The Secret Knowledge

ONE-WAY STREET

Asja has gone into a shop to buy almonds but doesn’t know the Italian word; a German gentleman helps her with the translation. Small round glasses; thick, dark hair; intellectual, from a well-to-do background. And clumsy. He insists on helping her with the packages but drops them, accompanying her to the place where she’s staying. His name is Walter Benjamin. He’s been here in Capri for some time, would she mind if he were to call on her? Next day Asja cooks spaghetti; he explains he’s noticed her already some time before, walking across the piazza. This is not how he falls in love with her. This is how he announces the existence of a theoretical notion willing to be made real. Love is the translation of concept into action.

NO ENTRY

Benjamin has come to Capri to work on his habilitation thesis which will qualify him to teach in a university. He is to remain here for six months while his estranged wife and their young son stay in Frankfurt. Asja Lacis is a dark-eyed Latvian actress and theatre director who lives in Russia and has been a Bolshevik since before the Revolution seven years ago. She is staying on Capri with her partner and daughter. Benjamin tells her his thesis is on Trauerspiel, a style of Baroque drama characterised by violence and suffering. She asks him why anyone should waste time studying old plays that nobody reads.

POTEMKIN

The connection between a battleship and the many workers who hammered its rivets is like that of worshippers in regard to the idols of organised religion; the fetish-character of commodities leads to their being seen as phantoms whose assumed reality supersedes that of the people who made them. Thus our existence within capitalism is a condition of dreaming. Asja awakens him to this. He writes to friends about the interesting communist he has met, and with whom he is having long discussions. He sends postcards to his wife, telling her he is fine. Their relationship was extinguished some time ago; he feels closeness only towards his son, because Benjamin has not forgotten how to see the world with a child’s eye of fear and wonder. He agrees with Baudelaire, childhood is the state closest to original sin, therefore purest. In the streets and brothels of Paris, Baudelaire stirred himself from dogmatic slumber, saw through the illusion, appreciated that modern life is an allegory whose signs can mean anything. Possessions, money, family, home: skeletons of their own contradiction.

VANITY MIRROR

Love begins with the contemplation of beauty, yet contemplation is a situation produced by capitalist production. Love itself is therefore allegorical: Asja could be anybody, she is the shape of the particular emptiness Walter brought with him to this Italian island, and it is the exactness of fit that bewitches him, the stencil of an unfulfilled desire waiting only to attach itself to a name. Asja: again and again he inscribes it, admiring the concordance between sound and image. I love you, he writes secretly to himself. I want to be with you, I want to leave my wife and child and live only with you. I want to be living the past that we will jointly remember, reading these words that will have become historical fact.

Capitalism is a mass narcosis whose ur-myth is the false promise: you can be happy. But love is this same dream, an internalised mythology, and Asja laughs at him: I am not a muse of the bourgeoisie, I am a proletarian and a free woman. I am not an unpaid prostitute who will be told whom I may or may not sleep with; I satisfy my physical needs and desires as I see fit. Free your own mind and heart, Walter, if your marriage is unhappy then get out of it.

— But what about our son?

He needs real love, not the illusion of an outmoded institution.

— How am I to find happiness?

Only through revolutionary action.

It is the Copernican turn of his heart; he came here to finish his thesis on Baroque drama but already he is thinking of another project: a book of fragments, epigrammatic or even surreal in character, apparent irrelevancies serving to create new, unintended meaning. And though he will go to Moscow, the centre of his thought will be Paris, the covered arcades where Baudelaire realised he was strolling in Hell.

Asja, I love you, he writes. I want to be able to look at your face every day; see how, like a mountain beside a lake, it changes with every passing cloud, every fluctuation of pressure and temperature. I want to see your breasts, kiss your belly and that catacomb, place of skulls, your lap where a new dream breaks all fetters and submerges us. I want to be human with you, mortal, slowly ruined by time until we are both dust together. I have never known this certainty of disaster.

— Walter, you are delightful and I so much enjoy being with you. I can think of no more stimulating companion, with your astute mental faculties, your understanding of philosophy. But you’re clumsy, and things will fall.

CONSPIRACY

1. By all means discuss the book you are writing, but do not disclose its essence, any more than you would tell a child how a magic trick is done.

2. Make note of everything. For example, the conversation with the unusual Frenchman.

3. Adhere to the timetable of an honest worker. Writing is like engineering, done with the hands.

4. Think always of the one who is the cause of all this. Keep her image in mind, be faithful to it. Love every sentence as you love her. That is to say, without hope or expectation.

5. Difference between document and artwork: the former serves to educate the public, the latter discovers truth.

6. In every philosophical project there is an esoteric quality. Expect understanding no more than you crave applause.

7. Keep a favourite pen, a well-ordered desk, and dedicate yourself to making ideas surrender themselves to you — for they alone will yield to your advances.

PLEASE USE ASHTRAYS

Walter Benjamin is sitting on the terrace of a café overlooking the bay. He knows several Germans staying on the island, and has been busying himself with excursions, social visits, letter writing, conversation. But today he is alone, with only his notebook and his thoughts. The thesis on Trauerspiel is finished; next will be his book of fragments, it will be called One-Way Street, and he will dedicate it to Asja.

A man comes and sits at another table, a foreigner like Benjamin, of similar age. They greet one another; the man responds in French, and after exchanging a few pleasant words they agree to sit together. Like Benjamin, the Frenchman has been on Capri for some time, has covered much of the same ground, both physically and socially, though neither claims any recollection of the other. They share a bottle of wine and a dish of olives; alcohol creates an air of friendship that might not otherwise have manifested itself so quickly.

Benjamin explains why he came here; he hopes to get a permanent position at Frankfurt University if his thesis is accepted.

“Is it a good thesis?”

“As good as I could make it, though perhaps that will be the problem, since success in circumscribed fields is dependent on adherence to existing categories of thought rather than the creation of new ones.”

“You speak like a philosopher of art.”

“And you, if I may say so, have the air of a poet.”

The stranger laughs. “You mean an eccentric? I adopt certain local habits, my razor is not too sharp, I have no woman telling me how I should look.”

“Did desire bring you here?”

“Only for knowledge, I study mathematics. Here is a problem for you, Epimenides the Cretan says that all Cretans are liars: do you believe him?”

“I know the paradox very well, there is something demonic in its circularity.”

“It’s a devil of a riddle, that’s for sure. What about the barber who shaves every man who doesn’t shave himself? Or the set of all sets that don’t contain themselves?”

“Children’s puzzles have always appealed to me, especially visual ones.”

“To be consistent is to exist, that is the law of mathematics, a single violation should be enough to make the entire edifice vanish into non-being. Yet we live in an age of paradox, science has demonstrated it. Time can be slowed or quickened, space is curved, light is neither wave nor particle, or perhaps is both. There are our new categories of thought.”

SHAKE BEFORE OPENING

The nineteenth century is when the crowd, the mass, becomes generally recognised as an object of history; it is in opposition to the crowd that the modern concept of the individual arises. Poe’s story, ‘The Man Of The Crowd’, depicts the view through a coffee-house window: real life is what happens on the street, the interior is a place of illusion. The crowd is a reservoir of energy, a kaleidoscope equipped with consciousness, creating collision, surprise, chance. Gambling becomes a widespread and socially acceptable bourgeois pastime. The victors of revolution are the speculators. Marx says of Darwin’s theory that it serves as a scientific basis for the class struggle, a death-blow to teleology, a rational-empirical explanation of historical progress; though without the inclusion of proletarian consciousness it is simply a description of capitalism itself. Baudelaire translates Poe’s story, appreciating the revulsion inherent in it. Like Rousseau he reverts to solitary wandering, which is to say savagery. Urban industrialised life is dependent on fear of being alone, yet manufactures isolation. Love is a commodity whose inflated price we must recognise. Like any stock, its value exists only by virtue of shared belief.

GRADUS AD PARNASSUM

“I have made an extensive study of Boltzmann’s thermodynamics,” the Frenchman continues. “All of nature, it appears, is statistical.”

“Nature itself, or our view of it?”

“Who knows? But since entropy rises inexorably, the universe must fade and decay.”

“Then physics is a form of allegory.”

The Frenchman slaps his thigh and exclaims with delight at this observation. “Yes, the allegory of chance, a cosmic casino. Are you a betting man?”

“I have insufficient love of money.”

“Gambling is not about money, it is about perpetually renewed hope. Every turn of the wheel is independent of the previous one, the past is erased. Would you put a loaded revolver to your head?”

“Of course not.”

“Then perhaps you have an insufficient love of life. I had a friend who was an incurable gambler, his lucky charm was a counterfeit coin made of glass.”

“And what do you do?”

“For a while I was a musician with dreams of being a great composer. Now I am a philosopher like yourself.”

“A natural consequence of disillusionment.”

“Come to think of it, I believe I may have noticed you previously. Aren’t you a friend of the Russian actress?”

HIGH VOLTAGE

Prostitution is described as the oldest profession because it is the prototype of wage labour in general. The worker comes to see time as a commodity he can sell, and capitalism becomes its perpetual degradation, an attempt to buy time at lowest cost. Time travel became a theme of fantastic fiction only after the invention of the motor car: it is the myth of instantaneous arrival, just as the whore is the myth of instantaneous gratification. The greatest good is attached to whatever can “save time”, an acceleration imagined to preserve the moment of youth while hastening us towards death. In the modern allegory of commodities, the whore occupies a special position analogous to that of the skull in the Baroque.

REFRIGERATOR

Asja, you say you sleep with anyone you choose, that your partner doesn’t mind and does the same, because this is the most progressive form of existence. But do you really choose freely? Is there a hidden mechanism of association, a shell trick that gives the illusion of will and makes us believe in the power of choice when actually the game is rigged so that one must always lose? The Frenchman, he’s another, isn’t he? You sleep with every man on this island except me, because I’m the only one who loves you.

Consider my position. I have a wife in Frankfurt, a child I love dearly and would never do anything to hurt. My wife is an outstanding person, morally and intellectually, I admire and respect her. Yet I don’t desire her. Belief has abandoned me, as it abandoned the millions who saw their currency devalued to nothing. It is not only a wrecked economy that has brought me to Capri, it is also a wrecked marriage, one I know to be doomed, because it exists only on the plane of material reality, a surface without metaphysical depth. For a long time, thoughts of escape: to Palestine, Paris, anywhere.

I cannot resist this capitalist love, this desire to own and live in contemplation of you, to be loved by you. I envy the air that surrounds you, the light that reflects from your face when you waken, your eyes that are like an infinite ocean, I regret every minute of my life that has not been spent with you, all of it wasted. My life is not to be found in drawers, photographs, letters tied with ribbon, souvenirs without context; it lies in the future I yearn for. I will sacrifice everything for you, this is the meaning of passion, which is to say suffering and martyrdom, I shall be annihilated by your immortality, it is what I wish, though I know the desire is not a free one: that is what renders it authentic. We cannot choose whom we love; love chooses us, its emblem a skeleton wielding a scythe.

SEASON’S GREETINGS

“Yes,” says Benjamin, “I know Miss Lacis. You’re a friend?”

“I saw you with her,” the Frenchman declares as a fly settles on the rim of Benjamin’s wine glass. “You’re in love with her, aren’t you? I could tell. Don’t think I’m being rude, I’m an eccentric, that’s all, I speak my mind. We French, you understand, are experts in love.”

“You already told me you’re half-German.”

He laughs. “German only in my head, thank God, but I have the heart of a Frenchman. Oh yes, I’ve loved, many times, and always truthfully, I’m no libertine. But you see, sir, I embrace risk, and what greater risk is there than love? The game is only worth it if the stakes are high, and that means you must first of all love life. What are the two things men kill themselves over? Money and women. I asked if you would put a loaded revolver to your head. I’ve done it. Pulled the trigger and… click. I live another day. Imagine if everyone in the world were to do that.”

“Millions would die.”

“And the rest would love life. They would end all war and poverty, live together in peace and prosperity in a world blessed by chance.”

“You’re a utopian.”

“While you, I take it, are a Bolshevik, like the actress.”

An unexpected challenge to define himself; Benjamin doesn’t know what he is. “I think Marx was a philosopher of profound insight.”

“But does the situation in Russia prove his theory? You can hardly call it a Marxist revolution, more like a Blanquist one.”

“You mean a conspiracy rather than a proletarian uprising? Blanqui never had much success with that in France.”

“But Lenin has in Russia. Make everyone think it’s a popular revolution when really it’s a coup: that’s genius.”

LINGERIE DEPARTMENT

Comparison between Baudelaire and Blanqui: their isolation. De Tocqueville saw Blanqui at his trial and described him as looking like a skeleton in an overcoat, a hideous apparition. Baudelaire drew a portrait of Blanqui, his idol. The connection may be arbitrary: all the more reason to look into it more deeply.

DO NOT LEAN OUT OF THE WINDOW

“We haven’t even introduced ourselves, my name is Pierre Klauer.”

“Walter Benjamin. And you must tell me exactly how you know Miss Lacis.”

“Oh, I was invited to a dinner party a few weeks ago and she was among the guests. Then not long afterwards I noticed her with you.”

Klauer must really have remembered it as soon as he arrived at the café and saw Benjamin sitting there. Nothing is random.

“You say you were a composer.”

“I gave up music and haven’t touched a piano in ten years.”

“I find that extraordinary.”

“Some men forego sex, I renounced music, which is easier for me.”

“But why?”

“Because I no longer believed in it. Rather, I came to believe in something else. I was working on a large-scale orchestral piece, all I had done was a piano version; but that, I decided, would be my final work. As a composer I died. And was reborn.”

“As what?”

“A man who loves life. But you, sir, you aren’t happy, and it’s because of the actress. She’s leading you a merry dance, anyone can see it, even a perfect stranger like myself who happened upon you both in a restaurant.”

“It was really so obvious?”

“Painfully so. Intellectuals are always the worst victims, too much thinking.”

“Then what should I do?”

With a bent finger Klauer beckons his companion closer. “Get hold of a revolver, put a single bullet in it, spin the chamber and let fate decide.”

He imagines Asja’s face when she hears: Walter Benjamin has killed himself. He imagines his wife and son, his friends. But mostly he imagines Asja.

“What if I survive?”

“That’s the point, my friend, you will. Or if you don’t, you’ll never know anything about it, so what is there to lose?”

It is Pascal’s wager for the era of mass production: the phantasmagoria of immortality.

“I lack your courage,” says Benjamin. “And what of your family and friends, did you renounce them too?”

“Completely. Though I did return to my parents’ home in Paris, just once. I knew they would be away, I only wanted to see the place.”

“You doubted your decision to leave?”

“Not at all, I thought of retrieving my last work and burning it. And as I walked in those once-familiar rooms I truly felt myself to be a ghost, for my mother had made the place a shrine to my memory. Here is posterity, I said to myself, here is what you craved, to be remembered, and what does it amount to? The tears of those few who knew you, the continued indifference of the multitude who did not. Pierre Klauer can be removed from the world like a loose brick and who will notice the hole he leaves?”

“You say you loved women.”

“They found other men. We are interchangeable.”

“If everyone thought like you there would be no art or science, no great works passed down the generations.”

“And every generation would be a world renewed. But I didn’t burn my score, because when I opened the drawer of my desk I found that it was gone, in fact for a moment I wondered if it had ever really been there. Its destiny, you see, was always to be non-existent, and I was glad that it was missing, I hoped that someone else had put a match to it, as I would have done. Yet the drawer wasn’t empty. I had also deposited a book there, that I used while composing the work.”

“The source of your inspiration?”

Klauer smiles. “You could say that. I took it with me and still have it.”

“Then you are more attached to art and literature than you care to admit.”

“The book is neither,” the Frenchman says with an air of satisfaction, as though a point has been scored. “It’s very old, written in a language I don’t understand, elegantly bound in yellow calfskin. And now that my finances have taken a bad turn I’m thinking of selling it. I expect I’ll let it go for far less than it’s worth.”

“I’m a collector of books.”

“Are you really? Then isn’t this a fine stroke of chance for both of us?”