A Labyrinth of Stairs
2020; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/abr.2020.0065
ISSN2153-4578
Autores Tópico(s)Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation
ResumoA Labyrinth of Stairs Robert Kramer (bio) Constellations of Waking Michael Heller Dos Madres Press www.dosmadres.com 162 Pages; Print, $25.00 What is being reviewed here? It is the libretto of an opera. Thus, it implies a further performance beyond the printed page. In its plan it envisages stage settings, the voices of singers, instruments, and pre-recorded texts and video presentations. But these scenes and sounds are not directly available to the reader. Thus, the reviewer can interpret and evaluate only the text at hand; he can deal only with a part, although a major part, of a Gesamtkuntswerk, and yet he may also attempt to imagine what a full-scale production would entail. In the preface Michael Heller states his intention in writing this text. “‘Constellation of Waking’ is an attempt to render specific moments in Walter Benjamin’s life, yet suggest the flavor of the totality that made up his existence.” Walter Benjamin, the major figure in the drama, was a distinguished German-Jewish cultural critic who committed suicide in France in 1940, before he could be captured by the Nazis. His writings are original, far-ranging, and exploratory. Few major thinkers of the twentieth century would be likely to entitle one of their works “Der Enthullte Osterhsase oder Kleine Versteck-Lehre,” (“The Easter Bunny Unveiled or a Little Theory of Hide-and-Seek”), which is precisely the title Benjamin gave to one of his more amusing but also illuminating creations. This is just one small example of Benjamin’s untraditional approaches to philosophical, historical, sociological, linguistic, and literary investigations. Heller provides nineteen pages of introductory material, much of it quite helpful, before we get to the actual text. The preface begins with a personal account of the author’s intellectual and literary development and his first encounter with Benjamin’s thought during a year of self-discovery spent in Spain. Heller then provides a crisp, concise introduction to Benjamin’s life and works, emphasizing his use of montage in historical analysis. Montage, a combination of disparate elements meant to form a unified whole, is employed to reveal “the crystal of the total event in the analysis of the simple individual moment.” In fact, Heller claims that Benjamin’s “use of citations as well as the rearrangement of fragments of letters, instantaneous observations and contingent felicities of phrasing” inspired the construction of his own text. Benjamin, with his “difficult and obstruction-ridden life, its unsettled quality,” “[h]is rejection of certainties, of comforting ideologies and dogmas,” his joy in knowledge and discovery, and his resolute truth-seeking, obviously became a heroic figure in Heller’s eyes, an ethical and intellectual exemplar, especially in view of Heller’s own spiritual wanderings. The preface is followed by a list of characters and a six-page synopsis, both of which are helpful in understanding the text that follows. A preliminary note on the setting describes the somewhat complex technical arrangements for the piece, including video, soundtracks, TV monitors and projectors, screens for the video projections and supertitles, as well as a magic lantern. Each page of text is divided vertically in half: the left column specifies what occurs on stage, the right column indicates the pre-recorded image and text for music and video. Obviously, the audience at an operatic performance would respond to the various aural and visual elements as a single unified experience; but a reader must sometimes spring back and forth between the columns, meanwhile imagining them to be simultaneous. In the prologue, the video voice in the right column describes Benjamin’s arduous journey while fleeing through France to the Spanish border in 1940, a foreshadowing of the final phase of Benjamin’s life. Scene I takes place in Berlin in 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I. Benjamin’s cynical friend Bellmore mocks him and urges Benjamin to “lift your head from the page…. Consult something real!” In reply Benjamin suggests that they compose an allegorical novella and entitle it Death of the Father, Europe as dying father. They play with this idea until Heinle, another friend of Benjamin’s, enters, looking for his girlfriend. When Heinle runs off...
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