2.2 Walter Benjamin On Mimetic Faculty

0 n the Mimetic Faculty
Nature produces similarities; one need only think of mimicry. The highest
capacity for producing similarities, however, is man's . His gift for seeing
similarity is nothing but a rudiment of the once powerful compulsion to
become similar and to behave mimetically. There is perhaps not a single one
of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive
role.
This faculty has a history, however, in both the phylogenetic and the
ontogenetic sense. As regards the latter, play is to a great extent its school.
Children's play is everywhere permeated by mimetic modes of behavior, and
its realm is by no means limited to what one person can imitate in another.
The child plays at being not only a shopkeeper or teacher, but also a
windmill and a train. Of what use to him is this schooling of his mimetic
faculty ?
The answer presupposes an understanding of the phylogenetic significance
of the mimetic faculty. Here it is not enough to think of what we understand
today by the concept of similarity. As is known, the sphere of life that
formerly seemed to be governed by the law of similarity was comprehensive;
it ruled both microcosm and macrocosm. But these natural correspondences
are given their true importance only if we see that they, one and all, are
stimulants and awakeners of the mimetic faculty which answers them in
man. It must be borne in mind that neither mimetic powers nor mimetic
objects remain the same in the course of thousands of years. Rather, we
must suppose that the gift for producing similarities (for example, in dances,
whose oldest function this is ) , and therefore also the gift of recognizing
them, have changed in the course of history.
On the Mimetic Faculty • 72 1
The direction of this change seems determined by the increasing fragility

of the mimetic faculty. For clearly the perceptual world [Merkwelt] of
modem man contains only minimal residues of the magical correspondences
and analogies that were familiar to ancient peoples. The question is whether
we are concerned with the decay of this faculty or with its transformation.
Of the direction in which the latter might lie, some indications may be
derived, even if indirectly, from astrology.
We must assume in principle that in the remote past the processes con
sidered imitable included those in the sky. In dance, on other cultic occa
sions, such imitation could be produced, such similarity dealt with. But if
the mimetic genius was really a life-determining force for the ancients, it is
not difficult to imagine that the newborn child was thought to be in full
possession of this gift, and in particular to be perfectly adapted to the form
of cosmic being.
Allusion to the astrological sphere may supply a first reference point for
an understanding of the concept of nonsensuous similarity. True, our exist
ence no longer includes what once made it possible to speak of this kind of
similarity: above all, the ability to produce it. Nevertheless we, too, possess
a canon according to which the meaning of nonsensuous similarity can be
at least partly clarified. And this canon is language.
From time immemorial, the mimetic faculty has been conceded some
influence on language. Yet this was done without foundation-without
consideration of a further meaning, still less a history, of the mimetic faculty.
But above all, such considerations remained closely tied to the common
place, sensuous realm of similarity. All the same, imitative behavior in
language formation was acknowledged under the name of onomatopoeia.
Now if language, as is evident to the insightful, is not an agreed-upon system
of signs, we will, in attempting to approach language, be constantly obliged
to have recourse to the kind of thoughts that appear in their most primitive
form as the onomatopoeic mode of explanation. The question is whether
this can be developed and adapted to improved understanding.
" Every word-and the whole of language, " it has been asserted, " is
onomatopoeic. " It is difficult to conceive in any detail the program that
might be implied by this proposition. But the concept of nonsensuous
similarity is of some relevance. For if words meaning the same thing in
different languages are arranged about that signified as their center, we have
to inquire how they all-while often possessing not the slightest similarity
to one another-are similar to the signified at their center. Yet this kind of
similarity cannot be explained only by the relationships between words
meaning the same thing in different languages, j ust as, in general, our
reflections cannot be restricted to the spoken word. They are equally con
cerned with the written word. And here it is noteworthy that the latter-in
some cases perhaps more vividly than the spoken word-illuminates, by the
722 . 1933
relation o f its written form [Schriftbild] t o the signified, the nature of

nonsensuous similarity. In brief, it is nonsensuous similarity that establishes
the ties not only between what is said and what is meant but also between
what is written and what is meant, and equally between the spoken and the
written.
Graphology has taught us to recognize in handwriting images that the
unconscious of the writer conceals in it. It may be supposed that the mimetic
process which expresses itself in this way in the activity of the writer was,
in the very distant times in which script originated, of utmost importance
for writing. Script has thus become, like language, an archive of nonsensu
ous similarities, of nonsensuous correspondences .
But this aspect of language, as well as of script, does not develop in
isolation from its other, semiotic aspect. Rather, the mimetic element in
language can, like a flame, manifest itself only through a kind of bearer.
This bearer is the semiotic element. Thus, the nexus of meaning of words
or sentences is the bearer through which, like a flash, similarity appears . For
its production by man-like its perception by him-is in many cases, and
particularly the most important, tied to its flashing up. It flits past. It is not
improbable that the rapidity of writing and reading heightens the fusion of
the semiotic and the mimetic in the sphere of language.
"To read what was never written. " Such reading is the most ancient:
reading prior to all languages, from entrails, the stars, or dances. Later the
mediating link of a new kind of reading, of runes and hieroglyphs, came
into use. It seems fair to suppose that these were the stages by which the
mimetic gift, formerly the foundation of occult practices, gained admittance
to writing and language. In this way, language may be seen as the highest
level of mimetic behavior and the most complete archive of nonsensuous
similarity: a medium into which the earlier powers of mimetic production
and comprehension have passed without residue, to the point where they
have liquidated those of magic.
Written April-September 1933; unpublished in Benj amin's lifetime. Gesammelte

Schriften, II, 2 1 0-2 1 3 . Translated by Edmund Jephcott.

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0 n the Mimetic Faculty

The direction of this change seems determined by the increasing fragility

relation o f its written form [Schriftbild] t o the signified, the nature of

Written April-September 1933; unpublished in Benj amin's lifetime. Gesammelte

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