"Paris, Capital of the 19th Century"

Some annotated online versions of Walter Benjamin's essay or notes on the essay:

From Professor Andrew Feenberg’s homepage (Simon Fraser University):
http://www.sfu.ca/~andrewf/benjaminparis.pdf

From Perspecta, Vol. 12. (1969), 163-172.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0079-0958%281969%2912%3C163%3APCOTNC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B

From Professor Chuck Tryon’s website (Georgia Tech University):
http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/~ctryon/fwp/benjaminparis.htm

Some sites devoted to the Arcades project and/or the material culture of Paris in the nineteenth century:

Giles Peaker, “Walter Benjamin’s Passagenwerk: Reading in the Ruins,” from Other Voices 1.1: http://www.othervoices.org/gpeaker/Passagenwerk.php

Brown University Center for Digital Initiatives, “Paris, Capital of the 19th Century”:
http://dl.lib.brown.edu/paris/

My own notes on the first half of the essay, with references, terms and translations I looked up. Weblinks to sources are included. Notes in purple are my own thoughts as I worked through the text. These notes demonstrate a very thorough engagement with the essay; your own reading practices might vary depending on what you need to get out of it.

Page 146
epigraph 1: from a Vietnamese poem.
Does Benjamin like it because it is pretty or because it alludes to “great ladies” and “small ladies,” i.e., class on parade?

epigraph 2:
The magic columns of these palaces
Show to the amateur on all sides
In the objects their porticos display
That industry is the rival of the arts.

Fourier: A Utopian Socialist who hated industrialization. http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/lecture21a.html
1772-1837. “French social theorist who advocated a reconstruction of society based on communal associations of producers known as phalanges (phalanxes). His system came to be known as Fourierism.”
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9035043/Charles-Fourier
What does this have to do with the Arcades? Fourier presumably would have disliked them as monuments to industrial capitalism.

Page 147
“Empire is the style of revolutionary heroism for which the state is an end in itself.”
Intriguing, provocative to suggest that "empire" is a "style" and that it is not driven by high aims.
architectonic: 1. “relating to, or characteristic of architecture, design and construction. 2. relating to the scientific systematisation of the totality of knowledge.” http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/architectonic

Page 148
Epigraph: “Each epoch dreams the one to follow.”
Much of this page I don’t understand—leave it for now.

Page 149
Travail (1901) and Therese Raquin (1867):
Novels by French writer, intellectual and political activist Emile Zola, who was famous for his article “J’Accuse” (1898) in which he accused the French army of injustice and anti-Semitism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Zola

Daguerre: Inventor of photography (1839). Others had experimented with recording images seen through a lens, but he was the first to devise a method (and have it patented) that allowed such images to last. Before inventing the daguerreotype, he was a “Romantic painter and printmaker most famous until then as the proprietor of the Diorama, a popular Parisian spectacle featuring theatrical painting and lighting effects.” http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm

panorama: A view, but here the “painting in the panoramas” reference suggests that Benjamin is specifically referring to painting. “Panoramic paintings are massive artworks that reveal a wide, all-encompassing view of a particular subject, often a landscape, military battle, or historical event. They became especially popular in the 19th Century in Europe and the United States. A few have survived into the 21st Century and are on public display.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramic_painting
So, Daguerre was engaged in making visual spectacles, the diorama and the photograph, that are a lot like the panoramic paintings.

epigraph: “Sun, look out for yourself!”
This alludes to the technology of photography, in which sunlight (or an artificial light source) is used to illuminate and "transcribe" the scene to be photographed.

David: (1748-1825). “French painter, one of the central figures of Neoclassicism” http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/david/. Neoclassicism is “A French art style and movement that originated as a reaction to the Baroque in the mid-eighteenth century, and continued into the middle of the nineteenth century. It sought to revive the ideals of ancient Greek and Roman art. Neoclassic artists used classical forms to express their ideas about courage, sacrifice, and love of country.” http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/n/neoclassicism.html
From the examples given, it seems that neo-classical paintings are very “realistic,” clear and detailed—very suitable for a visual spectacle like a panorama, which is meant to create the illusion of a real landscape.

Page 150
“Daguerre is a pupil of the panorama painter Prevost, whose establishment is situated in the Passage des Panoramas.”
Aha! Another link between photography and panoramic painting.

Page 151
Grandville: French cariacaturist and political cartoonist. http://www.search.eb.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/eb/article-9037712

Page 152
Saint-Simonists: “(n.) A system of socialism in which the state owns all the property and the laborer is entitled to share according to the quality and amount of his work, founded by Saint Simon (1760-1825).” http://www.drwords.com/define/Saint-Simonism

“The world exhibitions glorify the exchange value of commodities. They create a framework in which commodities’ intrinsic value is eclipsed. They open up a phantasmagoria that people enter to be amused. The entertainment industry facilitates this by elevating people to the level of commodities… The enthronement of merchandise, with the aura of amusement surrounding it, is the secret theme of Grandville’s art.”

Okay, I’m starting to see the links now between world exhibitions, where commodities are displayed as if in a theme park, and the other ideas about visual spectacles, panoramas, photographs, and the Arcades, which are shopping galleries. The Arcades are important as a key site where this whole “phantasmagoria” of commodities occurs, and thus they connect to other sites (like the world exhibitions) and media of display (like photographs, panoramas, dioramas, and Grandville’s cartoons). In places like the Arcades, PEOPLE are on display, as much as PRODUCTS.