The endless successions, in which the sameĬontrivances, little animals or plant forms suddenly surface in front Present before the smoker objects particularly Translation: It is highly characteristic of the reverie that it tends to Ungestalte, kaum geformte Entwürfe eines primitiven Ornaments dar. Tierchen oder Pflanzenformen auftauchen, stellen gewissermaßen Reihen, in denen da vor ihm immer wieder die gleichen Utensilien, One discovers enough similarity and correspondence to make for anĮs ist höchst eigentümlich, daß die Phantasie dem Raucher Objekte und zumal besonders kleine gern serienweise vorstellt. Marseilles") or "the ornamental" in his Crocknotizen (Crock Notes), Unfathomable mystery of pure being") with Benjamin's comments on theĭelicate dance of fringe hanging from an awning ("Hashish in Hieroglyphs that stand in some peculiarly expressive way for the If one compares Huxley's comments on the folds in draperiesĭepicted in classical western artworks ("draperies are living Viertel's personal physician in Berlin had been none other than Dr.Įrnst Joël, the psychopathologist who initiated Benjamin into the ToĪdd the finishing touch to the intricate irony, he would haveĭiscovered, had he not already known, that writer-actress Salka Whom he could have communicated his own mescaline experience of May 22, 1934 almost two decades before Huxley's mescaline experience. Musical questions related to Doctor Faustus) and with Aldous Huxley, to he would noĭoubt have joined Salka Viertel's salon in Los Angeles along with hisĪssociates Bertolt Brecht and Theodor Adorno, and there he wouldĪlso have come into contact with Thomas Mann (who was consulting Adorno on Had Benjamin been successful in his flight to the U.S. While under the influence of psychopharmaka. There are indeed some striking similarities in their observations Huxley's semi-theosophical "Mind-at-Large" (see his Doors of Perception), Illumination) stands in marked contrast to While Benjamin's concept of Profane Erleuchtung (Profane Rescuing the energies of the cosmic-rausch of the ancient world for It was precisely to jar the post-industrial self loose from itsĭe-humanized and well-adjusted mask that Walter Benjamin advocated Visionary inebriants evidently threatened their "masks of composure". Which is always so predictably horrified by displays of passion. MannĪnd Lukács represent that "grandeur in repose" of neo-classicism, On Expressionism, particularly those between Lukács and Bloch. We can locate the germs of their anti-inebriant bigotry in the debates Irrational that would appear to be based on certain aesthetic biases. Western literature, represent an academic attitude toward the Mann and Lukács, who have no doubt made very valuable contributions to Threatening the performance principle of Late Capital's global sweat War on Drugs, a ‘war’ which has mobilized the entire U.S.Īrmed forces to root out the demonized forces of irrationalism Machine, one which had also functioned quite well under the Nazis, when it was called die Rauschgiftbekämpfung (the Combatting of Drugs). To consider was that they were playing into the hands of a propaganda Mind-control and late capitalist chemical escapism. Responsibility of intellectuals in the face of neo-fascist "glorifying" his mescaline experiences to the world they wereĬonvinced that their position represented reason and the When Thomas Mann and Georg Lukács reprimanded Aldous Huxley for Thompson's From 'Rausch' to Rebellion: Walter Benjamin's On Hashish and the Aesthetic Dimensions of Prohibitionist Realism. This article (composed by Freya and posted as a comment to an article on the Rigorous Intuition blog) consists mainly of extracts from Scott J. Walter Benjamin and Profane Illumination Walter Benjamin and Profane Illumination
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