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Beaches and graveyards
<h1><span style="font-size: large">Beaches and graveyards</span></h1>
<p><span style="font-size: medium"><span style=""><b>Europe's haunted borders</b></span></span></p>
<p class="subTitle">By <a href="http://www.eurozine.com/authors/back.html"><font color="#2d4592">Les Back</font></a>, in <a href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-05-30-back-en.html">Eurozine</a></p>
<p class="subTitle" style="margin-left: 80px">"It is more arduous to honour the memory of the nameless than the renowned." The epigram on Walter Benjamin's memorial in Portbou, Catalonia, leads Les Back to reflect on the fate of the African migrants found dead on the coasts of Spain today.</p>
<p class="subTitle">There is a sign at the foot of the hill that leads to Portbou's cliff side cemetery, it reads: "Memorial W. Benjamin" and an arrow directs visitors to the philosopher's grave. Next to this public notice is a "no entry" sign. Benjamin took his own life here in this coastal town on 26 September 1940, after the Spanish border police had ruled that he did not have the appropriate papers to exit Vichy France. His aim was to escape via Lisbon and join other intellectual émigrés like his friend Theodor Adorno in America. In the Hotel de Francia he wrote on a scrap of paper his final message:</p>
<p class="quote" style="margin-left: 80px">In a situation with no escape, I have no other choice but to finish it all. It is in a tiny village in the Pyrenees, where no one knows me, that my life must come to its end.</p>
<p class="quote" style="margin-left: 80px">I would ask you to pass on my thoughts to my friend Adorno and to explain to him the situation in which I have now found myself. I no longer have enough time to write all those letters I would dearly have written.<sup><a class="footnote" href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-05-30-back-en.html#footNoteNUM1" name="footNote1"><strong><font face="Verdana" color="#2d4592" size="1">[1]</font></strong></a></sup>
Refused entry to Spain and unable to break free of the magnetic field of Nazi Europe Benjamin made what</p>
<p class="quote">Marshall Berman called a "pre-emptive strike on himself".<sup><a class="footnote" href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-05-30-back-en.html#footNoteNUM2" name="footNote2"><strong><font face="Verdana" color="#2d4592" size="1">[2]</font></strong></a></sup> Like many exiles he carried vials of morphine in case he arrived at just such a moment of hopelessness. The "no entry" sign that sits innocently here is a profane illumination like one of Benjamin's "dialectical images". As it basks in the afterglow of a Catalonian summer, the sign is a reminder of the deadly exit and entry points that were policed in this small innocuous resort town. ...
</p>
<p class="quote">Continue reading: <a href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-05-30-back-en.html"><b><span style="color: #ff0000">Beaches and graveyards</span></b></a></p>
<p class="subTitle"> </p>
<p><span style="font-size: medium"><span style=""><b>Europe's haunted borders</b></span></span></p>
<p class="subTitle">By <a href="http://www.eurozine.com/authors/back.html"><font color="#2d4592">Les Back</font></a>, in <a href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-05-30-back-en.html">Eurozine</a></p>
<p class="subTitle" style="margin-left: 80px">"It is more arduous to honour the memory of the nameless than the renowned." The epigram on Walter Benjamin's memorial in Portbou, Catalonia, leads Les Back to reflect on the fate of the African migrants found dead on the coasts of Spain today.</p>
<p class="subTitle">There is a sign at the foot of the hill that leads to Portbou's cliff side cemetery, it reads: "Memorial W. Benjamin" and an arrow directs visitors to the philosopher's grave. Next to this public notice is a "no entry" sign. Benjamin took his own life here in this coastal town on 26 September 1940, after the Spanish border police had ruled that he did not have the appropriate papers to exit Vichy France. His aim was to escape via Lisbon and join other intellectual émigrés like his friend Theodor Adorno in America. In the Hotel de Francia he wrote on a scrap of paper his final message:</p>
<p class="quote" style="margin-left: 80px">In a situation with no escape, I have no other choice but to finish it all. It is in a tiny village in the Pyrenees, where no one knows me, that my life must come to its end.</p>
<p class="quote" style="margin-left: 80px">I would ask you to pass on my thoughts to my friend Adorno and to explain to him the situation in which I have now found myself. I no longer have enough time to write all those letters I would dearly have written.<sup><a class="footnote" href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-05-30-back-en.html#footNoteNUM1" name="footNote1"><strong><font face="Verdana" color="#2d4592" size="1">[1]</font></strong></a></sup>
Refused entry to Spain and unable to break free of the magnetic field of Nazi Europe Benjamin made what</p>
<p class="quote">Marshall Berman called a "pre-emptive strike on himself".<sup><a class="footnote" href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-05-30-back-en.html#footNoteNUM2" name="footNote2"><strong><font face="Verdana" color="#2d4592" size="1">[2]</font></strong></a></sup> Like many exiles he carried vials of morphine in case he arrived at just such a moment of hopelessness. The "no entry" sign that sits innocently here is a profane illumination like one of Benjamin's "dialectical images". As it basks in the afterglow of a Catalonian summer, the sign is a reminder of the deadly exit and entry points that were policed in this small innocuous resort town. ...
</p>
<p class="quote">Continue reading: <a href="http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2008-05-30-back-en.html"><b><span style="color: #ff0000">Beaches and graveyards</span></b></a></p>
<p class="subTitle"> </p>
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