Her face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, she sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of her feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm . . . . irresistibly propels her into the future to which her back is turned, while the pile of debris before her grows skyward. (Walter Benjamin, revised)