(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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ROLF J. GOEBEL
the past for the present. In no unclear terms, Benjamin himself rejects
appropriations anchored primarily in the recipient’s subjectivity and the
cultural horizon of the present rather than in the truth claims of the past
text itself. In his translator essay, he asserts: “ . . . kein Gedicht gilt dem
Leser, kein Bild dem Beschauer, keine Symphonie der Hörerschaft” (GS
IV.1:9; “No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder,
no symphony for the audience,” SW 1:253). Of course, Benjamin does
not deny the fact that works of art must be read, watched, or listened to;
rather, for him, works of art, like language, have a life of their own and
therefore their unfolding legacy does not depend on the merely subjective
and arbitrary reception by changing audiences. In this sense, translations
do not serve the afterlife of great works of art but, on the contrary, owe
their very existence to the work’s fame: “In ihnen erreicht das Leben des
Originals seine stets erneute späteste und umfassendste Entfaltung” (GS
IV.1:11; “In them the life of the originals attains its latest, continually
renewed, and most complete unfolding,” SW 1:255).
Accordingly, in his Passagen-Werk Benjamin detects in the images
of the past a “historische Index” (historical index), which says that these
images do not merely belong to their own time but attain their “Lesbarkeit”
(legibility) at a particular later time:
Und zwar ist dieses “zur Lesbarkeit” gelangen ein bestimmter kritischer
Punkt der Bewegung in ihrem Innern. Jede Gegenwart ist
durch diejenigen Bilder bestimmt, die mit ihr synchronistisch sind:
jedes Jetzt ist das Jetzt einer bestimmten Erkennbarkeit.
[And, indeed, this acceding “to legibility” constitutes a specific
critical point in the movement at their interior. Every present day is
determined by the images that are synchronic with it: each “now” is
the now of a particular recognizability. (N3,1)]
On the other hand, in “Über den Begriff der Geschichte” Benjamin
insists that past cultural objects do not simply present themselves to later
generations as timeless treasures. Rather, in opposing the archival complacency
of nineteenth-century historicism, the materialist historian must blast
specific moments of the past, moments that are in danger of being forgotten
or marginalized by the course of history, out of the continuum of the
“homogene und leere Zeit” (GS I.2:702; “homogeneous, empty time,” SW
4:396) of universal history. This act of rescuing elements of the past is not
an arbitrary and subjective act but only facilitates or completes the internal
dynamic of images, texts, and events, which attain their full understanding
in a shock-like constellation of past and present forged by the critic as a
“Dialektik im Stillstand” (“dialectics at a standstill,” N3.1). 21
Benjamin’s theory of actualizing the past raises the important question
of whether our time qualifies as the “now of recognizability” in