Angelus Novus – Northcoast Antiquarian

Angelus Novus, monoprint, 1920, by Paul Klee.

The Lyrics below were written by D.S. Yarab, and inspired by Walter Benjamin’s 1940 essay, On the Concept of History, in which Walter Benjamin dubbed Paul Klee’s Angelus Novus the Angel of History in the following haunting paragraph: “A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” The music was created with artful prompts using AI at Udio.com.

It is safe to observe that neither lyricists nor composers are at risk of displacement. For proof, see, at the end of this post, below the transcription of my lyrics, the video of the work by the artist Laurie Anderson, who used the same Benjamin essay for inspiration for her work, “The Dream Before.” I came across her work several days after I posted my video and thought it would make a good addition to the original post so amended my post to include it.

Audio file of Eyes of Stone, an alternative musical setting of the Lyrics below.

Lyrics to “Angelus Novus, Angel of History” by Donald S. Yarab

Verse:

Angelus Novus stands alone,
Gazing back with eyes of stone,
Mouth agape, wings open wide,
Witness to the endless tide.

Chorus:

Angelus, angel of history,
Wreckage piled, a single catastrophe,
Storm from Paradise, wings unfurled,
Propels him onward, to the future hurled.

Verse:

Where we see events unfold,
He sees ruins, stories told,
Wreckage piling at his feet,
Dreams of wholeness, incomplete.

Chorus:

Angelus, angel of history,
Wreckage piled, a single catastrophe,
Storm from Paradise, wings unfurled,
Propels him onward, to the future hurled.

Verse:

Storm of progress, fierce and strong,
Drives him ever, far along,
Backwards facing, forward thrust,
Dreams of past now turned to dust.

Chorus:

Angelus, angel of history,
Wreckage piled, a single catastrophe,
Storm from Paradise, wings unfurled,
Propels him onward, to the future hurled.

Verse:

Angel yearning, dead to wake,
Mend the shattered, for their sake,
But the storm, it will not cease,
Angel’s plight, no sign of peace.

Chorus:

Angelus, angel of history,
Wreckage piled, a single catastrophe,
Storm from Paradise, wings unfurled,
Propels him onward, to the future hurled.

Coda:

Angelus Novus, forward driven,
By the storm, no peace is given,
Angel of history, face of sorrow,
Through the wreckage, towards tomorrow.

The past few days I have been researching the muse of History, Clio. That led me to read (and re-read) a highly academic article written by Stephen Bann in 1987 entitled “Clio in Part: On Antiquarianism and the Historical Fragment.” Aside from leading me to then read a wonderful essay by Nietzche entitled “On the Use and Abuse of History,” it led me to view the Paul Klee monoprint above, Angelus Novus. About which:

Walter Benjamin purchased the monoprint in 1921. Mr. Benjamin committed suicide in 1940 to escape the Nazis. In any event, in the ninth thesis of his 1940 essay “On the Concept of History ”, Walter Benjamin describes Angelus Novus as an image of the angel of history and writes:

“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

A useful explanatory work of scholarship explaining the work which I recommend is Behind the Angel of History: The “Angelus Novus” and Its Interleaf by Annie Bourneuf (University of Chicago Press, 2022). The YouTube video below is also a nice summary of the monoprint and Benjamin’s connection with it.