.
 |
| Paris in the eighteenth century. Date of edition 1908 but plans show Paris in 1734-1739 drawn by Louis Bretez and edited by A Taride |
"It is a sad testimony to the underdeveloped amour-propre of most of the great
European cities that so very few of them - at any rate, none of the German cities
- have anything like the handy, minutely detailed, and durable map that exists for
Paris. I refer to the excellent publication by Taride, with its twenty-two maps of
all the Parisian arrondissements and the parks of Boulogne and Vincennes
Whoever has stood on a streetcorner of a strange city in bad weather and had to
deal with one of those large paper maps - which at eery gust swell up like a sail,
rip at the edges, and soon are no more than a little heap of dirty colored scraps
with which one torments oneself as with the pieces of a puzzle - learns from the
study of the Plan Taride what a city map can be. People whose imagination does
not wake at the perusal of such a text, people who would not rather dream of
their Paris experiences over a map than over photos or travel notes, are beyond
help."
Walter Benjamin Das Passagen-Werk (The Arcades Project), 1927-40
 |
| Walter Benjamin |
No comments:
Post a Comment