The Killing Of A Criminal

All Efforts To Render Politics Aesthetic Culminate In One Thing: War.

To A Book Collector, You See, The True Freedom Of All Books Is Somewhere On His Shelves.

Rather Than Ask, What Is The Attitude Of A Work To The Relations Of Production Of Its Time? I Should Like To Ask, What Is Its Position In Them.

All Religions Have Honored The Beggar. For He Proves That In A Matter At The Same Time As Prosaic And Holy, Banal And Regenerative As The Giving Of Alms, Intellect And Morality, Consistency And Principles Are Miserably Inadequate.

This Is How One Pictures The Angel Of History. His Face Is Turned Toward The Past. Where We Perceived A Chain Of Events, He Sees One Single Catastrophe Which Keeps Piling Wreckage And Hurls It In Front Of His Feet. The Angel Would Like To Stay, Awaken The Dead, And Make Whole What Has Been Smashed. But A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise; It Has Got Caught In His Wings With Such Violence That The Angel Can No Longer Close Them. This Storm Irresistably Propels Him Into The Future To Which His Back Is Turned, While The Pile Of Debris Before Him Grows Skyward. The Storm Is What We Call Progress.