The Angel of History
Posted on Sep 18th, 2006
by 
sass
sass
"A Klee painting named 'Angelus Novus' shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward 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."
Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"
I came upon this quote again recently which I recorded back at the beginning of my Phd research. I was a retro-romantic, Kali Yoga sorta girl back then. These days I'm more of an 'ups and downs of evolutionary process' sort.
Still, some days I take leave to ponder his point. .. as the "o fuk" storm of past karmic events blows us along into the future .. on the tough days, that is. personally as well as universally.
on the good days, its all about standing right on the cusp of the waves of unfurling possibility.
breathing it in. and out.
such being the ups and downs of progress.
Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"
I came upon this quote again recently which I recorded back at the beginning of my Phd research. I was a retro-romantic, Kali Yoga sorta girl back then. These days I'm more of an 'ups and downs of evolutionary process' sort.
Still, some days I take leave to ponder his point. .. as the "o fuk" storm of past karmic events blows us along into the future .. on the tough days, that is. personally as well as universally.
on the good days, its all about standing right on the cusp of the waves of unfurling possibility.
breathing it in. and out.
such being the ups and downs of progress.
Access: Public
retreat
May 2008
what a great quote! Beautifully tragic…I too have resonance with the retro-romantic perspective(-:
Its amazing the power of that karmic cycle that patterns our unfolding into the next moment, and the next. both personally and globally. And the even stranger part is how we realize on those “good days” that we don't have to be a slave to them… Standing right amidst the intensity of unstoppable, irreversible forces and just breathing… and the release comes, and somehow in a moment we can halt the entire process of our own unconscious participation within the centered beating of our own hearts.
Sometimes all I can do is laugh…and cry… and sit in awe at the power of my own stupidity and my own infinity.