(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

104
BERND WITTE
identified “Kapitalismus als Kultreligion” (“capitalism as a religion of
pure cult”) 9 at the beginning of the 1920s, he ascertains a comparable
condition here in even more secular and radical form, without bringing
the theological vocabulary of his earlier works into play. His diagnosis of
what is truly monstrous in Baudelaire’s prose poem Les foules as well as in
Victor Hugo’s exile works has its roots in the concrete social experience
of the material critic. The totalitarian states give him his cue, “indem sie
die Massierung ihrer Klienten permanent und verbindlich für alle Vorhaben
machen” (GS I:565; “by making the concentration of their citizens
permanent and obligatory for all their purposes,” SW 4:36). In his readings
of nineteenth-century literature Benjamin assembles the fundamental
terms for his criticism of totalitarianism, terms which he not only applies
to Hitler Germany and the Soviet Union under Stalin but also uses to
characterize all modern societies complying with the laws of the free market
economy. Hence the Baudelaire book concentrates on “die Entfaltung
eines überkommenen Begriffs” (“the unfolding of a traditional term”), a
goal that Benjamin alludes to when comparing Ursprung des deutschen
Trauerspiels (The Origin of the German Mourning Play, 1928) with the
Passagen-Werk: “War es dort der Begriff des Trauerspiels so würde es hier
der des Fetischcharakters der Ware sein” (GB 5:83; If I dealt with the idea
of mourning play there, then I would deal with the fetish character of
merchandise here).
The universal context of delusion, which characterizes the constitution
of societies in the age of “high capitalism,” is only truly recognized
in Victor Hugo’s and Baudelaire’s works. They represent the general
exception to the universal innocuousness of literature and become a
critical medium for Benjamin’s own era. “Das ad plures ire der Römer
war Hugos chthonischem Ingenium kein leeres Wort” (GS I.2:566; “To
Hugo’s chthonian mind, the ad plus ire of the Romans was not an empty
phrase,” SW 4:37). This sentence is Benjamin’s cryptic response to the
representation of the vast number of deceased in Victor Hugo’s texts.
What is implied can be deciphered, when one considers what he illuminates
with respect to this Latin phrase in a footnote to his later essay
“Über einige Motive bei Baudelaire” (“On Some Motifs in Baudelaire”):
“Das Schöne ist seinem geschichtlichen Dasein nach ein Appell, zu denen
sich zu versammeln, die es früher bewundert haben. Das Ergriffenwerden
vom Schönen ist ein ad plures ire, wie die Römer das Sterben nannten”
(GS I.2:638–39; “On the basis of its historical existence, beauty is an
appeal to join those who admired it in an earlier age. Being moved by
beauty means ad plures ire, as the Romans called dying,” SW 4:352, n.63)
These sentences allude to the condition for the possibility of the effectiveness
of literature. Only when literature transports the experience of past
generations and readers understand literature as a passage to the many
dead present and not present in the text, and are thus willing to rewrite