grgr (34): "bright angel of death" (760)

[Lorentzen / Nicklaus]

 "there is a picture by klee, which is called angelus novus. an angel, who looks 
as if he is drifting away from something he stares at, is pictured on it. his 
eyes are wide open, his mouth too, and his wings are spread. the angel of 
history must look like this. he has turned his face to the past. where to  u s  
appears a chain of happenings, there  h e  sees one single catastrophe that 
incessantly piles up debris upon debris and throws it before his feet. actually 
he would like to stay, wake up the dead and put together the shattered. yet, a 
storm, which has caught itself in the angel's wings and is so strong that he 
cannot close them anymore, blows from paradise. this storm drives him 
unstoppable into the future, towards which he turns his backside, while the heap 
of ruins before him grows to the sky. that, which we call the progress, is 
t h i s  storm."

  (m.o.p.a.t. from walter benjamin: über den begriff der geschichte [1940], ix) 


 kfl