Books by Walter Benjamin

Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin is one of the most fascinating and enigmatic intellectual figures of this century. Not only was he a thinker who made an enormous impact with his critical and philosophical writings, he shattered disciplinary and stylistic conventions. This collection, introduced by Susan Sontag, contains the most representative and illuminating selection of his work over a twenty-year period, and thus does full justice to the richness and the multi-dimensional nature of his thought. Included in these pages are aphorisms and townscapes, esoteric meditation and reminiscences of childhood, and reflections on language, psychology, aesthetics and politics.Trade ReviewThe most important German aesthetician and literary critic of this century -- George SteinerBenjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones ... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre. -- Hannah ArendtBenjamin was the interlocutor of all the demons and angels of storytelling. And this is why he knew its endless secrets. Listen to him. -- John BergerA complex and brilliant writer * J. M. Coetzee *

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Book SynopsisOne of the most important works of cultural theory ever written, Walter Benjamin''s groundbreaking essay explores how the age of mass media means audiences can listen to or see a work of art repeatedly and what the troubling social and political implications of this are.Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

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Book SynopsisIn the final years of the Weimar Republic, Benjamin emerged as the most original public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Here, Benjamin is represented by two of his greatest literary essays, “Surrealism” and “On the Image of Proust,” as well as by an article on Goethe and a selection of his wide-ranging commentary for German newspapers.Trade Review[Praise for the one-volume hardcover edition]For those who know only the small selection of essays and longer texts previously translated into English, this book may be a revelation. Selected Writings: Volume 2 spanning the period from his abandonment of academia and his emergence as an important literary journalist in 1927 to his near silencing after the Nazis seized power and his exile in 1934, shows the writer at his sparkling best. -- Paul Mattick * New York Times Book Review *[Praise for the one-volume hardcover edition]The period from 1927 to 1934 spanned in this volume was for Walter Benjamin both grievous and fertile...The range of topics and perspectives is immense. It extends from considerations on kitsch and pornography to repeated encounters, personal or indirect, with Gide, Kierkegaard and surrealism. The cultural history of toys fascinates Benjamin as he records his own Berlin childhood. Insights into 'Left-Wing Melancholy' alternate with thoughts on Mickey Mouse, on Chaplin, and on graphology. -- George Steiner * The Observer *Table of ContentsMoscow, 1927 Dream Kitsch The Political Groupings of Russian Writers On the Present Situation of Russian Film Reply to Oscar A. H. Schmitz Introductory Remarks on a Series for L'Humanite Moscow Review of Gladkov's Cement Journalism Gottfried Keller Diary of my Journey to the Loire Review of Soupault's le Coeur d'or The Idea of a Mystery Review of Hessel's Heimliches Berlin A State Monopoly on Pornography Image Imperatives, 1928 Curriculum Vitae (III) Andre Gide and Germany Main Features of My Second Impression of Hashish Conversation with Andre Gide Old Toys Hugo von Hofmannsthal's der Turm Moonlit Nights on the rue la Boetie Karl Kraus Reads Offenbach The Cultural History of Toys Toys and Play Everything is Thought Books by the Mentally Ill Review of the Mendelssohns' der Mensch in der Handschrift Food Fair Paris as Goddess The Path to Success, in Thirteen Theses Weimar The Fireside Saga News about Flowers Review of Green's Adrienne Mesurat Goethe Karl Kraus (Fragment) The Return of the Flaneur, 1929 Chaplin Program for a Proletarian Children's Theater Surrealism Chaplin in Retrospect Chambermaids' Romances of the Past Century Marseilles On the Image of Proust The Great Art of Making Things Seem Closer Together Milieu Theoreticians Children's Literature Robert Walser The Return of the Flaneur Short Shadows (I) A Communist Pedagogy Notes on a Conversation with Bela Balasz Some Remarks on Folk Art Tip for Patrons Crisis and Critique, 1930 Notes (II) Notes (III) Program for Literary Criticism Notes on a Theory of Gambling The Crisis of the Novel An Outsider Makes His Mark Theories of German Fascism Demonic Berlin Hashish, Beginning of March 1930 Julien Green Paris Diary Review of Kracauer's die Angestellten Food Bert Brecht The First Form of Criticism that Refuses to Judge From the Brecht Commentary Against a Masterpiece Myslovice--Braunschweig--Marseilles A Critique of the Publishing Industry Graphology Old and New Characterization of the New Generation The Need to Take the Mediating Character of Bourgeois Writing Seriously False Criticism Antitheses A Note on the Texts Chronology, 1927-1934 Index

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Book SynopsisNot an autobiography in the customary sense, Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood around 1900 is a recollection of his childhood in an upper-middle-class Jewish home in Berlin’s West End at the turn of the century. In this diagram of his life, Benjamin focuses not on persons or events but on places and things, seen from the perspective of a child.Trade ReviewConceived in the early Thirties, the Berlin Childhood belongs in the orbit of that primal history of the modern world on which Benjamin was working during the last thirteen years of his life. It forms the subjective counterpart to the masses of materials brought together for the project on the Paris arcades. The historical archetypes he wished to lay out in their social-pragmatic and philosophical provenance in the study of Paris were to be illuminated by lightning flashes of immediate remembrance in the Berlin book, which throughout laments the irretrievability of what, once lost, congeals into an allegory of its own demise. For the images this book unearths and brings strangely near are not idyllic and not contemplative. Over them lies the shadow of the Third Reich. And through them dreamily runs a shudder at the long forgotten. -- Theodor Adorno, Afterword to Berlin Childhood around 1900 (1950)Berlin Childhood is an extraordinary autobiography in which the 19th-century city comes alive, not through abstract analysis or even storytelling but through details like ‘anthracite as it falls from the coal scuttle into a cast-iron stove, the dull pop of the flame as it ignites the brass mantle.’ Benjamin transports us to the fragmented immediacy of childhood, the city breathing just beyond the confines of home. -- Yvonne Sherratt * Wall Street Journal *Benjamin’s autobiographical masterpiece,…Berlin Childhood around 1900, is a reminder of the astonishing courage and modesty of a writer who, in the mid-193os, was fully and painfully aware both of the coming catastrophe and of what precisely had been lost already (both personally and collectively)… Berlin Childhood is an extraordinary work: as if the extravagant wanderings of Joyce and Proust in the labyrinths of memory and the city had been condensed and refracted to a kaleidoscopic 160 pages. It is less a memoir than a hallucinated inventory of the space of childhood, an eerie projection of the most intimate and exposed places in the author’s recollection, ‘images in which the experience of the big city is precipitated in a child of the middle class’… Berlin Childhood around 1900…imagines the city as a series of resonant nooks and crannies, suffused with an adult’s longing that is never merely individual but which reconstructs a whole historical era in the sound of a carpet being beaten in a courtyard or the ‘giant bloom of plush’ that was his grandmother’s apartment. Inevitably, minor childhood traumas prefigure mature miseries, the time and space of childhood and adulthood interweaving in the most telling ways. -- Brian Dillon * Irish Times *Now is the time to read Walter Benjamin, when doors to the future are slamming shut around us and freedom dribbles out of a modern life that is squeezed by masses of information delivered at high speeds and by a rigid morality that circumscribes behavior, movement and thought… He intended his memoir Berlin Childhood around 1900 as a goodbye to a city he loved but knew he could never again inhabit. Begun in Spain and Italy in 1932, it was finished in 1938 but wasn’t published until 1950, 10 years after he died of an intentional overdose of morphine while fleeing the Gestapo. Benjamin regarded the book as a series of ‘expeditions into the depths of memory,’ an act of ‘digging’ for the future. -- Susan Salter Reynolds * Los Angeles Times Book Review *The Proustian ideal of the redemption of ‘lived experience’ lies at the heart of Benjamin’s idiosyncratic memoir, Berlin Childhood around 1900… In Berlin Childhood he offers us a cityscape of the German capital as seen through the eyes of a precocious and impressionable youth. He revisits his favorite childhood haunts—the zoos, swimming pools, grammar schools, parks and railway terminals—and milks them for utopian potential… In a sense, Benjamin regarded childhood much as he did modern literature: as an invaluable repository of utopian longings and dreams in an age of industrialized degradation. Berlin Childhood represents his own Proustian effort to recapture lost time, a time that any revolution worthy of the name would seek to restore. -- Richard Wolin * The Nation *Comprised of thirty prose pieces separated by montage-like headings, Berlin Childhood provides a series of intimate glimpses into Benjamin’s bourgeois Jewish upbringing. Some of the most heartbreaking scenes include Christmas Day at his grandmother’s house, ice skating, visiting an otter at the zoo, catching butterflies, searching for peacock feathers, and wandering around the streets. In these glimpses of an irretrievable past, homesickness is tangible… The new and brilliantly executed translation by Howard Eiland is of the final 1938 version. -- Eric Bulson * Times Literary Supplement *Benjamin’s work continues to fascinate and delight because it has something for everyone: the literary critic, art historian, philosopher, urban theorist and architect. Whether he is talking about children’s toys, Mickey Mouse, Surrealism, photography, or Kafka, Benjamin has a knack for figuring out what they can tell us about the wider world that produced them. -- Eric Bulson * Times Literary Supplement *Begun in 1932 and extensively reworked between then and 1938, Benjamin’s recollection of his childhood remained unpublished during his lifetime. Now available in English for the first time, this unconventional autobiography is of a piece with, and in some respects the culmination of, Benjamin’s philosophical work. The three abiding aspects of his character—the flâneur, the allegorist and the collector—had already come together in Benjamin as a child. * London Review of Books *Benjamin has an affecting approach to the victories of childhood, exhibiting pleasure and regret at once… Benjamin was acutely aware of history—the history of ideas, the history of violence and fear, the history of commerce and objects. He annotated mentally whatever he saw, then dwelt on it till it became meaningful, maybe incandescent. He tried to see everyday life through the eyes of a mystic. -- Robert Fulford * National Post *Benjamin was a consummate polymath who wrote with erudition, playfulness, and compassion… In Berlin Childhood around 1900, Benjamin turns his scalpel on his childhood, Berlin, and the capricious faculty of memory… The reader stands awestruck as Benjamin flits effortlessly from memory to memory, from his mother’s sewing box to the otter’s cage at the Berlin Zoological Garden, seemingly unaware of the catastrophic shadow looming over him. In Benjamin’s hands, the most pedestrian moments of an inward-facing, bourgeois childhood become revelations about discipline and ideology… As with Kafka, Benjamin’s prose shines most brightly through the language of parable, the cliched, but somehow unexpected aphorism… His province is the truth we always knew but could never quite put into words, the eerily reminiscent description. -- Michael Lukas * Tikkun *Readers of Berlin Childhood will delight in Benjamin’s precise prose, rich in simile and metaphor… A Proust devotee and translator, Benjamin will appeal to enthusiasts of the French master. Intensely modern in its treatment of the city, in its unique approach to autobiography, Berlin Childhood, known only to Benjamin admirers for too long and available only recently in English, belongs in the canon of classic 20th-century texts. -- Rachel Eve Nisselson * AmeriQuests *Fifty years after its posthumous publication in German, this tidy volume of urban vignettes—memories of imperial landmarks and family vacations, school libraries and the arrival of the household telephone—has earned its own afterlife. The later writings of Roland Barthes are obvious descendents, and even Jacques Derrida’s final fixations on hospitality and his native Algeria bear its trace, however unconsciously… [Here are] some of the most marvelous performances of a master stylist… Berlin Childhood around 1900 finally functions like all excavations of lost time: the little boy may be innocent, the remembered milieu yet to be complicated, but the effect is unquestionably narcotic. -- Jonathan Liu * Harvard Book Review *Walter Benjamin’s autobiography of his early childhood is a welcome addition to the English language body of Benjamin’s work… Berlin Childhood around 1900 offers a rich portrait of Berlin at the turn of the twentieth century. Benjamin provides descriptive accounts of his experiences at famous landmarks, such as the Victory Column and the Tiergarten. His autobiography also provides an uncanny perspective of middle-class life in Berlin… While this autobiography focuses on Benjamin’s early childhood, it also profoundly speaks to Benjamin’s anxieties about living in exile and his precarious future… Benjamin’s is a rich autobiography that is translated well and provided with helpful notes by Eiland. -- Sara A. Sewell * H-Net Reviews *Berlin Childhood is not only an autobiographical text by the literary critic, historian and philosopher Walter Benjamin. Describing Berlin around 1900 from the point of view of a child that is introduced into the customs and way of life of society, it also explores a whole era in a nutshell, as Benjamin did on the grand scale in his Arcades Project. And, not least, this book examines the structure of an individual memory and its relation to history. -- Barbara Sattler * Metapsychology *All serious general readers should know something about Benjamin and his ideas… Harvard University Press is doing its best to make this a realistic goal. -- George Fetherling * Seven Oaks *Howard Eiland’s translation…is incomparable. -- Charles Mudede * The Stranger *[Berlin Childhood around 1900] is a series of miniature portraits conjuring up people, objects, streets, and interior scenes that reveal his childhood in a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family in Berlin’s West End at the turn of the century. In the letter to Gershom Scholem in 1932, Benjamin notes these childhood memories are not narratives in the form of a chronicle, but individual expeditions into the depths of memory. Benjamin is a writer who deserves our full attention. -- George Cohen * Booklist *Walter has been our philosophy pin up boy for a while now and this book is another jewel in his crown. An autobiography as a series of vignettes that concentrate on memory and how we understand not just ourselves but the cities and places we live in. Underlines the works he produced later in life with a profoundly personal understanding. Brilliant. -- Bookshop catalogue of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, LondonTable of ContentsTranslator's Foreword "Hope in the Past: On Walter Benjamin" by Peter Szondi Berlin Childhood around 1900: Final Version Loggias * Imperial Panorama * Victory Column * The Telephone * Butterfly Hunt * Tiergarten * Tardy Arrival * Boys' Books * Winter Morning * At the Corner of Steglitzer and Genthiner * Two Enigmas * Market Hall * The Fever * The Otter * Peacock Island and Glienicke * News of a Death * Blumeshof 12 * Winter Evening * Crooked Street * The Sock * The Mummerehlen * Hiding Places * A Ghost * A Christmas Angel * Misfortunes and Crimes * Colors * The Sewing Box * The Moon * Two Brass Bands * The Little Hunchback * The Carousel * Sexual Awakening From the 1932-1934 Version Departure and Return * The Larder * News of a Death * The Mummerehlen * Society * The Reading Box * Monkey Theater * School Library * New Companion of German Youth * The Desk * Cabinets * Beggars and Whores * The Moon Complete Table of Contents, 1932-1934 Version Notes Credits for Illustrations Index Illustrations Walter Benjamin and his brother Georg The Victory Column on Konigsplatz The goldfish pond in the Tiergarten Berlin's Tiergarten in winter Market hall on Magdeburger Platz Interior of a middle-class German home Courtyard on Fischerstrasse in Old Berlin

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Book SynopsisIlluminations contains the most celebrated work of Walter Benjamin, one of the most original and influential thinkers of the 20th Century: 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction', ‘The Task of the Translator’ and 'Theses on the Philosophy of History', as well as essays on Kafka, storytelling, Baudelaire, Brecht's epic theatre, Proust and an anatomy of his own obsession, book collecting.This now legendary volume offers the best possible access to Benjamin’s singular and significant achievement, while Hannah Arendt’s introduction reveals how his life and work are a prism to his times.Trade ReviewFrom the evidence of this book I would suggest that Benjamin was one of the great European writers of this century * Observer *He explained the modern with an authority that fifty years of unpredictable change have not vitiated * New York Review of Books *Like Baudelaire, Benjamin brings the very new into shocking conjunction with the very old … He is in search of a surrealist history and politics, one which clings tenaciously to the fragment, the miniature, the stray citation, but which impacts these fragments one upon the other to politically explosive effect, like the Messiah who will transfigure the world completely by making minor adjustments to it

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Book SynopsisThis first volume shows that even as a young man Walter Benjamin possessed astonishing intellectual range and depth. His topics here include poetry and fiction, drama, philosophy, history, religion, love, violence, morality, mythology, painting, and much more.Trade ReviewFor many readers, [Benjamin's]…scrupulous attention to detail, this sense that everything can be made to speak, explains [his] force as a writer. His hermeneutic skill is nowhere more evident than in his essay on Goethe's Elective Affinities, the most important previously untranslated article included here. He confronts the novel from several perspectives, using it to illuminate the institution of marriage, the morality of love, and the project of artistic creation. At the same time, the essay offers a powerful—and frankly mystical—image of criticism itself… Esoteric much of the work is, but its originality inspires. If cultural studies is headed back to basics, Benjamin's luminous musings are a rewarding place to start. -- James Surowiecki * Lingua Franca *To encounter Benjamin's piece ['The Life of Students'] is like overhearing the opening notes of one of the most intellectually compelling friendships of our century. It is greatly to the credit of Harvard University Press to have made the text finally available to English-speaking readers. In general, the editors of this volume have made an exemplary choice of what to include, and when their projected multi-volume section is complete, it will constitute the most important compilation of Benjamin's writings outside the mammoth German Collected Works. -- Michael André Bernstein * New Republic *[A] splendid new edition of Benjamin's own Selected Writings. * Times Higher Education Supplement *[T]he publication of an ambitious new edition of Benjamin's selected writings [is] a genuinely exciting event. In place of a limited selection of Benjamin's more immediately accessible pieces, American readers now have the chance to wander the full range of his work, and to gain a real sense of the often contradictory but always provocative combination of philosophy, criticism, and cultural history that it offers. -- James Surowiecki * Boston Phoenix *Benjamin has gradually emerged as a major presence in 20th-century letters. This reputation rests on his extraordinary and highly idiosyncratic gift for original and far-reaching insights. It was his ambition to become Germany's leading literary critic, a status that many no doubt would be inclined to award him posthumously… Benjamin is sometimes misunderstood, since only certain parts of his overall output have come into view here. The 65 pieces collected in this excellent first volume of the new Harvard Benjamin should help clarify the larger picture as well as deepen and enliven the discussion. -- Steve Dowden * Washington Times *A glance at the Table of Contents of Selected Writings—he writes on language, time, colors, children's books, love, violence, messianism—shows us at once Benjamin's provocativeness and his infinite variety. The two longest pieces, both from the early twenties and neither translated till now, are his doctoral thesis, 'The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,' and his long essay on Goethe's late novel, Elective Affinities… [The latter] is an exemplary piece of lit crit, brilliantly analyzing the book's layers, motifs, symbols and subtexts…Benjamin's reverent feeling for tradition gives weight to his radical readings of tradition. Both essays could be an inspiration to people doing cultural studies today. -- Marshall Berman * The Nation *[Walter Benjamin] is no less than a major enrichment and revision of the image of Walter Benjamin's criticism in the English-speaking world. -- Tyrus Miller * American Book Review *Today, the presence of Walter Benjamin is invoked in aesthetics, in political philosophy, in the theory of literature and of film, in linguistics and theology… [T]his [is a] sumptuous first volume of [his] Selected Writings… [T]here is more to this feast of a book than demanding gravity. The look at 'Old Forgotten Children's Books' is an arch delight. The sketch of 'Naples' (1925) anticipates the vital part the Mediterranean was to play in Benjamin's search for inexpensive nirvanas. The brief entry on 'Love and Related Matters' of 1920 speculates on the coming sexual revolution… Throughout Walter Benjamin, the prodigality of suggestion haunts one. -- George Steiner * The Observer *Selected Writings, Volume I increases our understanding of this most important of writers exponentially. There is nothing like Benjamin, and I can hardly imagine a more rewarding book being published this year. -- David Wheatley * The Irish Times *The appeal of Benjamin's writing, according to Terry Eagleton, lies in the way it 'manages marvellously to combine…[Marxist] 'aesthetics' with the entrancing esotericism of the Kabbala.'… Benjamin is admired not in spite of but because of his arcane syntax, murky vocabulary, and buried meanings… You have to seek the truth in Benjamin's writings, if you have the patience, and not treat them as conveying knowledge. There is an awful lot of husk to burn in the process, but the theory of truth, if true, explains the obscurity. -- Arthur C. Danto * Artforum *Bullock and Jennings's Selected Writings series offers and opportunity to reevaluate Benjamin within the context of rhetoric, from a wider body of documents than previously available… This first volume of the Selected Writings gives scholars of rhetoric a critical mass of text (from notebook jottings, to student writings and early published works, to Benjamin's dissertation) from which to evaluate Benjamin's work. From this new vantage point, we might identify his potential contribution to rhetorical theory through his writing on communication, the philosophy of language, aesthetics and the political. In some cases, Bullock and Jennings's new edition resonates with and reiterates themes found in the canonical anthologies. In other cases, we are exposed to a Benjamin not previously seen in English… There are key insights here, especially in these times when the Critical Theory project which has driven the study of mass communication comes into rhetorical studies… Benjamin reminds us that to embrace and preserve the true fragment exceeds the condemnation of the system, of the whole. -- David Beard * Quarterly Journal of Speech *A cause for excitement among literary essayists and critics: Walter Benjamin's scattered works are at last being translated and collected in a carefully edited edition… Most of his writings—including some of his most extraordinary accomplishments—have never been translated. The loss for American readers is substantial. At long last…a three-volume, chronologically organized edition of the essays, memoirs, reviews, aphorisms, fragments, and other short forms is being issued… The overall quality of the translations is high… And in Benjamin's case, this is no mean accomplishment… His peculiar gift was…for lightning flashes of sudden, precise, and idiosyncratic illumination. The translators have supplied useful (though relatively sparing) explanatory notes, and the editors have appended a narrative chronology of Benjamin's life through 1926… This new Benjamin set will be the standard work. * Kirkus Reviews *Readers new to Benjamin will find this a welcome introduction to a challenging but rewarding writer. Those already familiar with his work will be grateful to be reminded, once again, of the wisdom of his maxim, 'all the decisive blows are struck left-handed.' -- Graham McCann * Financial Times *[W]ith the advent of this volume…Benjamin's bold and invigorating philosophy of literature will reach a broader audience and truly make its power felt. Here are Benjamin's earliest writings, the youthful efforts of an emerging aesthetic theorist already in command of a vast wealth of material and unafraid to voice strong and controversial opinions about everything from children's books to Goethe, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, and such concepts as perception, the philosophy of history, and theories of knowledge and the imagination. * Booklist *Harvard's systematic presentation of the work of German cultural critic Benjamin has proved a revelation. * Publishers Weekly *Wherever [Benjamin] turned his incisive gaze…the clarity of morning's first light shines forth. -- Haim Chertok * Jerusalem Post *Table of ContentsMetaphysics of Youth, 1913-1919 "Experience" The Metaphysics of Youth Two Poems by Friedrich Holderlin The Life of Students Aphorisms on Imagination and Color A Child's View of Color Socrates Trauerspiel and Tragedy The Role of Language in Traucrspiel and Tragedy On Language as Such and on the Language of Man Theses on the Problem of Identity Dostoevsky's The Idiot Painting and the Graphic Arts Painting, or Signs and Marks The Ground of Intentional Immediacy The Object: Triangle Perception Is Reading On Perception Comments on Gundolf's Goethe On the Program of the Coming Philosophy Stifter Every Unlimited Condition of the Will Types of History The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism Fate and Character Analogy and Relationship The Paradox of the Cretan The Currently Effective Messianic Elements Angelus Novus, 1920-1926 The Theory of Criticism Categories of Aesthetics On Semblance World and Time According to the Theory of Duns Scotus On Love and Related Matters The Right to Use Force The Medium through Which Works of Art Continue to Influence Later Ages Critique of Violence The Task of the Translator Notes for a Study of the Beauty of Colored Illustrations in Children's Books Riddle and Mystery Outline for a Habilitation Thesis Language and Logic (I-III) Theory of Knowledge Truth and Truths / Knowledge and Elements of Knowledge Imagination Beauty and Semblance The Philosophy of History of the Late Romantics and the Historical School The Meaning of Time in the Moral Universe Capitalism as Religion Announcement of the Journal Angelus Novus Goethe's Elective Affinities Baudelaire (II, III) Calderon's El Mayor Monstruo, Los Celos and Hebbel's Herades und Mariamne Letter to Florens Christian Rang Stages of Intention Outline of the Psychophysical Problem Even the Sacramental Migrates into Myth On the Topic of Individual Disciplines and Philosophy "Old Forgotten Children's Books" Naples Curriculum Vitae (I) Reflections on Humboldt Review of Bernoulli's Bachofen Johann Peter Hehel (I): On the Centenary of His Death Johann Peter Hebel (II): A Picture Puzzle for the Centenary of His Death A Glimpse into the World of Children's Books One-Way Street A Note on the Texts Chronology, 1892-1926 Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"This translation places before English readers for the first time the most comprehensible version yet of Benjamin's compelling and demanding essay."—Kevin McLaughlin, Brown University"Fenves and Ng have assembled the definitive scholarly edition in English of Walter Benjamin's influential 1921 essay "Toward the Critique of Violence"...An indispensable resource for those interested in Benjamin's particular intervention at a place where political theology meets questions of morality, power, and authority. Essential." –G.D. Miller, CHOICE"A new edition of Benjamin's allusive essay helps elucidate what is often enigmatic and esoteric about a text whose author is working towards a more Marxist perspective. It is fully annotated and includes a large and helpful selection of notes and fragments by Benjamin that are closely related to what he was formulating."—Sean Sheehan, The Prisma"In making Benjamin's essay and these various sets of writings easily accessible to a new generation of English-language readers, as well as scholars already conversant with the main text, this critical edition encourages the sort of deep analysis it enables. Readers of Benjamin of all kinds, from undergraduate and graduate students to established scholars, will surely appreciate the book and the manifold resources it has to offer."—Michael Powers, The German Quarterly

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Book SynopsisOn Goethe contains the full range of Walter Benjamin's reflections on the central figure in modern German culture. The writings in this volumenewly translated, fully annotated, and framed by an extensive introductiondisplay a variety of styles and cover a vast array of topics. The collection revolves around two strikingly different essays. Whereas Goethe's Elective Affinities develops a theory of critique in which a work is illuminated wholly from within itself, an article Benjamin wrote on Goethe for the Soviet Encyclopedia represents his first large-scale attempt to elaborate an historical-materialist methodology. The other thirty translations stand in similarly productive tension with one another. Some are concerned with concepts of beauty and categories of the aesthetic, others with the relation of art to politics and the status of classical authors in contemporary culture, and still others with what remains of humanistic traditions in the wake of their disappearance under fascist regimes and what synthesis is required for the construction of an historical object. The volume provides a glimpse into the laboratory of Benjamin's thought, while granting readers a series of insights into the epochal phenomena that gather around the name Goethe.

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Book SynopsisCollected here are “Franz Kafka,” “Karl Kraus,” and “The Author as Producer,” the meditation “A Berlin Chronicle,” discussions of photography and the French writer, and previously untranslated pieces on such subjects as language and memory, theological criticism and literary history, astrology and the newspaper, Valery, Hitler, and Mickey Mouse.Trade Review[Praise for the one-volume hardcover edition]For those who know only the small selection of essays and longer texts previously translated into English, this book may be a revelation. Selected Writings: Volume 2 spanning the period from his abandonment of academia and his emergence as an important literary journalist in 1927 to his near silencing after the Nazis seized power and his exile in 1934, shows the writer at his sparkling best. -- Paul Mattick * New York Times Book Review *[Praise for the one-volume hardcover edition]The period from 1927 to 1934 spanned in this volume was for Walter Benjamin both grievous and fertile...The range of topics and perspectives is immense. It extends from considerations on kitsch and pornography to repeated encounters, personal or indirect, with Gide, Kierkegaard and surrealism. The cultural history of toys fascinates Benjamin as he records his own Berlin childhood. Insights into 'Left-Wing Melancholy' alternate with thoughts on Mickey Mouse, on Chaplin, and on graphology. -- George Steiner * The Observer *This awesome 800-page collection demonstrates that Benjamin was able to pack more thought into the years 1931–34 than most people manage in a lifetime...Altogether indispensable. -- Steven Poole * The Guardian *After the lede comes the body of the essay, where the meat is served up. When a critic as astute as German man of letters Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) writes about a subject as rich as his fellow journalist Karl Kraus (1874-1936), the cut can be rich, marbled and juicy...Topics in other pieces gathered here range from highbrow analysis ('Criticism as the Fundamental Discipline of Literary History') to pop-culture commentary ('Reflections on Radio,' 'Mickey Mouse'). -- Dennis Drabelle * Washington Post Book World *Table of ContentsThe Destructive Character, 1931 In Parallel with My Actual Diary Criticism as the Fundamental Discipline of Literary History Critique of the New Objectivity We Ought to Reexamine the Link between Teaching and Research Hofmannsthal and Aleco Dossena Left-Wing Melancholy Theological Criticism Karl Kraus Literary History and the Study of Literature German Letters May-June 1931 Unpacking My Library Franz Kafka: Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer Diary from August 7, 1931, to the Day of My Death Little History of Photography Paul Valery The Lisbon Earthquake The Destructive Character Reflections on Radio Mickey Mouse In Almost Every Example We Have of Materialist Literary History The Task of the Critic Ibizan Sequence, 1932 Experience On Ships, Mine Shafts, and Crucifixes in Bottles On the Trail of Old Letters A Family Drama in the Epic Theater The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay Privileged Thinking Excavation and Memory Oedipus, or Rational Myth On Proverbs Theater and Radio Ibizan Sequence A Berlin Chronicle Spain, 1932 Light from Obscurantists The Handkerchief In the Sun The Rigorous Study of Art Hashish in Marseilles The Eve of Departure On Astrology "Try to Ensure that Everything in Life Has a Consequence" Notes (IV) Thought Figures, 1933 The Lamp Doctrine of the Similar Short Shadows (II) Kierkegaard Stefan George in Retrospect Agesilaus Santander (First Version) Agesilaus Santander (Second Version) Antitheses Concerning Word and Name On the Mimetic Faculty Thought Figures Little Tricks of the Trade Experience and Poverty The Author's Producer, 1934 Once Is as Good as Never The Newspaper Venal but Unusable The Present Social Situation of the French Writer The Author as Producer Notes from Svendborg, Summer 1934 Hitler's Diminished Masculinity Franz Kafka A Note on the Texts Chronology, 1927-1934 Index

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Book SynopsisPresented in a new edition with expanded notes, this genre-defying meditation on the semiotics of late-1920s Weimar culture, composed of 60 short prose pieces that vary wildly in style and theme, offers a fresh opportunity to encounter Walter Benjamin at his most virtuosic and experimental, writing in a vein that anticipates later masterpieces.Trade ReviewThe prose in One-Way Street is positively electrified by the historical moment…Far more important than any residues of past literature, however prevalent, are the ways in which One-Way Street ushers in a wholly original literary aesthetics. Its formal daring is unmatched by any of Benjamin’s earlier work…One-Way Street is dead set on a new mode of materialism, one that shares with Surrealism an esteem for everyday objects, debris, junk, and dross—for whatever is marginal, marginalized, outmoded, or fleeting. This edition’s index testifies to the dizzying thematic diversity of Benjamin’s undertaking: children’s toys, capital punishment, money, mobs, utopia, fancy goods, misery, souvenirs, beggars, and red neon advertising signs reflected in pools of dirty rain. Form in One-Way Street is no mere envelope, but the very arena in which these objects and phenomena clash and generate their sparks. Benjamin’s aphorisms mimic the rhythms of the street, instantiating the experiences most proper to it: distraction, reverie, shock, haste, detour, etc. Scathing critique is mixed with imagistic commentary and surrealistic prose poetry—all broken into shards and scattered like a mosaic of fragments. But however atomized and heterogeneous, the little pieces of One-Way Street pursue a common goal: an idiosyncratic exposé on history (specifically, the disintegration of culture) as deciphered in the most concrete of its artifacts and rituals. -- Michael Blum * Los Angeles Review of Books *One-Way Street is Benjamin’s most daring and experimental book; though short, it contains a wide range of genres ranging from aphorisms and political satire to maxims and instructions. -- Carolin Duttlinger * Times Literary Supplement *

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Book SynopsisFocusing on the 17th-century play of mourning, Walter Benjamin identifies allegory as the constitutive trope of modernity, bespeaking a haunted, bedeviled world of mutability and eternal transience. In this rigorous elegant translation, history as trauerspiel is the condition as well as subject of modern allegory in its inscription of the abyssal.

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Book SynopsisThe Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.Trade ReviewHe drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe. -- Susan SontagIf the killing of Lorca was Fascism's first great crime against literature, Benjamin's death was undoubtedly the second. * The Listener *Walter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of this century. -- George Steiner

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Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin - philosopher, essayist, literary and cultural theorist - was one of the most original writers and thinkers of the twentieth century. This new selection brings together Benjamin''s major works, including ''One-Way Street'', his dreamlike, aphoristic observations of urban life in Weimar Germany; ''Unpacking My Library'', a delightful meditation on book-collecting; the confessional ''Hashish in Marseille''; and ''The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'', his seminal essay on how technology changes the way we appreciate art. Also including writings on subjects ranging from Proust to Kafka, violence to surrealism, this is the essential volume on one of the most prescient critical voices of the modern age. Contains: ''Unpacking My Library''; ''One-Way Street''; ''The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction''; ''Brief History of Photography''; ''Hashish in Marseille''; ''On the Critique of Violence''; ''The Job of the Translator''; ''Surrealism''; ''Franz Kafka'' and ''Picturing Proust''.

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Book Synopsis90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin BooksEvery sort of passion verges on chaos, I know, but what the collecting passion verges on is a chaos of memories.'From intimate musings on his book collection, to a dream-like trip through the bustling streets of Marseille, each of these essays offers a compelling journey into the mind of one of the twentieth century's most influential philosophers.

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Book SynopsisA new translation of philosopher Walter Benjamin''s work as it pertains to his famous essay, "The Storyteller," this collection includes short stories, book reviews, parables, and as a selection of writings by other authors who had an influence on Benjamin''s work. “The Storyteller” is one of Walter Benjamin’s most important essays, a beautiful and suggestive meditation on the relation between narrative form, social life, and individual existence—and the product of at least a decade’s work. What might be called the story of The Storyteller Essays starts in 1926, with a piece Benjamin wrote about the German romantic Johann Peter Hebel. It continues in a series of short essays, book reviews, short stories, parables, and even radio shows for children. This collection brings them all together to give readers a new appreciation of how Benjamin’s thinking changed and ripened over time, while including several key readings of his own—texts by his contemporaries Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukács; by Paul Valéry; and by Herodotus and Montaigne. Finally, to bring things around, there are three short stories by “the incomparable Hebel” with whom the whole intellectual adventure began.

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Book SynopsisThe Storyteller gathers for the first time the fiction of the legendary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, best known for his groundbreaking studies of culture and literature, including Illuminations, One-Way Street and The Arcades Project. His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, and delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling and fortune-telling, and explore the themes that defined Benjamin. The novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables and riddles in this collection are brought to life by the playful imagery of the modernist artist and Bauhaus figure Paul Klee.Trade ReviewWalter Benjamin was the interlocutor of all the demons and angels of storytelling. And this is why he knew its endless secrets. Listen to him. -- John BergerThis volume collects an extraordinary array of short pieces by Walter Benjamin that lets us see the centrality of stories, dreams, and tales to his own experimental writings. During the time in which Benjamin sought to understand the conditions of communicability between languages, he was also testing the thesis in the stories he told. Telling the tale and reflecting on its very possibility, under conditions such as war and poverty, Benjamin gives us short forms that are broken up by interruptions and sudden closure. This elegant and moving volume is beautifully edited, including an introduction that shows how these collections of short tales and dream sequences are already doing the critical work of the essay form. This volume is a marvelous gift that will reorient our reading of Benjamin in startling ways -- Judith ButlerA complex and brilliant writer. -- J.M. CoetzeeWalter Benjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre. -- Hannah ArendtBenjamin buckled himself to the task of revolutionary transformation. his life and work speak challengingly to us all." -- Terry EagletonThere has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time. -- George SteinerHe drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe. -- Susan SontagWalter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of the twentieth century. * Sunday Times *One doesn't read him to feel better. One reads him to feel. In his universe nothing is as it appears to be and there is a vital need to go beyond surfaces and connect with humanity. -- Elif Shafak * Guardian *The greatest German critic of the 20th century -- Stuart Jeffries * Financial Times *Everything which fell under the scrutiny of his words was transformed, as though it had become radioactive. -- Theodor AdornoA circular book to visit again and again, a book one can start reading right in the middle or read backwards, playing with its chapters and sentences wildly and freely, just as the philosopher would have probably wished. -- Elif Shafak * FT *An event. -- Jonathon Sturgeon * Guardian *Dreams, diaries, reviews, fragments, and short fiction make up The Storyteller, but there's no denying that this potpourri by the German critic and philosopher Benjamin is an essential addition to the corpus of one of the 20th century's preeminent figures. As the translators note in an elegant introduction, these pieces explore both the European oral storytelling tradition and a curious mysticism under the aegis of modernist literature...thoroughly illuminating. * Publishers Weekly *

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Book SynopsisThis volume ranges from studies of Baudelaire, Brecht, and the historian Carl Jochmann to appraisals of photography, film, and poetry. At their core is the question of how art adapts to survive and thrive in an age of violence and repression.Trade ReviewThe variety of subjects and the grace of a style that shines though even in translation help explain Benjamin's reputation as one of our... shrewdest commentators on literature and culture. -- Frank Day * South Caroline Review *Harvard's systematic presentation of the work of German cultural critic Benjamin has proved a revelation...This is another splendid volume. * Publishers Weekly *Readers new to Benjamin will find this a welcome introduction to a challenging but rewarding writer. Those already familiar with his work will be grateful to be reminded, once again, of the wisdom of his maxim, "all the decisive blows are struck left-handed." -- Graham McCann * Financial Times *The edition at hand...represents the first serious attempt to present his works with systematic chronology, judicious but inclusive selection, and sensitively accurate translation. The effect is nothing less than electric. -- Peter Brier * Macgrill's Literary Annual *The latest volume of Havard's majestic annoted edition [is] exhilarating...You feel smarter just holding this book in your hand. -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post Book World *Whenever [Benjamin] turned his incisive gaze...the clarity of morning's first light shines forth. -- Haim Chertok * Jerusalem Post *A glance at the table of contents...shows us at once Benjamin's provocativeness and his infinite variety. -- Marshall Berman * The Nation *There is nothing like Benjamin, and I can hardly imagine a more rewarding book being published this year. -- David Wheatley * Irish Times (Dublin) *The final volume in this collection of the German philosopher's writing, this title covers the last three years of Benjamin's life and is masterfully translated, edited, and annotated. Presented here are Benjamin's grandest themes: the arcades of Paris, Baudelaire, the concept of remembrance, and materialist theology. Also included is the third version of Benjamin's most famous essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility," which was unpublished in the author's lifetime. This essay alone makes the volume indispensable for any scholar of interwar literature, philosophy, or modern European thought. Together with the first three volumes in the set (1996-2002), this is one of the most remarkable editorial achievements in contemporary thought and politics. -- M. Uebel * Choice *Walter Benjamin's Selected Writings, Volume 4, 1938-40 brings to a conclusion the magisterial series published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. -- Ciaran Carson * The Guardian *First things first: this is a magnificent volume. Translating the work of a gifted translator is undoubtedly a somewhat daunting task...Benjamin’s Selected Writings is probably the most outstanding editorial achievement in modern cultural history and political thought that has been published in the last few years. Especially intellectual and social historians of early-twentieth-century Europe, who have traditionally not always paid much attention to Benjamin because of the latter’s appropriation by literary theory, now have every reason to take Benjamin’s writings more seriously. -- Christian J. Emden * H-Net *First things first: this is a magnificent volume. Translating the work of a gifted translator is undoubtedly a somewhat daunting task...Benjamin’s Selected Writings is probably the most outstanding editorial achievement in modern cultural history and political thought that has been published in the last few years. Especially intellectual and social historians of early-twentieth-century Europe, who have traditionally not always paid much attention to Benjamin because of the latter’s appropriation by literary theory, now have every reason to take Benjamin’s writings more seriously. -- Christian J. Emden * H-Net *Table of ContentsFRUITS OF EXILE, 1938 (PART 2) 1. The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire 2. Blanqui 3. The Study Begins with Some Reflections on the Influence of Les Fleurs du mal 4. Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire" 5. Review of Reneville's Experience poetique 6. Review of Freund's Photographie en France au dix-neuvieme siecle 7. Reviw of Francesco's Macht des Charlatans 8. A chronicle of Germany's Unemployed 9. A Novel of German Jews THEORY OF REMEMBRANCE, 1939 1. Review of Honigswald's Philosophie und Sprache 2. Review of Sternberger's Panorama 3. Review of Beguin's Ame romantique et le reve 4. Note on Brecht 5. Central Park 6. Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on "The Flaneur" Section of "The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire" 7. Commentary on Poems by Brecht 8. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Third Version 9. Germans of 1789 10. What is the Epic Theater? (II) MATERIALIST THEOLOGY, 1940 1. On Some Motifs in Baudelaire 2. "The Regression of Poetry," by Carl Gustav Jochmann 3. Curriculum Vitae (VI): Dr. Walter Benjamin 4. On Scheerbart 5. On the Concept of History 6. Paralipomena to "On the Concept of History" 7. Letter to Theodor W. Adorno on Baudelaire, Goerge and Hofmannsthal A Note on the Texts Chronology List of writings in Volumes 1-4 Index

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Book SynopsisRadical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness, yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie--such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930s. This volume, the third in a four-volume set, offers twenty-seven brilliant pieces, nineteen of which have never before been translated.Trade ReviewThis latest volume of Harvard's majestic annotated edition of the essays and fragments includes reflections on Brecht, Kafka and the collector Eduard Fuchs, an early version of the famous analysis of art in the age of mechanical reproduction (here more accurately translated as "technological reproducibility") and the equally exhilarating inquiry into the nature of narrative, "The Storyteller." You feel smarter just holding this book in your hand. -- Michael Dirda * Washington Post *Over the past few years, Harvard's systematic presentation of the work of German cultural critic Benjamin has proved a revelation...This third of four planned volumes...offers two major texts that are new to English...as well as a fascinating re-translation of one of the cornerstones of Benjamin's reputation, here rendered as the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility"...This is another splendid volume that will leave aficionados on campus and off awaiting the final installment. * Publishers Weekly *While the Harvard Series does include Benjamin's epochal contributions to Marxist theory and literary criticism, it also does English-language readers a great service by emphasizing his more accessible writings: fanciful personal essays, journalistic articles, and book reviews. These pieces are, at times, giddily delightful; at other moments, they offer lightning-quick, piercing insights. * Publishers Weekly *Benjamin attracts such metaphorical fancies, symbols of a life's work at once supernaturally precise and rigorously mysterious. His own favoured symbol for the scattered unity of his writing was that of the constellation: a stellar array of apparently unrelated points rendered into magical coherence by the powers of thought and intuition. This third volume in Harvard's essential selection from his huge corpus offers something like a deep-space photograph of Benjamin's enigmatic universe: a book as fascinating for scholars as it is enrapturing for any reader as yet unseduced by this most sensitive and audacious of writers...Benjamin's autobiographical masterpiece ['A Berlin Childhood Around 1900'] might alone justify this sedulously edited and beautifully translated volume. But here, too, alongside an outline of The Arcades Project and an early version of the 'Work of Art [in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction]' essay, are his thoughts on a wondrous variety of subjects--Kafka, Brecht, painting and photography, carnivals, the problem of translation--as well as a host of supposedly 'minor' writings (fragments, letters, diary entries) which often turn out to be among his most beautiful or thought-provoking...It is no exaggeration to say that Benjamin's writing changes lives, lights up unknown landscapes of art and politics, even at this historical remove. If his thought lives on...it does so in the sense that Baudelaire's 19th century survived for Benjamin in the 20th: less a reminder of the past than a signpost to the future. There is no more incisive or elegant guide to that territory. -- Brian Dillon * Irish Times *The quintessential Benjamin gesture of Volume 3 is the 1936 selection of letters by a wide assortment of figures from the German Romantic era, together with his brief, meticulously sympathetic commentaries, contained in German Men and Women...It is the story primarily of friendships amidst the passages and misfortunes of time, and of ideas as the substance of friendship: Their exchange becomes the fabric that connects one individual to another, and binds each to their precarious, uncertain lives. -- Howard Hampton * Village Voice *Howard Eiland's translation [of "Berlin Childhood around 1900"] in Harvard University Press's Selected Writings, Volume 3 is incomparable. -- Charles Mudede * The Stranger *Table of ContentsParis Old and New, 1935 Brecht's Threepenny Novel Johann Jakob Bachofen Conversation above the Corso: Recollections of Carnival-Time in Nice Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on the Essay "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century" Problems in the Sociology of Language: An Overview The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression Rastelli's Story Art In a Technological Age, 1936 The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version A Different Utopian Will The Significance of Beautiful Semblance The Signatures of the Age Theory of Distraction The Storyteller: Observations on the Works of Nikolai Leskov German Men and Women: A Sequence of Letters Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography Translation-For and Against The Knowledge That the First Material on Which the Mimetic Faculty Tested Itself Dialectics and History, 1937 Addendum to the Brecht Commentary: The Threepenny Opera Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian Fruits of Exile, 1938 (Part 1) Theological-Political Fragment A German Institute for Independent Research Review of Brod's Franz Kafka Letter to Gershom Scholem on Franz Kafka The Land Where the Proletariat May Not Be Mentioned: The Premiere of Eight One-Act Plays by Brecht Diary Entries, 1938 Berlin Childhood around 1900 A Note on the Texts Chronology, 1935-1938 Index Illustrations The Galerie Vivienne, Paris, 1907 Walter Benjamin at the Bibliotheque Nationale, 1937 Honore Daumier, La Crinoline en temps de neige The Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge, Berlin, early twentieth century The Victory Column on Konigsplatz, Berlin, early twentieth century The goldfish pond in the Tiergarten, Berlin, early twentieth century Berlin's Tiergarten in winter, early twentieth century Market hall on Magdeburger Platz, 1899 Interior of a typical middle-class German home, late nineteenth century Courtyard on Fischerstrasse in Old Berlin, early twentieth century Walter Benjamin and his brother Georg, ca. 1902

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Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin, one of the foremost cultural commentators and theorists of this century, is perhaps best known for his analyses of the work of art in the modern age and the philosophy of history. Yet it was through his study of the social and cultural history of the late nineteenth-century Paris, examined particularly in relation to the figure of the great Parisian lyric poet Charles Baudelaire, that Benjamin tested and enriched some of his core concepts and themes. Contained within these pages are, amongst other insights, his notion of the flaneur, his theory of memory and remembrance, his assessment of the utopian Fourier and his reading of the modernist movement.Trade ReviewA series of brilliant insights ... a remarkable volume. * Times Educational Supplement *His analyses are inspired. His fragments about with insights. -- George SteinerBenjamin is indispensable as well as brilliant. -- Raymond Williams

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Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin was fascinated by the impact of new technology on culture, an interest that extended beyond his renowned critical essays. From 1927 to '33, he wrote and presented something in the region of eighty broadcasts using the new medium of radio. Radio Benjamin gathers the surviving transcripts, which appear here for the first time in English. This eclectic collection demonstrates the range of Benjamin's thinking and his enthusiasm for popular sensibilities. His celebrated "Enlightenment for Children" youth programs, his plays, readings, book reviews, and fiction reveal Benjamin in a creative, rather than critical, mode. They flesh out ideas elucidated in his essays, some of which are also represented here, where they cover topics as varied as getting a raise and the history of natural disasters, subjects chosen for broad appeal and examined with passion and acuity.Delightful and incisive, this is Walter Benjamin channeling his sophisticated thinking to a wide audience, allowing us to benefit from a new voice for one of the twentieth century's most respected thinkers.Trade ReviewA complex and brilliant writer. -- JM CoetzeeWalter Benjamin was one of the unclassifiable ones... whose work neither fits the existing order nor introduces a new genre. -- Hannah ArendtBenjamin buckled himself to the task of revolutionary transformation. his life and work speak challengingly to us all. -- Terry EagletonThere has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time. -- George SteinerHe drew, from the obscure disdained German baroque, elements of the modern sensibility: the taste for allegory, surrealist shock effects, discontinuous utterance, a sense of historical catastrophe. -- Susan SontagWalter Benjamin is the most important German aesthetician and literary critic of the twentieth century. * Sunday Times *Radio Benjamin could hardly be bettered... There really is no parallel for what Benjamin did in these talks. Imagine a particularly engaging episode of Melvyn Bragg's In Our Time narrated by Alan Bennett - if Bennett were more profoundly steeped in Marx and politically engaged by the revolutionary potential of the medium of radio - and you have something of their allure. -- Stuart JeffriesThis collection shows a lighter - though entirely characteristic - side to this most influential of 20th-century thinkers. -- Jonathan Gibbs * Independent *Walter Benjamin, one of the first theorists to ponder the social impact of mass media [...] was equally entranced by the way thin air mysteriously transmits radio waves. In 1927, five years before he exiled himself from Germany in advance of the Nazi putsch, Benjamin began a series of experimental broadcasts on this new medium. -- Peter Conrad * Observer *

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Book SynopsisCalled the most important critic of his time by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years. Suitable for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin's work, this title offers a look at the man behind much of the twentieth century's most significant criticism.Trade Review"There has been no more original, no more serious, critic and reader in our time." (George Steiner)"

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Book SynopsisThe life of literary critic and philosopher Benjamin (1892–1940) is a veritable allegory of the life of letters in the 20th century. Benjamin’s intellectual odyssey included an eventful trip to the USSR. His stunning account of that journey is unique among his writings for the frank, merciless way he struggles with his motives and his conscience.Trade ReviewIn the ’20s and ’30s, [Benjamin] was a Jew in Berlin, a visitor to the Russian Revolution, a refugee in France, a citizen of the world in flames. More a man of letters than scholar, and more poet than either one, he wandered through Western culture as if it had been destroyed centuries earlier, and he were a revenant poking through its remains. He amassed quotations and collected books and toys, with no illusion of finding a living civilization, but seeking the artifacts of a shattered one… Love, mixed with obsession, is at the heart of Moscow Diary, the private record of Benjamin’s two-month visit to the Soviet Union in the winter of 1926. Edited and with an afterword by Gary Smith and lucidly translated by Richard Sieburth, it is a many-faceted jewel: a portrait of the Russian revolution in its still unsettled transition to Stalinism, a vivid picture of Moscow life, Benjamin’s intellectual journal, and above all, the tragicomic story of his pursuit of the Estonian actress, Asja Lacis. -- Richard Eder * Los Angeles Times Book Review *The German literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who died in 1940, was one of Europe’s grandest thinkers. This diary covers only two months in the winter of 1926–1927, but it feels like a lifetime. His meticulous, almost macabre attention to detail gives his perceptions a kind of scientific brilliance, whether he is describing the streets of the city, a curious shop sign, the sanatorium where his friend Asja Lacis is a patient, the wash table in his hotel room, or the ragged beds that stand at every street corner in ‘the open air sick bay called Moscow.’ The book is a supreme example of the kind of mental equipment any traveller would like to take with him, to any place. * The Independent *[An] unsurpassably quirky memoir of Bolshevik literati as Stalin consolidated power. * New Society *Moscow Diary is chiefly interesting not for what it tells us about Moscow during December 1926 but for what it tells us about Walter Benjamin, who has by now emerged as both a major figure in modern German literature and criticism and as the preeminent poet-historian of the modern European city. Moscow Diary is the longest of Benjamin’s autobiographical writings… [Benjamin’s] insights into Russia’s struggle to define its cultural identity are often compelling. Above all, the Diary is the story of the triangle among Benjamin, Asja [Lācis], and the expatriate German playwright Bernhard Reich. Their story of emotional instabilities and obstacles provides a fascinating counterpart to the story of Russia’s cultural dilemma. The edition is superbly translated, annotated, and illustrated, and contains a fine preface and afterword. * Choice *Table of ContentsPreface by Gershom Scholem Moscow Diary Appendices 'Russian Toys" by Walter Benjamin Letters from Walter Benjamin Afterword by Gary Smith Index

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Book SynopsisThe surviving correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. This is the first time all of the surviving correspondence between Adorno and Benjamin has appeared in English. Provides a key to the personalities and projects of these two major intellectual figures. Offers a compelling insight into the cultural politics of the period, at a time of social and political upheaval. An invaluable resource for all students of the work of Adorno and especially of Benjamin, extensively annotated and cross-referenced. Trade Review"[In this volume] the reader witnesses the hesitant, tension-filled process by which two individuals come together - individuals who could scarcely have approached each other in any other way than through the mediation of this literary form. True, they both repeatedly affirm their desire for personal meetings and face-to-face conversation. But the continued series of postponed and prevented visits (Adorno came to Paris, briefly, only twice) does not simply reflect adverse circumstances; it also bespeaks an unavowed preference for the obliqueness of letter writing. One gets the impression that the constraints of this medium protect the withdrawn Benjamin from the uncertainties and importunities of direct contact, and at the same time grant the austere Adorno greater freedom of critical expression." Jurgen Habermas, Die Zeit "Where Benjamin's cycles reveal the deliberately closed and enigmatic self-defensive nature of his personality, Adorno's letters are among the most remarkable things he himself ever wrote. Those letters document one of the most painful moments in Benjamin's life. Not the least interest of this correspondence is the questionable light in which it throws both of its protagonists: Benjamin for the riddle-like nature of his personality and the withdrawals and strategic or tactical evasions, so often evident here; and Adorno for the often self-important way in which he stages the flights of his own intelligence. The extraordinary and unique qualities of this correspondence stem from the confrontation in stages between two of the most intense and energetic minds of the century" Fredric Jameson, Duke University "These are complex, challenging texts that highlight the intellectual achievements of these two important thinkers. In discussions of such central concepts as the dialectical image, the problem of mediation between socioeconomic formations and cultural products, and especially the interrelation of new media technologies and aesthetics, these letters offer some of the most penetrating cultural theory written this century in any language." Michael Jennings, Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsAbbreviations. The Correspondence 1928-1940. Editor's Afterword by Henri Lonitz. Textual Notes and Source References. Bibliographical Index. Name Index.

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Book SynopsisThe surviving correspondence between Walter Benjamin and Theodor W. Adorno. This is the first time all of the surviving correspondence between Adorno and Benjamin has appeared in English. Provides a key to the personalities and projects of these two major intellectual figures. Offers a compelling insight into the cultural politics of the period, at a time of social and political upheaval. An invaluable resource for all students of the work of Adorno and especially of Benjamin, extensively annotated and cross-referenced. Trade Review"[In this volume] the reader witnesses the hesitant, tension-filled process by which two individuals come together – individuals who could scarcely have approached each other in any other way than through the mediation of this literary form." Jürgen Habermas, Die Zeit "The extraordinary and unique qualities of this correspondence stem from the confrontation in stages between two of the most intense and energetic minds of the last century." Fredric Jameson, Duke University "To reconsider the relationship between Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin is to reflect on one of the most enduring philosophical friendships of the twentieth century." Richard Wolin, New Republic "The first time the letters of these two great minds have been published in their entirety makes for endlessly crunchy reading that combines high-octane intellectual jousting with a touching arm’s-length friendship and, towards the end, a personal tragedy, as Benjamin’s situation gets inexorably worse. The sinewy dialogues on various topics – music, painting, poetry, Adorno’s theory of dialecticism, Benjamin’s aesthetics – throw up constant insights into how their major ideas were formed, as it were, out of live, fluid thinking." Steven Poole, The Guardian

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Book SynopsisWe must see to it that we put the best of ourselves in our letters; for there is nothing to suggest that we shall see each other again soon.' So wrote Walter Benjamin to Gretel Adorno in spring 1940 from the south of France, shortly before he took his own life. The correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin, published here in its complete form for the first time, is the document of a great friendship that existed independently of Benjamin's relationship with Theodor W. Adorno. While Benjamin, alongside his everyday worries, writes especially about those projects on which he worked so intensively in the last years of his life, it was Gretel Karplus-Adorno who did everything in her power to keep Benjamin in the world. She urged him to emigrate to the USA and told him about Adorno's plans and Bloch's movements, thus maintaining the connection between the old Berlin friends and acquaintances. She helped him through the most difficult times with regular money traTrade Review“Throughout the volume’s 180 letters, the editors’ scrupulous referencing and the extensive footnotes help us to decode the hermetic web of enquiries about close friends, in-jokes and mutual favours spun by the correspondents. The English translation skilfully navigates Benjamin’s effusive idiosyncrasies and softens the clipped directness of both authors to reveal the comfortable familiarity beneath.”Times Literary Supplement “The correspondence between Gretel Karplus Adorno and Walter Benjamin documents a remarkable friendship. Benjamin valued “Felizitas” as a critic who was at once acute and sympathetic, and these letters bristle with some of the most challenging formulations of his thought in the 1930s. Yet their relationship also enabled Benjamin to reveal aspects of his life that remained hidden from even his closest male friends, including Adorno himself and Scholem. The letters thus offer a moving and surprisingly intimate account of the fate of a great intellectual struggling to survive – and to write – in exile.”Michael Jennings, Princeton UniversityTable of ContentsEditors’ Foreword vii Correspondence 1930–1940 1 Index 291

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Book SynopsisMarking the centenary of Walter Benjamin's immensely influential essay, Toward the Critique of Violence, this critical edition presents readers with an altogether new, fully annotated translation of a work that is widely recognized as a classic of modern political theory. The volume includes twenty-one notes and fragments by Benjamin along with passages from all of the contemporaneous texts to which his essay refers. Readers thus encounter for the first time in English provocative arguments about law and violence advanced by Hermann Cohen, Kurt Hiller, Erich Unger, and Emil Lederer. A new translation of selections from Georges Sorel's Reflections on Violence further illuminates Benjamin's critical program. The volume also includes, for the first time in any language, a bibliography Benjamin drafted for the expansion of the essay and the development of a corresponding philosophy of law. An extensive introduction and afterword provide additional context. With its challenging argument conTrade Review"This translation places before English readers for the first time the most comprehensible version yet of Benjamin's compelling and demanding essay."—Kevin McLaughlin, Brown University"Fenves and Ng have assembled the definitive scholarly edition in English of Walter Benjamin's influential 1921 essay "Toward the Critique of Violence"...An indispensable resource for those interested in Benjamin's particular intervention at a place where political theology meets questions of morality, power, and authority. Essential." –G.D. Miller, CHOICE"A new edition of Benjamin's allusive essay helps elucidate what is often enigmatic and esoteric about a text whose author is working towards a more Marxist perspective. It is fully annotated and includes a large and helpful selection of notes and fragments by Benjamin that are closely related to what he was formulating."—Sean Sheehan, The Prisma

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Book SynopsisOn Goethe contains the full range of Walter Benjamin's reflections on the central figure in modern German culture. The writings in this volumenewly translated, fully annotated, and framed by an extensive introductiondisplay a variety of styles and cover a vast array of topics. The collection revolves around two strikingly different essays. Whereas Goethe's Elective Affinities develops a theory of critique in which a work is illuminated wholly from within itself, an article Benjamin wrote on Goethe for the Soviet Encyclopedia represents his first large-scale attempt to elaborate an historical-materialist methodology. The other thirty translations stand in similarly productive tension with one another. Some are concerned with concepts of beauty and categories of the aesthetic, others with the relation of art to politics and the status of classical authors in contemporary culture, and still others with what remains of humanistic traditions in the wake of their disappearance under fascist regimes and what synthesis is required for the construction of an historical object. The volume provides a glimpse into the laboratory of Benjamin's thought, while granting readers a series of insights into the epochal phenomena that gather around the name Goethe.

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Book SynopsisIn these essays, Benjamin challenges the image of Baudelaire as late-Romantic dreamer, and evokes instead the modern poet caught in a life-or-death struggle with the forces of the urban commodity capitalism that had emerged in Paris around 1850.Trade ReviewIn these essays, written in the 1930s, German critic Benjamin masterfully succeeds in changing our perception of French poet Charles Baudelaire as a late Romantic dreamer. Instead, he shows Baudelaire to be a thoroughly modern writer involved in a life-and-death struggle with that urban commodity, capitalism, which had begun to emerge in Paris in the 1850s. Benjamin portrays Baudelaire as a flaneur--a stroller who roamed the lonely Paris streets lost in the faceless crowd--as well as a lone modern hero searching for a means of selling his poetry. In the urban crowds, all traces of individuality are erased, and Baudelaire's famed "spleen" is actually disgust at that defining aspect of the modern condition. Indeed, in "The Painter of Modern Life," an essay Baudelaire wrote in 1863, he makes several acute observations about his sense of alienation that definitely establish him as a modern writer. Stimulating reading. -- Bob T. Ivey * Library Journal *Brilliant essays. -- Richard Wolin * The Nation *It's depressing to be a critic within a hundred years of Benjamin: he got there first on so many things. The poet Charles Baudelaire died twenty-five years before Benjamin was born, in 1892, but Benjamin writes about him as if they were there together in nineteen-twenties Berlin, making a ruckus. For Benjamin, Baudelaire represented 'the modern.' That doesn't mean that he claims Baudelaire wrote 'about' modernity but that his poetry embodies it. For example, Benjamin notes the influence on Baudelaire of new technologies such as photography, and writes that 'Baudelaire was his own impresario,' an artist who knew that his poems were commodities even before they were done. -- Sasha Frere-Jones * New Yorker *Now comes The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire, edited by Princeton University professor Michael Jennings, and based on the writings of Walter Benjamin, a long dead German genius. Benjamin dissects the author of Les Fleurs du Mal (The Flowers of Evil) with a Marxist scalpel, among other unusual literary procedures. Why is all this happening? Maybe because in a unique way we fearful and confused souls recognize that Baudelaire's mordant and yet often exquisitely beautiful poetry and screwed-up life are a kind of mirror noir of our own teetering times. The same violent deaths, political treacheries, religious confrontations--and yet brief Roman candle bursts of loveliness are there. -- Leslie H. Whitten Jr. * Washington Times *This is an excellent collection of essays by one of the greatest critics of the first half of the 20th century about one of the greatest poets of the 19th century. In presenting Baudelaire in these landmark studies, Benjamin situates the first truly modern poet against the backdrop of the first truly modern city. From wide brushstrokes about the figure of the flaneur to close readings of specific poems, Benjamin's acumen makes clear that he was that rare breed of critic who could deftly weave the macro and the micro in seamless discussions. -- S. Whidden * Choice *This is an excellent collection of essays by one of the greatest critics of the first half of the 20th century about one of the greatest poets of the 19th century. In presenting Baudelaire in these landmark studies, Benjamin situates the first truly modern poet against the backdrop of the first truly modern city. From wide brushstrokes about the figure of the flaneur to close readings of specific poems, Benjamin's acumen makes clear that he was that rare breed of critic who could deftly weave the macro and the micro in seamless discussions...Jennings' supporting critical apparatus, complete with useful notes at every turn, frames these important texts in a way that reveals not only Benjamin and Baudelaire but also the intersections of modernity, poetry, history, urbanism, and many other fields. -- S. Whidden * Choice *Benjamin planned to write a book on Baudelaire, but it never materialized. With the exception of 'On Some Motifs in Baudelaire,' which appeared in a journal edited by Max Horkheimer and Adorno in 1939, his Baudelaire essays were published posthumously. In the past thirty years, some of them have surfaced in English translations, but all of them have now been retranslated and brought together in a single volume entitled The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire, complete with a valuable introduction and notes by Michael W. Jennings. -- Eric Bulson * Times Literary Supplement *Benjamin's work continues to fascinate and delight because it has something for everyone: the literary critic, art historian, philosopher, urban theorist and architect. Whether he is talking about children's toys, Mickey Mouse, Surrealism, photography, or Kafka, Benjamin has a knack for figuring out what they can tell us about the wider world that produced them. -- Eric Bulson * Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsIntroduction, by Michael W. Jennings Baudelaire Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century The Paris of the Second Empire in Baudelaire Central Park On Some Motifs in Baudelaire Notes Index

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Book SynopsisWalter Benjamin's posthumously published collection of writings on hashish is a detailed blueprint for a book that was never written. A series of "protocols of drug experiments," written between 1927 and 1934, together with short prose pieces, On Hashish provides a peculiarly intimate portrait of Benjamin and of his unique form of thought.Trade ReviewThe essays and notes that Benjamin devoted to the characteristics of narcotic intoxication...are, despite their fragmentary nature, among the most authentic ever put to paper .... Benjamin's experiments correspond quite precisely to the specific cognitive intentions articulated in his most developed philosophical texts.... Like the micrological explorations that typify his philosophizing as a whole, his experiences of intoxication bring to light surprising finds. -- Hermann Schweppenhäuser, co-editor of Walter Benjamin's collected worksFascinating...On Hashish gives the reader a sense of Benjamin's philosophical method and a tour through the library (and the staggering erudition) that supported it, but also provides some insight into the man himself--his drives, his fears, and his creative process. -- Michael Berk * Nextbook *In search of heightened awareness, Benjamin would eat hashish, smoke opium and get injected with mescaline...Some of his notes (such as the part about giggling) will be familiar to any contemporary stoner, but even when dealing with drugs he surprises his readers...Everything Benjamin wrote, even when the subject is less than pleasant, exudes an almost euphoric spirit. It was as if he wrote as a form of worship, out of gratitude for the chance to live and discover. -- Robert Fulford * National Post *During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the radical thinker and cultural critic Walter Benjamin made a series of experiments with hashish, mescaline and opium...This very welcome collection is the first in English to round up his better-known drug pieces, such as his elliptical account of a hashish-intoxicated evening stroll around the port of Marseilles, and to place them in the context of the related notes, drafts and marginalia that track the course of his elusive and constantly evolving project. This is a very worthwhile venture, and one that produces a book much greater than the sum of its parts. Benjamin's scattershot approach to recording his drug experiences means that there are as many nuggets of brilliance (and as many incomprehensible rambles) in his notes and journal entries as in his finished prose. -- Mike Jay * Fortean Times *[On Hashish is] a miscellany, gathering the protocols of [Benjamin's] drug experiments, two accounts of his experiences, and a handful of references to drugs culled from his other works. It can only begin to suggest the true importance of drug experiences for the development of Benjamin's thought. Yet for this very reason On Hashish stands in the same relation to a more conventional essay on drugs as Benjamin's literary essays do to conventional criticism...What makes On Hashish an important book is that Benjamin's drug experiments not only were a failure in themselves but also shifted the ground beneath his other work in a way that he never fully acknowledged. -- Adam Kirsch * New Yorker *[Benjamin's] drug experiences show once again how singularly committed he was to the program of the avant-garde: overcoming the limitations of the self by subjecting it to an array of pulverizing, Dionysian, ego-transcending influences. -- Richard Wolin * The Nation *Drugs did, mostly, make Benjamin smile, and what could bring smiles to the lips of this proud, gifted and doomed man can't but bring smiles to the reader. There is wonderful writing in this book, much of which illuminates Benjamin's better known, equally suggestive, and no less enigmatic texts. Plus, here, we catch him tapping his foot. And smiling. -- Harvey Blume * Jerusalem Report *Harvard's pocket-sized On Hashish, edited by Howard Eiland, brings together everything that Benjamin ever wrote on the subject. It includes notes by him and his friends about the drug protocols and two essays. One of Benjamin's solitary experiments ended up as the basis for 'Hashish in Marseilles,' an essay that begins with him sitting in his hotel waiting for the drug to hit and then follows him around the streets. At points along the way, he giggles at his own jokes, has paranoid thoughts, feels the immensity of his solitude, and gets hungry. A piece of ice brings enormous pleasure; Pâté de Lyon reminds him of the words 'Lion paste'; the name of a boat in the harbor makes him think of aerial warfare; and he passes two men on the street who remind him of Dante and Petrarch. -- Eric Bulson * Times Literary Supplement *Benjamin's work continues to fascinate and delight because it has something for everyone: the literary critic, art historian, philosopher, urban theorist and architect. Whether he is talking about children's toys, Mickey Mouse, Surrealism, photography, or Kafka, Benjamin has a knack for figuring out what they can tell us about the wider world that produced them. -- Eric Bulson * Times Literary Supplement *Table of ContentsTranslator's Foreword Abbreviations and a Note on the Texts "Walter Benjamin and Drug Literature," by Marcus Boon Editorial Note, by Tillman Rexroth Protocols of Drug Experiments (1-12) Completed Texts "Myslovice--Braunschweig--Marseilles" "Hashish in Marseilles" Addenda From One-Way Street From "Surrealism" From "May-June 1931" From The Arcades Project From the Notebooks From the Letters "An Experiment by Walter Benjamin," by Jean Selz Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe first English translation of a lost classic that reinvents the flaneur in Berlin.Franz Hessel (1880-1941), a German-born writer, grew up in Berlin, studied in Munich, and then lived in Paris, where he moved in artistic and literary circles. His relationship with the fashion journalist Helen Grund was the inspiration for Henri-Pierre Roche's novel Jules et Jim (made into a celebrated 1962 film by Francois Truffaut). In collaboration with Walter Benjamin, Hessel reinvented the Parisian figure of the flaneur. This 1929 book—here in its first English translation—offers Hessel's version of a flaneur in Berlin.In Walking in Berlin, Hessel captures the rhythm of Weimar-era Berlin, recording the seismic shifts in German culture. Nearly all of the essays take the form of a walk or outing, focusing on either a theme or part of the city, and many end at a theater, cinema, or club. Hessel deftly weaves the past with the present, walking through the ci

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