(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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MARC DE WILDE
erschlagen . . . Nimmt man die Unabgeschlossenheit ganz ernst, so muß
man an das jüngste Gericht glauben” (quoted in Passagen-Werk; “The
determination of incompleteness is idealistic if completeness is not comprised
within it. Past injustice has occurred and is completed. The slain
are really slain . . . If one takes the lack of closure entirely seriously, one
must believe in the Last Judgment,” N8,1). Quoting Horkheimer’s letter
in the Passagen-Werk, Benjamin adds the following comments:
Das Korrektiv dieser Gedankengang liegt in der Überlegung, daß
die Geschichte nicht allein eine Wissenschaft sondern nicht minder
eine Form des Eingedenkens ist. Was die Wissenschaft “festgestellt”
hat, kann das Eingedenken modifizieren. Das Eingedenken kann das
Unabgeschlossene (das Glück) zu einem Abgeschlossenen und das
Abgeschlossene (das Leid) zu einem Unabgeschlossenen machen.
Das ist Theologie; aber im Eingedenken machen wir eine Erfahrung,
die uns verbietet, die Geschichte grundsätzlich atheologisch zu
begreifen, so wenig wir sie in unmittelbar theologischen Begriffen
zu schreiben versuchen dürfen.
[The corrective to this line of thinking may be found in the consideration
that history is not simply a science but also and not least
a form of remembrance. What science has “determined,” remembrance
can modify. Such mindfulness can make the incomplete (happiness)
into something complete, and the complete (suffering) into
something incomplete. That is theology; but in remembrance we
have an experience that forbids us to conceive of history as fundamentally
atheological, little as it may be granted us to try to write it
with immediately theological concepts. (N 8,1).]
Elsewhere Benjamin had already explained why we may not write
history with immediately theological concepts: it is impossible for us,
as finite human beings, to relate directly to the messianic (GS II.1:203;
SW 4:305). Consequently, Benjamin nowhere claims that the historical
materialist is capable of anticipating the real, messianic arrest of time,
which will redeem humanity, ending its history of suffering. What he
does claim is that the historical materialist, by seeking to give new life
to the past in a practice of remembrance, may in the heart of the present
produce an elusive vision of eternity. This image is as ungraspable
as involuntary memory itself; it has already passed as soon as it is consciously
perceived. It is revealed in the midst of the transitory moment,
not as a timeless truth but as time infinitely shortened to the “now of
recognizability.” Although the historical materialist cannot relate directly
to the messianic, an indirect relation is hereby granted to him. He only
has to follow a detour, via the (image of) the past, via the claims to
redemption — the claims to happiness, to an ending of suffering — of