Description
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.
Trade 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 University
Table of ContentsEditors’ Foreword vii
Correspondence 1930–1940 1
Index 291
