Benjamin
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Der Chronist, welcher die Ereignisse hererzählt, ohne große und kleine zu unterscheiden, trägt damit der Wahrheit Rechnung, daß nichts was sich jemals ereignet hat, für die Geschichte verloren zu geben ist. Freilich fällt erst der erlösten Menschheit ihre Vergangenheit vollauf zu. Das will sagen: erst der erlösten Menschheit ist ihre Vergangenheit in jedem ihrer Momente zitierbar geworden. Jeder ihrer gelebten Augenblicke wird zu einer ciation à l’ordre du jour – welcher Tag eben der jüngste ist.
from “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” by Walter Benjamin
Dying in
exile
rarely
Crossed
his mind.
reich the third
ordered all
non-persons
incarcerated,
so der Denker
fled
to Paris in
nineteen thirty-two
with familial
expats and
lived
communally.
historical
events
remain
dull
illusions
eroding
Epitaphs.
rumors
exchanged
inside de
gaulle’s
network
illuminate
subtle
story
elements.
historians
eventually
rank
elites
refining
zeitgeist
äbove
honest
labourers.
talk
of l’
homme
normal
excused
genocidal
regimes
ordaining
ßocial
extermination.
up to
nineteen
thirty-six, the
devil only
knew how
long put-upon
europeans could
isolate themselves as
nationalsozialists built
enforcement
zones. Der Denker
took
umbrage when stiff-
upper-lipped
neighbours wouldn’
t risk
engagement as Schutzstaffel
regiment the fourth
settled and
colonized
hardy borscht
eaters.
in truth, he was
damn
exercised as upper-crust
neighbours wouldn’
t give
refuge when the Empire
ännexed
grim border
territories.
destitute
and desperate, der
Denker
made a few francs
from
ideas. In “
the Work” – no, “L’œuvre
d’art à l’
epoque de sa
reproduction
mécanisée,”
he
Wonders whether
authenticity could
be
reproduceable. Is
humanity now
extraneous? Can
iconography acknowledge
technology? Will
Robots allow
experiential knowledge
to distinguish original from
copy? source from
product? artifact from commodity?
he argues
no. Society
used to
nourish
genius by
discerning “
aura.”
ßociety also
nurtured
ingenuity by
concocting a
hallowed
tradition.
so, society
wrought “
authority” from
symbols depicting a
sense of
immortality,
ceremony, or
heresy.
just as imagination
ended with the
modern
automated
production
line,
standardization
ended medieval
rituals of dimly
lit
engravers or
intensely
grave
lithographers.
now, as photography
has
ended impressionism,
transgressive artisans
hide their spirit
away from
thirty-
five mm film.
übiquity
rejects l’objet
d’art by
ignoring
eccentricity.
Going back,
enlightenment folk
swapped guilds
conjuring
hurlyburly for
infidels
consuming
humdrum
things.
economic
valuation
equated mechanical
reproduction and
legitimacy.
oblivious to cyclic
rhythms of artistry,
industrial stock
established
work-a-day
norms with
zero remorse.
under capitalism,
gratification is an
exclusive
brand.
ephemera
numbs
impatient homo
sapiens of a
target market.
It
Followed that
ruling-class
experts
impoverished
lower-class
inferiors by
contriving
statistic
homogeneity
from mystic
äesthetics.
legends
loose
truths l’
ennemi
routinely
silenced.
translating
dour
elegies
rang
eloquent
résistance.
legendary
öccupation
survivors
triumphantly
eluded
nationalist
Militias
every
night.
songs
consoled
hostages
holding
ethereal
ideals
through
ideological
hostilities
risking l’
existence.
Vocal in
exposition, not in
a
room, der Denker
gritted his teeth
to
ask academics if
his
neurosis distracts from
the
gist of his
essays. Le Collège
de Sociologie
nodded. A collective
feels
honour-bound to
everyone, but the
individual
toils in
vain. Nineteen
thirty-seven
observed
l’art pour
l’
art’s sake was
unthinkable. Art is
for the people. Its
zenith remains
unknown.
Then,
Documents
arrived to
strip “Benjamin,
walter” of
immigrant status.
In
late nineteen thirty-eight
la police
stormed residences
at ten rue
Dombasle.
groups of
emigrés paraded
north for
evacuation to
rural France. Benjamin
swallowed blood
thinners to keep
his heart
drumming.
even in the
ruins of an
estate house dining
room, he
lectured
ön
socialism
to
educate
nicotine-stained
detainees.
Marxist
ethos was
neutralized by
suppositions of
certain progress,
he professed.
humanity must
encounter
ironic digressions,
the back and forth,
out and
in, and up and
down, of
succession, in
the theatre’s
iconic gesture, its
hypnotic dialogue,
its
rhapsodic song.
With
eyes and ears
Vibrating, humanity
evaluates the way
revolutions
go
awry.
non-Aristotelian
gimmickry of
epic stagecraft
narrates famous
historical
events as
infamous
tales that
illustrate
news stories. Such
juxtaposition
exhibits
dramatic irony through
episodes
meant to
incite revolt.
hullabaloo
rising to that
effect
reflects one of Brecht’s
Maxims.
one of Brecht’s
maxims,
excerpted from a
musical
number,
turns up (along an
epigram by
zarathustra’s author)
in a paper Benjamin
typed upon
instructing no
eyes should
read it.
Der Dramatiker,
bertolt Brecht,
allowed asylum, a
room without
guards, to his
exiled ally. Der
Denker,
walter Benjamin,
often occupied that
room to write
during his ally’s
exile
near Svendborg, DK.
Jargon about an “
eternal image”
distorts philosophy
of history as
evolution
rather than
interruption,
he assessed.
rambling, shambolic,
and
episodic, his stylization
realizes the
haphazard
grammar of “
empty time.” His
lyricism
emphasizes “
barbarism lurking” under
triumphs of an
embattled
nobility
And its
unrivaled virtues.
Even
god Almighty was
emperor of yore.
nostalgia
became a
law
imposed so working-
class masses should
know sorrow. “
even the dead
would never be safe
if fascist diktats
reign victorious.”
diaries moulder
like
zig-zags smolder –
unsurprisingly.
examples of that
ilk strike crude
nihilists as
evident.
rude theologians
construe the same
incidents
as divine. In
the “Angelus
Novus”
image, Paul Klee
offers a
numinous vision of
àrmageddon – one
last angel
of time watching
rubble from
days past pile atop
rubbish of today –
enlightening the thesis
of “Über
den Begriff der
Geschichte.”
urged to flee with
fellow
jewish refugees, Benjamin
orphaned his
unfinished opus and
retreated to
Portbou, ES
with an
equine dose of
morphine.
liberators found
the
corpse in early nineteen
forty.
his final
essay sought to
rescue “every
second on
The clock.”
amen?
guilty
eulogies
bury
empathy
nay
duplicity.
each se
rendre
jangled
üptight
nerves.
guilt
seeds
tyranny.
erasure
invited
souvenir
testimonials.
nathan dueck lost a staring contest with the US of A after eighteen years. See, he was raised in a town 10 minutes from the border, but he blinked and moved away. He is the author of king's(mère) (Turnstone, 2004), he'll (Pedlar, 2014), and A Very Special Episode (Buckrider, 2019).
