Spain

I have been invited to Spain for a week’s holiday. It’s possible that I might have internet access; also possible that I’ll have other priorities. One slight drawback is that I’ll miss both of the Zizek lectures (ICA + Birkbeck). Can someone make a detailed transcript and/ or tape recording and send it to me, ta.


He would sometimes linger over a word, considering it from all sides, and in doing so, often discovered in its individual syllables an unexpected meaning. One night at my house, he was struck by the dominance of a certain color in a room with white walls, a dominance that had, occurred without any intention on my part. The color was red. Several bunches of roses, carnations, and pomegranate flowers presented an entire spectrum of reds to which was added the stark red of a peasant woman's handkerchief, made even more vivid by the light of a lamp. Benjamin was quick to give the room its definition: 'A laboratory designed to extract the essence of the color red.' He then uttered the German word rot (red). 'Rot,' he said, 'is like a butterfly alighting upon each shade of the color red.' Later on his attention was drawn by the red handkerchief: 'To me, it occupies a space between 'torch' and 'torchon' (cloth).' In this manner he associated two words whose difference in meaning had drawn them away from their common etymology (torquere, to twist)."

Jean Selz, 'Walter Benjamin in Ibiza'.