Selected Writings, Volume 2, Part 1: 1927–1930

The Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin #2.1

by Walter Benjamin, Gary Smith (Editor), Michael W. Jennings (Editor)

In the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse and mounting political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic and public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of the Selected Writings is now available in paperback in two parts.

In Part 1, Benjamin is represented by two of his greatest literary essays, "Surrealism" and "On the Image of Proust," as well as by a long article on Goethe and a generous selection of his wide-ranging commentary for Weimar Germany's newspapers.

Part 2 contains, in addition to the important longer essays, "Franz Kafka," "Karl Kraus," and "The Author as Producer," the extended autobiographical meditation "A Berlin Chronicle," and extended discussions of the history of photography and the social situation of the French writer, previously untranslated shorter pieces on such subjects as language and memory, theological criticism and literary history, astrology and the newspaper, and on such influential figures as Paul Valery, Stefan George, Hitler, and Mickey Mouse.

Genres: Philosophy, Essays, Theory, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, German Literature

480 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2005

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 5 out of 5]

"A healthy reader mocks the reviewer's judgment. But what pleases that reader most deeply is the delicious bad taste of taking part uninvited when someone else reads."

One of the 20th century's more criminally overlooked writers (outside of the shrinking circle of people who read such things) and, in my estimation, part of a triad of Great Essayists (Lu Xun and George Orwell form the other sides of the triangle) that everyone should read and for feeling foolish that they haven't yet.
Benjamin's pieces in this volume, spanning the period before he fled Germany with the rise of the Nazis, run the gamut: book reviews, the literature of the insane, toys, the history of toys, walks through cities, closely monitored drug use, fairy tales, Goethe, Proust...and so on.
His singular wit and refusal to dampen down his thick language make B a delight to read.

[Ernie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was basically the only book I was reading (next to the Arcades Project and McKay's Banjo) during Summer 2005.

Benjamin's essays from 1929 represent a true turning point in his work: the beginning of his idiosyncratic engagement with Marxism. Benjamin reached some of his greatest theoretical insights at this time: "Return of the Flaneur" and "Crisis of the Novel" represent a perfect blending of the book review with the creation of new critical frameworks, the kind of "improvising, immanent criticism" that he was sketching out in notes to himself, like "Program for Literary Criticism."

The collection is rounded out by more famous essays: "Surrealism," "On the Image of Proust," "Goethe," etc. On the whole, a wonderful collection, and the critical and biographical apparatus accompanying the book is a marvel.

[Eric Byrd]

As good a company as any.

[Nathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Definitely lots of goodies in this volume. My boy Walter is hands down one of the most - if not the most - unique thinkers I have ever encountered. It's hard not to fall in love with his work. Reading Benjamin is a breath of fresh air.

[Beatrice McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

A vital book. For the essay 'Goethe's Elective Affinities' I will be eternally grateful.