9‘Functional’ here is nützlich, i.e. ‘practical, useful’.
10 ‘Functionalism’ again Zweckform.
11 The phrase is taken from Johann Joachim Winkelmann’s Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek
Painting and Sculpture’ (1755). It characterizes the fundamental nature of Greek art and was
the guiding spirit of German classicism of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.
12 ‘Railway-station character’ is Bahnhofhaftigkeit, literally ‘railway-stationness’.
13 The use of the word ‘exorbiant’ seems to rest on the Latin etymology of the word (especially
since Bloch uses Exorbitanten and not the Germanized version whch would be more
common). Namely, exorbitare (from ex+orbitus), ‘to go out of the track’. This is supported
by the extended spatial and wandering metaphors in this passage.
14 ‘High and low points’ loses the pun and creativity of the German Hoch-und
Tiefstaplerisches, thus a Hochstapler is a con-artist, while Tiefstaplerisch is an invention by
Bloch (say, high and low con-artists).
15 ‘Fine, but still formative arts’ are the noch bildende Künste which were above (page 47)
called by their individual names, ‘pictorial and plastic’.
16 ‘Dwelling cubicles’ is even more drastic in German: Wohnmaschinen, literally ‘dwelling
machines’.
17 ‘Fine arts (those which form the essential)’ loses the pun somewhat, namely bildende Künste
des Wesentlichen, i.e., ‘forming (=fine) arts of the essential.’
18 Again a proverbial expression or slogan, which translates literally: ‘march separately, attack
together’.
19 ‘Functionalist’ again Zweckform.
20 ‘Fine arts’ again bildende Künste.
21 This seems to be a reversal of the position in Part Five and below in the beginning of Part
Six. In both those places he implies that technology (functionalist principles as applied to
architecture) facilitated life, eased the burden of the inessential and hence made room for the
essential (fine arts and their ornamentation). Here he associated the emancipation with the
(Chagallian) fine arts and the concern for the essential with architecture.
22 ‘Formation’ is Bilden, the substantive of the verb.
23 ‘Formative’ is the adjective bildend from the verb (literally ‘forming’).
24 ‘Fine art’ here and in the next line again bildende Kunst.
25 ‘This Exodus character’ is in German dieses Exodushafte, literally ‘this Exodusness’.
26 ‘Formations’ again the substantive Bilden.
27 ‘Excerpts, departures, flights from themselves’ is Auszugsgestalten ihrer selbst. Auszug
means excerpt or abstract, but it is also the Germanization of the word Exodus (the flight
from Egypt is the Auszug).
28 ‘Being formed’ is again the progressive form of bilden (bildend). Of course for Goethe, one
of the founders of the Bildungsroman tradition with his Wilhelm Meister, bilden was a key
aesthetic concept.
29 The opposition here is between Werkkunst (‘work art’, ‘technical art’) and bildende Kunst.
30 This parenthetical statement stands in an unclear relationship to the ‘postulated unity’,
though it is probably in aposition, a contemporary reformulation (utilitas—transparency,
clarity; venustas—fullness, richness).
31 ‘Formative arts’ again bildende Künste.
Ernst Bloch 49