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...brauchte nur noch die Abkehr von jenem Anschauen der Dinge, in dem deren Sprache dem Menschen eingeht, sich zu vollziehen... [1]
Ausstellung:
Walter Benjamin Archive
Bilder, Texte und Zeichen [2]
By Elisa Santucci, sasantu@hotmail.it
An wen schreibt man? To whom does one write? Searching for an answer there is a well known and deeply loved note so often quoted when the talk comes to Benjamin. It runs Benjamin writes to Gerhard Scholem "Every line we succeed in publishing today no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness."[3] And yet, Benjamin himself left another observation on the same matter in Convolute N, Passagenarbeit: "Es gibt eine Überlieferung, die Katastrophe ist."[4]
N 9, 4 per integrum reads: "Wovor werden die Phänomene gerettet? Nicht nur, und nicht sowohl vor dem Verruf und der Missachtung in die sie geraten sind als vor der Katastrophe wie eine bestimmte Art ihrer Überlieferung, ihre "Würdigung als Erbe" sie sehr oft darstellt. Sie werden durch die Aufweisung des Sprungs in ihren gerettet. Es gibt eine Überlieferung, die Katastrophe ist."[5]
If one walks along Unter den Linden there are Linden also in Magdeburger Platz (Benjamin was born at number 4) the last image before entering the Tiergarten is the view of Brandenburger Tor. Before Brandenburger Tor, on the left side, lies the new building of the Akademie der Künste. The exhibition of Benjamin´s Archive is housed there, exactly in Pariser Platz.
Ausstellung: Walter Benjamin Archive Bilder, Texte und Zeichen
(Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, Berlin)
To many visitors coming into the building it must sound either celebrative or ironic that such an exhibition had to find a stand right in Berlin, precisely in a square called Pariser Platz. The man that wrote the pieces of paper, the objects of the collection exhibited today, loved Berlin and loved Paris. He was also expelled both from Berlin and Paris. But it was during the thirties, before the Second World War. His pieces of paper are exposed today.
It sounds simple and it is also simple: man sieht mit den Augen an. One sees with the eyes. The pieces of paper collected on the little shelves and stuck on the walls clearly do not have eyes. They have a meaning as the catalogue of the exhibition explains,[6] while it exposes. Indeed the assumption is even clearer: "ein Portrait des Autors aus seinem Archiv"[7] or, as it later says: "Die Aufstellung ist ein Findmittel, ein Lageplan zu Benjamins Archiv. An ihm lassen sich Leben und Schreiben Benjamins exemplarisch nachzeichnen."[8] From these words can be evinced the aim: be it Benjamin that introduces himself, as he would. He never got tired of repeating that content and form are the very same thing. Another quote from the Passagenwerk is proposed in Chapter 10, Lumpensammlung: "Methode dieser Arbeit: literarische Montage. Ich habe nichts zu sagen. Nur zu zeigen."[9] Benjamin the archivist is on show today.
What being an archivist might mean for Benjamin has been explained by Benjamin himself. It involves the task of rescuing, therefore of distinguishing Spuren where instead a cultural flow is running. "Diese Spuren sind es, denen sie nachgehen: der Ausdruck (expression) des Geschehenen entschädigt sie tausendfach für die Unvernunft des Geschehens."[10] The impression of this exhibition is planned following the main way of the concept of rescuing, saving: therefore it involves the multifarious elaboration of this very concept and as if reinventing another heap of material after the one Benjamin collected for the Passages we meet (listing just a few): archives Benjamin compiled, pieces of paper, microcosmic examples of Benjamin´s handwriting, children's games, distorted words written by his son, Benjamin´s own notebooks, postcards, elaborations and re-elaborations, Benjamin´s drawings, the quotes collection, the pictures collection, Rätsel and Sprachspiele, still other postcards.
Differently from Benjamin´s index for the Passagenwerk, this index, translated into the names given to each chapter, indicates a precise direction: from rescuing to image the latter being the measure and chance for the former. Each chapter name is a quote from Benjamin: 1. Baum der Sorgfalt; 2. Verzettelte Schreiberei; 3. Vom kleinen ins Kleinste; 4. Physiognomie der Dingwelt; 5. Opinions et pensée; 6. Zarteste Quartiere; 7. Reisebilder; 8. Bogenspannung; 9. Konstellationen; 10. Lumpensammlung; 11. Raumgewordene Vergangenheit; 12. Knackmandeln; 13. Sibyllen. It is as fragments nested in images and in which images are nested that pieces of paper reached the Akademie der Künste.
The articulation and reasons of their presence in Pariser Platz, Berlin, is delineated in the philosophical project that this the assumption was the project of Benjamin himself. It is as fragments, it is as images that they lie on the shelves. It is as images, it is as fragments, also as evidences of the entire Benjaminian philosophical project that they are where they are. From the fragment to the whole. It is indeed describing the materialistic dialectical method (but already the concept of Ursprung in the Trauerspiels Buch) that Benjamin affirms: "As a result of this method the lifework is preserved in this work and at the same time concealed; in the lifework, the era; and in the era, the entire course of history. The nourishing fruit of the historically understood contains time as a precious but tasteless seed."[11] Erdmut Wizisla writes in his Vorwort to the catalogue: "Die Sammlungen erschließen sich, wenn das Einzelstück zum Sprechen gebracht wird. Am Anfang stand das exemplarische Objekt, das oft wie von selbst den Weg zum Denken hin öffnet. Es entstanden Dokumentengruppen, Verschwisterungen wurden sichtbar."[12]
Each exemplarische Objekt is presented as a von Ähnlichkeit entstellte Dinge, [13] whose measure of distortion is its plunge into losing journeys (from it the postcards; Wizisla himself complains about the absence of the hashish experiences) and into a Mythical past, a displaced space which is a Raumgewordene Vergangenheit, where the image wrestles with forgiveness and irresolution. So finally the Rätsel is the exemplarische Objekt par excellence. And its Lösung coincides with the dispelling of mythical violence and the emergence of the image, of the fragment on their own Schauplatz: the Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, Berlin. Identifying the Unterwelt, "die Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft der Stadt repräsentiert"[14] with the Sibyl, Gudrun Schwarz ends the catalougue observing: "Im mythischen Bild vom Abstieg mit der Sibylle der Seherin entwickelt Benjamin die vor- und zurückweisende Formel, die auf den Ursprung zurück- und zu neuen Möglichkeiten der Erkenntnis in Umgestaltung des Alten vorausdeutet."[15]
The fragment that emerges from this vision and that is the object on Schauplatz [16] is the previously mentioned von Ähnlichkeit entstellte Dinge, where "Ähnlichkeit" might refer to Adorno and "enstellte" to Derrida. A fragment or a différend-from-Myth: or, in still other words: an allegory. Images such as Rätsel are thrown into a mythical context (which differs neither from the one Benjamin modelled when working on Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften, nor from the mythical forces in the Kafka essay, nor from the often experienced distortion in Berliner Kindheit um neunhundert, nor from Myth in the Passagenwerk) from which they re-emerge only as its present solution. But the alchemist is searching for the formula of this solution, on a place where temporal tensions are bidimensionally space-made, and where the solution can come only from its inner space therefore opening to the impossibility of otherness and right there, therefore, on the line, to its difference.
Allegories could represent a moment of fraction of these so often repeated interpretations of images as mythically grounded, insofar as they fail in their expressive intention, into the cargo of their own Ausdrucklichkeit. If Kafka´s search for a "slow narrative pace" must be pertinently contextualised, his lifelong literary project was almost a failure. Benjamin´s recognition of Kafka´s achievement runs so: "on at least one occasion, he succeeded in bringing its [horse's, which should have accompanied him on an untrammelled, happy journey] breathtaking speed in line with the slow narrative pace that he presumably sought all his life." [17] Schlemihl failed,[18] Baudelaire also failed. Correspondences the allegorical substrata of his poetry failed, and this is their great lyrical achievement in the modern era: "Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frère!" [19] such are the lines we read at the beginning of the second version of Benjamin's Baudelaire. Also the last pages of the Trauerspiel Buch brings about a turning upside-down of the entire text where the concept of miracle in Calderón de la Barca denouncing/expressing the allegorical failure opens to its difference.
Adorno is quoted in N so transposing "allegories" into the Ur-history of Modernity:
Brief von Wiesengrund 5 August 1935: "Der Versuch, Ihr Moment des ´Traums´ - als des Subjektiven am dialektischen Bild mit der Auffassung von diesem als Modell zu versöhnen, hat mich zu einigen Formulierungen geführt: Indem an Dingen ihr Gebrauchswert abstirbt, werden die entfremdeten ausgehöhlt und ziehen als Chiffren Bedeutungen herbei. Ihrer bemächtigt sich die Subjektivität, indem sie Intentionen von Wunsch und Angst in sie einlegt. Dadurch daß die abgeschiedenen Dinge als Bilder der subjektiven Intentionen einstehen, präsentieren diese sich als unvergangne und ewige. Dialektische Bilder sind Konstellationen zwischen entfremdeten Dingen und eingehender Bedeutung, innehaltend im Augenblick der Indifferenz von Tod und Bedeutung. Während die Dinge im Schein zum Neuesten erweckt werden, verwandelt die Bedeutungen der Tod in älteste." Zu diesen Überlegungen ist zu berücksichtigen, daß im neunzehnten Jahrhundert die Zahl der 'ausgehöhlten' Dinge in vorher ungekannten Maß und Tempo zunimmt, da der technische Fortschritt immer neue Gebrauchsgegenstände außer Kurs setzt."[20]
But where images are often read as allegorical Rätsel engraved into a mythical underworld of similarity (correspondences, passages, Tiergarten), sometimes also underlining their relief (belongness/difference) on it, the problematical quest is instead the relation between images and allegories where two are the discriminating factors: language and history. Without them, in Benjamin no image is an image, that is: a dialectical image.
Allegorical failure might be read as a dialectical tension in the image of modernity: Derrida´s masterpieces as other great allegorical efforts of post-modernity or: self-aware allegories. Their failure is inscribed in their own allegorical intention, whose awareness establishes also their success at once or at the same differed time. But they do not coincide with images. The expressionless allegory can be an interpretative cypher in an intentionless dialectical image, but dialectical images are not allegories, rather can let/them/express express/them.
Indeed, Benjamin, recognising the role of the capitalisation of nouns in the German language,[21] recognised also the allegorical intention of logos. To it he counterpoised Proustian text and Kafkaesque paws , [22] that also means: language and history, analysing linguistically history with Proust and historically language with Kafka. In both essays he left the traces of the dialectical image: in On the Image of Proust, describing Proust´s eyes: "they were not happy but in them lay happiness" [23] and in Franz Kafka. Zur zehnten Wiederkehr seines Todestages with the above mentioned note: "On at least one occasion"
Therefore, if beginning this short review of this marvellous exhibition of Benjamin´s archive, we treated the previous quotes by Benjamin as fragments of allegories, they might also be considered as fragments of dialectical images now do not "now" sound allegorical! be read anew and (far from recomposing the whole starting from the fragments, or Benjamin's life as if so we could wait for a flesh passing through the pavement of Pariser Platz till the two-floors-underground-little rooms of the exhibition) N 9, 4 might be thought over again suspecting allegorical logos of being an "Überlieferung, die Katastrophe ist."[24]
Exactly so: self-aware allegorical intention of logos as the common denominator of the twentieth century, and catastrophic tradition.
Ausstellung: Walter Benjamin Archive Bilder, Texte und Zeichen
(Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz, Berlin, 2. Oktober 19. November 2006)
It was a nice sunny day in October when I entered the exhibition hall. The rooms were teeming with visitors, maybe also because it was the day of German unification (seven days after the date of Benjamin´s death, but that was in 1940), and lots of people were streaming along Unter den Linden. Few noses stuck on the protective glasses, people strengthening their own sight, many hunchbacked over the shelves: this the spectacle that the main room offered.
If dialectical images have no eyes, and surely are not intended for any reader, nonetheless they have got an expression, if it was said that such fragments follow a rule, in them: "der Ausdruck (expression) des Geschehenen entschädigt sie tausendfach für die Unvernunft des Geschehens."[25] If it is hard to imagine pieces of paper as eyes, maybe it is easier to imagine eyes as pieces of paper. Indeed Benjamin magisterially succeeded in such a description when he named Proust´s Augen, eyes: "They were not happy but in them lay happiness." So there is a moment when eyes are not happy, they are neither subjects of any experience nor of any action, they don´t do, they are not: a moment when the eyes do not speak and eyes following the tradition of the downtrodden do not speak. Hopeless eyes: it might be said in another context. "Denn im Glück erstrebt alles Irdische seinen Untergang"[26] the happiness that must be thought of here is happiness which lies.
The allegorische Tiefblick that struck Benjamin since his first meeting with Melancholia I by Dürer, the Ausdrucklichkeit he attributed to the allegorical efforts in the Trauerspiel Buch [27] all this did not hinder Benjamin to turn towards a particular sort of failure, Proust´s ausdruckslose eyes, Kafka´s failure (maybe also the Angelus Novus), in order to find a speechless expression, or ausdruckslose Ausdrucklichkeit: the communicative failure which opens up to the reading tempo of language. With both the concepts of failure and of Ausdrucklichkeit we are perhaps into other Benjamin´s dialectics. Indeed there must be a failure in the intention, a failure to temporalise the expression, or, in other words: linguistic-historical Ausdrucklichkeit must be ausdruckslos.
"Die Natur aber ist stumm" Indeed there must be a failure in the intention in order to temporalise the expression. [28] Benjamin already wrote in 1916. And he distinguished two forms of muteness two forms of expressions. If he characterised the second form as mournful and it was also incorporated later in the Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels deeply linked with the allegory, then there emerges, stronger than ever, the need to rescue the first form of muteness: where there is a "Verbindung von Anschauung und Benennung."[29]
Therefore, fragments brought into the constellation of a dialectical image have eyes and they are open eyes. To these eyes walking passers-by bend their shoulders, to catch their Gesicht. Little pieces of paper: there is a San Pellegrino advertisement card, where Benjamin, over "Acqua di San Pellegrino. La migliore da tavola" took note of Was ist Aura? There is a light red square where in a few millimetres of dimension Benjamin left Proust und Kafka the precious fragment Ms 251. There are pictures drawn for someone, or for himself, projects, notes, essays, there are shortly pieces of Benjamin's oeuvre. There is much to fall in love with.[30]
The catalogue is rich in quotes mainly from the correspondence which are intended to demonstrate the Sorge, the deep care and preoccupation, that Benjamin felt for the protection and rescue of his own writings these pieces of paper. Since they are a treasure the catalogue offers, most of them are transcribed here, documenting the hands through which these paper-eyes passed. There is a reiterated pledge of "die Manuskripte sorgfältig aufzubewahren."[31]
1928 to Alfred Cohn: "Für die Komplettierung Deiner Sammlung von Gräslein und Hälmchen meines Ackers werde ich weiter sorgen. Es ist ja mindestens so mein Vorteil, und mehr meiner, wie Deiner, wenn irgendwo noch ein komplettes Herbarium außer dem meinigen existiert."[32]
1934 to Karl Thieme: "Für jemanden, dessen Schriften so zerstreut sind wie meine und dem die Zeitumstände die Illusion nicht mehr gestatten, sie eines Tages gesammelt zu sehen, ist es eine wahre Bestätigung, hier oder dort einen Leser zu wissen, der in meinen verzettelten Arbeiten sich auf irgendeine Art heimlich zu machen gewusst hat."[33]
1931 to Scholem: "Der mir selbst manchmal störenden Bedenklichkeit, mit der ich dem Plan irgendwelcher Gesammelte Schriften von mir gegenüberstehe, entspricht die archivarische Exaktheit, mit der ich alles von mir Gedruckte verwahre und katalogisierte und wenn ich von der ökonomischen Seite der Schriftstellerei absehe, darf ich sagen, daß für mich die paar Blätter und Blättchen, in denen sie auftreten mir das anarchische Gebilde einer Privatdruckerei darstellen. Daher ist auch das Hauptobjectiv meiner publizistischen Strategie, alles, was ich verfasse von einigen Tagebuchnotizen abgesehen um jeden Preis zum Druck zu befördern und ich darf sagen, daß mir das unberufen seit etwa vier oder fünf Jahren gelungen ist."[34]
February 1935 to Scholem: Er sehe sich "in einer Geschichts- und Lebensspanne, die die endliche Sammlung meiner unendlich verzettelten Produktion weniger absehbar, ja unwahrscheinlicher als jemals erscheinen lässt."[35]
14 January 1926 to Scholem: "Über die ´opinions et pensées´ meines Sohnes habe ich seit seiner Geburt ein Büchlein geführt, das zwar infolge meiner vielen Abwesenheiten nicht gerade umfangreich ist, aber doch einige Dutzende seltsamer ´Wörter und Redensarten´ aufführt. Ich trage mich mit der Absicht, es in die Schreibmaschine zu geben und eines der wenigen Exemplare wäre Dir dann sicher."[36]
31 May 1933 to Scholem: "Es ist nun aber jener Augenblick gekommen wo Du mir erlauben mußt, vom Baum der Sorgfalt, dessen Wurzeln in meinem Herzen und dessen Blätter in Deinem Archive sich befinden, einige spärliche Früchte zu schütteln."[37]
1929 to Alfred Cohn: "Das märchenhafte Pergamentheft, das ich von dir habe, ist plötzlich ganz intensive in Gebrauch gekommen und ich kann dem Gedanken, bald wieder obdachlos schreiben zu müssen, garnicht isn Auge sehen. Da habe ich diesen Gedanken gehabt: Du machst mir, wenn Du es kannst, noch so ein Buch und dafür schenke ich Dir das beschriebene, in dem so ziemlich die Entwürfe von allem sind, was ich in letzter Zeit gemacht habe."[38]
15 Juli 1910 and 24 Juli 1910 to Herbert Blumenthal: "Auf so und so viel Postkarten habe ich noch keine Zeile Antwort von dir."[39] "Hoffentlich hebst Du wenigstens die übrigen, wenn nicht für Dich, so als Erinnerung für mich auf."[40]
Benjamin dispersed his own material in order to save it. Readers would have preserved his material better than he could. So he sent postcards to Blumenthal in order to find them later, and gave a written note-book away to Cohn in exchange for a new-empty one. Scholem more than anyone else was often asked for consultation of books, or for Benjamin´s own texts. Benjamin needed his early work, Über die Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen, when drafting his new theory of language,[41] as ardently as he asked for Bialik's Halachah and Aggadah when writing the Kafka essay: both times Scholem was the page-keeper.
Benjamin needed to get rid of his own pages, as carefully as he also collected them, for the very same reason: because he could not save them. He could not risk the story of Potemkin, chief favourite der Kaiserin Katharina, [42] with which Kafka´s essay begins he could not risk finding only its own signature. And yet it is exactly Kafka, who Benjamin says found the law of his journey; "on at least one occasion, he succeeded in bringing its [horse's, which should have accompanied him on an untrammelled, happy journey] breathtaking speed in line with the slow narrative pace that he presumably sought all his life."
It is in an unusual lateinischer Schrift that Benjamin noted behind a card picturing two russiche Spielzeugen two riders on two horses, where one of the horses had no neck: "Interessant ist der Vergleich dieser beiden Wjatka-Puppen. Das Pferd, das auf dem einen Modell noch sichtbar ist, ist auf dem nebenstehenden schon mit dem Manne verschmolzen." [43] The note can be compared with another observation in the Kafka essay: "'If one were only an Indian, instantly alert, and on a galloping horse, leaning into the wind, kept on quivering briefly over the quivering ground, until one shed one's spurs, for there were no spurs, threw away the reins, for there were no reins, and barely saw the land before one as a smoothly mown plain, with the horse's neck and head already gone.' A great deal is contained in this wish."[44] "This is the fulfilment of the fantasy about the blessed horseman who rushes toward the past on an untrammelled, happy journey."[45]
The gallop against the wind, into that direction which is inaccessible to the Angelus Novus, is accomplished by Kafka "at least in one occasion." Against the mythical Gewalten (pretending a differance instead of reading a dialectic here), which fix the ausdrucksvoll but expressionless eyes in the allegorical figure of the Angelus, there is this "untrammelled, happy journey" and we know what the Augen, the eyes towards which the horse is riding look like: not happy, but in them lies happiness.
Nur a piece of paper could have been snapped by the flight of a horse-rider And the tempo of this journey, its "breathtaking speed," the weighty paw that unexpectedly cuffs doctrine,[46] was by Kafka brought at least once "in line with the slow narrative pace that he presumably sought all his life." "Kein Bild gilt dem Beschauer" "no image is intended for the beholder" [47] nonetheless and rightly so we cannot fail to its expression.
The task of reading "what has never been written"[48] to look at eyes that are not happy but in which happiness lies, that do not talk but express, intentionlessly, as the dialectical method requires, is philosophical, as long as: "Es ist dem philosophischen Schrifttum eigen, mit jeder Wendung von neuem vor der Frage der Darstellung zu stehen. Zwar wird es in seiner abgeschlossen Gestalt Lehre sein, solche Abgeschlossenheit ihm zu leihen aber liegt nicht in der Gewalt des bloßen Denkens. Philosophische Lehre beruht auf historischer Kodifikation."[49] Such Darstellung is das dialektische Bild. Die Lehre with which Benjamin, as early as in the Über das Progamm der kommenden Philosophie, substituted any Kantian and post-Kantian hypostatisation is temporal and linguistic.
Their reciprocal connection is articulated in Über das mimetische Vermögen. Entstellte Ählichkeiten to those mimesis refers dialectically enter into language they do not refer to crystallisations on a mythical underworld, but to a "liberated prose prose which has burst the fetters of script."[50] So it is into the farthest areas of the Tiergarten into the blotting paper. "Viel von uns erinnern sich wohl noch aus ihrer Schulzeit der ´Labyrinthe´, die sie oder ihre Mitschüler während der Schulstunden auf Löschblätter oder an den Rand ihrer Hefte malten"[51]
In Über das mimetische Vermögen: "Alles Mimetische der Sprache kann vielmehr, der Flamme ähnlich, nur an einer Art von Träger in Erscheinung treten. Dieser Träger ist das Semiotische. So ist der Sinnzusammenhang der Wörter oder Sätze der Träger, an dem erst, blitzartig, die Ähnlichkeit in Erscheinung tritt. Denn ihre Erzeugung durch den Menschen ist ebenso wie ihre Wahrnehmung durch ihn in vielen und zumalden wichtigen Fällen an ein Aufblitzen gebunden. Sie huscht vorbei. Nicht unwahrscheinlich, dass die Schnelligkeit des Schreibens und des Lesens die Verschmelzung des Semiotischen und des Mimetischen im Sprachbereiche steigert."[52]
There is a happy journey into the nest of entstellte Ähnlichkeiten that does not remain entangled in the mythical underground. On the contrary, they are linguistic; the prior form (and possibility) of expression is language: the tempo of language. This Darstellung is the philosophical task.
Walking through the little rooms of the exhibition of Benjamin´s Archive, on the 3rd of October, along the little rows between the shelves, on both sides we find pieces of paper lying. They were given away (collected) in order to be saved; they are as the eyes sheets that do talk. Not happy; in them lies happiness. It also means: not written, they are in the tempo of reading.
Happiness. "Glück, das Neid in uns erwecken könnte, gibt es nur in der Luft, die wir geatmet haben, mit Menschen, zu denen wir hätten reden, mit Frauen, die sich uns hätten geben können. () Es schwingt, mit andern Worten, in der Vorstellung des Glücks unveräußerlich die der Erlösung mit. () Haben die Frauen, die wir umwerben, nicht Schwestern, die sie nicht mehr gekannt haben? Ist dem so, dann besteht eine geheime Verabredung zwischen den gewesenen Geschlechtern und unserem. Dann sind wir auf der Erde erwartet worden. Dann ist uns wie jedem Geschlecht, das vor uns war, eine schwache messianische Kraft mitgegeben, an welche die Vergangenheit Anspruch hat."[53]
It might be that we were really awaited in Pariser Platz, Berlin, in October-November 2006, to confront myriads of calligraphic microcosms in which happiness lies; but it might also be that instead we are awaited much further, following the "Takt der Stadtbahn und des Teppichklopfens," a tempo, into long-spun journeys, "travel dreams and dreams of rain,"[54] over narrower roads far from Pariser Platz, far from Berlin.
In Über das mimetische Vermögen and in Lehre von Ähnlichen, tempo in language, or, in other words, the historical codification on which Lehre is grounded was the moulding on which Ähnlichekeit (and therefore language) comes "blitzartig" in relief. [55] It was "an ein Aufblitzen gebunden." Benjamin says: "Sie huscht vorbei." There is a similar description of the dialectical image in N 9, 7: "Das dialektische Bild ist ein aufblitzendes. So, als im Jetzt der Erkennbarkeit aufblitzendes Bild, ist das Gewesene festzuhalten." Now he adds: "Die Rettung, die dergestalt und nur dergestalt vollzogen wird, lässt immer nur an dem, im nächsten Augenblick schon unrettbar verloren [sich] vollziehen."[56]
The linguistic and historical Züge of the dialectical image are inscribed in this tension between the soil where happiness lies and the untrammelled happy journey towards that land, between the ausdruckslose expressive and the intentionless, neither nur Augen nor Blick, but into the tempo of language, its historical codex, where the task is bringing back each written word to its reading tempo, to the abundance of lying happiness towards which we happily ride
Before the open eyes and territory of paper, little pieces, fragments, spread over the shelves which say nothing, where nothing is written but read language this was the aim of their author must be remembered what we were asked for: "Das wahre Bild der Vergangenheit huscht vorbei. Nur als Bild, das auf Nimmerwiedersehen in Augenblick seiner Erkennbarkeit eben aufblitzt, ist die Vergangenheit festzuhalten. (...) Denn es ist ein unwiederbringliches Bild der Vergangenheit, das mit jeder Gegenwart zu verschwinden droht, die sich nicht als in ihm gemeint erkannte."[57]
We have been called neither as witnesses, nor as interlocutors, nor to celebrate the archive of one of the most important philosophers of the last century, rather because we are needed, because "es gibt eine Überlieferung, die Katastrophe ist."[58] We are needed to lösen, release the written texts into the reading tempo, language.
Worüber sich unsere Großeltern den Kopf zerbrachen. Von Walter Benjamin.
Das Bilderrätsel ist nicht ganz so alt wie die dunklen vornehmen Rätselfragen des Völker, von denen die der Sphinx die berühmteste ist. Vielleicht musste die Ehrfurcht des Menschen vor dem Wort schon ein wenig geschwunden sein, ehe er es wagen konnte, den scheinbar so festen Zusammenhang von Laut und Bedeutung zu lockern und sie zum Spiele miteinander einzuladen. . .[59]
[1.] Walter Benjamin, ´Über die Sprache überhall und über die Sprache des Menschen´ in Ein Lesebuch, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1996), page 41. "...the turning away from that contemplation of things in which their language passes into man needed only to be completed" Walter Benjamin, 'On Language as Such and on the Language of Man' in Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996), page 72.
[2.] "Exhibition: Walter Benjamin Archive Images, Texts and Sketches."
[3.] Walter Benjamin to Gerhard Scholem, 11 January 1940. "Jede Zeile, die wir heute können erscheinen lassen, ist so ungewiß die Zukunft, der wir sie überantworten ein Sieg der den Mächten der Finsternis abgerungen."
[4.] Walter Benjamin, Passagenwerk, N 9, 4, (GS, V, 1, page 591). "There is a tradition that is catastrophe." Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999).
[5.] Ibidem. "What are the phenomena rescued from? Not only, and not in the main, from the discredit and neglect into which they have fallen, but from the catastrophe represented very often by a certain strain in their dissemination, their ´enshrinement as Heritage´. They are saved through the exhibition of the fissure within them. There is a tradition that is catastrophe."
[6.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2006), bearbeitet von: Ursula Marx, Gudrun Schwarz, Michael Schwarz, Erdmut Wizisla.
[7.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 11.
[8.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 15.
[9.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 196; (GS, V, 2, page 1030), O°, 36. "Method of this project: literary montage. I needn't say anything. Merely show."
[10.] Walter Benjamin, ´Gabriele Eckehard: das deutsche Buch im Zeitalter des Barock´, 6. Juni 1932, in Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 28; (GS, III, page 236f).
[11.] Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte, XVII. "Der Ertrag seines Verfahrens bestehet darin, daß im Werk das Lebenswerk, im Lebenswerk die Epoche und in der Epoche der gesamte Geschichtsverlauf aufbewahrt ist und aufgehoben. Die nahrhafte Frucht des historisch Begriffenen hat die Zeit als den Kostbaren, aber des Geschmacks entratenden Samen in ihrem Innern."
[12.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 11.
[13.] Walter Benjamin, Zum Bilde Proust. "Zerfetzt von Heimweh lag er auf dem Bett, Heimweh nach der im Stand der Ähnlichkeit entstellten Welt." "He lay on his bed racked with homesickness, homesick for the world distorted in the state of similarity." Walter Benjamin, 'On the Image of Proust', in Selected Writings, Volume 2, 1927-1934, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), page 240.
[14.] "The underworld, which represents past, present and future of the city"
[15.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 238
[16.] Benjamin gives the title "Schauplatz" to a chapter in the Trauerspiel Buch.
[17.] Walter Benjamin. 'Franz Kafka' in Benjamin, W. Selected Writings, Volume 2, 1927-1934, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1999), page 815. "Kafka aber hat das Gesetz der seinen [´leeren fröhlichen Fahrt´] gefunden; ein einziges Mal zumindest, asl es ihm glückte, ihre atemraubende Schnelligkeit einem epischen Paßschritt anzugleichen, wie er ihn wohl sein Lebtag gesucht hat." (GS, II, 2, page 437).
[18.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 194, (GS IV-1, S.405 f.).
[19.] Walter Benjamin, Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire. Benjamin shows the source: "NOTE 1: Charles Baudelaire: Oeuvres. Texte établi et annoté par Yues-Gérard Le Dantec. 2 Bde. Paris 1931/1932. (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. I. u. 7.) I, S. 18.
[20.] Walter Benjamin, Passagenwerk, N 5, 2 (GS, V, 1, page 582). "Letter from Wiesengrund of August 5, 1935: "the attempt to reconcile your ´dream´ momentum as the subjective element in the dialectical image with the conception of the latter as models has led me to some formulations: With the vititiation of their use value, the alienated things are hollowed out and, as ciphers, they draw in meanings. Subjectivity takes possession of them insofar as it invests them with intentions of desire and fear. And insofar as defunct things stand in as images of subjective intentions, these latter present themselves as immemorial and eternal. Dialectical images are constellated between alienated things and incoming and disappearing meaning, are instantiated in the moment of indifference between death and meaning. While things in appearance are awakened to what is newest, death transforms the meanings to what is most ancient." With regard to these reflections, it should be kept in mind that, in the nineteenth century, the number of ´hollowed-out´ things increases at a rate and on a scale hat was previously unknown, for technical progress is continually withdrawing newly introduced objects from circulation." Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project.
[21.] Cfr. Walter Benjamin, Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels.
[22.] Benjamin underlines the rapidity of Kafka´s grasp and the tempo of his writing "on at least one occasion" where also this temporal indication should be temporally, rhythmically understood. Kafka's parables "don't simply lie down at the feet of doctrine, the way Haggadah lies down at the feet of Halakhah. Having crouched down, they unexpectedly cuff doctrine with a weighty paw." Benjamin, W. 'Letter to Gershom Scholem on Franz Kafka', in Selected Writings, Volume 3, (1935-1938), (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002), page 326.
[23.] Walter Benjamin, 'On the Image of Proust', page 239; Walter Benjamin, Zum Bilde Prousts. "Cocteau hat gesehen, was jeden Leser Prousts im und besessene Glücksverlangen in diesem Menschen. Es leuchtete aus seinen Blicken. Die waren nicht glücklich. Aber in ihnen saß das Glück."
[24.] Walter Benjamin, Passagenwerk, N 9, 4.
[25.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 28; (GS, III, page 236f).
[26.] Walter Benjamin, Theologisch-politisches Fragment. "In happiness all that is earthly strives for its downfall." Walter Benjamin, ´Theological-Political Fragment´ in Selected Writings, Volume 3, (1935-1938), page 305.
[27.] Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte, IX. Walter Benjamin, 'On the Concept of History', in Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938-1940, (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2003). "A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread."
[28.] Walter Benjamin, ´Über die Sprache überhall und über die Sprache des Menschen´, page 41. "Nature, however, is mute." Walter Benjamin, 'On the Language as Such and on the Language of Man,' page 72.
[29.] Ibidem, page 38. "This combination of contemplation and naming." Ibidem, page 70
[30.] A special mention since it does not appear in the GS to the drawing concerning Die Windrose des Erfolges. "Für Frau Marietta Noeggerath / San Antonio / 17 Mai 1932 / Walter Benjamin." A more in-depth articulation of the drawing is in GS IV-1, S.405 f. A recent Italian edition of Einbahnstraße, Strada a senso unico, (Torino: Einaudi, 2006) edited by Schiavoni, includes Die Windrose des Erfolges (translated as: La bussola del successo) in the appendix. The appendix is composed of some of the texts on which Benjamin was presumably working on for a new version of Einbahnstraße.
[31.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 16; (GB, I, 452). An Scholem, Bern, 19.4.1918.
[32.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 15; (GB, III, 388). An Cohn, Berlin, 18.6.1928.
[33.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 30; (GB, IV, 394). An Karl Thieme, Paris, 19.4.1934.
[34.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 14; (GB, IV, 60f). An Scholem, Berlin, 28.10.1931: "The scruples, sometimes disturbing even to me, with which I view the plan of some sort of ,Collected Works' correspond to the archival precision with which I preserve and catalog everything of mine that has appeared in print. Furthermore, disregarding the economic side of being a writer, I can say that for me the few journals and small newspaper in which my work appears represent for the anarchic structure of a private publishing house. The main objective of my promotional strategy, therefore, is to get everything I write except for some diary entry into print at all costs and I can say that I have been successful in this knock on wood! for about four or five years." Walter Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, (Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 1994), page 385.
[35.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 32; (GB, V, 47). An Scholem, San Remo, 22.2.1935
[36.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 77; (GB, III, 109). An Scholem, Berlin, 14.1.1926: "I have written down my son's , opinions and thoughts' in a notebook since the day he was born. Needles to say, because of my many absences it is not terribly long, but nonetheless lists a few dozen unusual words and expressions. I am thinking of having it typed and of one of the few copies would be intended for you." Ibidem, page 288.
[37.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 15; (GB, IV, 222). An Scholem, Ibiza, 31.5.1933.
[38.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 122; (GB, III, 433). An Cohn, Berlin, 16.1.1929.
[39.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 137; (GB, I, 9; GB, I, 18). An Herbert Blumenthal, Vaduz, 15.7.1910: "Why don't I write you once? Why not? That's easy. I haven't yet received a single line from you in response to my many postcards." Ibidem, page 3.
[40.] An Herbert Blumenthal, St. Moritz, 24.7.1910.
[41.] Walter Benjamin to Scholem, San Antonio (Ibiza), 23.5.1933: "Bei näheren Bedenken des Unternehmens, dir meine neuen Notizen über die Sprach zu schicken, erkannte ich, daß dieses, ohnehin höchst gewagte Vorhaben für mich ausführbar allein werden würde, wenn ich vorher einen Vergleich dieser Notizen mit jenen früheren Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen vornehmen könnte." (GB, IV, 214). "Afte further misgivings about the plan of sending you my recent jottings on language, I realised that this project, hazardous as it is, would only be viable if I could first conduct a comparison of these notes with my early "On Language as Such and on the Language of Man." Ibidem, page 414.
[42.] Walter Benjamin, Franz Kafka. Zur zehnten Wiederkehr seines Todestages.
[43.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, page 63; (GS, IV, 2, after page 624), Ms. 617.
[44.] Walter Benjamin. 'Franz Kafka', p. 800. 'Wenn man doch ein Indianer wäre, gleich bereit, und auf dem rennenden Pferde, schief in der Luft, immer wieder kurz erzitterte über dem zitternden Boden, bis man die Sporen ließ, denn es gab keine Sporen, bis man die Zügel wegwarf, denn es gab keine Zügel, und kaum das Land vor sich als glatt gemähte Heide sah, schon ohne Pferdehals und Pferdekopf.'
[46.] Cfr. Walter Benjamin. 'Letter to Gershom Scholem on Franz Kafka', in Selected Writings, Volume 3, (1935-1938), p. 326.
[47.] Cfr. Walter Benjamin, ´The Task of the Translator´ in Selected Writings, Volume 1, 1913-1926), page 253. "No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the audience." Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers: "Denn kein Gedicht gilt dem Leser, kein Bild dem Beschauer, keine Symphonie der Hörerschaft." (GS, IV, 1, page 9).
[48.] Walter Benjamin, Über des mimetische Vermögen. Walter Benjamin, 'On the Mimetic Faculty', in Selected Writing, Volume 2, (1927-1934), page 722. The theme was also transcribed by Benjamin while working on On the Concept of History see the 'Paralipomena to On the Concept of History'. "Was nie geschrieben wurde, lessen."
[49.] Walter Benjamin, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels, (GS, I, 1, 207). "It is characteristic of philosophical writing that it must continually confront the question of representation. In its finished form philosophy will, it is true, assume the quality of doctrine, but it does not lie within the power of mere thought to confer such a form. Philosophical doctrine is based on historical codification." Walter Benjamin The Origin of German Tragic Drama, page 27.
[50.] Walter Benjamin 'Paralipomena to On the Concept of History', New Theses K, The Dialectical Image, page 406. "Seine Sprache ist die befreite Prosa, die die Fesseln der Schrift gesprengt hat." (GS 1,3, page 1238).
[51.] Walter Benjamin Archive. Bilder, Texte, Zeichen, Ariadnerätsel, page 232.
[52.] Walter Benjamin , Über das mimetische Vermögen. "Rather, the mimetic element in language can, like a flame, manifest itself only through a kind of bearer. This bearer is the semiotic element. Thus, the nexus of meaning of words or sentences is the bearer through which, like a flash, similarity appears. For its production by man like its perception by him is in many cases, and particularly the most important, tied to its flashing up. It flits past. It is not improbable that the rapidity of writing and reading heightens the fusion of the semiotic and the mimetic in the sphere of language." Walter Benjamin, 'On the Mimetic Faculty' page 722. In relation to the rhythmical question, it is also interesting to compare the concept of "Herauslesen" as it is worked over respectively in Antithetisches über Wort und Name and in Denkbilder. In the former Benjamin writes: "Das Herauslesen auf Grund von Ähnlichkeit als die Urform des Lesens. Die Runen als Übergangsform zwischen Wipfeln, Wolken, Eingeweiden auf der einen und Buchstaben auf der anderen Seite. Die magische Funktion des Alphabets: der unsinnlichen Ähnlichkeit den dauerhaften semiotischen Fond zu liefern, auf dem sie erscheinen kann." (GS, VII, 2, page 796). Selection on the basis of similarity as the primal form of reading. Runes as a transitional form between treetops, clouds entrails, on the one hand, and letters, on the other. The magical function of the alphabet: to provide the nnsensuous similarity with the enduring semiotic ground on which it can appear." Walter Benjamin, 'Antitheses Concerning Word and Name' in Selected Writings, Volume 2 (1927-1934), page 718. In Denkbilder, the section Brezel, Feder, Pause, Klage, Firlefanz reads: "Dergleichen Wörter, ohne Bindung und Zusammenhang, sind Ausgangspunkte eines Spieles, das im Biedermeier hoch im Ansehen stand. Aufgabe eines jeden war, sie derart in einen bündigen Zusammenhang zu bringen, dass ihre Reihenfolge nicht verändert wurde. () Doch nun vergegenwärtige man sich die Umkehrung des Spieles, sehe einen gegebenen Satz so an, als wäre er nach dessen Regel konstruiert. Mit einem Schlage müsste er ein fremdes, erregendes Gesicht für uns gewinnen. Ein Teil von solcher Sicht liegt aber wirklich in jedem Akt des Lesens eingeschlossen. Nicht nur das Volk liest so Romane nämlich der Namen oder Formeln wegen, die ihm aus dem Text entgegenspringen; auch die Gebildete liegt lesend auf der Lauer nach Wendungen und Worten, und der Sinn ist nur der Hintergrund, auf dem der Schatten ruht, den sie wie Relieffiguren warfen. Greifbar wird das zumal an solchen Texten, die man die heiligen nennt. Der Kommentar, der ihnen dient, greift Wörter aus solchem Text heraus, als wären sie nach den Regeln jenes Spieles ihm gesetzt und zur Bewältigung aufgegeben worden." (GS, IV, 1, pages 432, 433). "Such unconnected words are the starting point of a game that was very popular during the Biedermeier period. What you had to do was link them up meaningfully, without changing their order. () Now, however, imagine this game being turned back to front: think of a sentence as if it had been constructed according to these rules. This would, at a stroke, give it a strange, exciting meaning for us. In reality, something of this perspective is contained in every act of reading. It is not just ordinary people who read novels in this way that is to say, for the names or formulas that leap out of the text at the reader. The educated person, too, is constantly on the lookout for turns of phrase or striking expressions, and the meaning is merely the background on which rests the shadow that they cast, like figures in relief. This is particularly apparent with texts that are regarded as sacred. The commentaries designed to serve such texts fix on particular words, as if they had been chosen according to the rules of the game and assigned to the reader as a task." Walter Benjamin, 'Thought Figures' in Selected Writing, Volume 2 (1927-1934), page 721.
[53.] Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte, II. The second thesis reads: "'One of the most remarkable characteristics of human nature,' writes Lotze, 'is, alongside so much selfishness in specific instances, the freedom from envy which the present displays toward the future.' Reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly coloured by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of that." Walter Benjamin, 'On the Concept of History', in Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938-1940, pages 389, 390.
[54.] Walter Benjamin, ´Berlin Childhood around 1900: 1934 Version'; Benjamin, W. 'Berlin Childhood around 1900: Final Version', page 345 in Selected Writings, Volume 3. Berliner Kindheit um neunzehnhundert, Loggien. "Der Takt der Stadtbahn und des Teppichklopfens wiegte mich in Schlaf. Es war die Mulde, in der sich meine Träume bildeten. Zuerst die ungestalten, die vielleicht vom Schwall des Wassers oder dem Geruch der Milch durchzogen waren, dann die langgesponnenen: Reise- und Regenträume." "The rythm of the metropolitan railway and of carpet-beating rocked me to sleep. It was the mold in which my dreams took shape first the unformed ones, traversed perhaps by the sound of running water or the smell of milk, then the long-spun ones: travel dreams and dreams of rain." Ibidem, page 345.
[55.] Cfr. ´Lehre von Ähnlichen´ in Ein Lesebuch, page 63. "So teilt noch das profane Lesen will es nicht schlechterdings um das Verstehen kommen mit jedem magischen dies: daß es einem notwendigen Tempo oder vielmehr einem kritischen Augenblicke untersteht, welchen der Lesende um keinen Preis vergessen darf, will er nicht leer ausgehen." "So tempo, that swiftness in reading or writing which can scarcely be separated from this process, would then become, as it were, the effort, or gift, or mind to partecipate in that measure of time in which similarities flash up fleetingly out of thestream of things only in order to sink down once more." Walter Benjamin, 'Doctrine of the Similar' in Selected Writings, Volume 2 (1927-1934), page 698.
[56.] Walter Benjamin, Passagenwerk, N 9, 7 (GS, V, 1, pages 591, 592). "The rescue that is carried out by these means and only by these can operate solely for the sake of what in the next moment is already irretrievably lost." Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project.
[57.] Walter Benjamin, Über den Begriff der Geschichte, V. "The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again. () For every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably." Walter Benjamin, 'On the Concept of History'.
[58.] Walter Benjamin, Passagenwerk, N 9, 4.
[59.] Walter Benjamin Archiv. Worüber sich unsere Großeltern den Kopf zerbrachen. In Das Illustrierte Blatt, Juli 1929 (Nr. 28), S. 795. Vgl. GS IV, 2, S. 622-624.
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