Literature Tells Very Little To Those Who

To A Book Collector, You See, The True Freedom Of All Books Is Somewhere On His Shelves.

This Is How One Pictures The Angel Of History. His Face Is Turned Toward The Past. Where We Perceived 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 From Paradise; It Has Got Caught In His Wings With Such Violence That The Angel Can No Longer Close Them. This Storm Irresistably Propels Him Into The Future To Which His Back Is Turned, While The Pile Of Debris Before Him Grows Skyward. The Storm Is What We Call Progress.

For What Is The Program Of The Bourgeois Parties? A Bad Poem On Springtime, Filled To Bursting With Metaphors.

Each Morning The Day Lies Like A Fresh Shirt On Our Bed; This Incomparably Fine, Incomparably Tightly Woven Tissue Of Pure Prediction Fits Us Perfectly. The Happiness Of The Next Twenty-four Hours Depends On Our Ability, On Waking, To Pick It Up.

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.