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intermediate spaces in this novel demonstrates a process of his changed perspectives and his becoming. Strether’s inner harmony in the French rural scenes is in line with the intimate nearness he finds in the French landscape painter Lambinet’s pictures.
4.1 Collecting as Homing
Collecting is a form of practical memory, and of all the profane manifestations of “nearness” it is the most binding. (Benjamin 205)
All of these—the “objective” data together with the other—come together, for the true collector, in every single one of his possessions, to form a whole magic encyclopedia, a world order, . . . (Benjamin 207)
In Benjamin’s “Collector” in The Arcades Project, a collector’s gatherings are featured with both one’s pursuit of past memory and novelties, and the bourgeoisie coziness in a cosmopolitan house. On one hand, Benjamin’s statement of collecting as
“a form of practical memory” and all “the profane manifestations of ‘nearness’”
exhibits a bourgeoisie collector’s homely intimacy in amidst of one’s private collections (205). On the other hand, Benjamin’s emphasis on the “true” collector’s fascination with “a whole magic encyclopedia” — “a world order” (207) in a constellation of his private possessions — marks out a collector’s cosmopolitan perspective. In particular, Benjamin’s juxtaposition of “practical memory” and
“profane manifestation” points to a bourgeoisie collection of merchandized items instead of valuable possessions. Each of the collected items demonstrates a spirit of cosmopolitanism.
According to Benjamin, each object contains a private history—a landscape—
and symbolizes worlds/cosmos. If Benjamin’s Paris is seen as a great domestic
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interior space, his embrace of “all human knowledge” (205) through the collector’s domestic space exhibits not only a collector’s homely comfort but one’s spirit of cosmopolitan. These collections represent not only their current images but also their
“entire past” (207) that demonstrates their cultural past in association with private memory. In Benjamin’s One-Way Street, an essayistic account of his daily
observations in Berlin, Benjamin’s collections manifest his topophilic feelings. His description of an antique spoon regarding its “capacity to feed” the heroes of “the greatest epic writers” (Benjamin 73) shows his nostalgic pursuit of homely intimacy, especially his memory with his family.
Benjamin’s strong “passion” for butterfly collections could be also seen as his infatuation with things in connection to a distant world. In his Berlin Childhood around 1900, Benjamin’s butterfly collection evokes his homely intimacy with his family remembrance in connection to the word “Brauhausberg” (52). In “Butterfly Hunt” (50-53), once Benjamin sees his butterfly collection in his room, he recalls the well-kept garden of “the Brauhausberg” near Potsdam (“Brewery” Hill) (52), where his family had summer residence: “The air teeming with butterflies in his boyhood room vibrates the word” (52). The name “the Brauhausberg,” imbued with “the wind and scents, foliage and sun,” reminds him of his cheerful summer at a “bluemisted hill” with his parents (52). All these surrounding images have been interwoven into a beautiful and unforgettable harmonious picture in connection with his emotional bond with his homeland.
A Benjaminian collector’s empathy with things always linked with the interior objects, indicating a sense of bourgeois coziness and cosmopolite’s topophilia. In his
“Exposé” of The Arcades Project, Benjamin’s concept regarding the connection between home and the world sheds light on our understanding of the interior, which is
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not only like a “shell” but “a box in the theater of the world” (4, 19). Benjamin’s idea of how “dwelling becomes a shell” (4) is close to Bachelard’s concept of “an
immense cosmos house” (Bachelard 51), where one finds inner peace in one’s utmost inner corner in one’s mind. Namely, a whole universe comes to inhabit in one’s house of imagination, an “immense cosmic house” — a house dynamically allows “the universe comes to inhabit his house” (Bachelard 51). Benjamin’s idea of a “shell”
refers to the pursuit of one “private individual” for homely comfort in one’s interior (Arcades Project 4, 19):
The private individual, who in the office has to deal with realities, needs the domestic interior to sustain him in his illusions. . . From this derive the phantasmagorias of the interior—which, for the private individual,
represents the universe. In the interior, he brings together remote locales and memories of the past. His living room is a box in the theater of the world. (19)
Empathy with things extinguishes the physical boundary between the interior and the exterior world. In an industrial society, the Benjaminian collector may sustain one’s individuality in one’s “universe” filled with collections, which brings the collector a sense of comfort. Owing to the emergence of the bourgeois, there is a pursuit of one’s individual “coziness” (Benjamin, Arcades Project 6) at home during the off-hours.
Thus, the habitant’s domestic interior filled with collections serves as the interface that connects one’s mind with one’s “universe” (19) or “shell” (4). Benjamin’s metaphor of “living room” as “a box in the theater of the world” (19) marks out the collector’s transcendental connection with things. In a sense, the collector’s topophilia can be considered as embracing “bourgeoisie security” (88) as Benjamin mentions in
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his Berlin Childhood around 1900.32 In The Arcades Project, Benjamin’s tracing of the etymology of “comfort” requires our special attention. “Comfort” originally refers to a sense of “consolation” (225). It is used extensively as an implication of “well-being,” and “rational conveniences” later (225). The interior is to a collector’s private
“universe” as the exterior is to the flâneur’s home on the streets. The common key factor is one’s intoxication with things, in which one is imbued with the comfortable feeling of “well-being” (19). For a true Benjaminian collector, home is therefore the interior where one may find one’s longing for things in connection to the past and the world, which brings him a sense of individual coziness and of intimacy.