tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post7073083212871753956..comments2024-03-25T13:40:30.747-04:00Comments on Faith and Theology: A month with Walter BenjaminBen Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-75789585224716954372011-02-10T08:51:23.330-05:002011-02-10T08:51:23.330-05:00In Benjamin’s much discussed parable of the Angel ...In Benjamin’s much discussed parable of the Angel of History, the Angel is paralyzed with his face to the past in which “he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.”Walthttp://www.berfrois.com/2011/02/angel-of-anachronism/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-35178402461796191502010-04-09T03:39:55.894-04:002010-04-09T03:39:55.894-04:00Thanks, John — your post on Benjamin and Habakkuk ...Thanks, John — your post on <a href="http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2009/03/the-book-of-habakkuk-an-introduction.html" rel="nofollow">Benjamin and Habakkuk</a> is superb.Ben Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03800127501735910966noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-82989294334676398582010-04-08T21:18:33.998-04:002010-04-08T21:18:33.998-04:00"Ritual teaches us: the church did not build ..."Ritual teaches us: the church did not build itself up by overcoming the love between men and women but rather homosexual love. That the priests do not sleep with the choirboys is the miracle of the mass." (Gesammelte Schriften VI, p. 204) I am an ardent Benjamite, but did his extraordinary insightfulness fail him here? ObligedDaniel Imburgiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04011159253204822220noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-25243772215449286062010-04-08T18:52:53.705-04:002010-04-08T18:52:53.705-04:00"Each year my reading tends to cluster around..."Each year my reading tends to cluster around one or two main writers..."<br /><br />guess that's what distinguishes a true scholar from someone who just loves to read.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-69750023724572755052010-04-08T14:19:20.159-04:002010-04-08T14:19:20.159-04:00Ben,
how very Lutheran of you! I remember a sayin...Ben,<br /><br />how very Lutheran of you! I remember a saying from the doctor in his Table Talk that one must never move beyond two authors lest he stretch himself thin. We ought to read a man until his words become bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh.Emersonhttp://inchrist-emerson.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14261952.post-13665720663442474582010-04-08T14:02:00.255-04:002010-04-08T14:02:00.255-04:00Thanks for this, Ben. But your readers may appreci...Thanks for this, Ben. But your readers may appreciate more of a taste of Benjamin on history. Here goes:<br /><br />"A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress."<br /><br />- Thesis IX in “On the Philosophy of History.” I reproduce the translation of Lloyd Spencer (which depends on earlier translations, like that of Harry Zohn, Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings, Vol. 4: 1938-1940 (Cambridge: Harvard University Pres, 2003), 392-93). For Walter Benjamin’s 1940 work, "On the Concept of History," see idem, Gesammelte Schriften I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974) 691-704. Scholem's poem on the Klee painting was written for Benjamin's twenty-ninth birthday -- July 15, 1921. Sieburth's translation is found in Gershom Scholem, The Fullness of Time: Poems (Jerusalem: Ibis, 2003.))<br /><br />The New Testament analogue to Benjamin's philosophy of history is found in Paul: “[H]owever much sin abounded, grace abounded even more” (Romans 5:20).<br /><br />Benjamin begins by quoting the poem by Gershom Scholem in which the painting referred to is the focus:<br /><br />My wing is poised to beat,<br />gladly would I turn back;<br />were I to stay for endless days,<br />hapless I would remain. <br /><br />I relate Benjamin's philosophy of history to that of the biblical prophets, in particular, Habakkuk, here:<br /><br />http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2009/03/the-book-of-habakkuk-an-introduction.htmlJohn Hobbinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17011346264727684917noreply@blogger.com