Love and Imaginattion in Walter Benjamin: A Retrospective Reading of Berlin Child- hood around 1900

Abstract

This paper offers a reading of Walter Benjamin’s autobiography, Berlin Childhood around 1900 (1932-33), in relation with two early works. A “Dialogue on Love” (1913) and “The Rainbow. A Dialogue on Phantasy” (1915).
Only recently have Benjaminian studies started to broaden our comprehension of the philosopher’s formative period. In the 1910s, Benjamin already lay the foundations of his philosophy, the “pro- gramme” of his criticist vocation centred on the Kantian concept of “experience”.

The main objective of this paper is to show how this Kantian programme was based on the arti- culation of the concept of “Imagination” (“Phantasie”) with the notion of “Love” (“Liebe”). This fundamental articulation could be the starting point for the construction of the autobiographical subject in Berlin Childhood around 1900, thanks to the transcendental constitution of its “I”. Being composed of a system of image production, through which the original colour of the lived experience is made “transparent”, the child’s imagination could find a model system of surprising affinities in the amorous union, with its specific alternation of love and hatred.