Angelus suspensus. Essays on the patience of angels (5)

A picture is both silent and eloquent.

There is a picture by Paul Klee entitled “Angelus Novus”. Walter Benjamin refers to it in the ninth of his theses on the concept of history, interpreting the subject depicted as the “angel of history”. Benjamin’s thesis, together with Klee’s painting and the verse from Gershom Scholem’s poem that serves as the motto for the thesis, forms a new pictorial configuration, the “angel of history”. Elsewhere, Benjamin uses the term “dialectical image” to describe certain historical and cultural constellations. In these, the viewer is part of the configuration. For such images, in order to come into being, require a viewer who – at the moment of their creation – can “freeze” the image. In this moment, time is, as it were, seized and held by the viewer. What Benjamin calls “dialectic in stasis” is the contemplation of the “limbo over the abyss” that the image shows.

We take up Walter Benjamin’s consideration. We enter into a dialog with his interpretation of the picture. We do not seek historical anchoring – we find dialogical presence. This presence unfolds not only through our individual consideration, but it arises in the interplay between us as the viewers and the picture.

We do this not only as individual viewers, saying “I see a dialectical picture…” and “It shows…”. Rather, we involve each other reciprocally in the observation. This results in a new configuration. And the actuality of our observation is different from that of Klee’s or Walter Benjamin’s. We see the image that the other person shows us based on their observation of the image. This process makes it clear that mediation occurs not only between the observer and the image, but also between the observers themselves. This mediation creates a space in which our perspectives converge and release new insights. It is precisely in this limbo, in which the fixation on a single interpretation is dissolved, that the dialectic image reveals its dynamics: it invites us not only to decode meanings, but also to question our relationship to history and the present.

It is always appealing to engage in mediation as part of a performative presentation as a text, as in the present case. However, this sets a limit to understanding and opens up a new process. This mediates comprehension with aesthetic experience, makes emotional contact. For example, a viewer who is intentionally and conceptually observing the text can react angrily, furiously, when confronted with a mode of observation that does not conform to his or her convention of rational differentiation. Worse still, one that overrides its asserted legitimacy.

As for example in the present essay.

Deliberate provocation can give the impression that the writer is superior to the reader, especially when hermeneutics creates more confusion than openness. In such cases, the performative dimension of the text devalues the reader rather than challenging them and drawing them into a productive dialogue. The intended dialogic mediation is transformed into a hierarchical relationship and the open tension between text and reader into a barrier. However, a subtle and conscious handling of irritation can expand the space for shared cognitive processes. Writing always remains a balancing act between violent transmission and prevailing mediation.

We are interested in what remains in limbo between us in the writing process. To quote Ernst Bloch: the possibilities arising from the reality of the image as its utopian charge (the dynamei on [potentially existing] and the kata to dynaton [according to the potentiality]), which are contained in the experimentum mundi [experiment of the world]. Or, to quote Giorgio Agamben: the now-time possible in reality, possibility as presence, lived together. Ways of life in which relationships between you and you are mediated. These approaches open up a space in which the image and the viewer can together release the potential of the moment. The utopian charge that Ernst Bloch describes in the “experimentum mundi” is not an abstract concept for us, but a tangible possibility that reveals itself in the moment of observation. Likewise, Agamben’s “Jetztzeit” (now-time) opens up a presence that overcomes the static concept of the image and expands it into a dynamic resonance space. Both perspectives intertwine in the viewing of the image by showing the connection between past, present and an open future. Such a utopian charge thus holds unseen potentials that only come to fruition in the dialogue, in the relationship between image and viewer.

It is also important to find an expression for those relationships between viewer and image in which the image becomes a mirror of self-reflection. It is precisely in the interplay between observation and reflection that a space is created in which the boundary between productive self-reflection and a narcissistic escape into the mask becomes visible. We recognize this narcissistic aspect in ourselves; to deny it would be to intensify the narcissistic trait.

A particular aspect that makes masking attractive for narcissists is the gain in pleasure and the need to perfect the mask. This raises the question of how this dynamic affects the perception of images, especially in relation to the dialectical tension between angel and progress. The pleasure of masking is a typical feature of narcissistic personalities. Particular attention is paid to the factors that maintain the stability of the mask: value capital and intensity of identification. These two elements largely determine how long a mask remains stable and what scenarios occur when it breaks down. Furthermore, it is interesting to see how “the catastrophe that relentlessly piles wreckage upon wreckage” (Walter Benjamin) presents itself when the mask breaks apart, and what effect this has on the narcissists.

Confronting narcissism raises the question of whether a shared consideration can defuse this danger by transforming the “I” from its isolated perspective into a “we”. After all, the danger of self-reflection, of solipsistic self-reflection, is inherent in every image viewing, especially in every dialectical one. It also has the dynamics of multistable tilting images, in which the ambiguity is lost through the identifying, defining and fixed observation of the picture puzzle. For example, when the ego of the observer loses its relationship to duality, and thus also to the alienation of the other, which an image effects. Narcissists are incapable of changing in the shared observation together with the other in the we. Perhaps that is why, since Parmenides, every reflection that follows his philosophy denounces the vacillation, the feminine, the “holding in suspense” as a persistence in the undifferentiated, in the undifferentiated – and fights against the process of mediation of the differentiated: That is why systems theorists consider observation and system to be “coextensively or circularly intertwined” (Peter Fuchs), while “fusion anadyticians” (Robert Krokowski) are interested in what is conveyed by the formation of “elliptical configurations”.

A sea of colours. An unred slap. A red scent. Angelic message. A picture that is silent and screams.

Giving the resonances of You to You leeway means the beginning of a mediation process. In this context, mediation is an ambiguous word: its use here can and should evoke different meanings. In this respect, “mediation” is deliberately not used as a clearly defined term, but as a “word separator in linguistic turns”. This is intended to show (mediate) how reflection (as rational, cognitive observation and conceptual distinction) is linked to aesthetics (as sensual contact and mediation) in performative representations. The aim is not to arrive at a single concept of mediation, but to confront the concepts that are necessarily formed in the process of reflecting on events with linguistic structures in which mediation takes place or unfolds.

The dissolution of boundaries opens up spaces of mediation in which contradictions can be understood not as conflicts but as possibilities for synthesis. Processes of mediation produce mixtures, states of mixing, states of suspension, fluctuations, resonances, confusion, “inframince” (Duchamp) and aim at something that lies beyond the synaesthetic form from the perspective of an observer: Synaesthetic forms thereby denote the difference to distinguishing observations, because they dissolve and liquefy the conceptual – and also linguistic – distinction pictorially and linguistically through as-well-as actions. Mediation and observation are related to each other like “mixing” (symmeixis) and distinguishing.

From the perspective of the work with distinctions and concepts, the above-mentioned act of mediation appears as a “mixing” (symmeixis) of the metaphorical and the conceptual, of the movement of language and the theoretical analytical distinction – that is, as an imaginative activity, as a “symmeixis aisthaneos kai doxes” (transl., mixing of sensual perception and opinion orviewpoint), as a mixture of sensual perception and conceptualization (Plato, Sophistes, 264b). Such observation of mediation is disrupted in performative representation through the mediation of observations, which can appear to an observer caught in the conventional logic of distinction as “confused”, as entangled, muddled.

But from a different point of view, in which the hybrid forms present themselves as modes of mediation, the supposed “confusion” appears more as a fusion event in which condensations give rise to a third entity. For example, the Angelus Suspensus where the Angel of Progress usually masks the Angel of History: The angel of progress embodies the linear illusion of constant growth and improvement, while the angel of history recognizes the destructive forces of this illusion in the ruins of the past. However, the Angelus Suspensus dissolves the boundaries between these two perspectives. It waits in a state of suspension in which neither the optimistic delusion of progress nor the melancholy retrospective of history prevails. In its fixed moment, the apparent contradictions between progress and catastrophe are linked to a space of potential in which past, present and future merge. This limbo opens up the possibility of recognizing the hidden potentials of history and breaking new ground beyond the masking of belief in progress.

A shared contemplation of the image could break this narcissistic constriction by transforming the Ego into a We. The We makes it possible to explore the dialectical tension between self-reflection and resonance without remaining within the solipsistic boundaries of the individual. In joint reflection, the image becomes not only a mirror but also a window: it shows us not only who we are, but also who we can become through encounters with the other. Experience in aesthetic education shows that this is how the process of aesthetic mediation is kept going. An aesthetic perception of such an event is the experience of “almost understanding”, which is combined with a “but not understanding”. An experience similar to that in an incompletely focused reflection, in which the concentration on the fixed is disturbed by peripheral perception (like a well-thought-out socio-pedagogical event with people affected by dementia, with humming, screaming, laughing, moaning, or a person’s gaze directed “into the distance” while paying attention). This is difficult to grasp. Perhaps as difficult as a performative presentation – or an art performance or art in general – in which, nevertheless (or perhaps for that very reason), an aesthetic experience is conveyed that establishes a truth that is sought in the world of rational comprehension. The synaesthetic forms of viewing images not only dissolve boundaries, but also open up a new dimension of mediation.

The dimension described can be understood as a state of suspension in which opposites such as concept and sensuality, observation and experience resonate with each other. The mediation thus becomes an active process that can generate not only confusion but also clarity – a clarity that arises precisely from the juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory elements. So what is conveyed in the moment of the angel, of the Angelus Suspensus?

It is a silent image, and yet it is a scream. An angel stands there, with wings that do not fly, in the storm, and they carry her. His eyes, wide open, see the wreckage that piles up before him. The gaze remains fixed, as if seeing could redeem something. But what happens when the angel not only sees, when his gaze speaks? When he addresses the debris, breathing life into it with a “you”?

The image Angelus Suspensus, in which Angelus Novus and the Angel of History are conveyed, is both silent and screaming. It shows an angel in flight that is not flying. It shows movement at a standstill, a standstill in motion. In this moment, eye and gaze are conveyed. The image yields space and spatializes time. The angel is in a relationship to what he sees – and to what concerns him from outside. All outside is revealed in his face and in his figure. In the image of the “Angel of History”, we are conveyed (and thus aligned with) what Benjamin conveys in the image of Klee’s “Angelus Novus”: just as Benjamin reads what is shown in the face of the Angelus Novus, so we read what is shown in the figure of the “Angel of History” when the Angelus Novus opens his eyes and mouth and spreads his wings. In this moment of inhaling and exhaling, the linear time of progress is replaced by a timeless presence that brings the moment itself into a shared realm of togetherness. In the act of being on the move, the gesture that the angel of history shows us testifies that there is a moment of breathing that does not take the angel’s breath away in the storm. When the raging noise of progress suddenly stops in the history of catastrophes, a silence sets in that makes the breath of unlived life perceptible.

This happens at the moment when the message of the angel of history remains in limbo between what the angel’s eye sees and what his gaze testifies to. So what moment are we talking about? Certainly not the one in which the angel of history appears to the progressives as an angel of progress. Speaking eyes, eloquent gazes… in the moment in which the angel of history conveys himself in the representation “Angelus Suspensus”, the chronology of progress is suspended. It is a peculiar apocatastasis, a restoration that rises from the ruins of catastrophic history when it recapitulates in the present, at the moment of the Angelus Suspensus, what is written in the face of the angel of history – and what the mask of the angel of progress seeks to conceal:

Spaces of resonance between You and You are not fixed places, but living processes carried by the willingness to encounter. The “You” is not a place of refuge. It is not an island in the raging river of history. It is the call that turns to the fragment, that calls to the splinter to make its silence eloquent. This “you” connects the debris with the breath of history and opens up spaces of resonance in which something new can emerge. The “You” is not a whisper of comfort; it is a scream. It lifts up the fragmented, not to heal it, but to give it a voice that seeks an answer. Resonance. The “You” as an address reveals the tension of a new word.

How does the “You” sound in the midst of the storm? It sounds like a barren space in which the debris begins to speak. The “You” becomes a blade that cuts through the layers of the illusion that history is progress. It calls out to the silent witnesses of the catastrophe, to penetrate and make the landscape of debris resound. This You calls up the buried and lost into a proximity that would otherwise remain unattainable.

“Do you know that?” the angel addresses us. Do you know the moment when the spark arises from friction, not as destructive fire, but as light that arises from the shame of words? “Shamfiling” – a word that weaves like a thread that never holds. It is the friction of words that scrapes the edges of concepts until the fringes of meaning fall away.

The “You” is the drifting in which proximity and distance, silence and scream, immersion and retreat convey themselves. It is the point at which the debris becomes visual and directional markers for the searching eye. The angel does not speak to find answers, but to face the question. The storm blows, and the “You” remains the breath that carries the movement.

The “You” is not a promise. It is an echo, a standing sound that does not fall silent. It remains in the limbo in which catastrophe speaks and surrenders itself to memory. So the angel stands, with open wings and wide-open eyes. The “You”, the call into the landscape of debris and into the storm. This call becomes audible when eyes speak.

It is a strange test that “You” and “I” can undergo in the presence of the angels: if the “I” is a “blind spot” in the tableau of the angel of progress, then the “You” has the chance to get a glimpse of the angel of history as a “We”. This “We” is not a static collective, but a fleeting moment of resonance in which the tensions between the perspectives become visible. Resonance here does not mean sympathetic vibration, but a productive tension that unfolds between different interpretations.

If the “I” perceives the image of the angel of progress as a shield and protection against the gaze that the angel of history brings into the picture, then this resonance does not occur. The mask of progress, a central concept in Benjamin’s critique of the ideology of linear development, obscures the catastrophes that pile up in history. This mask is not only individually but socially constructed – an expression of the delusion that justifies catastrophes as necessary sacrifices on the way to the future. In Benjamin’s perspective, this delusion is to be understood not so much psychologically as ideologically: a myth that must be broken to reveal the truth of history.

The proverbial moment of the “angelus suspensus,” of being equally looked at and looking into the eyes of the other, represents a break in chronology – a “now” that draws from the past and impacts the present. Unlike a continuous utopia, the “now-time” in Benjamin is a messianic moment, a rupture in which history reveals its suppressed potential. It is not a linear process, but a moment that reinterprets history as a battleground.

This encounter is not a passive reception, but a give and take between “You” and “You”. The “You” as described here enters the space of the landscape of debris, not as consolation, but as a call that makes the fragmented speak. This “You” is a kind of response to the angel’s gaze, a voice that is not satisfied with illusions of progress. It addresses the debris, which in its fragmentation can tell a new story when viewed from the perspective of the “now-time”.

But this invitation is not without its challenges either. The text itself – like any performative representation – runs the risk of excluding readers through hermeticism or ambiguity. Benjamin’s own style demands intellectual effort, but seeks to avoid a reading loss. His texts invite readers to actively interpret rather than accept ready-made truths. The “Angelus Suspensus” is not to be understood in this context as a hermetic iconostasis, but as an impulse to critically question the masks of progress and to create new resonance spaces.

The mask of progress falls as soon as the angel’s gaze becomes ‘You’ – and in this address, a new story can begin in the midst of the history of violence – a story that does not set progress, but also breaks, tensions and potentials of the past in relation to each other. In this encounter lies the possibility not only to look at the debris of history, but to understand it as a resonance space in which the future becomes conceivable in the first place.

Thomas Sojer
Robert Krokowski