
Published online:
20 September 2018
Published in print:
15 April 2018
Online ISBN:
9781501715938
Print ISBN:
9781501715907
Contents
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Divining Benjamin Divining Benjamin
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Fate Fate
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Graphology Graphology
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Gambling Gambling
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Childhood Childhood
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Child Reading Child Reading
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Child Hiding Child Hiding
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On Reading as Such (Reading Old & New) On Reading as Such (Reading Old & New)
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Chapter
3 Reading Magic in Walter Benjamin
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Pages
202–270
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Published:April 2018
Cite
Downing, Eric, 'Reading Magic in Walter Benjamin', The Chain of Things: Divinatory Magic and the Practice of Reading in German Literature and Thought, 1850-1940 (Ithaca, NY , 2018; online edn, Cornell Scholarship Online, 20 Sept. 2018), https://doi.org/10.7591/cornell/9781501715907.003.0004, accessed 5 May 2025.
Abstract
This chapter focuses on divination in Walter Benjamin’s work, against the background of modernism’s self-imposed rejection of futurity and engagement with ‘primal history’, and the rise of fascism, commodity culture, and “Lebensphilosophie” or vitalism. It explores his writings on fate, graphology, gambling, childhood, language theory, his doctrine of the similar and the mimetic faculty, foregrounding his Neoplatonist investments, interests in magic, and take on the nineteenth century. Overall, the chapter considers the relations between Benjamin’s model of reading, especially magic reading, and the idea of happiness or “Glück.”
Keywords:
Walter Benjamin, divination, futurity, graphology, language theory, childhood, mimetic faculty, magic, Glück
Subject
Literary Studies (European)
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