History as a continuum of disaster.
The concern of art is to present something enduring, yet something time-bound. In consequence it takes up the history of ruins, in its ‘material content,’ as a means of discovering ‘truth content.’
In Trauerspeil Benjamin writes,
“Ultimately, in the death-signs of the baroque the direction of allegorical reflection is reversed; on the second part of its wide arc it returns, to redeem…”
Or,
“So long a the approach is an aesthetic one, paradox must have the last word.”
