Gestures and Constellations by Walter Benjamin and Max Kommerell

Abstract

On the agenda are two reviews of Benjamin about Kommerell. Since Agamben referred to Kommerell as one of the "rare supreme talents among twentieth-century critics" (2017, p. 211), these two texts demand re-readings. The 1928 review, "Wider ein Meisterwerk - zu Max Kommerell 'Der Dichter als Führer in der deutschen Klassiker'," considers that, due to the totalizing pretension of the encomiastic attitude, the book defends conservative social values. The 1933 review, "Der eingetunkte Zauberstab - zu Max Kommerells 'Jean Paul'," acquiesces to the destructive side of Jean Paul Richter's literary humor; humor that would have spared the writer from the tragic fate of Kleist and Hölderlin and that provides insights into the ways in which the record of history has constituted itself as a pantheon of eminent personalities. Kommerell's merit, according to Benjamin, is that of detecting in Jean Paul's work the phenomena that corresponded to the success of the idealism of the upper classes with the lower classes. However, he regrets that the book did not reveal Jean Paul's contribution to the dismantling of classicism's demand to the german bourgeoisie for an alliance with a feudal past via aesthetic education and the cult of the beautiful appearance (1991, volume III, p. 415).