A Language of the Border: On Scholem’s Theory of Lament
In: The Journal of Jewish Thought and PhilosophySearch for other papers by Ilit Ferber in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
In a diary entry from 1916 entitled “Über Klage und Klagelied” (On lament and dirge), originally written as a prologue to his translation of a collection of biblical lamentations, Gershom Scholem proposes a geographical metaphor to describe what he calls “all language.” The metaphor depicts two lands separated by a border: one land signifies the language of revelation, the other the language of silence; the border between them stands for what Scholem denotes as the language of lament (Klage). This article offers a close reading of this enigmatic text in an attempt to interpret Scholem’s early linguistic theory of lament and its relation to revelation and silence. In order to illuminate Scholem’s insights, I turn to Benjamin’s early fragment on lament (1916) and to his correspondence with Scholem on the relationship of lament to Jewish thought (1918), as well as to Werner Hamacher’s remarks on the linguistic form of lament. I argue that both Scholem and Benjamin portray lament as “a language of the border,” emphasizing its singular capacity to mark the boundaries of language and its expressive limits, while pointing to the possibility of lament to manifest a purely linguistic expression, devoid of any propositional, communicative, or subjective content. In his ambitious attempts to formulate a “metaphysics of language,” Scholem demonstrates the productivity of the intersection between the theological and philosophical, the linguistic and the metaphysical, in early twentieth-century continental philosophy.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
5
Linda M. Austin, “The Lament and the Rhetoric of the Sublime,” Nineteenth-Century Literature 53, no. 3 (1998): 280–1. Austin’s article does not refer to Scholem in any way but concentrates on a literary interpretation of nineteenth-century elegies and lamentations. The article nonetheless provides some useful insights regarding lament’s characteristics.
-
11
Sigrid Weigel, “Scholem’s Gedichte und seine Dichtungstheorie,” 29–30. In this text Weigel also interprets Scholem’s characterization of lament as a language of destruction and annihilation, his first and only attempt to formulate a literary theory (Dichtungstheorie) that describes poetry as a figure of destruction. Note that the pair “becoming and disappearance” appears in Benjamin’s account of “origin” (Ursprung) in his The Origin of the German Trauerspiel, originally translated as The Origin of German Tragic Drama (New York: Verso, 1998), 107–10 (hereafter Origin), 45.
-
22
In a letter to Scholem from March 30, 1918, Benjamin writes: “I openly admit that the theory of lament in this form still seems to be burdened by some basic lacunae and vagueness. Your (and my) terminology has not yet been sufficiently worked out to be able to resolve this question. . . . I continue to doubt the clear relationship between lament and mourning in the sense that every pure act of mourning must lead to a lament” (Correspondence, 1918, 121).
-
27
English translation by David R. Slavitt, The Book of Lamentations: A Meditation and Translation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 73.
-
30
Walter Benjamin, “The Idea of a Mystery,” in Selected Writings, vol. 2: 1927–1934, ed. M. W. Jennings, H. Eiland, and G. Smith (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 68; hereafter “Mystery.”
-
32
Werner Hamacher, “The Right Not to Use Rights: Human Rights and the Structure of Judgments,” in Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, ed. Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 687–90.
-
42
Walter Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” in Selected Writings, vol. 1: 1913–1926, 253–63, hereafter “Translator.” It is important to note here that Benjamin’s idea of “pure language” is essentially different from his aforementioned discussion of “purification.”
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 743 | 93 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 212 | 7 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 178 | 28 | 5 |
A Language of the Border: On Scholem’s Theory of Lament
In: The Journal of Jewish Thought and PhilosophySearch for other papers by Ilit Ferber in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
In a diary entry from 1916 entitled “Über Klage und Klagelied” (On lament and dirge), originally written as a prologue to his translation of a collection of biblical lamentations, Gershom Scholem proposes a geographical metaphor to describe what he calls “all language.” The metaphor depicts two lands separated by a border: one land signifies the language of revelation, the other the language of silence; the border between them stands for what Scholem denotes as the language of lament (Klage). This article offers a close reading of this enigmatic text in an attempt to interpret Scholem’s early linguistic theory of lament and its relation to revelation and silence. In order to illuminate Scholem’s insights, I turn to Benjamin’s early fragment on lament (1916) and to his correspondence with Scholem on the relationship of lament to Jewish thought (1918), as well as to Werner Hamacher’s remarks on the linguistic form of lament. I argue that both Scholem and Benjamin portray lament as “a language of the border,” emphasizing its singular capacity to mark the boundaries of language and its expressive limits, while pointing to the possibility of lament to manifest a purely linguistic expression, devoid of any propositional, communicative, or subjective content. In his ambitious attempts to formulate a “metaphysics of language,” Scholem demonstrates the productivity of the intersection between the theological and philosophical, the linguistic and the metaphysical, in early twentieth-century continental philosophy.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 743 | 93 | 11 |
| Full Text Views | 212 | 7 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 178 | 28 | 5 |