The Origin of the Storytellerīut Benjamin is not aiming to be depressing, at least notĮntirely. Of date, explanations for events are improved, and the newspaper becomes goodįor nothing except scrap paper. Not survive the moment in which it was new.” As time passes, news becomes out That it is intimately connected to its own time: “the value of information does A further problem with information is the way To escape the idea that an informational understanding of the world is the onlyĪnd best way to understand it. Spirit of storytelling”, and since we are so surrounded by it, it can be hard Information, however, “proves incompatible with the Through the ubiquity of the “why” in the form of news, we no longer care for theĮxperience of others. In the past, intelligence and experience that came from afar was valued,Įven if it could never be verified that a traveller spoke the truth. Happened, but why it has happened, regardless of where in the world it took Verifiability.” We have newspapers which will tell us not only what has Information, Benjamin writes, “lays claim to prompt The third and final cause Benjamin gives special mention to: Have made a ballad or a thousand years before an epic poem. Things they have seen in the early 20 th century – overexperience, inĪ word – people no longer wish to talk about what a hundred years before might Richer, but poorer in communicable experience”. Related cause is the consequence of the first World War: “was it not noticeableĪt the end of the war that men returned from the battlefield grown silent – not The face of new military technologies like the tank and mounted warfare. One’s knowledge of war and battle is deemed useless in ![]() Time: one’s experience of the economy becomes useless against the unprecedented He finds examples of this in the horrors of his State, changing so rapidly that experience from the past no longer can have The first of them is that society is, in its industrialised As to why,īenjamin suggests three potential causes. Source of all stories, has fallen in value and is no longer used. The main reason for this is that experience, which is the Outlines which define the storyteller”, but we cannot find them among our It is a craft – of telling stories, is dying out. In the modern day, for various reasons, the craft – and Though the name is surely familiar, they are almost entirelyĬonfined to the past. The Death of Experience and the Death of Storiesīenjamin begins by making us consider what exactly a ![]() Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was a German-Jewish critic and philosopher who took his own life after encountering difficulties fleeing the advancing armies of Nazi Germany. Though Benjamin is a challenging thinker and I doubtless missed things here and there, still I want to share what I got out of the piece. It is included in the collection of essays entitled Illuminations, which I’ve been reading in the past weeks, but I had been meaning to have a look at this particular essay for much longer, since I had guessed already that its contents would appeal to me. This is a truly magnificent show and should be required viewing for the whole family, or anyone who believes that art and television are mutually exclusive.“The Storyteller”, or “Die Erzähler”, is an essay, written in 1936, by the German-Jewish intellectual Walter Benjamin, consisting on one level of a discussion of the stories of the little-known Russian writer Nikolai Leskov, and on another of Benjamin’s views on the division between stories and storytelling, and novels and writing. But older kids, or ones who can handle a chill, will be stunned silent by the grandeur of these stories. Speaking of that, The Storyteller's darkness and realism may be too much for young or sensitive kids: characters are put in mortal danger over and over again, and even the show's narrator is a bit creepy and seems to tell of the character's travails with just a little too much relish. The makeup and costumes are stunning, every bit the equal of big-budget movies, with actors realistically turned into creatures like a shivering hedgehogs and terrifying trolls. Henson's studio spared no expense, collecting a dream roster of acting talent, giving them snappy dialogue and fantastic stories, and then polishing the visuals until they're positively magic. Every aspect of the production is superior. This anthology series is one of the best children's shows, ever.
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