Benjamin (Reflections).Pdf

EFLECTIOMS WALTEU BEHiAMIH _ Essays, Aphorisms, p Autobiographical Writings |k Edited and with an Introduction by p P e t e r D e m e t z SiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittiiiiiiiiiiiiiltiAMiiiiiiiAiiiiiiiiii ^%lter Benjamin Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical W ritings Translated, by Edmund Jephcott Schocken Books^ New York English translation copyright © 1978 by Harcourt BraceJovanovich, Inc. Alt rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conven tions. Published in the United States by Schocken Books Inc., New YoTk. Distributed by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. These essays have all been published in Germany. ‘A Berlin Chronicle” was published as B erliner Chronik, copyright © 1970 by Suhrkamp Verlag; "One-Way Street” as Einbahnstrasse copyright 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag; "Moscow,” “Marseilles;’ “Hashish in Marseilles:’ and " Naples” as “Moskau “Marseille,” “Haschisch in Marseille,” and “Weapel” in Gesammelte Schrifen, Band IV-1, copyright © 1972 by Suhrkamp Verlag; “Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century," “Karl Kraus,” - and "The Destructive Character” as "Paris, die H auptskult des XlX.Jahrhvmdertsl' "Karl Kmus’,’ and “Der destruktive Charakter" in llluminationen, copyright 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag; “Surrealism,” “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” and “On the M i me tic faculty" as “Der Silry:eaWsmus,” “Uber die Sprache ilberhaupt und ilber die Sprache des Menschen” and "Uber das mimelische Vermogen” in Angelus copyright © 1966 by Suhrkamp Verlag; “ Brecht’s Th r eep en n y Novel” as “B r e c h t ’s Dreigroschmroman" in Gesammelte Sr.hrifen, Band III, copyright © 1972 by Suhrkamp Verlag; “Conversations with Brecht” and “The Author as Producer" as “Gespriiche mit Brecht" and “Der Autor ais Produz.erit” in Ver-SMche ilber Brecht, copyright © 1966 by Suhrkamp Verlag; “Critique of Violence/' "Fate and Character,” and “Theologico-Political Fragment” as "Zur K r itiz der Gewalt',' "Schicksal und Charakter" and "Theologisch-polilisches Fr< ^ m ent" in Schrifen, Band I, copyright © 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag. Published by arrangement with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Benjamin, Walter, 1^2-1940. Reflections: essays, aphorisms, autobiographical writings. Bibliography: p. • Includes index. I. Demetz, Peter, 19:4a- II. Title. ■ PT 2603.^55^6 1986 834' .912 85-26232 i s b n o -805a - 0802 - X Manufactured in the United States of America FirstSchocken edition published in 1986 Edited and w ith an Introduction by Peter Dem etz Contents Introduction vii ONE A Berlin Chronicle j One-Way Street (selection) 6x TWO Moscow 97 Marseilles r^r Hashish in Marseilles i j 7 Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century 146 Naples 763 THREE Surrealism 177 B rechts Threepenny Novel ig j Conversations with Brecht .2oj T he Author as Producer 2.20 Karl Kraus FOUR Critique of Violence 277 The Destructive Character j o i Fate and Character J04 vi Contents Theologico-Political Fragment JI2 On Language as Such and on the Language of Man 314 On the Mimetic Faculty 333 Editors Note , 331 Useful Further Readings 339 Index J41 Introduction In the mid-fifties, Theodor W. Adorno presented the first col lection of Walter Benjamin’s essays to German audiences, and in the late sixties, Hannah Arendt prepared a similar volume for American readers. It was, both in Frankfurt (1955) and in New York (1968), a matter of rescuing Walter Benjamin from near-oblivion and of transforming what had been, in the late twenties and early thirties, a rumor among the cognoscenti into an incisive challenge to our ossifying habits of thought. Today, the situation has radically Ranged, and Walter Ben jamin has become a new classic, at least among the members of the philosophical left on the European continent, who study his essays as avidly as those of Antonio Gramsci, Georg LukAcs, or Ernst Bloch. We now have a nearly complete edition of his collected works in w h i& even some of his improvised reviews are preserved (as they should be) with a philological care never bestowed on Sainte-Beuve or N. G. Chernyshevski; and many groups of partisan interpreters ally their political cause, by quoting âpter and verse, with the ideas of a writer obseêd with protecting the privacy of his experience. Reading and in terpreting an author have never been activities that evolve out- dde a complex net of committed interests and social pressures, and I cannot pretend to approach Walter Benjamin from a more impersonal view than others have done. My difficulty is that I find myself unable to share his assumptions in the tradi tions of Romantic metaphysics or Hegelian dialectics, but I hope to balance these serious deficiencies by a compassionate effort to understand the tragic quality of his life and the inter nal contradictions of his thought, which was intent, at least at viii Introduction times, upon a vision of history violently disrupted by the com ing of the Messiah and/or the revolution of the proletariat. Over a long period, Gershom (Gerhard) Scholem and Theo dor W. Adorno collaborated loyally in editing Benjamin's re vealing letters and in suggesting diverse ways in which we should understand hisideas and commi tments. Gershom Scho lem, who was instrumental in introducing Benjamin to the Jewish spiritual tradition, continues to suggest in his memoirs that his restless friend was a religious if not a mystical thinker who may have been tempted, against the grain of his senubil- ities, to superimpose the terms of Marxist discourse upon his metaphysical vision of God, language, and a society ontologi cally in need of salvation. Theodor W. Adorno, Benjamin’s irascible friend and his first editor of substantial merit, was inclined to make some allow ances for an early metaphysical infatuation that was followed, to be sure, by a more important though uneasy alliance with a critical philosophy basically incarnated in the work of the Frankfurt Institut fur Sozialforsûng, which was continued, after Hitler had come to power, in Geneva and New York. In his own sophisticated way, Fredric Jameson, in one of the first important essays on Benjamin published in thi!' country, fully supports Adorno's claims and adds a dash of inevitable melan choly characteristic of American academic Marxists in their frustrating search for an old-fashioned proletariat Yet the neat division between a metaphysical and a materialist reading of Benjamin, advanced by Scholem and the critical Marxists re spectively, has been modified more recently by the German critic Helmut Heissenbiittel and some younger interpreters emerging from the radical German student movement of the late sixties, who rightly stress the substantial differences be tween Adorno’s and Benjamin's way of using Marxist ideas. These critics say, with a good deal of justification, that we can not entirely understand Benjamin’s particular brand of M ^ - ism without looking more closely at his creative friendship with the playwright Bertolt Brecht, a relationship very little appre- Introduction ix dated by either Scholem or Adorno. Scholem’s religious views thus compete with a rich array of highly differentiated Marxist readings of Benj amin, and yet I prefer a third way, suggested by Martin Jay's sober history of the Frankfurt Institut, Han nah Arendt’s biographical essays concerning the paradoxes of Benjamin’s personality, and Rene Wellek's judicious pano rama of his critical views. I am less concerned with construct ing a systematic pigeonhole than with sketching a biographi cal account of Benjamin’s experiences against crucial years of Central European history and with trying to ease, if it can be done at all, the exhilarating difficulties of reading some of his best writings, which are totally alien to the pragmatic and ana lytic orientations long prevalent in American thought. In many Jewish families of late nineteenth-century Europe, gifted sons turned against the commercial interests of their fathers, who were largely assimilated (after moving from the provinces to the more liberal cities) to bourgeois success, and, in building their counterworlds in spiritual protest, they ind- rively shaped the future of science, philosophy, and literature. Articulating an insight of far-reading implications, Karl Kraus, the belligerent Viennese satirist, suggested in his Magical Operetta (m ud enjoyed by Benjamin) that little Jewish family dramas were being played all over, the stern fathers concerned with tachles— profitable business ploys— and the spiritual sons with shmonzes— the less profitable matters of the pure mind. Whether we think of Sigmund Freud, Edmund Husserl, or Franz ' Kafka, we need few modifications to apply this descrip tion to what happened in these families, and in the story of Benjamin’s development, the fundamental pattern reasserts it self with particular clarity. Walter Benjamin’s parents be-' longed to the Berlin Jewish upper-middle class, and his Child hood was protected by an elegant household of refined diners and prescribed shopping excursions, the inevitable governesses, and the best schools. His father was a knowledgeable auction eer, art dealer, and investor who believed that he was distantly X Introduction rela ted to the poet Heinrich Heine. His mother came from a clan of lawyers and merchants successfully established in the Jewish communities of Prussia’s eastern provinces. There was a sister, Dora, and a - brother, George, who, as a physician, loyally served the working people in the northern industrial districts of Berlin, joined the German Communist Party, and later died in a concentration camp (his wife, Hilde Benjamin, was to serve the German' Democratic Republic as a fierce state prosecutor and appeared, in fictional shape, in Le Carry's Spy Who Came in from the Cold). Walter received his first educa tion in the Kaiser Friedrich School, a rather liberal institution (whatever he was to say about it later), and spent some time in an elite prep school in Thuringia, well known for the peda gogical experiments it directed against petrified educational tradition.

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