(Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture) Rolf J

THE PRESENCE OF THE BAROQUE
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an existential level refuses what allegory refuses in language: the integration
into a wholeness that is associated with an aesthetics of the symbol.
The stone-like physicality that Dürer gives his angel and in which the
“Tiefsinn” (pensiveness) of the angel transforms itself to “Gravität” (GS
I.1:319; “gravity,” Origin, 140), is not comparable to the symbolic beauty
of the German classical period, where the beautiful ascends like a feather
“bruchlos ins Göttliche” (GS I.1:337; “[into the realm of] the divine [as]
in an unbroken whole,” Origin, 160, translation modified). The “Grübeln”
(brooding) equals a founding in and a “Depersonalisation” (GS
I.1:319; “depersonalization,” Origin, 140), through which the pensive
person dissolves in a world of things. And yet, following an interpretation
by Florens Christian Rang, Benjamin confirms a significant difference
between the melancholy of the Baroque mourning play and the melancholy
of Hamlet, when he maintains that “[allein] Shakespeare vermochte [es,]
aus der barocken, unstoischen wie unchristlichen . . . Starre des Melancholikers
den christlichen Funken zu schlagen” (GS I.1:335; “only Shakespeare
was capable of striking Christian sparks from the Baroque rigidity of the
melancholic, un-stoic as it is un-Christian,” Origin, 158). With this Benjamin
refers back to a “playful” handling of Hamlet, a playfulness he misses
in the German mourning play. In contrast to Hamlet, the German mourning
play “[blieb sich] selbst erstaunlich dunkel” (GS I.1:335; “remained
astonishingly obscure to itself,” Origin, 158).
Allegories and Dead Things
Probably the most-cited and most interpreted section of the Trauerspiel
book is Benjamin’s analysis of Baroque allegory. It accompanies his entire
theory of modernity with an impact that reverberates in his interpretations
of the works of Baudelaire and Proust. 32 For Benjamin it is especially
in the area of allegory that the German Baroque can stand up to the
German classical period, an honor that has hitherto been given, as Benjamin
stresses, only to Romanticism (GS I.1:352; Origin, 176). Hence
Benjamin responds to prejudices that limit the Baroque to a preliminary
stage of German classicism and that discard the suggestion that an aesthetic
evaluation of the Baroque would be worth the effort. Even when Benjamin
consequently acknowledges that the Baroque achieved its only and singular
mastery in the theatre plays of the Spanish Golden Age, he nevertheless
shows how — with allegory — a figure of speech enters the history of
European literature whose importance is not only equal to, but even surpasses,
the symbol. The explicit anti-humanistic and premodern moments
in allegory elucidate why it (and not the symbol) regains prominent position
in the works of Baudelaire and Proust. 33 Of importance for Benjamin’s
statements is the inability of classicism “Unvollendung und Gebrochenheit
. . . zu gewahren” (GS I.1:352; “to behold . . . the imperfection, the