(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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BERND WITTE
the present by adopting a notion borrowed from Georg Lukács’s Theory of
the Novel. In contrast to the “age of complete sinfulness,” which finds its
most adequate literary expression in the novel, the halcyon society of craftsmen
depicted by Benjamin shines forth as an intact world, since the manual
labor of the craftsmen can be associated with the traditional art of telling
stories. The melancholy idealization of the past that permeates Benjamin’s
essay is nourished by the yearning of the lonely intellectual for a collective
experience, such as he believed could be found in the Soviet Union prior to
1933. By 1936/37 and in view of the dangers posed by exile and isolation,
his longing could only take refuge in a utopian view of an epoch long past.
Benjamin’s starting point is a negative description of the current situation,
which he sees characterized by the fact that “die Erfahrung . . . im Kurse
gefallen [ist]” (GS II.2:439; “experience has fallen in value,” SW 3:143). This
essential change in the ambient world — and that is Benjamin’s innovative
approach in his analysis — takes place at the same time as a change in the
medial forms of expression. Thus he identifies the primordial media of the
epoch as the general indicators of the transmissibility of experience. From
this perspective, history shows a continual decline in the possibilities underlying
transmissibility. Accordingly, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
the original epic form, the tale, is gradually superseded by the novel. Benjamin
views the novel as a deficient mode in the “Formen menschlicher Mitteilung”
(GS II.2:443; “forms of human communication,” SW 3:147), since
the reader of novels develops into a lonely individual. His “wärmen” (GS
II.2:457; “warming,” SW 3:156) can only come about by triumphing over
the death of the hero, whose life unfolds in the novel. That implies that wisdom,
morals, even practical advice for the reader can no longer be gleaned
from the text. It only offers the questionable aesthetic consolation that the
lives of all individuals find fulfillment in an immutable end and are thus
structurally similar to that of the hero of the novel. The “Mitteilbarkeit aller
Lebensbereiche” (GS II.3:1285; communicability of all forms of life) is completely
lost in the wake of the development of the organs of the mass press,
which Benjamin judges to be the central expression of “der durchgebildeten
Herrschaft des Bürgertums” (“the complete ascendancy of the middle
class”). The press subjects the experience of human life to the domination
of information, the authority of which is no longer derived from the bygone
lives of the forefathers but more accurately from “der prompten Nachprüfbarkeit”
(GS II.2:444; “prompt verifiability,” SW 3:147). Information is no
longer transferable to lived reality and finds its telos in a new value that is
synonymous with actuality.
This scenario of decay has been set against the idyllic background
of an almost paradisiacal society in its original state of innocence, which
Benjamin exemplifies by citing an image derived from Holy Scripture:
“Eine Leiter, die bis ins Erdinnere reicht und sich in den Wolken verliert,
ist das Bild einer Kollektiverfahrung, für die selbst der tiefste