Interesting paper on 'Walter, Benjamin, Surrealism and Photography' by Rajeev S. Patke

Walter Benjamin, Surrealism and Photography

Rajeev S. Patke

National University of Singapore

[Paper presented at Workshop on ‘Literature as Revolt in Twentieth Century Europe’, 17 August 1998, The University of Haifa, Israel (6^th ISSEI Conference)]

Benjamin wrote his essay on Surrealism during 1928, when the Surrealist movement was still in what André Breton called its transition from an "intuitive" to a "reasoning" phase.¹ Benjamin's recent work, the city-montage of One-Way Street (1928), had taken on the challenges presented to the writer by the natural history of the modern, post-Baudelairean, urban landscape of Europe. It had given him a presentiment of what was to become the Arcades project, the main preoccupation of his last decade. These developments were accompanied by the onset of a highly personal commitment to Marxism. In this context, his relation to the Surrealists was adventitious and fortuitous. He was neither part of the movement, nor close to its members, though he looked on, first with a keen—and then with a disappointed—eye on their activities in Paris.

via courses.nus.edu.sg

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