Detained
May 21, 2007
“They were jittery with the idea of staying,” he says, “and paralyzed with fear at the idea of leaving. You would get them prepared with their passports and all their visas in order, and a month later they would still be sitting in the Marseille cafés, waiting for the police to come and get them.”
From Michael Taussig’s Walter Benjamin’s Grave - a longer excerpt here.
Hey Angela,
Last year I’ve seen a film on the monument, closer to the documentary side than fiction, titled “Port Bou: 18 Fragments for Walter Benjamin” by Ross Birrell and David Harding, from glasgow. It relied a lot on the wind in the area. I remember one scene best: a woman is reading poetry in the wind, with the wind, but we hear the wind howling instead of the words. Birrel, who was at the screening himself, later commented on this as a play on the “angel of history”.
cheers,
pom
pomegranade [May 23, 2007 @ 2:09 pm]
That’s lovely. I’m wondering whether the film’s downloadable from somewhere … There’s a ‘forthcoming’ article here, is all I’ve found.
s0metim3s [May 23, 2007 @ 5:38 pm]
Don’t think it’s available online. but might be possible to ask for his contact from the guys in the marxist reading group of Univ. of Florida who had arranged the screening. In the discussion afterwards I remember he talked about redemption, filming as revisiting and redemption–about which I actually asked him a question, cause isn’t this a very problematic point in Benjamin’s work? he didn’t seem to be as troubled by it. Well, we’ll see how he frames it in the upcoming essay. The image-sound of the wind was powerful though.
Speaking of documentaries, I’ve seen a really good one on Simon Weil this past fall by an artist living right next door at Cornell.
pomegranade [May 24, 2007 @ 6:42 am]
Hi Angela, and thanks for this.
Brings back memories, among which, of a voyage to Portbou. The very idea of a ‘monument’ to Benjamin is not without paradoxes, as I’m sure you know, for what is a monument for a writer who in the Passagenwerk would write - to quote/translate from memory - “I shall purloin no valuables. But the rags, the refuse - these I will allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them.”
Yet Dani Karavan’s “Passages” is quite something, the steps leading down to the sea only to confront a glass wall/screen, the sea beyond, and retracing one’s steps “up” to confront the cemetery, and a wall of stone. And of course the epitaph engraved on the ‘monument’, from Benjamin’s Philosophy of History. I’m sure you know it already, but it is worth repeating and I can quote it exactly, for I have it scrawled on the wall above my desk.
Schwerer ist es, das Gedächtnis der Namenlosen zu ehren als das der Berühmten. Dem Gedächtnis der Namenlosen ist die historische Konstruction geweiht.
I’d love to hear more about the film Pom mentions, and the possibilities of actually seeing it. Pom’s brief description of the scene with the sound of the wind effacing the voice and the poem has me all curious! I’m reminded of Benjamin’s writing that if Nature could speak, it would cry, lament.
I wonder what poem it was? At Portbou, I remember reading/declaiming a poem aloud - Hölderlin’s Andenken, a poem of frontiers and passages
Es nehmet aber
Und gibt Gedächtnis die See,
Und die Lieb’ auch heftet fleißig die Augen,
Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter.
Amie [May 25, 2007 @ 11:09 am]
As always, Amie, thanks for the thoughts. I’ll keep an eye out about the film.
Ps. and if you haven’t already seen, Influxus has some posts you may find interesting.
s0metim3s [May 26, 2007 @ 2:21 pm]
Hi Angela and Amie,
I’ve written to Ross Birrell and he’s agreed to send us a copy of the film! After first asking to David, the co-author of the film.
cheers,
pom
pomegranade [June 1, 2007 @ 1:12 am]
Excellent Pom. We’ll talk more about the where and how of it.
s0metim3s [June 1, 2007 @ 10:34 pm]