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If the original does not exist for the reader's sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise?

— Walter Benjamin The Task of the Translator (1920)

Besteht das Original nicht um dessentwillen, wie ließe sich dann die Übersetzung aus dieser Beziehung verstehen?

Original text (German)

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More quotes by Walter Benjamin

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)

Scholarship, far from leading inexorably to a profession, may in fact preclude it. For it does not permit you to abandon it.

The Life of Students (1915)

Things are only mannequins and even the great world-historical events are only costumes beneath which they exchange glances with nothingness.

I would like to metamorphose into a mouse-mountain.

To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it ‘the way it really was’ (Ranke). It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger.

Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Walter Benjamin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.