Abstract

The conservative Character. Walter Benjamin and the Politics of the Poets The political and ethic dimension of Benjamin's works resides in the medium of poetic language. In my dissertation, I explore this hypothesis in an analysis of the poetic, cryptic and rhetorical particularities of Benjamin's writing. Central to my analysis of style and 'personal' character is the question of the name---the proper name as well as its pseudonyms. The analysis uncovers underlying literary types and Benjamin's linguistic mysticism and anarchism without claiming Benjamin for any exclusive political or theological descent. ;The tension between enlightenment and linguistic esoterism in Benjamin requires explanation as does his interest in conservatives or thinkers potentially "dangerous" for him. I examine the logic of this tension through a series of commentaries on Benjamin's essays on George, Proust, Dostoevsky and Lesskov, but also in his remarks on Kommerell, Hellingrath, Hofmannsthal, Klages, Goethe, and Schlegel. Benjamin cryptically relates these figures to alternative critical and theoretical approaches and "types": his friend, the poet Christian Friedrich Heinle, and Baudelaire, who in turn point to Holderlin. ;The two principal parts of this thesis, "Bergwald [mountain forest]" and "Himmelskorper [celestial bodies]," focus on the proliferation throughout his texts of the proper name of Walter Benjamin and two of his pseudonyms, "Holz [wood]" and "Nebbich." While the first part addresses the question of the poetic 'material' and the typology of Benjamin's style, the second part deals with the valorization of passivity, failure, danger, and its function. It is under the heading of "happiness" or "chance" that ethics, politics, destiny, history and poetic language relate to each other in Benjamin's work. ;One the one hand, the project seeks to shed light on the question of Benjamin's anarchism, seen here as a poetic and linguistic-mystical manifestation in its valorization of decision. Decisions, however, are neither made nor taken; Benjamin remains in danger to the extent that he remains before the decision. On the other hand, I seek to trace out the ironic coherence of Benjamin's work, a coherence provided by the interrelations of names and theoretical concepts, which I consider to be the hidden hallmark of his work