Benjamin and Bloch shared categories but diverged in tone and historical outlook

Evidence

The common ground between Bloch and Benjamin was wide: categories such as dream and myth, Early and Late, and archaic and dialectical images were central for both. Benjamin, too, viewed periods of decay positively. In his eyes, too, what was required in the revolutionary struggle against fascism was a form of power which sprang from the depths of history no less deep than the power of the fascists'. Benjamin saw surrealism as a significant step along the road to winning the energies of intoxication for the revolution’. And he emphasized the necessity of going beyond the undialectical Surrealist view of the essence of intoxication'. In early notes for the Passagen-Werk, he wrote, While Aragon remains in dream worlds, here the situation is that of awakening. Where an impressionist element remains in Aragon”mythology” … here it is a matter of dissolving “mythology” in the space of history.’ But the tone and general perspective of Bloch and Benjamin differed in the extreme: Bloch was cheerful, Benjamin was bitter. Bloch trusted in the indestructible, rebellious character of "life", which has not yet come to fulfilment in any period'; Benjamin observed with despair what Kracauer called the dangerous game’ of the historical process, in which ever more had to be saved with constantly decreasing resources. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 771

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes Benjamin’s ‘awakening’ project from Aragon’s ‘dream world’ surrealism — a precise reference distinction.
• XREF: Benjamin’s categories (archaic and dialectical images, awakening vs. dream) connect to the broader Passagen-Werk literature and to the surrealism debates of the 1920s-30s.