ABSTRACT

When Benjamin announces in his eighth paragraph that ‘das Verhältnis des Gehalts zur Sprache [ist] völlig verschieden in Original und Übersetzung’ (1991:15) [the relationship of the substance of the text to its language is completely different in the original text and in the translation], he introduces the noun Gehalt into his text, a noun that Berman translates as teneur [which is related to the verb tenir, meaning ‘to hold’ or ‘to keep’]. Gehalt would normally be translated as ‘content’ or ‘contents’, and implies content(s) of an intellectual or conceptual nature, or content(s) in the sense of the percentual or proportional content of a material substance. Like teneur, Gehalt is related to a verb that means ‘to hold’, halten. Translating Gehalt in this context as either ‘content’ or ‘contents’ would be problematic, however, since one of these words must serve to translate ‘Inhalt’. It is clear from Benjamin’s statements that Gehalt is precisely not Inhalt [content, as contrasted with form], that is, it is not ‘content’ in the sense of a message. Rather it is ‘that aspect of translation that goes beyond the delivery of a message’, it is the text’s ‘essential kernel’ (Benjamin 1991:15). Gehalt has therefore been rendered as ‘substance’, a word that suggests an essential if undefined presence both within philosophical thought and in everyday life, and that simultaneously escapes the form vs. content binary.