The Arcades Project - Operi

clocks, as during the July revolution in Paris. The gaze, which exorcized images from
objects blasted loose from time, is the Gorgon gaze at the )(lcies hippocratica of history;'
the "petrified primordial landscape" of myth (Trauet:rpiel, p. 166). But in that mystical
moment when past and present enter "lightning-like" into a constellation-when the true
unage of the past "flashes" in the " now of its recognizabiliti' (N9,7)-that image becomes
a dialectically reversing unage, as it presents itself from the messianic perspective, or (in
materialistic terms) the perspective of the revolution.
From this perspective of 'messianic time," Benjamin defined the present as catastrophe
(1:1243), as the prolongation of that "one single catastrophe" which meets the Angelus
Novus when he looks back on past history. It might appear as if Benjamin vvished to
reintroduce the "large hyphen between past and future,"28 which was thought to be
eradicated after Marx. Yet even Benjamin's late work does not fully forgo historical
reference. Henri :Focillon defined the classical in art as "bonheur rajJl'de/' as the chairou
achme of the Greeks, and Benjamin wanted to use that definition for his own concept of
messianic standstill (see 1:1229). TIle dialectic at a standstill, the final coming to rest, the
ending of the historical dynamic which Hegel, following Aristotle, wished to ascribe to
the state, was, for Benjamin, prefigured only in 8Tt. A "real definition" of progress,
therefore, could emerge only from the vantage pOUlt of an, as in the Passagen-Wer l:
In every true work of art there is a place where, for one who removes there, it blows
cool like the wind of a coming dawn. From this it follows that art, which has often
been considered refractory to every relation with progress, can provide its tnle
definition. Progress has its seat not in the continuity of elapsing time but in its
interferences. (N9a,7)
In dlis sense, it may even be possible to save that problematic definition from the first
expose, accordulg to which in the dialectical unage the mythical, Ur-historical experiences
of the collective unconscious "engender, through interpenetration with what is new, the
utopia"-and that utopia "has left its trace in a thousand conEgurations of life, from
enduring edifices to passing fashions" (section I). Benjamin devised his dialectic at a
standstill in order to make such traces visible, to collect the "trash of history," and to
"redeem" them for its end. He undertook the equally paradoxical and astonishing task of
presenting history in the spirit of an anti-evolutionary understanding of history. As a
"messianic cessation of the event," it would have devolved upon the dialectic at a standstill
to bring home in the PaJsagen-Werk the very insight Benjamin had long assullilated
when he began that project: "the profane . .. although not itself a category of this [messianic]
Kingdom, is at least a category, and one of the most applicable, of its quietest
approach." 29 Benjamin's concept of profane illumination would remain "illuminated" in
this way to the end; his materialist inspiration would be "inspired" in the same way, and
his materialism would prove theological in the same way, despite all "recasting processes."
Belam:in ) s historical materialism was historically tnle only as the puppet, "which enlists
the services of theology." Nevertheless, it was supposed to "win" (Illuminations, p. 253).
One can be excused for doubting whether this intricate claim could ever be honored. In
that case, the reader, who has patiently followed the topography of the Passagen-Werk,
including all the detours and cul-de-sacs this edition does not veil, may think he is, in the
end, faced with ruins rather than with vlTginal building materials. What Benjamin wrote
about German Trauerspiel however, holds true for tlle Passagen-Werk: namely, that "in the
ruins of gTeat buildings the idea of the plan speaks more impressively than in lesser
buildings, however well preselved they are" (Trauerspiel, p. 235).
-Translated by Gary Smith and Andre Ldi:vere