Accessing Written on Skin through the writings of Walter Benjamin

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Accessing Written on Skin

through the writings of

Walter Benjamin

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Introduction and Literature Review 1

Chapter 1 - Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History 6

1.i - Uncovering the Angel of History

-1.ii - A Brief Aside: Defining Walter Benjamin’s Conception of Hell 10

Chapter 2 - Redemption and Written on Skin 13

2.i - Expounding Benjaminian Redemption

-2.ii - The Redemptive Archives 21

Chapter 3 - Establishing Temporal Preference 29

3.i - Artificiality and Reality

-3.ii - Archival Time 34

3.iii - Uncovering Angelic Sentimentalism 39

3.iv - Authorial Challenges 47

Concluding Thoughts 51

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Introduction and Literature Review

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Since its premiere on the 7th July 2012 at the Festival d’Aix en Provence, Written on Skin has been produced 6 times around the world. The critic Guy Dammann likens this swift canonical acceptance to Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes, a stalwart of the British operatic repertory, even proposing Written on

Skin’s surpassing of Britten’s work - ‘In its first few years of existence, the work has been performed

more frequently and widely even than Peter Grimes. One can only wonder how its story will continue.’ 1 The inauguration of George Benjamin (alongside the opera’s librettist Martin Crimp) into the operatic mise-en-scène seems set to become all the more solidified through further commissions since Written on

Skin’s inception - Benjamin and Crimp’s new opera Lessons of Love and Violence is undergoing its debut

run at the Royal Opera House as I write, gaining broadly positive critical coverage. Written on Skin, 2 however, remains (for the time being, at least) their most lauded work, winning plaudits from across the critical world.

If initial critical response to the Written on Skin was overwhelmingly positive, the Guardian’s Erica Jeal embodied critical excitement through her declaration of the work as ‘nothing short of a triumph’, the 3 work has become all the more revered through age. Even in the immediate aftermath of its debut run,

G. Dammann, Lessons in Love and Violence Programme, ‘A Flair for the Dramatic’, Royal Opera House programme for 1

performance on 18 May 2018, pg. 25. See the following reviews: 2

I. F. Maddocks, ‘Lessons in Love and Violence review – a bolder, angrier, more tender George Benjamin’, The Guardian, 19 May 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/19/lessons-in-love-and-violence-review-george-benjamin-royal-opera (accessed 24 May 2018).

II. R. Christiansen, ‘Lessons in Love and Violence review, Royal Opera: a potent and beautiful account of Edward II's downfall’, The Telegraph, 11 May 2018, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/what-to-see/lessons-love-violence-review-royal-opera-potent-beautiful-account/ (accessed 24 May 2018).

III. A. Tommasini, ‘Review: A Long-Awaited New Opera Is a Raucous Beauty’, The New York Times, 11 May 2018, https:// www.nytimes.com/2018/05/11/arts/music/review-lessons-love-violence-george-benjamin.html (accessed 24 May 2018). E. Jeal, ‘Written on Skin - Review’, The Guardian, 10 March 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/mar/10/written-on-3

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critics seemingly predicted that the work would become an enduring masterpiece, stably established as part of the operatic Western canon - Andrew Clark writes in the Financial Times that Written on Skin is ‘the modern era’s most powerful and sophisticated musical drama’ before again invoking notions of the triumphant Benjamin and Crimp in his closing line - ‘on every level, this is a triumph’. Written on Skin 4 has become all the more hallowed in the years and productions following its premiere, with grandiose canonical statements becoming the critical norm: The Telegraph’s Rupert Christiansen leads with the headline ‘Written on Skin is one of the masterpieces of our time’ (necessarily alongside a five star review); the longevity of the opera is promoted by Richard Fairman in Gramophone, ‘a new opera that 5 will surely repay repeated viewings’; and George Hall again conforms to type in declaring the opera ‘a 6 modern masterpiece’ in The Stage. Perhaps the only disgruntlement with Written on Skin as time has 7 progressed has been with the imperfection of subsequent diﬀering productions (of which there are few) in comparison with the brilliantly cerebral original, with the direction of Katie Mitchell and design of Vicki Mortimer being particularly lauded. In a review of Opera Philadelphia’s new 2018 production of the work, The New York Times’ Zachary Woolfe writes:

Pity is particularly hard to summon in this new production, which conceives the central couple as more aristocratic, in a Disney “Sleeping Beauty” way, than the rough, flinty country gentry imagined by Katie Mitchell’s staging, in which the opera was first seen, captured on DVD and widely traveled. Barbara Hannigan, the Agnès in that premiere version, gave a performance of virtuosic vulnerability — dirty and wide-eyed.8

The initial success of the opera, then, appears to hinder those who attempt to recreate it in a diﬀerent setting. However, despite such criticisms, what remains clear is that Written on Skin is amongst the most frequently lauded, and journalistically discussed operatic works in the twenty-first-century.

A. Clark, ‘George Benjamin - Written on Skin’, The Financial Times, 31 January 2014, https://www.ft.com/content/ 4

afc957d6-86f1-11e3-aa31-00144feab7de (accessed 24 May 2018).

R. Christiansen, ‘Written on Skin is one of the operatic masterpieces of our time - review’, The Telegraph, 14 January 2017, 5

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opera/what-to-see/written-skin-one-operatic-masterpieces-time-review/ (accessed 24 May 2018). R. Fairman, ‘BENJAMIN Written on Skin’, Gramophone, https://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/benjamin-written-on-skin-0 6

(accessed 24 May 2018).

G. Hall, ‘Written on Skin Review at the Royal Opera House, London - a modern masterpiece’, The Stage, 14 January 2017, 7

https://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/2017/written-skin-review-royal-opera-house-london-2/ (accessed 24 May 2018).

Z. Woolfe, ‘Review: ‘Written on Skin,’ an Opera of Love, Betrayal and a Little Cannibalism’, The New York Times, 11 February 8

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In this context of widespread acclaim, it seems all the more surprising that there is very little scholarly discourse surrounding Written on Skin. The reasons for such a vacuum in academic literature are not my primary concern, and they are most probably varied and numerous - one imagines the proximity of the work’s premiere to the current day is potentially too short for a full analysis of the score; the composer’s living status is perhaps intimidating to those who wish to hermeneutically interpret his work and fear rebuttal. Regardless, Written in Skin is currently relegated to journalistic reviews (as highlighted above) and fleeting mentions in chronological compendiums of operatic histories - Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, in their ‘A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years’, devote a brief section of around 9 three pages to the work, commenting in passing on its musical language and thematic content. Brevity 10 is, of course, a burden of such compendia, and it is therefore wrong to level this as a criticism of such works, however, at the time of my writing this, such brief commentaries are the only scholarly discourse on Written on Skin present within the academic community. In fact, the only articles directly related (in the sense that Written on Skin was their primary focus) to the opera were to be found in the Royal Opera House programme at its performance - Christopher Wintle ‘sets the ball rolling’ for hermeneutic interpretation through his article ‘Opera in Flux’; Bill Burgwinkle writes about the opera’s ‘Occitan 11 Origins’; Patricia Lovett charts the physical process of ‘Writing on Skin’; and Alain Perroux 12 13 interviews both Benjamin and Crimp. These articles, despite their value, are still constrained by the 14 necessity of concision - their combined length of thirty-seven pages within the programme, between pages twelve and forty-nine, includes around fifteen pages comprising of images alone. Despite their

C. Abbate, R. Parker, A History of Opera: The Last Four Hundred Years, London : Allen Lane, 2012. 9

Ibid, pp. 541-544. 10

C. Wintle, Written on Skin Programme, ‘Opera in Flux’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 2017, 11

pp. 25 - 31.

B. Burgwinkle, Written on Skin Programme, ‘Occitan Origins’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 12

2017, pp. 12 - 16.

P. Lovett, Written on Skin Programme, ‘Writing on Skin’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 2017, 13

pp. 39 - 43. See: 14

I. G. Benjamin, interviewed by A. Perroux, Written on Skin Programme, ‘The Intensity of the Moment: George Benjamin interviewed by Alain Perroux’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 2017, pp. 33 - 38.

II. M. Crimp, interviewed by A. Perroux, Written on Skin Programme, ‘The Angels of History: Martin Crimp interviewed by Alain Perroux’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 2017, pp. 18 - 23.

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brevity, some of the articles (especially those of Wintle and Perroux) begin to draw parallels between the operatic product and its influences in outside literature. Such parallels are insightful and thought-provoking, but they are never fully developed and remain in a stage of infancy; the articles serve to identify influences but do not produce any semblance of a detailed interpretation of the opera through an exploration of these influences.

One such parallel drawn between Written on Skin and external literature comes from Martin Crimp himself. In an interview preceding the 2017 Royal Opera House reproduction of Written on Skin, Martin Crimp identifies the work of Walter Benjamin as a source of inspiration for the opera. More specifically, when asked by Alain Perroux about the origins of the angels within the opera, Crimp responds:

The angels have two origins. There are the medieval manuscripts where you see angels appearing in every corner, and that image also appears in Written on Skin in the line evoking these angels who ‘want to crank the universe round on its axis.’ The other source is a passage in Walter Benjamin’s essay On the Concept of History referring to the Angel of History, itself inspired by the Paul Klee painting Angelus Novus. Benjamin describes the Angel of History as being like a creature that looks back towards the disasters of the past, while propelled towards the future and unable to act against the past. 15

Such an implicit acknowledgement of influence is rare and demands further investigation. The angels within the manuscripts cited by Crimp are covered well in Bill Burgwinkle’s aforementioned article, while Walter Benjamin’s influence on the opera has been left unexplored. Therefore, in this thesis I aim to explore linkages between Written on Skin and Walter Benjamin’s writings, predominantly his On the

Concept of History. The discussion of Walter Benjamin’s work within this thesis comes from reading of 16 his own work, primarily focussing on his On the Concept of History, and reading the interpretations of his work by others.

M. Crimp, interviewed by A. Perroux, Written on Skin Programme, ‘The Angels of History: Martin Crimp interviewed by Alain 15

Perroux’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 2017, pg. 19.

In this thesis I use the English translations provided by Chris Turner in Michael Löwy’s book, Fire Alarm: Reading Walter 16

Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History, however to read Benjamin’s essay in an uninterrupted English format, I used W. Benjamin, Illuminations, ‘On the Concept of History’, trans. Harry Zohn, London : Schocken Books, 1968, pp. 253 - 265.

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After a reading of On the Concept of History (a collection of twenty theses), it became clear that two particular theses were directly applicable to the opera - Thesis II and Thesis IX (I have no doubt that more theses could have been applied to the opera, however the restraints of a word count prevent further interpretation at this stage). While the programmatic angelic element of Written on Skin, confirmed by Crimp, relates to Thesis IX, Thesis II is also of direct interest when attempting to conceive hermeneutic linkages between Walter Benjamin’s work and the opera. Whereas Thesis IX could be considered accountable, or perhaps an originating point, for the angels in the opera, Thesis II is increasingly relevant when considering the notions of both redemption and contrasting timeframes within the opera. Both theses are saturated with references to Benjamin’s other philosophical treatises, and after reading critical interpretations of his theses, it became clear that the angelic symbol present within both his theses and Written on Skin was inextricable from other Benjaminian concepts - his understanding of heaven and hell; his definition of and blueprint for redemption; and his sentimentalism towards the past; all of which are supplemented and framed by his desire for ‘the primitive classless society’. In light of Martin Crimp’s explicit referencing of Walter Benjamin as an 17 influence for Written on Skin, this thesis aims to highlight and interpret Benjaminian elements within the opera. What follows, then, is a kaleidoscopic exegesis of Benjamin’s two theses, with subchapters exploring a wide range of Benjaminian notions within the opera, culminating in a reading of Written of

Skin (specifically focussing on the successful original Katie Mitchell 2013 Royal Opera House

production and its 2017 reincarnation) methodologically situated by philosophical literature, criticism, score and libretto analysis, and an exploration of Mitchell’s staging decisions.18

M. Löwy, Fire Alarm : Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’, trans. C. Turner, London : Verso, 2016, pg. 63. 17

In order to review the staging, and visual elements of the opera, I used the Royal Opera House DVD, produced by Margaret 18

Williams, recorded at a performance at Covent Garden in March 2013: 

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Chapter 1 -

Walter Benjamin’s Angel of History

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Walter Benjamin’s Thesis IX:

My wing is ready for flight, I would like to turn back. If I had stayed timeless time, I would have little luck.

-Gerhard Schloem, “Gruss vom Angelus”

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.19

Chapter 1.i - Uncovering the Angel of History

In 1921, Walter Benjamin purchased Paul Klee’s painting ‘Angelus Novus’ (shown below alongside a photograph of the artist) for the modern day equivalent of around thirty dollars. Benjamin developed a deep-set attachment to the painting, with numerous critics noting that it became his ‘most treasured possession.’ The painting inspired Benjamin to write his book On the Concept of History, and is 20 21 specifically cited by Benjamin within his above ninth thesis. Critics have frequently debated diﬀering interpretations of the theses, however a consensus has formed around its bipartite origination in secular

W. Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn, Schocken, 1969, pp. 257-258. 19

This exact terminology can be found in the following: 20

I. J. Farago, ‘How Klee’s Angel of History Took Flight’, BBC News Online, 6 April 2017, http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/ 20160401-how-klees-angel-of-history-took-flight (Accessed 16 May 2018).

II. A. Danchev, ‘Claims’, in D. Howland, E. Lillehoj, M. Meyer (eds.), Art and Sovereignty in Global Politics, New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, pg. 130.

III. A. Danchev, On Good and Evil and the Grey Zone, Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pg. 44.

W. Benjamin, Illuminations, ‘On the Concept of History’, trans. Harry Zohn, London : Schocken Books, 1968, pp. 253 - 265. 21

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Marxist philosophy, and religious Talmudic scripture. This combination of the religious and secular becomes key to an understanding of the allegory, and in interpreting the allegory’s importance to

Written on Skin.

It is perhaps most profitable to first explore interpretations of Benjamin’s Paradise and the storm originating there before going on to consider any overarching ideological beliefs on the part of Benjamin showcased in Thesis IX. In his book, ‘Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’’, Michael Löwy meticulously dissects Benjamin’s theses, elucidating upon their 22 theological origins and providing supporting real-life examples which help illustrate their deeper meanings. For Löwy, mentions of ‘Paradise’ and a ‘storm’ within the thesis ‘doubtless evokes the Fall and expulsion from the Garden of Eden.’ The storm’s propulsion of the angel further away from Paradise 23 mirrors the Biblical aftermath of the Fall, as mankind increasingly strayed from Biblically ‘holy’ existence. Simultaneously, Benjamin’s ‘Paradise’ acts as a quite literal allusion to the Paradise present in

M. Löwy, Fire Alarm : Reading Walter Benjamin’s ‘On the Concept of History’, trans. C. Turner, London : Verso, 2016. 22

Ibid, pg. 63. 23

Paul Klee, pictured on the right, alongside his painting ‘Angelus Novus’ which was owned by Walter Benjamin - both photos comes from http://www.paul-klee.org.

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Jewish scripture, and also serves as an allegory for a more humanly grounded primitive non-hierarchical society. The storm, in turn, is also subject to literal and allegorical interpretation - in theological terms, the storm is instigated through the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden, which created a human race separate from God and increasingly independent of his teachings; allegorically, through the definition of Benjamin himself, the storm is representative of ‘progress’, namely technological and political ‘progress’ moving humanity further away from Benjamin’s ideal of a utopian classless society. Within the thesis, then, one can see both religious doctrine and secular allegory - the Paradise in which the storm originated represents both Eden, and Benjamin’s ideal human society, defined by Löwy as ‘the primitive classless society’, supported by Susan Handelman’s classification of the angel as ‘Marxist’.24 25

The storm which controls the angel, which ‘irresistibly propels him into the future’, is to be secularly understood as the advancement of mankind, while the angel embodies both mankind, and mankind’s insatiable desire for such ‘progress’ - the pastoral idyll of Paradise and the non-hierarchical society within it has been exponentially abandoned by a mankind evermore invested in technological advancement. Löwy notes that Adorno and Horkheimer consider the angel responsible for the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise as the prime instigator of this technology-based journey, and in turn suggest that the angel is a representative symbol of the process of technological advancement, or as Benjamin terms it, ‘progress’:

The angel with the fiery sword who drove man out of paradise and onto the path of technical progress is the very symbol of that progress.26

The angel of history is cut adrift from Paradise in a storm of its own making, forced to perpetually regard a human race that, according to Benjamin in an essay on Karl Kraus, ‘proves itself by destruction.’ Benjamin’s negative view of humanity is perpetuated within Written on Skin, the story of 27

S. Handelman, ‘Walter Benjamin and the Angel of History’, Cross Currents, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 1991, pg. 348. 25

T.W. Adorno, M. Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. J. Cumming, London : Allen Lane, 1973, pg. 166. 26

W. Benjamin, M.W. Jennings, H. Eiland, G. Smith (eds.), Selected Writings Volume 2 1927-34, trans. R. Livingstone, Harvard 27

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which perfectly embodies the violence and destruction of humanity. The narcissism and insecurity of the Protector is immediately apparent in his commissioning of the Boy to immortalise his family in a series of illuminations:

Protector: Paint me the life to come, paint deeds of angels: show me graves opening, the damned shovelled into ovens, and the just - us - us - my family - the pure and just, show us in our rightful place: show us in Paradise. 28

The nervousness of the Protector, his moral insecurity, is self-promoted by his repeated assertion that he and his family are ‘the pure and just’. Equally telling, and a direct illustration of a humanity that ‘proves itself by destruction’, is the Protector’s insistence on the ‘damned’ being punished - he seems as willing to identify himself negatively, through not being one of the damned being thrown into ovens, as he is to identify himself positively, as alongside his family in Paradise. His sadism is clearly apparent, the suﬀering of others is equally important as his own ascendancy. If Benjamin’s analysis of a destructively focussed humanity is not validated wholly in this section, the remainder of the opera serves to further support his cause - the storyline spirals into death and violence as the Protector uncovers Agnès and the Boy’s aﬀair and, seemingly more hurt by his own loss of status as a cuckold than any notion of a betrayal on the part of his wife, brutally murders the Boy and, after feeding her the Boy’s heart, pursues Agnès to her death. Meanwhile, the angels watch on, coldly surveying (at least initially) the story they have recreated.

Within the storm, Benjamin depicts the angel as powerless - despite the apparent omniscience of the angel, able to view the entirety of history since the schism caused by the Fall as a ‘one single catastrophe’, the angel’s abilities to intervene in such destructive events has been removed by the storm of its own making. Susan Handelman, in her article ‘Walter Benjamin and the Angel of History’, 29 describes the angel’s powerlessness as follows:

M. Crimp, Written on Skin Libretto, Het Muziektheater Amsterdam libretto published for performance on 6 October 2012, 28

pg. 54.

S. Handelman, ‘Walter Benjamin and the Angel of History’, Cross Currents, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 1991, pp. 344-352. 29

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But this angel does not sing praises or hymns; he is impotent. He would like to stay, resurrect the dead, heal, redeem, but he cannot. The storm from Paradise is pushing him in the opposite direction, back into the future. Paradise here is the source of a “storm”, not a peaceful idyll. The storm is a violent force which catches the angel and propels him against his will.30

The impotency, or superfluous will, of Benjamin’s angel of history is again embodied by the angels within Written on Skin. As the events of the opera unfold, the angels aid the recreated medieval characters (more on this below) in their logistical needs - changing clothing where necessary, moving props, physically moving the characters into place. The angels, framed by their present-day archivist setting in the top-left of the stage, lubricate proceedings, and look on with fascination as the storyline progresses. However, any illusion of the angels possessing genuine power in the medieval reconstruction is shattered by their powerlessness during Agnès’ death. The angels grow increasingly frantic throughout the opera, their initial cold and calm exterior gives way to a mortified glaze. Their morbid fascination remains as they follow the Protector and Agnès up the staircase, determined to get the best vantage point. They are, however, as Handelman declares, ‘impotent’. They would like to ‘stay, resurrect the dead, heal, redeem’, but cannot. They are instead forced to watch as the episode reveals its violent end; like the angels in the margins of medieval manuscripts, they intimately observe yet remain outside of proceedings.

Chapter 1.ii - A Brief Aside: Defining Walter Benjamin’s Conception of Hell

With any insinuation of Paradise, regardless of secular or religious meaning, necessarily comes a connotation of hell. While the notion of hell is not directly addressed in Theses IX, Benjamin does

S. Handelman, ‘Walter Benjamin and the Angel of History’, Cross Currents, Vol. 41, Issue 3, 1991, pg. 346. 30

Powerless angels look on as Agnès is pursued to her death. (Pascal Victor/Artcomart)

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indeed define hell in his other work, Löwy notes that ‘several of Benjamin’s texts suggest a correspondence between modernity - or progress - and infernal damnation’. While Benjamin’s religious 31 conception of hell once again conforms to Jewish teaching, his secular derivation relates to Marxist notions of the mundane. For Benjamin, the mundanity of everyday life, demonstrated by the repetitive, prescribed movements of the worker, embodies a secular hell made all the worse by ‘progress’. Löwy further discusses Benjamin’s conception of hell, invoking Engels’ literary example of Camus’ Sisyphus to exemplify his point, before ultimately quoting from Benjamin’s ‘Arcades Project’ :32

Benjamin quotes a passage from Engles comparing the worker’s interminable torture - compelled as he is, endlessly to repeat the same mechanical movement - with the infernal punishment of Sisyphus. But this is not just something that aﬄicts the worker: the whole of modern society, dominated by commodities is subject to repetition, to the Immergleich (always the same), disguised as novelty and fashion: in the realm of commodities, ‘Humanity figures…as damned.’33

Benjamin’s expanded understanding of the mundane as a hallmark of modern culture is pivotal to his perception of modernity, and progress, as representative of hell itself. His expansion of the mundane from the trials of the worker to the overarching modern capitalist culture is a damning indictment of modernity itself - such views are echoed by Theodor Adorno, a friend of Benjamin, in his book ‘The Culture Industry’. The mundanity of modern culture, achieved through ‘progress’, is echoed within 34 both the libretto and musical writing of Written on Skin. The angels within the opera refer to the mundane stalwarts of modern culture - the ‘Saturday car park’, the ‘flights from the international 35 airport’, and the ‘eight lanes of poured concrete’ - willing their destruction in their recreation of the 36 37 medieval world at the centre of Written on Skin. In particular, the ‘Saturday car park’ is redolent of the 2012 discovery and 2013 confirmation of a body found under a staﬀ car park in Leicester as the long-lost

W. Benjamin, The Arcades Project, Harvard University Press, 1999, pg. 106. 32

T. W. Adorno, J. M. Bernstein (ed.), The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture, Routledge Classics, 1991. 34

M. Crimp, Written on Skin Libretto, Het Muziektheater Amsterdam libretto published for performance on 6 October 2012, 35 pg. 53. Ibid, pg. 53. 36 Ibid, pg. 67. 37

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Richard III (the timing of which is in keeping with the period in which the opera was being written); 38 in this instance the mundane modern world physically covers the significant past. Such blatant references by the angels toward the mundane elements of the modern world reveal their Benjaminian origins. The angels, in their desire to ‘strip’ away the aforementioned banalities of modern culture, 39 embody the views of their creator. Their sentimentality towards the past, catalysed by their existence in the infernal present, is preserved by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp, whose writing faithfully presents the angels (biases and all) in Walter Benjamin’s image. A more detailed discussion of the operatic angels as an embodiment of Walter Benjamin, facilitated by the writing of both George Benjamin Martin Crimp and, will take place in Chapter 3, ‘Establishing Temporal Preference’, further supplemented by interpretations of Benjamin’s Thesis II.

Information on this can be found in the following newspaper articles: 38

I. M. Kennedy, ‘Richard III: DNA confirms twisted bones belong to king’, The Guardian, 4 February 2013, https:// www.theguardian.com/science/2013/feb/04/richard-iii-dna-bones-king (accessed 8 June 2018).

II. L. Dixon, ‘DNA confirms skeleton under Leicester car park to be Richard III’, The Times, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/ article/dna-confirms-skeleton-under-leicester-car-park-to-be-richard-iii-5drpt20k39c (accessed 8 June 2018).

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Chapter 2 -

Redemption and Written on Skin

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Walter Benjamin’s Theses II:

"One of the most remarkable characteristics of human nature," writes Lotze, "is, alongside so much selfishness in specific instances, the freedom from envy which the present displays toward the future." Reflection shows us that our image of happiness is thoroughly coloured by the time to which the course of our own existence has assigned us. The kind of happiness that could arouse envy in us exists only in the air we have breathed, among people we could have talked to, women who could have given themselves to us. In other words, our image of happiness is indissolubly bound up with the image of redemption. The same applies to our view of the past, which is the concern of history. The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply. Historical materialists are aware of that.40

Chapter 2.i - Expounding Benjaminian Redemption

Michael Löwy again proves particularly useful in extrapolating meaning from Benjamin’s writing. In the case of Theses II, Löwy traces Benjamin’s inspiration back to Max Horkheimer’s early work on remembrance before defining Benjamin’s significant additions. Löwy suggests a passage from 41 Horkheimer’s Kritische Theorie as a place where Benjamin’s inspiration could have originated:

What has happened to the human beings who have fallen no future can repair. They will never be called to be made happy for all eternity...Amid this immense indiﬀerence, human consciousness along can become the site where the injustice suﬀered can be abolished, the only agency that does not give in to it...Now that faith in eternity is necessarily breaking down, historiography is the only court of appeal

W. Benjamin, Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn, Schocken, 1969, pp. 253-254. 40

Löwy specifically references two of Horkheimer’s works, one under his pseudonym Heinrich Regius (all quotations of 41

Benjamin and Horkheimer from Löwy are translated by Chris Turner): I. M. Horkheimer, Kritische Theorie, Frankfurt : S. Fischer, 1968, I.

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that present humanity, itself transient, can oﬀer to the protests which come from the past.42

Historiography, for Horkheimer, grants some form of redemption to the victims of the past. The ever-decreasing influence of organised religion in everyday life renders man as the sole force capable of oﬀering redemption. Horkheimer suggested that this redemption came through the remembrance of past injustices, by highlighting such injustices in the present world, the individuals involved would finally be judged - dwindling belief in a divine day of judgement had, for Horkheimer, resulted in the need for humanity itself to act as the infallible moral judge after-the-fact. In the years following Horkheimer’s proclamation of humanity’s ascendence to the role of redemption-givers, in lieu of faith in a divine being, theism has further decreased in size - a 2016 National Geographic report proposed that atheists and agnostics are the second largest group in the United States and most of Europe, and that many Western countries will soon lose their Christian majorities. In the Western world in which 43

Written on Skin was created, the view of humanity as the only source of redemption in the place of a

God is increasingly common. Horkheimer’s view of redemption, first iterated in his debut book, ‘Dämmerung: Notizen in Deutschland’, (again brought to light by Löwy) laid a foundation for 44 Benjamin’s second theses, first prompting a philosophical consideration of historical research:

When you are at the lowest ebb, exposed to an eternity of torment inflicted upon you by other human beings, you cherish, as a dream of deliverance, the idea that a being will come who will stand in the light and bring truth and justice for you. You do not even need this to happen in your lifetime, or in the lifetime of those who are torturing you to death, but one day, whenever it comes, all will nonetheless be repaired...It is bitter to be misunderstood and to die in obscurity. It is the honour of historical research that it projects light on that obscurity.45

Despite a seeming convergence of views with Horkheimer on the matter, Löwy suggests that Benjamin required an element in addition to remembrance in order for redemption to be granted - reparation. Remembrance, although shedding light on obscurity, was not, for Benjamin, in itself a redemptive act.

M. Horkheimer, Kritische Theorie, Frankfurt : S. Fischer, 1968, I, pp. 198-199. 42

G. Bullard, ‘The World’s Newest Major Religion : No Religion’, National Geographic, 22 April 2016, https:// 43

news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/04/160422-atheism-agnostic-secular-nones-rising-religion/ (Accessed 23 April 2018). M. Regius, Dammerung : Notizen in Deutschland, Zurich : Verlag Oprecht und Hebling, 1924.

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M. Horkheimer, Dämmerung: Notizen in Deutschland, Zurich : Verlag Oprecht und Hebling, 1924, pg. 272. 45

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Instead, Löwy proposes that Benjamin’s redemption was truly gained through ‘the accomplishment of the objectives they [those who suﬀered] struggled for and failed to achieve...There is no Messiah sent from Heaven: we are ourselves the Messiah; each generation possesses a small portion of messianic power, which it must strive to exact.’ The act of reparation, necessarily alongside remembrance, as 46 part of the redemptive process is something which is granted to the characters within Written on Skin. An understanding of the origins of the characters of the opera is pivotal in order to consider their redemption through Crimp and Benjamin’s work. In interviews with Alain Perroux, both Crimp and Benjamin acknowledge that the primary inspirations for the opera were Occitan vidas and razos pertaining to the legend of Guillem de Cabestaing, described by Bill Burgwinkle in the Royal Opera 47 House programme as ‘a knight from the minor nobility who attached himself in service to a regional lord, Raymon de Castel Rossillon, and produced for him and his wife a body of love poetry and music’ 48 - Crimp remarks that the tale of de Cabestaing ‘stood out...no doubt because of it’s extreme nature’ 49 while Benjamin refers to the legend of the ‘eaten heart’. The opera specifically recreates the final aﬀair 50 and death of de Cabestaing, succinctly outlined by Burgwinkle:

The story is short and tragic: Guillem and the wife of his lord, Raimon, fall in love; Raimon learns about it; he locks his wife in a tower and kills Guillem in the forest in an act of cold-blooded murder. He removes his heart, and has it cooked and served to his wife in a pepper sauce. When the lady has eaten and been informed that it is her lover’s heart she has consumed she states calmly that she will never again eat or drink so as to savour forever the lover’s trace in her mouth. Raimon, enraged, attacks her with a sword drawn and she throws herself from the tower window, landing below with a broken neck. 51

Various spellings of this surname exist, however I shall continually use ‘Cabestaing’, as it has been the most frequently used 47

amongst articles I have surveyed.

2017, pg. 13.

Perroux’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 2017, pg. 18.

G. Benjamin, interviewed by A. Perroux, Written on Skin Programme, ‘The Intensity of the Moment: George Benjamin 50

interviewed by Alain Perroux’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 2017, pg. 33.

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After the couple’s death, word spread of Raimon’s brutality and people successfully petitioned the King of Aragon to imprison him. Furthermore, the King of Aragon buried the lovers together in Perpignan with a plaque telling of their love and declared that an annual pilgrimage should take place to their graves by all courtly lovers, Burgwinkle comments on the gravity of such an declaration - ‘the final irony is the oﬃcial announcement that each year all knights and ladies in love should travel to the tomb to honour their deaths. Adultery has become sanctity; the secular value of true love has been embraced as of religious worth.’ Given Walter Benjamin’s views on humanity granting redemption through both 52 remembrance and reparation, it seems that the proclamation of pilgrimage instigated by the King of Aragon grants the dead couple redemption in the immediate aftermath of their death (along with the imprisonment of Raimon). In this instance, as in the Benjaminian concept of redemption, the secular has triumphed over the religious and both of Benjamin’s criteria for human redemption are fulfilled - the grave and plaque act as remembrance, and the act of pilgrimage by young lovers fulfils reparative standards. The act of lovers making such a pilgrimage to the grave of de Cabestaing and his lover reaﬃrms their exercising of free will and provided immediate redemption in the aftermath of their deaths.

In their creation of Written on Skin, Crimp and Benjamin likewise grant redemption to the characters (and their originating real-life counterparts) through their remembrance of them, and in their granting the characters reparation by presenting them in a Western world where the free-will and individuality they strove for has been (at least increasingly) actualised. The oppressed character of Agnès is particularly relevant to this notion of redemption, as Crimp references a desire for individualism as a key factor within the opera in the aforementioned interview with Alain Perroux, remarking ‘one of the very interesting aspects of this medieval period is the aspiration for individuality which is what Agnès is demanding when she asks to be called by her name...’. This desire for individuality is not, however, 53 unopposed; Agnès’ despotic husband treats her as his property ‘my wife’s body, her still and obedient

2017, pg. 15.

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body is my property’. Over the course of the opera, Agnès undergoes something of an individual 54 awakening - developing a need for both personal independence and sexual expression. An act embodying each of these awakenings - personal recognition and sexual expression - comes both through Agnès’ commanding the Boy to paint a woman ‘who’s real’ in place of his generic illuminations and in 55 her response to his creation of such a ‘real’ woman. The first libretto excerpt (Part I Scene IV) is Agnès’ request to the Boy for a truthful depiction of a woman (herself), while the second is her reaction to the Boy’s completion of this task (Part I Scene 6):

Agnès - What else can you invent? Can you invent another woman, says the woman, not this, but a woman who’s real, a woman who can’t sleep, who keeps turning her white pillow over and over from the hot side to the cold side until the cold side’s hot? Can you invent that?

Boy - What is it you mean, says the Boy.

Agnès - And if the woman said, says the woman. Boy - And if the woman said what, says the Boy.

Agnès - Said - said - said - what if you invented a woman who said that she couldn’t sleep, who said that her heart split and shook at the sight of a boy, the way light in a bowl of water splits and shakes on a garden wall - who said that her grey eyes at the sight of a boy turn black with love.

Boy - What boy? says the Boy. Agnès - You can decide what boy. Boy - What love?

Agnès - You can decide what love. Invent her - invent the woman you want: and when you know the colour of her eyes, her length of hair, the precise music of her voice - when you've quickened her pulse, entered her mind, tightened her skin over her back, when you have invented and painted that exact woman, come to me, show her to me: I'll tell you if she's real.56

Agnès’ initial mockery of the Boy’s illustration, coupled with her passionate declaration of her own feelings through her prescriptive description of the ‘woman’ she wants the Boy to paint showcase her newfound confidence and self-knowledge - she is no longer the silent figure the Protector wishes her to

G. Benjamin, Written on Skin, Vocal Score, London : Faber, pp. 8-9. 54

Ibid., pg. 28. 55

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be. As the Boy returns to her chamber to show her the completed page, Crimp and Benjamin again present her as a strong figure, now sexually aware (indeed, Christopher Birtle insinuates that before her experiences with the Boy, Agnès was a virgin) and increasingly independent:57

Agnès - What does the voice want? To wind and to wind itself around another. Who does she catch click shut the black rectangle of the door?

Boy - Him. The Boy.

Agnès - What d’you want, says the woman? Boy - To show you the page, says the Boy. Agnès - What page?

Boy - Here.

Agnès - Then concentrate. This - says the Boy - shows a house in winter: here - look - white stars - Orion - and in this wide blank space, the moon. See how I've lifted the roof like a jewel box lid. Inside's the woman - see her? - unable to sleep: buried in the hot white pillow her head feels heavy like stone. Round her legs, round her arms, I've twisted a lead white sheet, like a living person, and tightened her skin, darkened her veins with blood. This is the woman's picture. Now you must tell me whether it's real.

Agnès - It’s dark.

Boy - Then look more closely: what colour are her eyes? Agnès - Grey - turning black - like my eyes now.

Boy - Like yours now. And her hair? Pay attention. Agnès - Dark - damp - heavy - the weight of mine now. Boy - Of your hair now. And her mind.

Agnès You’ve given her my mind skin mouth voice

Boy I’ve given her your mind skin mouth voice says the Boy -Agnès - - drawn its exact music.

Boy drawn its exact music. And here under the bone -Agnès - No.

Boy in the hot space between her ribs

C. Wintle, Written on Skin Programme, ‘Opera in Flux’, Royal Opera House programme for performance on 27 January 2017, 57

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Agnès - No.

Boy - I’ve painted the woman's heart.

Agnès - No! - not 'the woman' - I am Agnès. My name's Agnès. Boy- Agnès.

Agnès - What use to me is a picture? Boy - Agnès.

Agnès - A picture, says Agnès, is nothing. Love's not a picture: love is an act.58

Agnès’ transition from the beginning of the opera from servile and repressed into a strong female lead, sexually liberated and independent in thought and action, have led to some critics interpreting the opera as ‘feminist’ in nature. Alongside providing a form of Benjaminian redemption to the 59 representative figures of Agnès and the Boy, a host of never heard or seen, yet persecuted villagers are also referenced:

Agnès - And smoke - why that black smoke in May? Protector - We’re burning villages.

Agnès - Ah. Why?

Protector - To protect the family. Agnès - Ah. Yes. Good. From what? Protector - Don’t look.

Agnès - And in the meadow I saw a guard reach down into the buttercups to pick up a baby -

Protector - Don’t look, Agnès.

Agnès - -to pick it up - how odd - on the point of a stick. 60

pp. 61-63. See: 59

I. V. Sadler, ‘Review: Written on Skin, Royal Opera House ‘Brooding, Powerful’’, Victoria Sadler, 24 January 2017, http:// www.victoriasadler.com/review-written-on-skin-royal-opera-house-brooding-powerful/ (Accessed 26 April 2018).

II. A. Holloway-Nahum, ‘George Benjamin’s Written on Skin: The Power of Restraint’, I Care If You Listen, 3 April 2013, https:// www.icareifyoulisten.com/2013/04/george-benjamin-written-on-skin-power-restraint/ (Accessed 26 April 2013).

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Through their presentation of such a scenario on the modern stage Benjamin and Crimp provide those who died under obscurity access to the public stage. Despite their relatively brief illumination, especially when compared to the exposure given to Agnès’ subordination, their demises being witnessed and spoken about by Agnès alerts the modern audience to their unjust slaughter. Although Crimp and Benjamin change the names of the characters from the tale of de Guillem Cabestaing and his mistress, the elevation of such plights - of illicit lovers in a society where woman were very much treated as the property of their husbands - provides a public stage to those previously forgotten. Indeed, the substitution of historical names for generic titles conforming to the characters’ roles within the opera, alongside the deliberate anonymity of the villagers (who themselves belong to an unknown town) lends an element of universality to the opera; in doing so perhaps Crimp and Benjamin attempt to redeem not only the lovers within the story of de Cabestaing, but lovers everywhere in that period, and all of those oppressed throughout history. The nameless quality of the characters conforms to notions of anonymity, and remembering those repressed anonymous figures from the past in Walter Benjamin’s own writings. Musing on the forgotten figures of history, Benjamin wrote ‘it is more diﬃcult to honour the memory of the anonymous than it is to honour the famous, the celebrated, not excluding poets and thinkers. The historical construction is dedicated to the memory of the anonymous.’ As such, Written 61

on Skin can be seen as Crimp and Benjamin’s attempt to implement a Benjaminian redemptive process,

instigated, to some degree, to redeem and provide reparations to those anonymous faces within the confines of history. Their inclusion of the ‘anonymous’ figures from history, alongside the more historically traceable real-life iterations of the opera’s protagonists, conforms to Benjamin’s redemptive wishes - their highlighting the worker figure from the ‘insignificant’ lower class figure removes the hierarchical indiﬀerence of traditional history towards such figures, and begins to right the wrongs of a capitalist, bourgeois modernity and its historical materialism gathered in its own image.

Crimp and Benjamin’s re-creation of Agnès’ struggle for liberty within the context of modern day society conforms (if one accepts the assumption that modern day society has more equality between men and women than medieval society) to Löwy’s definition of Benjaminian reparation whereby the

W. Benjamin, H. Eiland and M.W. Jennings (ed.), Selected Writings, Volume 4; Volumes 1938-40, trans. E. Jephcott, Harvard 61

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objectives they struggled for and failed to attain’ are, to some extent, ‘accomplished’. Therefore, using 62 Löwy’s interpretation of both Benjaminian redemption and his wider reading of the second theses, one could regard Written on Skin as Crimp and Benjamin’s messianic wielding of power to grant redemption to the repressed figures in the thirteenth-century razo of Guillem de Cabestaing, and repressed figures from that age at large.

Chapter 2.ii - The Redemptive Archives

Mitchell’s decision to present the angels as modern day archivists, recreating a tale from the past housed within an archive, furthers the notion of Written on Skin as invested in the Benjaminian concept of redemption. In giving the angels a recognisable vocation - they are clearly seen in a sterile room, removing labelled boxes from shelves, using rubber gloves to touch manuscripts etc. - Mitchell provides a contemporaneous tint to Walter Benjamin’s angels. Her presentation of them as archivists is telling, it places the angels in the modern vocation which most closely relates to their Benjaminian description: ‘face…turned toward the past’, able to see events in their entirety, and yet powerless to alter such events. It is through the presentation of the angels as archivists that Mitchell can ground Walter Benjamin’s theses in the modern world, physically presenting the angels’ actions (as defined by Benjamin) through their recreation of the medieval tale of Agnès and the Protector - and therefore provide reparations to de Cabestaing and all persecuted lovers, as explained in the first part of this chapter. The archive in Written on Skin, then, serves a dual purpose: to allegorise Benjamin’s angel of history; and to provide redemption through its animation.

Such an animation of the archive, implemented by the angels, grants the persecuted characters 63 redemption (as understood by Benjamin). The angels take inanimate objects, in the opera these take the form of manuscripts and illuminations (in the case of de Cabestaing they are razos and vidas as

I have previously written about this topic, the animation of the archive through performance, in an essay entitled 63

‘Nuremberg and the Archive’ submitted for the course ‘Archiving Art’, Course Code: HKRC 145417322Y. However, while I use the same critics, the application of their theories is markedly diﬀerent - whereas in my previous essay I relate archival documents becoming ‘live’ in the courtroom of Nuremberg, here I consider the redemptive power of archival documents through performance, specifically within Written on Skin.

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Burgwinkle explains), and recreate the stories they contain in a diﬀerent context. These objects therefore become galvanised and personalised within the opera, with angelic archivists physically becoming those about whom they read. This animation of historical people in a new context grants, as explained in chapter 2.i, Benjaminian redemption through remembrance and reparation: the figures behind the characters within Written on Skin are immortalised in a musical work, clearly referenced by it’s creators as an influence, forever remembered; reparation comes in the form of the plights of these characters airing in a vastly diﬀerent society, the misogyny and violence present in the opera become a concrete part of modern culture, drawing empathy and horror from audiences; the injustices in Written

on Skin become a reparative statute of modernity, both a reminder and an influence over modern

societal behaviour.

In the previous subchapter, I noted that Written on Skin also serves to memorialise those anonymous faces in history, those without names or perceived significance. That Written on Skin provides some level of redemption to these figures, in the acknowledgement of their existence and heinous ends, aligns it further with archival trends, and again vindicates Mitchell’s framing of the opera with an archive. It is a recent characteristic of archival scholarship to focus on the lives of those ‘insignificant’ figures from history, those numerous workers championed by Benjamin. In her article ‘The (W)hole in the Archive’, Annie Ring discusses (framed within a discussion of her research case study, the Stasi 64 Archives) Michel Foucault’s work with Arlette Farge in the Bastille archives. Foucault and Farge explore a series of petitions written to the King of France by disgruntled members of the public, most often those from the lower classes, in which they ask for the King to take action on a certain subject, Ring provides examples:

… ‘the cruelest of all women’, a wet-nurse requests that her absent husband be arrested as ‘a terrible example of the eﬀects of disorder’ (LIM, 164–5). In answer to these incriminating letters come lettres de cachet, in which the royal authorities approve confinement of their subjects…65

A. Ring, ‘The (W)hole in the Archive’, Paragraph, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 387-402. 64

Ibid., pg. 390. 65

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These archival entries, then, begin life as a pragmatic request - a real-world desire for change, however petty. The forgotten figures of history are captured interacting with those deemed significant within the annals of history. As a direct result of such interactions, figures who would otherwise simply have ceased to exist, with all traces of them simultaneously expiring as they left their mortal coil, are in some way preserved. Ironically, it is through potentially their most extreme writings that we gain access to such characters - their petitions for the King to kill highlight the extremities of their character, we are not party to a lengthy ‘back story’. Instead, all that remains is a name and a request, memorialised only because of the person to whom the request was made. Foucault recognises this disjunction in status between sender and receiver, as well as acknowledging the letters may be the only evidence of those killed as a result of them, therefore they are, despite being the prime cause of an individual’s death, also their only memorial. Ring summarises:

On the other hand, as Foucault found, this new recording mechanism displayed certain unintended qualities, for instance a ‘strange intensity, and (. . . ) a kind of beauty’ (LIM, 167). Although the letters were the means by which lives were extinguished, they remain in an archive whose form preserves their subjects, in poignant and at times chillingly comic stories—for Foucault, these are ‘poem-lives’ that ‘flash’ with a power of their own (LIM, 159)…A second unintended quality of this new archival mechanism was the recognition that the lettres de cachet bestowed upon the ‘minuscule commotions’ of ‘the lowliest men’ (LIM, 169). By drawing royal attention to local conflicts, citizens risked the confinement of their peers and loved ones.66

The memorialisation of vanquished figures, as previously mentioned, is also found in Written on Skin. The villagers murdered by the protector are present in the opera only through reference to their deaths. These murderous deeds are present in the razos and vidas surrounding the tale of Raimon and de Cabestaing, and this is then referenced on the operatic stage created by Crimp, Benjamin, and Mitchell. Therefore, in the case of Written on Skin, one sees an operatic interpretation of a novelised version of events - the opera is based on, or inspired by, dramatised accounts of the tale of the ‘eaten heart’. 67

A. Ring, ‘The (W)hole in the Archive’, Paragraph, Vol. 37, No. 3, pp. 390-391. 66

G. Benjamin, interviewed by A. Perroux, Written on Skin Programme, ‘The Intensity of the Moment: George Benjamin 67

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However, if one follows this trail to its original medieval story, the archival tropes Foucault and Farge discover in the Bastille are also present - petitions to the King decrying Raimon’s behaviour are indeed made, and these petitions result in (as explained above by Burgwinkle) the King of Aragon punishing Raimon, the inspiration for Crimp’s Protector figure within the opera. It is also interesting to note the relative obscurity of the ‘protagonist’ figures within the ‘eaten heart’ debacle - Burgwinkle himself, as noted above, describes de Cabestaing as from ‘minor nobility’, and a ‘regional’ figure. However, the 68 literary depiction, embellished with portraits and calligraphic writing (shown below) transforms the 69 story from one of dubious longevity to a romanticised moral fable.

The empathetic approach of the archival angels, by which I mean their fascination with these human stories within the historical record, conforms to the concept of a Verstehen-based history discussed by Carl Dahlhaus in his book Foundations of Music History. Defined by the Oxford English Living 70 Dictionary as ‘empathic understanding of human behaviour’, a Verstehen-prioritised consideration of 71

2017, pg. 13.

An online version of Manuscript 12473 can be found at the following URL, courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France: 69

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b60007960/f207.image

C. Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, trans. J. B. Robinson, Cambridge University Press, 1983. 70

This definition can be found on the online version of the dictionary at the following address: 71

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/verstehen

de Cabestaing as presented in the razo depicting his tale, and the tale itself in written form. Both images come from Manuscript 12473, folio 89v, held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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history seemingly reflects the angels’ willingness to interact with, or view the interactions between, the figures within the historical record (in this case Manuscript 12473). Such an interaction between historian, sociologist, or archivist in the case of Written on Skin, is a staple of a Verstehen approach, as Dahlhaus explains:

The Verstehen theory of history as developed in the nineteenth century was based, implicitly or explicitly, on the notion of an imaginary dialogue that the historian conducted with historical agents in an eﬀort to discover their aims and motives.72

The ‘imaginary dialogue’ which Dahlhaus alludes to is present in Written on Skin in the form of the recreated medieval plane. Therefore, one can view Written on Skin holistically as an animated Verstehen-based exploration of the historical records telling of de Cabestaing and the other figures represented within the opera. However, where Verstehen based historical literature generally makes use of an interlocutor figure, in Written on Skin such a figure is replaced by an imagination of interactions between characters, rather than between historian (or archivist) and character. While there is no interaction between the archivist angel figures and an interlocutor, as such, the angels do interact with the figures within the opera, both physically and verbally (as explored above, and further below). Thus, the overriding process demonstrated within the opera, that of an imagined recreation of the emotions and human cost of events from a historical record, aligns Written on Skin with a Verstehen sensitive consideration of the past. The empathetic focus of the opera, and of the Verstehen theory of history at large, enables it to provide redemption to the figures upon which it focuses. Akin to Benjamin’s favoured historical materialism, Verstehen history allows for a focus on the individual in a human sense, regardless of significance, therefore enabling a Benjaminian understanding of redemption (through remembrance and reparation) to be forthcoming through a presentation of such a historical process on stage.

C. Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, trans. J. B. Robinson, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pg. 72. 72

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The duality of temporal layers in Mitchell’s staging, with a concurrent presentation of archive and medieval recreation, embodies the simultaneity found in historiography and archival studies of the historical event and the historical narrative record. The human narrative, subjective and individual, is inseparable from the abstract concept of ‘history’, or the events of history. When one considers where societal knowledge of history comes from, one thinks of museums full of historical artefacts (physical objects created by another civilisation or iteration of our society), and of records or narrative accounts created by individuals within past societies. In the case of physical artefacts, one must consider the function of said artefact, who it would be used by, and the accuracy of what it represents if it is in any way artistic. In the case of records, and any artistic (by which I mean anything involving imagination, representation, or indeed novelisation) item, one must consider the bias of the source creator - one must realise the inseparability of the historical events one discovers and reads about, and the presence of the narrative in which they are placed. Dahlhaus, in the aforementioned Foundations of Music History, quotes Hegel’s explanation of the duality of narrative and event (which he refers to as ‘subject-object distinction’):

In our language ‘history’ combines both the objective and the subjective meanings of the term, referring equally to the historiam rerum gestarum and to the res gestas themselves…We should view this combination of the two meanings as of a higher order than mere external coincidence: it is responsible for the fact that historical records appear simultaneously with the actual historical deeds and events. There is common substance inherent in each which leads to their being produced at one and the same time…Those periods, be they centuries or millennia, which the peoples of the world experienced before the advent of written history and which may well have been replete with their revolutions, mass migrations and upheavals of the most tumultuous sort, nevertheless have no history in the objective sense as they have left behind no history in the subjective sense - no historical records.73

Hegel’s invocation of the absence of known history before the emergence of historical records is an emphatic demonstration of the inseparability of reality and narrative with regards to historical facts. Indeed, Dahlhaus himself responds to his Hegel quotation with the judgement that ‘history does not

G. W. F. Hegel, Die Vernunft in der Geschichte, ed. G. Lasson, Meiner Verlag, 1917, pp. 144-146. 73

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exist apart from our awareness of it, and written history is itself historical fact.’ Therefore, one can see 74 that the historical facts or events encoded within a historical record, or literary representation of a historical event, are inexorably intertwined within a narrative created by the source author. Mitchell’s

Written on Skin staging, in many ways, embodies this relationship between the historical fact, event, or

reality and the humanly authored narrative: the isolated archive in the top-left of the stage represents the present, the angels attempt to recreate the past through an archival object, containing historical facts embedded within a narrative (the narrative of Manuscript 12473, folio 89v); meanwhile the medieval recreation can be seen as the recreation of the narrative in within the archival source, and it is through this animation of the archive that the angels (and the audience) come to learn of the events of Guillem de Cabestaing and the other figures in the tale represented within the opera. The inseparability of narrative and historical events is preserved, and could even be seen as being self-referenced in the opera by the characters’ self-narration. Written on Skin’s preservation of the relationship between narrative and historical fact, visually achieved through Mitchell’s staging, further aligns it with the aforementioned Verstehen-based historical approach. The staging of the opera, alongside Crimp’s writing, shamelessly presents the empathic narrative of the archival manuscript; the angels willingness to recreate the past, and immerse themselves within the storyline and interactions of the protagonists, places them within the Verstehen tradition.

Mitchell’s archival setting, then, becomes the perfect contemporary foil in which to explore Benjaminian redemption. The archive itself is a place of possible redemption, filled with the forgotten faces of the past, and Mitchell’s placement of Benjamin’s angels within such a place is befitting of the authorial description - the archive is the place in which they are to attempt to wield their weak messianic power. Mitchell’s archival setting aligns this messianic power wielding with the processes of

Verstehen-based historiography, as Written on Skin seems to conform to a empathic reading of the past

achieved through a recreation, or a snapping of the dead back to life. Ultimately, however, the angels within the opera conform to type, they retain their impotency and are unable to provide redemption

C. Dahlhaus, Foundations of Music History, trans. J. B. Robinson, Cambridge University Press, 1983, pg. 79. 74

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themselves; it is only through Benjamin, Crimp, and Mitchell’s public presentation of the opera, and of the Verstehen archival processes within it, that Benjaminian redemption is gained. Therefore, Benjamin’s angels retain their character, their powerlessness is faithful to their authorial description, yet the operatic staging of their plight ironically provides redemption. The cross sectional view of the angels of history, granted to the audience by Written on Skin, provides a redemption which is not present in Benjamin’s original text, it shows their travails from the outside, without getting caught in the storm to which they are subject.

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Chapter 3 -

Establishing Temporal Preference

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Chapter 3.i - Artificiality and Reality

An alternate interpretation of the second theses, which can of course co-exist with that of Löwy, could increasingly focus on Benjamin’s conception of time. Benjamin, with reference to Lotze, considers the innate reluctance of humanity to positively appreciate their present in relation to the uncertain future. While reminiscence, or the consideration of one’s current condition compared to previous times, is relatively common - one often wonders ‘What if ?’, remembers better or conversely worse times - the consideration of the future, and specifically the condition of the self within the future, is conspicuous in its absence. The reason for this lack of comparison (and therefore envy) between the present condition and the projected future condition is undefined, yet seems to be one of uncertainty. Whereas the past is considered finite, knowable, and tangible (through such artefacts as those used by the angels in Written on Skin), the future is infinite, unknowable, and intangible. The impossibility of holding any form of knowledge of the future, quite apart from informed projections in its certainty, renders it impossible to possess such an envy.

However, in Written on Skin multiple timeframes are simultaneously presented; this is visually realised in Katie Mitchell’s production of the opera as the modern day angels move in slow motion compared to their medieval counterparts. This presentation of contrasting time frames within a singular shared stage (shown below) is initially jarring, but ultimately serves to illustrate and enhance notions of suspended time relating to both Theses II and IX.Within the recreated medieval plane of the opera, the figure of the Boy initially acts as the exception to the assumptions within Benjamin’s second thesis. Through the

Accessing Written on Skin through the writings of Walter Benjamin

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