Illuminations Benjamin, Walter

*Author: Benjamin, Walter *Publication Date: 1985/12/01 *Binding Type: Paperback *Language: English *Depth: 0.75 *Width: 5.25 *Height: 7.75

From the Publisher:
Studies on contemporary art and culture by one of the most original, critical and analytical minds of this century.Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history.

Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin's life in dark times. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times.

Annotation:
IILUMINATIONS includes Benjamin's most important literary essays on Kafka, Baudelaire, Proust, and Brecht, along with perhaps his most influential essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Hannah Arendt compiled this collection, subtitled "Essays and Reflections."

Author Bio

Walter Benjamin

The son of an art dealer, Walter Benjamin grew up in Berlin, in a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family. After school, where he was active in the student association and wrote for its magazine, he studied philosophy and literature at several German universities. Benjamin sought an academic career, but his doctoral thesis, "The Origin of German Tragic Drama" (pub. 1928), was rejected by the University of Frankfurt. Instead, he contributed to various newspapers, wrote essays, and translated Proust and other writers. In the 1920s, he visited Russia and came close to becoming a Communist. In 1933 he left Germany for Paris, a city whose culture and literature he loved. He took half of his treasured library with him, and continued to write. Following the fall of France to Germany, Benjamin went on to Spain, hoping to make it to the United States. When the police informed Benjamin and friends that they would be turned over to the Gestapo, Benjamin committed suicide. Walter Benjamin's reputation as a critic and thinker has grown since his death. His writings on a wide variety of topics--Marxist critiques of art and aesthetics, literary criticism of Baudelaire, Goethe, and others--draw from history, the Talmud, and society at large. His unique contribution to literature and the intellectual world has only become more pronounced due to the publication of multiple Benjamin biographies, his correspondence, and other commentary.

Praise

New Republic
"This is a book one doesn't know intimately without a good many rereadings...Benjamin's work is full of quotations from other writers, explicit testimony to his sense of the continuity of all literary and intellectual effort. But it is also his way of breaking up the present, disturbing its settled-upon ideas, making room in it for the past." - Richard Gilman 12/14/68

Product Attributes

Book Format:		Paperback
Number of Pages:		0288
Publisher:		Schocken Books Inc

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Illuminations (Paperback)

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