(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

BENJAMIN’S CRITICISM OF LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE
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Benjamin forged his literary and philosophical style in the context of
Kantian, Romantic, and Hegelian thought. Although he used the term in
his very first writings, he turned toward the idea of criticism especially in his
dissertation Der Begriff der Kunstkritik in der deutschen Romantik (GS I:7–
122; The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism; SW 1:117–200) and
his essay on Goethe’s novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities),
written in the early 1920s (GS I:123–202; SW 1:297–360). In his work
on the Romantics he follows the term as used in the writings of Johann
Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Friedrich and August Wilhelm
Schlegel, Friedrich Hölderlin, and, especially in the concept of natural science,
of Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). For Benjamin the task of the
critic includes paying special attention to what Novalis called the Reflexionsmedium
(medium of reflection) between the subject and the object,
which allows both to enter an intersubjective evolution. Like Goethe,
Novalis worked out his method in the field of natural sciences and literature,
and he applied this poetic principle to Goethe’s works; for him there
exists neither fixed subject nor object. What we usually refer to with these
terms are for Novalis two poles in an a priori unifying medium of reflection
where the one does not exist without the other: the object only gives the
knowledge that it intends to give, and the researcher himself has to initiate
a new cognitive development to see it in a new way, then in the next step
the object can offer something new, and so on. In this way both parties in
this process, subject and object, are able to undergo a certain evolution. 27
Benjamin adopts this principle for his literary criticism but diverges from
Novalis’s process of endless romanticization, by which common things are
given a higher meaning, the ordinary acquires a mysterious appearance, the
known becomes unknown, and the finite takes on the aura of infinity. In
contrast to this dynamic concept of romanticizing, Benjamin develops, following
Friedrich Hölderlin, a concept of freezing and standstill, which he
calls mortification. According to this notion, not only the endless shift from
one position to the other becomes visible but also the medium of the shift
itself (GS I.1:52 and 53–61; SW 1:142 and 143–48). 28
In the first two pages of his essay about Goethe’s Die Wahlverwandtschaften
Benjamin immediately starts to explain why he distinguishes
commentary from critique: the first has to follow the Sachgehalt
(material content) of the literary work, while the second attends to what
he calls the Wahrheitsgehalt (GS I:125–27; truth content: SW 1:297–
99). 29 But the one does not exist without the other; the knowledge of the
first is necessary to approach the second. He summarizes and defines this
relation in the latter part of the essay as follows:
Die Kunstkritik hat nicht die Hülle zu heben, vielmehr durch deren
genaueste Erkenntnis als Hülle erst zur wahren Anschauung des
Schönen sich zu erheben. (GS I:195)