Here we have a man whose job it is to gather the day's
refuse in the capital. Everything that the big city has thrown away, everything
it has lost, everything it has scorned, everything it has crushed underfoot he
catalogues and collects. He collates the annals of intemperance, the capharnaum
of waste. He sorts things out and selects judiciously: he collects like a miser
like a miser guarding a treasure, refuse which will assume the shape of useful or
gratifying objects between the jaws of the goddess of Industry." This
description is one extended metaphor for the poetic method, as Baudelaire
practiced it. Ragpicker and poet: the refuse concerns both.
Method of this project: literary montage. I needn't say
anything. Merely show. I shall purloin no valuables, appropriate no
ingenious formulations. But the rags, the refuse-these I will not inventory but
allow, in the only way possible, to come into their own: by making use of them.
The Arcades project wishes to pick up the refuse of history.
Like a poor and burdened man cleverly picking through the rubbish of the
previous day, the materialist historian selects from amongst all that is
disregarded and from the residues of history. At the library he is
unconcerned with what has been accredited as precious and valuable, but rather
is drawn towards historical refuse. Waste materials are to enter into
significant connections and fragments are used to gain a new perspective on
history.
Walter Benjamin
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