Angelus suspensus. Essays on the patience of angels (3)
TS: Angelus Novus is a watercolour painting, and if my information is correct, at 31.8 by 24.2 cm, it is somewhat larger than an A4 sheet of paper. Walter Benjamin acquired it for what would today be approximately 500 euros. Initially, Benjamin entrusted it to Scholem for safekeeping. Later, Georges Bataille concealed it in the National Library in Paris. Upon Benjamin’s death, it found its way to New York via Adorno, and since the end of the war, it has resided in Jerusalem. The journey of the painting reads like a brief philosophical history of the 20th century. What did Benjamin see when he cast his eyes upon the drawing?
RK: The Angel of History. In the ninth of his theses On the Concept of History, he spells it out. But what do we perceive when we gaze at Klee’s drawing and engage with Benjamin’s text? In Benjamin’s view, it forms a configuration of drawing and text that, along with our contemplation, brings forth the image of an Angelus Suspensus. It presents a gesture that marries stillness with motion. The angel is compelled to endure being driven unrelentingly by the storm into a future in which time marches on ceaselessly. Yet he also embodies the anticipation of the moment when destructive violence and catastrophe shall be brought to a halt. Therefore, Benjamin describes the Angel of History not only as a figure arrested in motion but also as one who pauses in the midst of it. The storm is so fierce that the angel can no longer make use of his wings. He is at the mercy of a force whose effects he cannot evade. However, the Angel of History is not a mere paper kite, blown away when a child loses hold of its string. Rather, the angel sustains himself aloft, wings outspread, in the manner depicted by Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus.
TS: Does this “storm” suggest that the angel is caught between motion and stillness? Was the storm both chaos and stability? Could this be construed as a paradox, perhaps as a dialectical thought experiment? But what is the intention behind this portrayal?
RK: Benjamin first refers to the storm simply as “progress”. He valued the agudeza por ponderación misteriosa, the sharpness, wit, or esprit in the depiction of connections through dialectical images. In these, allegorical representations are preserved—rendered both ineffectual and safeguarded. By inheriting the concepto of ponderación misteriosa from Baltasar Gracián, Benjamin situates the Angel of History as a figure within a configuration where the fate of the angel remains in suspense: The Angelus Novus becomes an Angelus Suspensus in the face of a danger that could transform him into an Angelus Satanas, a fallen angel. As a harbinger of redemption, he manages to resist the violence to which he himself—caught even in the storm of progress—is exposed. Es el sujeto sobre quien se discurre y pondera / “It is the subject upon which one reflects and deliberates” (Gracián, Agudeza y arte de ingenio, Discourse IV, 20). This has a ring of the enigmatic. But the image of the Angel of History that Benjamin sketches in his thesis merely recapitulates what he had examined in his studies on the baroque tragic drama, in his essays on Franz Kafka and Karl Kraus, on Brecht’s epic theatre, on Surrealism, and on the dream architecture of the Parisian arcades: How is it possible to gain insight into these subjectively and objectively endured conditions of violence, and is there a grounded hope that a force could prevail which renders unjust and destructive violence ineffective? Is there a possibility for restoration, resurrection, Restitutio, Apokatastasis—that is, to achieve what the Angel of History “desires”: to tarry, to awaken the dead, and to piece together what has been shattered?
TS: So, is the Angelus Novus/Suspensus a symbol of hope for redemption and restoration? This brings to mind the Kabbalah with its teaching of the “shattering of the vessels” at the beginning of creation and the ultimate goal of all existence to jointly and anew reassemble the broken, or even the Japanese art of Kintsugi, where broken vessels are reassembled and their cracks gilded.
RK: Symbol? Allegory? Dialectical image? Puzzle picture? The latent desire that interprets the image of the Angelus Novus as the Angel of History also manifests itself in the Angelus Suspensus as a dream image. From an open mouth and in eloquent silence, the truth of violence roars. The image condenses the mute lament of the angel over the suffering that fills his ears, because it cries out to the heavens from the heap of rubble before him. If Scholem, who kept Klee’s painting for Benjamin, greets Benjamin in his poem from the Angelus, it is with the message that the angel’s wing is “ready to take flight.” The angel’s wonder at what piles up before him places him in a state of vibrating tension. And the image conveys that such tension might be discharged at any moment.
TS: Does this imply that the drawing, text, and dream image as a representation deliver a sort of encrypted message in the guise of a visitation? In other words, the drawing does not immediately reveal; it first conceals and must be unlocked through exploration. Where might this dream pursuit lead?
RK: Perhaps to surprising, ambivalent traces. To configurations embedded within Klee’s image and Benjamin’s text, which are also shaped by both when brought into the present day, into our current era. An analysis of the image of the Angel of History as a dream image will henceforth no longer overlook the latent ideas manifest in his figure—that music and dance are at play here. Both music and dance, for the young Benjamin (as in his dream text The Ball, II 103f), are emblematic of a suspended restlessness. They form part of a configuration that captures, condenses, and transforms time, within chronological progression, into a moment where the opportunity may be seized by the forelock: Kairos. But what is the proper moment when suffering and violence are interrupted, when lament turns to song, and the standstill in the forward-thrusting march of progress is disrupted? Is Benjamin, in his theses on the concept of history, concerned with compelling the petrified conditions to dance by playing them their own tune, as Marx demands in the revolutionary ferment of 1844 in his Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right? The dream image of the Angel of History, situated among the other theses on the concept of history, demands much of the rebellious impatience and revolutionary patience of every present era, given the shattered conditions of the history of violence. Walter Benjamin, in the face of rapid and violent anarchist, communist, socialist, and social-democratic solutions, insists upon the possibility of a redemption that ends tyranny without continuing it under a new ideological guise. Political activists and impatient rebels might, therefore, regard a verse from Goethe’s elegy titled Reconciliation as a rather heavy burden: “Then music floats forth on angel wings…”—a line that, as quoted in Benjamin’s essay on Goethe’s Elective Affinities, leads to the trail of what lament can become: not merely the sentiment of being moved as a spectator, but movement and tangible togetherness.
TS: What does “floating” signify in this context? Is it a necessary counterweight to “rebellious impatience” in order to set the “petrified conditions” into motion?
RK: What connects Klee’s Angelus Novus, Benjamin’s Angel of History in his thesis, with the Angelus Suspensus, as a dream image of an angel “on the brink” of dancing? “On the brink” is a curious phrase—especially when dictionaries suggest “poised to leap” as a synonym. Yet both phrases encapsulate what renders the dialectical image of the Angel of History legible: He finds himself in a status suspensus, a state of suspension, between past and future, a condition that is on the brink of crystallising into the present moment and is poised to transform into a new origin, aimed at interrupting the history of violence and ultimately bringing it to an end.
TS: Might this “state of suspension” be understood as indicating that every moment harbours the potential for a new beginning? A moment of being-held-in-readiness for creation? How might this “leap” into a new origin be historically situated? Could the angel’s “suspension” also be interpreted as a form of “inoperativity” or “unworking”—as current theoretical discourse proposes—as something that disrupts the continuous progress of empty, homogeneous time, as Benjamin terms it, and instead allows for “now-time”?
RK: Music and dance know well the moments in which the action is held in suspense. In a trice, a tension builds that demands resolution. This applies both to suspended chords (such as when a minor second replaces the third in a major triad) and to the pause in a dance movement. If Klee’s Angelus Novus and Benjamin’s Angel of History reveal themselves as an Angelus Suspensus, then they are on the brink and poised to resolve their suspended chord and commence dancing. It requires a great deal of patience when things are in suspension, to seize the right moment so that a felicitous and beautiful opportunity, particularly a redeeming one, may be grasped. Music and dance know this as timing—the moment of re-entry when a suspended chord or movement shifts from suspension back into the “course of events.” And if “inoperativity” or “unworking” carry connotations of “rendering ineffective”, “καταργεῖν” (to abolish), or even the Lutheran and Hegelian “Aufheben” (to sublate)… then yes.
TS: Is this notion of “timing” in dance a model for personal or even historical transformation? Could we say that this “suspension” and its resolution is a form of deliberate action, consciously reconfiguring one’s position within history?
RK: In contemporary dance, Libertad Esmeralda Iocco shows how an invisible trembling is conveyed in the pause amidst a driven movement. Were this to build up indefinitely, it would tear the body apart. Yet, if out of impatience the right moment is missed, the gesture could not remain in suspension. For it is this suspension that is needed to unfold the rhythm and bring forth the moment that makes emergence possible.
TS: Does this “invisible trembling” reveal a form of productive inactivity that forces the body neither into disintegration nor into constant motion? Could this be understood as an aesthetics of désœuvrement, which opens up a new form of rhythm in political action beyond mere inoperativity?
RK: That is a thought worth pondering. We might explore this further in a small essay on the Angelus Suspensus… In Benjamin’s sense, it comes down to recognising, in the angel’s still gesture, the “intermittent rhythm” of pausing. “What characterises the tragic drama is thus by no means immobility, nor even the mere slowness of the process—au lieu du mouvement on rencontre l’immobilité—but the intermittent rhythm of a constant holding back, a sudden reversal, and new stasis” (I 373). The dissolution of this rhythm in the rhythm of the dance shows nothing more, but also nothing less, than this: that it can succeed; emergence, a new beginning, is possible.
TS: Is Benjamin’s idea of “timing” more than just an aesthetic principle? Could it also be understood as an ethical stance, demanding a conscious waiting for the right moment to intervene in history?
RK: To experience Kairos in such a way means that it works, it fits, it succeeds. Yet the experience of such ponderación misteriosa, becoming aware of its play, its drama, and its resolution, is a rather rare experience, as rare as an allegory turning into a dialectical image, an Angelus Novus becoming an Angelus Suspensus, an Angel of History in which Chronos and Kairos condense in a moment of now—perhaps one might call it “Nu-Suspension”… but perhaps that would be more Angelus Silesius than Angelus Suspensus… It is so much easier to miss the moment, to vainly believe that this cannot happen to one, or to resign oneself to failure and missing the moment. Just a little too soon—and there is downfall, falling, lack of support, not being liked, being abandoned, the breaking of the potsherd. Just a little too late—and there is disintegration, striving against heaven, out-of-bounds passes, overshooting the mark, and missing the origin. In a flash, success has passed.
TS: Might this “success” be a rare experience of aesthetic passivity that shows us the importance of the right moment of pausing? Does missing this moment reveal the limits and possibilities of both passivity and activity?
RK: The question, of course, tempts one to pose the question of the gender of angels, to question a both-and of activity and passivity, but also to challenge the notion of angels as neutral beings, as neither-nor… but that is yet another trail. On success and failure: According to Walter Benjamin, despite (or perhaps because of) all this, there is still wonder. He, who perceived the close kinship between epic theatre and the mystery plays of all ages, saw in seemingly significant gestures a status suspensus. To experience this, in his opinion, is a gift—but also something that can be learnt.
TS: Could “wonder” be seen as a skill that can be cultivated, one that opens us up to the significance of aesthetic passivity? Does wonder enable us to think and act beyond the logic of productivity?
RK: Perhaps a degree of scepticism is warranted here. For a gift is always a tricky matter, especially when its gesture remains in suspension. “The damming in the real stream of life,” writes Benjamin at the end of his text on Brecht’s epic theatre, “the moment when its flow comes to a halt, is felt as a backwash: wonder is the backwash. The dialectic at a standstill is its true subject. It is the rock from which the gaze into that stream of things descends, of which they know a song in the city of Jehoo, ‘which is always full, and where no one stays,’ which begins with:
Do not cling to the wave
That breaks at your foot, so long as it
Is in the water, new waves
Will continue to break upon it.”
But when the stream of things breaks upon this rock of wonder, there is no distinction between a human life and a word. In epic theatre, both are only the crest of the wave. It lets existence leap high from the bed of time, stand glittering for a moment in the void, only to bed it anew.” One would merely need to add: In another time. In a time when neither proletarian children’s theatre nor epic theatre can produce gestures that, as Benjamin writes, show the secret signal of the coming… for this, one needs different spaces of play than those usually offered by the theatre today.
Robert Krokowski
Tom Sojer