Does anybody know who the face on the cover of this edition of the Arcades Project belongs to?
On the inside cover it says it's a photograph of Benjamin c.1932, but that's blatantly not true, unless he had an alter ego called 'Waltraud'... I've always thought that the particularly passive expression on her face is wonderfully effective in preparing you for the dream-like state of the texts within, the fragmented face as the drifting gaze; passionate disinterest.
UPDATE! Thanks to Lang Rabbie, we have an answer! Its this:
Sarah Bernhardt as photographed by Nadar, apparently. Ah, Paris, capital of the 19th century...!
3 comments:
My Belknap/Harvard edition says that it is Sarah Bernhardt in 1864 photographed by Nadar
You might like to know she was the inspiration for Berma on Proust's novels
indeed- the wassheorwasshenot lover of Albertine... she also lived on an arcade for a while...
Post a Comment