The Origin of German Tragic Drama

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by Walter Benjamin

Verso

Due/Published September 1998, 256 pages, cloth

ISBN 1859848990

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The Origin of German Tragic Drama is Benjamin's most sustained and original work. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Bejamin's aesthetics, singled it out as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history.

Review

"Like every man committed to abstruse thought and scholarship, he [Walter Benjamin] knew that not only the humanities, but humane and critical intelligence itself, resides in the always-threatened keeping of the very few. Trauerspiel is beautifully apt: a presentiment of man's suffering and cruelty, made bearable through stately, even absurd form. A play of sorrow." -- George Steiner

In his introduction George Steiner finds a connection between the nature of Trauerspiel, a genre of German baroque drama and the ultimate tragedy of Benjamin's life. The connection between Trauerspiel and Benjamin began when the writer was trying to secure an academic post in Weimar Germany. Walter Benjamin wrote his thesis on Baroque German drama and though it failed in its initial goal (Benjamin never got that post), The Origin of German Tragic Drama is a fascinating theoretical work and deepens our understanding of his thought. Benjamin's work focuses on the defining elements of the Trauerspiel such as emblems, the use of the symbolic as well as its "torrential" nature. He also distinguishes between Greek and Baroque drama, the former as mythical and the latter as historical and earthbound. In his introduction, George Steiner elaborates on Benjamin's distinction, "...tragedy does not require an audience. Its space is inwardness and the viewer aimed at is 'the hidden god.' Trauer, on the other hand, signifies sorrow, lament, the ceremonies and memorabilia of grief. Lament and ceremonial demand audience. Literally and in spirit, the Trauerspiel is a 'play of sorrow,' a playing at and displaying of human wretchedness.' The Origin of Tragic Drama delves into baroque plays that were even obscure during Benjamin's Germany but the ideas and vitality of Benjamin's arguments and ideas make the works under discussion relevant and complex. There are also elements in the work that are more familiar to Benjamin readers: the Kabbalah, his understanding of language, and his use and interpretation of other philosophers. The work also reflects many of the concerns of early modernism: an interest in arcane art forms, mirroring writers such as Yeats and modern painters interest in the primitive; and Benjamin's definition of figuration and allegory relates to the works of German expressionist painters.