There is a painting by Klee called Angelus Novus. It shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which unceasingly piles wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it before his feet. The angel would like to pause, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has caught itself in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm drives him irresistibly into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.