SOURCE: Jackman, Graham. “The Fear of Allegory: Benjaminian Elements in Christoph Hein's The Distant Lover.” New German Critique 66, no. 66 (fall 1995): 164–92.

In the following excerpt, Jackman explores the influence of German art theorist Walter Benjamin on the structure of allegory in Hein's The Distant Lover.

Christoph Hein's knowledge of and interest in the work of Walter Benjamin is unmistakable. Almost all his major essays contain explicit references to Benjamin, to whom he referred in 1983 as “probably the most important and exemplary German art theorist of our century.”¹ It is thus hardly surprising that critical studies of Hein's dramatic and narrative work have found evidence of Benjamin's influence.²

The Distant Lover³ receives relatively little attention in Zekert's dissertation on Hein and Benjamin, nor has Benjamin figured prominently in the critical work on The Distant Lover.⁴ Discussion of this text has focused mainly on psychological and social aspects, most notably in...