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Walter Benjamin, or Nostalgia Author(s): FREDRIC JAMESON Source: Salmagundi, No. 10/11 (FALL 1969-WINTER 1970), pp. 52-68 Published by: Skidmore College Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40546514 . Accessed: 27/09/2011 00:04
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* or Walter Benjamin, Nostalgia

BY FREDRIC JAMESON

So the melancholy that speaks fromthe pages of Benjamin's essays - privatedepressions, the dejectionof professional discouragement, theoutsider, thedistress In the faceof a politicaland historical nightmare - searchesthe past foran adequate object, forsome emblem or Image at which, as in religiousmeditation, the mind can stare humorsand know morbid its it can which itselfout, into discharge In finds it: the Germanyof It relief. if momentary, only an esthetic, nineteenth the thirty century years war, in the Paris of the late century").For theyare both ("Paris - the capitolof the nineteenth - the baroque and the modern- in theirveryessence allegorical, of allegory, which, and theymatchthe thought processof the theorist disembodied intention searchingforsome externalobject in which to takeshape, is itself alreadyallegoricalavant la lettre. Indeed, It seems to me that Walter Benjamin's thoughtis best levels one, as a set of parallel,discontinuous graspedas an allegorical model to thatultimate resemblance whichis notwithout of meditation describedby Dante in his letter to Can of allegoricalcomposition Grande delia Scala, where he speaks of the fourdimensionsof his
Walter Benjamin was born in 1892 of a wealthy Jewishfamily in Berlin. to Unfitforservicein World War I, he studied for a time in Bern, and returning to found a literaryreview there,beforeturning Berlin in 1920 triedunsuccessfully to academic lifeas a career.His Orifins of German Tragedy was however refused in 1925. Meanwhile, he had begun of Frankfurt as a Ph.D. thesisat the University to translate Proust, and, under the influenceof Lukncs*History and Class Consciousness,became a Marxist,visitingMoscow in 1926-27.After1933, he emigrated to Paris and pursued work on his unfinishedproject Paris: Capitol of the NineteenthCentury. He committedsuicide at the Spanish borderafteran unsuccessful attemptto flee occupied France in 1940. He numbered among close friendsand intellectualacquaintances, at various moments of his life, Ernst Bloch, Gershom Scholem, T. W. Adorno, and Bert Brecht. Everyfeelingis attached to an a prioriobject, and the of the latteris the phenomenologyof the former. presentation - Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels

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poem: the literal (his hero's earthlydestinies), the allegorical (the fate of his soul), the moral (in which the encounters of the main resumeone aspector anotherof the lifeof Christ), and the character the anagogical (where the individualdrama of Dante foreshadows It will of the human race towardsthe Last Judgement)*. progress not be hard to adapt this schemeto twentieth century reality,if for literalwe read simplypsychological, and forallegoricalethical; if for the dominantarchetypalpatternof the life of Christ we substitute some more modernone (and formyself, replacingreligionwith the religionof art, thiswill be the cominginto being of the workof art we replace of meaningin Language); if finally the incarnation itself, with politics,and make of Dante's eschatologyan earthly theology but one, where the human race findsits salvation,not in eternity, in Historyitself. Benjamin'sworkseems to me to be markedby a painfulstraining sitwhich the historical towardsa wholenessor unityof experience at everyturn. visionof a worldof ruins uationthreatens to shatter an ancientchaos of whatevernatureon the point of and fragments, - these arc some of the images that consciousness overwhelming seem to recur,eitherin Benjamin himselfor in your own mind as you read him. The idea of wholenessor of unity is of course not have described originalwith him: how many modernphilosophers the psychological the"damaged existence" we lead in modernsociety, the general of the divisionof labor and of specialization, impairment forms of modernlife and the specific alienationand dchumanization remain such alienation takes?Yet for the most part these analyses of the intellectual and throughthemspeaks the resignation abstract; where the dream of wholeness, to his owti maimedprosrnt; specialist it persists, to someoneelse's future.Benjaminis unique attachesitself in that he wants to save his own life as well: among these thinkers not only of his writings, hence the peculiarfascination incomparable for their noreven forthe poeticsensibility dialecticalintelligence, they but above all, perhaps,for the manner in which the autoexpress, in the shape satisfaction biographical part of his mind findssymbolic of ideas abstractly, in objectiveguises,expressed. the drive towards unity takes the form of an Psychologically, determines Genuinememory withthepast and withmemory. obsession
* It model than that is, at least, a more familiarand less intimidating proposed by Benjamin himself,in a letterto Max Rychncr:"I have never been able to inquire and thinkotherwisethan, if I may so put it, in a theologicalsense - name!) levels of in conformity with the Talmudic prescription regardingthe forty-nine meaningin everypassage of the Torah."

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whetherhe "whetherthe Individualcan have a pictureof himself, can masterhis own experience." "Every passion borderson chaos, on thechaos of memory" but thepassionof thecollector borders (and it was in the image of the collectorthat Benjamin foundone of his mostcomfortable identities)."Memoryforgesthe chain of tradition that passes events on fromgenerationto generation."Strange refora Marxist(one thinks these- strange of reflexion flexions, subjects of Sartre's acid commenton his orthodoxMarxist contemporaries: "materialism is thesubjectivity of thosewho are ashamedof theirown subjectivity").Yet Benjaminkeptfaithwith Proust,whom he translike Proustalso, he his own discovery of communism; lated,long after saw in his favorite poet Baudelairean analogous obsessionwith remmaster his literary and involuntary and he followed iniscence memory; in the fragmentary evocationof his own childhood called Berliner his own Kindheitum 1900; he also began the task of recovering withshortessayistic of dreams,of isolated existence records sketches, which howeverhe was unable to carry and experiences, impressions to the greater writer's ultimatenarrative unity. assimilatus from He was perhapsmoreconsciousof what prevents life a such form than of the perfected would ing our life experience between untake: fascinated, forexample,with Freud's distinction was for which conscious and theconsciousact of recollection, memory what the former or eradicating Freud basicallya way of destroying was designed to preserve:"consciousnessappears in the systemof and the traces. . . consciousness in place of the memory perception traceare withinthesame system mutually leavingbehindof a memory is the defense of consciousness For Freud,the function incompatible." in this environment: the external of theorganism againstshocksfrom sense traumas, dreams,are ways in which the repetitions, hysterical to make its way throughto shock attempts assimilated incompletely and hence to ultimate appeasement In Benjamin's consciousness a of historicaldescription, hands, this idea becomes an instrument the of account on in modern how of perhaps society, way showing increasing quantityof shocksof all kinds to which the organismis are no longerpersonal mechanisms thesedefense henceforth subjected, intervenesbetween ones: a whole series of mechanicalsubstitutes and its objects shieldingus perhaps,yet at the same consciousness what happens to us or us of any way of assimilating timedepriving to to any genuinely Thus, giveonlyone example, personalexperience. of novelty, stands as a shock-absorber the newspaper numbingus to overwhelm what mightperhapsotherwise us, but at the same time

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its eventsneutraland impersonal, rendering makingof themwhat by definition has no commondenominator with our privateexistences. in that it depends on sociallyconditioned Experienceis moreover on certaincategories and similarities, of recurrences a certainrhythm culturalin origin. Thus even of likenessin eventswhich are properly in Proustand Baudelaire,who lived in relatively societies, fragmented in the conelements are primary oftenunconscious, ritualistic devices, and the themin the "vie antrieure" struction of form:we recognize of Baudelaire, in the ceremoniesof salon life in correspondences Proust. And where the modernwritertries to create a perpetual - as in Kafka- the mystery in the eventsseems to inherent present resultnot so much fromtheirnoveltyas fromthe feelingthat they that they are in some sense "familiar," have merelybeen forgotten, in the hauntingsignificance which Baudelaire lent that word. Yet as of experienceare less and decays,such rhythms societyincreasingly less available. seems to pass over At thispoint,however, description psychological of the reconciliation a vision into into moral judgement, insensibly of past and presentwhich is somehowan ethical one. But for the westernreader the whole ethical dimensionof Benjamin's work is as it docs a kind of ethical incorporating likely to be perplexing, has become traditionalin codified Goethe, which, by psychology in the German rooted and language, but forwhich deeply Germany is indeed a kindof halfwe have no equivalent. This Lehensweisheit human nature,with fixed a of idea classical the between way house its psychology of the humors,passions,sins or charactertypes; and of influence of the determining the modernidea of pure historicity, in the domain of the As a compromise the situationor environment. of Hegel in it is not unlike the compromise individualpersonality, itself:and whereforthe lattera generalmeaning therealmof history for Goethe in was immanentto the particularmomentof history, its and of of the the overall some sense development personality goal is built into the particular emotionin question,or latentin the paris based on a ticularstage in the individual'sgrowth.For the system like Gide, writer the of (a visionof the fulldevelopment personality reflexion narcissistic and a but pale by Goethe,gives deeplyinfluenced' moment at the individualism class middle ofthisethic, whichexpressed to of its historictriumph); it neitheraims to bend the personality Chriswith case is the as standardof discipline, some purelyexternal accidentsof empirical nor to abandon it to the meaningless tianity, but rathersees modern with most ethics, as is the case psychology,

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which includes the individualpsychological experienceas something withinitself in whichethicalgrowth seedsof development, something as a kindof interiorized Providence.So, forexample,the is inherent closinglines of Wilhelm Meister:"You make me thinkof Saul, the son of Kish, who went forthto seek his father'sasses and found, instead,a kingdom!" of Benjamin that in his mostcomplete It is howevercharacteristic of thisGoetheanethic,the long essayon ElectiveAffinities, expression on the dangersthat menace the personality he should lay morestress For thisessay,which of its ultimate thanon the picture development. is at the same time psychology, speaks the languageof Goetheanlifeforcesin German societywhich made a critiqueof the reactionary it is at with the conceptof myth, theirown: working thispsychology the same time an attackon the obscurantist ideologieswhich made the notionof myththeirrallying cry. In this,the polemicpostureof all for those of us who, undialectically, instructive can be Benjamin on are temptedsimply to reject the concept of myth altogether, uses to whichit is ordinarily accountof the ideological put; forwhom seems not to aim thisconcept, like relatedones of magicor charisma, of but ratherat a consecration at a rationalanalysisof the irrational it through language. a mythical But forBenjaminElectiveAffinities may be considered which from that element ns understand we work,on condition myth instinctual of chaos forces, earlier as some itself: theworkseeksto free of as that which is destructive inchoate,natural,pre-individualistic, it if overcome must which consciousness that genuine individuality, to accede if is to it its of any own, is to attain any real autonomy to see in this human level of existence. Is it far-fetched properly oppositionbetweenmythicalforcesand the individualspirita disan about past and present, of Benjamin'sthoughts guisedexpression its masters consciousness image of the way in which a remembering in the lost be to lightwhatwould otherwise prehistory past and brings that the essay on Elective of the organism?Nor should we forget the past, this time a cultural is itselfa way of recovering Affinities past, one given over to the dark mythicalforcesof a proto-fascist tradition. Benjamin's dialecticalskill can be seen in the way this idea of throughattentionto the formof Goethe's novel, mythis expressed in its comof Westernliterature, no doubtone of the mosteccentric with symbolsof binationof an eighteenth centuryceremoniousness a strangely artificial, allegoricalquality: objectswhich appear in the

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blankncssof the non-visualnarrative styleas thoughisolatedagainst a void, as though fatefulwith a kind of geometrical meaning not to have cautiouslyselecteddetail of landscape, too symmetrical significance, analogies,such as the chemicalone that gives the novel its title,too amply developed not to be emblematic.The reader is of course familiar with symbolism in the modernnovel; everywhere but in general the symbolism is built into the work,like a sheet of instructions supplied inside the box along with the puzzle pieces. Here we feelthe burdenof guiltlaid upon us as readers, that we lack what strikesus almost as a culturallyinheritedmode of thinking, accessible members:and no doubt onlyto thosewho are thatculture's the Goethean systemdoes project itselfin some such way, in its claim to universality. The originality of Benjamin is to cut across the sterileopposition betweenthe arbitrary of the symbolon the one hand, interpretations and the blank failureto see what it means on the other: Elective but as a is to be read, not as a novel by a symbolic writer, Affinities novelabout symbolism.If objectsof a symbolic loom nature large in thiswork,it is not because theywerechosento underline theme of the in some decorative manner,but ratherbecause the real unadultery over into the power of derlyingsubject is preciselythe surrender symbolsof people who have lost theirautonomyas human beings. "When people sink to this level, even the life of apparently lifeless the crucialrole underlined things growsstrong.Gundolfquite rightly ofobjectsin thisstory.Yet the intrusion intohuman of the thing-like lifeis precisely a criterion of the mythical universe."We are required to read these symbolicobjects to the second power: not so much as to sense that to deciphera one-to-onemeaningfrom them, directly of which the veryfactof symbolism is itself symptomatic. And as with the objects,so also with the characters: it has for exampleoftenbeen remarkedthat the figureof Ottilie, the rather saintlyyoung woman around whom the drama turns,is somehow fromthe other,more realdifferent in its mode of characterization For Benjaminhowever drawn characters. and istically psychologically thisis not so much a flaw,or an inconsistency, as a clue: Ottilie is not realitybut appearance,and it is this which the ratherexternal and visual mode of characterization conveys. "It is clear that these Goetheancharacterscome beforeus not so much as figures shaped from but externalmodels,nor wholly Imaginaryin theirinvention, rather entrancedsomehow,as thoughunder a spell. Hence a kind

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of obscurity about them which is foreignto the purely visual, to paintingforinstance,and which is characteristic only of that whose veryessence is pure appearance. For appearance is in this worknot so muchpresented as a theme in theverynature as it is rather implicit and modeof the presentation itself." This moral dimensionof Benjamin's,work, like Goethe's own, momentbetween an uneasybalance, a transitional clearlyrepresents or the historical on the one hand, and the esthetic the psychological with this purely on the other. The mind cannot long be satisfied of fateful, of the eventsof the book as the triumph ethicaldescription and at and social it strains historical for forces; explanation, mythical "that the conclusion himself is to forced express length Benjamin the writer shroudsin silence: namely,thatpassionloses all its rights, when it seeks to make under the laws of genuinehuman morality, in Benjamin'swork, But a pact with wealthymiddle-class security." characand politics, into history this inevitableslippageof morality is revealed is mediated by esthetics, teristic of all modernthought, by attentionto the qualities of the work of art, just as the above conclusionwas articulated by the analysisof thoseaspectsof Elective that best have been describedas allegoricalrather might Affinities than symbolic. For in one sense Benjamin'slifeworkcan be seen as a kindof vast of allegorof all shapes and varieties a passionatecollection, museum, that enormous on workcenters ical objects;and his mostsubstantial which is the Baroque. studioof allegoricaldecoration The Origins- not so muchof German tragedy ("Tragdie) - as for which English has no of German Trauerspiel: the distinction, For "tragedy," equivalent,is crucial to Benjamin's interpretation. is a sacrificial which he limitsto ancientGreece as a phenomenon, drama in which the hero is offered up to the Gods for atonement. the baroque genon the otherhand, which encompasses Trauerspiet, German and Calderonas well as the 17thcentury Elizabethans erally, characterized be best that is initially might something playwrights, as a pageant: a funerealpageant - so might the word be most adequatelyrendered. as as chronicle, the baroque vision of history As a formit reflects a succession ceaseless wheel of the of the relentless fortune, turning across the stage of the world's mighty, princes,popes, empressesin - a and poisoners, maskeraders theirsplendidcostumes, courtiers, of a Renaissancetriumph. withall the finery dance of death produced in the modernsense: "No matter For chronicle is not yethistoricity

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how deeply the baroque intentionpenetratesthe detail of history, its microscopicanalysis never ceases to search painstakinglyfor political calculation in a substanceseen as pure intrigue. Baroque of condrama knowshistorical eventsonly as the depravedactivity in conviction any of spirators.Not a breathof genuinerevolutionary himself thecountless rebelswho appear before the baroque sovereign, in the posture immobilized of a Christianmartyr.Discontent such is the classic motiveforaction." And such historical time,mere successionwithoutdevelopment, is in realitysecretly spatial, and takes the court (and the stage) as its privileged spatial embodiment. At first glance, it would appear that this visionof life as chronicle is in The Originsof GermanTragedy,a pre-Marxist work,accounted forin an idealistic manner: as Lutherans, Benjaminsays,theGerman knewa worldin whichbeliefwas utterly separate baroqueplaywrights from works,in which not even the Calvinisticpreordained harmony a littlemeaningto the successionof emptyacts intervenes to restore thatmake up human life,theworldthusremaining as a bodywithout a soul, as the shell of an object divestedof any visiblefunction.Yet it is at least ambiguouswhetherthis intellectualand metaphysical positioncauses the psychological experiencethat is at the heart of or whether it is not itselfmerely one of the various baroque tragedy, and concrete an acute which abstract, expressions, through relatively emotion triesto manifest itself.For the keyto the latteris the central enigmaticfigureof the prince himself,halfway between a tyrant his passion: interpreted justly assassinatedand a martyr suffering he stands as of the embodiment allegorically, Melancholyin a stricken world,and Hamlet is his mostcompleteexpression.This interpretation of the funerealpageant as a basic expressionof pathological has the advantageof accountingboth forformand conmelancholy tentat the same time. motivations:"The indecision Contentin thesenseof thecharacters' of the princeis nothing of Saturn acedia. The influence but saturnine falls account on 7hc slow.* makespeople 'apathetic, indecisive, tyrant of thesluggishness the character of his emotions.In the same fashion, - anothertraitof the preof the courtier is markedby faithlessness 's mind, as portrayedin these dominance of Saturn. The courtier is fluctuation itself:betrayalis his veryclement. It is to be tragedies, charnor to insufficient to hastiness neither of composition attributed need that in acterization the parasites these plays scarcely any time forreflection over to the and at all before their lords going betraying of in their evident actions,partly enemy. Rather,the lack character

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desan inconsolable, to be sure, reflects consciousMachiavellianism of balefulconstelto an impenetrable conjunction pondentsurrender thatseems to have takenon a massive,almost lations,a conjunction all are in the last character.Crown,royal purple,scepter, thing-like of the tragedy of fate,and they carryabout analysis the properties to submit theman aura of destinyto which the courtier is the first to his fellow men as to some portent of disaster. His faithlessness faith he keeps with to the deeper,more contemplative corresponds thesematerialemblems." is for those momentsin which Once again Benjamin'ssensitivity human beings findthemselves given over into the power of things; - thatmelancholy which of baroquetragedy content and thefamiliar - lust,treason, Hamlet thosevicesofmelancholy from we recognize in the lesserElizabethans,in Websterfor sadism- so predominant - veersabout slowlyinto a questionof form, into the probInstance lem of objects,which is to say of allegoryitself.For allegoryis preof a world in which things ciselythe dominantmode of expression from sunderedfrom reasonutterly have been forwhatever meanings, existence. human from genuine spirit, of the baroque fromthe And in the lightof thisnew examination littleby littlethe broodof than rather view form of of content, point altersin focus, the of the center at play himself figure ing melancholy transformed becomes little little funereal the the hero of by pageant in the excellence, into the baroque playwright himself, allcgorist par that Grbler: the overparticular superstitious, Benjamin'sterminology modernguise In the In a morenervous, readerof omenswho returns heroesof Poe and Baudelaire. "Allegoriesare in the realm hysterical what ruinsare in the realmof things";and it is clear that of thoughts among these depressedand Benjamin is himselffirstand foremost his who visionaries pages. "Once the object people hyperconscious once look of Melancholybecomeallegorical, has beneaththe brooding life hps flowedout of it, the object itselfremainsbehind,dead, yet it lies beforethe allegorist, for all eternity; given over to preserved is henceitself the In other ill. or him utterly, forgood words, object it can its on own; only forth any meaning incapable of projecting wishesto lend it. He instills whichtheallegorist takeon thatmeaning it with his own meaning,himselfdescends to inhabit it: and this but in an ontologicalsense. mustbe understood not psychologically becomes In his hands the thingin question somethingelse, speaks of something else, becomesforhim the key to some realm of hidden

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as whose emblemhe honorsit. This is what constitutes knowledge, the natureof allegoryas script." Scriptratherthan language,the letterratherthan the spirit;into this the baroque worldshatters, legible signs and emblems strangely naggingat the too curious mind,a processionmovingslowly across time In thissense,forthe first a stage,laden withoccultsignificance. it seems to me that allegoryis restored to us - not as a gothicmonnor as in C. S. Lewis a sign of of purelyhistorical interest, strosity but ratheras a pathology the medievalhealthof the (religious) spirit, withwhichin the modernworldwe are only too familiar.The tendhas been to exalt symbolat the expenseof ency of our own criticism the objectsproposedby thatcriticism privileged allegory(even though - Englishmannerism and Dante - are moreproperly allegoricalin his in as in of other this, nature; Benjamin has sensibility, aspects much in commonwith a writer like T. S. Eliot). It is, perhaps,the expressionof a value rather than a descriptionof existingpoetic betweensymboland allegoryis that phenomena: forthe distinction between a completereconciliation between object nnd spiritand a of Benjamin's anmere will to such reconciliation.The usefulness as well: distinction in his lies insistence on a however temporal alysis the symbol is the instantaneous, the lyrical,the single momentin time; and this temporallimitationexpressosperhnpsthe historical to last in the modernworld forgenuine reconciliation impossibility in time, accidentalpresent. to be anything a lyricnl, morethnn Allegory is on the contrarythe privilegedmode of our own life in time, a to moment, the painful moment of meaningfrom clumsydeciphering instants. disconnected a continuity to heterogeneous, to restore attempt "Where thesymbolas it fadesshowsthe faceof Nature in the lightof that lies of history salvation,in allegoryit is the fades hippocratica like a frozenlandscape beforethe eye of the beholder.History in that it has of unseasonable,painful,abortive,expresses everything itself in that face - nay ratherin thatdeath's head. And as true as it may be that such an allegoricalmode is utterlylacking in any of feature, in any classical harmony of expression, 'symbolic'freedom in the form hereportentously in anything human- what is expressed of a riddle is not only the natureof human life in general,but also of the individualin its mostnatural and the biographical historicity This - the baroque, enrthbound form. expoorganicallycorrupted - is the very as the storyof the world's suffering sitionof history essence of allegoricalperception; historytakes on meaning only in the stationsof its agony and decay. The amount of meaning is in

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exact proportion to the presenceof death and the power of decay, since death is that which tracesthe surestline betweenPhysis and meaning." of modern holds forthe allegory And what marksbaroque allegory times,for Baudelaire as well: only in the latter it is interiorized: "Baroque allegorysaw the corpse fromthe outside only. Baudelaire within."Or again: "Commemoration sees it from [Andenken] is the secularized version of the adorationof holyrelics. . . Commemoration therefindsexto experience.In commemoration is the complement alienationof human beings,who take invenpressionthe increasing In the nineteenth merchandise. tories oftheir century pastas of lifeless abandonstheoutsideworld,only to colonizethe inner.Relics allegory of fromthe dead occurrences come fromthe corpse,commemoration knownas experience." thepast whichare euphemistically a new preoccupation Yet in theselate essayson modernliterature appears,which signals the passage in Benjamin fromthe predominand politicaldimensionitself.This is to the historical antlyesthetic whichcharacterto mechanicalinventions, the attention to machines, in the studyof itself in realm of esthetics the first istically appears the movies ("The ReproduceableWork of Art") and only later is in general(as in the essay "Paris extended to the studyof history Capitol of the 19th Century,"in which the feelingof life in this of the new objectsand inventions periodis conveyed by a description theuse ofcast iron,theDaguerofit- thepassageways, characteristic the and the advertising).It is importexpositions, rotype panorama, such an approachto history materialistic ant to pointout thathowever on invenfrom Marxismthan the stress is farther may seem,nothing cause of historical as the primary tion and technique chnnge. Indeed it seems to me that such theories(of the kind forwhich the steam and whichhave recentrevolution, engineis thecause of theindustrial formin the modernistic ly been rehearsed yet again, in streamlined for Marxist as substitute worksof Marshall McLuhan) function a a of in the way in which theyoffer feeling concretehistoriography at the same time that ness comparableto economicsubject matter, of classes of the human factors theydispensewith any considration of production. and of the socinlorganization in history seems with the role of inventions Benjamin'sfascination or estheticterms. If we in psychological to me mostcomprehensible on the role of the passerbyand follow,forinstance,his meditation the crowd in Baudelaire,we find that afterthe evocationof Baudafter the discussionof elaire's physicaland stylistic characteristics,

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shock and organicdefensesoutlinedearlierin this essay, the inner logic of Benjamin'smaterialleads him to materialinvention:"Comfort isolates. And at the same timeit shifts its possessor closerto the With theinvention of matchesaround powerof physicalmechanisms. the middle of the century, therebegins a. whole series of novelties which have this in commonthat they replace a complicatedset of operationswith a single strokeof the hand. This development goes on in many different spheresat the same time: it is evidentamong othersin the telephone, where in place of the continuousmovement with which the crank of the older model had to be turneda single of the receiver now suffices. lifting Amongthe variouselaborategesturesrequiredto preparethe photographic apparatus,that of 'snapping1 the photographwas particularly consequential.Pressing the once is enough to freezean eventforunlimited time.The apfinger a posthumous shock,so to speak. And beside paratuslendsthe instant tactileexperiences of this kind we findoptical ones as well, such as the classified ads in a newspaper, in a big city.To move or the traffic the latterinvolvesa whole seriesof shocksand collisions.At through like charges the pedestrian crisscross dangerousintersections, impulses in a battery.Baudelairedescribes theman who plungesintothecrowd as a reservoir of electricalenergy. Thereupon he calls him, thus of shock,'a kalidoscopeendowed with singlingout the experience consciousness'/1 And Benjamin goes on to complete this catalogue with a description of the workerand his psychological subjectionto the operationof the machinein the factory.Yet it seems to me that alongsidethe value of thispassage as an analysisof the psychological effect of machinery, it it has for Benjamin a secondaryintention, in some satisfiesa deeper psychological ways perhaps requirement even more important than the official intellectual one; and that is to serve as a concreteembodiment forthe state of mind of Baudelaire. disembodied The essay indeed beginswith a relatively psychological of language in modern state: the poet facedwith the new condition of the the inhabitant facedwiththe debasement of journalism, times, numbness shocks with and faced the greatcity perceptual increasing of daily life. These phenomenaarc intensely familiarto Benjamin, he "rendered11: but somehowhe seems to feel themas insufficiently them cannot cannot possess themspiritually, he adequately, express until he findssome sharper and more concretephysical image in is prewhich to embodythem. The machine,the list of inventions, conreader that we an it will clear to the be image; and ciselysuch as in sidersuch a passage,in appearancea historical reality analysis,

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in the locatingof some fitting artexercisein allegoricalmditation, emblemin whichto anchorthe peculiarand nervousmodernstate of mindwhichwas his subject-matter. with machines and inventions For this reason the preoccupation of historical in Benjamindoes not lead to a theory causality;rather it findsits completion elsewhere,in a theoryof the modernobject, in the notionof "aura." Aura forBenjamin is the equivalentin the call the forwhat anthropologists modernworld,whereit still persists, "sacred" in primitive societies; it is in the world of things what is in the world of human events,what "charisma" is in "mystery" the world of human beings. In a secularizeduniverseit is perhaps the cause of which of itsdisappearance, easierto locateat themoment of human perception thereplacement is in generaltechnical invention, with those substitutes for and mechanical extensionsof perception which are machines. Thus it is easy to see how in the movies,in resulted workof art," that aura which originally the "reproduceable fromthe physical presenceof actors in the here-and-nowof the theateris short-circuited by the new technicaladvance (and then to in Freudian by the attempt symptom-formation, replaced, genuine endow the starswith a new kind of personalaura of theirown off thescreen). which of physicalpresence Yet in theworldofobjects, thisintensity can perhaps best be expressedby the aura of something constitutes of returned:"The experience the image of the look, the intelligence relathe onto reaction of a social aura is based on the transposition or of nature to man. The personwe look at, tionshipof the lifeless looked at, looks back at us in return. the personwho believeshimself means to endow it with the the aura of a phenomenon To experience powerto look back in return." And elsewherehe definesaura thus: "The single, unrepeatable how close it may be. While resting no matter of distance, experience to followthe outlineof a mountainagainst on a summer afternoon, means or of a branchthatcastsitsshadow on the viewer, thehorizon, of the branch." Aura is thus in to breaththe aura of the mountain, in thatin it a mysterious a sense theopposite of allegoricalperception, visible. And wherethebrokenfragments ofobjectsbecomes wholeness forcesin which of destructive a thing-world of allegoryrepresented was drowned, the objectsof aura represent human autonomy perhaps not shorn of the the setting of a kind of utopia, a Utopianpresent, past but having absorbedit, a kind of plenitudeof existencein the instant.Yet thisUtopiancomifonlyforthe briefest worldof things,

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of Benjamin'sthought, as it is by the mechanized portent put to flight of history, is available to the thinker cultural present only in a simpler past. Thus it is his one evocationof a non-allegorical art, his essay on Nikolai Leskow,"The Teller of Tales," which is perhapshis masterpiece. As with actorsfacedwith the technicaladvance of the reproduceable art-work, so also with the tale in the face of moderncommunications and in particular of thenewspaper.The function systems, of the newspapers is to absorbthe shocksof novelty, and by numbing the organismto them to sap their intensity.Yet the tale, always to constructed around some novelty, was designed on the contrary its force; wherethe mechanicalform "exhausts"ever increaspreserve of new material, communicathe older word-of-mouth ing quantities tion is that whichrecommends itselfto memory.Its reproduceability is not mechanical,but natural to consciousness; indeed, that which allows the storyto be remembered, to seem "memorable"is at the same timethe means of its assimilation of to the personalexperience the listeners as well. It is instructive to compare this analysis by Benjamin of the tale fromthe novel) with that of Sartre,so (and its implieddistinction in its ultimateemphasis. similarin some ways, and yet so different For both,the two forms arc opposednot only in theirsocial origins solitude- and the tale springing from collective life,the novel from not only in theirraw material- the talc using what everyonecan the novel that which is uncommon recognizeas commonexperience, - but also and primarily in therelationship and highlyindividualistic to death and to eternity. Benjamin quotes Valry: "It is almost as were relatedto the the though disappearanceof the idea of eternity of of for kind work distaste long durationin time." increasing any with the disappearanceof the genuine storyis the inConcurrent of death and dyingin our society:forthe aucreasingconcealment of death, of derivesfromthe authority thority the storyultimately who "A man whichlends everyeventa once-and-for-all uniqueness. is at everypoint in his life a man who died at the age of thirty-five is going to die at the age of thirty-five": so Benjamin describesour the of characters in the tale, as the anti-psychological, apprehension But what appeals of theirown destinies. simplified representatives to his sensitivity what Sartrecondemnsas to the archaic is precisely inauthentic: namelythe violenceto genuinelived human experience, which neverin the freedom of its own presentfeelsitselfas fate,for which fate and destinyare always characteristic of other people's

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closed and thing-like. seen from the outsideas something experience, of For thisreasonSartreopposesthetale (it is truethathe is thinking a to catered which well-made the late-nineteenth story, century middle-class audience,ratherthan to the relatively anonymousfolk productof which Benjaminspeaks) to the novel, whose task is prein the present, of consciousness ciselyto renderthisopen experience of freedom, ratherthan the optical illusionof fate. to a hisThere can be no doubt that this oppositioncorresponds torical experience: the older tale, indeed the classical nineteenth a social life in which the individual novel as well, expressed century in which he chances and opportunities, facedsingle-shot, irreparable on a single roll of the dice, in which his life had to play everything tendto takeon theappearanceof fateor destiny, did therefore properly of a storythatcan be told. Whereas in the modernworld (which is to say,in Western prosperity Europeand theUnitedStates), economic in thissense: hence the is everreallyirrevocable is such thatnothing of consciousliterature hence the modernistic of freedom, philosophy hence also, the decay of plot, ness of whichSartreis here a theorist: forwhere nothingis irrevocable(in the absence of death in Benthereis only a seriesof jamin's sense) thereis no storyto tell either, reversible. is order whose of indiscriminately experiences equal weight the which in the tale, with of way Benjaminis as aware as Sartre in the lived our to does violence its appearanceof destiny, experience the of past. present: but for him it does justice to our experience so is to be seen as a mode of commemoration, Its "inauthenticity" man the that it does not really matterany longer whether young dead in his primewas aware of his own lived experienceas fate: him,we always thinkof him, at the forus, henceforth remembering variousstages of his life,as one about to become this destiny,and " our own chillyexistence the tale thusgivesus thehope of warming read." we which about a death upon mode of relatingto the past, The tale is not only a psychological it: it is forBenjaminalso a mode of contactwith of commemorating a vanishedformof social and historicalexistenceas well; and it is and the in this correlationbetween the activityof story-telling of mode determinate form of a certain production concrete historically at criticism that Benjamin can serve as a model of Marxistliterary findtheirarchaic its mostrevealing.The twinsourcesof story-telling on the one hand and the seain "the settledcultivator embodiment of life have in fact proforms Both other. the on merchant faring ... A genuineexof duced theirown characteristic type story-teller

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tension of thepossibilities ofstory-telling historical to itsgreatest range is howevernot possiblewithout fusion of the themostthorough-going two archaictypes. Such a fusion was realizedduringthe middleages in the artisanalassociations and the master and guilds. The sedentary worked together in the same room; indeed, wanderingapprentices been a wandering before settling everymasterhad himself apprentice down at home or in some foreign city. If peasants and sailors were the inventors of story-telling, the guild system provedto be the place of itshighest The tale is thusthe product of an artisan development." a hand-madeproduct, like a cobbler'sshoe or a pot; and like culture, such a hand-made object,"the touch of the story-teller clings to it like the traceof the potter's hand on the glazed surface." of literature to politics, In his ultimate statement of the relationship of the Benjaminseems to have triedto bringto bear on the problems presentthis method,which had known success in dealing with the is not withoutits difficulties, objectsof the past. Yet the transposition in his and Benjamin'sconclusionsremainproblematical, particularly unresolved,ambiguous attitudetowards modern industrialcivilizahim. him as muchas it seemsto have depressed tion,whirhfascinated The problemof propagandain art can be solved,he maintains,by not so much to the contentof the work of art, as to its attention, form: a progressive workof artis one whichutilizesthe mostadvanced the artistlives his activity artistic one in which therefore techniques, as a technician,and throughthis technicalwork findsa unity of of the specialist worker."The solidarity purposewith the industrial but a mediatedone." with the proletariat . . . con neverbe anything This communist of art," which he opposed to the "politicalisation fascist of the machine,"was designedto harnessto "estheticalisation to whichotherMarxistcritics thatmodernism the cause of revolution therecan be no doubt that for And were hostile. (Lukacs, instance) as a his experience radical first came to a politicsthrough Benjamin his of within the domain his awareness, specialist: through growing work the on influence crucial the of own specializedartistic activity, in shortof Historyitself. of artof changesin the public,in technique, can no of realm of the history art the historian But althoughin the in a advances technical between doubt show a parallelism specific a as the of whole, economy given art and the generaldevelopment work of advanced and difficult it is difficult to see how a technically but a "mediated"effect art can have anything Benjamin politically. him: for was of courseluckyin the artistic examplewhich lay before of theater the with his thesis he illustrates Brecht, perhapsindeed epic

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the only modernartistic innovationthat has had directand revolutionarypoliticalimpact. But even here the situationis ambiguous: an astutecritic(Rolf Tiedemann) has pointedout thesecretrelationforBrechton the one hand and ship betweenBenjamin's fondness "his lifelong fascination withchildren's books"on theother(children's books: hieroglyphs: simplifiedallegorical emblems and riddles). in reality toemerge intothehistorical Thus, wherewe thought present, we plungeagain into the distantpast of psychological obsession. assois most frequently But if nostalgia as a politicalmotivation thereis no reason why a nostalgiaconsciousof ciated with fascism, on the with the present dissatisfaction a lucid and remorseless itself, furnish as cannot some remembered of adequate grounds plenitude, stimulusas any other: the example of Benjamin is a revolutionary his to contemplate thereto proveit. He himself, however, preferred in in as the according paragraph, following destiny religious imagery, to GershomScholem the last he ever wrote: "Surely Time was felt who inquired noras homogeneous neither as empty by the soothsayers forwhat it hid in its womb. Whoever keeps this in mind is in a in commemoration: to graspjusthow past timeis experienced position in just exactlythe same way. As is well known,the Jewswere forthe Thora and bidden to search into the future.On the contrary, of the past. So for themin commemoration the act of prayer instruct remains in to which the clienteleof soothsayers them,the future, all that for not it does Yet thrall,is divestedof its sacred power. For their in time becomesimply every eyes. emptyand homogeneous second of the futurebears within it that littledoor throughwhich Messiah may enter." image of the angel that exists Anglus novus: Benjamin'sfavorite only to sing its hymnof praisebeforethe face of God, to give voice, So at its and thenat once to vanishback into uncreated nothingness. on the of time: a pure present, mostpoignantBenjamin'sexperience on in meditation it averted threshold of the future eyes honoring by the past.