last one for the night/month

"Tirelessly thought begins from new things, returning in a roundabout way to the same object. This continual pausing for breath is the mode most proper to the process of contemplation." Walter Benjamin, The Origin of the German Tragic Drama

"Only he who can view his past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in every present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue that has had all its limbs broken off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one's future must be hewn." Walter Benjamin - One Way Street.

Fragments for Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (July 15, 1892 – September 27, 1940) was a German-Jewish writer that wrote many essays, critiques, memoirs, letters, and short stories. He also translated many works, and was a philosopher that was associated with the Frankfurt School (basically, a perfect human being).

I came across this movie, "One Way Street: Fragments for Walter Benjamin" trying to find out how to buy the documentary "Who Killed Walter Benjamin" - a ridiculously expensive movie - but don't worry, I bought it.

This movie runs 58 minutes and has kinda cheesy scenes, but what's to be expected from 1992?
I will definitely watch it a few times, to get more out of it, I was really excited that the initial viewing was more caught in the moment of being giddy, rather than paying attention. Yes, I am that much of a nerd, that I nerd out, over nerd stuff.

I tried to do some research on the film, and results returned are from all over the place. Movies with the same name, shorter versions, different directors, different languages, different companies and so on. Which is fitting for the subject of the film.

The title is perfect as Walter left behind what many essentially call a perfect masterpiece, had it been completed.

I'm a little more interested in the other documentary "Who Killed Walter Benjamin" but haven't received it yet. I'll probably have a showing at my house when it arrives for me, my new roommates, and a few others.

anyway, I compressed this down into mp4 to share with my Frankfurt School professor I had over the summer. And if you're interested at all in anything Jewish, German, historical, or intellectual, or things that really, truly interest and move me - you can watch it too. Be warned, it will take a good amount of time to download it.

One Way Street: Fragments For Walter Benjamin part 1
One Way Street: Fragments For Walter Benjamin part 2
One Way Street: Fragments For Walter Benjamin part 3
One Way Street: Fragments For Walter Benjamin part 4

- in the event anyone involved with this project has a problem with me sharing it, you need to re-read Walter Benjamin.

Excavation and Memory

Language has unmistakably made plain that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but rather a medium. It is the medium of that which is experienced, just as earth is the medium in which ancient cities lie buried. He who seeks to approach his own buried past must not be afraid to return again and again to the same matter; to scatter it as one scatters earth, to turn it over as one turns over the soil. For the "matter itself" is no more than the strata which yield their long-sought secrets only to the most meticulous investigation. That is to say, they yield those images that, severed from all earlier associations, reside as treasures in the sober rooms of our later insights - like torsos in a collector's gallery. It is undoubtedly useful to plan excavations methodically. Yet no less indispensable is the cautious probing of the spade in the dark loam. And the man who merely makes an inventory of his findings, while failing to establish the exact location of where in today's ground the ancient treasures have been stored up, cheats himself of his richest prize. In this sense, for authentic memories, it is far less important that the investigator report on them than that he mark, quite precisely, the site where he gained possession of them. Epic and rhapsodic in the strictest sense, genuine memory must therefore yield an image of the person who remembers, in the same way a good archaeological report only informs us about the strata from which its findings originate, but also gives an account of the strata which first had to be broken through.
Walter Benjamin - Selected Writings Volume 2:2 1927-1934