Alberto Corsin Jimenez (Consejo Superior de
Investigaciones Cientificas,
Madrid)
The Baroque Enhancement
In a letter to Walter Benjamin in which he responds to material from the Passagen-Werk, Theodor Adorno once observed: ‘every single sentence here is and must be laden with political dynamite; but the further down such dynamite is buried, the greater its explosive force when detonated.’ The comment echoes an earlier remark by Benjamin himself when he described a plan for writing a ‘journal of current affairs that would seek to understand the epoch through ‘vertical penetration’ and ‘a rationality driven to the limits of the possible’.’ These are both baroque images: images of profundity, depth, interiority and the vertical effects of allegory.
