Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 by Walter Benjamin (PDF)

Description

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, Valéry 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.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Amazon.com Review A leading German critic from the generation of Europeans scarred by the First World War, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) had a writing career marked by deep philosophical insights and tumultuous emotional crises. But until recently, most of his work was unavailable in English; the handful of essays that could be read in English, like “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” were undisputed classics, but the full spectrum of Benjamin’s thought remained untapped. That has changed with Harvard University’s publication of the multivolume Selected Writings. This second volume covers Benjamin’s work from 1927 to 1934, the period in which he established himself as a leading public intellectual, and encompasses a wide variety of literary forms addressing an even wider variety of subject matter. From interviews with André Gide to film reviews of work by Chaplin and Eisenstein, from the autobiographical recollections of “A Berlin Chronicle” to his reflections on the cultural nostalgia for children’s literature and toys, Benjamin wrote with perception and unflagging inquisitiveness. The editors have provided a chronological essay, which helps place the assembled writings in the context of Benjamin’s life; the collection considered as a whole will undoubtedly be of vital importance to any scholar of modern European philosophy. From Library Journal Benjamin (1892-1940) was the last German Jewish intellectual. His great critical work encompasses three metaphysical themes: how things and people move from strangeness to become part of oneself; how the self endlessly changes; and how eternal solitude characterizes that self. This second volume of his selected writings (Vol. 1, LJ 2/15/97) covers all aspects of the time, with the great figures of European thought in the background. Surrealism, Russian films, Chaplin, Keller, Kafka, Gide, Proust, hashish, children’s toys and literature, Hoffmansthal, travel, Goethe, Berlin life, radio talks, Stefan GeorgeAit is all here and all living. The notes are clear, and the chronology is an extended essay on Benjamin’s life during these years and his profound relationships with Brecht and Scholem. Redemption was an important word in Benjamin’s work, and his redemption is present in these critical essays and fragments. This volume cannot be praised too highly. Essential for academic and large public libraries.AGene Shaw, NYPL Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist The period covered by the second volume in this invaluable collection of selected works by Benjamin, a groundbreaking critic and thinker, found him growing into the promise of his earliest writings. In 1927 Benjamin, a German and a Jew, traveled to Moscow and subsequently wrote about Russian literature and film. Upon his return home, he continued to expand his sphere of interest, writing about the work of AndreGide, Goethe, Proust, Brecht, and Kafka, as well as photography, Charlie Chaplin, children’s books, toys, the publishing industry, surrealism, music, hashish, pornography, radio, Mickey Mouse, and the act of writing itself. The great range of his interests inspired Benjamin to compose essays, travel writing, and the concise and philosophical form he made his own and called “thought figure.” Politics and the increasingly disturbing news of the day inevitably surfaced in his highly creative cultural and intellectual inquiries, and Benjamin confided his personal intimations of catastrophe to the pages of his diaries, excerpts of which are published here for the first time. Two more volumes are planned. Donna Seaman Review For those who know only the small selection of essays and longer texts previously translated into English, this book may be a revelation. Selected Writings: Volume 2, spanning the period from his abandonment of academia and his emergence as an important literary journalist in 1927 to his near silencing after the Nazis seized power and his exile in 1934, shows the writer at his sparkling best…All his published work of this time is included here, from a few longer essays on themes as varied as the history of photography and Kafka to three-page pieces on recent French fiction, art history, ‘the crisis of the novel,’ food and the effects of hashish. The new book also includes a generous selection of Benjamin’s notes, diary entries and drafts. Interesting in themselves, and indispensable to anyone seeking insight into Benjamin’s thinking, they also offer a view of the writer at work, developing different aspects of a thought or recycling successful paragraphs from one assignment to another. –Paul Mattick (New York Times Book Review)Volume 2 of the Harvard edition, a welcome project that I cannot praise enough, is filled with astonishingly ‘annihilating trivia,’ as astonishing, I dare say, as Benjamin’s half-dozen fully realized monographs. Thanks to it, his luminosity, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of his premature death, is happily in focus. –Ilan Stavans (Forward)The period from 1927 to 1934 spanned in this volume was for Walter Benjamin both grievous and fertile…The range of topics and perspectives is immense. It extends from considerations on kitsch and pornography to repeated encounters, personal or indirect, with Gide, Kierkegaard and surrealism. The cultural history of toys fascinates Benjamin as he records his own Berlin childhood. Insights into ‘Left-Wing Melancholy’ alternate with thoughts on Mickey Mouse, on Chaplin, and on graphology, which Benjamin practised to eke out his earnings. –George Steiner (The Observer)No matter how seemingly idiosyncratic the topic, Benjamin drills deep until, almost invariably, he excavates prose that sparkles with a high specific density: hard aphoristically gem-like, and often brilliant…Benjamin’s Selected Writings, Volume 2, should, I think, bowl over and beguile any who, caring about the life of the mind, have not yet succumbed to the bearish charms of this gloomy observer of his besotted times. Wherever he turned his incisive gaze the clarity of morning’s first light shines forth. –Haim Chertok (Jerusalem Post)While the Harvard series [of Walter Benjamin’s writings includes] Benjamin’s epochal contributions to Marxist theory and literary criticism, they also do English-language readers a great service by emphasizing his more accessible writings: fanciful personal essays, journalistic articles and book reviews. These pieces are, at times, giddily delightful; at other moments, they offer lightening-quick, piercing insights. Particularly surprising are the writings on food, such as an account of buying a bunch of figs from an open-air market and consuming them all in a frenzy. Benjamin concludes that one only understands the essence of a given food when one continues to eat it past the point of disgust. (Publishers Weekly)This second volume of [Walter Benjamin’s] selected writings covers all aspects of the time, with the great figures of European thought in the background. Surrealism, Russian films, Chaplin, Keller, Kafka, Gide, Proust, hashish, children’s toys and literature, Hoffmansthal, travel, Goethe, Berlin life, radio talks, Stefan George–it is all here and all living…This volume cannot be praised too highly. –Gene Shaw (Library Journal)Benjamin’s writings deserve a spot in every library. This volume especially speaks of extraordinary resilience, given the diminishing prospects of an author forced to sell parts of his library to survive. –Andrew C. Wisely (LUCE)Whatever your expectations, here is a book that will meet them, surpass them, frustrate them, and probably transform their very nature altogether…This is a book to be mined, which offers the English-reading scholar a rich resource of mineral wealth. It contains previously translated precious gems such as the “Surrealism” essay which illuminates Benjamin’s own “poetic politics”…There are also wide, rich seams of sound and solid philosophical and critical coal that will keep the post-Kantian boilers stoked for the foreseeable future. –Ewan Porter (Philosophy in Review) About the Author Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis.Michael W. Jennings is Professor of German, Princeton University. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐

⭐

Keywords

Free Download Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 in PDF format
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 PDF Free Download
Download Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 1999 PDF Free
Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 1999 PDF Free Download
Download Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934 PDF
Free Download Ebook Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: 1927-1934