Consider Paul Klee’s “Angelus Novus”:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3a/f9/40/3af9404ce15ee4bdc177635d22ee9c02.jpg

What does it mean, and who decides?

Paul Klee created the image in 1920. Walter Benjamin purchased the image in 1922. Robert Alter writes in “Necessary Angels” that “[for] the rest of his life Benjamin kept the drawing, according to Scholem’s testimony, as a kind of spiritual talisman and focus for meditation. Benjamin willed the drawing to [Gershom] Scholem, and it hung in the living room of the Scholem home on Abarbanel Street in Jerusalem until 1989, when it was placed by his widow in the Israel Museum.” In fact, when Benjamin purchased the image he was between residences, so it was on his great friend Scholem’s wall that the image was first hung for temporary safe keeping. And it is from here that Scholem wrote his best known poem, which was sent to Benjamin as a 29th birthday gift (translated from German):

“GREETINGS FROM ANGELUS
(Paul Klee “Angelus Novus”)

To W. B., on July 15, 1921

I hang nobly on the wall
and look no one in the eye
I have been sent from heaven
an angelman am I.

Man is well within my realm
I take little interest in his case
I am protected by the Almighty
and have no need of face.

The world from which I come
is measured, deep and clear
what keeps me of a piece
is a wonder, as it here appears.

In my heart stands the town
where God sent me to dwell.
The angel who bears this sign
falls not beneath its spell.

My wing is poised to beat
but I would gladly turn home
were I to stay to the end of days
I would still be this forlorn.

My gaze is never vacant
my eye pitchdark and full
I know what I must announce
and many other things as well.

I am an unsymbolic thing
I mean what I mean
you turn the magic ring in vain
there is no sense to me.”

Is Scholem’s last quatrain ’correct’?

Besides the creator and the purchaser, the image also meant something to the inheritor. And now that the nation of Israel has inherited it, presumably it must hold some meaning for the nation. What meaning?

Maybe the guy who invented the oral contraceptive pill, Carl Djerassi, should have a say. Why not?

“In September 2014, shortly before his death at the age of 91, [Djerassi] published a letter in the New York Review of Books in which he faulted Benjamin’s recent biographers for failing to note that Klee’s drawing was probably a caricature of Hitler.”

Facts are facts, right? You decide:

https://forward.com/culture/art/438254/did-walter-benjamin-truly-understand-his-prize-possession-paul-klees/

        

I found the drawing at once very leonine. You seem to be right.

I saw a man who just found out his girlfriend was cheating on him with an oral surgeon...  That's right, a jumped-up dental school graduate!!!

Many are trying to translate the language of art into human language. They don't translate. In this case Kee's dialect for which there is no Berlitz course.

The image itself would be the ultimate representation of Klee's language.

The only proper response would be to draw one's own response to the Angelus Novus. Words are no substitute for paint and pencil.

Is the last quatrain correct in what sense? Form? Meaning? I'd say yes to both. Why do you ask?

As for the image being a caricature of Hitler, that seems highly unlikely since it was done more than a decade before Hitler rose to power.OTOH, your last linked article does make an interesting case that it might be a Hitler caricature.

Angel in a dress with hair curlers - a female or trans angel?

And literally pigeon-toed.

Mostly, that last linked article reminded me of why humanities departments are dying all over. There's just not that much of a market for smug erudition. It is no longer a world of obscure coffee houses filled with deep thinkers dressed in black natural fibers, a cigarette dangling from one hand.

It is now a Starbucks world, for better or worse.

"Mostly, that last linked article reminded me of why humanities departments are dying all over. There's just not that much of a market for smug erudition. It is no longer a world of obscure coffee houses filled with deep thinkers dressed in black natural fibers, a cigarette dangling from one hand."

COMMENT: We might also ask why pure mathematics PhDs are declining. Same reason, "not much of a market for smug erudition." (Plus, it's too damn hard!)

https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/133373/why-do-so-many-pure-math-phd-students-in-the-usa-drop-out-or-leave-academia-com

So, they head to corporate industry, or engineering, where they can spend the rest of their careers solving differential equations. (How noble is that?) Even biologists and physicists are heading for corporate paychecks. At least out-of-work philosophers keep wondering about the world they live in while assuming that something matters deeper than next week's paycheck (while drinking their coffee at Starbucks). Even modern art, which frankly often strikes me as just silly, suggests that there is something about the artist and her work that goes deeper than surface impressions, and invites personal reflection--and maybe, just maybe, some sort of insight.

The decline of the humanities is complicated to be sure, but certainly money is a big part of it. But that does not mean that philosophical thinking (or engaging in art, history, psychology, or even (I dare say) the social sciences) is worthless as a tool to help come to grips with life itself, human nature, and the place of conscious, intelligent humans in the universe--beyond genetic blueprints or neural images.

The Humanities got into the most trouble when its departmental 'research' sought to mimic science and mathematics, while abandoning their humanistic orientation. They started thinking in materialist, probabilistic, terms--facts are facts--while forgetting that deeper insights might be revealed when one stops calculating and starts thinking.

I know this all sounds uncomfortably religious. But then so does Platonism. :)

Brother Of Jerry Wrote:
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> Mostly, that last linked article reminded me of
> why humanities departments are dying all over.
> There's just not that much of a market for smug
> erudition. It is no longer a world of obscure
> coffee houses filled with deep thinkers dressed in
> black natural fibers, a cigarette dangling from
> one hand.

Could it be that an occasion has finally arisen in which I disagree sharply with BoJ?

The decline of humanities and, to a lesser extent, social sciences worries me greatly. STEM teaches skills that are highly valued in the marketplace and contribute to economic growth and in some cases to rising living standards.

What STEM does not teach is morality, ethics, and the complexity of social and political and geopolitical life. Einstein and Oppenheimer's scientific genius did not give them pause in the creation of the atom bomb, and their subsequent musings on the morality of their actions evince considerable naivete. The modern ersatz version of such scientists are people like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and the armies of technocratic lemmings who follow them in their thoughtless pursuit of cool ideas and lots of money.

If there are not people who have thought deeply about moral issues, political issues, even religious ideas, who is going to run countries wisely? Who is going to realize that the amassing of private fortunes does not lead to rising living standards without political action to ensure that it does? Who will weigh the consequences of diplomatic decisions and consider their effects on society and the world?

One of the reasons our little blue orb is in such poor shape is the cult of technocratic celebrity. Einstein knew no more than anyone else about God; his musings about politics are insipid. So too are the modern rock stars' proclamations about free speech, declining birth rates, cryogenics, the terms on which the Ukrainian War should end, and a dozen other popular topics. These men are buffoons when they step out of their personal bailiwicks.

We need fewer Space Karens and more John Kenneth Galbraiths, Isaiah Berlins, Arnold Toynbees, Fyodor Dostoevksys, Arthur Millers, Leonardo DaVincis, Abraham Lincolns, and Banksys. If the cost of that is having some pretentious middle-aged man in Trotsky eyeglasses sitting across the table from Leo Strauss and Hannah Arendt in some seedy Cambridge cafe--for both of them would assuredly have been there--so be it.

The pursuit of money has led academic institutions to prioritize STEM to the detriment of the liberal education that teaches values and judgment. Both sides of that equation--the worship of lucre and the disregard for moral thinking--represent a major threat to civilization.

I enjoyed reading these thoughts. Well said.

I worry greatly about the topic.

I'm a big fan of STEM, but it doesn't teach moral values or the "soft" elements of civic life. Society needs both; ideally even technologists and entrepreneurs would have a basic understanding of the social sciences and humanities, but whether or not that is the case there must be people who are steeped in such things.

We live in a profoundly distorted time, when the rich are viewed as geniuses and enjoy great deference. Someone published a critical biography of Peter Thiel recently and the book was inundated with lousy reviews, in which people defending him largely because they identify with him--they'd like to be rich and famous too--and accordingly disregard any facts that suggest he's less than divine.

Society is in serious danger when the general public plays Echo to the celebrity's Narcissus.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> Society is in serious danger when the general
> public plays Echo to the celebrity's Narcissus.

Yes, indeed. I've never been much into worshipping celebrity. It can be kind of embarrassing to fail to recognize some major star. Not that I come across that many. :)

I forget where I read it, but maybe in an RfM post, that it's best if people stay in their own lanes, unless they're equipped to migrate. Such as athletes who score winning goals but don't make the best math teachers, for example. (I just said math teacher in a nod to BoJ's gift but the point is clear).

In a superb display of the truth that some good things can also have major negative sides, social media, which has great potential for much good, tends to highlight the lowest common denominators. And strangely (to me) many readers and watchers believe everything they see or hear or read. The first rule of thumb in this life (which I obviously must confess I haven't always followed) is to stop a minute and think a bit and be informed enough that if something is off you will notice that there's an issue at least enough to check it out before believing it. And don't let yourself go all the way down into the rabbit hole so far that you can't back up. Too, it doesn't hurt to check more than one reference.

Honour variety, in other words. The spice of life, they say. In some contexts, anyway.


PS: Yeah, I don't get the deference, and near worship in many cases, shown to folks just because they have $$$. You may be clever enough, or fortunate, to amass a fortune. That doesn't automatically confirm you've got something impressive between your ears. Especially if you're operating outside your area of expertise (if any).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2022 09:51PM by Nightingale.