote to Jula Radt-Cohn: “You will see that—starting about a week ago, I have once more entered a period of small writing, in which, even after long intervals, I always find some kind of home again, and into which I should like to entice you. If you perceive this little box as homely, then nothing should prevent you from becoming its Princess. (You do know the ‘New Melusine’, don’t you?)” (GB III, p. 171). In Goethe’s fairytale The New Melusine, an allegorical tale in William Meister’s Journeyman Years, the magic box harbors a wonderful realm that has shrunk to a miniature, and is constantly exposed to the dangers of ruin and disappearance. Just as an air of secrecy and fragility surrounds the casket in Goethe, so too Benjamin’s tiny handwriting appears enigmatic and fragile. It bars the reader from direct access to what is written, and initially it can only be experienced sensuously, through the expressive power of the writing’s image; only once it has been deciphered can its contents unfurl. Like the casket it preserves something precious, which disguises itself in the form of a miniature. It parades “the pantomime of the entire nature and existence of mankind, in microcosmic form” (SW 2:1, p. 134).
Figures
3.1 Peace Commodity (1926). Critique of Fritz von Unruh’s Wings of Nike (1925)—Manuscript, three