Unfolding Melusine: About an Unfinished Project by Walter Benjamin
Abstract
For a long time Walter Benjamin thought about writing an essay on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s tale “Die neue Melusine”, although he never actually carried out this project. The affinity of this story with Benjamin’s micrology has already been rightly indicated. This article develops how Goethe’s tale reflects in its plot some aspects of Benjamin’s conception of the storyteller’s art and the task of philologists. There are also some analogies between Goethe’s text and several thoughts by Benjamin on the nature of childhood, love feelings and loving evocation.
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