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The Burden of the Past, the Dialectics of the Present: Notes on Virginia Woolf's and Walter Benjamin's Philosophies of History

The Burden of the Past, the Dialectics of the Present: Notes on Virginia Woolf's and Walter... <jats:p> Writing in a Paris rife with war-anxieties, refugees and political plots, a stateless individual by the name of Walter Benjamin recorded on 11 January 1940: “Every line that we succeed in publishing today - given the uncertainty of the future to which we consign it - is a victory wrested from the power of darkness.” The fusion of desperation and mystical activism in the face of historical horror, expressed in Benjamin's last letter to Gershom Scholem, was echoed across the Channel. Only ten days later, Virginia Woolf - assailed by a mixture of historical, financial, creative and publishing worries - responded to a commission to write about peace by stating that the “views on peace […] spring from views on war.” </jats:p> http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Modernist Cultures Edinburgh University Press

The Burden of the Past, the Dialectics of the Present: Notes on Virginia Woolf's and Walter Benjamin's Philosophies of History

Bahun, Sanja
Modernist Cultures , Volume 3 (2): 100 – May 1, 2008
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Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press, 2010
ISSN
2041-1022
eISSN
1753-8629
DOI
10.3366/E2041102209000367
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

<jats:p> Writing in a Paris rife with war-anxieties, refugees and political plots, a stateless individual by the name of Walter Benjamin recorded on 11 January 1940: “Every line that we succeed in publishing today - given the uncertainty of the future to which we consign it - is a victory wrested from the power of darkness.” The fusion of desperation and mystical activism in the face of historical horror, expressed in Benjamin's last letter to Gershom Scholem, was echoed across the Channel. Only ten days later, Virginia Woolf - assailed by a mixture of historical, financial, creative and publishing worries - responded to a commission to write about peace by stating that the “views on peace […] spring from views on war.” </jats:p>

Journal

Modernist Cultures – Edinburgh University Press

Published: May 1, 2008

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