“Intriguing Ideas, Plotting Bögen”: Thinking the Limit of Allegory in Walter Benjamin's Trauerspielbuch

Abstract

Although Walter Benjamin's interest in mathematics is well known, its specific relationship with other parts of his thought often remains unexplored. This article proposes a reading of Benjamin's “Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels” that focuses on the figure of the Bogen as both mathematical and literary figure, illuminating Benjamin's conceptions of allegory and language. The central, yet often obscure, role of intrigue—of the plotter—in the Trauerspiel is read in the context of the plotting of a curve toward redemption; from the arc of allegory arises a thinking of the highly contorted space of the Trauerspiel and of an allegorizability before and beyond subjectivity, a thinking that finds an analogue in the mathematics of Benjamin's time and that echoes his early interest in another type of Bogen, the rainbow (Regen-bogen). This space of the Bogen opens onto an ethics of the middle of “Mitteilbarkeit.”

Keywords:

• allegory
• Walter Benjamin
• intrigue
• mathematics
• redemption
• subjectivity

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Tobias Kühne, for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper; Peter Fenves, whose work provided an invaluable starting point for this argument; and Samuel Weber, whose comments and encouragement enabled the “plotting of the Bogen” of this article.

Notes

Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schweppenhäuser (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1972–91), volume V, 139. All quotations from Benjamin's work are to the Gesammelte Schriften edition and will be cited merely as “GS” along with the volume and page numbers.

Quoted in Werner Hamacher, Intensive Sprachen, in Christian L. Hart Nibbrig, Übersetzen: Walter Benjamin (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2001), 191.

GS I, 409.

GS I, 409.

GS I, 274.

Cf. for example: “Im Ablauf des politischen Geschehens schlägt die Intrige den Sekundentakt, der es bannt und fixiert,” GS I, 275. The manipulation of clock-time is thus inscribed into the manipulation of space; further examination would show how, despite the privilege of space here, the relation of time and space is indelibly marked by a never dissolvable tension.

GS I, 274.

GS I, 271.

At many points of this article, the German term will be kept in order to emphasize the semantic field of “Bogen” that is dispersed in English. Most importantly, the word's derivation from the verb “biegen,” to bend, to inflect, or to turn, points to its tight link with the question of tension.

GS I, 257–58; emphasis added.

GS I, 350.

GS I, 406; emphasis added. The connection with death will be elaborated on below; note also the importance of the “Mal” that Benjamin is concerned with in letters and fragments roughly contemporaneous with the dialogue on the rainbow analyzed in section two of this article.

GS I, 171; emphasis added. The rhetorical question Benjamin refers to is the following: “Gebt uns euren Segen! riefen beide, da alle Welt staunend verstummte. Euren Segen! ertönte es zum drittenmal, und wer hätte den versagen können?” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1971), 210. A more extensive reading of the Wahlverwandtschaftenessay in conjunction with the Trauerspielbuch would necessitate a reading of the falling silent of the world as they face the novella's couple. How does this silence relate to the silence of the tragic hero? Similarly, one would have to pay close attention to the fact that the counterpoint to the adults of the novel is found in the “wunderlichen Nachbarschaft-kinder,” to evoke the title of the novella. As analyzed below, one of Benjamin's most important (and heilsgeschichtlich relevant) Bögen is the rainbow: a Bogen that is essentially tied to children or the child-like character of the adult. The “wunderlich” nature of the novella's characters directly flows from their status as children; it is here that the source of the radical rejection by the adults of the novel is to be located. In this context, Ottilie's frequent reference to the “Bahn” that she has left should also be compared to the Bogen as analyzed here.

GS I, 171.

GS I, 405.

GS I, 405; emphasis added.

GS I, 406.

GS I, 408.

GS I, 408; emphasis added.

Peter Fenves, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), 240. This discussion of the “shape of allegory,” if we can call it that, draws on and develops in a new direction Peter Fenves's discussion of the “shape of time” in the final chapter of The Messianic Reduction.

For a concise introduction to Weierstrass's work, cf. Israel Kleiner, “Vi.44 Karl Weierstrass,” in The Princeton Companion to Mathematics, ed. Timothy Gowers et al. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). The original paper by Weierstrass appears in Karl Weierstrass, Mathematische Werke, Bd. 2 (Berlin: Mayer & Müller, 1895), 71–74. For a lengthy historical account of the development of Weierstrass's work, including Weierstrass's proof of the non-differentiability of the function he gave, cf. Umberto Bottazzini and Jeremy Gray, Hidden Harmony—Geometric Fantasies: The Rise of Complex Function Theory (New York: Springer, 2013), esp. chapter six, “Weierstrass's Analytic Function Theory.”

Fenves, The Messianic Reduction, 241.

GS I, 406.

The last section of this article will seek to give some further indications how this conception of space differs positively from what is ordinarily called space: instead of representing space as delimitation and the drawing of borders, space is thought as the middle of Mit-teilbarkeit, both the condition of possibility of and that which comes to unsettle ordinary space in the former sense.

Among the numerous textbooks on set theory that introduce the difference between countable and uncountable sets, the reader might consult George J. Tourlakis, Lectures in Logic and Set Theory, Volume 2: Set Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Chapter VII.2 and VII.3.

GS I, 350–51; emphasis added.

For an accessible explanation of the self-similarity of the Weierstrass function, cf. Bruce J. West and Ary L. Goldberger, “Physiology in Fractal Dimensions,” American Scientist 75, no. 4 (1987), 360f.

Fenves, The Messianic Reduction, 241.

GS I, 181–82; emphasis added. With respect to Goethe's Wahlverwandtschaften, Benjamin locates the caesura in the following sentence: “Die Hoffnung fuhr wie ein Stern, der vom Himmel fällt, über ihre Häupter weg” Goethe, Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 225. Benjamin comments that “nicht deutlicher konnte gesagt werden, daß die letzte Hoffnung niemals dem eine ist, der sie hegt, sondern jenen allein, für die sie gehegt wird,” GS I, 200; and again in closing his essay: “Nur um der Hoffnungslosen willen ist uns die Hoffnung gegeben,” GS I, 201.

GS I, 182.

GS I, 208. Hölderlin's quote and the German word “Vorstellung” point to a different way of reading the caesura: as pointing toward theatricality (“Vorstellung” in German not only means presentation but also refers to a theater performance); cf. Weber, Theatricality as Medium (New York: Fordham, 2004), 114–15. The question of theatricality marks, just like the question of writing and style addressed in part three of this article, one of the limits of the homology between mathematical figures and the philosophical insights into the nature of allegory that is being investigated here.

We are resorting here to a practice that Benjamin—for reasons related to his understanding of the historicity of language—dreaded: the forming of neologisms. We hope to be justified, however, not only by the present need for such a term but also by Benjamin's own highly significant recourse to forming nouns by adding the suffix “-barkeit” to a verb. Cf. especially Samuel Weber, Benjamin's -abilities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 3–10.

GS I, 214; emphasis added.

GS I, 173; emphasis added.

It is important to emphasize the historically limited scope of Benjamin's Trauerspielbuch: medieval or romantic allegory will differ from baroque allegory. Consequently, any claims in this article, too, have to be read as historically determined and do not—occasional surface appearance notwithstanding—lay claim to any transhistorical validity.

GS I, 206; emphasis added. Benjamin identifies the “Grübler” as the origin of the modern scholar and thus requires a rethinking of scholarship as a practice of accumulation of information or, to speak with Benjamin, data points.

Fenves, The Messianic Reduction, 162. Juxtaposed to Benjamin's arguments against profundity (Tiefsinn), one should read his comments on depth in his “On the Program of the Coming Philosophy.” Here Benjamin emphasizes that the two philosophers who will serve as guides to the coming philosophy—Kant and Plato—did not avoid depth but rather sought it in a particular way: “Sie haben die Forderung der Tiefe aus der Philosophie nicht verbannt,” GS II, 157.

Another contemporary thinker who could be regarded as an heir to Benjamin in this regard, albeit in a somewhat complicated manner, is Giorgio Agamben. Agamben's thinking of “pure means/mediality” or “means without ends” with its emphasis on the extreme of devastation and the redemptive “Umschwung” toward something that is of a different Mächtigkeit and essentially a potentiality (“form-of-life” as opposed to forms of life) echoes many points explored here.

GS I, 260; emphasis added.

GS VI, 41.

Fenves, The Messianic Reduction, 178–79.

Weber, Benjamin's -Abilities, 338.

GS I, 408; emphasis added.

Weber, Benjamin's -Abilities, 163.

GS II, 159.

GS II, 161.

A more general comparison with Kant would benefit this inquiry. Kant, for instance, uses a figure that recalls a Bogen yet emphasizes the notion of a container or envelope—”Gewölbe”—in his discussion of the sublime in the Critique of Judgment (thanks to Sam Weber for the pointer). Further, Benjamin was interested in Kant's schematism: how then does Kant the schemer differ from Benjamin the schemer?

North, The Problem of Distraction (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 150.

A larger project investigating Bogen-figures in Benjamin would turn to further occurrences of Bögen that must be left aside here; some examples of interest, especially from the arcades project, include Bilderbogen, Briefbogen, Fragebogen, Torbogen, Triumphbogen. Benjamin seems particularly intrigued by the transformation of Paris's Triumph-bogen into a “Rettungsinsel,” to which we will turn below.

GS VII, 19; emphasis added.

GS VII, 20.

GS VII, 23.

GS VII, 24.

GS VII, 25.

The infidelity and falling apart of Benjamin's rainbow stands in a curious relationship with what might be the best-known occurrence of a rainbow in Western literature: the rainbow of the Old Testament, a sign created by God to symbolize His pact with humankind to never destroy the earth again and to remind man of the fidelity he owes God.

GS I, 406; emphasis in the original.

GS VII, 25; emphasis added. Benjamin's use of the word “Ursprung” here is surely not accidental and should be read in the context of his mediations on the Ur-sprung in the preface to the Trauerspielbuch. Any (messianic) reduction is always a leap and a fissure, a maelstrom that sweeps away the “Entstehungsmaterial” from which it emerges; cf. GS I, 226.

Fenves, The Messianic Reduction, 90.

Ibid.

GS I, 408; emphasis added.

For an insightful study of Kant's conception of perception in the context of Benjamin's analysis of language, cf. Hamacher, Intensive Sprachen.

GS I, 406.

GS VII, 25.

Weber, Benjamin's -Abilities, 9.

Indeed, Benjamin himself calls criticism a form of scheming and plotting: in his essay on Calderon and Hebbel, Benjamin calls the altercations in the reception of Calderon the “Intrigenspiel um den Namen des großen Spaniers,” GS II, 257.

In the letter, Benjamin writes to Scholem about the progress of his work on the arcades project and reports, in a somewhat exasperated tone, that the time of germination needed by the arcades project might surpass even “die Bogenspannung in der Entstehung des Trauerspielbuchs,” GS V, 1112. References to the need “einen Bogen zu spannen” (cf., for instance, GS V, 1140) and the lack of the required force for such a project (“Nun habe ich die beiden Enden des Bogens—aber noch nicht die Kraft, ihn zu spannen,” GS V, 1138–39) recur in Benjamin's letters and notes concerning his work on the “Passagenwerk.” The very title of his unfinished work also foregrounds another aspect of the discussion of Bögen: the question of “passages,” those that can be quoted and those that can be passed through, concerns again the question of directionality—where, if anywhere at all, do they lead?

GS I, 209; emphasis added.

That this specific type of writing requires a specific mode of reading has been emphasized by, among others, Carol Jacobs, who, in reflecting on her sustained yet interrupted engagement with Benjamin over decades, writes: “I would like to believe he [Benjamin] taught me how to read in the practice of interrupting intention and taught me that reading is, necessarily, the practice of interrupting intention” Carol Jacobs, In the Language of Walter Benjamin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 1.

GS I, 384.

GS I, 354.

Here, if not earlier, the parallel between the Bogen figure from the Trauerspielbuch and the Weierstrass function reaches its limit. The non-derivability at each point of the Weierstrass function does not preclude it from being calculable; Benjamin's concern with (human) language in the end, however, cannot be reduced to the mathematicity that forms the curve of the function.

In the Wahlverwandtschaftenessay, Benjamin, in a different context, seems to say as much explicitly, evoking the term of non-derivability that guided our discussion of the shape of the Bogen: “Allein das ist ja das Entscheidende, daß niemals ableitbar ihr Gehalt sich zur Sache verhält, sondern daß er als das Siegel erfaßt werden muß, das sie darstellt,” GS I, 128; emphasis added.

Fenves, The Messianic Reduction, 77.

Fenves, Arresting Language (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 255.

GS V, 139.

GS I, 406; emphasis added.

Fenves, Arresting Language, 266.

GS IV, 119.

GS IV, 939. Benjamin's aversion to “Typen” recalls, once again, his essay on the Wahlverwandtschaften, where he defends Goethe again the charge that his characters are merely types and do not serve any other (higher) purpose.

GS VII, 25.