Photoessay #2078 - Erfahrung

In my class, we read Benjamin's (that j has an h sound) "Hashish in Maresilles" which actually is about somebody taking hashish in Marsilles.

He's been discussing two German concepts of experience

ehrlibris - lived experience
erfahrung - ongoing cumulative trascendant experience

Erfahrung might be described as experiencing the flash from a trancendant long ago epoch, possibly returning or witnessing a past that never was.

He mentioned Proust "I can hear the echo of great spaces traversed"

Many of us, maybe all of us have this experience, where you see in an instant something from long ago, the collective memory, a vision that's real but can't be documented.

As my professor says ... a higher order of conscience, no longer accessible to modernity.

The modernity which will anhilate the German Jews.  That's where he's going with this.

I can feel the tug of these shared anceint experiences.  Anyone who peers into the past wonders, am I seeing only a portion, is there something that will speak to me.

My current idea that Maier Zunder's handwriting in the journals is there for me to discover.

Modernity - so empirical and organized, don't we all know that there remains deep mystery within?

Picture of a tree with deep roots, somehow an ancient tree seems appropriate.