After the death of my father, he began, when a not entirely meager amount of capital fell into my hands, I hurriedly departed for France. I was lucky, above all else, to become acquainted with Marseilles before the Twenties had come to an end. Apart from all the other things for which it stood to me at that time, it was Marseilles, the home town of Monticelli, to whom I owed everything in my art.


As for my capital, I left it untouched in the small private bank which had satisfactorily advised my father for decades. Moreover, the firm's junior director was, if not quite my friend, then an especially good acquaintance. He also promised me, with the utmost assurance, that he would keep a sharp eye on my deposit during the long period of my absence and, in the event a favorable chance of making some investment should arise, that he would immediately notify me. "You merely need to leave us a code word," he concluded. I looked at him perplexed.. Suppose we were to wire you and the telegram came into the wrong hands. We protect ourselves by arranging a code name for you to sign your telegraph orders with instead of your own."

I understood and yet for a moment was perplexed. After all, it's not always that easy to just slip into a strange name, like a costume.

To me it was as if the pressure of a thousand atmospheres which this whole world of images was urging and convulsing and staggering beneath were the same force which tests itself in the firm hands of a sailor on women's thighs and women's breasts after a long voyage; the voluptuousness which urges a red or blue velvet heart from out of the mineral world of a shell pyx so that it may be pricked by pins or brooches; the same force which quakes the streets on payday.

Much more likely, it was an attempt to surrender myself completely to the city which had gently taken me by the scruff of the neck with a magical hand.  I had a view of one of the black narrow streets of the port district which are like the trace of a knife's incision in the body of the city.

Only now did I realize that the hashish had long begun to work its effect, and if the transformation of tins of powder into boxes of bonbons, chrome-plated cases into bars of chocolate and wigs and toupees into pyramids of cake had not already tipped me off to the fact, then my own laughter had been enough of a warning. For the high begins with such laughter or with laughter which, being quiet and intimate, is all the more blissful.

And now I also recognized it in the infinite tenderness of the wind which was ruffling the fringe of the awning on the other side of the street.

My gaze fell upon the creases in my white beach-trousers. I recognized them, creases of the burnoose;
my gaze fell upon my hand.

I recognized it, a brown, Ethiopian hand.

And as my lips continued to purse tightly together, refusing the drink and words alike,

a smile rose to them from within me,

a haughty, African, Sardanapalan smile,

The smile of a man who is on the verge of seeing through the course of the world and destiny.

For whom things and names no longer contain secrets.

Brown and silent I saw myself sitting there...

That was the last clear thought which I formulated that night. The next one was bequeathed me by the noon paper which, when I awoke on the bench in the hot afternoon sun overlooking the water, read:

>>SENSATIONELLE HAUSSE<<

or

SENSATIONAL HIGH !

--walter benjamin