Haschisch in Marseille

Walter Benjamin, R. Sieburth

Minnesota Review, Number 1, Fall 1973 (New Series), pp. 132-139 (Article)

Published by Duke University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/427042/summary

[ Access provided at 28 Oct 2020 17:22 GMT from Freie Universitaet Berlin ]
 WALTER BENJAMIN

HASCHISCH IN MARSEILLE
TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

Benjamin took haschisch as well as mescalin periodically during

the late 20' s and early 30's. Although most of his drug-experiences
took place under the medical supervision of the pioneer Berlin research
team of Joël and Fränkel, Benjamin also experimented more casually
with some friends (most notably the philosopher Ernst Bloch) and, less
frequently, alone. The text "Haschisch in Marseille" falls into the
latter category of solitary experiment and is therefore more palpably,
and almost nostalgically, inscribed in the Baudelairean ethos of
intoxication. Indeed, it is above all Baudelaire, whose prose poems
Benjamin had translated as early as 1923, who provides the impetus
and context for his ventures into "les paradis artificiels" - - for
Benjamin, the most profoundly Francophile of his literary generation,
had always located the Tradition of the New to the west of the Rhine.
Marseille, in this sense, takes on added significance as the locus
of his experiment with haschisch. On the one hand, as an urban center
it allows him, in his wanderings, to extract that particularly modern
''poesie des villes" (learned from Baudelaire's Tableaux parisiens)
which, combined with a sterner -Marxist analytical method, gives
Benjamin's writings their absolutely individual blend of luminous
detail and generalized sweep. Oa the other hand, the geographic
setting of Marseille places it within that crucial southern perimeter
of the German mind; from Goethe's Italian Journey through the later
Nietzsche, Mann and Benn, German writers have located imaginative
liberation under the classic azure of mediterranean skies. Benjamin is
no exception; the zones of residence in his own uprooted life (Capri,
Paris, Ibiza, San Remo as well as Germany) parallel the fruitful
tension in his thought between a 19th century Latin aestheticism and
a hard-nosed 20th century Marxism (the "plumpes Denken" advocated
by his friend Brecht).
"Haschisch in Marseille," written in September, 1928, is contem-
porary with Benjamin's interest in French Surrealism, for he saw very
clearly that any true revolution would have to be based on the dual
dicta of Marx's "changer le monde" and Rimbaud's "changer la vie"
and that the liberation of consciousness from the perceptual chains
of bourgeois culture is the absolute prerequisite for the political or
economic annihilation of that system. Haschisch, Benjamin writes in
his essay on Surrealism, can serve as a propaedeutic for the "profane
illumination" of materialistic or anthropological (as opposed to religious)
inspiration on which such revolutionary activity must be based. By
"profane illumination' ' Benjamin essentially means that experience
of the aura, which capitalist technology has eliminated from the modern
world. "Experience of the aura," he notes in his discussion of Baude-
laire, "rests on the transposition of a response common in human
relationships to the relationship between the inanimate or natural
object and man ... To perceive the aura of an object we look at
means to invest it with the ability to look at us in return."
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 But whereas Baudelaire, in the wake of Poe, used drugs as a
vehicle to get "anywhere out of this world," Benjamin's aura-inducing
haschisch leads him directly into the material universe - - hence the
notion of a profane, nontranscendental, illumination (Hegel's or Rilke's
"in den Sachen sein, um über den Sachen zu sein"). Again, as he
writes in reference to the Surrealists, "we penetrate into the mystery
only inasmuch as we rediscover it in the quotidian, by means of a
dialectical viewpoint that recognizes the quotidian as impenetrable
and the impenetrable as quotidian." This making new of the habitual,
this almost allegorical sense of wonder and of the occult depths of
the cliche which Benjamin found not only in Baudelaire but in Proust
and Breton's Nadja as well, is also, in its more dialectical form,
cognate to Brecht's alienation-effector the Russian Formalists' notion
of ostranenie (both of which would ultimately derive from Schlegel's
concept of Romantic Irony). As Kraus puts it; "The closer one looks
at a word, the further it looks back."
Aura, we learn from Benjamin's other scattered writings on drugs,
is also closely associated with ornament and nuance. As such, it
might be beet defined as the experiencing of the depth of the surface,
as that sudden illumination in which the detail, as detail, becomes
eloquent of the whole, becomes, in a word, an emblem in a larger
allegory. Related both to Baudelaire's andNovalis' concept of arabesque
(the former's dandy is but the human embodiment of this) as pure
surface form, the ornament qua emblem is, like Pound's definition of
a vortex, "a radiant node or cluster . . . from which and through
which and into which ideas are constantly rushing." Not frozen into
a single viewpoint, but rather forever fluid, as in Cubist multiple
perspective (cf. Benjamin's description, a la de Chirico, of a square
in Marseille), the aura haschisch catalyzes is eminently metamorphic:
an identity, an integrity within change.
This revelation of identity (in both senses) under haschisch leads
Benjamin into the magical realm of Baudelairean correspondences: he
ambles through Marseille as through a forest of symbols of his own
devising; every object, every face, every situation is laden with
analogies which, as he looks now through his eye and not merely
with it, are his to parse and decipher. Like those other privileged
figures of Benjamin's essays - - the flaneur, the reader, the collector,
the dreamer, the translator - - the haschisch-eater is also a kind of
hero of modern life, an illumine who saunters across the bleakness of
the modern industrial city, sifting through the human and material
rubble, chancing on sudden synapses which, like bursts of love or
laughter, strike unexpected sparks across the falling sky.
R. S ieburth

Preliminary remarks: One of the first signs that haschisch

is beginning to take effect "is a sinking feeling of foreboding
and anxiety: things strange and inescapable loom up; single
or clustered images, long-submerged memories appear; entire
scenes and situations become vivid, initially exciting interest
and even pleasure, but in the end, if no respite is possible,
causing suffering and fatigue. One is surprised and overpowered
by everything that happens, including one's own words and
actions. One's laughter, one's utterances seem like external
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events. One also arrives at experiences that verge on inspiration
or illumination. Space can expand, the floor can slope off;
atmospheric sensations occur: haze, opacity, heavy air; colors
grow brighter, more lustrous; objects become more beautiful or
else massive, menacing. None of this evolves continuously;
more typical is a prolonged alternation between states of dream
and waking, a constant and ultimately exhausting hurtling
between entirely distinct worlds of consciousness; this sinking
or surfacing can take place in the middle of a sentence. The
drug-users account of all this takes a form which deviates
considerably from the norm. The sudden loss of all memory of
the immediate past affects his coherence, his thought cannot
shape itself into words, the situations can acquire such a
compelling hilarity that the haschisch-eater is, for minutes on
end, capable only of laughter. His memory of the intoxication
is surprisingly sharp. - -It is curious that the effects of haschisch
have not yet been studied experimentally. The best description
of the workings of haschisch is Baudelaire's Paradis artificiels."
(From Joël and Frankel: "Der Haschischrausch, " Klinische
Wochenschrift, 1926, v. 37.)

Marseille, July 29. Took haschisch, after much hesitation,

at 7 P.M. I had been to Aix that day. In the absolute certainty
that, as a stranger in this city of several hundred thousand, no
one will disturb me, I lie on my bed. But a small child crying
annoys me. It seems as if three quarters of an hour have already
passed, but in fact it has only been twenty minutes . . . Read
and smoked, lying on the bed. Across from me, the same old
view of the bowels of Marseille. The street I've seen so often
seems like a knife-cut.
I finally left the hotel, thinking that the drug was working
or that its effect was so weak that I could dispense with the
precaution of staying in my room. First stop: the cafe at the
corner of Cannebière and Cours Belsunce. To the right coming
from the harbor, therefore not my usual cafe. And now? Simply a
steady benevolence, expecting warmth from passers-by. The
feeling of isolation is quite quickly lost. My cane begins to
make me especially happy. One becomes so tender, fearing
even a shadow falling on a piece of paper might harm it. Disgust
vanishes. One reads the posters on pissoirs. I wouldn't be
surprised if this or that person came towards me. Either way,
it leaves me indifferent. Yet there's too much noise for me here.
Now the spatial and temporal pretensions of the haschisch-
eater become evident. They are, as is well known, absolutely
royal. For him Versailles is not too large, nor eternity too long.
And behind these immense dimensions of inner experience, of
absolute duration and immeasurable space, there remains a
strange and serene humor, particularly related to the contin-
gencies of the spatial and temporal world. I experience this
infinite humor in the Restaurant Basso when I learn that, just
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as I was about to sit down there ior eternity, they are no longer
serving hot dinners. Nevertheless the sense thereafter that all
this is bright, visited, animated and will remain so. I must note
how I found my seat. I particularly wanted the view one gets of
the Vieux-Port from the upper stories. As I was walking along
the street I spied an unoccupied table on the third floor terrace.
In the end, however, I only goc as far as the second floor. Most
of the tables by the window were taken. I therefore approached
a very large table that had just been vacated. But just as I was
sitting down I realized the disproportion of placing myself at a
table of such size; I was so ashamed that I walked straight
across the room to a more modest table which I had just noticed.
But the meal came later. Earlier there was the little bar
on the harbor. I had just decided to turn back again because a
concert, or rather a brass-choir, seemed to be blasting forth
from there. Luckily I managed to realize that it was only the
howling of car horns. Already on my way to the Vieux-Port,
there was this amazing ease and assurance to my steps; under
my feet the rocky, unarticulated ground of the large square
became a country road on which I, a vigorous vagabond, strode
through the night. For at this point, unsure I was capable of
controlling my reactions, I was still avoiding the Cannebière.
In the small bar by the harbor the haschisch began to play out
its canonic magic with a primitive acuity the like of which I had
never known before. I became, in effect, a physiognomist, or at
least an observer of physiognomies, and I experienced something
entirely novel: I obstinately seized on the forms of the faces
around me - - for the most part they were incredibly coarse or
repulsive. Faces which I normally would have shunned, wishing
neither to attract their attention nor to endure their brutality.
This bar was a fairly advanced outpost. (The furthest, 1 believe,
to which I still had access without danger and which, in my
intoxication. I had measured with the assurance of a man who,
though dead-tired, fills a glass to the brim without spilling a
single drop - - a feat of which he would have been incapable
had his senses been entirely alert.) Though still far enough
from the rue Bouterie, there was no middle-class clientele here:
at most, sitting next to the real harbor proletariat, a few petty
bourgeois families from the neighborhood. I suddenly realized
how to a painter - - didn't this happen to Rembrandt and many
others? - -ugliness might seem like the true reservoir of beauty,
better than a treasure chest, but like a mountain torn asunder,
whose inner aesthetic gold flashes through the creases, the
eyes, the features. I especially remember the absolutely bestial,
vulgar face of a man whose "wrinkles of resignation" deeply
shook me. It was above all men's faces which thus struck me.
Then a long, sustained game started up, in which acquaintances
of mine would surge from the features of every passing face. At
times I would remember their names, at times, forget; the illusion
would disappear like a dream, without shame or compromise,
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but rather, serenely, amiably, like someone who has fulfilled
all his obligations. Under these circumstances there could be
no more question of solitude. Did I keep myself company? Cer-
tainly, although not altogether explicitly. Nor do I know whether
I would have been that happy with it. Rather, I became the
most clever, tender, brazen pimp towards myself and procured
myself things with the double certainty of someone who knows
and who has studied the desires of his client thoroughly. - -
Then half an eternity began before the waiter reappeared. Unable
to endure the wait any longer, I went to the bar and paid at the
counter. Whether tips are expected in this type of bistro. 1 don't
know. Under other circumstances I certainly would have left
one. But haschisch made me rather stingy yesterday - - afraid
of attracting attention to myself through extravagance, I managed
to achieve the exact opposite.
The same thing at Basso's. First I ordered a dozen oysters.
The waiter immediately wanted me to order the second course
as well. I pointed to some local specialty. He returned to tell
me that they were out of it. My eyes wandered over the menu, I
would arrive at a decision and then, distracted by a dish imme-
diately above the one I had just chosen, change my mind again
until I had finally climbed back up to the very first item on the
list. This was not gluttony on my part, but rather simply polite-
ness towards those dishes which I was afraid of offending by
rejecting. In short, I ended up with a pâté de Lyon. Lion-pastry,
I laughed, as it lay on my plate; but then noted with disdain:
this is just the delicate flesh of a hare or chick or whatever.
For in my leonine hunger I could have gobbled an entire lion
without overeating. At any rate, I had already decided to leave
Basso's when I was through (this was around 10:30) and go
somewhere else for a second dinner.
But to return to how I got to Basso's. As I walked along
the docks I read the successive names of the boats anchored
there and was overcome with mysterious mirth: one after another
I laughed every French name in the face. The love bestowed
on these boats and their names struck me as amazingly beautiful
and moving. The only one that somewhat dampened my spirits
was a certain "Aero ?" which reminded me of the air-war. I
walked by it hurriedly - - just as in the bar I had previously
left I had avoided the stares of certain menacing, deformed faces.
Looking out from the second floor of Basso's, the previous
games started playing themselves out again. The square facing
the harbor was the palette on which my imagination mixed the
geographical givens at whim, experimenting with various com-
binations like a painters dreaming over his oils. I hesitated
over the wine; it was a half-bottle of Cassis. A piece of ice
swam in the glass. But in effect the wine worked quite well with
the drug. 1 had chosen my particular table because I could look
out over the shady square below. As I was aimlessly glancing
down, I noticed that the square seemed to change with each
136
person that entered it; it was as if the person gave it a shape
which of course had nothing to do with how he saw it but rather
with the aspect of a window or a colonnade which the great 17th
century portrait-painters used to modify according to the character
of the model whom they posed in front of these props. Later,
looking down, I noted: "Things get stranger every century."
I should make this general observation: the solitude of this
type of intoxication has its darker sides. To speak only of its
physical effects, there was a moment in the bar when the pressure
on my diaphragm sought relief in a buzzing of the ears. And
without doubt, much that is truly beautiful and evident remains
dormant. On the other hand, though, solitude functions as a
filter. What one writes down the following day is more than an
account of impressions; during the night, the intoxication
settles around the quotidien with beautiful prismatic edges, thus
shaping a kind of figure and becoming more memorable. I would
say it contracts and takes the form of a flower.
To unravel the riddles of the pleasures of intoxication one
should think of Ariadne's thread. What delight resides in the
simple act of unrolling a ball of string! It is a delight deeply
related to that involved in drugs and creativity. We advance and
in the process discover the meanders of the cave; and yet the
pleasures of such discovery depend entirely on that other
rhythmic joy which consists in the unwinding of the string. Does
not the pleasure of all (or at least of prosaic) productivity
derive precisely from unravelling an artistically wound skein
with such certainty? Under the effects of haschisch we are
prosecreatures whose pleasures are raised to the highest power.
More elusive than all the preceding was the profound sense
of happiness subsequently felt in a square contiguous to the
Cannebière where rue Paradis runs into the public gardens.
Fortunately I find this phrase in my journal: "One always has
to spoon the same thing out of reality." Several weeks previously
I had noted another phrase by Johannes B. Jensen that said
something more or less similar: "Richard was a young man who
had a sense for everything in the world that was identical."
This phrase pleased me a great deal. It makes it possible for
me to confront the rational -politi cal meaning I had formerly
given it with the magical -individual nature of yesterday's
experience. Whereas I had previously interpreted Jensen's
phrase as saying that things, as we well know, are so thoroughly
technicized and rationalized that today the particular only
resides in nuances, I now saw the phrase in a completely dif-
ferent light. For I could only see nuances now - - and yet they
were all alike. I stared at the pavement below me, thanks to
a kind of salve which propelled me over it, as if it were in
fact identical to Parisian pavement. One often says: stones
for bread. These paving stones were the bread of my imagination,
suddenly famished to taste the essential likeness of all lands
and place. And yet I was immensely proud to realize how few
shared my sitting here in Marseille tonight under the effects
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of haschisch, that my inability to fear the unhappiness and
solitude soon to come was also due to the drug. At this stage
a nearby nightclub's music which had been pursuing me played
its role. B. passed by me in a cab. He whisked by exactly as U.
had earlier surged from the shadows of the boats in the guise
of a loiterer and pimp. But not only acquaintances of mine
appeared to me. Plunged into tiie depths by this point, two
figures - - good citizens, hoodlums, whatever - -passed by me
and I perceived them as "Dante and Petrarch." "All men are
brothers." Thus began a chain of thought which I can no
longer reconstruct. Its final link, however, was undoubtedly
far less banal than the first and most probably culminated in
animal images.
The tram that briefly stopped in front of me said "Barnabe"
on it. And it seemed to me that the sad, desolate tale of Barnaby
was not a bad destination fora tram in the outskirts of Marseille.
A fine scene was taking place outside the door of a dance-hall.
A Chinaman was walking back and forth in blue silk pants and
bright pink silk jacket. He was the doorman. In the entry-way
girls were visible. I felt no desire. I was amused watching a
boy leave witii a girl in a white dress and was immediately
forced to think: "She just ran away from him in her nightgown
and he's trying to get her to come back. So it goes." I flattered
myself with the thought that I was located here at the vortex
of all debauchery — by "here" I meant not the city but the
small, uneventful spot where I was sitting. But the events
happened in such a way that her apparition touched me with
a magic wand and I sank away from her into a dream. In such
moments men and things behave like those props and puppets
made of elder-pith which are placed in glass-covered tin boxes
and which, when the pane is rubbed, become electric and at
every moment assume the strangest positions vis-à-vis each
other.
The music which in the meantime continued to rise and fall
I called the straw rods of jazz. I have forgotten why I decided
to tap my feet to the beat. It was against my upbringing and I did
it not without inner reservations. There were points when the
acoustic intensity drowned out all other sensations. Especially
in the little bar everything was submerged by the noise not of
the street but of voices. The strangest thing about this vocal
din was that it sounded like dialect. Suddenly it seemed to me
that the inhabitants of Marseille spoke defective French and
had remained at the stage of dialect. The alienation-effect
perhaps operative here and which Kraus has nicely formulated - -
"The closer one looks at a word, the further it looks back"
- - also seems to extend to visual perception. At any rate I find
among my jottings this astonished notation: "How things resist
observation."
It all faded as I walked up the Cannebière and turned off
into the Cours Belsunce to have some ice-cream in a small
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cafe. It was not far from that first cafe of the evening where
the sight of a few fringes ,undulating in the breeze evoked the
happiness of love in me, convincing me that the haschisch had
started to work. And when I remember this state of mind, I would
like to believe that haschisch knows how to persuade nature
to grant us - - less selfishly - - diat squandering of our own
existence particular to love. For if during those moments in
which we love, our existence glides through nature's fingers
like golden coins which she cannot hold and lets slip by so that
she might thus obtain a new-birth, so now, with her hands full,
she hurls us into existence, unable to hope or expect anything.
- - Sept. 1928

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