Given Heed Already to a Great Many Things
Whoever follows traces must not only pay attention; above all, he must have given heed already to a great many things. (The hunter must know about the hoof of the animal whose trail he is on; he must know the hour when that animal goes to drink; he must know the course of the river to which it tums, and the location of the ford by which he himself can get across.) In this way there comes into play the peculiar configuration by dint of which long experience appears translated into the language of immediate experience. Experiences can, in fact, prove invaluable to one who follows a trace—but experiences of a particular sort. The hunt is the one type of work in which they function intrinsically. And the hunt is, as work, very primitive.
The experiences <Erfohrungen> of one who attends to a trace result only very remotely from any work activity, or are cut off from such a procedure altogether. They have no sequence and no system. They are a product of chance, and have about them the essential interminability that distinguishes the preferred obligations of the idler. The fundamentally unfinishable collection of things worth knowing, whose utility depends on chance, has its prototype in study.
Walter Benjamin
from The Arcades Project, Convolue m, Idleness
The experiences <Erfohrungen> of one who attends to a trace result only very remotely from any work activity, or are cut off from such a procedure altogether. They have no sequence and no system. They are a product of chance, and have about them the essential interminability that distinguishes the preferred obligations of the idler. The fundamentally unfinishable collection of things worth knowing, whose utility depends on chance, has its prototype in study.
Walter Benjamin
from The Arcades Project, Convolue m, Idleness
