Walter Benjamin 班雅明 · Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin

🔊He studied philosophy and literature at several universities, took a doctorate at Bern in 1919, and hoped for a professorship. To qualify he wrote a difficult study of German baroque drama. In 1925 the faculty at Frankfurt let him know that it would be rejected, and he withdrew it. One examiner said that he had not understood a word. After that Benjamin belonged to no institution. He supported himself by writing reviews and essays for newspapers and by giving talks on the radio, many of them for children.

他在好幾所大學讀哲學與文學，1919 年在伯恩取得博士學位，並且盼望當上教授。為了取得資格，他寫了一部艱深的研究，談德國的巴洛克戲劇。1925 年，法蘭克福大學的教授們讓他知道，這部論文會被拒絕；他把它撤了回來。有一位審查人說，他一個字也看不懂。在那之後，班雅明不屬於任何機構。他靠著為報紙寫書評與文章、並且在廣播裡談話來維持生活；其中有許多談話是對兒童講的。

🔊He was drawn in two directions that his friends thought could not be combined. Gershom Scholem, the historian of Jewish mysticism, wanted him to learn Hebrew and come to Jerusalem. Bertolt Brecht and a Latvian actress he loved, Asja Lācis, drew him toward Marxism. He took something from each side and never chose between them. In 1921 he bought a small picture by Paul Klee, Angelus Novus, and kept it with him wherever he lived. In his last essay it becomes the angel of history, who is blown backward into the future with his face turned to the wreckage of the past.

他被兩個方向拉著；而他的朋友們認為這兩個方向是無法結合的。研究猶太神祕主義的史家格爾肖姆・朔勒姆，希望他學希伯來文、到耶路撒冷來。貝托爾特・布萊希特，以及他所愛的一位拉脫維亞女演員阿霞・拉齊絲，把他拉向馬克思主義。他從兩邊各取了一些，而始終沒有在兩者之間做出選擇。1921 年，他買了保羅・克利的一小幅畫〈新天使〉；無論住在哪裡，他都把它帶在身邊。在他的最後一篇文章裡，它成了「歷史的天使」：臉朝著過去的廢墟，被風倒吹著退向未來。

🔊When Hitler came to power in 1933, Benjamin left Germany for good and settled in Paris. He was poor, often ill, and dependent on a stipend from the exiled Institute for Social Research. He spent his days in the national library gathering thousands of quotations for a book on the shopping arcades of nineteenth-century Paris, through which he hoped to show how a whole society dreams. The book was never finished. In those years he also wrote the essays for which he is now read, on the storyteller, on Kafka, on Baudelaire, and on the work of art in the age of its reproduction.

1933 年希特勒上台，班雅明永遠離開了德國，在巴黎住了下來。他很窮，經常生病，靠流亡中的社會研究所給的一筆津貼過活。他整天待在國家圖書館裡，為一本關於十九世紀巴黎拱廊商場的書，蒐集了成千上萬條引文；他希望藉著這本書，顯示一整個社會是怎麼做夢的。這本書始終沒有完成。在那些年裡，他也寫下了今天人們讀他時所讀的那些文章：論說故事的人、論卡夫卡、論波特萊爾，以及論複製時代的藝術作品。

🔊When war began in 1939 the French interned him for some months as an enemy alien. In June 1940, as the German army approached Paris, he fled south. Friends in America had obtained an entry visa for him, but he could not get permission to leave France. In late September he joined a small group that crossed the Pyrenees on foot by a smugglers’ path. He had a weak heart and carried a heavy briefcase containing a manuscript that he said was more important than his life.

1939 年戰爭開始，法國人把他當作敵國僑民，拘留了幾個月。1940 年 6 月，德軍逼近巴黎，他向南逃。在美國的朋友為他取得了入境簽證；但他拿不到離開法國的許可。九月底，他加入了一個小隊伍，沿著一條走私者的小徑，徒步翻越庇里牛斯山。他的心臟不好，卻提著一只沉重的公事包，裡面有一份手稿；他說那比他的性命更重要。

🔊They reached the Spanish border town of Portbou on September 25. The police told them that the rules had changed that day and that they would be sent back to France in the morning. That night Benjamin took an overdose of morphine. He was forty-eight. The next day the others in the group were allowed to travel on. The manuscript in the briefcase was never found. Hannah Arendt, who crossed the same border a few months later, carried a copy of his last essay to New York, and it was through her and through Adorno that his work reached readers after the war.

他們在 9 月 25 日抵達西班牙的邊境小鎮波爾特沃。警察告訴他們：規定在那一天改了；第二天早上，他們會被遣送回法國。那天夜裡，班雅明服下了過量的嗎啡。他四十八歲。第二天，隊伍裡的其他人獲准繼續前行。公事包裡的那份手稿，始終沒有找到。幾個月後越過同一條邊界的漢娜・鄂蘭，把他最後一篇文章的一份抄本帶到了紐約；而戰後，他的著作正是經由她與阿多諾，才到了讀者手上。