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

conceived of as a pantomime where tragedy can only imagine itself in an aesthetic
medium that serves decision, purity, and the discovery of immutable law – all objects that
require encoding in a communicable and transmissive language. This tragic imperative,
Benjamin argues, is guaranteed by the tragic hero‘s pointed and purposeful descent into
silence as he contends with the probity of his seemingly demonic impulses: ―Tragic
silence, far more than tragic pathos, became the storehouse of an experience of the
sublimity of linguistic expression…The tragic is to the demonic what the paradox is to
ambiguity‖ (109 OGT). Trauerspiel, while it does continue to follow the paradoxes of the
king‘s sovereignty, changes its purpose by trafficking with the inescapable ambiguities of
emotion. Trauerspiel does this by understanding that it is not man‘s sadness or suffering
that needs or can be articulated. The answer to the trauerspiel‘s ―riddle‖ lies in its ability
to communicate with any ―event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature.‖ The
trauerspiel‘s apprehension of the fallen post-lapsarian word arrives, Benjamin argues,
with the discovery that it is not only man that speaks. A trauerspiel lets nature‘s sadness
fill language and gain entry into its aesthetic practice. A trauerspiel asks that nature be
considered as that which is truly sad and makes the members of its audience so.
Benjamin discovers in his application of the two-word theory to tragedy and
trauerspiel that while the creative appropriation of the divine word ends in our
disappointment, the trauerspiel‘s utilization of man‘s word also meets a particular limit.
Tragedy effects disappointment in its reminder that human language is inherently
ambiguous, ―bound,‖ as it is, ―to the language of things.‖ In fact, tragedy consigns itself
to a monological discourse with God. The relationship between taboo and aesthetic
language, then, as it is now able to be formulated more precisely, is one where the
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