Description

Book Synopsis
On 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.

On Goethe

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    A Hardback by Walter Benjamin

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      Book details

      Publisher Stanford University Press
      Published 1/29/2025
      ISBN-13 9781503630963
      978-1503630963
      ISBN-10 150363096X
      Also in:
      Books by Walter Benjamin

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      On 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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