jbml 7/2 Benjamin quote: Unfortunately I don't ...


have
a copy
of Illuminations here
in New York, but I can look this up easily enough
when I get back to Kansas (or maybe you have the book);
in the Introduction by Hannah Arendt (student of Heidegger;
if we need a SMIKHES HAPARSHE to my point 1) she quotes him as saying
that if we don't resolve our species-wide historical predicament, "the planet will not forgive us."
Again, if that was prescient, does prescience help us in any way,
and if not, why does it even
attract our interest?

["SMIKHES HAPARSHE,"
another bit of Yiddish, refers to the rhetorical connection
between a weekly portion of the Pentateuch read in the synagogue on the Sabbath,
and the reading from the Prophets & Writings for that same Sabbath.
It is already used ironically, by Yiddish writers such as Sholem-Aleykhem,
to indicate the fragmentation of meaning in modernity.
The quote from Benjamin in Arendt's introduction to
ILLUMINATIONS
reads:

ON THIS PLANET
A GREAT NUMBER OF CIVILIZATIONS HAVE PERISHED IN BLOOD AND HORROR.
NATURALLY, ONE MUST WISH FOR THE PLANET THAT ONE DAY IT WILL EXPERIENCE A CIVILIZATION THAT HAS ABANDONED
BLOOD AND HORROR; IN FACT, I AM ... INCLINED TO ASSUME THAT OUR PLANET IS WAITING FOR THIS.
BUT IT IS TERRIBLY DOUBTFUL WHETHER WE CAN BRING SUCH A PRESENT TO ITS HUNDRED- OR FOUR-HUNDRED-MILLIONTH BIRTHDAY PARTY. AND IF WE DON'T, THE PLANET WILL FINALLY PUNISH US, ITS UNTHOUGHT-FUL WELLWISHERS,
BY PRESENTING US WITH THAT
LAST JUGDMENT.

Well, maybe Benjamin was merely adding, as a postscript to the famous nineteenth-century Communist slogan, " ... but most likely, barbarism."

And while I'm still writing in brackets, let me introduce the next item. You have no reason to know that I was pained, in previous correspondence, by ML's quick and almost allergic reaction to my desire to discuss the continuing relevance of the messianic.

(Or indeed that ML lives in Jerusalem, where the messianic and the annihilationist are often indistinguishable.)

And I should also tell you that "Heshel's por-trait of the Kosker" refers to a book
written in Yiddish by Abraham Joshua Heshel,
about a Hasidic master who waged
an implacable and ulti-
mately fatal was
against self-
deception.]
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