BENJAMIN AND FRIEDRICH SCHLEGEL: THE NOVEL AND THE DEFORMATION OF EPIC

Abstract

Traces of Benjamin’s late interest in the epic are scattered throughout his
texts on the modern novel, written at the end of the 1920s and during the 1930s.
Specifi cally, Benjamin has developed his late theory of the novel through the texts
on Leskow, Keller, Döblin, Proust, and Kafka. In that same period, his concept of
epic starts to fi gure signifi cantly in his texts on theater, art, and history. Benjamin
writes on epic theatre, uncovering/abandonment of epic elements in history, on the
relation between epic and fi lm, etc. However, the role of the concept of epic is mostly
fragmentary in these texts, with one possible exception in the text on Leskow; at the
same time, the link with the earlier Benjamin’s texts on romanticism is not clearly
visible. Following Benjamin’s theory of narration through the text on Leskow, as well
as his other late texts on the novel and narration, it is possible to catch a sight of the
connection between Benjamin’s question on the destiny of epics in modernity and
romantic (specifi cally F. Schlegel’s) theory of the novel. Forming a theoretical arc
between F. Schlegel’s Letter on the novel and Benjamin’s late texts draws an outline
of Benjamin’s conception of the novel as a deformed epic. However, for Benjamin, the
causes of this deformity are to be understood only from the perspective of historical
materialism, which is possible only through the emancipation and overcoming of the
epic element in historiography. Finally, for Benjamin, as for F. Schlegel, the crisis of
epic contains within itself a certain index of salvation. But while Schlegel was still in
a position to place high hopes in the novel as a new epic form, Benjamin sought new
epic possibilities emerging from the novel’s crisis and overcoming it.