Works that have lasted…

IN 1929, WALTER BENJAMIN WROTE A review article concerned with “four great works of German scholarship” which had “remained alive” (Bücher, die lebendig geblieben sind). ¹ These disparate books were Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption, Alfred Meyer’s Eisenbauten [Iron Constructions], Gyorgy Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness and Aloïs Riegl’s Late Roman Art Industry. Benjamin had probably read Riegl’s work as early as 1916 ² and it was to have great significance for his own work, whether this work is taken as criticism, philosophy, or history, or all three together. It is, however, an importance more often indicated through allusion than by any sustained elaboration. Like so many of Benjamin’s influences, that of Riegl is thoroughly absorbed and transformed, to the point where it can be only occasionally glimpsed on the surface. The two main points at which Benjamin explicitly engages with Riegl are this 1929 review and a more developed text written in 1931, Strenge Kunstwissenschaft, ³ which is a review of the first volume of the Kunstwissenschaftliche Forschungen. Given that, these texts are a good place from which to begin a consideration of Benjamin’s reading of Riegl. Tracing the influence of that reading will involve a brief discussion of Benjamin’s 1924–8 study of baroque drama, Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels ⁴ and of what is perhaps his most widely known work, the 1935 essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” ⁵ Benjamin’s reading is also a transformation of Riegl, and it is the nature of that transformation that the next part of this essay will address, through a discussion of the concept of beauty interwoven with a comparison of the structure of history proposed by each critic. Riegl’s deepest influence on Benjamin is perhaps also the place that the difference between the two is most marked, and it is with an examination of this that the essay will conclude.