From Philosophy to Literature

Abstract

The article provides commentary on Walter Benjamin’s “The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and Tragedy” and is meant to clarify the key problem of this text as well as the thought processes that, according to Benjamin, can lead to its solution. Having previously outlined the general profile of the published work, the author addresses Benjamin’s distinction between tragedy and trauerspiel. He interprets it in light of the philosophy of language, more specifically the role assigned to the word in each of these dramatic genres. For Benjamin, the word in trauerspiel is not reducible to its meaning but acts as the bearer of a “metaphysical” feeling experienced by the creation itself — such a drama appears as a stage in the ascent of nature from its immediate silence to a pure divine language. In trauerspiel, a being strives to express itself and simultaneously, encountering meaning as a boundary and ultimately the impossibility of genuine expression, is filled with sorrow. This process, however, has dialectical meaning for Benjamin: there, where conflict between word and meaning disrupts any relation of linguistic reference, the free play of these elements becomes possible. Its main result, what should be heard by the viewer in Benjamin’s opinion, is the sound of speech itself, its music, in which the signifier and signified coincide expressing nature on the stage with purity that is inherent in the language of divine names. In the final part of the article, this transformation of dramatic speech into music is contextualized and correlated with the question of language’s expressive possibilities, which allows one to see the rooted philosophical and aesthetic relevance of Benjamin’s work.