If the original does not exist for the reader's sake, how could the translation be understood on the basis of this premise? - Walter Benjamin

The enslavement of language in prattle is joined by the enslavement of things in folly almost as its inevitable consequence.

One might, for example, speak of an unforgettable life or moment even if all men had forgotten it. If the nature of such a life or moment required that it be unforgotten, that predicate would imply not a falsehood but merely a claim unfulfilled by men, and probably also a reference to a realm in which it is fulfilled: God's remembrance.

The true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.