Here's a funny thing I noticed the the other day.
By now you should all be aware of this:
Hence, the light that fell from above, through the panes between the iron supports, was dirty and sad.
-Walter Benjamin, Arcades Project, [F1,1] p.150 (1927-40)
But what about this then eh?
The Zwinger [...] is altogether lovely, with such sudden sad passages [arcades] ...
-Samuel Beckett, Letter to Thomas McGreevy, 16/2/37
There are sad passages, the arcades leading up to the entrance on the garden side.
-Samuel Beckett, Letter to Günther Albrecht, 30/3/37
3 comments:
I am of course aware that Beckett was visiting a Baroque palace, rather than a shopping arcade.
Except that (whatever the English Wikipedia may claim) the Zwinger isn't actually a palace.
As a series of all-weather covered routes linking pavilions used mostly for entertainment, and with access restricted to the leisure class resident in the nearby Schloss and surrounding courtiers townhouses, Pöppelmann's structure was surely a proto-arcade.
By the way, were you aware of the suggestion that Caspar David Friedrich's "Two Men Contemplating The Moon" in the Dresden collection might have inspired Beckett to write Godot.
http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2009/05/beckett-and-painting-caspar-david.html
Today the picture is housed across town at the Gemäldegalerie Neue Meister but back in the 30s it would have been crammed into Semper's gallery at the Zwinger.
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