书信作家本雅明

Benjamin:the Epistolary Writer

本雅明是一个伟大的书信作家。他一生对写信充满热情,书信也成为他的文学形式之一。书信对他来说可谓非常投缘,因为从一开始它就鼓励了一种被中介的、客观化的直接性。尤其难能可贵的是,当打字机早已流行的时候他却依然尽可能手书,这与他的《可技术复制时代的艺术作品》中所论的内容形成了一种对比。对他来说,书信是自然—历史图像,是在稍纵即逝和衰败中幸存下来的东西。他的书信完全不像一个活生生的人的短暂话语,它们因此获得了客观的力量。这些书信不仅提供了他本人的进取图景,而且还呈现了一个时代的精神氛围。然而,在一个经验崩溃的时代,由于通讯的手段变得更为快捷,时空距离正在缩小,技术似乎正在消除书信的先决条件。这意味着本雅明式的书信已成空谷足音。

Walter Benjamin was a great epistolary writer.He had a lifelong passion for epistolary writing,which became one of his literary forms.Letters were very close to his heart because they encouraged a mediated,objectified immediacy from the outset.It is particularly remarkable that he continued to write by hand as much as possible when typewriters had long been in vogue,in contrast to what he argued in The Work of Art in the Age of Its Mechanical Reproducibility.For him,letters were natural-historical images of something that survives transience and decay.His letters do not resemble the ephemeral utterances of a living human being at all,and they thereby acquire objective force.The letters provide a progressive picture not only of him but also of the spiritual climate of an era.However,in an age of disintegration of experience,in which spatial and temporal distances are shrinking because the means of communication have become more rapid,technology seems to be eliminating the prerequisites of the letters.This means that the Benjaminian letter has become a sound of footsteps in a deserted valley.