"There is a picture by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel
that seems about to move away from something he stares at. His eyes are
wide, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how the angel of
history must look. His face is turned toward the past. Where a chain of
events appears before us, he sees one single catastrophe, which keeps
piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it at his feet. The angel would
like to stay, awaken the dead, and make who
le
what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise and has
got caught in his wings; it is so strong that the angel can no longer
close them. This storm drives him irresistibly into the future, to which
his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows toward
the sky. What we call progress is this storm."
— Walter Benjamin, The Concept of History
No comments:
Post a Comment