Epigones in the House of Language: Benjamin and Kraus

If the subject matter of Benjamin’s criticism in his early maturity foregrounds philosophical-theological issues—one thinks of the two dissertations and the essay on Goethe’sDie Wahlverwandtschaften—the writings of the late twenties seem to search for a tactic whereby the written word could bring about a discernible, immediate effect by the most economical of means.One-Way Street, the playful, experimental text of 1928, is a kind of laboratory of “inconspicuous forms” (unscheinbare Formen), as they are called in the very first entry, “Filling Station,” forms more apt, we read, for realizing a “constructive” effect at a communal level than