TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...

classicism plays no role” (OGT 161). Classicism invents allegorical speculation merely as
a framing device to the symbolic unity it hosts. In the baroque period, allegory begins to
appear as having its own conceptual-structure such that it rivals the symbol‟s unity. An
allegory in this sense becomes the mode of pointing away from itself towards something
else that is not designated by the symbol. Allegory in the trauerspiel serves to elevate
profane things into the realm of sanctification. When Benjamin argues that allegory is the
expression of a convention what he means to suggest is that the allegorical substrate
serves to critique and interpret the symbol‟s implied unity of material and transcendental
meaning:
And the very same antinomies take plastic form in the conflict
between the cold, facile technique and the eruptive expression of
allegorical interpretation. Here too the solution is a dialectical one.
It lies in the essence of writing itself…The sanctity of what is
written is inextricably bound up with the idea of its strict
codification. For sacred script always takes the form of certain
complexes of words which ultimately constitute, or aspire to
become, one single and inalterable complex. So it is that
alphabetical script as a combination of atoms of writing, is the
farthest removed from the script of sacred complexes. The latter
take the form of hieroglyphics. (OGT 175)
What emerges from this is the way in which Benjamin is tacitly construing two
antithetical hermeneutic processes. The “single and inalterable” complex of the divine
symbol becomes something that is, ultimately, a non-verbal icon. Allegory, as that which
“is the farthest removed” from the symbol is left without any “inalterable” theological
rebus to be used for the task of its de-coding. This helps to explain the two dominant
images Benjamin uses to explain his linguistic thought: the ruin and the hieroglyph. The
sense of self-enclosed possession of meaning that the symbolic-hieroglyph evinces is
categorically at odds with the ruin of allegory that, in its essentially invisible character, is
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