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En annans tanke

whatisiswhatitisisit

Beauty and Semblance*

I
Every living thing that is beautiful has semblance [ist scheinhaft].

II
Every artistic thing that is beautiful has semblance [Schein] because it is alive in one sense or another.

III
There remain only natural, dead things which can perhaps be beautiful without having semblance.

Fragment written in 1920–1921, unpublished in Benjamins lifetime. Translated by Rodney Livingstone.

*W. Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 1, 1913–1926, London, Cambridge Press, 2002, s. 283