In this communication, I propose to evaluate the effects of a recurring translation deviation in one of Walter Benjamin's best-known texts: his theses On the Concept of History [Über den Begriff der Geschichte], 1940. I refer specifically to the translation of the term Trümmer (rubble) used by the author in the ninth thesis, also known as the “angel of history thesis”. Over the years, this term has been translated as “ruin” in languages such as Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese — despite the author himself having translated it as “décombre” in his own French version. My hypothesis is that this translation deviation may have consequences for the reception of his work, firstly, because “ruin” is a category that plays a central role in the elaboration of his concept of allegory in The Origin of German Tragic Drama [Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels] (1928) ; secondly, because there is a substantial difference between ruin and rubble in the context of German language and culture: ruin is to classical antiquity, baroque and romanticism, as “rubble” (Trümmer) is to destruction, and, in the context in which Benjamin wrote his “Theses”, for the destruction caused by war. It is no coincidence that the first post-war generation of German-language writers and directors named after this rubble, as the generation of Trümmerliteratur or Trümmerfilm (among the writers: Günther Grass, Heinrich Böll, Nelly Sachs, Paul Celan etc.; among the directors: Gerhard Lamprecht, Helmut Käutner, Josef von Báky, etc.). In a text in which he theorises about ruins, Georg Simmel, who exerted a definitive influence on Benjamin's generation, states that the beauty of the ruin is related to the fact that it is, despite everything, a unity: a coefficient between the human will to build, and the nature that acts to take back for itself what humans have built. The rubble Benjamin speaks of, on the other hand, does not concern unity or beauty, but pure fragmentation and horror. The mistranslation therefore dislocates the reception of the text from one aesthetic category to another, above all in the context of the Romance languages.
Key-Words: Ruins, Rubble, Trümmer, Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History
Maykson Cardoso is a PhD Candidate in Visual Arts/History of Art at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and holds a master degree in Literature Studies from the Fluminense Federal University. He also work as an independent curator and critic. Since 2018, he lives in Berlin, where he’s writing up his PhD Thesis called “Towards an Archaeology of Violence [Gewalt]: Walter Benjamin, from the ruins of the past to the rubble of the present”
In this communication, I propose to evaluate the effects of a recurring translation deviation in one of Walter Benjamin's best-known texts: his theses On the Concept of History (1940). I refer specifically to the translation of the term Trümmer (rubble) used by the author in the ninth thesis, also known as the “angel of history thesis”. Over the years, this term has been translated as “ruin” in languages such as Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese — despite the author himself having translated it as “décombre” in his own French version. My hypothesis is that this translation deviation may have consequences for the reception of his work, firstly, because “ruin” is a category that plays a central role in the elaboration of his concept of allegory in The Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928) and for many other reasons that will be analysed.