Benjamin Afterword DE-EN - Revision history

Root: /* VI. */

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VI.

Fu Chen: /* II. */

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II.

Li Si 2: /* English Afterword */

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English Afterword

Li Si 2: /* English Afterword */

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English Afterword

Xiao Jiayu: /* III. */

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III.

Xiao Jiayu: /* III. */

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III.

Yin qiao: /* III. */

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III.

Yin qiao: /* III. */

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III.

Zhaotong: /* III. */

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Yin qiao: /* III. */

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III.

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 At about the same time that Benjamin was thinking about the political function of the author, he was dealing with the work of Kafka, in which the question of the political recedes completely into the background. Instead, with Judaism, a point of view comes to the fore here that formed an enduring, but differently pronounced point of reference for Benjamin. In particular with his childhood friend Gershorn Scholem, who had emigrated to Palestine and taught Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, he corresponded again and again about questions of Judaism. He incorporated some of his references into the Kafka essay. As in the other essays, Benjamin paces the characteristic moments of the writing. Among these, in the Kafka essay, is reflection on the workings of narrative.
-In the essay ''The Narrator'' (see here pp. 28-60), written a few years later, he formulates apodictically: <span style="color:blue">"It is [... ] already half the art of narration to keep a story, by reproducing it, free of explanations."</span> Benjamin fundamentally demarcates narration from the information that dominates modern media worlds. Information is interspersed with explanations, it hides nothing; by the time it is consumed, it is already obsolete. Lesskov's narrative proceeds differently, as does Kafka's parable-like narrative. Narrative and parable close something inside them that remains unfathomable and unfixable, a "cloudy place" that resembles the gesture and that stimulates the interpretive activity of the listeners and the readers. The debate appropriate to these narratives is the interpretation, because it leads neither to a fixed knowledge nor to a doctrine. Rather, as Benjamin puts it in the Narrator's Essay, the reader is "free to make up his own mind about the matter as he understands it, and thus the narrated reaches a range of vibration that information lacks.
+In the essay ''The Narrator'' (see here pp. 28-60), written a few years later, he formulates apodictically: <span style="color:green">"And in fact isn't it half the art of journalism to keep the news free of explanations?" (Jennings II-2,660)</span> Benjamin fundamentally demarcates narration from the information that dominates modern media worlds. Information is interspersed with explanations, it hides nothing; by the time it is consumed, it is already obsolete. Lesskov's narrative proceeds differently, as does Kafka's parable-like narrative. Narrative and parable close something inside them that remains unfathomable and unfixable, a "cloudy place" that resembles the gesture and that stimulates the interpretive activity of the listeners and the readers. The debate appropriate to these narratives is the interpretation, because it leads neither to a fixed knowledge nor to a doctrine. Rather, as Benjamin puts it in the Narrator's Essay, the reader is "free to make up his own mind about the matter as he understands it, and thus the narrated reaches a range of vibration that information lacks.
 In the Kafka essay (see here: Franz Kafka, pp. 164-198), Benjamin practices a mode of writing in which he himself operates with such recesses and thus approaches literary writing. He quotes narratives without resolving them into explanations. He intersperses his text with quotations, which he uses in such a way that they transcend the function of proof and begin to take on a life of their own. Furthermore, he works with the stylistic device of metaphor. For example, he invokes metaphors of water, movement, weight, and light. On the one hand, he thus immerses himself in Kafka's fictional world and engages in that <span style="color:green">"interpretation of the poet from the center of his imagery"<span> (II,678) that he had once called for; on the other hand, he subjects Kafka's world to his own gaze. Thus, with the Potemkin story, he implants a revolutionary perspective in it: the name Potemkin refers not only to the commander-in-chief of the army under Catherine II, but also, on an initially invisible, secret level, to the armored cruiser on which the Russian Revolution of 1905 got underway and whose story Eisenstein triumphantly put on film in 1925. Benjamin thus gives the Kafkaian motif of conversion, which in the story of Sancho Panza, for example, is tied to reading, study, and literature, an esoteric, political-revolutionary dimension.

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 That he was an excellent connoisseur of literary history is impressively demonstrated by his essays. He knew the history of German-language literature as well as that of French literature. A third focus of interest was Russian literature. While the authors of antiquity remained a constant point of reference, other literatures, such as English-language literature, appeared only occasionally. Benjamin was equally concerned with the literature of his contemporaries as with that of past epochs. In the second case, he acted as a literary historian. He also provided theoretical information about this function.
-He develops his theory of literary history to a good extent in the article Literary History and Literary Studies (see here pp. 250-257). The historical dimension separates the discussion of works within the framework of literary history from that within the framework of current criticism. But what role should be assigned to history in the context of literary historical considerations? Benjamin's relationship to literary history is clearly not one of care and preservation, in which only an administration of what has been handed down is envisaged. He also rejects those approaches that see literary history as a stringing together of facts and thus subscribe to the objectivity ideal of the natural sciences. In contrast, he argues for a materialist view of literary history, specifying his difference from a traditional type of materialism, for which he names Franz Mehring as a representative. If the latter assumes that literary history must preserve the >edelste Güter der Nation<, Benjamin calls this approach, despite a certain proximity to materialism, a conservative one, because it does not revolutionize the cultural practice of the bourgeois age, but preserves it. He himself conceives a different relationship to history, which he later validly formulated in the famous text On the Concept of History. In Literary History and Literary Studies, he develops an analogous one in the grandiose final passage. In the grandiose concluding passage, he develops an analogous idea with regard to the history of literature: it is not a matter of <span style="color:green">"presenting the works of literature in the context of their time, but rather of presenting the time that recognizes them - that is our time - in the time in which they were created"</span>. Seen in this way, literature becomes a legitimate medium of historical knowledge, it becomes an <span style="color:green">"organon of history"</span>.
+He develops his theory of literary history to a good extent in the article Literary History and Literary Studies (see here pp. 250-257). The historical dimension separates the discussion of works within the framework of literary history from that within the framework of current criticism. But what role should be assigned to history in the context of literary historical considerations? Benjamin's relationship to literary history is clearly not one of care and preservation, in which only an administration of what has been handed down is envisaged. He also rejects those approaches that see literary history as a stringing together of facts and thus subscribe to the objectivity ideal of the natural sciences. In contrast, he argues for a materialist view of literary history, specifying his difference from a traditional type of materialism, for which he names Franz Mehring as a representative. If the latter assumes that literary history must preserve the >edelste Güter der Nation<, Benjamin calls this approach, despite a certain proximity to materialism, a conservative one, because it does not revolutionize the cultural practice of the bourgeois age, but preserves it. He himself conceives a different relationship to history, which he later validly formulated in the famous text On the Concept of History. In Literary History and Literary Studies, he develops an analogous one in the grandiose final passage. In the grandiose concluding passage, he develops an analogous idea with regard to the history of literature: it is not a matter of <span style="color:green">"presenting the works of literature in the context of their time, but rather of presenting the time that recognizes them - that is our time - in the time in which they were created"</span>. Seen in this way, literature becomes a legitimate medium of historical knowledge, it becomes an <span style="color:green">"philosophy of history"</span>.(Jennings II-1,829)
 These formulations presuppose a certain understanding of how the interweaving of past and present takes place in literary history: It is a complex, living encounter that can even be heightened to the point of collision. Therefore Benjamin does not try; to put himself back into an old text or into the state of consciousness of an author long dead and to empathize. The procedure of empathy is based on the illusionary. Assumption that one's own present can be passed over and made forgotten and that the past can be retrieved in a kind of emotional simulation. On the other hand, this present must not appear as a higher stage of development of the past, so that the current works would be regarded as the more important ones compared to the older ones. The past would thus be degraded to a transitory stage that progress has since left behind. Benjamin's understanding of history generally rejects this kind of orientation toward progress. For him, the two times, the past and the present, encounter each other at eye level. Each brings something of its own to the encounter: Works are handed down from the past; the present confronts them with a certain, historically specific view. Only in the encounter of the two does the respective current view of a past work emerge. This also means that each time interprets the past in a different way, because each time is confronted with its own questions - questions that it also addresses to the past. It is not least through the historically specific perspective of this questioning that the present time is reflected in the representation of that past to which these questions are addressed.

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 One of the forms in which Benjamin integrates the heterogeneous elements of his concept of criticism is the portrait. Having increasingly moved closer to the Marxist left since the mid-twenties and reformulated his theories in materialist terms, he strengthened the judgmental elements in his literary critical practice. Beyond the immanent procedure, which continued to play a central role for him, he now demanded that criticism be tied to a program, namely that of materialist criticism, in which <span style="color:green">"the books would be set in the context of the time"</span> (VI,l66). If this did not happen, criticism would be atomized.
-<span style="color:green">"The atomization of criticism," according to Benjamin, is, however, "connected with the demise of the art of critical portraiture"</span> (V2,P294). It is precisely this portrait art that connects the precise, mimetic, and physiognomic view of works with their positioning in the society in which they were created and the time in which they were received. The great essays on Charles Baudelaire, Gottfried Keller, Karl Kraus, Marcel Proust, and Pranz Kafka are the epitome of Benjamin's portraiture, and the texts on surrealism, the narrator, Hebel, and Brecht point in the same direction.
+<span style="color:green">"The atomization of criticism," according to Benjamin, is, however, "connected with the demise of the art of critical portraiture"</span> (V2,P1,P294). It is precisely this portrait art that connects the precise, mimetic, and physiognomic view of works with their positioning in the society in which they were created and the time in which they were received. The great essays on Charles Baudelaire, Gottfried Keller, Karl Kraus, Marcel Proust, and Pranz Kafka are the epitome of Benjamin's portraiture, and the texts on surrealism, the narrator, Hebel, and Brecht point in the same direction.
 In all these texts, Benjamin first draws the categories of his analyses from the works themselves by uncovering their peculiarities. In the critical portraits, too, the path to truth leads through the factual content. And in each case Benjamin is interested in the characteristic, genuine components of the works that appear as their extremes. In the Trauerspiel book, he designs and practices, with reference to the phenomenon of the baroque tragedy, a procedure of representation that proceeds from the treading off of the extremes. His essays and portraits are structured quite similarly: they do not design an argumentation that proceeds linearly from a premise to a conclusion. The conclusion as a category of representation -therefore-has no place in Benjamin's work. It is true that many of Benjamin's essays are clearly structured at first glance; for example, those on Proust and Kraus comprise three sections, the one on Kafka four. These numbers, too, Benjamin has by no means chosen at random. However - and this is the crucial point - they do not function in the sense of a hierarchical gradation. The individual sections are not superordinate or subordinate to one another, but rather alongside one another; they are on the same level in terms of argumentation logic. Once one has begun reading, however, the impression of a clear structure becomes blurred. Benjamin's texts then often convey the impression of disorder, jumping from one thought to the next or proliferating in an ornamental net-like manner.

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 One of the forms in which Benjamin integrates the heterogeneous elements of his concept of criticism is the portrait. Having increasingly moved closer to the Marxist left since the mid-twenties and reformulated his theories in materialist terms, he strengthened the judgmental elements in his literary critical practice. Beyond the immanent procedure, which continued to play a central role for him, he now demanded that criticism be tied to a program, namely that of materialist criticism, in which <span style="color:green">"the books would be set in the context of the time"</span> (VI,l66). If this did not happen, criticism would be atomized.
-<span style="color:green">"The atomization of criticism," according to Benjamin, is, however, "connected with the demise of the art of critical portraiture"</span> (VI,167). It is precisely this portrait art that connects the precise, mimetic, and physiognomic view of works with their positioning in the society in which they were created and the time in which they were received. The great essays on Charles Baudelaire, Gottfried Keller, Karl Kraus, Marcel Proust, and Pranz Kafka are the epitome of Benjamin's portraiture, and the texts on surrealism, the narrator, Hebel, and Brecht point in the same direction.
+<span style="color:green">"The atomization of criticism," according to Benjamin, is, however, "connected with the demise of the art of critical portraiture"</span> (V2,P294). It is precisely this portrait art that connects the precise, mimetic, and physiognomic view of works with their positioning in the society in which they were created and the time in which they were received. The great essays on Charles Baudelaire, Gottfried Keller, Karl Kraus, Marcel Proust, and Pranz Kafka are the epitome of Benjamin's portraiture, and the texts on surrealism, the narrator, Hebel, and Brecht point in the same direction.
 In all these texts, Benjamin first draws the categories of his analyses from the works themselves by uncovering their peculiarities. In the critical portraits, too, the path to truth leads through the factual content. And in each case Benjamin is interested in the characteristic, genuine components of the works that appear as their extremes. In the Trauerspiel book, he designs and practices, with reference to the phenomenon of the baroque tragedy, a procedure of representation that proceeds from the treading off of the extremes. His essays and portraits are structured quite similarly: they do not design an argumentation that proceeds linearly from a premise to a conclusion. The conclusion as a category of representation -therefore-has no place in Benjamin's work. It is true that many of Benjamin's essays are clearly structured at first glance; for example, those on Proust and Kraus comprise three sections, the one on Kafka four. These numbers, too, Benjamin has by no means chosen at random. However - and this is the crucial point - they do not function in the sense of a hierarchical gradation. The individual sections are not superordinate or subordinate to one another, but rather alongside one another; they are on the same level in terms of argumentation logic. Once one has begun reading, however, the impression of a clear structure becomes blurred. Benjamin's texts then often convey the impression of disorder, jumping from one thought to the next or proliferating in an ornamental net-like manner.

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 mobile transitory moment in the living transcendental form. By limiting
 itself in its own form, it makes itself transitory in a contingent gure, but
-in that eeting gureit makes itself eternal through criticism?(L,21；auf seite 191)"</span> (VI,172). <span style="color:green">"a successful form of criticism breaks through the limits of the aesthetic realm."</span> (VI,179Walter Benjamin Volume 2, part 1,1927-1930 ，408). The work of art, even the classical one, never becomes a fixed object with him. Rather, it always appears as one that changes with each new present - and critique is the midwife of this change.
+in that eeting gureit makes itself eternal through criticism?(L,21；auf seite 191)"</span> (VI,172). <span style="color:green">"a successful form of criticism breaks through the limits of the aesthetic realm."</span> (VI,179; Walter Benjamin Volume 2, part 1,1927-1930 ，408). The work of art, even the classical one, never becomes a fixed object with him. Rather, it always appears as one that changes with each new present - and critique is the midwife of this change.
 ==IV.==

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 In the conviction that each individual work has a truth content, Benjamin's assumptions on the theory of language also continue to have an effect. The latter takes on a founding function for his entire aesthetic theory. Thus he acknowledges that each art speaks its own language: <span style="color:green">"There is a language of sculpture, of painting, of poetry"</span> (II ,156 Jennings I,73). Furthermore, each individual work of art expresses its own idiom, which does not exist outside of its concrete form. This is especially clear in poetry, for which Benjamin coins the category of the "poem" (cf. II,105), but it also applies to prose works and drama. It is this uniqueness that is at stake, to which the truth content clings. Therefore, each work must first be comprehended and understood in its peculiarity. Criticism works to define the work's own genuineness and thus to reveal its inherent idea, not by applying philosophical concepts to the works from the outside, but by spelling out the tendencies inherent in the work itself: <span style="color:green">"Criticism, as well as the criteria of a terminology[...], are formed [...] immanently, in a development of the formal language of the work, which drives out its content[...]"</span> (I,224f;JenningsI,219). Thus, it is the formal language of the work in whose medium the concepts are formed and whose content they expel at the same time. This results in a function of critique that corresponds with the Romantic conception: By opening up the truth content, criticism develops the work further. It does not change the letter of the tradition, but since the tradition is always received in the medium of a reading that is bound to time, it appears in a different light.
-Benjamin has returned several times to the idea of the <span style="color: green">"life and afterlife in works of art< </span> (I,254), which is connected with this. All works become obsolete in the sense that their historical frame of reference eludes our prior understanding in the course of time. As readers become alienated from what has become obsolete, the factual content of a work emerges and becomes increasingly knowable vis-à-vis its truth content (cf. I,125). Criticism now judges whether the work is rightly accorded permanence and classicism by either emphasizing or rejecting the viability and validity of the relation of factual and truthful content. The survival of the works thus arises, on the one hand, from within them, from their aesthetic form, and, on the other hand, from the criticism that strikes the work from without. It is now interesting that Benjamin thinks of the survival of the works as a transgression: <span style="color:green">"The work of art cannot be a torso; it must be a
+Benjamin has returned several times to the idea of the <span style="color: green">"life and afterlife in works of art< </span> (IV,11；Jennings I,254), which is connected with this. All works become obsolete in the sense that their historical frame of reference eludes our prior understanding in the course of time. As readers become alienated from what has become obsolete, the factual content of a work emerges and becomes increasingly knowable vis-à-vis its truth content (cf. I,125). Criticism now judges whether the work is rightly accorded permanence and classicism by either emphasizing or rejecting the viability and validity of the relation of factual and truthful content. The survival of the works thus arises, on the one hand, from within them, from their aesthetic form, and, on the other hand, from the criticism that strikes the work from without. It is now interesting that Benjamin thinks of the survival of the works as a transgression: <span style="color:green">"The work of art cannot be a torso; it must be a
 mobile transitory moment in the living transcendental form. By limiting
 itself in its own form, it makes itself transitory in a contingent gure, but

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 It is clear from this that the truth content can only be revealed through the factual content. Criticism is therefore dependent on the commentary, on the exact reading, as its starting point. All criticism starts from the inner determinations, from the form and content of the individual work; <span style="color:green">"only in the critical, annotated unfolding of the work itself"</span> (II,284) does its truth content reveal itself. Criticism here, as in Romanticism, is first and foremost immanent criticism.
-In the conviction that each individual work has a truth content, Benjamin's assumptions on the theory of language also continue to have an effect. The latter takes on a founding function for his entire aesthetic theory. Thus he acknowledges that each art speaks its own language: <span style="color:green">"There is a language of sculpture, of painting, of poetry"</span> (II ,156 Jennings I,73). Furthermore, each individual work of art expresses its own idiom, which does not exist outside of its concrete form. This is especially clear in poetry, for which Benjamin coins the category of the "poem" (cf. II,105), but it also applies to prose works and drama. It is this uniqueness that is at stake, to which the truth content clings. Therefore, each work must first be comprehended and understood in its peculiarity. Criticism works to define the work's own genuineness and thus to reveal its inherent idea, not by applying philosophical concepts to the works from the outside, but by spelling out the tendencies inherent in the work itself: <span style="color:green">"Criticism, as well as the criteria of a terminology[...], are formed [...] immanently, in a development of the formal language of the work, which drives out its content[...]"</span> (I,224f.). Thus, it is the formal language of the work in whose medium the concepts are formed and whose content they expel at the same time. This results in a function of critique that corresponds with the Romantic conception: By opening up the truth content, criticism develops the work further. It does not change the letter of the tradition, but since the tradition is always received in the medium of a reading that is bound to time, it appears in a different light.
+In the conviction that each individual work has a truth content, Benjamin's assumptions on the theory of language also continue to have an effect. The latter takes on a founding function for his entire aesthetic theory. Thus he acknowledges that each art speaks its own language: <span style="color:green">"There is a language of sculpture, of painting, of poetry"</span> (II ,156 Jennings I,73). Furthermore, each individual work of art expresses its own idiom, which does not exist outside of its concrete form. This is especially clear in poetry, for which Benjamin coins the category of the "poem" (cf. II,105), but it also applies to prose works and drama. It is this uniqueness that is at stake, to which the truth content clings. Therefore, each work must first be comprehended and understood in its peculiarity. Criticism works to define the work's own genuineness and thus to reveal its inherent idea, not by applying philosophical concepts to the works from the outside, but by spelling out the tendencies inherent in the work itself: <span style="color:green">"Criticism, as well as the criteria of a terminology[...], are formed [...] immanently, in a development of the formal language of the work, which drives out its content[...]"</span> (I,224f;JenningsI,219). Thus, it is the formal language of the work in whose medium the concepts are formed and whose content they expel at the same time. This results in a function of critique that corresponds with the Romantic conception: By opening up the truth content, criticism develops the work further. It does not change the letter of the tradition, but since the tradition is always received in the medium of a reading that is bound to time, it appears in a different light.
 Benjamin has returned several times to the idea of the <span style="color: green">"life and afterlife in works of art< </span> (I,S.254), which is connected with this. All works become obsolete in the sense that their historical frame of reference eludes our prior understanding in the course of time. As readers become alienated from what has become obsolete, the factual content of a work emerges and becomes increasingly knowable vis-à-vis its truth content (cf. I,125). Criticism now judges whether the work is rightly accorded permanence and classicism by either emphasizing or rejecting the viability and validity of the relation of factual and truthful content. The survival of the works thus arises, on the one hand, from within them, from their aesthetic form, and, on the other hand, from the criticism that strikes the work from without. It is now interesting that Benjamin thinks of the survival of the works as a transgression: <span style="color:green">"The work of art cannot be a torso; it must be a