John Schad, "Walter Benjamin's Ark: A Departure in Biography"

 

John Schad is Professor of Modern Literature at University of Lancaster. His books include: Someone Called Derrida. An Oxford Mystery (Sussex, 2007); The Late Walter Benjamin. A False Novel (Bloomsbury, 2012); Paris Bride. A Modernist Life (Punctum, 2020); Derrida | Benjamin. Two Plays for the Stage (Palgrave, 2021), co-authored with Fred Dalmasso; and Walter Benjamin’s Ark. A Departure in Biography (UCL Press, 2025). He has had two retrospectives published, Hostage of the Word (2013) and John Schad in Conversation (2015), has read his work on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb and at various festivals, and his plays have been performed at The Oxford Playhouse, Watford Palace Theatre, HowTheLight GetsIn, and the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford. His next book, he says, is Eng. Lit. -- A Phantom History. 

About Walter's Benjamin's Ark, by John Schad
On July 10th 1940, amidst fear of Nazi invasion, HMT Dunera, a so-called "hell-ship" left England. On board were a few British soldiers guarding over two-thousand interned male Enemy Aliens – mostly Germans. Many of the internees had, until arrest, lived peaceably in England for some time. Now, though, they were herded together, below deck, and with all hatches sealed. 

Some of the internees were passionate Nazis, most were Jewish refugees. And among them was Stefan Benjamin, the estranged child of the German-Jewish intellectual, Walter Benjamin. Stefan was not, though, the only "name" aboard, there also being one man called Kafka, another called Freud, yet another called Wittgenstein, still another called Karl Marx, and three called Wilde.

After surviving a U-boat attack, the ship headed south, and far from Europe. And, with no word as to how the world and its War was going, fights broke out, one sad man jumped overboard, lectures were organised, questions were asked, and both fathers and women (killed and un-killed) were dreamt of. 

Cue Walter Benjamin’s Ark which, just like those aboard, swears, prays, and (above all) quotes wildly as she goes. And, all the while, she is hell-bent on learning why we are here, who is here, and where are we heading. New world? Next world? Or (dear God) the end of the world? 

On September 6, 1940, HMT Dunera finally docked in Sydney.

You can read more about Walter Benjamin's Ark on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read an excerpt from the opening of the book. 

From Walter Benjamin's Ark

10 July 1940

No. No. This was not what S. had hoped. Not of Merry England, not the dark. Not at all. Not the pandemonium, not the bayonets, not the barbed wire. Not even the oil-painted face of the waters. The deep. 

But what, thought S., could be said of it all? What indeed? Words, like the day, were failing him. If he had still possessed the gift of tongues, as granted his child-self, his dwarf-self, he surely would have had the words, words adequate to the situation, words equal to this new dark house of his. With such a gift, he might, for instance, have looked about and remarked, It is totally unwindowed.* 

           S. stumbled. 

           Or inquired, How does the house see? 

           S. tripped. 

           Or perhaps he might have said, The sun is ill today.  

           S. staggered.  

           Or even, My whole ear is laughed full of headache. 

           The blind house swayed.  

  

*

           [Since] expatriation, my son has not been able to find his balance. 

           (Walter Benjamin)

*

(*All italicised words attributed to S. are from Benjamin’s transcription of Stefan’s infant utterances).