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Myslowitz-Braunschweig-Marseilles:

The Story of a Hashish-Rausch [1]

By Walter Benjamin [1930]

[From Walter Benjamin, Über Haschisch, ed. T.Rexroth, Frankfurt a.M., Suhrkamp Verlag, 1972; originally published in the German journal Uhu, November 1930, Translated by Scott J. Thompson (1993, Samos, Greece)]

This story is not one of mine. Whether Edward Scherlinger, the painter who I saw only that one evening when he told it, was a great storyteller or not, I won't say, for in this age of plagiarism, there are always a few listeners ready to credit a story to somebody else as soon as a person merely mentions that it was rendered faithfully. Be that as it may, I heard it one evening at one of Berlin's only classical spots for storytelling and listening, Lutter & Wegener's. Though it was pleasant enough sitting amongst our group at the round table, the conversation had for some time become scattered, taking on a muffled, marginal existence in groups of two or three who seemed unaware of one another. Then, in some context or other which has never been clear to me, my friend, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, tossed out the sentence that there was no one who had not already come within a hair of becoming a millionaire once in his life. There was laughter. The sentence was taken for one of his paradoxes. But then a peculiar thing happened. The longer we were occupied with debating this assertion, the more contemplative each of us became, reflecting back to such a point in our own lives when we had come the closest to touching the million. The story told by Scherlinger, who was never heard from again, belongs among the peculiar stories that came to light that evening, and I shall retell it as much as possible in his own words:

After the death of my father, he began, when a not entirely meager amount of capital fell into my hands, I hurriedly departed for France. I was lucky, above all else, to become acquainted with Marseilles before the Twenties had come to an end. Apart from all the other things for which it stood to me at that time, it was Marseilles, the home town of Monticelli, to whom I owed everything in my art. As for my capital, I left it untouched in the small private bank which had satisfactorily advised my father for decades. Moreover, the firm's junior director was, if not quite my friend, then an especially good acquaintance. He also promised me, with the utmost assurance, that he would keep a sharp eye on my deposit during the long period of my absence and, in the event a favorable chance of making some investment should arise, that he would immediately notify me. "You merely need to leave us a code word," he concluded. I looked at him perplexed. "That's to say, we can only fill orders received by telegraph," he explained, "if we're to protect ourselves against impropriety. Suppose we were to wire you and the telegram came into the wrong hands. We protect ourselves by arranging a code name for you to sign your telegraph orders with instead of your own."

I understood and yet for a moment was perplexed. After all, it's not always that easy to just slip into a strange name, like a costume. Thousands upon thousands of them are ready at hand; the thought, however trivial, paralyses one's choice, which is even further paralyzed by the feeling, albeit entirely hidden and barely conscious, of how imponderable the choice is and how grave the consequences are. Like a chess player who, having found himself in a dilemma, most wants to leave everything as it had been but feels his hand forced to make a move, I said, "Braunschweiger." I knew neither any person by that name nor the city whence it came.

Around noontime, one sultry July day, I arrived at the Gare St. Louis in Marseilles after a four-week-long rest in Paris. Friends had recommended the Hotel Regina, not far from the seaport. I allowed myself enough time to find accommodations there, to inspect the utility of the bedside lamp and the water-faucets and then set out on my way. Since it was my first time in this city, I was forced to fall back on my old traveler's rule of thumb. Contrary to the average passers-by who, having barely just arrived in a city, awkwardly shuffle around its center, I decided to first explore the outskirts, the city boundaries. I soon realized just how well this principle held good here. Never before had the first hour given me so much as this one between the inner harbors and docks, the warehouses, the quarters of the destitute, the scattered asylums of the poverty-stricken. City boundaries are indeed the exception of the city, the terrain upon which the great decisive battle between city and country rages. Nowhere is this more embittered than between Marseilles and the Provençal countryside. It is the close combat of telegraph poles versus agaves, barbed wire versus prickly palm trees, the billowy fog of stinking corridors versus the humidity of dark plane trees in brooding places, short-winded outside staircases versus the mighty hills. The long Rue de Lyon is the channel of gunpowder with which Marseilles has entrenched the countryside to explode Saint-Lazare, Saint-Antoine, Arenc and Septemes sky high, leaving the popular and commercial language showered with shell-splinters: Alimentation Moderne, Rue de Jamaique, Comptoir de la Limite, Savon Abat-Jour, Minoterie de la Campagne, Bar du Gaz, Bar Facultatif. And covering all of it is the dust which accumulates here from sea salt, chalk and mica. At that time it extended all the way to the outermost quay, used only by the largest ocean liners, beneath the piercing rays of the gradually sinking sun, between the bricked-up foundations of the old city on the left and the denuded hills or quarries on the right, to the towering Pont Transbordeur that seals off the old port, the quadrangle which the Phoenicians lay claim to here as a great outlet to the sea.

Though I had been pursuing my path through the most populous suburbs by myself, from here on in I felt myself being imperiously drawn into the ranks of celebrating sailors, homecoming longshoremen and promenading housewives who formed a procession which, bristling with children, moved along the cafes and bazaars, gradually losing its way into the side streets, and only reaching the main artery, La Cannebière, the street of commerce, stock exchange and foreigners, in the guise of the few mariners and flaneurs, which I was one of. A mountain range of 'souvenirs' stretches all along the bazaars here from one end of the port to the other. Seismic forces have heaped up this massif of glass flux, limestone and enamel where the ink-wells, steamships, anchors, mercury columns and sirens intermix. To me it was as if the pressure of a thousand atmospheres which this whole world of images was urging and convulsing and staggering beneath were the same force which tests itself in the firm hands of a sailor on women's thighs and women's breasts after a long voyage; the voluptuousness which urges a red or blue velvet heart from out of the mineral world of a shell pyx so that it may be pricked by pins or brooches; the same force which quakes the streets on payday.

In the midst of such thoughts I had long since left La Cannebière behind me. Without seeing much, I was beneath the trees of Allee de Meilhan, roaming along the window lattices of the Cours Puget until finally by Chance, who still as always hugs me to her bosom with my first step in a city, the narrow court led into the Passage de Lorette, the city morgue where, in the somnolent presence of a few men and women, the whole world seems to shrivel up into a single Sunday afternoon. Something of the sadness came over me which, to this day, I still love in the light of Monticelli's paintings. I believe that something imparts itself in such hours to the stranger who experiences it which otherwise would only be sensed by the older natives. For childhood is the water-witch of misery, and to know the sorrow of such gloriously radiant cities one needs to have been a child in them.

It would be a nice romantic touch, said Scherlinger smiling, were I now to describe how I had come across some hashish in some notorious dive or other by way of an Arab, who might have been a stoker on a cargo ship or a transporter on a barge. But such polish is of no use to me for I was perhaps more like these Arabs than the foreigners who are led into such places. As for the hashish, however, I did happen to have some with me on my travels. I don't believe that it was a subaltern wish to escape my sorrow at the time which induced me to eat the hashish upstairs in my room towards seven o'clock in the evening. Much more likely, it was an attempt to surrender myself completely to the city which had gently taken me by the scruff of the neck with a magical hand. As I've said, I was not a novice to the intoxicant. Whether it was my nearly daily depressions or the paltry society of unsuitable localities, I had so far never felt myself accepted by that community of cognoscenti with whose testimony, from Baudelaire's Les Paradis Artificiels to Hesse's Steppenwolf, I was entirely intimate. I lay upon the bed, read and smoked. Through the window across from me, far below, I had a view of one of the black narrow streets of the port district which are like the trace of a knife's incision in the body of the city. Thus did I savor the positive certainty that in this city of hundreds of thousands, where not a soul knew me, I could remain undisturbed, hidden in my dreams. The effect of the hashish was some time in coming, however. Three-quarters of an hour had already elapsed and I began to become suspicious with regard to the quality of the drug. Had I kept it for too long a time? Suddenly there was a loud knock at my door. Nothing could have been more unexplainable to me. I become mortally terrified but in no way made any attempt to open it, rather I inquired about the matter without altering my position in the least. The hotel porter: "A gentleman wishes to speak to you." "Let him come up," I replied. I had neither the presence of mind nor the courage to ask his name, but leaned against the bedposts, my heart palpitating, and stared at the crack of the open door until a uniform appeared in it. The 'gentleman' had been a dispatch courier:

RECOMMENDATION--

1000 ROYAL DUTCH FRIDAY.

PURCHASE OFFICIAL RATE.

WIRE APPROVAL.

I looked at the clock. It was eight. An urgent telegram could arrive quite early the next day at the Berlin office of my bank. I sent the courier away with a tip. Uneasiness and displeasure began to alternate in me. Uneasiness at having just now become burdened with a business matter, an errand; displeasure concerning the persisting absence of any effect from the hashish. It seemed to me that the most intelligent thing to do would be to make my way at once to the main post office, which I knew was open for sending telegrams until midnight. That I had to reply was made clear to me beyond doubt by the conscientiousness with which my consultant had advised me.

I became somewhat troubled by the conflicting thought that, should the hashish, contrary to my expectations, take effect, I might forget the prearranged code name. I therefore decided that it would be better not to delay a second longer. While I was descending the stairs I recalled the last time I had taken hashish---it had been several months before and I had been unable to quell the consuming hunger which had come over me late at night in my room. It therefore seemed advisable to purchase a bar of chocolate. From afar a shop window beckoned with boxes of bonbons, glittering tin-foil wrappers, and fine-looking bakery goods piled high. I entered the shop and stopped short. There was no one to be seen. But that made less an impression upon me than the completely peculiar arm chair, at which sight I must have concluded willy-nilly that, for the most part, in Marseilles one drinks chocolate sitting in a high chair of state, bearing a strong resemblance to an operating chair. At that moment the proprietor came running along in a white smock from the other end of the street, and I had just enough time to escape, laughing outloud at his offer to give me a shave and a haircut. Only now did I realize that the hashish had long begun to work its effect, and if the transformation of tins of powder into boxes of bonbons, chrome-plated cases into bars of chocolate and wigs and toupees into pyramids of cake had not already tipped me off to the fact, then my own laughter had been enough of a warning. For the high begins with such laughter or with laughter which, being quiet and intimate, is all the more blissful. And now I also recognized it in the infinite tenderness of the wind which was ruffling the fringe of the awning on the other side of the street.

At once, the demands which the hashish eater makes on time and space came into play. They are, as is well-known, absolutely regal. Versailles is not too great for one who has eaten hashish, nor eternity too long-lasting. And in the background of these colossal dimensions of the inner adventure, of the absolute duration and the immeasurable spatial realm, a wonderful humor lingers with that blissful smile, made all the more agreeable by the infinite dubiousness of all existing beings. In addition, I felt a lightness and determination in my stride, which turned the cobbled pavement of the large public square I crossed into the dirt of a country road along which I, brisk wanderer, traveled by night. At the end of this large square, however, towered an ugly, symmetrical building of halls, in the pediment of which a clock was illuminated: the post office. That it is ugly is what I say now; at that time I would not have allowed such a judgment. Not only because, we, upon having eaten hashish, know nothing of the ugly, but because at the time it evoked in me such a deep feeling of gratitude that this dark, expectant post office, waiting for me, prepared in all its chambers and cabinets to accept my invaluable approval and transmit it further, should make me a rich man. I was unable to turn my gaze away from it. Indeed, I felt how much would be missed were I to come too close and thus lose the entirety, and above all the illuminated clock, from my sight. Just at that moment at a spot on my right, the chairs and tables of a small, and now really quite notorious, bar moved in the darkness. It was still far enough away from the Apache quarter, and yet no bourgeois were sitting there. At best, there were a few poor shop-owner families from the neighborhood sitting next to some of the authentic harbor proletariat. In this small bar I took a seat. It was the one furthest in that direction which was still accessible without putting me in danger, and here, in my inebriated state, I had assessed it with the same certainty with which a deeply exhausted person understands how to fill a glass to the very brim without spilling a drop, whereas a person with refreshed senses would never be in a position to do so. Yet, barely had it felt me relaxing than the hashish began to perform its magic with a primitive acuity which I had never experienced before, nor have I experienced since; namely, it allowed me to become a physiognomist. I, who had otherwise never been capable of recognizing distant acquaintances, of keeping facial features in my memory, suddenly became dead stuck on the forms of the faces which surrounded me, and which I generally would have avoided for two reasons: neither would I have wished to draw their attention to myself, nor would I have been able to bear their brutality. I now grasped all at once how to a painter---has it not happened to Leonardo and many others?-- ugliness is the true reservoir of beauty, better than the receptacles of its treasure; just as the jagged mountain-chain could appear with all the interior Gold of the Beautiful sparkling from its folded strata, vistas and ranges. I particularly recall an infinitely bestial and vulgar face of one of the men, from which the deeply moving 'wrinkles of abandon' suddenly struck me. It was men's faces which appealed to me most in this context. And now, too, I began the long sustained game in which an acquaintance surfaced up in front of me in each new face. Often I knew his name, often again not. The deception vanished as deceptions in dreams vanish, that is, not in shame and with oneself compromised, but rather untroubled and friendly like a being who has performed its obligation. The man sitting nearest to me, however, a petit bourgeois according to his demeanor, incessantly changed the form, expression, and corpulence of his face. His hairstyle, a pair of black-rimmed spectacles made him now severe, now genial. I said to myself, certainly he couldn't change so quickly, but that did nothing. And he already had had many lives behind him when he suddenly became a secondary school pupil in a small, eastern European city. He had a handsome cultivated study. I asked myself: where has this young man acquired so much culture? What is his father's occupation? Draper or grain agent? Suddenly I knew that it was Myslowitz. I looked up, and there at the end of the square, no, completely at the end of the town, I actually saw the Gymnasium of Myslowitz standing there and the school clock. Was it standing still, for it didn't move forwards? It was shortly after eleven. The lesson must have already begun. I sank down into this picture, finding no more footing. The people who had just drawn me under their spell ---or had that been two hours earlier?--- were as if swept aside. "From century to century, things get stranger" went through my head. I was extremely reluctant to partake of the wine which I had ordered. A piece of ice swam in the glass. I don't know how long I sat musing on the images which inhabited it. But when I looked up again at the square, I saw that it had the tendency to alter itself with each person who set foot on it. It was as if it formed a figure [in relation] to the person which, mind you, had nothing to do with how he saw it, but rather was closer to the great portraitists of the 17th Century who cast persons of title in relief by positioning them in front of porticos and windows.

Suddenly I roused with a jerk from the deepest reverie. It was entirely light within me and I knew but one thing: the telegram. It must be expedited at once. In order to stay completely alert, I ordered a black coffee. Then it began to take half an eternity until the waiter appeared with the cup. Greedily I clutched at it, the aroma rose to my nose, but my hand suddenly paused a few fingers' breadth from my lips, to my own astonishment or from astonishment, who knows? All of a sudden I saw through the instinctive haste of my arm, and taking account of the beguiling aroma of the coffee it only now occurred to me what this drink does to every hashish eater at the zenith of his pleasure, namely that it increases the effect of the intoxicant unlike anything else. For that reason I wanted to stop myself and in mid-air, it remained suspended before me in the void by my arm, which began to grow numb gripping the cup dead and motionless like an emblem, a holy stone or bone. My gaze fell upon the creases in my white beach-trousers. I recognized them, creases of the burnoose; my gaze fell upon my hand. I recognized it, a brown, Ethiopian hand. And as my lips continued to purse tightly together, refusing the drink and words alike, a smile rose to them from within me, a haughty, African, Sardanapalan smile, the smile of a man who is on the verge of seeing through the course of the world and destiny, and for whom things and names no longer contain secrets. Brown and silent [German: braun and schweigend] I saw myself sitting there...

BRAUN-SCHWEIGER! The 'open sesame' of this name which should conceal all riches in its interior had disclosed itself to me. There must have seemed no end to the compassion with which I was now smiling as I reflected for the first time on the Braunschweigers who live there in their little central German city without knowing anything of the magical powers with which their name has been endowed. At this point, all the church towers of Marseilles chimed in like a choir, festive and confirming, with their stroke of midnight.

It grew dark, the bar closed. I glided along the quayside and read one after another the names of the boats docked there. At the same time I was overcome by an incomprehensible cheerfulness and I smiled in the face of row upon row of names of girls from France: Marguerite, Louise, Renee, Yvonne, Lucile--- it seemed to me that the love which was promised to these boats along with their names was wonderful, beautiful and touching. Next to the last one of these stood a stone bench. [German: Bank]. "Bank" I said softly to myself and frowned because it didn't include the firm's name in gold letters on a black background. That was the last clear thought which I formulated that night. The next one was bequeathed me by the noon paper which, when I awoke on the bench in the hot afternoon sun overlooking the water, read:

>>SENSATIONELLE HAUSSE IN ROYAL DUTCH<<

[SENSATIONAL HIGH IN ROYAL DUTCH!]

Never in my experience, concluded the storyteller, have I felt so vigorous, clear and festive after a rausch.

--Translated by Scott J. Thompson, © 1993

Endnotes:

[1] Translator's Note: The German word "Rausch" has only recently been adopted in English speaking countries as rausch and may still be unfamiliar to some readers. Etymologically speaking, the English cognate is "rush," and a number of important works on Benjamin, e.g. Susan Buck-Morss's Origin of Negative Dialectics have so translated this word. Buck-Morss has also translated rausch as "high." Edmund Jephcott has translated the word as "trance," but this is a more accurate translation of the German word "Entrückung" and fails to capture the essential characteristics of "whirling, swirling, buzzing and thundering" which seem particularly appropriate when "Rausch" is used in an adjectival form such as "rauschendes Wasser" [rushing water]. Werner Dannhauser has even translated "haschisch-rausch" as "hashish trip". Despite the etymological correctness of the English "rush," the numerous slang connotations of this word and its frequent use to describe the sensation of velocity experienced in amphetamine-like substances have led us to opt for the German original, and we have found precedents in scholars like Margaret Cohen, whose Profane Illumination has preserved the original as well. Benjamin scholar, John McCole has astutely presented the case for this usage in his Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition. "'Rausch' is far more suggestive than the English equivalent 'intoxication': it quite naturally bears the connotations of such overwhelming feelings as exhilaration, ecstasy, euphoria, rapture, and passion; its onomatopoetic qualities have an equivalent in the slang term 'rush'. 'Intoxication' is the only real option for rendering "Rausch" in English, but its strong associations with alcohol and toxicity can be misleading. Benjamin referred to it to refer to various states of transport. . ."

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