I persevered with this project. It opens with Aragon --Le Paysan de Paris. Evenings, lying in bed, I could never read more than two or three pages at a time, for my heartbeat became so strong that I was forced to lay the book down.... the fir st preliminary sketches for the Arcades originated at that time.

Walter Benjamin, letter to Theodor Adorno, 31 May 1935

 Image is law in the realm of abstraction, fact in that of happenings, knowledge in that of the concrete. This last premise allows one to come to a judgement and delcare, succinctly, that the image is the path of all knowledge. One is then justified in regarding the image as the resultant of all the mind's impulses, in ignoring everything that is not image, and in devoting onself exclusively to poetic activity at the expense of all other activity.

Louis Aragon, Paris Peasant