Sonnets: By Walter Benjamin

by Walter Benjamin, Carl Skoggard (Translator)

Walter Benjamin's sonnets, written to mourn his friend Fritz Heinle, constitute an important though little-known part of the philosopher's literary achievement and a unique contribution to the history of the German sonnet. Benjamin would add to their number over a decade, having begun his project soon after the outbreak of World War I and the suicide of his friend. They were among the writings that Benjamin, forced to flee France, entrusted to Georges Bataille in 1940 for safekeeping. Here, for the first time, readers of English are offered translations of all 73 "Heinle sonnets" along with the original German text and an extensive commentary. The Introductory Essay examines the poems' biographical context as well as Benjamin's bold approach to sonnet writing. These poems weave the deeply personal together with Benjamin's evolving religious and philosophical perspective--shedding new light on the emergence of the man and the thinker.

Genres: Poetry

394 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

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

[vinnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

you know it’s good when the translator’s notes amount to “this is impossible to translate, and i am fully aware he would’ve hated me for trying”

[17CECO · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems are bad. Painfully sincere, swerving between overwrought and just barely not overwrought. & Skoggard makes no attempt to modernize Benjamin's backward looking diction ("And do I love--so didst thou ask--my friend?") (which is kind of great move). The only reason they got translated is because they're by Benjamin. Yet sometimes bad verse sticks & becomes a guilty pleasure. Have this in the first place b/c it was put in my hands at a reaidny. This was a few weeks after the election. Read the first poems in a Dunkin Donuts : "Into his hands I wished to pour my hours / Like unto flower buds which should about him bloom / And with the evergreen of silence did I think / To shade his brow to round his songs." So maybe I'm giving 5 stars not to Benjamin's pastoral impressionism but the weird dissociation of that moment, how it started me on a line of thinking about the relationship between the precious and this fascist moment. But, also, pulled out of the poems, some phrases still stick w/me: "friendship like an amaranth."

[Jack Bussert · Rating 4 out of 5]

As someone obsessed with Walter Benjamin and poetry, this book is invaluable. Though perhaps too opaque for a casual reader, this is well worth a read for anyone looking for something to chew on.

[Leah · Rating 3 out of 5]

ow.

[Randolph Pitts · Rating 5 out of 5]

No one would question that Walter Benjamin was one of the most important intellectuals of the last century. Early works such as "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" have strongly influenced subsequent thought both in the specific field of aesthetics butin all areas of philosophy, extending into discussions of mass media such as were also undertaken by his friend and correspondent Theodor W. Adorno.

Here we find another Benjamin, struggling with the issues of youth, identity, love and sadness. These were poems written following the early suicide of his friend Christoph Friedrich Heinle, and it has been fascinating for me to compare Benjamin's sonnets with the few remaining writings of his friend (available only in German save for my translations). As a poet one might argue that Heinle would have become the greater poetic genius, had both he and Benjamin, who also killed himself, survived and grown to full maturity as poets. However what both left us is remarkable and tragically satisfying. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Walter Benjamin's thought (and everyone should be) and/or in German poetry of his era, by which Benjamin, to my way of thinking, was not strongly influenced. There is no expressionism here. Only fine structure, and finer emotion expressed in a highly original way.