Bookmarks

Benjamin and Novalis

To this day, the readability of Walter Benjamin’s texts is determined by a kind of hybridity, duality or ambivalence. This unconcluded or unresolvable contradiction basically stems from the conflict between the roles of the scholar-philosopher and the elusive writer. In this paper, I try to shed light on some aspects of this conflict from the perspective of Benjamin’s view of Novalis. The relationship between the two thinker-writers is best understood in the light of their approach to language, for they both regarded language less as a means of communication than as a medium of creation.

Released: Replika 133, 177–192.