Thanks for the tip on the book, Janice. I'll be on the lookout for this,
though I don't think I've seen it in my library either <grumble>. Thanks,
too, Troels, but unfortunately, a reading knowledge of French is something I
don't have at this point <sigh>.
Andrew
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"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. This 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." - Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"
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