The second half of the song, i.e., from the line, "History is an angel, . . ." is a (lovely) paraphrase of one of Walter Benjamin's theses on history. Benjamin, if you haven't encountered this name before, was a terribly important German Jewish writer and theorist who died in 1940 attempting to escape the Nazis. Benjamin quite liked Paul Klee's painting, Angelus Novus, which he appropriated in a metaphorical narrative about Klee's angel (Google "Angelus Novus" on Google images) as the angel of history being blown into the future by a storm blowing from Paradise. The angel wants to fix the mess in front of the angel, the pile of debris, but can't because the storm has been caught in the angel's wings. So, the angel is Anderson's appropriation of Benjamin's appropriation of Paul Klee's Angelus Novus. It's important to keep in mind that Benjamin lived through the first half of the 20th century and died in Port Bou, Spain, as he tired to make it to Portugal where he would catch a boat to the United States. Notions such as history as "a pile of debris" become clearer given the context of the European catastrophe.
The second half of the song, i.e., from the line, "History is an angel, . . ." is a (lovely) paraphrase of one of Walter Benjamin's theses on history. Benjamin, if you haven't encountered this name before, was a terribly important German Jewish writer and theorist who died in 1940 attempting to escape the Nazis. Benjamin quite liked Paul Klee's painting, Angelus Novus, which he appropriated in a metaphorical narrative about Klee's angel (Google "Angelus Novus" on Google images) as the angel of history being blown into the future by a storm blowing from Paradise. The angel wants to fix the mess in front of the angel, the pile of debris, but can't because the storm has been caught in the angel's wings. So, the angel is Anderson's appropriation of Benjamin's appropriation of Paul Klee's Angelus Novus. It's important to keep in mind that Benjamin lived through the first half of the 20th century and died in Port Bou, Spain, as he tired to make it to Portugal where he would catch a boat to the United States. Notions such as history as "a pile of debris" become clearer given the context of the European catastrophe.