The most dazzling such transmutation takes place in an essay titled “The Storyteller,” in which Benjamin uses the work of 19th-century Russian writer Nikolai Leskov as a springboard for a higher-order meditation on the role of storytelling in society, the dangers of its decline, and how it shapes our relationship to truth, both public and private.
In the introduction, Arendt envelops Benjamin’s genius in her own to describe him as “an alchemist practicing the obscure art of transmuting the futile elements of the real into the shining, enduring gold of truth.” Walter Benjamin Only the storyteller can transmute information - be it in the form of “objective” fact or “subjective” experience - into wisdom.Ī century before the age of the listicle, German philosopher, cultural theorist, literary critic, and unflinching idealist Walter Benjamin (July 15, 1892–September 26, 1940) explored this dance between information and wisdom with great insight and prescience in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections ( public library) - a compendium of Benjamin’s ideas on language, literature, and life, originally published in 1968 and edited by the brilliant Hannah Arendt. A listicle can never order information into truth, much less imbue it with meaning. Although the list may be the origin of culture, truth and meaning are culture’s end goal. Listicles commandeer these bits into alleged order, furthering our collective delusion of mistaking information for truth and meaning there is a reason, after all, why we call such disjointed bits of information “trivia” - the true material of wisdom is meaning, and the meaningful is the opposite of the trivial. I think often, and with billowing concern, about the role of storytellers in helping us cultivate wisdom in the age of information - a task increasingly challenging and increasingly important as we find ourselves bombarded with bits of disjoined information, devoid of the sensemaking context that only deft storytelling can impart.
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