I’m with you Walt Benjamin as you traverse mysticism and modernity

Illustrated by Victoria Cheng.

I am with you Walter Benjamin:
Benjamin the Marxist
Benjamin the refugee
Benjamin the mystic
Benjamin the womaniser
Benjamin the writer
Benjamin the critic
Benjamin the Jew.

Who are you Walter Benjamin?

Walter Benjamin teetered on a tightrope through early 20th century Europe, torn between the vulgar materialism of capitalism and the labyrinthine spiritualism of Kabbalic Judaism. If he fell to one side, he would be subsumed by mysticism and spiritual dogmatism courtesy of the thousands of years of rabbinical scholarship and Talmudic study. If he fell to the other side, he would be stripped of all spirit by an anathematized modern life where all values have a price tag, subsumed by market forces the invisible hand clenches in an iron fist.  

Rimbuad vs Rashi
Marx vs Maimonides
Buber vs Baudelaire 

Most articles documenting the life of German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin begin with his end: out of fear of being captured by the Nazis, Benjamin overdosed on morphine after being denied refuge in Spain. If he had waited a day later, he would have been granted access, safety, and life in Spain away from the doom that fascism promised so many Jews. 

It is then that most articles dive into the man who declared that Paris was the capital of the 19th century, the man who analysed the Paris Arcades, who studied cities and mass technology. His most famous and misunderstood work, Art on the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, analyses the impact of mass reproduction technologies, mainly used for art. He argues that the destruction of the aura through mass production is beneficial for the proletariat, who can now access aesthetic experiences once shielded by economic barriers. This sits side by side with his work on photography, a novel art form whose art objects are in a sense, aura-less. A photograph has no original, one print has just as much value as the other.

But alongside the detailed investigation into the nature of modern life, Benjamin was a spiritual man. He was the son of wealthy assimilated German Jews, yet Benjamin’s religion was never straight forward. He both criticised and embraced Zionist movements in his youth. Zionism as a serious political movement was still in its infancy with only 20 years having passed since the publication of Theodore Hetezl’s Der Judenstaat calling for the establishment of a Jewish state in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. His lifelong friend Gershom Scholem, a Kabbalah scholar, invited him to work with him at the newly established Hebrew University, an invitation which he repeatedly declined. Nevertheless, Judaism filtered through to his work. The Messiah is a motif in Benjamin’s writings, but unlike traditional depictions, Benjamin’s messiah would not come to bring the end of history, but the dawn of a timeless age, one unencumbered by the great forces of class struggle (here emerges the Marxist synthesis in Benjamin).

This intellectual tension within Benjamin seeped into his personal life. His semi-autobiographical text titled One Way Street documents the absurdity, the beauty, and the true nature of urban life. The text itself is fractured, featuring a wide range of subjects all rendered in semi-poetic form:

“Quotations in my work are like bandits on the road that leap out, brandishing weapons, and rob the idler of his certainty.” 

One Way Street documents the nature of clothes, memory, books, stamps, office equipment, St Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, and toys. Even a rejection letter from a publisher. Yet one subject continuously rears its head: desire. 

“a s p h o d e l – When someone is loved, the abyss of sex loses is behind them as does that of family.” 

Benjamin’s love life was tragic. He married Dora Kellner in 1917 and had one son before a divorce in 1930. While drifting around Europe he bounced from affair to affair frequenting brothels in between, all whilst reflecting on the nature of love and desire, something he could only express as aphorisms.

“ARC LAMP – Only someone who hopelessly loves a person knows that person.”

This is what makes One Way Street the most personal of his texts. It is a window into Benjamin the human being, Benjamin the lover, Benjamin the tragedy. Whilst mysticism and modernity struggle to dominate his intellectual capacity, the primordial passions of love emerge, both the beauty and tragedy of it. Most importantly, One Way Street hints at his failure, his victimhood in a world that was increasingly hostile to left leaning academics and Jews. 

Benjamin was struck by constant failure, both romantic and academic. Despite being revered as an intellectual, he never secured academic tenures (his Theses on Philosophy of failure was a critical failure). He scourged off of his parents for many years even into his marriage, and eventually survived off of handouts from the Institute of Social Research courtesy of his friend, Theodore Adorno (who he alienated by flirting with his wife for many years). Worst of all were his drug habits. He was a frequent hashish user even documenting his experiences in an essay titled Hashish in Marseille: 

“To come closer to the riddle of drug bliss, one would need to think about Ariadne’s thread. The sheer pleasure of simply unrolling a ball of thread. And that pleasure relating at a very deep level to drug pleasure and the pleasure of creation.” 

One cannot read his document of drug experimentation with a tinge of sadness; Perhaps if he were not always alone, he would not have to seek hashish to soothe his inflamed sense of isolation. 

Nothing remains of Benjamin but a human being caught under the net. Whilst his writing is dense, rambling and often confusing, it aptly captures the tension at the heart of the early 20th century, a world transitioning into late capitalism and emerging into something resembling what we know today. He leaves us questioning what will survive? What ideas will triumph over time itself? Maybe Benjamin will show us the answer. 

Whoever you are, I’m with you Walt Benjamin as you traverse mysticism and modernity, Rimbaud and Rashi, Marx and Maimonides.