Benjamin / Scholem: conversations with an absent "
The trouble with connections, c ' is that it rubs essentially futile when it does not overwhelm. The sake of completeness honors editor but sometimes, it will happen. Unless the letter writers do not indulge in this talk which is certainly the charm of daily life but quickly tired of reading. This is also the title of that correspondence 1933-1940 philosopher, essayist, translator Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) and Gershom Scholem (1897-1982), who has just published under the title Theology and Utopia (Briefweschel, translated from German by Renault and Didier Peter Rusch, 332 pages, 29 euros, Publishing brightness), is exceptional. For the two intellectuals immediately put the bar very high and rarely travel, which, if any, does not exclude humor. Suhrkamp this collection was published in 1980, but had to wait until, by the obstinacy of a French publisher, other letters were found and that rights issues are resolved, so that the reader of the French language there is finally accessible. The purpose is rarely
ano din; futility is not their forte, nor is the small talk . We gain in density what is lost in light. Given to the stature of both men, the exchange is a rare intensity, especially since the publisher had the good idea to assign to each his own translator and his own voice, to keep his truth to their dialogue. To say it is substantial. It is a rare opportunity to attend and the deployment of two minds in action. Gershom Scholem shows himself honest, perceptive and a generous spirit. Even if the mystery remains unimpaired for readers Story of a Friendship (in pocket Hachette Plural) on two questions unanswered Why installed Scholem in Jerusalem has he helped his friend Benjamin in a great financial distress despite his calls? he tried to persuade him to settle in Palestine? In a particularly illuminating afterword, Stephane Moses brings early response. 
Dear dear Gerhard Walter ... ... The scholar and bibliophile sedentary nomad, the Jewish mysticism based in Jerusalem and the Marxist wandering exile in Paris, we do not be more opposite. Everything happens but certain topics more than others: the mystical nihilism in the ghetto, flâneur Baudelaire absolute brightness of the ambiguous term "Jewish state", the solution of a condominium Arab and Jew for the whole of Palestine (in 1937 ...), the Paris of the nineteenth century, heretics and false messiahs, the melancholy of two acute thinkers, sensing the imminent end of the world ... Adorno, Brecht, Marx is most often cited. But one writer dominates the conversation: Kafka. One is Benjamin, the mill turns Kafka's friend Max Brod, accusing his contradictions, his bonhomie, his lack of distance, pietistic attitude vis-à-vis St. Franz, his journalistic reflexes, his pictures, his lack of rigor dogmatic. His six-page letter dated June 12, 1938 is the relentless execution of a biography as we've rarely read; watermark, we will book their own worldview Kafkaesque, ellipse torn between mystical experience forged by tradition and that of the inhabitant of a modern city, and 
starting from this premise, the essayist reasoning weaves a light on the parables at work in all creation sprung from the pen of Kafka to the paradox Final: "Once was assured of the ultimate failure, he succeeded in any way like a dream. Nothing does more to reflect the eagerness with which Kafka emphasized his failure. " remained a mystery in the eyes of Benjamin, his friendship with Max Brod ... To say that the edition of this match is a stimulating wealth. Hopefully, by bringing us back to the depths of his mind, it will "save Walter Benjamin's fans" as called essayist Stephan Wackwitz in an article published in Die Welt and reprinted here English for non-Germans. About Proust, Walter Benjamin wrote 5 July 1932 from his holiday in Ibiza: "Today I-for the first time in five or six years, started reading Proust and I am excited to see what will teach me about myself and about the time the contrast between the impression that probably reading this happen to me and that felt old. Not that I imagine the contrast so striking and so important. " The man Research is cited only twice. Is that Scholem was not the right person for evoke it (similarly to Baudelaire, that one admires not know when the other). For Proust is in constant Benjamin. Proof, if it is not talking about anyone with anyone. Question of sensitivity even and especially in a strong relationship of friendship. It cites as evidence the On Proust (translated from German by Robert Kahn, 130 pages, 18 euros We editions) just published at Caen in the signature of Walter Benjamin. For the first time are collated his texts, articles, snippets, fragments and scattered remarks, known or novel, devoted to the writer. There not only offers the look of an alien, not native French language, in that work, but that of his German translator, someone who has grappled with his words, his breath, his tongue (he has translated three volumes of the Search ). The impregnation was such that, by his own admission, Berlin Childhood is a palimpsest of Search . What looks like Proust
Benjamin? A detective engaged his curiosity about high society, prey to the martyrdom of the recall and the infinite dimension of memory, capable as anyone else to show us things (Proust excelling be that means, and anyone who touches Peguy), insensitive to the intoxication of pure physical feelings of love or food ("Of all the great epic writers, he is one of few not know how to eat his characters'). Walter Benjamin asserted that since the Spiritual Exercises of Loyola, Western literature had not produced a more radical attempt to become absorbed in himself. And if you wonder what took this small editor to engage in the publication of this exciting Proust to Walter Benjamin, a far cry from what is written usually on the subject, the back cover provides a clear answer without appeal (once will not hurt), which should generate much debate: "The analysis of the Proustian snob, which is much larger than its apotheosis in the art, represents the pinnacle of his social criticism. Because of the snobbish attitude is nothing but the contemplation consistent, organized, hardened, existence from the standpoint of chemically pure consumer. It's less humor that comedy is the real core of the power of Proust, he does not transcend the world through laughter, but laughter he shoots. At the risk of breaking into a thousand pieces, before which there is to it to melt into tears. Songs are: unity of the family and personality, of sexual morality and social respectability. The pretensions of the bourgeoisie broke in the laughter. "
Hence we see that the thought of Walter Benjamin is inexhaustible in any side we want to take it. We had a recent preview with exposure resurrecting his library at the Kunstmuseum in Solingen (North Rhine-Westphalia) and in the catalog that was drawn. Another album just out, just as original, is now available which allows to take full measure of subterranean ramifications of this work: Walter Benjamin Atlas Constelaciones , amazing audiovisual test consists of a DVD movie on some of its ideas, and a digital atlas on CD-Rom linking 900 extracts from his works to 1200 concepts, allowing navigation between his unpublished texts and images. Là encore, un catalog issu d'une exposition qui vient se tenir au the Circulo de Bellas Artes à Madrid.
(et Walter Benjamin Gershom Scholem, "photos DR," Baudelaire par Nadar père and 1855, "Proust" fils par Nadar and 1887)
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