Poetry, Thought, and Image Intertwined: “El Truco Preferido de Satán” by Walter Benjamin and Alberto García-Alix

Abstract

This paper proposes an exploration of various points of intersection between poetry, thought and contemporary photography by means of a ‘parallactic’ analysis of the volume El truco preferido de Satán, a compilation by Spanish poet Jenaro Talens that features a selection of fragments from Walter Benjamin’s unfinished magnum opus, The Arcades Project, which have been paired up with photographs by Alberto García-Alix, arguably the most renowned artistic chronicler of the Movida Madrileña in the 1980s. The resulting relationship of intermediality and supplementarity is a complex one, with moments of proximity, but also of extraneation. In order to capture these nuances and to elevate the obtained insights to a more general level, the notion of parallax, particularly in one of Slavoj Žižek’s specific formulations, serves as this essay’s methodological framework, as it sets out to understand García-Alix’s photographs as the elusive, spectral, parallactic supplement that discovers what would otherwise remain hidden in Benjamin’s fragments.