Awakening and Utopia in Walter Benjamin's Moscow Diary

• In Event: Dream Records as Historical Sources and Literary Narratives

Abstract

In his unfinished work Passagen-Werk, Walter Benjamin suggests that the concepts of sleep and wakefulness can be transferred from the individual to the collective. In this shift, what was external to the former becomes internal to the latter. Architecture, fashion, weather, and many other aspects of life can thus be understood in analogy to states within the body. This idea applies most notably to cities. Furthermore, Benjamin viewed even the past as a dream from which humanity must awaken for the sake of the future. Benjamin’s 1926 visit to Moscow can therefore be seen as one of his first attempts at such an awakening. In a letter to Martin Buber, he expressed his intention to describe Moscow without imposing theory, conclusions, or judgments. At that time, Soviet Russia represented for many the realization of utopia—the dream of a just society. For Benjamin, it was crucial to determine, through his experience of Moscow, whether the revolution would ultimately succeed or fail. However, Benjamin’s Moscow Diary often reads like his dream accounts, which he regularly recorded. In my talk, I argue that Moscow Diary is, in a sense, an account of immersion into a dream state—one that Moscow itself embodied at the time. It may be no coincidence that after his visit to Soviet Russia, Benjamin began writing Passagen-Werk, in which many of the ideas only outlined in Moscow Diary found their full realization.

Author

• Garris Rogonyan, Smolny Beyond Borders (Germany)