translate English to German: This element derives from Benjamin's interest in Jewish mysticism, which represents a substrand in the book, whereby the Jewish consciousness is arrested by the inability to speak the true name of the Divine and abandoned by a God they cannot have true knowledge of. On the second line of thought, the Trauerspiel proceeds through allegory since the stories are always representations of something outside themselves, but, says Benjamin, the allegory ultimately fails because it depends for meaning upon another object or idea - an object or idea that is not present or whose meaning is eternally deferred in the Trauerspiel.
Dem als Hauptwerk geplanten, unvollendeten Buch über die "Pariser Passagen", einer Geschichtsphilosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts, an dem Benjamin seit 1927 arbeitete, hatte er zeitweilig die Form einer surrealistischen Zitatmontage zugedacht.