(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

PARIS ON THE AMAZON?
233
madness and delusion as elements of the lyrical impulses, without which
neither poetic reflection nor the cognition of madness and delusion is possible.
These, as well as the dialogue with the references to “primeval forest”
and “horror” are incorporated into poetic labor. Thus de Andrade’s
poetics of desvairismo does not have recourse to an understanding of
Aufklärung that succumbs to the attraction of violence, but reactivates
the conception of Art as a “heilkundige Zauberin” (“enchantress capable
of healing”), as Friedrich Nietzsche called it in his interpretation of
antique tragedy. 25
IV. Hell — a Metaphysical Speculation
or a Place of the Excluded?
In the Passagen-Werk, Benjamin aims to portray modernity, or more
exactly “the modern,” as “the time of hell”:
Das “Moderne” die Zeit der Hölle. Die Höllenstrafen sind jeweils
das Neueste, was es auf diesem Gebiete gibt. Es handelt sich nicht
darum, daß “immer wieder dasselbe” geschieht, geschweige daß hier
von der ewigen Wiederkunft die Rede wäre. Es handelt sich vielmehr
darum, daß das Gesicht der Welt gerade in dem, was das Neueste
ist, sich nie verändert, daß dies Neueste in allen Stücken immer das
Nämliche bleibt. — Das konstituiert die Ewigkeit der Hölle. Die
Totalität der Züge zu bestimmen, in denen das “Moderne” sich ausprägt,
hieße die Hölle darstellen.
[The “modern,” the time of hell. The punishments of hell are always
the newest thing going in this domain. What is at issue is not that
“the same thing happens over and over,” and even less would it be
a question here of eternal return. It is rather that precisely in that
which is newest the face of the world never alters, that this newest
remains, in every respect, the same. — This constitutes the eternity
of hell. To determine the totality of traits by which the “modern” is
defined would be to represent hell. (S1,5; cf. G,17)]
Benjamin’s conception of the modern and his plan to represent it with
infernal elements are based on a theological perspective and on theological
are concepts: “time of hell,” “punishments of hell,” “eternity of hell.” He
explains this theological armature with the secularized elements of commodity
capitalism, where the mise-en-scène of “the newest” — through
novelty, fashion, and advertising — always has the same results. For his
project of determining the traits of the modern under the sign of hell — or
to elaborate a “physiognomy of hell,”as he entitled one of the thirty categories
of his model book of the Passagen-Werk — Benjamin assembles
a considerable number of fragments with literary representations of hell,