Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927–1934

The Selected Writings of Walter Benjamin #2

by Walter Benjamin, Michael W. Jennings (Series Editor)

In the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse and mourning political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic and public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of Selected Writings, covering the years 1927 to 1934, displays the full spectrum of Benjamin's achievements at this pivotal stage in his career.

Previously concerned chiefly with literary theory, Benjamin during these Years does pioneering work in new areas, from the stud of popular Culture (a discipline he virtually created) to theories of the media and the visual arts. His writings on the theory of modernity-most of them new to readers of English--develop ideas as important to an understanding of the twentieth century as an contained in his widely anthologiied essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility.

This volume brings together previously untranslated writings on major figures such as Brecht, Valery and Gide, and on subjects ranging from film, radio, and the novel to memory, kitsch, and the theory of language. We find the manifoldly inquisitive Benjamin musing on the new modes of perception opened tip by techniques of photographic enlargement and cinematic montage, on the life and work of & Goethe at Weimar, on the fascination of old toys and the mysteries of food, and on the allegorical significance of Mickey Mouse.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

880 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

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

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Walter Benjamin’s Collected Essays offers the reader a glimpse into the cultural and political landscape of post-Great War Europe. From personal reflections on hash, the artistry of Bertolt Brecht and holidays in Spain, to essays on Marxist dialectics, the political situation in Russia and Germany, and role of art and the artist in 20th Century capitalist society, Benjamin’s restless mind and powerful insights are on full display. The essays are a pleasure to read of themselves, and spending time randomly selecting essays opens a world that will immediately remind one of the other great writers of “the lost generation.” Indeed, one could imagine Benjamin as easily writing reflections on Dos Passos, Steinbeck or Hemingway as he does with Brecht, Lukacs and Chaplin. Indeed, Benjamin's genius is on full display in this book, as he writes on a wide array of diverse topics from Proust to Surrealism to Mickey Mouse and what film and Photography mean for art. But there is more to this exceptional book as well. The editors include working drafts, unpublished reflections, ideas for essays, so that the reader not only enjoys the workings of the finished product, but we also get to read Benjamin’s process for writing. A wonderful book, that aptly showcases the works of one of the great minds of the twentieth century.