A Postcard of Eivissa/Ibiza: Image, Landscape, Experience and Narration in the Age of Proto-Tourism

Abstract

Following the link between a short story ("The Wall"), a postcard, and what can be reconstructed from Walter Benjamin‘s experience in Eivissa/Ibiza (1932-1933), the author proposes an analysis of interrelationships between narration, image, landscape, and the perceptions of Ibiza—its situation and transformation during those times—by a traveler/tourist intellectual like him. How Benjamin‘s Ibiza is pictured in his texts, and how it seems to influence his essays, says a lot about his thinking, methods and prejudices, maybe more about himself than about the island.