Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings

by Walter Benjamin

Overview

“This book is just that: reflections of a highly polished mind that uncannily approximate the century’s fragments of shattered traditions.” — Time
 
A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin’s writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin.
            Benjamin moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most versatile writers of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781328470225
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/15/2019
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	791,895
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.04(d)

About the Author

WALTER BENJAMIN (1892–1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and was also greatly inspired by the Marxism of Bertolt Brecht and Jewish mysticism as presented by Gershom Scholem.

Table of Contents

Introduction

ONE

A Berlin Chronicle
One-Way Street (selection)

TWO

Moscow
Marseilles
Hashish in Marseilles
Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century
Naples

THREE

Surrealism
Brecht’s Threepenny Novel
Conversations with Brecht
The Author as Producer
Karl Kraus

FOUR

Critique of Violence
The Destructive Character
Fate and Character
Theologico-Political Fragment
On Language as Such and on the Language of Man
On the Mimetic Faculty

Editor’s Note
Useful Further Readings
Index

Editorial Reviews

An extraordinary collection of writings of a major modern thinker and cultural critic, this is a companion volume to Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, recounts Berlin in the '20s, recalls conversations with Brecht, provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. PW called this ``haunting, brilliant, modern.'' (April)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"There has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time."
—George Steiner

"Benjamin is a legitimate ancestor of much that for the moment is most alive in criticism."
—The Nation

"This book is just that: reflections of a highly polished mind that uncannily approximate the century's fragments of shattered traditions." - Time

From the Publisher