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UFÜ Sosyal ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi 2026, Clt. 2(4) 1-28

City, Poetry, Stage: A Reading of Walter Benjamin

Erdal Cengiz

ss. 1 - 28   |  DOI: https://doi.org/10.29329/ufusobed.2026.1465.1

Yayın Tarihi: Temmuz 07, 2026  |   Görüntüleme Sayısı: 0/0   |   İndirilme Sayısı: 0/0


Özet

This article discusses the reading method of Walter Benjamin through six key moments in the narrative of experience of modernity. The figures chosen (Baudelaire, Proust, Kafka, Brecht, Hölderlin and Goethe) are analyzed as sites at which the tensions and transformations of modernity become visible within Benjamin’s critical framework. José Asunción Silva is presented as an extra-textual figure outside Benjamin’s own corpus. Silva is not a comparative analogy but a shift in perspective that allows marginal modern experiences to be reexamined. Each author is traced as a threshold through which modern experience is revealed as a dialectical image. In these pictures the meaning is not directly explained but is created through tension. Benjamin's formulation from The Arcades Project: “I have nothing to say. " articulates a reading practice in which montage replaces explanation and meaning arises from juxtaposition. Just to show. The structure is not based on a unitary concept or linear historical narrative. Rather, it is made up of heterogeneous moments with overlapping historical tensions at varying intensities. The article constructs authors and moments as discrete elements that retain their singularity while producing relations by virtue of proximity, drawing on Benjamin’s notions of montage and constellation. Here, the constellation names these nascent clusters of meaning and montage is the operative method of arrangement. This approach does not seek a totalizing interpretation, but rather inscribes incompleteness as a methodological principle. Benjamin’s reading atlas, therefore, beckons readers to chart their own trajectories, where meaning is made through disjuncture, comparison, and relational tension.

Anahtar kelimeler: Walter Benjamin, dialectical image, montage, constellation, Jose Asuncion Silva


Bu makaleye nasıl atıf yapılır

APA 7th edition
Cengiz, E. (2026). City, Poetry, Stage: A Reading of Walter Benjamin. UFÜ Sosyal ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi, 2(4), 1-28. https://doi.org/10.29329/ufusobed.2026.1465.1

Harvard
Cengiz, E. (2026). City, Poetry, Stage: A Reading of Walter Benjamin. UFÜ Sosyal ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi, 2(4), pp. 1-28.

Chicago 16th edition
Cengiz, Erdal (2026). "City, Poetry, Stage: A Reading of Walter Benjamin". UFÜ Sosyal ve Beşeri Bilimler Dergisi 2 (4):1-28. https://doi.org/10.29329/ufusobed.2026.1465.1

Kaynakça

    Adorno, T. W. (2004). Aesthetic theory (R. Hullot-Kentor, trans.). Continuum.

    Adorno, T. W. (2006a). Benjamin'e mektup. (Ü. Oskay çev.). Estetik ve politika (s. 203 230).

    Adorno, T. W. (2006b). Bağlanma. (Ü. Oskay, çev.). Estetik ve politika (s. 377–419).

    Agamben, G. (2005). State of exception (K. Attell, trans.). University of Chicago Press.

    Arendt, H. (2012). Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940. In W. Benjamin, Illuminations (pp. 7 58). Schocken Books. Baudelaire, C. (2003). Modern hayatın ressamı (A. Berktay, çev.). İletişim Yayınları.