“Wie eine Äolsharfe vom Winde berührt” Translation in Walter Benjamin’s Early Writings

Abstract

The article aims at analysing the concept of translation in Walter Benjamin’s early writings, especially with reference to the essays Über Sprache überhaupt und über die Sprache des Menschen (On Language as Such and on the Language of Man, 1916) and Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers (The Task of the Translator, 1921) but also taking other contemporary writings into consideration. It is shown how the concept of translation, inextricably linked to Benjamin’s reflection on language, draws on the one hand on the hermeneutics of early German Romanticism and on its reflection on translation and on the other is charged with the entire semantics of Jewish messianism, in continuous confluences of which the concepts of pure language (reine Sprache), transformation (Verwandlung), of the unintentional (intentionslos) and the inexpressive (ausdruckslos) are the most evident precipitate.