Walter Benjamin: Translation and Spirit in the Time of the Now

Abstract

This combined essay and poetry translation focuses on Walter Benjamin’s little-known collection of sonnets written predominantly for his friend, Fritz Heinle, who died by suicide at the start of World War I. Relying on the recent translation of the entirety of Benjamin’s sonnets into English by Carl Skoggard, the two-part essay attempts to situate these sonnets as an overlooked but important element to an overall understanding of Benjamin’s life and work. Further, the sonnets and Benjamin’s biography point to a vital spirituality at the heart of Marxist materialist critique and practice, forming a constellation from which an understanding of Benjamin should not be separated and pointing toward the need for a renewed sense of urgency to continue his work in the time of the now.

Key Words:

• Walter Benjamin
• Terry Eagleton
• Historical Materialism
• Literary Criticism
• Sonnets

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Joyelle McSweeney for Césaire, Baudelaire, Crane, Benjamin, and many others; to Orlando Menes for that first phone call and for giving us permission to just translate; to Peter Blickle for his generous interest in my work, his unsurpassed instruction of the German language, and his comments on my early “readings” of Benjamin’s sonnets; and to Serap Kayatekin for her constant encouragement in all things. Any and all shortcomings are my own.

Notes

1 Eagleton (2007) does much work toward trying to unpack all of this in his How to Read a Poem, which if it is not about writing poems at least gives substantial thought to how the actual coming-to-be of a poem affects (or maybe should affect) our reading of it, in all kinds of material and demystifying ways.