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Walter Benjamin Thesis IX

My wing is ready to fly
*I would rather turn back*
For had I stayed mortal time
I would have had little luck.
*– Gerhard Scholem, “Angelic Greetings”*

There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. An angel is depicted
there who looks as though he were about to distance himself from something
which he is staring at. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and
his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His
face is turned towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he
sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and
hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the
dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from
Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel
can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the
future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him
grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.
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