Tradition, Innovation, and Aesthetic Experience

Author(s): Hans Robert Jauss

Source: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Spring, 1988), pp. 375-388
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for Aesthetics
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 HANS ROBERT JAUSS

Tradition, Innovation, and

Aesthetic Experience

I. through the aesthetic preference for the new?

"THE CONFLICr over the dissociation of future
developments and past origins may become the
deadly prolegomenonof every metaphysicsthat
seeks to develop in the future."1 With this bold
prognosis Odo Marquardushered postwar Ger-
many into a new phase of the timeless quarelof
the ancients and the moderns. This time the
debate drew representatives of the new aca-
demic trends in history and literarycriticism in
addition to those schooled in progressive or
conservative philosophy. In fact, the General
Philosophical Society of Germany devoted its
1962 congress to the topic, focussing on the
philosopherand the question of progress. There
theorists representing opposing views in the
history of philosophy and in social theory (Karl
hiwith and Theodor W. Adorno, Helmut
Schelsky and JurgenHabermas,Arnold Gehlen
and Hans Blumenberg)hammeredout positions
that have since dominatedthe discussion. Even
that society's most recent meeting in 1984 on
the topic of "traditionand innovation" did little
but retracetheir positions. I have spoken to this
issue from the standpointof literarytheory and
criticism: My initial contributionwas a history
of the "Querelle des Anciens et des Mod-
ernes." This was followed with a history of the
concept of "moderne/modernite," which I
traced to its preliminary end in so-called
postmodernism.2In this essay I want to respond
to a series of questions:Will the fine artsbe able
to overcome what will be an even sharper
dissociation between past origins and future
developments at the beginning of the next
century?Can the conflict between a progressive
and a conservative philosophy be settled
HANS ROBERTJAUSS is professor of literary criticism
and romance philology at the Universityof
Konstanz.
? 1988 The Journalof Aesthetics and Art Criticism
And finally, will aesthetic experience be able to
compensatefor the damage done by moderniza-
tion in the victorious wake of technology? By
way of answer, I would like to suggest that the
separation of future developments from past
origins is not a deadly aporia for literatureand
art. Their mediation is much more a task which
has repeatedly confronted the arts, which the
arts have overcome in their own way-that is
without force-and which they also hope to
solve again today. The royal road of aesthetic
experience is thus not the alleged aesthetic
preferencefor the new, but the mediation of the
new throughthe old!
As my leading witness I would like to cite
Paul Valery, who in an essay on Leonardo da
Vinci, described aesthetic experience's mediat-
ing function: "Ii imite, il innove; il ne rejette
pas l'ancien, ni le nouveau, pour etre nouveau;
mais il consulte en lui quelque chose
d'eternellement actuel."3 Imitation and cre-
ation, preservationand discovery, traditionand
innovation have always determinedthe history
of art. Failure to understand this symbiotic
unity has plunged both traditionalismand mod-
ernism into ahistoricaldogmatism:Traditional-
ism is blind to the role of innovation and
modernism can see only the new. They fail to
graspthat the history of artconsists of a creative
interplay between the two. While tradition in
the life-world can be directly and freely handed
down from generation to generation,4 artistic
traditioncannot. In the arts, the old can only be
preserved through ever newer realizations-
through selection, forgetting, and reappro-
priation. This is true even when the epistemo-
logical preeminenceof the old over the new, of
recognition over knowledge, of tradition over
all innovationhas gone unquestioned.5 Even the
Modern Age's aesthetic privileging of the new

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376
necessarily presupposesthe old as a horizon of
understanding.And movements like the avant-
garde which disclaim the heritage of the past
and deny all past origins are no exception.6 In
fact if we can even make a gross distinction
between antiquity and modernity according to
the epistemological priorityof the old over the
new as well as the new over the old, it is only
because we implicitly agree with Valery that
mediation is always involved in both the past-
oriented older arts as well as in the future-
oriented newer arts. This notion of the mediat-
ing function of art manifests itself in the poetic
license of the new that sidesteps traditionalism
when traditionalismfails to take notice of it. On
the otherhand, it also characterizesthe classical
cannon from which even the most rigorous
modernismcannot escape (as the phrase "mod-
em classics" reveals). Whereeverythingdevel-
ops only regularlyor irregularly,therearises (as
Valery once again observed) no real thought.7
Where art slavishly follows past origins as a
norm, all that develops is imitative. Where it
depends solely on what is new and newest, and
believes itself capableof anticipatingthe future,
there is only diletantism (or the tedium of
science fiction). In the realmof the artstradition
realizes itself neitherin epic continuitynor in a
creatio perpetua, but in a process of mutual
production and reception, determining and
redetermining canons, selecting the old and
integratingthe new. It is out of this interplay,
this constant mediation between past origins
and future developments, that the communica-
tive function of aesthetic experience develops.
I would like to call as my second witness an
authorwho lived during the transitionfrom the
Midde Ages to the early Modem Age, Dante
Alighieri. At first glance Dante still remains
totally indebted to the old-the rigor of legal
metaphysics in scholastic theology. And yet at
the same time, if one looks at the responseto his
Divina Comedia, he paved the way for the
new-the justification of individual and histor-
ical existence.8 With poetic license Dante es-
tablished his own hermeneuticrealm of ques-
tion and response by letting his wanderer
throughthe netherworldquestionthe dead about
their earthly fate, their guilt or merit. In the
timeless realms of perdition, penitence, and
blessedness, Dante thus reinstatedthe freedom
of human speech. He gave expression to some-
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JA U S S
thing which had remainedsilent in the dogmatic
hierarchy of hell, purgatory, and heaven: the
historicalexistence of individualpersons. In his
unforgettable interpretation, Erich Auerbach
claimed that a duplex sententia mediates here
between the old and the new. This double sense
allows us on the one hand to read the Divinia
Comedia allegorically and canonically as an
authoritative answer to the question of the
hiddenjustice of God's wordly plan, and on the
other hand to read it literally and historicallyas
a mirrorof the earthly world. The final fate of
the dead is the motif though which individual
destinies are clarified and given concrete ex-
pression.
Although Dante unquestiongly presupposed
the doxological backgroundof scholastic theol-
ogy, he depicted the netherworldin such a way
as to develop a highly personal canon: He
conceived a series of exempla that provide a
paradigmatic and unique conception of the
whole of classical, Christian,and contemporary
history. And he did not shy away from quietly
assisting the divine election of grace in the
process. Instead of peopling Limbo, that
Elysium-like oasis in hell, with the Old Testa-
ment patriarchsthe Scholastics had supposed,
he filled it with the poets, sages, and heroes of
heathen angiquity (all good nonchristians).
Later he even situated Ripheus, a minor char-
acter in Virgil's Aeneid, in paradise. He passes
over Augustine in the canon of saints, but
places Siger of Brabant,the guiding spiritof the
Latin Averroism, at the side of Thomas
Aquinas. He bans the contemporary Pope
Boniface VIII among the Simonists, judges
many prominent contemporaries cum ira et
studio, and casts his political support for Em-
peror Henry VII in the guise of a prophecy
abouta futuresaviourof Italy. He respectedand
at the same time poetically transgressed the
strongestbarrierof theological dogmatism, the
requirement that the damned be denied all
sympathy.Indeed, at the sight of Francescaand
Paolo, he collapsed in a deathlikefaint, though
he softened the scene by adding a rebuke from
Virgil. And he allowed Odysseus, who embod-
ies the ancients' spirit of adventure,to journey
beyond the pillars of Hercules, and thus beyond
the boundaryof the Old World.Of course in the
end, he punished Odyssesus' willful transgres-
sion-as the hubris of an inordinate curiosity
Tradition, Innovation, and Aesthetic Experience
about the world-with the shipwreck on the
dark mountain of the great ocean (the earthly
paradise denied him?). And yet he seemed to
sense that this hubris prefigureda new form of
self-consciousness, one that would discover the
drive for knowledge and experience to be the
noblest passions in man's nature. We are re-
mindedof Odysseus' oft- quoted warningto his
comrades:
"O brothers," I said, "who through a hundredthou-
sand dangers have reached the west, to this so brief
vigil of our senses that remains to us, choose not to
deny experience, following the sun, of the world that
has no people. Consider your origin: you were not
made to live as brutes, but to pursue virtue and
knowledge."9
If great poetry has repeatedly succeeded in
mediating between the horizon of past experi-
ence and that of present expectations, if it has
wedded the normative nature of past origins
with futurepossibilities, then we arejustified in
saying with Odo Marquardthat the function of
aesthetic experience is a "culiminationpoint in
the problemof alienation." As such, it presents
a way to solve that same problem today. And
the exemption of aesthetic reflection from the
antinomybetween conservativeand progressive
philosophy certainly makes such a solution
easier. Aesthetic theory can assert the prefer-
ence for the new withoutdiscreditingthe old per
se. Without falling under the sway of the
hypertrophiclaw of progress, it can simulta-
neously promote the process of emancipation
and preservethe canon of the past. At this point
the history of the art is neither a history of
progressnor a growing heritage. Even, when in
the latter stages of the modern age, new art is
created as a provocative reaction against the
old, the new does not push the old-as in the
paradigmshifts in the history of science-back
into the museum of history forever. No, often
the new is the only thing giving aesthetic
consciousness access again to the old. For this
reason I would like to cite as my third witness
an authoron the thresholdbetween the histori-
cism of the romantic period and the aestheti-
cism of modernism.
Baudelaire,generallyconsideredto be one of
the most radical proponentsof an aesthetics of
"nouveaute," was one of the first critics who
diagnosed the shift from historicism to aesthet-
icism. He noted it in his report on the 1855
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377
internationalexhibition as well as in Le peintre
de la vie moderne (1859). In these articles he
did justice to the modernity of the much ma-
ligned "imaginary museum" in a way that
probablycould have given a tolerant "Ancien"
something to think about.'0 The worldwide
pluralismof the exhibited productsof the indus-
trial and mechanical arts with their often
strange, inexplicably fascinating beauty, re-
quired a "modem Winckelmann." Confronted
with objects that defy the "timeless" canon of
the beautiful, the criticalobserverhas to learnto
recognize the quintessence of the beautg
universelle in the strange, the bizarre, and the
individual:He has to learn to accept the new as
the beautifulthat cannot be derived from a rule.
Thus in answer to classical art's loss of aura, a
new aesthetic experience restored it to art in
exhibitions and museums!
The accusation that this modem aesthetics is
a mere abstractionof aesthetic consciousness is
unjustified. This is so for several reasons: First
of all, the imaginarymuseum, which contains a
collection of treasures from remote places or
past ages, frees things (as WalterBenjamin said
so well) "from the necessity of being useful."
It overcomes "the complete irrationality of
(their) mere presence by including them in the
collection, a new system created especially for
this purpose, in this way establishing their
presence in our space and hence making them
again experiencable.'11 Secondly, in this mu-
seum, novelty as an aesthetic quality can be-
come the key to decoding the strangeness of
whatever is distant and old. And thirdly, even
Baudelaire has already opposed aesthetic con-
sciousness to empathy, i.e. the false conscious-
ness of historicism which-I would like to
add-the aesthetic experience of modernity in-
heritedat the same time. In the future, aesthetic
experience will be able to deal freely with the
temporally distant and the spatially unusual
because the study of history will have filled the
treasure house of memory. Moreover the his-
torical understandingwill have investigated the
works of all eras in the diachroniccontinuumof
history to such an extent that aesthetic under-
standing will be able to reach out toward
synchronicview of human art. This will enable
it to determine its own position in a new way.
To echo a question Hans-Georg Gadameronce
raised:Why should the "aesthetic distinction,"
378
which "chooses solely on the basis of aesthetic
distinctions as such," necessarily end in ab-
stractionand be harmfulif it is apparentlyalso
capable of fulfilling a hermeneuticfunction that
is indispensableto our age?"2
It would be temptingto recountthe history of
aesthetic experience and to explain how time
after time it has been precisely the aesthetic
preference for the new that has made the old
understandablein a fresh way. Be it throughthe
interpretationof the critique, the quote, or the
parody; be it through the nineteenth-century's
imaginary museum or finally through this
century's principle of intertextuality, the old
has been made new. But I do not have space to
rehearse that here. Instead I would like to
explore two problems that straddlethe border-
line both between aestheticsand philosophy and
between aesthetic and historical experience:
first, the role aesthetic preferenceplays, during
transitionperiods, in the perceptionof the new
(with respect to Hans Blumenberg), and sec-
ondly, the role it has in the "salvation of the
past" (with respect to WalterBenjamin).13
II.
"Il faut commencerpar le commencement!"
The irony in this saying raises some intricate
questions such as, why does the beginning
become a problem, in everyday behavior as
well as in historical actions, as soon as the
habitualis supposed to be transcended,the new
begun, or even the state of the world changed?
Even the eyewitness to an event has this prob-
lem because he is not yet able to forsee what can
develop when something new begins, if indeed
it is a new beginning. The well-known quote
from Wilhelm Meister, "All beginnings are
happy, the threshold is the place of expecta-
tion," masks the problem in optimism. Its
promise presupposes that the apprentice has
already recognized the thresholdhe is standing
before: the beginning of middle-class existence
that is also the end of his aestheticeducation. In
Goethe's case the thresholdwas markedby the
right question at the right time ("Is Felix my
son?"). Today historiansof all persuasionsare
concernedwith these questions:Is it possible to
identify actual beginnings or the division of
epochs? Can contemporariesreally experience
them or can they only be understoodretrospec-
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JA U S S
tively? To say that they can appears to be a
privilege of arthistorythatthe rigorof historical
pragmatismdenies: "There are no witnesses to
the radical disruption of epochs. The transi-
tional phase between epochs is an imperceptible
boundary that is not clearly connected to any
particulardate or event. But viewed differen-
tially a threshold becomes visible that can be
identified as either not yet reachedor as already
crossed. "4
This thesis should be completely rejected. Its
author, Hans Blumenberg, however, illumi-
natedthe structuresof period shifts by introduc-
ing the categories "threshold of periods" and
"reception" in his article "Epochenschwelle
und Rezeption" (1958). Since then he has
written literatureon the beginning of the Mod-
em Age that uncovers the hitherto impercepti-
ble boundarythat runs underthe surface of the
chronology. Not even such pivotal figures as
Nicolas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno testify
with certainty about this even though it is the
transitionalperiod par excellence. But granting
that, one can still ask whether Blumenberg's
criticism of the "rhetorical hyperbole about
epoch-makingevents" (p. 458) is a bit exces-
sive. One could be less vehement and still cast
doubt on the extent to which we can demon-
strate and experience the new in history.
Blumenberg's new view is of the self-
development of the Modem Age which "in
contrast to the Middle Ages is not present in
advance of its self-interpretation"(p. 468) or,
in the earlier version, of the "singular situation
of challenge and self-assertion from which
springs the incomparableenergy at the begin-
ning of the Modem Age."15 The crucial ques-
tion, however, is whether this view has itself
become subject to the "erosion inflicted by
historical diligence." Is its fate any different
from that of transitionalperiods that lose their
explanatorypower when viewed from different
perspectives; or from that of the founding fig-
ures who are swept away by the progress of
historicalknowledge (p. 470)? Is it not also true
precisely for the self-conception of the begin-
ning modem age that an awareness of the
transitionfrom the old to the new had to precede
the initial boundarybetween the "not yet" and
the "no longer," a boundarywhose shifts can
only be charted ex eventu? If this transition
could not be recognized and situated as a
Tradition, Innovation, and Aesthetic Experience
threshold, then it could at least enter conscious-
ness as a shift of horizon through the rupture
between expectation and experience.
For ReinhardKoselleck"6the asymmetry of
expectationand experience has always been the
hermeneuticalcondition for reconstructinghis-
torical experience. Even when we are missing
explicit documentationof epochal disruptions,
the discrepancy between the closed space of
experience and the open horizon of expectation
allows us to determine the threshold between
old and new. New expectations that are no
longer derivable from the sediment of experi-
ence can be produced through the "initiating
force of events" as well as throughanticipation
(in the form of prognoses, utopias, or imaginary
omens). Thus the threshold of an epoch as an
"absolute metaphor" does not become super-
fluous. It describes the consciousness of a
period that expresses itself at first hesitantly or
alreadyemphatically, prematurelyor belatedly,
in terms of the simultaneity of the temporally
disparate. It gives a special indexical value to
the groups of images that articulatethe initial
consciousness of the beginning of something
new. In the case of the period shift from the
middle ages to the modem age, one should
recall not only the metaphorsof awakening and
new light, of rebirth and resurrection, of
renovatio and reformation,but also the Pauline
paradigmof the conversio. This last paradigm
was particularlyimportantin the early literature
of the modem age. It was used especially for
picking out the leading minds of periods and for
delineating their contrastingconceptions of old
and new. But its importance has not been
sufficiently recognized by later scholars. My
thesis, however, is that this paradigm best
explains the reversal in the meaning of
"epoche": Classically, it meant the point at
which something comes to rest or a reversal
takes place, but with the beginning of the
modem age it acquireda new meaning, that of
a beginning event which irrevocably changes
things.
Although as a metaphor,"the thresholdof an
epoch," seems so sensible, so difficult for
historiography to do without, it involves a
dilemma. We immediately notice it if we use
the word literally rather than metaphorically:
What spaces does the threshold divide? When
we cross the threshold, where did we come
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379
from and where are we going? Every history
book (at least up to the high point of the
Nouvelle Histoire) parcels the past into periods
as if the dividing line was as real and noticable
as the metaphorof the threshold suggests. The
metaphor'spower arises from its mythical anal-
ogies in rituals of purity or rebirth: the holy
gateway that changes him who walks beneath
it, or the porta triumphalis which, as the
general and his army pass through it, takes
away all the defilement and guilt of murderous
war.17 If the assertionof absolute beginnings in
history lives off of such a mythical force, then
the need to experience the meaningfulness of
one's own life as well as history in terms of the
prevailing period has outlived its demythologi-
zation. Even when one grants the insight of
historicalcriticism that "man does indeed make
history, but he does not make the epoch" (p.
31), the metaphor still retains a hermeneutic
privilege. This shows that, at least with respect
to the experience of historical change, the
transition from old to new occurs gradually,
piece by piece. And those involved in the
development of a new age are the first to carry
old baggage over the threshold. It also reveals
that contemporariescannot all govern the same
threshold in the same way. Some shy away
from it at first; some cross over while casting a
look backwards;some never cross it at all.
Even when there is a significant beginning
event the transition is incremental. Take for
instance the birthof Christ:considered in terms
of its consequences, it placed Westen history in
an irreversible process and at the same time
divided it radically into a before and after.
According to Blumenberg,
Christianitylaid claim only very late to having initiated
a new phase of history. Initially this claim was totally
out of question for it because of Christianity's
eschatological opposition to history and the unhistorical
quality that was (at least) implied by it. (p. 468)
We will leave it to the theologians to evaluate
this assertion. But we do need to consider
whether the set of Christian images involving
the old and the new nonetheless persisted dur-
ing the experience of period shifts, especially
during the "renaissances" such as the
Carolingian,the twelfth century's, or thatof the
early Modem Age: humanism. An instance of
this continuity is seen in the imminent
380
eschatological expectation of Christ's coming
evidenced in John's apocalypse: "Then I saw a
new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven
and the first earthhad passed away, and the sea
was no more" (Rev. 21:1).
Of course in answerto gnosticism's tendency
to turn the new into the 'strange', the church
fathers soon asserted the identity of the Deus
creator et salvator as well as the one creationof
the world. They "domesticated the new with
the help of the category 're' and hope with the
help of the anamnesis of holy origins."'18And
yet their theological neuteringof the new con-
cerned only the period of final judgment and
salvation. It must have scarcely affected the
inner-historicalcaesure of Christ's birth. That
prototypical, revolutionary division of world
time into a before and an after must have
remained unscathed. After all the paradigmof
Christian chronology could legitimately arise
from the rational belief that the succeeding
periods stood at the beginning of a new era that
broke away decisively from the exhausted old
one. Moreover, it could find grounds in a
second Christianparadigmthat was unaffected
by the suspension of eschatology-the Pauline
concept of the Christianas a "new creature":
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation; the old has passed away, behold, the
new has come" (2 Cor. 5:17). This is the
Christianconcept of the qualitativelynew, the
newness which breaks out of the crisis of the
past and rejects forever what has become old.
Was it not this concept that informed the ep-
ochal consciousness at the beginning of the
Modem Age? Do we not see it there expressed
in Christian terms such as "renovatio" or in
profane terms like "rinascita"? Is it not true
that in orderto legitimize the expectationof the
new against the normative horizon of the old,
the Modem Age still had to rely on the category
"re" to show that the new was a reappro-
priation of an original, outdated, or forgotten
truth?Hans Blumenbergargues that prior to its
self interpretation,the self-conception of the
modem age with its claim of inauguerating
history ab ovo did not exist, and that it in fact
made "the concept of an epoch itself a signifi-
cant element of the epoch" (p. 19). If
Blumenberg is correct, does it not stand to
reason that the Christian paradigm of the
conversio (of the new in eschatological form)
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JA U S S
also determinedthis shift in which the meaning
of epoche in antiquityis practicallyreversed?In
other words, does it not stand to reason that the
reinterpretation or "provocativesecularization"
of that paradigmproducedthe shift? In orderto
answerthis question we need to look at the way
the field of images concerningthe advent of the
new shifted in the early Modem Age.
We should turn first to Petrarch, an almost
proverbialwitness to the period shift from the
Middle Ages to the Modem Age. Of course,
like other transitionalfigures, he was unaware
that his own writing as a militanthumanistwas
contributingto epoch-makingchanges and that
he would one day be considered the initiating
force behind the Renaissance. Still his letters
reveal that he was thoroughly conscious of
standing at the beginning of a new age, with
which the DarkAges met theirend. In the letter
he wrote Giovanni Colonna remembering his
stay in Rome in 1341, he suggests using the
victory of Christianityover Rome as a historical
line of demarcationto divide history into two
greatperiods-the classical and the modern. As
a result the decline of the Roman Empire and
cultureaquireda significance analagousto that
held by the birthof Christ in the conception of
history characteristicof the Middle Ages. Thus
the paradigm of Christian chronology legiti-
mized not only a new conception of history but
also the repudiationof the recent "dark ages"
as something that now had to be left behind.
According to Petrarch, just as Christ once
broughtthe light of belief into the darkness in
which the heathen lived, now the light of
classical culture would cast its rays on the
Middle Ages' barbaricdarkness.'9
It was only because the Modem Age rigor-
ously renounced the recent past that it could
describe it as dark and barbaric.But legitimiz-
ing this rejectionand with it the self-conception
of modernity (which at this point still claimed
no autonomy) required a return to a more
remote past, an ideal past, an antiquitybrought
back from the depths of time. This necessity
then accounts for the emergence of the cyclical
view of rebirth (rinascita) among the early
Modems. But from the beginning that image
had to compete with other metaphors such as
"return from exile" or "resurrection." (The
latter especially makes the paradigm of the
Pauline conversio comprehensible by portray-
Tradition, Innovation, and Aesthetic Experience
ing the advent of the new as an irreversible
process.) This lies behind Ulrich von Hutten's
joyous exclamation at living here and now in a
newly created world. That familiar quotation,
"O saeculum! 0 litterae! iuvat vivere, etsi
quiescere nondum iuvat"20 has become a pro-
totype of the emphatic conception of epochs in
the Modem Age. It presupposes not only the
resurrectionto new life but also the death of the
old (Romans 6:4)-a rejection of the past that
outdoes the classical gesture of triumph:"Heus
tu, accipe laquium, exilium prospice."21 Thus
the Reformation began with an ostentatious
destructionof the old that sanctioned the new
message: On the morning of December 10th,
1520 Luther burned along with the bill of
excommunication the Decretum Gratiani and
the papal decretals-the books of canon law
among Catholic Christianity; "Tradition had
been executed."22
As I previously suggested, we can distin-
guish antiquity and modernity according to the
epistemological precedence of the old over the
new and the new over the old respectively. This
holds at least if we count the Modem Age as
beginning with Descartes, who by providingthe
categories of methodical doubt and necessary
existence (the concept of an absolute beginning
whose origins lie in its own nature)helped the
Modem Age achieve self-understanding .23 If
my suggestion holds, then the Christianpara-
digm of the new, which changes everything
both in the world-through Christ's incarna-
tion-as well as in the individual-through his
conversion-would have predeterminedthe ep-
ochal shift to the Modem Age. Moreover, as a
latent pattern,it even anticipatedthe priorityof
the new in the subsequentpolitical and aesthetic
revolutions which rejected all tradition, espe-
cially the Christian. In this process involving a
continuing and accelerating development of
ever shorter periods, aesthetic expectation has
repeatedly gone ahead of the historical experi-
ence of the new. ReinhartKoselleck has shown
this to be the case with the greatperiodconcepts
of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the
Reformation;Poetik und HermeneutikXII has
done the same for the nineteenth-centuryperiod
concepts which, as it turns out, were also
derived from the history of literature, art, and
style. In what was often a long process of
acceptance, these period concepts were at first
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381
more or less literarily or aesthetically con-
ceived, then accepted historically, and finally
pragmaticallyapplied. One might want to speak
here of a historical avant-gardism in aesthetic
experience, a point that is underlined by the
very history of avant-garde: This military met-
aphor, which became very fashionable around
the middle of the nineteenth century,24 itself
had literary and aesthetic origins. Etienne
Pasquier used it first to describe the develop-
ment of Frenchpoetry in the Renaissance: "Ce
fut une belle guerre que l'on entreprit alors
contre l'ignorance, dont j'attribue l'avantgarde
a Sceve, Beze et Pelletier; ou si vous voulez
autrement, ce furent les avant-coureurs des
autres Poetes."25
Even when one looks at how the definition of
epoch has changed from the old chronological
concept to the modem historical one, one sees
that the shift in meaning, which occured during
the transition from the eighteenth to the nine-
teenth century (Koselleck: "Sattelzeit"), was
actually anticipatedin literarydocumentsof the
Enlightenment. Since the sixteenth century,
epoch has become an increasingly significant
concept for reckoning time, because it allows
one to structure the series temporum around
importantdates. In Bossuet's universal history,
announcedwith the new subtitleLes epoques ou
la suite des temps, epoch acquires the signifi-
cance of a great event: "ainsi, dans l'ordre des
siecles, il faut avoir certains temps marquespar
quelque grand evenement auquel on rapporte
tout le reste." Yet having noted how great
events mark off the new, Bossuet immediately
ties this into the classical meaning of epoch as a
stopping or resting point. He claims that from
the vantage point of a great event, the historian
can survey both what comes before and after
without being misled by anachronisms:
c'est ce qui s'appelle 6poque, d'un mot grec qui
signifie s'arrqter, parce qu'on s'arrqte la pour
considerer comme d'un lieu de repos tout ce qui est
arrive devant ou apres, et eviter par ce moyen les
anachronismes,c'est-a- dir, cette sorte d'erreurqui fait
confondre les temps.26
The article in D'Alembert's encyclopedia
adopts this definition almost verbatim, and
mentions the rule, so useful for the historical
chronology, of using the concept of epoch
properly-neither too much nor too little.
Moreover, noting that the division of epochs is
382
purely arbitraryand that there is no astronomi-
cal reason for choosing one epoch over another,
the article expresses little surprise that nations
disagree about how to distinguish the differ-
ent epochs. However, this understanding of
"epoch" is not the end of the story. We need to
look at how two other writers use the word in
order to grasp something of its still hidden
character:Thus far "epoch" has been defined
by the point in time that allows one to demar-
cate periods, but from now on it will be fixed by
the initialevent which ushersin the new through
an irreversible"revolution"!
"Epoch" is first used this way not in Kant(in
the "conflict of [academic] faculties" over the
"epoch-makinginfluence" of the revolutionof
1789) but in Diderot ("Sur la princesse
d'Ashkow"): "ce projet fera 6poque."27 It
includes the meaning of "epoch" as an event
that produces something new: something that
cannot be derived from the old and tracedback
to what "has always been there." Likewise
Rousseau, in his "Discours sur l'inegalite parmi
les hommes" (1755), called the crisis that
broughtthe state of natureto an end, and thus
had a decisive influence on the course of all
future events, an epoch-making event par ex-
cellence: "Ce fut 'a l'epoque d'une premiere
revolution qui forma l'etablissement et la dis-
tinctiondes familles, et qui introduisitune sorte
de propriete;d'ou peut-9trenaquirentdeja bien
des querelles et des combats."28 Epoch and
revolution enter here into a new relationship:
the cyclical-astronomicalunderstandingof "ep-
och" as a point of rest and reversiblemovement
is itself reversedso thatan epoch begins with an
initial and unique revolution which irreversibly
decides the further fate of mankind.29 This
historicized conception informs the specifically
modem consciousness of time and epochs that
we find at the beginningof the transitionperiod.
Later, there is a further shift in meaning: the
German idealists, in their philosophies of his-
tory, expand the new consciousness of epochs
through the transcendentalconstruction of the
"Epochs of Consciousness." Accordingto this
conception, epochs no longer succeed one an-
other but diverge. The historical school subse-
quently conceived of them as self-contained
periods; since then they have formed the foun-
dation for the periodization of history.30 By
extending the mere point in time to an initiating
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JA U S S
event, the modem concept of epoch allows one
to conceive the split between the new and the
old in dialectical terms. This can be seen in
Hegel's concept of "objective spirit," which
explains the history of mankindin terms of one
unifying principle expressing itself in manifold
political and culturalmanifestations.
In the wake of the increasingly rapid devel-
opmentof industrialand democraticsociety that
came with the nineteenthcentury, this idealistic
concept of objective spirit lost its persuasive
power. The concept proved to be retrospective,
and as such well suited for understandingthe
past as successive phases in the developmentof
consciousness towardemancipation,but not for
understandingthe rapidly changing present. At
the end of the Romanticperiod, historicismwas
joined by an aesthetic consciousness that could
deal freely with the whole of the past
(Benjamin'smus e imaginaire). The succession
of self-contained periods devolves into the co-
existence of competingmovementsthatrise and
fall in rapidsuccession. The primacyof the new
is posited as absolute; the modernity of the
period since Baudelaire is conceived of as an
experience in which the new sets itself off not
from the old but only from itself, in which every
modernitybrings forth its own antiquit,.
III.
In the period of modernitysince Baudelaire,
no critic of culturehas questioned the aesthetic
(and epistemological) preference for the new
more decisively than Walter Benjamin.3' The
new and the never-changing are for Benjamin
disguised categories of historical illusion and
the task of a marxistphilosophy of history is to
uncover their unrecognized correlation: "The
destructionof historical illusion must result in
the same process as the construction of the
dialectical picture" (WA V. 2, 1251). Here, in
this early note, Benjamin expressed an idea he
hoped to develop in the Passagenwerk: he
would use Nietzsche's idea of an eternal repe-
tition of the same (in which the historicism of
the nineteenthcentury overturnsitself [8a, 3]),
to oppose both the moral Amor fati and the
modern aesthetics of the Nouveaute. Under-
stood in this way, Baudelairewould have all at
once revealed the false consciousness of a
modernityenamoredof progress, as Benjamin's
Tradition, Innovation, and Aesthetic Experience
materialist reading of Fleurs du Mal would
prove:
Modernity, the period of hell. The punishmentsof hell
are in each case the newest thing that exists in this
sphere. The concern is not with the fact that 'again and
again the same' occurs (a fortiori the eternal returnis
not what is meant here). It is ratherthat the face of the
earth, precisely in what is new, never changes, that
what is newest always remains the same in all of its
parts. Thatconstitutesthe eternityof hell. To determine
the totality of the traces by which modernity reveals
itself would mean representinghell (p. 1.5; PP I, G 17).
Now, of course, the contemporary reception
already demonstratedthat Baudelaire's friends
took measures to oppose the charge of immo-
rality by trying to vindicate the writerof Fleurs
du Mal as the "Dante of the decadent era":
"c'est du Dante athee et moderne, du Dante
venu apresVoltaire" (J 3a, 1). And in his newly
seen "landscape of ennui" there definitely
appears a "death-like Idylle" of the city in
many facets" (WA V. 2, 55). Yet the aspect of
hell by no means does justice to all of the traces
of modernism in Baudelaire's major work.
Fleurs du Mal also leads the reader-if I may
retain the Dantesque frame of reference-
througha modernpurgatory32and opens up for
him in the contrasting "landscape of ec-
stasy,"33 unhopedfor resting places of remem-
brance and artistic paradise. The experience of
the new and the newest (which is by no means
permanent and necessary) thereby suddenly
changes again into the same and never-changing
or into the oldest (the "pre-history" Benjamin
sought for). Baudelaire's aesthetics of Nou-
veaute maintains its moral claim with the atti-
tude of an exploratory curiositas, which al-
though sometimes disappointedis nevertheless
indomitable. For Benjaminthe closing verse of
the poem in Fleurs du Mal, "Au fond de
l'inconnu pour trouver de nouveau," reveals
the new as the "origin of illusion" and the
"quintessence of false consciousness" (V 1,
55). But against this, one can argue that
Baudelaire renewed here a famous Dantesque
paradigm:the last journey that leads Odysseus,
unconcernedwith heaven and hell, beyond the
limits imposed on man, the antipodes of the
ancient world. Thus Baudelaire provocatively
quotes: "Nous voulons, tant ce feu nous bruile
le cerveau, / Plonger au fond du gouffre, Enfer
ou Ciel, qu'importe?" It is precisely the new
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383
that makes the old quotable again for
Baudelaire. The new revives a dead past. This
is what his fashion paradigm shows (Ed. PI.
837ff.) and it is this basic impulse that
Benjamin failed to see. The hermeneuticfunc-
tion of the aesthetics of Nouveaute allows
Baudelaire to complete the shift from histori-
cism to aestheticism. It thus contradicts Ben-
jamin's concept of the regression of modernity
back to its "pre-history," but by the same token
it corresponds to his theory of the present
momentof recognizability. But to his own loss,
Benjaminfailed to use it to buttresshis position.
Benjamin's approachto a "pre-historyof the
nineteenth century" provoked a serious objec-
tion from Adorno: "The phrase that 'the new
immerses itself in the old' is to me highly
suspect from the point of view of my critiqueof
the dialectical image as a regression. In this
phrase one does not reach back for the old;
instead, the new is, as illusion and phantasma-
goria, itself the old" (WA V. 2, 1132). This
criticism has a kernel of truth. After all, at one
point, Benjamin himself offers a reformulation
of his main thesis in which he rejects the idea of
an archeology of the nineteenth century. He
repudiatesthe search for prime historicalforms,
the archetypes of collective unconscious, as
methodologically inappropriatefor producing a
pre-history. Instead he suggests that "the con-
cept of a pre-historyof the nineteenth century
has meaning only where it is to be presentedas
an original form of that pre-history, that is a
form in which all of pre-history groups itself
anew in images peculiarto the last century" (N
3a, 2). His point-at least on my reading-is
that our modern age has its specific pre-history
in the preceding century. In other words, the
nineteenth century, with its initial appearance
of uncontrollabletechnology, is the pre-history
of what is to come; it is the "clasical antiquity"
of modernity! On this reading then, the naive
belief in progress, the new as mere sensation,
would be nothing more than the dream form of
the event found in the collective consciousness:
"The dreaming collective knows no history.
The course of events, always the same and
always the newest, flows by it. The newest, the
most modernas mere sensation, is just as much
a mode of dreaming the event as the eternal
returnof the same" (S 2, 1; PP I, M14). The
moment when one awakens from the collective
384
dream and the historical illusion dissolves
would then be characterized as Baudelaire's
"moment of waking." This is identical to
Benjamin's "presentmoment" of recognizabil-
ity (N 18, 3) "in which things put on their
true-surrealistic-mask" (N 3a, 3). From this
it follows thatin the dialecticalimages of Fleurs
du Mal "the past unites with the present to
become immediatelya constellation" (N 2a, 3),
and moreover, thatFleurs du Mal allows one to
see the present alreadyas an anticipationof the
future-the present Paris already as the ruin of
middle-class society and capitalist culture.
If one accepts this reading, then the forced
attempts to show that Fleurs du Mal portrays
modernityas permeatedby (classical) antiquity
become superfluous, and the charge that the
absence of a conflict with classical antiquity
weakened Baudelaire's theory of modernity
falls by the wayside.34 If only Benjamin had
graspedthis, his Passagenwerkcould have then
embodied Maxime Du Camp's overwhelming
idea: "d'ecrire sur Paris ce livre que les
historiens de l'antiquiten'ont pas ecrit sur leur
villes." But although the Passagenwerk, with
its "mythological topography" postulating
Paris' decline, did not do justice to Du Camp's
greatinsight, Benjaminnonethelessplaced great
emphasis on it. In the chapter "Antikisches
Paris, Katakomben, demolitions, Untergang
von Paris," Benjamin recounts how Du Camp
was thus inspired to write his great factual
account Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa
vie dans la seconde moitie du XIXe si'cle (1st
ed. 1868). While waiting for his glasses to be
repaired, Du Camp suddenly realized he had
grown old. It was then, while meditatingon the
Pont Neuf about "cette loi de l'inevitable de-
struction qui gouverne toute chose humaine,"
that he had a sudden inspiration.As the crown-
ing achievement of his mature years he would
write the book about Paris that could have been
written about the fallen cities of antiquity:the
book that during the age of Pericles could have
been written about Athens or during Ceasar's
lifetime could have been writtenabout Rome.35
This is not simply "the highly characteristic
classical inspiration," because, more than that,
it anticipatesthe decline of the modern interna-
tional city. Benjamin returns to this in a later
entry: "The fantasies about the decline of Paris
are an indicationthat technology was not being
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JA U S S
responded to. Through these fantasies blind
consciousness exclaims that with the develop-
ment of large cities, the means increased of
razing them to the ground" (C7a, 4). The
modem reader would have been better served,
if Benjamin, with his gift for diagnosing the
preconscious, repressed, or forgotten knowl-
edge buried in the mythic realm of tradition,
had takenthis insight into the underlyingpathos
and made it the main focus of his pre-historyof
coming modernity! This insight, fully devel-
oped, could have been the test of his theory of
the dialectical image. He could have demon-
strated- or rathertried to demonstrate-how a
historianpracticingthe new dialectical method
is able to "go throughthe past with the intensity
of a dream in order to reach the present as the
waking world the dreamrefers to" (PP I; F, 7).
This dialectical method of history Benjamin
proposes is supposed to be the "Copernican
revolution" thatputs "contemplationon trial."
The theory behind it presupposes that in the
"present moment of recognizability" we con-
ceive the past in terms of what it determinesin
the present. However-and here is the dialecti-
cal move-the moment of waking dispells the
illusion of epic continuity (the traditionof the
victor [PP I, 081]), thus enabling us to recog-
nize the constellation of present time and his-
tory (N 18, 4). It is this that makes possible the
dialectical shift to political action (PP I, 056).
Benjamin's understandingof the presentmo-
ment of recognizabilityanticipates the aesthet-
ics of reception by thirty years. According to
Benjamin a dialectical image "is that in which
the past suddenly unites with the present mo-
ment to become a constellation" (N 2a, 3). He
subsequently explains this definition in this
way: "The historical index of images, namely,
says not only that they belong to a particular
period, more than anythingelse it says that they
only become readable in a particularperiod."
(N 3, 1). He does not just incidentally under-
stand "recognizability" as "readability" here;
he goes on to say, "Every historical moment
conceived of as possibility frees possibilities in
history. Every possibility of history that is freed
comes to the aid of possibilities in the
present."36 This expectation is realized most
clearly in literarytexts; every extensive history
of receptionreveals that not every question can
be put to every text at all times: These questions
Tradition, Innovation, and Aesthetic Experience
can only be determined progressively. The
wealth of significance a text has can only be
recognized over time. After all, with the pas-
sage of time, the horizon of experience shifts-
often against tradition. And that shift in turn
changes the way the text's possible meanings
are read and understood. What Benjamin says
here is clearly analogous to the subsequent
aesthetics of reception. In fact in his essay on
Fuchs, Benjamin writes:
a posthistory, by means of which its (art's) prehistory
as if in constant change is also recognizable. They
teach him how art's function of outliving its creator
enables it to leave his intentions behind; how the
response from his contemporariesis part of the effect
that the work of arthas on us today, and how this effect
rests on the encounternot only with him, but also with
history which has allowed it to progress up to the
present day (WA 11.2, 467).
As a result of this, Benjamin demands that the
historical dialectician "be aware of the critical
constellationin which precisely this fragmentof
the past occurs at precisely this presentmoment
in time."
This demand, understood in terms of the
dialectic of aura and trace, could be articulated
in such a way that it would indeed be a
"Copernican shift"-and would be fully con-
sonant with receptiontheory:contemplatingthe
past gives way to reappropriatingit in the
present. The contemplativeattitudewould thus
be understood as directed towards the appear-
ance of something distant, in which the aura
gains control over us. The dialectical attitude,
on the other hand, would be understood as
directedtowardsthe productivereappropriation
in the present of the distant in which
"rememberance" (Eingedenken) attempts to
gain control of an object (in the critical constel-
lation that a conscious appropriationof the past
requires, but where it is not enough that "the
present casts its light on the past" [N 2a, 3]).
Benjamin nevertheless did not draw this con-
clusion. Instead, he apparently attempted to
preserve an auratic moment in the "present
moment of recognizability". The definition-
"image is thatin which the past suddenlyunites
with the present moment to become a constel-
lation"-is explained abruptly and at first
unclearly: "Image is dialectic at rest" (Bild ist
Dialektik im Stillstand: N 2a, 3). But this is
puzzling-especially given his anticipation of
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385
reception theory. In the productiveresponse to
art works the dialectic does not come to rest: the
present moment of readability implies other
future moments of readability. Why should
history be any different? Apparently because
here, where the shift occurs from the aesthetic
to the political, a theological paradigm was
called on for assistance: the messianic freezing
of the event (WA 1.2, 703). But why should
history be frozen, with what hope, to what
ends?
Perhapsthe answer to this puzzle lies in the
fact that the "present moment of recognizabil-
ity" has aesthetic origins, and the "moment of
waking" theological ones. In both concepts the
opposition between trace and aurareturnswith-
out finding a final dialectical solution: "The
trace is the appearanceof proximity, as distant
as what it left behind may be. The aura is the
appearance of a distance, as near as what
produces it may be. In the trace we are in
control of the matter;in the aurait takes control
over us" (M 36,4). For this reason Gerhard
Kaiser has correctly remarkedwith respect to
the GeschichtsphilosophischenThesen and the
essay on Fuchs that Benjamin's "conception of
heliotropism was taken from art and cultural
history, namely the response to works and
texts. "37 In fact the expectation latent in the
past correspondsto the meaning hidden in the
work, which waits to become evident in the
light of later works; or as Benjamin put it: "As
flowers turntheir head to follow the sun, so the
past by means of a secret type of heliotropism
turnsto face the sun that is rising in the heavens
of history" (1.2, 694). Thus Benjamin could
also say that "The response to great and much
admired art works is an ad plures ire"' (N 7a,
4), equating aesthetic experience with a reli-
gious conception (in Rome the phrasemeant the
dead!) that speaks for itself. Moreover,
Benjamin's previously mentioned demand on
the historical dialectician also has aesthetic
origins. Benjamin makes the demand in the
Fuchs essay after discussing works of art as
examples that integratetheir prehistorywith the
history of their reception.
Now as for the moment of waking, the
"GeschichtsphilosophischenThesen" make the
reliance on messianic theology quite visible:
"The past carries a temporal index with it that
refers to it to redemption. . . . We were
386
expected on earth. With every race that pre-
ceded us we were given a weak messianic
power to which the past has a claim" (II). Here
Benjamin short-circuited the paradigm of an
aestheticsof receptionwith thatof theology: the
redemption of the past takes the place of the
work from which the interpreterderives its
hithertounnoticed significance for the present.
The messianic power nevertheless provides
more thanjust the interpreter.It should not stop
with freeing a work from the work of a lifetime
or its era, or with liberating a particularepoch
from the homogeneous course of history; it
should continue "until the whole past in an
historical apokatastasis is brought into the
present" (N la, 3). This hope, however, has a
stipulation:"Admittedly, redeemedmankindat
first receives the bruntof his past. That means
that it is only for redeemed mankind that the
past becomes quotablein each of its moments"
(III). In the end, however, this stipulation is
withdrawnagain in a heightened determination
of the coincidence between presentmoment and
history. Not just a final state in the future,every
lived and frozen moment can already be the
final judgement for the salvation of mankind
(III) or-as in the case of the Jews to whom it
is forbiddento peer into the future- "the small
gate through which the messiah can enter"
(XVIII B).
If here-as Gerhard Kaiser remarked-the
resurrectionof history should fulfill a hope that
Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Bloch set
in a resurrection of fallen nature, then
Benjamin's solution is purchased with a final
contradiction:the "present moment of recog-
nizability" and the "moment of waking" can
no longer be mediateddialectically. The present
moment of recognizability presupposes con-
scious access, even the seizure of the trace, in
order to gain control of the object-the lost,
repressed experience. The present moment of
waking, on the other hand, is not accessible to
the historical subject. It presupposesa decisive
moment (Kairos), the intangible opening up of
the gate through which the messiah can enter,
thus "the appearance of a distance, so near
what causes it may be." This contradictionruns
throughthe whole Passagenwerk as well as the
"Geschichtsphilosophischen Thesen." Ben-
jamin cannot decide whether to use active or
passive images to explicate "the present mo-
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JA U S S
ment of recognizability": "Blasting out a piece
of the past" (XVII) is opposed to "receiving
the past as a gift" (III), the violent "tiger's leap
into the past" (XIV) to the nonviolent "remem-
brance" (XVIII B), the critically destructive
quoting (N 11, 3) to the redeeming quotability
(III), the freed fragment to the monadological
structureof the historical object (N1O,3), and
this in its singularityin turnto the apokatastasis
of the whole past (N1A,3), finally the messi-
anic, though weak, power given to us (II) is
opposed to waiting for the coming of a greater
force. But when all the historian(or any agent)
can do is kindle the sparksof hope in the past,
not in the future (VI), what can waiting
achieve?
We cannot expect a solution to this contra-
diction either in the incomplete Passagenwerk
or in the extensive essays. Perhapsthis is one of
the reasons why the text-and along with it the
plan WalterBenjaminspent his life pursuing-
never achieved the auratic form of a 'work'
and-in accordance with his insight into the
dialectic between trace and aura-could never
have achieved it. Nevertheless, it is a unique
commentaryon a period of calamity which may
well be the prehistoryof the presentfin de sie-
cle. It is a document of a "search for time
past," that was a search for the lost future.,"38
Moreover, it gives a clear-sighted prognosis:
"The concept of progress is to be groundedin
the idea of catastrophe.That it continues 'in this
way,' is the catastrophe"(N 9a, 1). As such, it
leaves behind a large trace that we should
respond to when it is once again necessary for
us to determine the relationshipbetween tradi-
tion and innovation in the "present moment of
recognizability."
IV.
"Ii faut commencerpar le commencement!"
I have shown elsewhere what hopes and disap-
pointments, what happy expectations and pain-
ful experiences this motto has produced in
recent history.39Todaythe privilege of the new
is questioned more decisively than ever before.
It is burdened with the unrealizable duty of
justifying not the preservationof tradition but
its change. "Saving the past" now counts as the
ultimatein wisdom. Nonetheless, the indispens-
able role of aesthetic experience has always
Tradition, Innovation, and Aesthetic Experience
been, and should continue to be, creating ex-
pectations-creating them in orderto reveal and
test what is thinkableor desirable, if not quite
recognizable or readily justifiable. The literary
historianshould rememberthis. Creatingexpec-
tations is, in my opinion, the obligation of the
contemporaryarts. Only those who confuse this
obligation's necessarily provisionalmoral char-
acter with aesthetic indifference can contest it.
To put faith in this privilege of aesthetic expe-
rience, precisely under the fatal conditions of a
new Fin de Siecle at the end of the second
millenniumpost Christumnatum, seems to me
more promising than a return to the old, ante
Christum natum concept of epoche. Indeed,
such countermovementsinvolve us in aporias.
Both Heidegger's history of being and Ben-
jamin's theology of history make this clear.
According to Heidegger one should consider
thatevery epoch in history "is one thatinvolves
the 'Ansichhalten'(withholding/ epoche) of the
truthof being." 40 According to Benjamin, on
the otherhand, every epoch needs a "messianic
stopping of the event." Only then can it over-
come progress or the period of decline, which
are two sides of the same coin-or in his words,
"the past completely devolves upon the re-
deemed mankind."41 Prophets on the right,
prophetson the left-who will blame the child
of the world who, findinghimself in the middle,
mistrusts the pausing of truth as well as the
stopping of history and instead sets his hope in
the quiet power of what are, if no longer
absolute, then perhaps modest beginnings?
'O. Marquard,SkeptischeMethode im Blick auf Kant,
3rd ed. (Freiburg:1982), p. 47.
2Cf. "Ursprungund Bedeutungder Fortschrittsideein
der 'Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes"' in Die
Philosophie und die Frage nach dem Fortschritt, VIII
Deutscher Kongre fur Philosophie (Munchen 1962), ed.
H. Kuhn and F. Wiedmann (Munich: 1964), pp. 51-72;
"LiterarischeTraditionund gegenwartiges Bewultsein der
Modernitat," in Literaturgeschichte als Provokation,
(Frankfurt:1970), pp. 11-66; "Der literarischerProzel des
Modernismus von Rousseau bis Adorno," in Adorno-
Konferenz 1983, ed. K. v. Friedburg and J. Habermas
(Frankfurt:1983 [stw 460]), pp. 95-130.
3 This quote is from the second of his essays on
Leonardoda Vinci. See Paul Valery, edition de la Pleiade,
vol. I (Paris 1957), p. 1210.
4 According to Th. W. Adorno, "U ber Tradition," in
Ohne Leitbild. Parva Aesthetica. (Frankfurt: 1967), pp.
29-41.
5 In Plato's "Symposium" (207a-208b) Diotima's
comparison between the reproduction of animal and of
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387
spirituallife demonstratesthis. Thus Hans- Georg Gadamer
comments: "Just as there it is always a new creature that
continues the preservation of the species, so it is also
apparently with human knowledge that it must always
acquire new relevance if it should exist at all." H.-G.
Gadamer, "Unterwegs zur Schrift?" in Schrift und
Gedachtnis, ed. Aleida Assman, Jan Assmann and Chr.
Hardmeier(Munich: 1983), p. 16.
6 See in this context my interpretation of Apollinaire's
programmaticpoem "Zone" in "Die Epochenschwelle von
1912" in Sitzungsberichteder Heidelberger Akademie der
Wissenschaften,Phil.-hist. Klasse, vol I, 1986.
7 Op. cit. (fn. 4), I, 1172.
8 See Erich Auerbach, Dante: Poet of the Secular
World,trans. RalphMannheim(Chicago: 196 1)-Dante als
Dichterder irdischen Welt, (Berlin/Leipzig: 1929)-as well
as the passages on Dante in my A sthetische Erfahrungund
literarische Hermeneutik,(Frankfurt:1982).
9 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, vol I: Inferno,
trans. with a commentary by Charles S. Singleton
(Princeton:1970), p. 279. The Italianoriginal is as follows:
"'0 frati,'dissi, 'che per cento milia / pergli siete giunte a
l'occidente, / a questa tanto picciola vigilia / di nostri sensi
ch'e del rimanente/ non vogliate negar l'esperienza, / di
retro al sol, del mondo sanza gente. / Consideratela vostra
semenza:/ fatti non foste a viver come bruti,/ ma per seguir
virtute e canoscenza."'
'0 Oeuvres, ed. de la Pleiade (Paris: 1951), pp. 680ff.
" Das Passagenwerk (see fn. 33), vol. 1, pp. 1135,
271, 273.
12 With reference to his critique on the abstractionof
aesthetic consciousness in Wahrheit und Methode
(libingen: 1980), p. 81.
13 The text of the following section was originally
writtenfor the colloquium 'Epochenschwelle und Epochen-
bewultsein". For further treatmentof this topic see vol.
XII of Poetik und Hermeneutik, ed. R. Herzog and R.
Koselleck (Munchen: 1987), esp. pp. 563ff. The text of the
subsequent section III has been taken from a work "Spur
und aura-Bemerkungen zu Walter Benjamins Passagen-
werk" in Art social undArt industriel,ed. H. Pfeiffer et. al.
(Munchen: 1987).
14 H. Blumenberg,The Legitimacyof the ModernAge,
trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge, Mass.: 1983), p.
469. Aspekte der Epochenschwelle-Cusanerund Nolaner
(Frankfurt:1976), p. 20. References to page numbers will
be made in the text. I have made slight changes in some of
the English quotations (STG). See also "Epochenschwelle
und Rezeption," in Philosophische Rundschau 6 (1958),
pp. 94-120.
15 In English, p. 148. For the quotationin German see
SakularisierungundSelbstbehauptung(Frankfurt:1974), p.
170.
16 Vergangne Zukunft-Zur Semantik geschichtlicher
Zeiten, (Frankfurt:1979), pp. 355ff.
17 F. Noack, Triumph und Triumphbogen, Vortrage
der Bibliothek WarburgV (Leipzig: 1928), pp. 150ff.
18 J. Moltman, Artikel, "Neu, das Neue" in Histori-
cal Worterbuchder Philosophie, vol. 6, ed. J. Ritterand K.
Grunder(BasellStuttgart:1984).
19 For a more extensive discussion with references see
JauI, Literaturgeschichteals Provokation, pp. 23-29, here
p. 25.
388
20 Oh, this century!Oh, the cultivationof literature.It
is a pleasure to live and no longer to rest.
21 Harkthou, accept the yoke and look forwardto your
exile.
22 According to M. Fuhrmann, "Die Falschung im
Mittelalter," in Historische Zeitschrift 197 no. 3 (1963):
549.
23 See H. Blumenberg (fn. 15), p. 145 (Engl.) and p.
164 (Germ.).
24 Especially through the followers of Saint-Simon.
See H. B6hringer, "Avantgarde-Geschichte einer Meta-
pher" in ArchivfiurBegriffsgeschichte22 (1978): 90-114.
25 Tresor de la langue francaise, vol. 3, ed. P. Imbs
(Paris: 1974), p. 1057.
26 "Discours sur l'histoire universelle" in Oeuvres
completes de Bossuet, vol. 24 (Paris: 1875), p. 262.
27 See the P. Robert's Dicionaire alphabetique et
analogique de la langue francaise (Paris: 1963), epoque
(no. 6).
28 OeuvresCompletes, vol. 3, ed. B. Gagnebinand M.
Raymond (Paris: 1964), 167.
29 Blumenberg(see fn. 1, p. 165, fn. 6) comments on
an analagous passage in Voltaire: "I' s'est fait depuis
environ quinze ans une revolution dans les esprits qui sera
une grande6poque."
30 See M. Riedel's article "Epoche, Epochen-
bewuptsein" in Historisches Worterbuchder Philosophie,
vol. 3, ed. J. Ritter, p. 598.
31 Quoted from Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte
Schriften(Werkausgabe= 3) in vol. V. 1-2: Das Passagen-
werk (Frankfurt:1982), (from the "Aufzeichnungen und
Materialien" with abbreviation and page number, from
"Ersten Entwurfe" with the abbreviationPP I and page
number);Baudelaire,Oeuvre, ed. de la Pleiade, Paris 1951.
32 Baudelaire himself defended his book with the
argumentthat in its "terrible moralite" it would be mis-
judged if one did not take his principleof composition into
account:"A un blaspheme,j'opposerai des elancementvers
le ciel; a une obscenite, des fleur platoniques . . . Livre
destine a representerl'agitation de l'esprit dans le mal."
See my A sthetische Erfahrung, p. 848.
33 See G. Hess, Die Landschaftin Baudelaires Fleurs
du Mal, (Heidelberg: 1953).
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JAUSS
I A
glance at the themes in Fleurs du Mal contradicts
Benjamin'sassertionthat "Classical antiquityin Baudelaire
is Roman. Only at one point does classical Greece standout
in his world" (WA I. 2, 593). The poem "Le Cygne," for
Benjamin a prototype for the merging of modernity with
classical antiquity, quotes Andromache, Lesbos, and the
Femmes damnees Sappho, Delphine and Hippolyte. What-
ever else may seem to belong to classical antiquityrefers to
a mythical preworld: "j'aime le souvenir de ces 6poques
nues, La vie anterieure, La Geante." With this the cata-
logue is alreadyat an end. The dandy as "last gleam of the
heroic in times of decadence" (WA 1.2, 599) may only
compensate for this with difficulty. This negative conclu-
sion could not have been expected any differently if one
takes the provocative phrase from the Salut publique more
seriously than Benjamindid, althoughhe places him at the
end of Das Paris des Second Empire bei Baudelaire: "No
more tragedies!Enoughof the old history of ancientRome!
Do we not stand larger today than Brutus did?" (Ibid., p.
604).
35 The inspiration of the anticipated decline of the
world city does not yet occur in the preface, but only much
later at the end of the Du Camp's work. See Karlheinz
Stierle's revealing comments in his latest book Die
Lesbarkeitder Stadt, (Munich: 1988).
36 G. Kaiser, "Benjamin's 'Geschichtsphilosop-
hischenThesen".'inAntithesen-Zwischenbilanz einesGerman-
isten (Frankfurt:1973), pp. 241-42. See also Peter Szondi,
"Hoffnung im Vergangenen. Uber Walter Benjamin"
(1961), in Satz und Gegensatz (Frankfurt:1964).
37 Kaiser noted this in the context of some remarkson
the GeschichtsphilosophischenThesen and the essay on
Fuchs. See G. Kaiser, ibid. 217/8.
38 Szondi, "Hoffnung im Vergangenen" (see fn. 36),
p. 40.
39 In Der literarische Prozed der Modernismus (see
fn. 1).
4 See M. Riedel (fn. 30), p. 599.
41 "GeschichtphilosophischeThesen," II/III. See also
Das Passagenwerk(fn. 33), V. 1, p. 575: "Overcomingthe
concept of 'progress' and the concept of 'decadent age'
(Verfallszeit)areonly two sides of one and the same matter"
(N2,5).