Rag-and-Bone Angel: The Angelus Novus in Charles Bernstein‘s Shadowtime

When analyzing Walter Benjamin’s oeuvre, and perhaps in particular his “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” many commentators have pointed out the apparently irreconcilable strains of dialectical materialism and Jewish Messianism in his thought. In Charles Bernstein’s libretto to the opera Shadowtime, which focuses on the last night of Benjamin’s life, Bernstein wrestles with these competing worldviews poetically. While Bernstein does not attempt to reconcile Benjamin’s idiosyncratic thought, he does point out ways that the apparently divergent strands can be understood side-by-side. In particular, he focuses on the image of the Angelus Novus, the Angel of History, an image Benjamin fleshes out in his essay, based upon the Paul Klee painting that Benjamin himself owned.