Wesleyan University

Time and History

Author(s): Siegfried Kracauer
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 6, Beiheft 6: History and the Concept of Time (1966), pp.
65-78
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
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 TIME AND HISTORY*

SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

Our present Westernconception of history as an immanentand continuous

process in chronological,or secular, time is of modern origin. It came into
being in the wake of increasingsecularizationand the concomitantrise of
scientificinquiry;and it was precededby mythologicaland theologicalcon-
ceptionswhichdiscountedthe significanceof chronologicaltime for an under-
standing of the past. Think of the indifferenceto chronologicalaccuracy
amongthe Greeksof the classicalperiod;of the recourseto Tyche in the Hel-
lenistic age when the Mediterraneanpeoples were thrown into open space
where Reason seemed powerless;and of the general predilection,based on
nature religion,for a cyclical theory of history in the Graeco-Romanpagan
world. Nor did the ancient Jews consider history a linear process; rather,
their past appearedto them as a series of partly supernaturaltransactions,
with God's wrathor forgivenessconstantlyinterveningin the course of secu-
lar events. And where would He lead his chosen people and throughthem
humanity?The hoped-forredemption,envisionedby the apocalypsesof later
Judaism,markednot so much a new historicalepoch as the divinelydecreed
end of humanhistory.Early Christianeschatologyengulfedchronologyalso.
But since the parousiafailed to come, the Church,while retainingthe belief
in ultimateresurrection,establishedherself in the world, with the result that
she had to reconcile with each other two divergenttimes: a vertical time
pointing heavenwardand a horizontal, or chronological,time framing the
successionof innerworldlyhappenings.Medievalchronicles,with their inco-
herentmixtureof elementsfrom both salvationhistory and mundanehistory,
nicely reflect this attempt simultaneouslyto move within secular time and
away from it. Incidentally,one does well to rememberwhat Malinowskisays
of his Trobriands- that their relianceon magic does not preventthem from
approachingmany issues in a rational,all but scientificspirit.' By the same
* Reprinted from Zeiignisse: Theodor W. Adorno zum 60. Geburtstag (Frankfurt
am Main, 1963), 50-64, by permission of the publishers, Europiische Verlagsanstalt.
1. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion (Garden City, N.Y., 1954),
especially 26, 28-30, 33-35.

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66 SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

token, a sense of chronologicaltime may have subsisted even throughout

periodswhichin their art or literatureostensiblyignoredits flow.
Chronologicaltime is a homogeneousmedium which indiscriminatelycom-
prises all events imaginable.And of course, each event has its definiteplace
in it. This carriesimportantimplicationsfor the modernapproachto history.
First, in identifyinghistory as a process in chronologicaltime, we tacitly
assume that our knowledgeof the moment at which an event emergesfrom
the flow of time will help us to accountfor its appearance.The date of the
event is a value-ladenfact. Accordingly,all events in the historyof a people,
a nation, or a civilizationwhich take place at a given moment are supposed
to occur then and there for reasons bound up, somehow,with that moment.
Historians usually establish meaningful relationships,causal or otherwise,
between successivegroupsof events, tracingthe chronologicallylater ones to
those precedingthem.
Second, under the spell of the homogeneityand irreversibledirection of
chronologicaltime, we tend to focus on what we believe to be more or less
continuoussequencesof events and to follow their course throughthe cen-
turies. Many a general narrativerelates, say, the history of a people or an
institutionin chronologicalorder, with an eye on contemporaryactivitiesin
various areas of human endeavors.Ranke's political histories, for instance,
are full of excursionsinto the culturalfield. The underlyingidea is that, in
spite of all breaks and contingencies,any such wholesale sequencehas a life
of its own - an individuality,as Meinecke puts it. Sometimesnarrativesin
this vein seem to be intendedto answerthe questionwhere do we come from
(or where do we go, for that matter). The questionwould hardly be raised
were it not for our confidencein the workingsof homogeneoustime.
Third, from here it is only a small step to some secularversionof the old
world histories. In fact, the experienceof the formal propertiesof chrono-
logical time kindlesa desireto translateform into content- to conceive, that
is, of the historicalprocess as a whole and to attributeto that whole certain
qualities: it may be imagined as an unfolding of potentialities,a develop-
ment, or indeed a progresstoward a better future. This desire proves irre-
sistible.Not to mentionHegel, whose grandioseconstructionof the historical
process still materializesin a no-man's land between temporalityand eter-
nity, even Marx, more down to earth though he is, cannot help yielding to
the temptationto map out the course of history in its totality. What the
philosophersimpose from above, the historianstry to achieve from below;
they too are hauntedby the chimeraof universalhistory, this phantom-like
counterpartof flowingtime. Ranke speaks of a "generalhistoricallife, which
moves progressivelyfrom one nation or group of nationsto another"2;Henri
2. Leopold von Ranke, Universal History: The Oldest Historical Group of Nations

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 TIME AND HISTORY 67

Pirenne3 and Marc Bloch4 call universal history the goal of all historical
pursuits. Chronology thus acquires a material meaning of the first magnitude.

At this point I should like to draw attention to a theory which has recently
been advanced in history of art. In his little volume, The Shapes of Time:
Remarks on the History of Things,5 George Kubler, a brilliant art historian
and an anthropologist to boot, attacks the preoccupation with periods and
styles common among scholars in this field. Instead of emphasizing matters
of chronology, he submits, the historian had better devote himself to the
"discovery of the manifold shapes of time."6 And what does Kubler under-
stand by shaped times? Art works, or more frequently their elements, says
he, can be arranged in the form of sequences, each composed of phenomena
which hang together inasmuch as they represent successive "solutions" of
problems originating with some need and touching off the whole series. One
after another, these interlinked solutions bring out the various aspects of the
initial problems and the possibilities inherent in them. So it would seem evi-
dent that the date of a specific art object is less important for its interpretation
than its "age," meaning its position in the sequence to which it belongs. The
fact that related consecutive solutions are often widely separated in terms
of chronological time further suggests that each sequence evolves according
to a time schedule all its own. Its time has a peculiar shape. This in turn
implies that the time curves described by different sequences are likely to
differ from each other. In consequence, chronologically simultaneous artistic
achievements should be expected to occupy different places on their respective
time curves, one appearing early in its series, a second being remote from
the opening of it. They fall into the same period but differ in age.
Kubler's theory is of interest since it ends with a pithy argument against
overemphasis on chronological time in art history. If somewhat modified,
this argument is valid also for history in general. Everybody will agree that
the flow of time involves events in a variety of areas or dimensions. History
of art marks only one of them; other areas comprise political affairs, social
movements, philosophical doctrines, etc. Now successive events in one and
the same dimension obviously stand a better chance of being meaningfully
interrelated than those scattered over multiple areas: a genuine idea invari-
ably gives rise to a host of ideas dependent on it, while, for instance, the

and the Greeks (London, 1884), xi-xiv, 2, quoted in Herbert Butterfield, Man on his
Past (Boston, 1960), 124.
3. Henri Pirenne, "What Are Historians Trying to Do?" in The Philosophy of His-
tory in Our Time, ed. Hans Meyerhoff (Garden City, N.Y., 1959), 88-89.
4. Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft (New York, 1959), 47. [French title: Apologie
pour l'histoire ou metier d'historien (Paris, 1949).]
5. (New Haven, 1962).
6. Kubler, 12.

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68 SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

effects of social arrangementson culturaltrends are ratheropaque. To sim-

plify matters,it may be assumedthat the events in each single area follow
each other accordingto a sort of immanentlogic. They form an intelligible
sequence.Experienceshowsthat each such sequenceunfoldsin a time peculiar
to it. Moreover,the times of differentsequenceshave differentshapes, as is
strikingly illustrated by an ingenious little experiment which Sigmund
Diamondconductedat Harvard.He requestedhis studentsto investigatedif-
ferent areasof Americanhistoryand to periodizethe courseof events on the
basis of their respectivefindings.One student specializedin political history,
another in history of literature,and so on. Finally they came together and
comparednotes. The result was that the periods which they had separately
deviseddid not coincide.7
At a given historicalmoment, then, we are confrontedwith numbers of
events which, because of their location in differentareas, are simultaneous
only in a formal sense. Indeed, the nature of each of these events cannot be
properlydefinedunless we take the position into account which it occupies
in its particularsequence.The shaped times of the diverse areas overshadow
the uniformflow of time. Any historicalperiod must thereforebe imagined
as a mixtureof eventswhich emergeat differentmomentsof their own times.
Thus the overstuffedinteriorsof the second half of the nineteenthcentury
belongedto the same period as the thoughtsborn in them and yet were not
their contemporaries.It is an incoherentmixture.This is nothing to wonder
at. Are not our mindsincoherentalso? "Nos esprits,"says Valery, "sont . . .
pleins de tendanceset de pensees qui s'ignorententre elles."8 And Lichten-
berg, about 150 yearsearlier: "Ich habe oft die Meinung,wenn ich liege, und
eine andere, wenn ich stehe, zumal, wenn ich wenig gegessen habe und matt
bin."9The integratedpersonalityis a prejudiceof modernpsychology.

The upshot is that we are not justified in identifyinghistory as a process

in homogeneouschronologicaltime. Actuallyhistoryconsistsof events whose
chronologytells us but little about their relationshipsand meanings. Since
simultaneousevents are more often than not intrinsicallyasynchronous,it
makes no sense indeedto conceiveof the historicalprocess as a homogeneous
flow. The image of that flow only veils the divergenttimes in which substan-
tial sequences of historical events materialize.In referringto history, one
7. Personal communication from Sigmund Diamond.
8. Paul Valery, La politique de l'esprit, notre souverain bien in Oeuvres (Paris,
1957), I, 1018. ["Our minds . . . are full of tendencies and thoughts that are unaware
of each other . . ." Quoted from Valery, History and Politics, Collected Works, Vol.
X (New York, 1962), 93.]
9. G. C. Lichtenberg, Aphorismen, Briefe, Schriften (Stuttgart, 1953), 21. ["I have
frequently one opinion when I lie down and another when I am standing, especially
in case I have eaten little and feel weak."]

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 TIME AND HISTORY 69
should speak of the march of times ratherthan the "Marchof Time." Far
from marching,calendrictime is an emptyvessel. Much as the conceptof it is
indispensablefor science, it does not apply to human affairs.Its irrelevancy
in this respectis confirmedby the mechanicsof our memory.We may vividly
recall certain events of our past without being able to date them. Perhaps
the memoryfor qualitiesdevelopsin inverseratio to the chronologicalmem-
ory: the better equipped a person is to resuscitatethe essential features of
encountersthat played a role in his life, the more easilywill he misjudgetheir
temporaldistancesfrom the present or play havoc with their chronological
order. These errors must be laid to the difficultyfor him to transfer his
memoriesfrom their establishedplaces on his subjectivetime curve to their
objective positions in chronologicaltime-a time he never experienced.
Nobody reallyexperiencesit. This once more highlightsits formal character,
its emptiness.How should it carry content?As WalterBenjaminjudiciously
observes, the idea of a progress of humanity is untenable mainly for the
reasonthat it is insolublyboundup with the idea of chronologicaltime as the
matrixof a meaningfulprocess.10
Hence the problematicnature of general historical narratives.Whether
they deal with early Christianity,medieval Europe, or the origins of in-
dustrialsociety, all of them bear on a largerlive entity- a whole in flowing
time which involves events in many dimensions. Small wonder that most
generalhistoriansdo not confine themselvesto a compilationof these events
in chroniclefashion but tend to proceedfrom the belief in their interdepen-
dence. Note that even those nationalhistorieswhich concentrateon political
developmentsfrequentlyrangeover the whole of a nation'slife in an attempt
to correlate their wars, peace treaties, and diplomatic intrigues with
social processes, economic calamities,and culturalchanges. There is practi-
cally no general narrativethat would not trace phenomenain one area to
influencesfrom another or postulate affinitiesbetween events that happen
to crop up side by side. Yet in doing so, these narrativesrun the risk of over-
burdeningchronologywith significance.It is all but inevitable indeed that
they should indulge in deceptive transitions,succumbto compositionalde-
mands, and neglect intelligible area sequences in sham linkages between
incoherent facts. From Ranke to the present, examples abound in highly
respectedplaces. Take Ranke himself: wheneverhe looks out of the window
of political history to survey the neighboringregions of art, philosophy,
science, etc., he insists on explainingevents in them from the total situa-
tion, at such and such a moment,of the nations and peoples whose destinies
he narrates.In other words, he contrives to fit the cultural events of the
period into a makeshiftscheme which is to give us the impressionthat they
10. Walter Benjamin, Geschichtsphilosophische Thesen in Schriften (Frankfurt am
Main, 1955), I, 502.

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70 SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

conform to the general run of things. But his very eagernessto bring these
events onto the commondenominatorof a whole that moves in time prevents
him from probingtheir essences, their real historicalpositions. As a result,
Ranke presentsdistortedpicturesof them, in defianceof his own claim that
historyshould tell us "wie es eigentlichgewesen."The profile of Erasmusin
his Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation is as lifelike and lifeless
as a slick court painter'sportraits." And aside from being irrelevant,his
comments,in Die Geschichteder Pdpste,on GuidoReni, Palestrina,and other
exponentsof late Italian sixteenth-centurycultureare put in terms so flowery
and amateurishthat any college student today would be ashamedof using
them.12 I might as well mentionin passingthat Jacob Burckhardtas a young
man knew parts of this famous work by heart.'3 (But none of us is immune
againstmagic splendor,howeverfutile. I rememberhavingbeen in my youth
completelyunderthe spell of Thomas Mann's Tonio Kruger with its elegiac,
if ludicrous,nostalgiafor the blond and blue-eyed doers. In fact, my whole
generationwas.)
In pursuitof my argumentI wish to stay a bit longer with Burckhardt.
Within this context his ambiguous,largely negative attitude toward chrono-
logical narrationis of greattheoreticalinterest.It is not that he would refrain
from rendering,on occasion, a succession of all-embracinghistorical situa-
tions. But he does refuse to be put in the strait-jacketof the annalisticap-
proach;'4and a look at his majorwritingsmakesit evidentthat he is reluctant
to acknowledgethe homogeneousflow of time as a mediumof consequence.
In his Weltgeschichtliche Betrachtungen he withdraws from that flow into
a timeless realm in order to pass in review the varying relationshipsthat
obtain, or may obtain, between culture and the two institutionalpowers of
religion and the state; and he authenticates his observations by many
examples culled from all imaginable quartersof world history with little
regard for their chronological order. Die Zeit Constantins des Grossen as well
as Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien testify to the same unconcern for the
dynamicsof the historicalprocess. In both works Burckhardtbrings time to
a standstill and, having stemmed its flood, dwells on the cross-sectionof
immobilizedphenomena which then present themselves for scrutiny. His

11. Leopold von Ranke, Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation [1839-
52] (Cologne, 1957), 128-30.
12. Ranke, Die romischen Pdpste in den letzten vier Jahrhunderten[1842] (Cologne,
1954), 193-204. On page 203 Ranke says of Palestrina's music, "Es ist als ob die Natur
Ton und Stimme bekdme, als ob die Elemente sprachen und die Laute des allgemeinen
Lebens sich in freer Harmonie der Anbetung widmeten, bald wogend wie das Meer,
bald in jauchzendem Jubel aufsteigend gen Himmel."
13. Werner Kaegi, Jacob Burckhardt:Eine Biographie (Basel, 1950), II, 71.
14. Kaegi, 185.

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 TIME AND HISTORY 71
accountof them is a morphologicaldescription,not a chronologicalnarrative.
It covers a single historicalperiod.
However, in thus repudiatingchronology,Burckhardtagain pays tribute
to it, as is best illustratedby his volume on the Renaissance.In this unrivaled
masterworkhe explores,one by one, the variegatedmanifestationsof Renais-
sance life, rangingfrom the rediscoveryof antiquityto the free creation of
states, from the new sense of personalvalues to social custom and mounting
secularization.Does he want to demonstratethat, their simultaneitynotwith-
standing,the events he summonspoint in differentdirections?That not all
that appears together actually also hangs together? On the contrary, his
objectiveis to interpretthe Italian Renaissanceas the age of the awakening
individual- a conception, by the way, which is still considered a lasting
contribution.15 Now this conception,a genuineidea ratherthan a sheer gener-
alization, naturallyimplies that one and the same spirit of (secular) indi-
vidualismasserts itself in virtually all the activities, aspirations,and modes
of being that comprise the period. Consequently,the Renaissancemust be
thoughtof not as an incoherentconglomerateof events but as a whole with
a meaning which pervadesits every element. Burckhardt,that is, steps out
of chronologicaltime only to entrusthimself to its flow in the end. For once
a period in its complexity is recognized as an integratedwhole emerging
from, and disappearingin, homogeneoustime, the shaped area times auto-
matically recede into limbo, and, along with the total historical process,
chronologyreassumessignificance.

The wary readerwill alreadyhave noticed that this vindicationof chronol-

ogy flagrantlycontradictsmy originalpropositionto the effect that chrono-
logical time is an empty vessel. It remainsto be seen, of course, whetherthe
two opposite propositionsare equally well-founded.As for the first, which
denies the homogeneityof the historicalprocess, furtherevidence in its sup-
port will hardlybe needed.For the rest, its validity is in a measurecorrobo-
rated by the fact that generalhistoricalnarrativesare increasinglygiving way
to monographsas well as specializedhistorieswhich center on some coherent
sequenceof events in a particulararea. To quote Valery again, this tendency
towardarea historiesmay in the final analysisresultfrom a deeper awareness
of the methodologicaltangle in which the general historianis caught. Saga-
cious observerof the intellectualscene that he is, Valery reproachesgeneral
historywith leaving chaos unpenetratedand at the same time championsthe

15. As, for example, by Paul Oskar Kristeller, "Changing Views of the Intellectual
History of the Renaissance since Jacob Burckhardt" in The Renaissance: A Recon-
sideration of the Theories and Interpretationsof the Age, ed. Tinsley Helton (Madison,
1961), 29-30.

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72 SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

analysis of what he calls "comprehensibleseries": "j'ai tire du fruit de la

lecture, ga et la', d'histoires particulieres de l'architecture, de la geometrie,
de la navigation, de l'economie politique, de la tactique. Dans chacun de ces
domaines, les choses sont files visibles les unes des autres," whereas in
"l'histoire generate chaque enfant semble avoir mile peres et reciproque-
ment."'16(Obviouslywith a view to reducingthe numberof fathers, several
monumentalchronologicalnarrativeshave been composed from specialized
historiesby way of co-operativeeffort. But as the example of the old Cam-
bridge Modern History proves, this is more or less a mechanical device.
Histories at differentlevels of generalityrequire differenttreatment,and a
compilationof monographsis not likely to yield the kind of wholeness to
which generalhistoryaspires.)
All this would seem to tip the balance in favor of the anti-chronological
proposition.And yet the opposite one, intimatedby Burckhardt'sinterpreta-
tion of the Renaissance,rests on solid ground also. Kubler in his otherwise
legitimatecriticismof the art historians'overemphasison periods decidedly
overshootsthe mark in almost precludingthe possibility of a confluenceof
area sequences: The "cross-sectionof the instant," Kubler contends, "re-
sembles a mosaic of pieces in different developmental states . . . rather than a
radialdesignconferringits meaningupon all the pieces";'7and he insists that
the "culturalbundles"which make up a period "are juxtaposedlargely by
chance."''8Presumablythis might hold true, say, of the Biedermeierperiod
(which had to bear with the late Beethoven) but does certainlynot apply to
the Renaissanceand many anotherera. The absenceof periodswith a physi-
ognomy of their own would indeed be rather surprising.Contemporaries
communewith each other in variousways; so it is highly probablethat their
exchangesgive rise to cross-linkagesbetweenthe accomplishmentsand trans-
actions of the moment. Accordingly,even though simultaneousevents as a
rule occur in times of differentshapes and moreoverdifferin "age,"there is
a fair chancethat they will neverthelessshow commonfeatures.Simultaneity
may enforce a rapprochement;random coincidencesmay jell into a unified
pattern.Do not, by the same token, the fragmentsof the self each of us be-
lieves to be sometimesconvergeand achieve unity or a semblanceof it? At
any rate, the osmotic processes that constantlytake place are always apt to
producea periodor a situationwhich breathesa spirit affectingall areas and,
16. Paul Valery in a letter to Andre Lebey, dated September 1906, Oeuvres (Paris,
1960), II, 1543. ["I have derived something now and then from reading specialized
histories-of architecture, geometry, navigation, political economy, tactics. In each of
these fields, every event is clearly the child of another event," whereas in "all general
history, every child seems to have a thousand fathers and vice versa." Quoted from
Valery, History and Politics, 515-16.]
17. Kubler, 28.
18. Ibid., 122.

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 TIME AND HISTORY 73
hence, assumesthe characterof a whole. But since such units are necessarily
part and parcel of the whole of the historicalprocess, their emergenceestab-
lishes, by implication,homogeneoustime as a mediumpregnantwith mean-
ings. It should not be forgotten either that the old daydreamsof mankind
envision a far-distantfuture which cannot with any certaintybe said to lie
completelyoutside chronologicaltime; and that developmentsin a horizontal
directionhave even been imaginedin predominantlyvertical-orientedages:
Tertullianseems to have believedin a secularkind of progress;'9St. Ambrose
in his answer to the pagan Symmachuspoints to the "gradualinvention of
the arts and the advancesof human history."20Once again, think of Mali-
nowski'sTrobriandswith theirrationalproceduresand magicalrites. ...

Thus we are confrontedwith two mutuallyexclusive propositionsneither of

which can be dismissed.On the one hand, chronologicaltime dissolves into
thin air, supersededby the bundles of shaped times in which the manifold
comprehensiblesequencesof events evolve. On the other, chronologicaltime
proves indestructibleinasmuchas these bundles tend to coalesce at certain
momentswhich then are valid for all of them. It is this state of things which
must have caused Burckhardtto reject as well as to affirmchronology.But
he never cares to bringits inherentcontradictionsinto the open. Benjaminon
his part indulgesin an undialecticalapproach;he drives home the nonentity
of chronologicaltime withoutmanifestingthe slightestconcernover the other
side of the picture.That there are two sides to it has rarelybeen recognized.
How deal with the dilemmain which we find ourselves?To come to grips
with it I shall in the followingno longer refer to the differentarea sequences
and their peculiartimes but focus only on the relativelyuniformperiods or
situationsbroughtabout by their occasionalconfluence.Each such period is
an antinomicentity embodyingin a condensed form the two irreconcilable
time conceptions.As a configurationof events which belong to series with
differenttime schedules,the perioddoes not arisefrom the homogeneousflow
of time; rather, it sets a time of its own - which implies that the way it
experiencestemporalitymay not be identicalwith the experiencesof chrono-
logicallyearlieror laterperiods.You must, so to speak,jumpfrom one period
to another. In this view, all histories featuring the "march of time" are
mirages- paintingson a screenwhich hides the truththey pretendto render.
Each periodcan be supposedto contributea new picture;and the successive
paintingsthus produced cover, layer after layer, the ever-expandingscreen
in a manner which is perfectly illustratedby Clouzot's documentaryfilm,
Le mysterePicasso. It shows the artist in the act of creation. We see: once
Picasso has outlinedwhat he appearsto have in mind, he immediatelysuper-
19. Arthur 0. Lovejoy, Essays in the History of Ideas (New York, 1960), 320.
20. Edward Kennard Rand, Founders of the Middle Ages (New York, 1957), 17.

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74 SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

poses upon his initial sketch a second one which more often than not relates
only obliquelyto it; and in this way it goes on and on, every new system of
lines or color patches all but ignoringits predecessor.2'
Yet the same configurationof events which because of its spontaneous
emergencedefiesthe historicalprocessmarksalso a moment of chronological
time and has thereforeits legitimateplace in it. So we are challengedto follow
that process and thinkin termsof linear transitions,temporalinfluences,and
long-rangedevelopments.It occurs to me that the only reliable informant
on these matters,which are so difficultto ascertain,is a legendaryfigure-
Ahasuerus,the WanderingJew. He indeed would know firsthandabout the
developmentsand transitions,for he alone in all historyhas had the unsought
opportunityto experiencethe process of becomingand decayingitself. (How
unspeakablyterriblehe must look! To be sure, his face cannot have suffered
from aging, but I imagine it to be many faces, each reflectingone of the
periodswhich he traversedand all of them combininginto ever new patterns,
as he restlessly,and vainly, tries on his wanderingsto reconstructout of the
times that shapedhim the one time he is doomed to incarnate.)
I have emphasizedthe double aspectof the periodwith a purposein mind:
two modernattempts- are there more of them?- to do justice to both the
emptinessand the meaningfulnessof chronologicaltime assignto the concept
of the period a key position. Their discussionmay help clarify the inextri-
cable dialecticsbetween the flow of time and the shaped times negating it.

To begin with Croce, his argumentis an outrightfallacy.22This inveterate

idealistwho does not want to be one boasts of having dealt a deadlyblow at
Hegel's transcendentalmetaphysics.Hegel, says he, postulates an absolute
spirit, or world spirit, which is both immanentand transcendent;it realizes
itself in the dialecticalprocess of world history and at the same time has its
abode beyond history as the goal of this process. Croce has it that this onto-
logical transcendentalism will no longerdo. And he puts an end to it by drag-
ging the absolute spirit lock, stock, and barrel into the immanencyof the
innerworldlyuniverse.The spirit,he insists,is not an Absolute above and out-
side our changingworld but materializesonly within history; to be precise,
it providesus with concreteanswersto the concretequestionsraised in every
given situation- questionswhich, of course, vary with the requirementsof
the moment.Croce,then, assumesthe existenceof comparativelyautonomous
situationsor periods,each with a spiritpeculiarto it. But if the manifestations

21. Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New
York, 1960), 200-01.
22. See Croce, History: Its Theory and Practice (New York, 1960) [Italian title:
Teoria e storia della storiografia (Bari, 1917)] and History as the Story of Liberty
(New York, 1955). [Italian title: La storia come pensiero e come azione (Bari, 1939)].

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 TIME AND HISTORY 75
of the spirit are inseparablefrom the specificneeds of differentperiods, their
meaningful connection in chronologicaltime poses tremendousproblems.
Now Croce is so deeply concernedwith the historicalprocess that he never-
theless aspiresto give chronologicaltime its due. How does he solve the prob-
lems contingenton this task? He does not even see them. His heart's in the
Highlands,his heartis not here.To say it bluntly,it still quiverswith nostalgia
for the idol he believesto have demolished.Obliviousof the fact that, accord-
ing to his own premise,the spiritdoes not spreadover the expansesof history
but reveals itself exclusively in concrete situation, Croce in his otherwise
admirablesketch, "Concerningthe Historyof Historiography,"23 identifiesits
successiverevelationsfrom antiquityvia the Middle Ages, the Renaissance,
etc., to the presentas phases of an intelligibledialecticalprocess to which he
moreoverattributesa progressivequality.True, he tries to adjustthe notion
of a wholesaleprogressto his basic assumptionof the complete immanency
of the spirit by eliminatingthe idea of an absolute good and enhancingin-
stead the spirit'seffort to achieve a bettermentof the conditionsthat obtain
in any particularperiod. Yet this is a sheer playing with words in view of
Croce'sidealisticdesire to equate the total historicalprocess with a progres-
sive movement, a movementtoward "liberty."In sum, after having thrown
out Hegel with great aplomb, Croce reintroduceshim by the back door, un-
aware that what is possible to Hegel is denied to him. Indeed, while Hegel's
transcendentalspiritis fully qualifiedto determinethe directionof the whole
of history,Croce'simmanentspiritwith its concreteanswersto concreteques-
tions is not in a position to account for the course of events. Croce evades
ratherthan tackles the problemsbound up with the antinomiccharacterof
chronologicaltime. Instead of asking how, if at all, the two contradictory
time conceptionscan be relatedto each other- how, that is, chronological
time can be reducedto nothingnessand yet be acknowledged- he undialec-
tically, and absentmindedly,presentsthem side by side. And the Hegelianhe
is wins out over the Hegel-destroyerhe would like to be.

And thereis Proust'suniqueattemptto grapplewith the perplexitiesof time.

Strangelyenough, its consequencesfor historyhave not yet been realized.In
dealingwith it, I shall featureonly such traits of his novel as are relevantto
my presenttheme.24
Proust radicallyde-emphasizeschronology.With him, it appears,history
is no process at all but a hodge-podgeof kaleidoscopicchanges- something

23. History: Its Theory and Practice, Part II, 165-314.

24. See Hans Robert Jauss, Zeit und Erinnerung in Marcel Prousts 'A la recherche
du temps perdu' (Heidelberg, 1955). I have greatly benefited by this remarkable mono-
graph, a model of concise and comprehensive analysis. Cf. also Georges Poulet,
"Proust,"in Studies in Human Time (New York, 1959), 291-322.

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76 SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

like clouds that gatherand disperseat random.In keepingwith this Platonic

view, he refuses to act the historianand rejects the ideas of becoming and
evolution.There is no flow of time. What does exist is a discontinuous,non-
causal successionof situations,or worlds, or periods, which, in Proust'sown
case, must be thought of as projectionsor counterpartsof the selves into
which his being- but are we justifiedin assumingan identicalbeing under-
neath?- successivelytransformsitself. It is understoodthat these different
worldsor situationsreachfullness and fade away in times of differentshapes.
With great ingenuityProust demonstratesthat each situationis an entity in
its own rightwhich cannot be derivedfrom precedingones and that indeed a
jump would be needed to negotiate the gulf between adjacent worlds.
Throughouthis novel he systematicallyveils the moments of their junction,
so that we learn about a new world only afterit is alreadyin full swing. And
to discreditcompletelyour belief in the operatingpower of time, he removes
the most imperishable,and most tenuous,connectinglink between successive
worlds- hope. Marcel,the protagonistof the novel and the embodimentof
Proust'spast selves, anticipatesfuture fulfillmentsin every situation;yet no
sooner have his hopes come true than their magic dissolves, along with the
self that nurturedthem; and the succeedingself starts afresh on a path beset
with other, if increasinglyfewer, expectations.The gulf is unbridgeable;time,
far from being the All-Father,does not father anything.
Why not then simply ignore it? This is precisely what Proust does. He
invariablyturns the spotlighton time atoms- memoryimages of incidents
or impressionsso short-livedthat time has no time to mold them. Touched
off by accidentalbodily sensations, his involuntarymemories assert them-
selves with completeindifferenceto chronology.The events they by and large
evoke are much in the same natureas the seeminglyinsignificantminutiaeof
daily existence which Tolstoy calls more real and more significantthan the
big victoriesand heroes played up in the historybooks. Proust restoresthese
microscopicunits to their true position by presentinghuge enlargementsof
them. Each such "close-up"consists of a texture of reflections,analogies,
reminiscences,etc., which indiscriminatelyreferto all the worldshe, not only
Marcel,has been passingand altogetherserve to disclose the essentialmean-
ings of the incidentfrom which they radiateand towardwhich they converge.
The novel is repletewith close-upsin this vein. They are penetrationsin depth
whose components - those meditations and recollections - follow unac-
countablezigzag routes spreadingover the whole scroll of the past. The pat-
terns they form can no longer be defined in terms of time; in fact, their
functionis to lift things temporalinto the near-timelessrealm of essences.
So far it looks as if Proust, unconcernedfor dialectics,confinedhimself to
arguingthe case of the discontinuousworldsand theirshapedtimes. However,
this is only part of the story. Even though Proust blurs chronology,he is at

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 TIME AND HISTORY 77
pains to keep it intact. Much as the close-ups with their time-confusingpat-
terns tend to obstructour awarenessof a flow of events, they not only point
to the situations occasioning them but are woven into a narrativewhich
rendersMarcel'ssuccessiveselves in their chronologicalorder. On the whole,
the novel abides by a strict itinerary.Or as Jauss puts it, behind the mosaic
of anachronisticmoments there lurks, concealed from view, the "prizise
Uhrwerk der irreversiblen Zeit."25
Not content with installingit, Proust tries to re-embedthe chronologically
successive worlds- worlds which are spontaneouscreations arising from
nowhere- in the flow of time. The reason is that he wants to make that
flow an equal partnerin the game. For he cannot resolve the antinomywith
which he grapplesunless he really confrontsand dialecticallyreconcileswith
each other its two opposite aspects- the incoherentseries of shaped times
and chronologicaltime as a homogeneousflow. His solution inevitably in-
volves a detour: he establishestemporalcontinuityin retrospect.At the end
of the novel, Marcel, who then becomes one with Proust, discoversthat all
his unconnectedprevious selves were actually phases or stations of a way
along whichhe had moved withoutever knowingit. Only now, after the fact,
he recognizesthat this way throughtime had a destination;that it servedthe
single purposeof preparinghim for his vocation as an artist. And only now
Proust,the artist,is in a positionnot only to identifythe discontinuousworlds
of his past as a continuityin time but also vicariouslyto redeemhis past from
the curse of time by incorporatingits essences into a work of art whose time-
lessnessrendersthem all the more invulnerable.He sets out to writethe novel
he has written.
The profundityof this solution should not lead one to overestimatethe
range of its validity. Proust succeeds in reinstatingchronologicaltime as a
substantialmediumonly a posterior; the story of his (or Marcel's) fragmen-
tized life must have reachedits terminusbefore it can reveal itself to him as
a unified process. And the reconciliationhe effects between the antithetic
propositionsat stake- his denial of the flow of time and his (belated) en-
dorsementof it - hingeson his retreatinto the dimensionof art. But nothing
of the sort appliesto history.Neitherhas historyan end nor is it amenableto
estheticredemption.
There is no use in carryinganalysis further. The antinomy at the core of
time is insoluble.Perhapsthe truth is that it can be solved only at the end
of time. In a sense, Proust'spersonalsolutionforeshadows,or indeed signifies,
this unthinkableend - the imaginarymoment at which Ahasuerus, before
disintegrating,may for the first time be able to look back on his wanderings
throughthe periods.
25. Jauss, 87. [". . . precise clockwork of irreversible time."]

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78 SIEGFRIED KRACAUER

Meanwhileall that is left to us is to make ourselvesat home in the ante-

room we live in and to face up to the last things before the last it harbors.
Theirtrue significancestill lies buriedunderpowerfulphilosophicaltraditions.
But I had betterbreak off here. The issue of the provisionaland its implica-
tions for historyby far transcendthis statement.
New York City

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