I imagine Benjamin experienced culture shock in Naples. He was born in Germany, a country where the social norms are linear, cut and dry, black and white, legal or illegal. Where everything has it proper place and nothing is out of order. Where rules are to be kept without exception, where people maintain private lives behind walls, where individual expression and artist ways are out of the norm. This is the society that Walter Benjamin grew up.
Then imagine the first impression of his experience in Naples where culture, tradition and history is inexplicably part of its people whether they know it or not. Catholicism, Benjamin argues is at the heart of the city where it can accommodate both swindler and whore with the simple act of confession. I would argue that in a city with so much poverty a little faith gives many hope and a bit of stability.
Benjamin sees the city as porous without wall, there are no defined lines, where everything and everyone is up for a debate, where legally is just a measure in the eye of the beholder, where honor and respect tumps any law, where there is no place for anything or rather the same place can be used for anything, where people’s lives intermingle and spill into the street, where everyone from the fruit vendor to the bus driver to a pick pocket can be an artist.
This is the world Benjamin writes about. It is his captivating love letter to Naples. Like a young boy’s wide eyed open mouthed first visit to a carnival. The barker draws him in and he can’t resist it’s temptation. It is a breath taking world, both beautiful and disturbing. There are sights, sounds and smells that he has never experienced. It is strange to him, dangerous, mysterious and alluring. And what boy wouldn’t love to run away with the carnival? Yet he can’t. He knows intellectually all the nooks and crannies of the city and is an excellent observer of the Neapolitan way of life. The yearning to be part of this beautiful kaleidoscope of Naples which is so foreign to him is undeniable. But it is a love affair that he can only have at the safe distance of a paper and pen.
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