The surrealists shaped Benjamin’s sense of modern literature and his lifelong Passagen-Werk project.

Evidence

Benjamin’s hope now was to become the leading literary critic in Germany. The surrealist novelists (from 1926 on he visited Paris frequently) encouraged him more than anyone else in his conception of what modern literature ought to be in a period of decadence such as his. But his ambitions in philosophy continued unabated. The project of his Passagen-Werk grew out of a plan for an essay on the nineteenth-century arcades in Paris. The Passagen-Werk was to occupy him for the whole of the rest of his life. Constantly interrupted by the need to do more remunerative work, Benjamin was always returning to it, but never succeeded in advancing it beyond a fragmentary stage. He wanted to take up the inheritance of surrealism with all the absolute power of a philosophical Fortinbras' and to see how far it is possible to be “concrete” in the context of the philosophy of history’, to what extent extreme concreteness' could be achieved for one era’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 362

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 362
• XREF: connects to: Aragon’s 1926 work inspired Benjamin’s Passagen project as a modern mythology — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 822; Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris profoundly moved Benjamin and shaped the Passagen work — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 822

Broader Connections

• Aragon’s Le Paysan de Paris profoundly moved Benjamin and shaped the Passagen work #expands (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 822
• Aragon’s 1926 work inspired Benjamin’s Passagen project as a modern mythology #expands (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 822