(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

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WOLFGANG BOCK
in the collective apparatus of the human language, which Benjamin sees
as a hidden project of human culture. In other words, Benjamin assesses
the Babylonian disintegration of language not only in a negative but also
in a hidden positive light, because every single language is locatable in
its development from the original language to the coming unifying language.
In this construction Benjamin places the origin somehow beyond
the flow of time. 8 When we examine Benjamin’s first language theory, it
is essential to be mindful of this dialectic of the development of language
as obvious dispersal and unintelligibility and at the same time as a secret
collection and clarification. Misapprehension, translatability, and untranslatability
are to Benjamin a complex constellation. 9
“Lehre vom Ähnlichen”/
“Über das mimetische Vermögen”
In the essay of 1933, “Über das mimetische Vermögen,” which Benjamin
referred to in his correspondence with Gershom Scholem as his “new theory
of language,” he chose another starting point (GB IV:163). Here he
began not with a biblical myth but with its anthropological prerequisites,
understanding language and writing as imitations of nature and its phenomena.
They appear as extensions of a tendency of early human beings
to assimilate themselves to the world:
Die Natur erzeugt Ähnlichkeiten. Man braucht nur an die Mimikry
zu denken. Die höchste Fähigkeit im Produzieren von Ähnlichkeiten
aber hat der Mensch. Die Gabe, Ähnlichkeit zu sehen, die er besitzt,
ist nichts als ein Rudiment des ehemals gewaltigen Zwanges, ähnlich
zu werden und sich zu verhalten. Vielleicht besitzt er keine höhere
Funktion, die nicht entscheidend durch mimetisches Vermögen mitbedingt
ist. (GS II.1:210)
[Nature produces similarities — one need only think of mimicry.
The very greatest capacity for the generation of similarities, however,
belongs to the human being. The gift he possesses for seeing similarity
is nothing but a rudiment of the formerly mighty compulsion to
become similar and to behave in a similar way. Indeed there may be
no single one of his higher functions that is not codetermined by the
mimetic faculty. (My translation. The Selected Writings translates the
second version; cf. SW 2.2:694)]
In this sense, humans imitate the world in their gestures, in speaking, and
in writing. According to Benjamin, however, these reproduce not only elements
of nature like mountains or wind but also more abstract phenomena,
such as the flight of birds or the constellations of stars. He goes on to
say that a clear expression of these tendencies, which have exerted strong