Dialectical Passions by Day Gail;

Author:Day, Gail;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Philosophy/Aesthetics
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

3.1 Belvedere Torso, Greco-Roman, marble, 159 cm high, Vatican Museums and Galleries, Vatican City, Italy. Photo: Alinari/The Bridgeman Art Library.

In considering the stage sets, he also describes how the dualities evident in the Trauerspiele acquire plastic form; the drop scenes allow a waver between foreground and background.144 Benjamin notes how, in Baroque architecture, there is a division between the controlled, mathematical simplicity of the exterior and the exuberance of the interior’s “uncontrolled imagination,” which is not dissimilar to the antinomy he finds in the “cold, facile technique” and the “eruptive expression” of the Trauerspiele themselves.145 The soaring angels of Baroque architectural sculpture, Benjamin tells us, are carried by massive pedestals and columns, which draw “attention to the difficulties” of support “from below.”146 To say this, of course, is like “foregrounding the device,” but its effect goes beyond highlighting the artifice of representation. Benjamin’s claims exceed his local subject matter: the baroque forces us to look “into the depths of language” and is particularly attuned to “the problematic character of art.”147 As his example makes clear, these architectural supports highlight “the difficulties” which ground the act of representation. Benjamin challenges the traditional relation between symbol and allegory where allegory appears as “the dark background against which the bright world of the symbol may stand out.”148 Ceasing to be the mere backdrop to the symbol’s bright performance, allegory instead is revealed to be the symbol’s necessary foundation. (De Man too describes allegory as more authentic than the symbol.149) What we see here is not the lightening flash of the symbol—the mystical instant, or the momentary insight, described by Creuzer; rather, it is allegory that sheds light onto the symbol’s obfuscation, the flash of allegory that returns us to the play of history, nature, and ethics.150 What is significant about this inversion is that it is not just a reversal of the standard valuation of the symbol-allegory opposition. Symbol and allegory are not treated simply as terms around which aesthetic preferences are staked. Benjamin’s central claim is stronger: allegory (or more precisely the point to which allegory takes us) is the ground upon which we choose; and in choosing we either acknowledge or deny that ground.

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