“For Benjamin to quote is to name, and naming rather than speaking, the word rather than the sentence, brings truth to light. As one may read in the preface to the Origin of German Tragedy, Benjamin regarded truth as an exclusively acoustical phenomenon: “Not Plato but Adam,” who gave things their names, was to him the “father of philosophy.” Hence tradition was the form in which these name-giving words were transmitted; it too was an essentially acoustical phenomenon. He felt himself so akin to Kafka precisely because the latter, current mis-interpretations notwithstanding, had “no far-sightedness or ‘prophetic vision,’” but listened to tradition, and “he who listens hard does not see” (“Max Brod’s Book on Kafka”).”