The work of Walter Benjamin It is a bold outline of history, art, and thought. Understood as a whole, an archive comprises numerous secondary archives that, in addition to gathering images, texts, and drawings, also contain experiences, ideas, and hopes that the author himself recorded and analyzed. With the ethos of an archivist, Benjamin established the conditions for the preservation of his legacy. The archival techniques, which Benjamin fervently put into practice, determined the writing process: systematizing, reproducing, establishing abbreviations, preparing extracts, and transmitting.

Thirteen archives have been examined: meticulously laid-out manuscripts; color diagrams and signatures for organizing knowledge; photographs of an ostentatiously furnished home, images of Russian landscapes and toys; postcards of Tuscany and the Balearic Islands; a carefully and deliberately kept register, files, and indexes; notebooks in which every square inch is utilized; a collection of his son's first words and phrases; riddles and mysterious sibyls. Everything is connected in the most subtle way.

Walter Benjamin's archives are extremely complex and very personal, sometimes seeming irrational and unique, and yet they lead us to the heart of his work, drawing a portrait of the author.

“Here is a man who must collect the day’s garbage from the capital. Everything the great city discarded, everything it lost, everything it despised, everything it tore to pieces, he records and gathers. He compares the annals of excess, the Capernaum of refuse. He classifies things, makes a judicious selection; he behaves like a miser with his treasure, gathering the refuse that, between the jaws of the goddess Industry, will be transformed into useful or pleasing objects.” This description is a single, extended metaphor for the poet’s approach, according to Baudelaire’s sensibility. Ragpicker or poet, both are concerned with refuse. WB