Nimbus

Nota sulla questione dell'"aura" in Ludwig Klages

Giampiero Moretti

pp. 149-159

in: Aura, Rivista di estetica 52, 2013.

Abstract

In this paper the author reconstructs the Klagesian positions that, according to him, have possibly inspired Walter Benjamin in his reflection on “aura”. Ludwig Klages’ thought, in fact, and especially the notion of “Nimbus-Aura”, had an interesting resonance in the work of Walter Benjamin. The author shows that Benjamin has probably shared with Klages the idea that human history is indeed rooted in what we might call “myth”, differently from Theodor Adorno, who intends to criticize Klages’ influence in Benjamin’s notion of “aura”, dialectilizing the mythical “origin” and characterizing it as fiction. In the author’s view, moreover, if in Klages this root receives nourishment from the universal symbolism of matter, that Klages intends as originally “auratic”, in Benjamin this root becomes the starting point through which, by means of artistic reproducibility, the human pattern moves away from the myth.