Author: Walter Benjamin

Cited by

• Lisa Lowe (1)
  • IN: Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Culture Politics (1996) American Literature, American
    EPIGRAPH: Nothing that has ever happened should be regarded as lost for history,
    FROM: Thesis on the Philosophy of History, (1942), Essay, Germany
• Ciaran Carson (1)
  • IN: Belfast Confetti (1989) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: Not to find one's way about in a city is of little interest... But to lose one's way in a city, as one loses one's way in a forest, requires practice... I learned his art late in life: it fulfilled the dreams whose first traces were the labyrinths on the blotters of my exercise books.
    FROM: A Berlin Childhood Around the Turn of the Century, (1950), Book, Germany
• Carolyn Forche (1)
  • IN: The Angel of History (1994) Poetry, American
    EPIGRAPH: 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 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 in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistably propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.
    FROM: Theses on the Philosophy of History IX, (1942), Essay, Germany
• Christa Wolf (1)
  • IN: City of Angels (2010) Fiction, German
    EPIGRAPH: So, for authentic memories, it is far less important that the investigator report on them than that he mark, quite precisely, the site where he gained possession of them.
    FROM: Excavation and Memory, (1932), Essay, Germany
• Cees Nooteboom (1)
  • IN: Lost Paradise (2007) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: 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 towards the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single castastrophe which keeps piling 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 in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The 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.
    FROM: On the Concept of History, (1942), Book, Germany
• China Miéville (1)
  • IN: Embassytown (2011) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The word must communicate something (other than itself)
    FROM: On Language as Such and on the Language of Man, (1916), Book, Germany
• Jeremy Tiang (1)
  • IN: State of Emergency (2017) Fiction, Singaporean
    EPIGRAPH: The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the 'state of emergency' in which we live is not the exception but the rule.
    FROM: Theses on the Philosophy of History (trans. Harry Zohn), (1968), Essay, Germany
• C. D. Rose (1)
  • IN: Who's Who When Every One is Someone Else (2017) Fiction, British
    EPIGRAPH: The storyteller: he is the man who could let the wick of his life be consumed by the gentle flame of his story.
    FROM: The Storyteller, (1968), Essay, Germany