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
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Walter Ben)amin, ' or Nostalgia
BY FREDRIC /A M ESON

SO Tez melancholy that speaks from the pngns of Benjamin’s essays

— private depressions, professional discouragement. Hoc dcjection of
the outsider, lhe distress ln the fece of e political and hlstoricnl night-
mare — searches the past for an adequate object, for some emblem
or imnge at which, ss in religious meditation, the mind can stare
itself out, into which it can discharge its morbid humors and know
momentary, if only en esthetic, relief. It finds it: in the Cermnny of
the thirty yeers war, in the Pans of the lete nlneteenth century
(”Paris — the capitol of the nineleenth century”). For they are both
— the baroque end the modern — in their very essence allegorical,
and they match the thought process of the theorist of allegory, which,
disembodied intention searching for some external obJect in which la
take shepe, is itself already sllegoricel auortt fn tel me.
Indeed, lt seems to me that Welter Benjamin’s thought is best
grasped as an allegorical one, as n set of pnrnllcl, discontinuous levels
of meditation which is not without resemblance to that ultimate model
of allegorical composition described by Dante in his letter to Cen
Crende della Scala, where he spcnks of the four dimensions of his
’ Waltef Benjamin was fi'nrn in 1902 of a wealthy ]ewi.sh family in Berlin.
\Jnfit for .service in World War I, he st\irlicd fnr a time in hem, and returning t0
Berlin in t920 tried un.succersf‹tlly tn (nund a literary review there, before turning
to academic life os a career. Hi.s Origins oJ Cermon Trngedq however rcfu.scé
a Ph.D. the*is at the University of Frankfurt in )925. Meanwhile, be had bepun to
translate frou.st, and, under the influence of I.ukñcs’ history and Class Con scinu.mess,
became a Marxist, vi.citing Mnscnw in 1326-27. After 1933, he emigrated to Paris
end pursued work on his unfinished project P‹irii: Top idol oJ ltte N inr.- tecnth
Century. He committed suicide at the Spanish border after an unsuccessful attempt
to free occupied France in 1940. He numbered among close friends and intellectual
acquaintances, at various moments of his life, Ernst Bloch, Cershom Scholes, T. W.
Adorno, and Bert Erccht.
Every fce)iny is att«cl1cd to en a priori object, and the
presenlatlon of the latter is the phenomenology of the former.
Ursyruti g dcs dcutichcn T’raucrsp refs

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Waller Ben|‹imin, or Nostalgi’a 53
poem: the literal (his hero’s earthly destinies) , the allegorical (the
late of his soul), the moral (in which the encounters of the main chnrscter
resume one nspect or another of the life of Christ), end the itnngogicnl
(vhcre ltte individual dram a of Dentc foreshadows the progress of the
human race towards the 1.est J tidgemcnt) *. lt will not be hard to
ndopt this scheme to twentieth century remit y, lf for literal we
rend .simply psychological, end l‹ir allegorical et hicof; it for the
dominant archetypal pattern of lhc life of Christ we substitute
*ome more modern one (rind for myxelf, rcpl ncing religion w'ith the
religion of ort, this z'iIl be the coming into being «›f the work ot art
itself, the incnrne tion of meaning in Lan gunge) ; if finally we replnce
theology u ith poJ ities, and moke of Dan ie’s eschatology n n rarthl y
OTlt•, where ltte hi imnn rnce finds its snl votion, not in eternity, but
in History itself.
Benjamin’s work seems to me to be marLed 6y n painful straining tn\
vards « «hnlcncrs cr unify of experience which fhc hi.•toricaI sit- uation
threatens to shatter at every turn. A x’ision of a v’orld of ruins and
fragment.«, en ancient chaos of y’hfttc cr nnttire on the point of nver\
vhrlming cct scintirnrss — these grC snmc of tl›c imn{'rr thnt seem to
recur, eithrr in Benjamin himself or in }’cur ny’n mind as you read
him. 1”)›c idea ol ’holencss or of unit}’ is of ccurse not original with
him: hcw many modern philosophers hnx’e described the ”dnm«g••l
cx:stcncc” we lead in modern society, the psychological impairment of the
dix’ision of lnbor and of specialization, the general alienation end
dchumanixation or modern life null the specific forms Sllch alienation ta
kcs? Yet for the most Fart these s not yses remein
abstract; n nd through them spea ks the resignation of the intellectual
specialist to his ov’ii maimed pr•srnt; the dream of u hr›le ness, where
it persi.sts, ati nchrs itself to someone else’s luture. Ben jo min is unique
emong these thinkers in thnt he ivan is to snve his oz n life us well:
hpnpe the peculiar fascination of li is writ ings, incomparn Plc not onl y
fnr their rlinlcctic9l itztclligrnce, nor evrn for the ycctic scn*ihility they
Express, but nhox'c nil, perhaps, for the mnnnrr in ’hich the aito-
bi0pr e yhicnl yart of ) is mind finds symbolic sa ti*fncti‹›n in the rhape
f idrns ab.strnctli’, in ohjrctivc guiser, expressed.
Psychologicall y, the drive towards unity takes the form of o n
obsession w'ith the pnst and z'ith memory. Genuine mrmory determines
‘ lt is, at lc,st, a more taniili0r and less int imiduting mallet tha n that proposed
y Ben jsmin h imself, in a letter to Max Rychncr: "1 ha ve never bern able to in-
quire rind think ot herivise i hon, if I may so put it, in a t heol'›pical sense — namely
in conformity wit h the Talmudic prescription regard in g the forty-nine levels of It\
c0ning in every passage r›f the Torafi.”

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54 FnEDRlC JA M ESOW
“whether the Individual cen have e picture of himself, whether he
can master his own experience.” “Every passion borders on chaos,
but the passion ot the collector borders on the chaos of memory” (and
it was in the imcge of the collector that Benjamin found one of his
most comfortable ldentitles). “Memory forges the chain of tradition
that passes events on from generation to generation.” Strange re-
flexions, these — strange subjects of rcfiexioii for e Marxist (one thlnks
O( Sort£e’S RCid comment on his orthodox Marxist contemporaries:
”materialism is the subjectix'ity of thone who are ashamed o( their own
subjectivity”). Yet Benjamin kept faith with Proust, whom he trans-
I nted, long after his own discovery of communism; like Proust also, he
saw in his favorite poet Baudel nire en ennlogous obsession with rem-
iniscence and involuntary memory; end he followed hls literary master
ln the fragmentary evocation of his own childhood called Berliner
Kirtdheifi urri 1900; he alno began the task of recovering his own
existence with short essayistic sketches, records of dreams, of Isolated
impressions and experiences, which however he was unable to csrry
to the greater wrlter’s ultimate nnrrntive unity.
Plc was perhaps more conscious ot whnt prevents us from ensimilat-
ing our life experience than of the form such a perfected life would teke:
fascinated, for example, with Freud’s distinction between un- conscious
memory and the conscious act of recollection, y'hich was for Freud
basically a way of destroying or eradicating what the former was
designed to preserve: “consciousness appears in the system ot perception in
pfoee of the memory traces ... consciousness and the leaving behind of a
memory trece are within the same system mutually incompatible.” For
Freud, the function of consciousness is the defense of the organism
against shocks from the external environment: in this sense traumas,
hysterical repetitions, dreams, are ways in which the incompletely
assimilated shock attempts to make its way through to consciousness and
hence to ultimate appeasement. In Benjamin’s hands, this Idea
becomes an instrument of historical description, a way of showing how
in modern society, perhaps on account of the increasing quantity of shocks
of all kinds to which the organism 1s henceforth subjected, these defense
mechanisms are no longer personal ones: a whole series of mechanical
substitutes intervenes between eonsclousness and its objects shielding us
perhaps, yet at the same time deprlving us of any way of asslmilsting
whet happens to us or to any genuinely personal experience. Thus, to
give only one example, the newspaper stands as a shock-absorber of
novelty, numbing us to what might perhaps otherwise overwhelm us, but
at the same time

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Waller Benjamin, nr Nostalgia 55
rendering its ex'rnts neutral end impersonal, making of them what by
dcfinitlon has no common denominator with our prlvate existences.
Experience is moreover socially conditioned in that it depends on
a certain rh ytlim of recurrences and similaritie.s, on certain cetegorles
of lileness in events o hich are properly cultural in origln. Thus even
in Proust rind Baudelaire, who lived in relntix'ely fragmented societies,
ritualistic devices, often uncon.scions, are primary elements in the con-
rtr«ctinn nf fnrm: wr recognize them in the “vie nn tcric*ure” nnd the
correspondences of Baudelaire, In the ceremonies ot sn lori life in
Proust. And where the modern writer tries to crcste a perpetual
present — us in Knf ka — the mystery inherent in the events seems to
result not so much from their novelty as from the feeling thnt thry
have merely been forgotten, that they nre in some sense “f0 milinr,”
in the haunting significance o hich Baudelaire lent that word. Yet ss
society increasingly dccnys, such rhythms of experience nre less rind
less available.
At this priint, howes'er, psychological dcscript:on seems to pss.s ovrr
insensibl y in to mornl J tidgement, I nlo n x’ision of I he rcconcillnllon
of pest end present u'hich is somehow en ethical one. But for the
we.stern reader the u'hole ethical dimension of Ben jomin’s work is
likrly In be pcrylrxing, incorporating as it drirs n kind of ethical
psychology which, codi8ed by Goethe, hue become traditional in
Grrmnny n nd dreJily roofed in the Germ o n ln ngi ings, but for which
wt have no cr}tiivalcnt. This Le bensuieis heit is indeed a kind of half-
way house between the cfs.ssicnl idea of e fixed h timn n nsture, north its
psychology of the humors, passions, sins or character types; and the
modern idea of pure historicity, of the determining influence of the
situation or eriviron ment. As a compromise in I hr domain of the individual
prrsonulity, it is not unI ike the compromise of Hegel in the renlm of
history itself: and where for lhc letter a general meaning wns immanent
to the par ticulnr moment of history. for Cioclhe in
*ome .sense the os'er RH goal of the personality rind of its development
is butt t into the particular emotion in question, or ln tent in the par-
ticular stage in the individual’s growth. For the system is besed on a
vision of the full dcv clopment of the prrsonnlit y I a writer like G idc.
deeply influenced’ by Goethe, gives but a pale end no rcissistic reficxion
of ibix ethic, xx'hich expressed middle class individu 9lism e t the moment
of iln historic lriu mph) ; it neither eims to bend the personality to
sorrie purel y external stands ref of discipline, as is lhc case with Chris-
tianii y, nor Io abandon it to the meaningless nccidr nts of empirical
psychology, us is the case with most modern ethics, but rether sees

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Waller De• iamin, or Nostalgia 57
blankness of the non -s'isual ns rrative style as though isol ntrd against
a void, nn lhough fateful with a kind of geometrical meaning —
cautiously selected detsil of landscape, too symmetrical not to have
Signiflcti nce, rim nlogics, such as the chemical one 1 h nt gives the nox'el
its title, too nmpl y dcx'eloped not to be emblem a tic. The reader is
of course fern ilinr u it h s'mbolism everywhere in the modern novel ;
but I n general the sy mbolism is built into the odor h, like a sheet of
instructions en pJilicd in.sidr the box elong with the puzzle pieces.
Here we feel the burden of guilt lnid upon us as readers, that we lack
what strikes us al mo.st as e culturally inherited mode of thinking.
accessible only to those who are th at culture’.s members: a nd no doubt
lhe Gr›elhra n system does project ilself in some such way, in its
claim to u niversnlil y.
The originnlit y of Benjn min in to cut «cross the sterile opposition
between the nr bitrnry in lerprelntions of the symbol on the one hand, and
the bl rink fail urc to see w’hat it meens on the other: r.!lecIii!e
{fruit ter is to be reed, not as n nos'el by a s) mbolic writer, but as a
novel ahem symbolism. If objects of a symbolic nut ti re loom lnrge in
this work, It is not brcnuse they were chosen to underline the theme of
^dul trry in some decorative menncr, but re t her because the reel un-
1s O(

"When people sink to this lex'el, even the life of n pparcntly lifeless
things grow's xtrong. Gundolf quite righ tly under lined the crucial role
Of object.s in this story. Yet lhe intrti.sion of the thing-like into human
II(e is ptecisel y o criterion of the mythical universe.” We nre required
o rcnd these symbolic objects to the second power: not so much
directly to decipher e one-to-one meaning from them, ss to sense that
which the very Iact of symbolism is itself symptomal ie.
And as with the objects, so also with the characters: it has for
example often brcn rem nrked that the figure of Ol t ilic, the rather
58 J n{}y young woman around w horn the drama turns, is somehow
different in its mode of clinrncterization from the other, more real-
istical ly and psychologically drnwn characters. For Rrnj; min however
thf5 is not so much a fI nw, or a n inconsistency, os n clue: Ottilie is
not reality but nppcarn nce, rind it is this which the rather external
and visual mode of characterization conveys. "It is clear that these
Welhcan ch araclcrs come before us not so much os fiyurrs shn ped
*om external models, nor wholly Imaginary in their invention, but
rather entranced somehow, as though under a spell. Hence a kind

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58 FREDRtC .QAM ESON

of obscurity ebout them which is foreign to the purely visunl, to

printing for instance, end which is chnracieristic only of that whose
very essence is pure eppeurance. For appearance 1s in this work not
so much presr nled os a theme as it is rnther implicit in the very neturc
and mode of the presentation itself.”
This moral dimension of Benjamin’s. work, like Coethe’s own,
clearly represen 1s an uneesy belsnce, a trtinsitional moment between
the psychological on the one hand, and the esthetic or the historicnl on
the other. The mind cannot long be satisfied with this purely ethical
description of the events of the book as the triumph of fateful, mythical
forces; it stralns for historical end social explanation, and tit length
Benjamin himself is Jorced to express the conclusion "that the writer
shrouds in silence: namely, lhat passion loses nll Its rights, under the lews
nf genuine. humnn morality, w'Inen it reeL.s to make e pact with
wealthy middle-clns.s security.” But in Benjamin’s work, this lnevilnlilc
slippage of morality into history a nd politics, charac- teristic of all
modern thought, is mediated by esthetics, in resented by attention to
the qualities of the work of nrt, just as the ttbovc conclusion wns
arliculated by the analyst.s of those aspects of Efectif'e divinities that
might best heve been described us ellcgoricel Luther than symbolic.
For in one sense Benjamin’s life work can be seen as a kind of vest
museum, a passionate collection, of nlI shn pcs and varieties of allegor-
ical objects; rind hin most substantial work centers on lhat enormous
studio of allegorical decoration which is the baroque.
the Origins — not so much of C•ermnn tr‹igeJy (”Trsgddie) — es
of German Trouerspie!: the distinction, for which English has no
equivalent, is crucial to Benjamin’s interpretation. For "tragedy,”
which he limits to ancient Greece es a phenomenon, 1s a sacrificial
drama in which the hero is offered up to the God.s for atonement.
Trouerspief, on the other hond, which encompasses the baroque gen-
erally, Elizabethans and Calderon es well as the 17th century Germen
playwrights, is something that might be.st be initially characterized
es e pageant: a funereal pageant — so might the word be most
adequately rendered.
As e form it reflects the baroque vision of history as chronicle. as the
relentless turning of the wheel of fortune, n ceaseless succession ncross
the stege of the world’s mighty, princes, popes, cmpre.uses in their
splendid costumes, courtiers, mnskeraders end poisoners, — a dance of
death produced wlth all the finery of a Renaissance triumph. For
chronicle is not yet historicity ln the modern sense: "No matter

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Waller Beni nmin, or Nost‹ifgin 5i)
how deeply the baroque intention penettntrs I he drt ail of history, its
microscopic nnnl ysis never censes to set rem pninst nltingly for political
calculation in a substance seen as pure intrigue. Baroque drama know's
historical event.s only as the J‹'prss rd o ctlvit y of con- spirators. Not e
brcn i h of gon nine revolu finn nry c‹›n victi‹›n in eny of the countless
rcbrls ss'ho npprar before the baroque sovt'rcign, himself immobilised in
the post tire c›l n Christian mnrtjr. Discontent — such is the classic
motive for ection.” A nd such historical time, mere suc- cession w ithout
Jovelopmcnt, is in reality srcrctl y spatial, rind lakes lhe court (e nJ the
si age) us its privileged spa l iol cmb‹›climent.
At fir.st pl a rice, it recur rid n pprar that this vision ‹›t 1 inc as chronicle
in In The Or rattle o{ Carmen TrageJq, a pre-Ma rxist u ork. accounlrd
lOr in en idealistic mn nncr: as Luthcrens, Ben jam in ss ys, the German
baroque pla)'w'righ ts k new' n w'orld in which bcl ict u as utt crl y separate
from work.s, in whirh not rs'cn the Cals inist ie preords inrd harmon y
i ntcrvcn r't In rt’rtorc n litilr meaning to the ttircrtsi‹›n of empty nett
that make u p hu mmi file, the world thus remain ing as a br›dy wilhout e
soul, us the shell o( an object divested of my v isible Isuction. Yet it
is at least n mbiguruis whether this intellectual and mets ph ysico1 position
chusrs t he psyrhol‹igicol experience th nt is at the hrart of baroque tro
grdy, or whether it is not itself rncrrl y one of lhe various expres.sions, rel
ntivcl y abstract, through which o n acute und concrete emotion tries to
manifest itself. For the key to the lai I cr is the central enigmatic figu re ot
the Jirincr li imsclf. holfwn y brl u’ccii n I yrsnt justly assnssino led o nd
n m nrtyr su(fering li is passi‹in: interpreted allegorically, he st and.s as the
embodiment of Mclanchr›l y in n stricken world, e nd Hamlet is his most
complete expression. 3’his interpret a- tion of the funrreal pagr0 nt as a
basic expression of pathological melancholy has thr nd vantnge of account
itig hot li ter form and con- tent at the srimc time.
Content in lhc .sense of ltte characters’ motix’atir›ns: “The indecision
of llic prince is nolliin g but saturninc occdio. The i rift ucncc of Sri I u rn
makes people ’a pm hrt ie, indecisive, slow.’ 7 he t yrn n1.1oils on accoun t
of the sluggislincss of his emotions. In the same Iashion, the character
Of the courtier is mar kid by to ithlessncss — a nolhrr fruit of the prc-
Jominnncc of Sriturii. The courtier’.s mind, us Jiortr:iyed in ihesc
tragedies, is fluctuation iisclf: bclrn yal is his x-cry element. It is to be
Attributed ncil her to li nst incxs of composition nor to ins ufficirnt char-
acterization that the parasites in these plc}s scarc‹'ly need any time
for reflection at all before betraying their lor‹ls n tul goi ng over to the
enemy. It ntlirr, I he lark of ch n meter ex-idcnt in t heir nr tions. peril y

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 FREOR7C /Ah4 ESON

conscious Machinvelllanism to be sure, reflects an lnconsoleble, des-

pondent surrender to an impenetrable conj iinciion of baleful constel -
latlons, a conjunction that seems to heve tn ken on a masslve, at most
thing-like character. Crown, royal purple, scepter, all are in the last
antilysis the properties of the tragedy of fete, and they carry about
tlaem an eura of destiny to which the courtier is the first to submii
ns to some portent of disaster. His faithlcrsness to his fellow men
corresponds to the deeper, more contemplative faith he keeps with
these material emblems.”
Once ngain Benjamin's sensitts'ity is for those moments ln which
human beings find themselves given over into the power of things;
and the fnmillar content of baroque trsgeJy — that melancholy which
we recognize from hamlet — those vices of melancholy — lust,
treason, sedism — so predominant in the lesser Elizabethans, in
Webster for Instance — veers nbout slowly into e question of form,
into the prob- lem of objects, which is to say of allegory itself. For
allegory is pre- cisely the dominant mode of expression of a world in
whlch thlngs have been for whatever reason utterly sundered from
meanings, from spirit, from genuine human existence.
And ln the light of this new examination ot the baroque from the
point of view of form rather then of content, little by little the brood-
ing melancholy figure nt the center of the plny himself alters In
(ocus, the hero of the fiinereal pegennt litl ie by little becomes
transformed into the baroque plnywrlght himself, the allcgorlst par
excellence, ln Benjnmln’s terminology the Grit hler: thnt superstitious,
overparticulnr render of omens who returns ln a more nervous, modern
gulse ln lhe hysterical heroes of Poe and Baudelaire. ”Allegories are ln
the reelm of thoughts what ruins ere in the realm of things”; and it is clear
that Benjamin is himself first and foremost among these depre.ssed snd
hyperconscious visionaries who people his poges. “Once the object
hns beneath the brooding look of Melancholy become ellegorical, once
life hos flowed out of lt, the object itself remains behind, dead, yet
preserved for el1 eternity; lt lies before the allegortst, given over to
him utterly, tor good or ill. In other words, the object itself is hence-
forth incapable of projecting any meaning on its own; it cen only
take on that meaning which the allegorist wishes to lend it. He lnstills
it wlth his own meaning, hlmscll descends to inhabit it: arid this
must be understood not psychologically but In an ontological sense.
In hls hands the thing In question becomes something else, specks
of something else, becomes for him the key to some renlm of hidden

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Walter Be n|amiii, or Nostnlgin 61
knowledge, es whose emblem he honors it. This Is whnt constitutes
the natti re of allegory as script.”
Script rnther than language, the letter rnthcr lho n the spirit; into
this Ihe baroque world shatters, strangely 1cgil›lc .signs rind emblems
mugging nt the too curious mind, n proce.ssiori movin g slou’l y across
ri sl ngc, lndpn with occult signlficrincc. 1n this sense, for I he first timr
it scents to me tha t allegory is restored to tis — not as a gothic mon -
slrorily of purrly historical interest, nor as in C. S. Lew is a sign of
the med:es al hrul th of the (religious) .spirit, but rst hrr as a pathology
with which in the modrrn w'orld eve are out y too fn mil isr. The tend-
ency of our own en ticlsm has been to exe I t symbol o t the expense of
allegory (even though the privileged objects proposed by thnt criticism
— English morn crism o nd Dante — nrc more proper1 y nllegorical in
nature; in this, as in of her aspects of his srnsi bili I y. Pen jamin hos
much in cr›mmnn v’ith « u'rItrr likr T. .S. F\lir›t ) . ) t ir, ycrmys, tlir
cxyrcrrinn of n valiir rather thn n n description ‹›f existing pnctic
phennmrnn: for the distinction hctu een rymhr›l nnd allegory is thnt
betu'cen a com]›lcte rccnnciliatinn hetwcrn object and spirit Attn a mere
will to such reconciliation. The uscf u lncss of Ben jnmin’s sn- nlyris licr
Ilrjv c ’rr in hir insistence on n temporal distinction ns v'rll: t he
symbol is thr inrtantancour, thr lyricitl, thr single moment in timr;
nnrl thi.s lcmpr›rn1 limitn lion cxprrrsrr prrhs ps the historical imposriLility
in the modern v.’crld fnr gmt inr rrconciliatinn tn last

is on the con trnr v t he pris'ile8cd mode ct oil r or’n I i fe in t imr, u

‹liimty rlrrip)1rriny r›f mr'nning [rnm m‹›m‹'i› I l‹› i»•›t› rt› I, thr pftlnflil
a Item Jet to resttirc n cont in uity to heterogeneous, cliscon ncctcd instants.
"Where the sjm bo1 as it Udcs shows the fnce ref Nat u rr in the ligh t of
Sil $V ilt iOFi, i l3 ft)) Pgfi F y i t iS (DC JflC.CS b .J7}'7OCLG I iCa O( )1iS I US v l)âil t
iC’S
like n Irozen In iidsca pc before the eye of the bchr›lder. History in
c ’ervthing I lan I it har of ttnscasnna hlc, p9inhif, »l›nrti c. rxprcrsrs
it.srl f in thgt Ince — nay rnthcr in thnt drnth’s h‹'n‹l. Anrt a.s true 'is
it may be thet such an n!lcgorical mode is ut tcrl v lacking in an y
's ymbolic’ freedom of expression, in rim y classical li armon y of frat ure.
in an ythirig human — w'hat is expressed here porlentousl y in the form
of a riddle is not on1 y the nnture of h uman I ifo in general, but al«r›
the biographical historicit y of the indix'idual in it.s most natural and
orgn nic9 II y corrupted fr›rm. Th:.s — the b1rod u‹', e1rl h hound e.xpo-
silian of history us the story ot thr w‹irld’.s sutlcri ri g — is the very
essence ot olleg‹irirnl perception; li is ter}' ta kcs on meaning only in
flue sl ations of i1s ng‹›ny a nJ drctty. T’hc a mr›u n t ot mm ning is in

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62 FREDRIC 3* W ESDN
exact proportion to lhe presence of dee th and the power of decay,
since death is thnt which trflces the sure.st line between Physis and
meaning.”
And wh nt mnr ks baroque allegory holds for the allegory of modern
times, for Baudelaire as well: only in lhe latter it is interiorized:
“Baroque allegory saw the corpse from the outside only. Bnudelnirc
sees it from within.” Or eqnin : “Commemoration [A ndenken l is the
seculorizcd x-ersion of the ndortition of hot y i clic.s ... Commemoration
is the complement to experience. In commemoration there fi nds ex-
pression the increasing alienation of humn n beings, who teke inven-
tories of their pa.st es oJ lifeless merchandise. I n the nineteenth century
allegory nbendons the outside world. only to colonize the inner. Relics
come from the corpse, com mrtnoralion from the dead occurrences of
the pest which nre cuplicni isticnlly know n as experience.”
Yet in these late essnys on modern literature a new preoccupation
appears, which signals ihe pnssage in Benjamin from lhr predomin -
nntly estliclic to the hisloricnl and p‹›liticnl dimension isclf. 3’h1s is
the attention to machines, to mechanical inventions, which character-
istically first appears in the rent m of e.sthctics itself in the study ot
the movlcs (“3’hc Rcproduccable Work of Art”) end only Inter is
extended to the study of history in general (us in the cssn y “Peris —
Capitol of the 19lh Centtiry.” in which the feeling of life in this
period is conveyed by n description rif ihr new objects n nd invrn lions
characteristic of it — the passsgewe ys, the use of cnst iron, the Dngtier-
rolypc and the pnnoramn, the expo.siiions, nds'crti.sing). lt is import-
ant lo point out tlint however materialistic such an e Jipronch lo history
mey seem, nothing is further from Mn rxisiu tlinn lhc st ress on ins'cn-
tion end technique as the primary cnusc of historical ch o nge. Indcrd
it seems to me that stich theories (of the kind for z'hich the stenm
engine is the en use of the indusl rial revoliil ion, and which have recent-
ly been rehearsed yet eqn in, in streamlined modernistic form in the
works of Marshall McLuhsn) fu nclion us s su bstil lite for Marxist
historiography in the wny in svhich they offer a feeling of concrete-
ness comparable lo economic subject matter, nt the sn mc time th nt
they dispense svilh nny considers I ii›n of the human Inclors of classes
and of the socinl orgn nizotir›n o( production.
Benjamin’s fnscinnlion wil h I he rol‹' r›l iiu en lions in hlslory seems
to mc most comprehensible in psych‹ilrigical or csthrtic terms. If we
follow, for instance, hi.s meditnlion on lbc role of lhc passer by rind
the crowd in Ba udelaire, we find that after llie cs'ocation of Beud-
cl nire’s physical and styli.st ie churnctrristics, after the discussion of

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M’atler Beti|an1in. or Nostalgia 63
shork Rl"1d OFgflN iC dclv.uses outlined earlier in th is essay, the inner
logir of flcnjamin’s material leads him to material invention : "Com-
fort lsols Ice. A nil nt the en me time it shifts its poss‹•ssor closer to thr
power of physical mechanisms. Wilh lhe ink cntirin of matches nround
the middle o( the century, there begins o whole series of novelties
»’hich have I his in com mon that lhry rrpl occ a romplicatrd set ot
opera t ions with a single stroke of the he nd. This dr 'clopment goes
on in mn ny different sphrrc•. at the snme I imr: it is evident nmong
others in I he telephone, where in pl.arr of the con I in none movement
9'f i h »•hich the cr:in k of the older model had to be tur ned a single
lifting of the rrceis er now suffices. Among the various elaborate ges-
tures reqs ircd to prepare I he photographic appl rat us. that of 'sna p-
ping’ the pliril ogre plc wn.s Fort:cul 9rly con.ser]tien i i11. Pressing llir
finger Cures i.s cm›ugh to freeze an event for tinlimitr rl time. 5’he ap-

r nctilr expericnr es of this kind u.'e find opt reel rent s as well, nuch as
tlir classified nd.s i n a nrw spn per, or the traffic in n l3Ig cii y. To move
through the Int ter in vol yes a whole srrics of shocks, ted collisions. A t
dangerous intersect ions, impulses crisscrr›ss I he pcdcsl ria n like charges
in a battery. Raudrlairc describe.s the man who pt u ugcs into the crowd
es It rcscrx’oir ‹if elcrtrical energy. Thcrcu pon lir calls him, thus
singlin g out 1 he ex pericncc of shock, 'a kalcidnscopc cndou’cd with
consciou.ences’.” A nd Ec njn min gors on lo coni)i1cir ihis catalogue
o’ith a description ‹if the w'orkrr and his psycholr›gica 1 subjection to
thr nyrr.n ti‹›t› nf l)\r morhinr in the fAt tnr y. Yrt i t sc’rms t‹› mr thn I
nlongsiclc 1 he' vnluc rel Hi is po.see gc us a n n n:i1ysis of th c psycliologirnl
effect of ni schint'r s', it hns for Ben juts in a srro nil:i ry intention, it
satisfies n deeper }isychological rcquiremen t pcrh o ps in some wa ys
rvcn more tin portant than the official inlellcctti ol our; and that is to
.serve as n concrete cmbodimc nt for the st at c of mind of Ba udelairc.
The essay indeed begins u.'ith a rrl ativcl y di embodied psychological
Slip tP: I(lO l3'1Pt tilCt ‹1 Lvl t h i he rim' condition of I angi i:i gc in modern
times, faced u'ith the debascmcnt of journalism, tile inhn bitant of i he great
rit y Istud w'ith t he increasing shocks and porcrpt ual numbness of clnil
y lite. T’lic.sc ph cnomcnrt nrc intr:nscl y fnmi1i:i r I o Rcn jam in, but
somehow lie srrnis lo frcl them us irish IIic'i‹'n11 y "r*udcrrd”: hr ca n
nr›t Ji‹›ss'ss their spirittinlly, he can not cx prrss I li‹'in ntlt'‹jua ml y, until
he finals sonic sharper and more concrete ph ysical ima gc in n hich
to cm body t hem. T’lie machine, the list of ins'cntions, is prc- ci.scly such
an ink age; and it u ill be clear to the render that ve con- staler such n
passsgc, in n ppcnrancc n historical a no l}’sis, os in real it y

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 FnEDittC JA M RSON

en exercise In ellegorleol medltntlon, in the locotlng of some fitting

emblem ln which to anchor the peculiar end nervous modern stale of
mlnd whlch wcs his subject-motter.
For thls reason the preoccupetlon with machines and inventions
in Benjamin does not leed to a theory of historical causality; rather
it finds its completion elsewhere, in a theory of the modern object,
in the notion of "oura." Aura for Benjamin Is the equivalent in the modern
world, where it still persists, for whnt anthropologists call the "sacred" in
primitive societies; it is in the world of things what "mystery" is in the
world of humnti events, what "charisma" is in the world of humen
beings. In a secularized universe lt 1s perhaps ensier to locate at the
moment of its disappearance, the cause of which is in general technlcnl
invention, the replacement of human perception with those substitutes for
and mechanical extensions of perception which ere machines. Thus it
is eo5y to see how in the movies, in the “reproduceable work of art,”
that ourn which originally resulted from the physical presence of
actors in the here-end-now of the theater is short-clrcuited by the new
technical advance (and therl replaced, in genuine Freudian symptom-
formation, by the attempt to endow the stars with a new kind of
personal eurn of their own off the screen).
Yet ln the world of objects, this intensity Inf Fhysicnl presence whlch
constitutes the aurn of something cfln ycrh8pr test be expressed by
the imoge of the look, ltte intelligence returned: “The experience of
aurn is bnsed on the transposition of n social reaction onto the rela-
tionship of the lifeless or of ml urc lo men. The person we look ct,
the person who believes himself looked nt, looks beck ct us in return.
To experience the aura nf n phenomenon means to endow it with the
power to lnct‹ bnct‹ in return.”
And elsewhere he defines nnra thus: ”The single, unrepenf9hle
experience of di.stnnce, no mnlter how close it may be. While resting
on a summer afternoon, to fr›lIow the outline of n mountain against
the horizon, or nf a brnnch thnt cnrls its shndow nn the viev’er, mennr
to breath the nurn of the mount nitt, r›f the brnrtch." Alirn is thtts in
n sense the opposite of nllegoricnl perception, in that in it n mysterious
«’holiness of nbjcct.s become.r virihle. And u›hcrc the brnken
fragments ot nllegcry represented a thing-world of destructive fnrcer in
which humnn autonomy was drowned, the objects of aurn represent
perhnpr the setting of a kind o( utnpia, n utopian present, not shorn of
the ynst bttt having absorbed it, e kin J of plcnitude of existence in the
world of thing.s, if only for the briefest inrlnnt. Yet this utopliin cnm-

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W i lier Re rid s min. f2r Nostrtfgio 65
ponent of Benjamin’s though I, put to fi lgh t us it is by the mechAnixéd
present of history, is ave iI able to the I hinker only in a simpler cultural
P°°t
Thus It 1s his one evocation of n non-ellcgoricnl att, his essoy on
Nikolai Leskoiv, “The Teller of Tales,” which it perhaps his master-
piece. As with ecit›rs faced with the technical adx'ancc of the repro-
ducenble art -work, so nlsr› wit h the tale in the race of modern com-
munion tionn systrm.s, a url in particular of the new spoper. The Iunclion
of the newspn pers is to s bsorb the shocks of not cl ty, and by nu mbing
the orga nism to lhem to sap their intensity. Yet the 1rile, always
constructed nrr›und some novelty, was designed r›u the contrary to
presets e its force; whrrc the mechanical torm “exhn nets” ever increas-
ing que ntities of new material, the older w'ord -of- moul h communica-
tion in thnt which recommends itself to mcmor y. I ts reproduceability
is nrit mechanical, but natural to consciousness; indeed, that which
allows the story to be remembered, to seem “memorable” is at the
snmc time the means of its assimilation to the personal experience of
the li.stcnrrs 9s well.
It is instructive to compare this anal ysis by Benjo min of the tale
(n nd its implied distinction from the novel ) with that of Sartre, so
similar in some wuy.s, a nd yet so different in its ultimate rmphnsis.
Fr›r hot h, I he tsvo torms erc opposed not only in their social origins —
the 1rile springing from collective life. the novel from solitude — and
nrit rinl}• in their ron' matrrinl — i he tnlc using w hat everyone cm
recognize as common experience, the not cl that z'hich is uncommon
and high I v indix’idualistic — but also s nd primarily in the relationship
to dcoth a ml to ctcrn ity. Benjamin quotes Valr'ry: “I t is al most ns
though the disap}icarance ‹›f t he iden of eternity z crc related to the
increasing dis i:isIe for my kind of work of long duration in t imc.”
Concurrent with t he disn ppearance of the gen uinc story is the in-
creasing c‹›nccnImcnt of death nnd dying in otir society: fnr the au-
thority’ nf the .slnry ultimately dcrix’es from the not thnrity of death. tvl\
ich lrnds r' cr cx’en t e once-nnd-fnr-nil I› niqurness. "A man ’hn died
nt the aye nf thirty -fire ir nt ex'cry point in his life e man who is
going to die n I I he a ge of lhiri y- five”: .so Ben jrim in describes otir a
pprchciision of characters in the to ie, us I he a nti - psychological, the
simplified rrprrsentatix’es r›f their own destinies. But what appeals
to his .sensitivity to I he e rchnic is precinct y what Sartre condemns as
innuthcntic: nnmcly thr x’in1cncc tn genuine lived humnn experience,
V’hich nr\’cr in the frcudum n( its nwn yrrsrnt frrls itsrlf nr fate, fnr
v’hich Ante nnd rlr.stinv nre n I ways characteristic ‹›f other prcplc’s

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66 Flt EDBtC JA M ESON
experience, seen from the outside es something closed rind thing-like. For
I his resson Sartre opposes ihe iale (it is true that he is thinking of the
late-nineteenth century well-mnde story, which uttered to a middle-cless
audience, rather than to the relatively anonymous folk product of which
Benjamin specks) to the novel, whose task 1s pre- cisely to render thi5
open experience of consciousness in the present, of freedom, rot her
th‹in the optical illusion of fete.
There can be no doubt thet this opposition corresponds lo a his-
torical experience: the older tale, indeed the clnssicel nineteenth
century novel us well, expressed e socisl I ifc in which the individual teced
single-shot, irreperoble chances and opportunities, in which lie had to
plny everythlng on e single roll of the dice, in which his life did
therefore properly tend to take on the appearance of fete or destiny, of a
story that cm be told. Whereas in the modern world (which is to sity,
in Western Europe and the United States), economic prosperity is such
thot nothing 1s ever rca Jly irrevocable in this sense: hence the philosophy
of freedom, hence the modcrnintic literature of conscious- ness ot which
Sartre 1s here a theorist: hence alno, the decay of plot, for where
nothing is irrevr›cable ( in the absence of death in Ben- jamin’s sense)
there is no story lo tell either, there is only a series of experiences of eqtml
weight whose order is indiscriminetel y reversible. Benjamin 1s os aware
as Snrtro of the wny in which the tnle, wlth its spprs rnnce of destiny,
does violence to our lived experience in ihe present: but for him it does
jfirticc to nur experience of the pgst. Its "inauthenticity” is to be
seen as a mode of commemoration, so that it does not really mutter
any longer whclher the young mm deed in hls prime was oware of
his own lived experience as fate: for us, henceforth remembering him,
we alwnys think of him, at the various stnges of his life, es one about
to become this destiny, end the tale thus glves us “ the hope of warming
our own chilly existence
upon a death ebout which we read.”
The tale Is not only a psychological mode of relating to the ptisl, ot
commemorating it: it is for Benjamin also a mode of contact with a
vanished torm of sociel and historical existence us well; and it is in
this correlation between the activity of story-telling and the concrete
form of a certain historically determinate mode of production that
Benjamin can serve as a model of Marxist literary criticism st its
most revealing. The twin sources of story-telling find their archaic
embodiment in “the settled cultivator on the one hand and the sea- faring
merchant on the other. Both forms ot life have In fact pro- duced their
own characteristic type of story-teller ... A genulne ex-

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Waller Den|amin, or Nosl‹itgia 67
ten.sion ot the possibilities of story-telling io its greatest historical range
is however not possible without the most thorough-going fusion of the
two nrchnic types. Such a fusion wcs realized during Ihe middle egcs in
the ertisanal associations and guilds. The sedentary master and the
wandering Apprentices worked together in the same room; inderd,
every master had himself been e wandering apprcnt ice before set tling
doz'n ct home or in some foreign city. II peasants and sailors were
the inventors of story-telling, the guild system proved to be the piece
of its highest development.” The tale is thus the product of an artisan
cut ture, a hnnd-mnde product, like a cobbler’s shoe or a pot; and like
such « hnnd -mnde obJect, “the touch of the story -trllrr clings to it like
the truce of the potter’s hnnd on the gI azcd surf acr.”
In his ultimate statement of the relatiotvship of lilcrat ure to politics,
Benjamin seems to hex'e tried to bring to bear on the problems o( the
present this method, which had known .success 1 n dcsI ing u'ith the
objects of the pnst. Yrt the transposition is not w'ithout its difficult:es,
end Benjamin’s conrlusionn remein problematical, particul nrly in his
unresolx-cd, ambiguous attitude tow'ards modcr n industrial civiliza-
tion, whi‹ h Iascinntrd him es much as it seems to hns‘c depressed him.
The problem of propaganda in art can be solved, he maintains, by
attention, riot so murh to the content of lhc v'ork of srt, us to its
form: n gr‹›gr0tsivc wnr§ of nrt is one which ulilizcr Ihc mo*t advanced
art istic techniques, one in u'hich therefore the artist Irenes his activity
ns a technician, nn‹J through thir technical worL fi nrls a unity of
purpose with lhr industrial worker. “The srilidarit y of the specialist
with the prole tnrint ... en ri never be anything but n mediated one.”
This com mum ist “politicnlisation of art,” which he opposed to the
fascist “esthetico lis,tion of the machine,” z'as designed to harness to
the cause of rcx olution thnt modernism to which of hrr FJarxist critics
(Lukncs, for inst ance) were hostile. And there en n be no doubt that
Benjamin first came to a radical politics through his experience es a
npccinlist: through his grow'ing us nreness, wii hin the dom nin of his
own specialized arti.stic nctix ity, of the crucial inhucncc on the u ork
of art of changes in the publir, in trch niqur, in shorl of History itself.
But although in i he realm of the history of art the historian can no
doubt show n parallelism between specific lcchnic:11 »d a rices in a
given nrt rind the general dcx-elopment of the econom y as a whole,
it is difficult to see how a technically advanced and difficul t work of
art can has'e an ything but a “mediated” effect polil icall)'. Benjamin
was of course lucky in the artistic example which lay before him: for
he illustrates hin thesis worth the epic theater of B rccht, perhaps indeed

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 FREDRIC JAM ESON

the only modern artistic innovntlon that lfas had direct and revolu-
tionary political lmpect. But even here the situation is ambiguous:
an tistute crltie (Roll Tledcmenn) hes pointed out the secret relation- ship
between Benjamin’s fondness for Brecht on the one hnnd and “his
lifelong fascination with children’s br›oks” on the other (children’s hooks:
hieroglyphs: slmpllfied ollegoricol emblems end riddles). Thus, where
we thought lo emerge into the historical present, in reelity we plunge
again into the distant past of psychological obsession.
But if nostalgia as a prillticnl motivation is most frequently asso-
ciated wJth fascism, there is no rcnson why a nostalgia conscious of
itself, a lucid and remorseless dissatisfaction u ilh the present on the
grounds of some remembered plenitude, cannot furnish as adequate
a revolutionary stimulus as ony other: the example of Benjamin is
there to prove it. He himself, however, preferred to contemplate his
destiny in religious imagery, as in the following paragraph, according
to Cershom Scholem the last he ever wrote: “Surely Time was felt
neither as empty nor es homogeneous by the soothsaycrs who inquired
for what it hid in its womb. Whoever keeps this in mind is in a
position to grasp just how past time is experienced in commemoration:
in just exactly the ssme wny. As is well known, the Jews were for-
bidden to search Into the future. On the contrary, the Thora end
the act of prayer Instruct them ln commemoratlon of the past. So for
them, the future, to which the clientele of soothseyers remriins in
thrall, is divested of its secred power. Yet it does not tor all that
become simply empty end homogeneous time in their eyen. For every
second of the future bears wlthin it thnt little door through which
Messiah may enter.”
Angeles novus: Benjamin’s tevorite imege of the angel that exists only
to slng its hymn of pralse before the lace of God, to give voice, and
then at once to venish back info uncreated nothingness. So at its most
poignant EenJnmin s ex F•• ience of time: a pure present, on the threshold
of the future honoring it by averted eyes ln medltntion on
the p/tst.

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