MOONLIT NIGHTS ON THE RUE LA BOETIE
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never popular because the technique was always too expensive? Nothing is known about that. For these forty transparencies stand here in complete isolation. Nothing similar to them is known, and one knew nothing even of the present ones llntil recently, when they were discovered in someone's estate. They belonged to a collection assembled by a wealthy aficionado, the great-grandfather of their present owner. Every piece was made individually and specifically for him. Great artists like Gericault, David, and Boilly are said to have been involved to a greater or lesser degree. Other experts believe that Daguerre worked on these plates before created his famous diorama (which burned down in 1839, after seventeen years}.4 Whether the greatest artists really were involved or not is important only for the American who sooner or later will pay the one and a half million francs for which the collection can be had. For this technique has nothing to do with '<art" in strict sense-it belongs to the practical arts. Its place is somewhere among a perhaps only provisionally unordered set that extends from the practices of vision to those of the electric television. In the nineteenth century, when children were the last audience for magic, these practical arts all converged in the dimension of play. Their intensity was not thereby diminished. Anyone who takes the time to linger before the transparency of the old spa of Contrexeville soon feels as if a hundred years ago he had often strolled along this sunny path between the poplars, had brushed up against the stone wall - modest magical effects for domestic use, of a sort one otherwise only experiences in rare cases-Chinese soapstone groups, for example, or Russian lacquer paintings. Published in Die literarische We/t, March 1928. Gesammelte Schriftell, IV, 509-511. Translated by Rodney Livingstone.
Notes 1. "The last Conde" is the traditional name for Louis Henri-Joseph, due de Bourbon (1756-1830). Having played a minor role on the side of the aristocracy in the French Revolution, he led a dissolute life in England and returned to France with his mistress, Sophie in 1814. After he was found hanged in his chateau, Dawes was of the murder; she was, however, released order of Louis Philippe, and the crime remained un~ solved. 2. The Nazarenes were a group of young painters, inc1udirm Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869) and Franz Pforr (1788-1812), who first met at the Academy of