Walter BenjaminHistoricism, literary history[With whom do the adherents of historicism actually sympathize?] The answer is inevitable: with the victor. And all rulers are the heirs of those who conquered before them. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers. Historical materialists know what that means. Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror. They owe their existence not only to the efforts of the great minds and talents who have created them, but also to the anonymous toil of their contemporaries. There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another. A historical materialist therefore dissociates himself from it as far as possible. He regards it as his task to brush history against the grain.-- Walter Benjamin, [from] Thesis X of "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (tr. Lloyd Spencer). The truth is that [literary history] should struggle above all with the works. Their entire life and their effects [Wirkung] should have the right to stand alongside the history of their composition. In other words, their fate, their reception by their contemporaries, their translations, their fame. For with this the work is transformed inwardly into a microcosm, or indeed a microeon. What is at stake is not to portray literary works in the context of their age, but to represent the age that perceives them -- our age -- in the age during which they arose. It is this that makes literature into an organon of history; and to achieve this, and not to reduce literature to the material of history, is the task of the literary historian. -- Walter Benjamin, "Literary History and the Study of Literature" [1931]. Selected Writings. Ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. |