“A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating.  His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread.  This is how one perceives the angel of history.  His face is towards the past.  Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one catastrophe, which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.  The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed.  But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them.  This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward.  This storm is what we call progress.”                                                            

Walter Benjamin

《Theses on the Philosophy of History》

保羅．克利（Paul Klee）1920年的一幅印染作品， Walter Benjami在1921年買下，後來送給了摯友葛休姆．肖勒姆（Gershom Scholem）收藏的〈新天使〉。 　  
     這幅作品除了做為克利揭示造形表現上，來自原始或者童趣的線條啟發的表徵作品之一，
在當代歷史的論述裡， Benjami曾在「歷史哲學題綱」一文提及：
「他的雙眼凝視，嘴巴張開，翅膀伸展。
這就是人們對於歷史天使的想像。
他轉身回望著過去。在我們所認知的一連串事件之處，
他只看見一場由不斷的廢墟殘骸堆疊而成的災難，砸在他的跟前。
天使想要留下來喚醒死者，並縫合這些碎片，
但是從樂園刮來一陣狂風，
他的翅膀把風擋了下來，卻敵不過風勢強勁而無法收起。
這陣風暴把他推向背對著的未來，而眼前大量的碎片直向天際。
這風暴，我們稱為進步。」


http://www.lines-magazine.org/textfolder/editorial.htm