Benjamin's "turn to politics'¹ with the completion of the Trauerspiel book is well documented in his letters. By the summer of 1925 he was able to declare that the "academic intentions' of the book had been no more than an external occasion, and one that he viewed "ironically'.² To Scholem he wrote that he now expected nothing from his plans for a lecturing career except a "belated and bright red cactus bloom'³ — this in recognition of the prickly nature of his new work with Marxism. From his own point of view, he now found himself no longer able to take a "full interest' in the subject of his book;⁴ it had to be "a conclusion — not a beginning at any price'.⁵ In later years Benjamin still regarded the tragedy book as the completion of his "German literature cycle';⁶ and from then on he saw his literary work as essentially a matter of making this field "unpalatable' for the bourgeois critics.⁷