Not To Be Continued
I am reading an extended essay by Byung-chul Han entitled The crisis of narration. Han quotes often from Walter Benjamin. Here are a few lines from Han:
Communicable experience based upon word of mouth
is becoming increasingly rare.
Nothing is passed down;
nothing is narrated.
Benjamin holds that the storyteller
‘is a man who has counsel for his listeners’1.
Such counsel does not simply provide solutions to problems.
Rather, it suggests how a story is to be continued.
The one seeking counsel and the counselor
both belong to a narrative community.
Those seeking counsel must themselves
be able to narrate.
In real life,
counsel is sought and given
in a narrative context.
As wisdom,
it is ‘woven into the fabric of real life’2.
…the epic side of truth, wisdom,
is dying out.3
-Byung-chul Han
1 Benjamin, The Storyteller, p. 145
2 Ibid, p. 146
3 Ibid
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