After Language as Such: Gershom Scholem, Werner Kraft, and the Question of Mathematics

Abstract

This article investigates a forgotten essay contest proposed by Gershom Scholem to Werner Kraft in the wake of Walter Benjamin's seminal text “On Language as Such and On the Language of Man” (1916). Intent on completing Benjamin's language essay by focusing on the relationship among language, symbolism, and mathematics, the contest and conversation sparked by Benjamin explores the enigmatic proposition with which his essay leaves off: that language is both communication of the communicable and a symbol of the incommunicable. The effects of Benjamin's “On Language” can thus be found in Scholem's formulation of a privative structure of communication in mathematics, lament, and his translations of the Book of Lamentations that—negatively—communicates language's own limits. That Scholem locates in mathematics such an aesthetic strategy, while Kraft's responses remain ambivalent about mathematics, indicates a growing concern over mathematics’ supposed opposition to language and representation, which prefigure Benjamin's and the Frankfurt School's later polemics against mathematics.

Keywords:

• language
• mathematics
• lamentation
• philosophy of mathematics
• definition
• Platonism
• silence

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the numerous readers and audiences at conferences and workshops who have helped shape this article. My gratitude is also due to the Literatur- und Kunstinstitut Hombroich and the National Library of Israel for their permission to reproduce quotations contained in this article and to their staff, as well as to those at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv (Marbach), for their guidance and support in its publication.

Notes

Gershom Scholem, Briefe, ed. Itta Shedletzky (München: C.H. Beck, 1994) 1, 126. Cited parenthetically hereafter as B with volume number. Gershom Scholem, A Life in Letters, 1914–1982, trans. Anthony David Skinner (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 63. Cited parenthetically hereafter as LL.

Walter Benjamin, “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man.” In Selected Works, ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 62–74.

Scholem composed the Referat on November 8, 1917 and held it on November 10. He completed his translation of the Book of Lamentations on December 1, 1917 and his epilogue on lament on December 2. Gershom Scholem, Tagebücher: nebst Aufsätzen und Entwürfen bis 1923, ed. Herbert Kopp-Oberstebrink, Karlfried Gründer, and Friedrich Niewöhner (Frankfurt am Main: Jüdischer Verlag, 1995), 109, 87–88; Lamentations of Youth: The Diaries of Gershom Scholem, 1913–1919, trans. Anthony David Skinner (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 196. Hereafter, Scholem's journal will be cited as TB with volume number. Translations from Scholem's diaries, letters omitted in the English editions, and unpublished documents are my own.

Walter Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940, ed. Gershom Scholem and Theodor W. Adorno, trans. Manfred R. Jacobson and Evelyn M. Jacobson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 81.

Kraft to Scholem on July 18, 1917, quoted in B 1, 360n6. Scholem responds: “By the way, the letter on language you have already read is not a copy; it's the original,” B 1, 85; LL, 51.

Kraft to Scholem on December 1, 1917. Kraft's Nachlaß is held at the Literatur- and Kunstinstitut Hombroich, which also holds the rights to Kraft's literary estate, and the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach (DLA Marbach). Kraft's letters to Scholem are deposited in the National Library of Israel (NLI). I would like to express my gratitude to the the Literatur- and Kunstinstitut Hombroich and the National Library of Israel for permission to cite from Kraft's unpublished letters and my thanks to all three archives and their staff for their generous help and support in the composition of this article.

Benjamin, “On Language,” 62, 65, and 69. For key readings of Benjamin's essay, see Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 87–90; Samuel Weber, Benjamin's -abilities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010), 31–52. Much of the recent work on Scholem and lament focuses on its theoretical link with Benjamin—for instance, on the notion of a priori “purity” in Ilit Ferber, “Lament and Pure Language: Scholem, Benjamin and Kant,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2014): 42–54.

See Peter Fenves, Arresting Language: From Leibniz to Benjamin (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), 205–215. On Benjamin and Russell's paradox, see Peter Fenves, The Messianic Reduction: Walter Benjamin and the Shape of Time (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 124–151.

Benjamin, “On Language,” 74 (trans. modified). Paula Schwebel, “Lament and the Shattered Expression of Mourning: Gershom Scholem and Walter Benjamin,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 21, no. 1 (2014): 27–41; “The Tradition in Ruins: Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem on Language and Lament,” in Lament in Jewish Thought, ed. Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), especially 278–284. See also Daniel Weidner, Gershom Scholem. Politisches, esoterisches und historiographisches Schreiben (München: Fink, 2003), 191. On Scholem's theory of lament, Sigrid Weigel, “Scholems Gedicht und seine Dichtungstheorie: Klage, Adressierung, Gabe und das Problem einer biblischen Sprache in unserer Zeit,” in Gershom Scholem, Literatur und Rhetorik, ed. Stéphane Mosès and Sigrid Weigel (Köln: Böhlau, 2000), 23. See also Ilit Ferber and Paula Schwebel, eds., Lament in Jewish Thought, Philosophical, Theological, and Literary Perspectives (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014).

Lina Barouch, “Lamenting Language Itself: Gershom Scholem on the Silent Language of Lamentation,” New German Critique 37, no. 3 (2010): 10. Weidner, Gershom Scholem, 191.

Schwebel provides a helpful contextualization of “the teaching” within Benjamin's speculative theory of knowledge; see “Lament and the Shattered Expression of Mourning,” 28–32, here 28. Gershom Scholem, “Der Name Gottes und die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala,” in Judaica 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973), 8. See Winfried Menninghaus, Walter Benjamins Theorie der Sprachmagie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 31–52; Theodor W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 139–162.

Gottlob Frege, “Über die wissenschaftliche Berechtigung einer Begriffsschrift,” in Begriffsschrift und andere Aufsätze, ed. Ignacio Angelelli (Hildesheim: Olms, 1993), 106. Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 2–3.

See Fritz Mauthner, Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1906). Scholem's criticism of Mauthner, for instance, TB 1, 156–157.

On the concept of “structural possibility” in Benjamin and Jacques Derrida, see Weber, Benjamin's -abilities, 6. See also Weber's astute commentary on retaining in translation the specificity of “Mitteilbarkeit” via the English “impartibility,” 40–41. While Scholem seems to be convinced that there is a “mathematics as such” (TB 1, 427), I borrow here, too, from Fenves's application to mathematics of Benjamin's terms from “On Language”; see The Messianic Reduction, 117–118 and 123.

TB 1, 264–265. Scholem's discussions of Novalis are fascinating, but they exceed the scope of the present analysis. For an introduction to and essays in the philosophy of mathematics (even if Scholem shies away from the term), see Paul Benacerraf and Hilary Putnam, eds., Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

See the special issue of MLN on Scholem, Benjamin, and the Marburg School edited by Julia Ng and Rochelle Tobias, MLN 127, no. 3 (April 2012).

See Moshe Idel, “The Function of Symbols in Gershom Scholem,” in Old Worlds, New Mirrors: On Jewish Mysticism and Twentieth-Century Thought (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). Other commentators translate Scholem's word “Gleichnis” here as “metaphor” (Barouch) and “image” or “semblance” (Ng); see “Lamenting Language Itself,” 6; “‘+1’: Scholem and the Paradoxes of the Infinite,” Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio 8, no. 2 (2014): 200–201. I have chosen “analogy” because it more closely matches the mathematical connotation of equation (“Gleich-nis”) with the Greek root analogia, meaning proportion.

See TB 1, 278. Kurt Gödel, “Some Basic Theorems on the Foundations of Mathematics and Their Implications,” in Collected Works, vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 323. Hartry H. Field, Realism, Mathematics, and Modality (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 1.

See TB 1, 428 and Aurel E. Voss, Über das Wesen der Mathematik, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: Teubner, 1913), 31–32n3.

Scholem's conception and defense of mathematics as an infinite tautology, which humans unfold and interpret but never exhaust, is an area of his thought that demands further research. A full discussion, however, is beyond the scope of this analysis. See Ng, “+1: Scholem and the Paradoxes of the Infinite,” here 201 and 204.

Scholem's discussion of mathematics and mysticism pervade his journals: on Novalis, TB 1, 265 and B 1, 94–95; on Buber and Steiner, TB 1, 371; and on Scholem's epistolary criticism of Goldberg in B 1, 233–239, discussed in Manfred Voigts, Oskar Goldberg: der mythische Experimentalwissenschaftler (Berlin: Agora, 1992), 118–122.

Steiner, Rudolf, “Mathematik und Okkultismus,” in Rudolf Steiner Gesamtausgabe, 2nd ed., vol. 35 (Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1984), 9 and 18.

Benjamin and Kraft's friendship was also vexed and often interrupted by strife and “abyss.” While interesting, the details exceed the limits of the present study. See, on their conflict over Benjamin's publication “The Regession of Poetry” (“Die Rückschritte der Poesie,” 1939), Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem, “Der liebe Gott wohnt im Detail” Briefwechsel 1939–1969, ed. Asaf Angermann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2015), 41 and 47–48.

Uwe Dathe, “Jena – Eine Episode aus Gershom Scholems Leben,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte 60, no. 1 (2008): 74–75.

See Volker Peckhaus, Logik, Mathesis Universalis und Allgemeine Wissenschaft (Berlin: Wiley, 1997).

See Lotze's “Anmerkung über logischen Calcül,” in Hermann Lotze, Logik: Drei Bücher, vom Denken, vom Untersuchen und vom Erkennen, 2nd ed. (Leipzig: F. Meiner, 1912), 256–269, here 259. George Boole, An Investigation of the Laws of Thought (London: Walton and Maberly, 1854), 49–50.

Gottlob Frege, Begriffsschrift, 2nd ed. (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1993), x. Russell and Whitehead, Principia Mathematica, 2.

Moshe Idel, “The Voiced Text of the Torah,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 68 (Sonderheft) (1994): 165–166.

See Benjamin, “On Language,” 67–69.

Klaus Thomas Volkert, Die Krise der Anschauung: Eine Studie zu formalen und heuristischen Verfahren in der Mathematik seit 1850 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986).

Ng, “+1: Scholem and the Paradoxes of the Infinite,” 198–200.

See Paul Scheerbart, Lesabéndio: An Asteroid Novel, trans. Christina Svendsen (Cambridge: Wakefield Press, 2012), 161. Translation modified. Cf. Paul Scheerbart, Lesabéndio in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 5, ed. Thomas Bürk, Joachim Körber, and Uli Kohnle (Linkenheim: Edition Phantasia, 1988), 472.

This entry is included only in the English translations of Scholem's diaries, Lamentations of Youth, 196. See also TB 2, 78. The diaries housed in Scholem's archive at the NLI confirm that Scholem uses the verb “schweigen” in the German original.

Kraft to Scholem on October 16, 1916 (NLI and DLA Marbach).

Gershom Scholem, Briefe an Werner Kraft, ed. Werner Kraft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 40. The origin of “schweigen” as a critical concept has its roots in Scholem's conversations with Benjamin, and the latter's rejection of Buber's link of language and action in July 1916; see Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940, 79–81. Moreover, the concept of silence allows Scholem to decouple Hebrew and nationalism (as suggested by Hans Oppenheim); as Scholem writes: “One learns Hebrew in order to be silent in Hebrew, then it is in order,” TB 1, 474 and here 2, 15.

Scholem's source for the translation is likely Rudolf Kittel, Biblia Hebraica (Leipzig: Hindrichs, 1913), 1126–1135. Gershom Scholem, “A List of the Books in Scholem's Library,” 1 (NLI).

For an extended interpretation of the spatial metaphor of “border,” see Ilit Ferber, “A Language of the Border: On Scholem's Theory of Lament,” Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy 21, no. 2 (2013): 176–185. Border or limit (“Grenze”), we may add, is a core mathematical concept in calculus and analytic geometry.

I cite from the translation, “On Lament and Lamentation,” in Lament in Jewish Thought, ed. Paula Schwebel and Ilit Ferber, trans. Paula Schwebel and Lina Barouch (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 313. Cited hereafter as L.

Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 160.

TB 2, 607–611. Cf. Weigel, “Scholems Gedicht und seine Dichtungstheorie,” 34–35.

I leave this translation in German to emphasize Scholem's focus on meter.

Ferber astutely emphasizes the sonic nature of Scholem's lamentations, citing a wealth of evidence from his diaries, see “A Language of the Border,” 176–185. Scholem writes, for example: “lament can be contained in music, indeed in the acoustic sphere, but really without words [wortlos],” TB 2, 139.

Kraft to Scholem on February 13, 1918 (NLI and DLA Marbach).

Benjamin, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940, 121.

See Werner Kraft, “Die Klage,” in Herz und Geist: gesammelte Aufsätze zur deutschen Literatur (Wien: Böhlau, 1989), 175–209.

Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 2003), 27.