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  1. The Word Before Heidegger When the history of deconstruction is introduced, it usually begins with Heidegger and Derrida. Heidegger speaks of Destruktion , and Derrida later develops déconstruction as a distinct philosophical practice. Yet a remarkable conversation with Derrida points to an earlier history, reaching back through Heidegger to Martin Luther and, before him, to a biblical passage. In November 2002, Derrida took part in a conference in Toronto entitled Other Testaments . During a discussion about deconstruction and Christianity, the interviewer proposed a genealogy: Heidegger's Destruktion could be connected to Luther's theological project, which recalled Paul's warning to the Corinthians and, further back, Isaiah's words about the destruction of human wisdom. Derrida did not reject the suggestion. He acknowledged a Judeo-Christian heritage within the tradition from which deconstruction emerged. The historical connections are more complex than...

Yet any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information — hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations. But do we not generally regard as the essential substance of a literary work what it contains in addition to information — as even a poor translator will admit — the unfathomable, the mysterious, the "poetic”, something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet ?  —Walter Benjamin, The task of the translator Introduction: Translation and the Life of Language Walter Benjamin's The Task of the Translator contains a remark that is easy to overlook but difficult to explain. Discussing literary translation, he writes that an ordinary translator can reproduce only information, whereas "the unfathomable, the mysterious" can be reproduced "only if he is also a poet." At first glance, the statement seems almost self-evident. Poets possess a refined sensitivity to...