> But a storm is blowing from paradise; it has 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's "Theses on the Philosophy of History," completed
in
> the spring of 1940, was first published in Neue Rundshau 61 in 1950, pp.
> 257-258. This transition was published in Illuminations. Ed. Hannah
Arendt,
> 1968, Schocken Books, NY.
Interesting. 20 years ago, a painter friend spoke of an image that kept
recurring to him , of an ice skater speeding assbackwards into the future.
I like it better than angels.
The trouble with the image of the angel--even the fallen ones, or the
falling ones, like this one--is that purity remains a condition of their
existence.
AK
