Words, strutting around ...

Benjamin's »Origin of the German Mourning Play«, we are told, is »esoteric«. It is not. The thing Benjamin does is quite common among German authors between 1890 and 1930. With his writing he follows two ideals, not respecting academic divisions of fields like »Philosophy« or »Literature«: these ideals are beauty and truth. He does so because, in ancient Greece as well as in the modern world, someone taught that expression of thought has to be carefully considered, and that a thinker and writer should pay attention to the words he chooses. The words do not transport, as psychologists say, a meaning, so that you may choose one or the other synonym without consequence – words are the meaning, or at least part of it. Do not ignore the sound and the images they give.

When Benjamin writes das Wort stolziert, we can see »the word strutting around«: walking stiffly and arrogantly, apparently proud of itself. The entire sentence: 

Hier stolziert das Wort, die Silbe und der Laut, emanzipiert von jeder hergebrachten Sinnverbindung, als Ding, das allegorisch ausgebeutet werden darf. 

The English translation gives: 

Here the »word, syllable, and sound are emancipated from any context of traditional meaning and are flaunted as objects which can be exploited for allegorical purposes«. 

No strutting, no pride. And on it goes:

»The language of the baroque is constantly convulsed by rebellion by the part of the elements which make it up«. (p. 207)

»Convulsed«? No. Benjamin had written: 

Die Sprache des Barock ist allezeit erschüttert von Rebellionen ihrer Elemente.

»Shaken« may be a good translation ... shaken as we are by earthquakes, shaken: broken things are on the floor, chaotic pieces, a mess. No »convulsions«. The translator obviously just looked up erschüttern in a dictionary and thought the direct translation of the word would be okay. He did not see the picture.