The Storyteller

by Walter Benjamin

  The German word for play or game is Spiel. This same word relates to gambling. Der Spieler is a gambler. The activity of gambling and the figure of the gambler appear at various points in Benjamin’s work. Gambling is a decayed form of divination. In his file on ‘Prostitution, Gambling’ in The Arcades Project, Benjamin wonders about the links between the two: ‘Were fortune-telling cards around earlier than playing cards? Does the card game represent a deterioration of soothsaying technique? Perceiving the future is surely decisive in card games, too.’49 In his first sketch for The Arcades Project, Benjamin draws a link between automata and gods.

  In front of the doorway to the ice rink, the local pub at those day-trip resorts, the tennis court: penates. Guarding the threshold: The hen who lays the praline-eggs of gold, the vending machine that punches out our names, machines for games of chance, the automated fortune teller. Strangely enough, such machines do not flourish in the town, but are more likely to be found as something at places where day trips happen, such as beer gardens in the outskirts. And, on a Sunday afternoon, out and about on the hunt for a little greenery, one is also heading to enigmatic thresholds. P.S.: coin-operated automatic scales – today’s gnothi seauton (Know Thyself).50

  In the game, a sporty one perhaps, in the act of gambling, placing the ball in the roulette wheel or laying the card, in divination by cards, entrails or stars, each player is aware of what move to make only at a subliminal bodily level. They mobilise, if they are to be successful, a motor reflex that works below the workings of the conscious mind. This appears as fate and is a communion between body and the order of the world that is present in the story ‘The Lucky Hand’ and that Benjamin returns to again and again. But such a version of things does not send play completely into a mystical realm. And indeed the gambler may misjudge, may make a wrong move, a false play. As Benjamin states, ‘The ideal of the experience formed by shock is the catastrophe. In gambling this becomes very explicit; by persistently raising the stakes, in the hope of retrieving what is lost, the gambler steers toward total ruin.’51 For Benjamin, gambling, as well as fate, has its historical materialist side. One of the striking aspects of nineteenth-century capitalism, as represented in The Arcades Project, is its simultaneous naturalisation and mythologisation of social and historical forces as fate. This took on various forms, such as the language of a seemingly self-propellant rising and tumbling of stocks and shares – a consequence of the misconception (or ignorance) of the value-form, of playing the market, of prophecies of wide-scale destruction. Benjamin quotes from Paul Lafargue’s ‘The Causes of Belief in God’ (1906):

  Today’s economic progress in general inclines ever more to transmute capitalist society into a colossal international gambling house, where the bourgeois wins and loses capital as a consequence of events which remain unknown to him … The ‘inscrutable’ is deified in bourgeois society just as it is in a gambling venue … Triumphs and losses, which are the result of causes that are unexpected, in the main indecipherable, and apparently reliant on chance, predispose the bourgeois to adopt the spiritual condition of the gambler … The capitalist, whose prosperity is bound up with stocks and shares, which are dependent on deviations in market value and yield whose causes he does not understand, is a professional gambler. The gambler, nonetheless … is a highly superstitious type. The habitués of gambling hells always possess magic spells to conjure up the Fates. One will mumble a prayer to Saint Anthony of Padua or some other spirit from the heavens; another will lay his bet only if a specific colour has won; while a third clasps a rabbit’s foot in his left hand; and so on. The inscrutable in society shrouds the bourgeois, just as the inscrutable in nature the savage.52

  Play and playing, toys and mimicry: these crack open the world. But the impulse of play leads back to the dreamworld, to wishing and longing, to the gambler’s yearning to make the greatest win, and it leads back to the desires that both mitigate and make blind to the catastrophe of economic rule. In ‘Verdant Elements’, Benjamin celebrates the attitude of ‘exaggerated exuberance’ in a children’s learning primer written by Tom Seidmann-Freud. Such an attitude informs all of Benjamin’s works of fiction, be it the wild excesses of the early night-dreams and fantasies, the tall tales of wanderers and adventurers and the absurd reasoning in origin myths and riddles. Benjamin wrote the following of the consummate storyteller Proust: ‘He lay on his bed racked with homesickness, homesick for the world, distorted in the state of similarity, a world in which the true surrealist face of existence breaks through.’53 The same can perhaps be said of him and his own fictions.

  PART ONE

  Dreamworlds

  Woman and Beast (Weib und Tier), 1904.

  Fantasy

  CHAPTER 1

  Schiller and Goethe

  A Layman’s Vision

  The Balloon (Der Luftballon), 1926.

  The sky had spread out a select German summer night between the trees. But as during a rococo rendezvous, the moon emitted a discreet yet bright yellow. Curling blossoms trembled down from the trees into the dark moss like yellow strips of confetti. The gigantic outlines of the great literature pyramid towered in the blue darkness. It was cosily uncanny. And now it lay there. Its peak stood out against the clear sky. Shades of green and white – many colours – glowed delicately within the black mountain. E.T.A. Hoffmann shone from an undulating Baroque boulder that protruded half toppled from the mound. The moon illuminated him. At the bottom yawned a black gate. In the uncontrollable twilight, its pillars appeared like Doric columns, Iliad on the one, Odyssey on the other. A white marble staircase glowed halfway up the pyramid. Upon it moved, quick as a monkey, the silhouette of a thin little man who continually called out ‘Gottsched, Gottsched’ in an unspeakably bright voice … so quiet was his call that it was only audible in this fairy tale silence. In the dark depths, as though from an abyss, protruded a desolate heap of rocks. Slopes tore it apart, dirt and snow lay in its crevasses. A harsh wind howled from it. Shadows of kings, sad women, and on a small green patch of grass before a cave, beautiful mist-elves sat in a circle and laughed at a strange lion with baggy fur that roared like a human. I turned around. I felt dreadful that night. I proceeded to the hill of the wise owls. I spun round in a circle three times until I sprayed fire and called out, ‘Wisest owl, Eulenberg, Eulenberg, wisest owl, wisest Eulenberg.’ At first it was totally still, then there was a rustling in the trees. Then I heard a thin, sharp voice calling out from above. ‘Wait!’ A man with a walking stick came down the mountain. The night owls shrieked and fluttered as he advanced. He was wearing a brown frock coat and a beautiful, albeit slightly dented top hat. We did not exchange a single word. He walked ahead. Initially our ascent was quite comfortable. Broad marble steps led us past chasms from which ruined temples jutted forth, echoing with the sad rush of mighty rivers. A portly gentleman sat on a bench by the parapet. Snugly, and with a sour smile, he rubbed his hands. He had a wax tablet and a stylus in front of him. As soon as he saw us, he began to write slowly. ‘Horace – the first man of letters’, noted my guide in a sharp tone of voice. Suddenly I was brought up short. On a ledge I saw a man in a heavily wrinkled toga. One could see that he spoke continuously, his weak body quivering from exhaustion. He appeared to be yelling and yet one could hear no sound. All around him was empty. Terror seized hold of me. ‘Cicero’, whispered my guide. The comfortable steps came to an end. Stony, unruly paths appeared in their stead. The boulders took on strange shapes: slender stone flowers blossomed forth from them. Lining the way were rubble heaps, in front of which stood walls with tall pointed windows. Occasionally an organ sound seemed to become faintly audible. After some time we came upon a road in open country. A tiny little man with a greyish-green hood over his head fled as we approached. Quickly my guide took off his top hat. He wanted to trap the little fellow but he got away. ‘Opitz’, my guide remarked regretfully. ‘I would have liked to have had him for my collection.’ Then we walked for a long time along the dull country r
oad. Suddenly a mountain appeared ahead of us. Upon it we saw, set against the sky, the silhouette of a writing man. He had an enormous sheet before him, and his pen was so long that it seemed to write in the heavens when he moved it. ‘Take off your hat’, I heard the voice beside me say, ‘that is Lessing’. We greeted him, but the mighty figure on the peak did not move. There were dense shrubs at the foot of the mountain. The trees were finely trimmed. Little people moved around on paths like automatic puppets dressed as shepherds and beaus. Many danced around white statues that stood amid the greenery. A faint chirping rang from this party of puppets in the moonlight. But occasionally it was silent and a mighty voice riven with woe and longing and joy could be heard penetrating as far as the stars. ‘Can you hear Klopstock?’ I heard my guide ask. I nodded. ‘We will be there soon,’ he announced.

  We went around the mountain and before us lay another dark plain from which two bright temple-like structures arose. With horror I noted that the immense chasm opened up beside us, with its temple ruins and roaring streams. Along its side swayed a figure, inching closer and closer towards the edge until – finally – it plunged before our eyes. ‘Yes, we have arrived,’ remarked my guide. ‘Did you see Hölderlin?’ Once again, I nodded silently and in terrible fear. The clear air was filled with strange cries. The deep yet beautifully constant tone of the sad streams reverberated from below. The sunken man’s bright, woeful song seemed to mingle with it. From behind our backs resounded Klopstock’s booming song. But the closer we drew to the two tall structures, the lighter it got and the sound began to fade. One structure towered above a tall, irregular boulder: it stood alone. Many people surrounded the other one. Men with large flags and kettledrums and others with feathers and bows sat around it. Screams came from the crowd. A great many lecterns stood all over the place, from which wildly gesticulating people preached. Some bellowed loudly up to the temple, ‘Our Schiller!’, but nobody came. Here my guide turned a corner. Soon we stood before the solitary temple. Hastily, a wizened little man in a tightly buttoned frock coat came hopping down the tall, broad stairs. ‘Haha, our Eckermann’, he giggled. An authoritative and unfriendly glance from my guide made him wince. He led us upwards.

  I felt a quiet tremor in the stone structure under our feet. To my surprise, I simultaneously heard a sound like a distant drone. The farther we climbed up the tall marble steps, the more fiercely the ground shuddered, and the louder the drone echoed. It did not leave us again. As we entered, a dense darkness enveloped us. The mighty noises, which seemed to come not only from the ground but equally from either side of us, shook me. At the same time, I felt a transformation within myself. All my senses seemed to draw new strength from a force located within, which heightened them two- and tenfold. In the dense darkness, I could see; I felt with my eyes. I could feel myself in a large empty room. On every side, there were doors, gates and passages of every conceivable shape and size. Nearest to me was a bulky round doorway. It was tightly boarded up with wooden planks, between which protruded thick iron rods. From inside sounded the muffled ringing of ferocious bells. Further along, an equally wide Gothic gate swung open. Behind it, in the twilight, there appeared to be a room. Bright laughter came from the corridors that led inside. From time to time the figure of a biblical prophet appeared in the strange light; people in brown tails carrying feathers and bows hurried around the room and a young man spoke in a deep, sonorous voice: ‘To be or not to be.’ Aside from that it was silent amid the lively commotion. Magnetic forces seemed to inhabit the depths of the temple. It became hard for us to walk. Ahead of us lay a range of portals – some larger, some smaller – all in a heavy, gold-flourished Baroque or Empire style. They were closed, but from behind them – perceptible amid the subterranean storm – came fine music. And opposite, at a great distance, an open, illuminated room became visible, from which a wealth of marble statues emitted their glow.

  Beside us stood Mephisto. He trod on ahead up some steep, narrow stairs – it may have been a thousand steps. We stood on one of the temple’s elevated platforms. A wide, clear view of the earth spread out before us and we drank it in. But soon a stirring became discernible in this smooth, calm scene. It swelled and grew. The land appeared to surge in great waves. The sky darkened and contracted. It was as if the entire world drew together into this one point with terrifying force. While fleeing, we caught sight of torn laurel leaves strewn on the ground. Behind us resounded Mephisto’s bright laughter. We reached a narrow corridor that continued on for an inestimable distance. Suddenly Mephisto’s voice was with us again. Clearly and scornfully, but in a low voice, he seemed to ask a question: ‘To the mothers?’

  —

  Translated by Sebastian Truskolaski.

  Fragment written c. 1906–12; unpublished in Benjamin’s lifetime. Gesammelte Schriften VII, 636–9.

  CHAPTER 2

  In a Big Old City

  Novella Fragment

  Two Facades (Dwie fasady), 1911.

  There once lived a merchant in a big, old city. His house stood in one of the very oldest parts of town, on a narrow, dirty little alley. And on this alley – where all the houses were so old that they could no longer stand alone and had to lean against each other – the merchant’s house was the oldest. But it was also the biggest. With its mighty, arched doorway and tall, curved windows made up of half-blind bullseye panes, and with the steep roof on which a number of narrow little skylights had been fitted, it looked quite strange – the house of the merchant, the last house on Mariengasse. This was a pious town and many of the houses had beautiful carvings of the holy virgin or some other saint above their doorways or under their roofs. On Mariengasse, too, every house had its saint – only the merchant’s house stood bare and grey without any adornments. Nobody lived in the big house except for the merchant and a small eight-year-old girl. The girl was not his daughter, but she lived with him; he brought her up and the child helped with the housekeeping. But how she came to live in the merchant’s house, nobody really knew. The merchant was not some ordinary grocer from whom the people bought clothes or spices – no! Nor did he keep company with the poor, common residents of his street. Day in and day out, he sat in his large study with the tall cabinets and long shelves and did his accounts and calculations. For his trade extended far across the seas to far-flung, distant lands. At intervals – perhaps once or twice per year – he had to leave his house for an extended period, when his business affairs summoned him far away. At these times, the girl stayed home by herself and took care of the household. One day the merchant-lord stood, once again, before the girl to tell her that he was leaving home for some time. ‘I don’t know when I will return,’ he said. ‘Take care of the house as you have before – but’, he interrupted himself, ‘I see you are old enough now; during my absence you can do as you please in the house. Here, take the keys.’ The girl, who up until this point had stood silently in front of him, gazing wide-eyed at the strange, colourful flowers that were embroidered onto the lord-merchant’s clothes, looked up and took the keys. Suddenly the merchant-lord looked at her with intent. Then he spoke in a stern tone of voice: ‘You know very well that you may use the keys only for the rooms in which you see to the household chores. Never let yourself be tempted to ascend to the upper floor. Do you understand?’ Timidly the girl assented. Then the merchant bowed down, kissed her, looked at her once more with a penetrating gaze, went down the stairs and left the house. The front door slammed shut behind him with a bang. The girl was still standing by the stairs in a daze, gazing at the large bundle of ancient keys that she held in her hand.

  —

  Translated by Sebastian Truskolaski.

  Fragment written c. 1906–12; unpublished in Benjamin’s lifetime. Gesammelte Schriften VII, 635–6.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Hypochondriac in the Landscape

  Aged Phoenix (Invention 9) (Greiser Phönix [Invention 9]), 1905.

  ONLY FOR GROWN–UPS. NERVOUS TYPES – BEWARE!

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p; Above the landscape hung such storm clouds as cause that specific fear of storms among young people known to physicians under a Latin name. It was a gently apprehensive mountain scenery. The path was steep and tiresome; the air was very hot and high temperatures prevailed. A mature man — greyed by the passing of the years – and an adolescent moved as inaudible points through the silence. They carried an empty stretcher. From time to time the gaze of the younger man fell upon the stretcher and his eyes would fill with tears. It was not long before a doleful song streamed forth from his mouth, reverberating from the mountain with a thousand sobs. ‘Red of the morning, red of the morning lights the path to an early death.’1 In the distance, bloody bolts of lightning tinged the sky. Suddenly the singing broke off and was followed by a faint groan. ‘Permit me for a moment’, the young man said to the elder one. He rested the stretcher on the ground, sat down, closed his eyes and folded his hands.

  At the peak of the landscape we find him again. A ruin stood there, overgrown by the green of nature. Storms and tempests roared more fiercely here than elsewhere. The place was created for the indulgence of every conceivable suffering … Special weight was placed on melancholy, which took place between seven and eight o’clock each evening. A valley located in the shadow of the sinking sun turned out to be suitable. Moreover, a box of eyeglasses with black and dark-brown lenses was on hand, which could enhance the melancholia to a state of horror and raise the evening temperature from 37º to a feverish 40º. When the moon was full, 40º was the minimum temperature and a flag was raised to signal mortal danger.