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Paul Klee's "Angelus Novus"
In Walter Benjamin's "Theses on the
Philosophy of History" he describes the painting "Angelus Novus" by
Paul Klee as
follows:
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 toward
the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single
catastrophe
which keeps piling wreckage upon 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 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.
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