Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels

by Walter Benjamin, Rolf Tiedemann

Mit Walter Benjamins Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels legen die suhrkamp taschenbücher Wissenschaft eines der kanonischen Werke der neueren Ästhetik vor. Von der Analyse der deutschen Trauerspiele des 17. Jahrhunderts ausgehend, liefert Benjamin einerseits die Geschichtsphilosophie der Barockepoche, auf der anderen Seite eine stringente Abgrenzung der klassischen Tragödie vom Trauerspiel als literarischer Form sui generis. Die Rettung der Allegorie - das Zentrum des Trauerspielbuches - eröffnete erstmals den Blick für lange verkannte Bereiche der poetischen wie der theologischen Sprache.

Genres: Philosophy, Literary Criticism, Theory, Nonfiction, History, Literature, German Literature

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1928

About the author

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.

Reviews

[Preetam Chatterjee]

There is an appalling lot of resemblance between the phase of life when the author penned this tome and the phase when I read it for the first time.

In an earlier phase of his life the man wrote his ‘Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels’ (The Origin of German Tragic Drama, NLB, London, 1977) with the intention of taking up an academic career.

This was part of a ‘habilitation’ work in the form of a published edition which, if acknowledged, by the University of Frankfurt might fetch the man a teaching post. A regular job at the Goethe-Universität was a big deal back then.

However, Professor Hans Cornelius found ‘the nursprung to be an incomprehensible morass.’

Benjamin’s short-lived dream of an academic career sadly concluded.

The work was unconditionally far ahead of its time.

However, it still was a distinctive critical text. The ‘Epistemo Critical Prologue’ of the work was reasonably challenging and intellectually inspiring.

Take my case now. Me the green-horn! An unqualified reader!! I was introduced to this book for the first time in my College days.

Imagine my effing pluck! My kingshit ego! My audacity!! I was barely prepared for a book such as this.

I knew almost nothing of Critical Studies. Knew far lesser of the German theatrical philosophy!!

After a devastating and short-lived spell at German in The Goethe-Institut, also known as Max Mueller Bhavan back in my part of town (only to amaze my second solemn and short-lived crush back then, a beautiful, somewhat horizontal nosed and voluptuous dame), my German was unabashedly restricted to deciphered pieces.

So you get the earlier 'resemblance' I was speaking of? Neither was the society prepared for the author, nor was I, the reader, prepared for this book.

Subsequently, a solid cavity of a decade would pass.

And I would get at home in German history, the history of World theatre, probe profoundly into linguistics, shed my boyhood greenness and only then would in conclusion come to have my seat in the gallery of Alphas.

For starts, let’s quote a few mockups in an attempt towards communicating this book’s quality. The author says:

**‘Just as mosaics preserve their majesty despite their fragmentation into capricious particles, so philosophical contemplation is not lacking in momentum.’

**‘The relationship between the minute precision of the work and the proportions of the sculptural or intellectual whole demonstrates that truth-content is only to be grasped through immersion in the most minute details of subject matter.’

Perhaps the most striking observation is to be found on ‘ideas’.

The man says: ‘Ideas are to objects as constellations, phenomena are subdivided and at the same time redeemed; so that those elements which it is the function of the concept to elicit from phenomena are most clearly evident at the extremes. The idea is evident at the extremes; the idea is best explained as the representation of the context within which the unique and extreme stands alongside its counterpart.’

While trying to institute a relationship among truth, knowledge and ideas with reference to Plato’s Symposium, Benjamin makes certain observations which, incidentally might interest readers of English literature as a working clue for interpreting the Keatsian equation between truth and beauty.

He says: ‘....truth, it is not so much beautiful in itself, as for whomsoever seeks it. If there is a hint of relativism here, the beauty which is said to be a characteristic of truth is nevertheless far from becoming simply a metaphor ... .truth is the content of beauty.’

The Origin of German Tragic Drama is apparently a study of German baroque drama. Benjamin discusses the works of Andreas Gryphius, Daniel Casper von Lohenstein, Hallman etc. whom he considers to be lesser successors of Calderon.

The whole book, however, actually turns out to be anti- Aristotelian theory of drama whose relevance can be found, politically, in the troubled times of Weimar Republic, and artistically, in Expressionism.

Benjamin’s insistence on allegory, it may be noted, in his study of the mourning plays (Trauerspiel) is a search for meaning which he pursued throughout his life. The search for meaning could also be related to his study of history which needs to be exploited so that significant fragments of the past could be related to the present and be the vehicles of the revolutionary future.

The epicenter of baroque drama may be located in the following observation:

‘Here, as in other spheres of baroque life, what is vital is the transposition of the originally temporal date into a figurative spatial simultaneity. This leads deep into the structure of the dramatic form.’

This is further elucidated by the succeeding quotation:

‘In contrast to the spasmodic chronological progression of tragedy, the Trauerspiel takes place in a spatial continuum, which one might describe as choreographic.’

Unsurprisingly, the Trauerspiel of the German baroque appeared to be a caricature of classical tragedy. Benjamin suggests that the presentation of the Aristotelian formula of misfortune and distress is neither wanted nor conceivable while judging baroque drama, because that Trauerspiel is confirmed as a custom of the tragedy of the saint by means of the martyr-drama.

And if one only learns to distinguish its physiognomies in many different styles of drama from Calderon to Strindberg it must become vibrant that this form, a form of the mystery play, still has a future.

In a thought-provoking sentence Benjamin traces the origin of martyr-drama to ‘the death of Socrates as a parody of tragedy.’

Bejamin stresses the allegorical excellence of the Trauerspiel, we may guess, because it becomes the central motif of his aesthetics.

He quotes Goethe in an attempt towards defining allegory.

The allegorist seeks the particular in the general; Benjamin adds that an allegorical work of art serves the purposes of the expression of ‘a concept and the expression of an idea’.

Rather fascinatingly, while outlining allegory, Benjamin writes about ‘those comprehensive relationships between spoken language and script which provide the philosophical basis of the allegorical and which contain within them the resolution of their true tension.’

As one finishes reading this book, he realizes that this is not the work of an obscure academic, but the dedicated posture of an isolated Jewish intellectual, searching for meaning in a Germany, progressively becoming resplendent with threatening indecisions.

The book is sheer exquisiteness. Who am I to recommend it to you?

It was an honour to have read it.

And purely by Ma Chamunda’s elegances have I been able to decode as much of it as I have.

[Luís · Rating 5 out of 5]

The technique betrayed humanity and turned the nuptial layer into a bloodbath.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are some books in which the richness of the text creates for the reader a fireworks display. Walter Benjamin’s The Origin of German Tragic Drama is one such book for me. Entry into Benjamin’s study felt like a post-structuralist examination of the Baroque in which the Trauerspiel was both the occasion for and development of the constellation of literary, historical, religious and economic structures that informed the construction of both the Trauerspiel and Benjamin’s philosophical odyssey.

The study starts with the epistomo-critical prologue in which Benjamin lays out his theoretical framework for an approach to literary criticism in general and the German Trauerspiel in particular. The examination of the philosophical, philological and classicist literature that informs Benjamin’s examination provides a primer on the recurring conceptual images that he will develop within his philosophical and literary essays throughout the rest of his career.

The study then breaks down into two main parts: 1) the literary history of the Trauerspiel in relation to tragedy and 2) the Trauerspiel and allegory.

The first part in particular felt like a text Foucault could have written. Benjamin presents an archeology of the Trauerspiel as a product of its time that speaks across its time to the literary and artistic constructs of its past (the Christian heritage of a de-mythologized world) and the present (the post-Christian world of early twentieth century capital). In it, Benjamin paints a picture of the melancholic hero, a product of a fallen history, engaged in intrigue and martyred either as an active participant in his death or as a passive recipient of her fate (and yes, Benjamin identifies and distinguishes between the tragic ways of dying for men and women). In a fallen world, Benjamin argues, the Trauerspiel presents the essence of human life as a form of suffering in which even stoic acceptance is without meaning.

The melancholic hero’s stoic suffering in a world without meaning, lays the groundwork for the investigation into allegory as the driving force of German Trauerspiel. The melancholic experiences the world as disjointed (out of joint) and the source of mourning as the incapacity of joining the sign with meaning, which itself is the essence of allegory. In allegory, history emerges as a series of actions that always standing for something else, as if the result of the Hegelian dialectic of being and nothing didn’t result in becoming, but in allegory. Allegory, Benjamin argues, must therefore be distinguished from the symbolic character of the Greek tragic hero who calls forth the God in a symbolic suffering that reveals totality through the establishment of divine justice. Contrary to the symbolic form of Greek Tragedy, in the German Trauerspiel the hero’s suffering is an allegory in which it always signifies that which is not present, a meaning that is never fully grasped, a justice that cannot be claimed, a disjunction between the sign and the signified.

This description does not really do justice to Benjamin’s work. The flashes of insight, the constellation of conceptual ideas, the scholarly distinctions between Greek and Christian tragedy made this book a joy to read.

[Christian Haines · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a difficult work even by Benjamin's standards. If one is willing to reread, it is well worth the effort. It sets out Benjamin's notion of truth (something like a platonic materialism) and coordinates it with a theory of genre and a theory of history. Benjamin doesn't just produce an exposition of these topics, however. He (as Martin Heidegger might put it) sets truth to work - he tries to enact truth through literary criticism, to, as he puts it, burn away the husk of the work in order to reveal its truth, the potency of its history. Benjamin may, at times, seem as if he is rambling (he alludes to this himself by considering his work a treatise founded on digression), but there is a nonetheless the consistency of a well-thought out work. Reading this work besides Carl Schmitt's Political Theology (Benjamin actually sent a copy of this book to Schmitt) and Benjamin's essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities is quite helpful.

[Eero · Rating 4 out of 5]

ok, so i didn’t really “read” this; i just read the intro and epistemo-critical prologue, but i’m moving it from my “want-to-read shelf” to my “read shelf” for the dopamine

[Anya Ciccone · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's fine but honestly life is too short

[Ashley · Rating 4 out of 5]

r o u g h

[Michal Lipták · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me just make some preliminary remarks here. Unsorted, fragmentary, confused remarks. You shouldn’t read them actually – they are my notes, primarily.

This is real tour de force, sweeping stuff. Benjamin sets his eyes on the lesser genre of German Baroque Trauerspiel, a play that is sort of like tragedy but – Benjamin makes his point eminently – also nothing like that. Where the former draws its strength from mythology and prehistoric heroic times, in Trauerspiel content is derived from known history. Tyrants and martyrs are presented in Trauerspiel – sometimes overlapping and indistinguishable – dying in a way that doesn’t elicit catharsis, but mourning. Emotions are more naturalistic and straightforward, but also in a way over the top and unbelievable. Protagonists are melancholic and passive (similar melancholy Benjamin earlier read in Goethe’s Elective Affinities , where melancholy and passivity was cause the guilt of the characters). Language of these plays – ridiculously bent on nationalistic revival of German – is clunky and clumsy, never achieving the compact excellence of Shakespeare and Calderon. Allegory – main mode of operation in Trauerspiel – everywhere produces doubles, artificial distance between the character and meaning. Clowns and schemers never work as contrastive foil to elevate tragic presentation of fate – which Benjamin claims is the way Shakespeare operates – they are puzzling allegory of Satan. And yet, at this era of Reformation, counter-Reformation and disenchantment, the allegory no longer bears its didactic value it had in Middle Ages. Allegory of Trauerspiel is “ruin”:

Allegory thereby positions itself beyond beauty. Allegories are in the realm of thought what ruins are in the realm of things. Hence the Baroque cult of the ruin.

The question, though, after finishing this, is why. There are actually two whys. First why is why should we care about Baroque Trauerspiel, this duly forgotten genre, this parade of works which I am sure I’ll never, ever read (I’m liberal with my to-read list, but not that much). The second why is why Benjamin must write in such – I’m not going to flinch before that brutish word – confusing way? So fragmentary?

I’ll comment (comment, because I’m incapable of answering) on the second question first. It won’t probably help you, though. Anyway, in the Epistemico-critical introduction, there’s this passage in which I read (though it may not be intended as) a jab at Husserl:

Truth never enters into a relation, let alone an intentional one. The object of knowledge, an object determined in conceptual intention, is not truth. Truth is an intentionless being formed from ideas. The comportment appropriate to truth is therefore an entering and disappearing into it, not an intending in knowing. Truth is the death of intention.

That’s cruel dismissal of the very possibility of “eidetic variation”, but it’s not like phenomenologists are unaware of the problem (Merleau-Ponty’s metaphysical turn in Visible et invisible is precisely motivated by the failure of transcendental reflection). But what else can these poor beings do? Their hard work at interrogation of phenomena comes at price: the blockage of access to anything like the Revelation understood theologically (Marion’s reformulation of donné is unconvincing), and they’re left with constant and recursive returns to origins. “Let’s start again from the beginning...” will be what a phenomenologist will always say.

In the notion of origin though we may find common ground (Benjamin doesn’t go as far as Derrida to strip us even of notion of “origin”, which will provoke Derrida’s ire during reading of his "Critique of Violence"). So “origin” is not historical origin, but rather a constant source:

In the most singular and eccentric of phenomena, in the feeblest and clumsiest attempts no less than in the overripe manifestations of a late period, discovery is capable of bringing the genuine to light. The idea takes in the series of signature historical formations— but not for the sake of constructing unity out of them, still less of extracting a common denominator from them. Between the relation of the particular to the idea and its relation to the concept there is no analogy: here it falls under the concept and remains what it was— particularity; there it stands in the idea and becomes what it was not— totality. That is its Platonic “salvation.”

Is there not some affinity between such Ursprung with Heidegger’s “Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes”? Heidegger:

The origin of the artwork - of, that is, creators and preservers, which is to say, the historical existence of a people - is art. This is so because, in its essence, art is an origin: a distinctive way in which truth comes into being, becomes, that is, historical. (…) Are we, in our existence, historically at the origin? Or do we, rather, in our relationship with art, appeal, merely, to a cultured knowledge of the past? (…) What we mean, here, by the word "origin" is thought out of the essence of truth.

In any case, Benjamin doesn’t deploy a thought-out conceptual schema akin to Heidegger. Rather, he forwards the notion of “idea as configuration” – intentionless, only something to dive into. And towards the end of his fragmentary narrative he explains he couldn’t do otherwise:

Whatever in the way of far-reaching connections could be brought forward in a method that is here and there perhaps still a bit vague, still tied to cultural history, nonetheless comes together under the aspect of the allegorical, and gathers itself in the idea of the Trauerspiel.

Benjamin’s fragmentary configuration of history, theology, art criticism or linguistics is indeed a method of diving in.

But what is to be gained by it? In preceding essay, Goethe's Elective Affinities, Benjamin distinguishes between “truth content” and “material content” of the work of art. The more temporally distant the work of art, the more incomprehensible the “material content” – woven out of period social fabric – becomes. Such works of art thus become equipped with commentaries. But a space opens more prominently for art criticism, too, which can explain why we are commenting at all – why works still tell us something. I always proposed the art criticism should seek response to this inquiry in lasting aesthetic value of the work, but Benjamin’s opposing answer – shamelessly metaphysical, it appears to me – seems to be that what remains is truth: the way work of art negotiates language, nature, God(s) – and the people and the things.

But why focus on Baroque Trauerspiel in particular? In a subversive turn it seems to me that the point is that aesthetic value – if we can trust the claim of canonical works – will not distract us here. Baroque Trauerspiel can interrogate the truth precisely because it is ruinous, transitory, imperfect. These people found themselves in disenchanted nature, history stripped of eschatology, God at extreme points (Calvinism) receding from the world, tentative steps of capitalism, language disintegrating except for “music—the last universal language of humanity since the construction of the tower”. The produced no “prime examples” of the emerging art. Their art never truly emerged. In this ruinous failure it makes most sense for Benjamin to raise the “idea”.

I’m not sure how much it helps me to at least somehow grasp the nature of Benjamin’s operation if I am relatively knowledgeable in Baroque opera. Benjamin says that “from the perspective of literature and particularly of the Trauerspiel, opera must appear as a product of decay”. But Benjamin couldn’t have known – much less heard – that much of Baroque opera (Händel revival was only beginning in 1920s). If you dive into in, though, you’ll be swept in something that seems much akin to Benjamin’s description of Trauerspiele. You’ll find continuously contrasting naïveté and artificiality. You’ll find recitatives disrupting the flow and moving uncannily to common speech – that is, strangling of opera at its birth – without ever becoming it (I’ve once made this note concerning Vivaldi’s Olimpiade: “Recitative reminds one of common speech extremely closely, but one should avoid such lure at all costs. The goal is, precisely, to alienate oneself as much as possible from an allure of speech - take those recitatives as far from life as possible. One couldn't be more mistaken than to handle them in form of some Sprechgesang one knows from, I don’t know, Wagner.”). You’ll not find masterworks there. That is – except for existence of Monteverdi’s Orfeo which must be provisionally considered simply a miracle (Another my note: “If one wants, one can hear Verdi in it, capable of coming with short and very memorable musical characterizations, or Wagner with his Teutonic flow, or Janáček and his sčasenka, and so on. Of course, none of these late operatic giants had to be particularly influenced by Monteverdi, but listener is free to form his own links while trying to grasp what's happening in work of art: and truth is, that Orfeo is not just great work on its own, it seems to contain, in implicated form, practically all possibilities of opera that will be explicated in next 400 years. That Monteverdi was capable of nailing opera such effectively and profoundly some 10 years into its existence is a miracle.”), there are no great operas in Baroque.

As a culturally/historically situated audience you will find yourself in impossible situation – this is what I’ve noted down (for some reason) when thinking about Händel’s Arianna in Creta: “Opera seria shows clear tendency towards commodification: the works are produced in large numbers, ensembles and opera singers are professionalized, which allows for highly complex, daring and technically demanding vocal writing – on the other hand, the overall artistic structure of the opera is standardized to ridiculous level, topics for the operas are rigidly defined, and surprising structural innovations are kept to minimum. But the audience which receives these operas is not yet an audience of buyers, and operas not yet enter the artistic market in strong sense: rather, the consumers are anachronisms of their age, dying feudal class, dinosaurs whose power will be broken in forthcoming revolutionary upheavals. They don’t know it yet, though, and operas function at that point as rituals, which are meant reflect their own social standing. Connoiseurs analyze the operas at that time, reveling in artistic opportunities allowed by professionalism and generous financing, but they only plant the seeds of future way of appreciation of works of art – they are not the intended audience yet. (…) Opera seria as a genre – which brought a lot of enjoyment – belongs not only to a cultural milieu which is far remote, it belongs to cultural milieu which is now undesired.”

I’ve seen people resolve this impossible situation by simply “enjoying the tunes” in the most dimwitted way possible (I of course tend to resort to this myself from time to time, and I love Vinci’s Artaserse and Graun’s Cesare e Cleopatra for no other reason). But a slightest bit of reflection induces a self-hate that once again reveals the impossibility of the situation. And yet… there must be something in these fragments, in these ruins. The deeper one goes, the more convinced one becomes, despite the fact that only thing mounting is the evidence to contrary.

Now, I don’t say I understand exactly what Benjamin tries to achieve with his diving into Trauerspiel (and necessarily its idea – that is, origin – because there’s no masterwork). But I feel certain affinity to his impossible project. In short: I think we could be buddies. (Despite the fact that I’m trained phenomenology.)

So, that’s it. Now I can finally read that excellent dissertation by Martin Ritter that’s occupying my shelf for some 10 years now.

[Nicolas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Worst writing I have ever experienced! Makes it almost unreadable.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

The "Epistemo-Critical Foreward" is a very nice exposition of Benjamin's critical method, but I found the rest of the book quite frustrating and opaque.

[Cristian Mocanu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originea dramei baroce germane a început drept o teză universitară scrisă de Walter Benjamin cu scopul de a explora din perspectivă istorică modul în care drama baroca a survenit în cultura germană. E împărțită în 3 părți, fiecare din ele preocupându-se de teme aparte, deși strâns legate între ele

In prima parte, trebuie sa recunosc că nu am înțeles complet la ce se referea Benjamin cu privire la discursul epistemic. Am înțeles că încearcă să renege vechea tradiție de analiză estetică a dramei baroce, și să abordeze una istorică. Dar felul în care concepe "Ideea" mi-a părut destul de convolută și îmbârligată.

Urmează apoi în părțile ulterioare sa descrie elemente diverse ale dramei baroce. Demn de luat in seamă este felul în care răstălmăcirea dramaturgilor germani, precum Gryphius, Lohenstein ori Opitz a Poeticei aristoteliene nu are multe elemente în comun cu lucrarea Stagiritului. Un element comun pe care îl sesizează Benjamin, precum și autorii citați de el în privința dată, este plasarea figurii regale drept personaj tragic. De altfel, felul de dramă baroca germană, sau Trauerspiel, este specific barocului. Figura regelui întruchipează tiranul (contextul războiului de 30 de ani și Contrareforma) și martirul (figura cristica, moștenită din Evul Mediu). Spre toate acestea, dramaturgul realizează o abordare in care predomina Melancolia - de fapt, lucrarea omonimă lui Dürer constituie un argument - cu o atitudine de "doliu" (straniu, fara proveniență din tragedia greacă). Figura intrigantului sau a curtezanului își are și el locul cuvenit. Benjamin continua cu laudele sale ale lui Calderon și Shakespeare, in detrimentul barochiștilor germani, spunând că primii au avut, in mare parte, o libertate mai mare de a-și scrie dramele - libertate ce nu era constrânsă de considerente politice.

Ultima parte este dedicata alegoriei, și reprezintă felul în care acesta este in mare parte realizată în dialectică dintre sunet, conceput drept senzual, și cuvânt - conceput drept spiritual. La acestea se adaugă și felul în care sunetul cuvântului, și forma sa, sunt concepute drept elemente alegorice in constituirea dramei. Fascinația pentru morbid și Memento Mori a barochiștilor se regăsește în fascinația lor de a ucide personajele într-un final, și de a le dezmembra, astfel încât părțile lor sa insemne ceva în interpretarea alegorică. Ostentația fata de deitatea greaca, moștenită de la medievali și Contrareforma, își găsește ființare in satanicul abordat - abordare ce tinde să dea de înțeles cititorului că alegoria e ceva intenționat criptic și elevator, iar ceea ce este dat pe față - satanic și degradant. Aspectul ornamentativ al barocului este justificat în dorința de a construi ceva matematic in exterior, dar fantezist in interior. Într-un final, suntem lăsati să concepem barocul drept o perioadă melancolică și alegorică, in care tipologiile create aveau să servească, pentru romantici, un nou fundament creativ, în opoziție cu clasicismul ce apropia mult mai mult concepția bastardizata a clasicismului.

Într-un final, recunosc că lectura nu a fost ușoară. In cele mai multe momente simt că mai degrabă am răsfoit decât am citit. Cartea ar fi putut fi scrisă, după părerea mea, mult mai explicit și cu mai puțin jargon academic. Ideile însă sunt de natură propice de a înțelege felul în care limba germana - limba majusculei reprezentative a substantivelor (de altminteri practica provenita din baroc) - și-a găsit fundament pentru constituirea unei idei coerente asupra ce înseamnă spiritul german: rațiune, practica și o preocupare pentru teologicul imediat.

O lectură bună, per se :))

[Emannuel K. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gosto do Benjamin e estou buscando estudar mais sobre alegoria, então ler o livro no qual ele desenvolve sua teoria desse conceito parece uma ótima ideia. Mas a realidade não foi bem assim. A parte de que a teoria de alegoria exposta nesse livro é a do Benjamin é particularmente importante. Ela não dialoga com a maior parte daquilo que entendemos por alegoria, seja como concebida desde o Renascimento com Dante, por exemplo, e também não dos diz muito hoje. Na verdade, o que o autor chama de alegoria parece se aproximar mais de símbolo ou emblema. Pode, portanto, ser mais útil a pessoas que estudam história da arte do que literatura. Talvez. Algumas passagens são bem interessantes, é verdade, mas mesmo estas estão bem distantes da genialidade dos ensaios célebres que fizeram dele um intelectual de grande impacto em diversas áreas das humanidades. Um dos fatores determinantes pode ser o fato dessa ser uma obra da juventude de Benjamin. Talvez a tradução não tenha ajudado (comecei a leitura pela edição brasileira, mas não era tão bem organizada), mas não muda o fato de que ficou abaixo das expectativas, seja como leitura ou como fonte de pesquisa.

[Marcos Carrasco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fin del camino. Leído entre colegas a lo largo de nueve meses. Una obra densa, misteriosa, llena de misterios en el fondo, como un baile de máscaras.

El prólogo es absolutamente increíble y el descifrar entre todos los muros de texto de Benjamin ha sido una bonita actividad.
Filosofía como duelo.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Nur den Teil ,,Allegorie und Trauerspiel" gelesen)

[Jessica]

Having made sure to finish this before marking it read, I don’t feel qualified to give it a rating. I’m between two and three stars, but making the distinction calls for insight I don’t have into the Baroque cultural tradition. I mention the Baroque inclusively, despite Benjamin’s ostensible focus on the German Trauerspiel, because this text ventures into English and Spanish drama and triangulates a seventeenth-century zeitgeist with pit stops in politics, history, philosophy, and sociology (selectively). I’d have to know the period thoroughly well in order to respond to Benjamin’s claims, and I’m not sure, either, how critically prescient this text was in the 1920s; Benjamin’s interest in allegory and the symbol, for instance, resonates with strains of literary scholarship, but I can’t tell how path-breaking his ideas might have been (had this received wider circulation earlier, that is). That said, though, I doubt I would have admired Benjamin’s analysis even were I more familiar with his topic, because I don’t agree with this sort of interpretive mash-up and the kind of sociological master statement it derives. It’s not surprising that this – the equivalent of Benjamin’s dissertation – was passed between the literature and art history departments; I’d say it best resembles cultural studies or metaphysical philosophy, but the perfect disciplinary fit hasn’t been invented yet. Neither is it hard to believe that this text was ultimately rejected: try telling your dissertation advisors that the “value of fragments of thought is all the greater the less direct their relationship to the underlying idea,” or that the “absence of an uninterrupted purposeful structure” is the hallmark of the treatise, which has a “very real affinity” with the mosaic. Were I to take my cue from Verso and shelve this as literary criticism, it would receive a firm two stars for its arbitrary organization and poor accessibility. I did learn from Benjamin’s Origin – but I would have gathered more from a better written text, for starters.

[Elias Dourado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Para mim, estudioso da lógica matemática, este livro de Benjamin apresenta de forma bastante erudita o impressionante valor da filosofia para além da analítica.

"O conceito de sistema, do século XIX, ignora a
alternativa à forma filosófica, representada pelos conceitos da
doutrina e do ensaio esotérico. Na medida em que a filosofia é
determinada por esse conceito de sistema, ela corre o perigo de
acomodar-se num sincretismo que tenta capturar a verdade
numa rede estendida entre vários tipos de conhecimento, como
se a verdade voasse de fora para dentro. Mas o universalismo
assim adquirido por essa filosofia não consegue alcançar a
autoridade didática da doutrina. Se a filosofia quiser perma-
necer fiel à lei de sua forma, como representação da verdade e
não como guia para o conhecimento, deve-se atribuir impor-
tância ao exercício dessa forma, e não à sua antecipação, como
sistema. "

[Nepo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The reason this book is difficult is because Benjamin was trying to articulate an art form and a period that was not yet seen in his time as constituting a distinct realm of its own: Mannerism. If you have troubles getting through, I therefore recommend reading this along with Wylie Sypher's "Four Stages of Renaissance Style: Transformations in Art and Literature, 1400-1700," and Arnold Hauser's "Mannerism: The Crisis of the Renaissance and the Origin of Modern Art."

[Bahar Beizaei · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impenetrable text. Demands multiple readings. Seems to be inexhaustible in its capacity to yield truly astonishing insights about modernity, secularization, and counter-reformation theology. Unfortunately the majority of studies and commentaries written on it seem to focus (one-sidedly) on certain aspects instead of a thoroughgoing analysis of its other moments (i.e., Agamben obsesses over sovereignty, Pensky over melancholia).

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hooray for insightful, philosophical critics who are actually good writers!

[Sebastian Baere]

"There is strictly speaking only a single book that deserves to be called critical..."

[Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is actually about mannerism rather than baroque per se.

[Kevin Fitzpatrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Subjectivity, like an Angel falling into the depths, is brought back by allegories, and is held fast in heaven, in God, by ponderacion misteriosa. But with the banal equipment of the theater--chorus, interlude, and dumbshow--it is not possible to realize the transfigured apotheosis familiar from Calderon...In the ruins of great buildings the idea of the plan speaks more impressively than in lesser buildings, however well preserved they are; and for this reason the German "Trauerspiel" merits interpretation. in the spirit of allegory it is conceived from the outset as a ruin, a fragment. others may shine resplendently as on the first day; this form preserves the image of beauty to the very last." ("The Origin of the German Tragic Drama," Walter Benjamin, pg. 235)

Thus the work in question ends (far too soon), with a grandeur that does justice to its subject matter, the German "Trauerspiel," or 'mourning play.' Beginning with an "Epistemo-Critical Prologue," which lays out the theory of knowledge and philosophical antecedents to his work, Benjamin, in his longest sustained bit of philosophical writing, goes on to explain the various elements that make up this play of the Baroque period. Everything from 'Tyrant as martyr, martyr as tyrant,' to 'Sovereign as creature,' and 'The courtier as saint and intriguer' is dealt with by Benjamin, with a literary grace and philosophical rigor that encompasses encyclopedic knowledge with a saving grace of smooth prose style. And all along the way Benjamin illustrates his assertions with lengthy and appropriate quotations from these plays of the mourning period that immeasurably assist the reader in their understanding of the sometimes difficult concepts found in this exegesis of a now obscure segment of European literary history. Finally, the book ends with a particularly insightful excursion into the nature of allegory and the Trauerspiel, with much worthwhile explication of this area of the subject.
This small yet essential book should be interesting for those who are intrigued by early modern drama, the works of Walter Benjamin in general, and those who are fascinated by literary criticism in general. The erudition of the author is extremely impressive, the prose style is smooth and easy to process, and the end result is the gaining of knowledge that will give insight into an important aspect of the human experience as revealed in that most elusive of objects, the worthwhile piece of literary art.

[mauro di carlo · Rating 3 out of 5]

pedazo de libro lastima que no se entienda un carajo

nivel que ni los profesores de la universidad de frankfurt que tenían que valorar el libro como tesis de habilitación lo entendieron xd
bueno a lo que vamos, si figura para auerbach es la vuelta de campana de la modernidad, para benjamin lo es la alegoria en los dramas del barroco aleman, que ven un mundo destruido, donde la religión ya no tiene el papel que se pretendía (disputa de heidelberg), adelantando aquí la concepción de la muerte de dios.

mas alla de esto, creo que lo bonito de este libro es la mezcla de géneros y temas, la aportación de una dialéctica negativa (como dice Adorno) en contraste con Hegel, que da sentido a una naturaleza petrificada … blabla bla
benjamin era subversivo y revolucionario, el primer alternativo y edgy de su momento, era criptico y místico, destructor fragmentario y recolector de esos pedazos, construyendo así constelaciones 🌌, ideas que totalizando mantenían los restos, y que en una historia escrita por los vencedores, reivindicaba a los vencidos

si eres comunista te gustará la interpretación que le hace lukács como alienación y segunda naturaleza

[Jennifer Suzuki · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is my third attempt to read the Trauspiels of Walter Benjamin and the more I read, the less impressed I became.

I first took interest in Benjamin after reading his essay on experience, and then I started to read more of his works and I was mesmerized by his mysticism. The introduction to his Trauerspiels "Epistemo Critical Prologue" I have already read no less than 10 times and copied some of his paragraphs and the conclusion I got is, according to him, the problem of representation in philosophy cannot be resolved by any means other than by representation. ... This ... once you finally understood what he is trying to say, is ... well ... uninspiring.


He is a poet, a mystic, a beautiful writer, and an artist of the German language, like Kafka, but he doesn't seem to provide any philosophical system or resolve any philosophical problem.

I only read Benjamin as though he is a literary author, whose work provides the fancy, the ornate style of an art. It's more like listening to music. The actually meaning behind his music is not all that important.

[Jack Pettifor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Walter Benjamin's works are like entering into a fairy-tale, or getting lost in a labyrinth. What confronts you, upon the turn of every page, is a world of endless wonder; it is a world construed of a manifold of parts, each taken from a different body, a different period, a different setting, and placed in such a manner as in a theatrical play such that each is given a role in the context of this wider image. One can read and re-read such books endlessly; the difficulty of Benjamin's prose both enhances this and lies in wait; like a viper, his words are poised to strike at any who are not committed to delve into the depths of the cabinet of curiosities that is his writing.

[Lysergius · Rating 4 out of 5]

The subject matter, Trauerspiel, German tragic drama does not really interest, but this is Benjamin in full flow, ideas, references, and quotations just bounce off the page. Once started it is hard to put down, though rest one must, to digest what one has just read. A wonderful book.

[Joëlle Dumais-Allard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pratique pour explorer la notion de Trauerspiel, opposé à la tragédie classique. Analyse intéressante sur la mélancolie, l’allégorie et la théâtralité baroque, soulignant leur rapport au pouvoir et à l’histoire. L’œuvre, qui pourrait être mieux traduite...

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

The appendices make it all worth it. in the Arcades Project Benjamin notes that there hasn’t yet been an epoch which does not feel itself to be modern, and that is probably the best one line explanation of the Messianic time we have left.

[Lovely Fortune]

For German class on Aby Warburg. Another supplemental piece meant to show what other (German) philosophers thought about the same topics Warburg focused on.

[Katrinka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Never thought I'd be impatient to finish anything by Benjamin.