Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913–1926

The Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin #1

by Walter Benjamin, Marcus Bullock (Editor), Michael W. Jennings (Editor)

Walter Benjamin was one of the most original and important critical voices of the twentieth century, but until now only a few of his writings have been available in English. Harvard University Press has now undertaken to publish a significant portion of his work in definitive translation, under the general editorship of Michael W. Jennings. This volume, the first of three, will at last give readers of English a true sense of the man and the many facets of his thought. (The magnum opus of Benjamin’s Paris years, The Arcades Project , has been published in a separate volume.) Walter Benjamin emerged from the head-on collision of an idealistic youth movement and the First World War, which Benjamin and his close friends thought immoral. He walked away from the wreck scarred yet determined “to be considered as the principal critic of German literature.” But the scene, as he found it, was dominated by “talented fakes,” so—to use his words—“only a terrorist campaign would I suffice” to effect radical change. This book offers the record of the first phase of that campaign, culminating with “One Way Street,” one of the most significant products of the German avant-garde of the Twenties. Against conformism, homogeneity, and gentrification of all life into a new world order, Benjamin made the word his sword. Volume I of the Selected Writings brings together essays long and short, academic treatises, reviews, fragments, and privately circulated pronouncements. Fully five-sixths of this material has never before been translated into English. The contents begin in 1913, when Benjamin, as an undergraduate in imperial Germany, was president of a radical youth group, and take us through 1926, when he had already begun, with his explorations of the world of mass culture, to emerge as a critical voice in Weimar Germany’s most influential journals. The volume includes a number of his most important works, including “Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin,” “Goethe’s Elective Affinities,” “The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism,” “The Task of the Translator,” and “One Way Street.” He is as compelling and insightful when musing on riddles or children’s books as he is when dealing with weightier issues such as the philosophy of language, symbolic logic, or epistemology. We meet Benjamin the youthful idealist, the sober moralist, the political theorist, the experimentalist, the translator, and, above all, the virtual king of criticism, with his magisterial exposition of the basic problems of aesthetics. Benjamin’s sentences provoke us to return to them again and again, luring us as though with the promise of some final revelation that is always being postponed. He is by turns fierce and tender, melancholy and ebullient; he is at once classically rooted, even archaic, in his explorations of the human psyche and the world of things, and strikingly progressive in his attitude toward society and what he likes to call the organs of the collective (its architectures, fashions, signboards). Throughout, he displays a far-sighted urgency, judging the present on the basis of possible futures. And he is gifted with a keen sense of humor. Mysterious though he may sometimes be (his Latvian love, Asia Lacis, once described him as a visitor from another planet), Benjamin remains perhaps the most consistently surprising and challenging of critical writers.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory, Nonfiction, Essays, Art, Germany, History

528 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. An eclectic thinker who combined elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism, Benjamin made influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. He was associated with the Frankfurt School and also maintained formative friendships with thinkers such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem. He was related to German political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt through her first marriage to Benjamin's cousin Günther Anders, though the friendship between Arendt and Benjamin outlasted her marriage to Anders. Both Arendt and Anders were students of Martin Heidegger, whom Benjamin considered a nemesis.
Among Benjamin's best known works are the essays "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1935) and "Theses on the Philosophy of History" (1940). His major work as a literary critic included essays on Charles Baudelaire, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Franz Kafka, Karl Kraus, Nikolai Leskov, Marcel Proust, Robert Walser, Trauerspiel and translation theory. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.
Of the hidden principle organizing Walter Benjamin's thought Scholem wrote unequivocally that "Benjamin was a philosopher", while his younger colleagues Arendt and Theodor W. Adorno contend that he was "not a philosopher". Scholem remarked "The peculiar aura of authority emanating from his work tended to incite contradiction". Benjamin himself considered his research to be theological, though he eschewed all recourse to traditionally metaphysical sources of transcendentally revealed authority.
In 1940, at the age of 48, Benjamin died by suicide at Portbou on the French Spanish border while attempting to escape the advance of the Third Reich. Though popular acclaim eluded him during his life, the decades following his death won his work posthumous renown.

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Being this a collection of Benjamin's earliest writings, these are of a lesser quality than what the later volumes in this series feature. In fact, many of the selections here are mere fragments and never published. The quality of these vary greatly, some read as mere note-taking or jottings, others are a little more fully fleshed out. In the full thrush of youth, the quality of the content is much more unforgivable than his more mature pieces. Still, there is much to love here. Capitalism replacing religion; fascinating studies on the nature of form in art; bewildering notions of time and one's apprehension of it; proto-angel of history bits.
Likely for the completist only.

[Jonfaith · Rating 4 out of 5]

What, in the end, makes advertisements superior to criticism? Not what the moving red neon says—but the fiery pool reflecting it in the asphalt.

It was a refreshing experience to finish Benjamin's One-Way Street on the same ill-fitting night that I finished Spring and All. The two works penned within five years of each other. Each soul staring into the postwar tumult of Art and History, not hoping for transcendence as such but a pragmatic foothold from which to continue their journey.

Much of this work went unpublished in Benjamin's lifetime. Much of that is academic and rather dry. I found the pieces below to be most illuminating.

The Metaphysics of Youth
Dostoevsky’s The Idiot
Angelus Novus, 1920–1926
The Task of the Translator
Calderón’s El Mayor Monstruo, Los Celos and Hebbel’s Herades and Mariamne
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

Glancing at the list now, I recognize that most of these were from the later years of the selected time frame. That obviously suggests a finding of form after Benjamin sought publication or at least an audience outside of the academy. There is a measure of frustration in the critic in these pages. He isn't proclaiming dogma but rather he appears incensed about his lack of recognition. It would indeed arrive, albeit posthumously.

[Tosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The early years of Walter Benjamn, or the roots of Walter. Either way it's great to have all his early work in one volume. I have the complete set of writings, and he's an author that I dip my toes into his world of knowledge as well as whatever thought runs across his head. He's a writer I greatly admire.

[Hu Sang · Rating 5 out of 5]

a great job of translation.

[Tom Romer · Rating 3 out of 5]

ELLIPTICAL AND DENSE

This volume contains selected writings by thinker and cultural critic Walter Benjamin for the period spanning the years 1913-1926.

Many of the entries consist in short fragments, interspersed by more lengthy pieces such as 'The Concept of Criticism' and 'Goethe's Elective Affinities'.

Before I continue, I must confess having a soft spot for WB.

I first read him, in French translation, at the tail end of my 12 year mandatory stint in the French schooling system which never encouraged ,and in fact discouraged independent and critical thought; rather the aim of those twelve years seems to have been to annihilate all traces of imagination and creativity and ensure life-long submission to phoney authority.

So it was with much fascination and glee that I read some of WB's earliest essays which opened up a whole world of passionate intellectual enquiry into the nature of reality, all for its own sake.

Nor did his output have anything to do with monetary or employment concerns, and indeed, taken too far, such concerns would have stifled WB's creative spirit and condemned him to obscurity, even post mortem.

These things being said, I cannot now, as a mature reader of thirty years, heartily recommend this volume.

While I still find WB's intellectual energy and penetrating analyses inspiring on principle, in practice WB's writing does not come off well in English translation, for his essays are at times impenetrable, elliptical, always dense, and all too often obscure in their argument.

There are lighter and darker patches of density and ellipsis in this volume, but I found my efforts at trying to penetrate the more arduous chunks of theoretical text slimly rewarded, for the contents when grasped are not all that revolutionary or illuminating.

Yes, WB offers new insights on certain terrains, such as fate, children's books, and the art of translation, but I do not find the thinking, when understood, all that enlightened.

WB lacks background knowledge of key areas such as the true content of natural law principles and the role of the occult traditions.

To be sure, he was writing in earlier times but then some texts age better than others.

WB is often said to be a good writer, and this may be true in the German original, but in English his texts are chunky, lacking fluidity and clarity.

Despite my best intentions of reading the book cover to cover, I gave up three quarters of the way through just because of the slog and the small pay-off for investing time and effort in attempting to understand what was being said.

While the world would undoubtedly be a poorer place without Walter Benjamin's literary and critical output, ultimately what inspires me the most about the character is his example as an always curious and diligent non-conformist thinker, rather than the actual contents of his musings.

Taking all these factors into consideration, the good and the bad, my score for this book is three stars.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can you imagine how things would be different if Benjamin had landed that university post instead of Heidegger? It's not just an academic question. Take a somber journey through subjunctive history.

[Mel]

Read "Critique of Violence" (1921) - p. 236-252.

[Will Schumer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Logging due to having recently finished some selections which I believe means I read the sum total in this collection. This is a scholar's collection. Everything is in here. Like any "collected works" (you see the same thing with Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Goethe) there are some underrated standouts and some fluff. The heavy hitters are certainly "Critique of Violence," "'Experience'," "The Metaphysics of Youth," "On Language as Such and on the Language of Man" (my favourite), "The Life of Students," "The Task of the Translator," and "Goethe's 'Elective Affinities'," the final one being a distinctively long text. Ultimately this first volume does an excellent job of collecting the more obscure texts from Benjamin's early days. While most will find them dry and overly academic, they are integral to understanding his development as a thinker. This is really a collection for Benjamin scholars. The most important essays from here are already in Illuminations and Reflections, but for those who want to dig deeper, there are some gems waiting to be found if you take the time to look.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although he wrote these essays when he was young, in his first thirteen years of writing, they belie his youth and ooze confidence while displaying a vast range of reading. His perspective on tragedy suggests studying both history and art in the quest to find significance in the terrible. The analysis of critique of German romanticism looks deeply into the inspiration behind the criticism as well as the ideas of intellectuals like Schelling and Fichte.

Benjamin consistently offers insights that continue to be relevant more than a century later, whether he is discussing the nature of translation or explaining how we use language. His reflections on the nature of being, along with the prerequisites for writing and the appropriate format for expressing ideas, most inspired me.

The writings by Walter Benjamin collected here offer opinions on a wide range of subjects, including language, translation, criticism, tragedy, and writing. Their superior writing and thoughtfulness are the only things they have in common. There is a message that emanates from a curious mind and permeates the pages of this anthology, regardless of how basic or flippant it may appear. His Arcades project is complemented by three volumes of essays, the first of which is this one. It is a good place to start exploring this writer who challenges you to think seriously about ideas.

[Damian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This gets 5 stars because of the brilliance of the essay "The Metaphysics of Youth" written in 1914 when Benjamin was 22 years old.

I wish I would have just bought this series outright instead of all the individual books.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

These early essays provide great insight into Benjamin's almost autobiographical essays. The origins of his thought and his personal reflections. Benjamin is one of the great essayists, and this collection shows his versatility and his effectiveness as a critic.

[Paul Moffett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Benjamin is a huge name in literary and philosophical history in the 20th century, and it's easy to see why. Brilliant.

[Mona Kareem]

I really love his writings about fiction although he is so repetitive in diagnosing Bourgeois literature and inaesthetically praising soviet realism

[Daniel Duarte]

i m reaing a specific article about the art in the age of reproductibility for a subject at university, which name is commnicationd and aesthetics.

[Bowdoin]

Reader in group - "Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious."

"There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism."

Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History"