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It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language that is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of that work.

Walter Benjamin

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Walter Benjamin
Age: 48 †
Born: 1892
Born: July 15
Died: 1940
Died: September 26
Art Critic
Essayist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Philosopher
Sociologist
Translator
Writer
Berlin
Germany
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin
Language
Liberate
Another
Spell
Work
Spells
Task
Release
Tasks
Translator
Pure
Translators
Creation
Imprisoned

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History breaks down into images, not into stories.
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The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is a process of unlimited scope, as much for thinking as for perception.
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As long as there is still one beggar around, there will still be myth.
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Mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.
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The book borrower...proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures...as by his failure to read these books.
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To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves.
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I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.
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All the decisive blows are struck left-handed.
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Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method.
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We do not always proclaim loudly the most important thing we have to say. Nor do we always privately share it with those closest to us, our intimate friends, those who have been most devotedly ready to receive our confession.
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Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.
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In other words, the unique value of the authentic work of art has its basis in ritual, the location of its original use value. This ritualistic basis, however remote, is still recognizable as secularized ritual even in the most profane forms of the cult of beauty.
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Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.
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If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatches the egg of experience.
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Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].
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Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.
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Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.
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Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts, but their arrest as well.
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The concept of progress must be grounded in the idea of catastrophe. That things are 'status quo' is the catastrophe
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