The Wall and the Arcade: Walter Benjamin’s Metaphysics of Translation and its Affiliates

"True translation is transparent: it does not obscure the original, does not stand in its light, but rather allows pure language, as if strengthened by its own medium, to shine even more fully on the original. This is made possible primarily by conveying the syntax word-for-word; and this demonstrates that the word, not the sentence, is translation's original element. For the sentence is the wall in front of the language of the original, and word-for-word rendering the arcade." —Walter Benjamin, The Translator's Task The book centers on Walter Benjamin's revolutionary essay 'The Translator's Task' (1923) which subverts some widespread assumptions concerning translation: that it serves for communication, that it transfers meaning, that it must not distort the translator's own language, and that it is inferior to the original. Benjamin overturns these assumptions by replacing the concept of translation as a merely linguistic operation with a metaphysical—or theological—concept of the same, derived from Jewish Kabbala and French Symbolisme. In 'The Translator's Task', as well as his earlier essay 'On Language as such and the Language of Man', he delineates a cosmic linguistic cycle of descent from, and ascent back to, God. The translator's task is to promote this ascent by deconstructing his own language in order to advance it towards a final 'Pure Language'. Following an analysis of Benjamin's approach, some of its affiliates are discussed in texts by Franz Rosenzweig, Paul Celan (as explicated by Peter Szondi) and Jacques Derrida.