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wlpr: Bataille, Benjamin and the Bibliotheque Nationale

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WORLD LIT PHILOSOPHY RELIGION at RPL

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 28, 2012

Bataille, Benjamin and the

Bibliotheque Nationale
BEING FRIENDS WITH THE LIBRARIAN IN THE BIBLIOTHQUE NATIONALE

December 29, 2009

Lorcan Dempsey
[I bring back this entry prompted by the selection of The Arcades Project
in the series of canonical works in the Times Higher Education
Supplement. It was originally published on July 13 2007.]
There is a passage in a letter from Walter Benjamin to Theodor Adorno
where he suggests removing a reference to Georges Bataille from a
document. Bataille, in addition to his other accomplishments, was a
librarian at the Bibliothque Nationale de France. Benjamin writes:
And in this way my own relationship with Georges Bataille will
not be adversely affected either, something I would like to
maintain, both because of his assistance at the Bibliothque
Nationale, and because of my plans for naturalization. - The
fragment would not escape his attention since the Institute
journal is openly displayed in the reading room where he often
works; and he is hardly the type of person to react serenely to
its contents. [Theodor W Adorno and Walter Benjamin. The
complete correspondence, 1928-1940. p. 276]
I was reminded of this passage as I read Jeremy Harding's discussion in
the current London Review of Books of Walter Benjamin's 'last day'
before his death in 1940 while trying to flee to the US.
Benjamin had left various papers, including the manuscript of his Arcades
Project, with Bataille for safe-keeping. Bataille hid them in the library. The
Arcades Project is a massive unfinished work, a weaving of quotations
and Benjamin's own text.
So the library comes in at three levels. At one, it is important for the
scholar to keep in with the librarian ;-) At a second, the librarian receives a
manuscript on the eve of flight and keeps it safely in the library from where
it is retrieved and published. At a third, is it possible to imagine a book
which rests so much on quotations without the libraries which preserve
the scholarly and cultural record the quotations point to and make it
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