Walter Benjamin
The Destructive Character*
It
could happen to someone looking back over his life that he realized that almost
all the deeper obligations he had endured in its course originated in people
who everyone agreed had the traits of a “destructive character.” He would
stumble on this fact one day, perhaps by chance, and the heavier the shock
dealt to him, the better his chances of representing the destructive character.
The
destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one
activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than
any hatred.
The
destructive character is young and cheerful. For destroying rejuvenate, because
it clears away the traces of our own age; it cheers, because everything cleared
away means to the destroyer a complete reduction, indeed a rooting out, out of
his own condition. Really, only the insight into how radically the world is
simplified when tested for its worthiness for destruction leads to such an
Apollonian image of the destroyer. This is the great bond embracing and
unifying all that exists. It is a sight that affords the destructive character
a spectacle of deepest harmony.
The
destructive character is always blithely at work. It is Nature that dictates
his tempo, indirectly at least, for he must forestall her. Otherwise she will
take over the destruction herself.
The
destructive character sees no image hovering before him. He has few needs, and
the least of them is to know what will replace what has been destroyed. First
of all, for a moment at least, empty space – the place where thing stood or the
victim lived. Someone is sure to be found who needs this space without
occupying it.
The
destructive character does his work; the only work he avoids is creative. Just
as the creator seeks solitude, the destroyer must be constantly surrounded by
people, witnesses to his efficacy.
The
destructive character is a signal. Just a trigonometric sign is exposed on all
sides to the wind, so he is exposed to idle talk. To protect him from it is
pointless.
The
destructive character has no interest in being understood. Attempts in this
direction he regards as superficial. Being misunderstood cannot harm him. On
the contrary, he provokes it, just as oracles, those destructive institutions
of the state, provoked it. The most petty bourgeois of all phenomena, gossip,
comes about only because people do not wish to be misunderstood. The
destructive character tolerates misunderstanding; he does not promote gossip.
The
destructive character is the enemy of the étui-man. The étui-man looks for
comfort, and the case is its quintessence. The inside of the case is the
velvet-lined trace that he has imprinted on the world. The destructive
character obliterates even the traces of destruction.
The
destructive character stands in the front line of traditionalists. Some people
pass things down to posterity, by making them untouchable and thus conserving
them; others pass on situations, by making them practicable and thus
liquidating them. The latter are called the destructive.
The
destructive character has the consciousness of historical man, whose deepest
emotion is an insuperable mistrust of the course of things and a readiness at
all times to recognize that everything can go wrong. Therefore, the destructive
character is reliability itself.
The
destructive character sees nothing permanent. But for this very reason he sees
ways everywhere. Where others encounter walls or mountains, there, too, he sees
a way. But because he sees a way everywhere, he has to clear things from it
everywhere. Not always by brute force; sometimes by the most refined. Because
he sees ways everywhere, he always stands at a crossroads. No moment can know
what the next will bring. What exists he reduces to rubble – not for the sake
of rubble, but for that of the way leading through it.
The
destructive character lives from the feeling not that life is worthing living,
but that suicide is not worth the trouble.
*
Text published originally in the Frankfurter
Zeitung at 20th November 1931.
Image: Berlin, Unter den Linden, 1945
________
Walter Benjamin (Berlim, 1892). Philosopher.
Literary Critic. Sociologist. Translator. Wrote among others The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Theses on
the Philosophy of History and the
unfinished work The Arcades Project. Committed
suicide while running away from the Nazi Secret Services in 26 September 1940
in Portbou, Spain.
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