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Marxist of sorts-still seriously considered emigration to Palestine .
On the other hand, while not swayed by communist political hostil–
ity to Zionism, Benjamin was impressed by such vulgar Marxist
reductionist analyses of the "Jewish question" as Otto Heller's
Untergang des Judentums
(1931) and Max Horkheimer's
Die Juden und
Europa
(1939), which were demolished with withering scorn by
Scholem in their correspondence.
Benjamin himself attributed his constant postponement of emi–
gration plans to Palestine to the "pathological vacillation" in his
character and the pressure of other projects . In reality, this indeci–
sion may well have stemmed from a bitter realization that for him
there was no personal salvation, and that there were no ideological
solutions for his metaphysical estrangement and radical questioning
of all traditions. Once the hope of an academic career miscarried (in
1925, his
habilitation
thesis , "The Origins of German Tragedy," was
returned by the University of Frankfurt as utterly incomprehensi–
ble), Benjamin was forced to wage a seemingly endless struggle to
keep himself afloat on the economic front. On bad terms with his
parents, never at home in Germany where his ideas were too uncon–
ventional to find a place in the academic hierarchy, unprepared to
"work for a living" and still vacillating between Zionism and
Marxism, he could not-unlike Scholem-Ieap into the as yet dis–
reputable world of Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism and thereby
resolve his existential dilemmas.
With the breakup of his marriage and the dialectic disintegra–
tion of his metaphysical world view after 1927, the innate wander–
lust, inner unrest, depressive traits, and dissatisfaction with the con–
ditions of his life caught up with Benjamin. The literary
communication with Scholem that had ripened under the pressure of
physical separation and political crises, though it had never been
free of tensions and misunderstandings, assumed a grimmer edge in
the 1930s. Between 1927 and 1938 the two friends met only twice, on
both occasions in Paris, which became Benjamin's home throughout
the seven years of emigration, following Hitler's rise to power.
Despite Scholem's loyalty to his friend and the feeling of personal
trust that vibrates in the letters, it was, however, already clear that
they were moving in opposite directions. Under the influence of his
new friendship with Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin was drawing closer to
a fitful kind of Marxism and away from Jewish concerns. Scholem,
who disliked Brecht's communist politics and theoretical crudity,
