TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...
TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...
TABOO: THE ACTUAL MODERNIST AESTHETIC, MADE REAL A ...
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history‖ overcomes its being ensnared by titles – is that in which the aesthetic object has<br />
become depersonalized:<br />
The influence of rational pessimism is less important than the<br />
desolation with which the practice of stoicism confronts man. The<br />
deadening of the emotions, and the ebbing away of the waves of<br />
life which are the source of these emotions in the body, can<br />
increase the distance between the self and the surrounding world to<br />
the point of alienation from the body. As soon as this symptom of<br />
depersonalization was seen as an intense degree of mournfulness,<br />
the concept of the pathological state, in which the most simple<br />
object appears to be a symbol of some enigmatic wisdom because<br />
it lacks any natural, creative relationship to us, was set in an<br />
incomparably productive context. (OGT 140)<br />
If fate is not the same as the determined, the trauerspiel discovers the mode of<br />
modernist expression that lets nature express dismay by ―setting [depersonalization] in an<br />
incomparably productive context,‖ that only appears pathological and unnatural.<br />
Depersonalizing one‘s speech is the economic imperative behind the production of this<br />
context. What follows, in conclusion, is an investigation of the way Benjamin understood<br />
the substance of that which aesthetically playful titles induce into being – the re-<br />
articulated lament of natural history. The re-articualtion of natural history in man‘s names<br />
is Benjamin‘s implicit definition of allegory and the subject of this study‘s concluding<br />
chapter.<br />
Natural History<br />
Benjamin first presents the concept of “natural history” in The Origin of German<br />
Tragic Drama. He uses it to describe what it is that allegory cites. By focusing on the<br />
relationship that Benjamin draws between trauerspiel kings and their possession of moral<br />
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