Product Description

The literary-philosophical works of Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) rank among the most quietly influential of the post-war era, though only since his death had Benjamin achieved the fame and critical currency outside his native Germany accorded him by a select few during his lifetime. Now he is widely held to have possessed one of the most acute and original minds of the Central European culture decimated by the Nazis. Illuminations contains his two most celebrated essays, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' and 'Theses on the Philosophy of History', as well as others on the art of translation, Kafka, storytelling, Baudelaire, Brecht's epic theatre, Proust and an anatomy of his own obsession, book collecting. The essay is Benjamin's domain; those collected in this now legendary volume offer the best possible access to his singular and significant achievement. In a stimulating introduction, Hannah Arendt reveals how Benjamin's life and work are a prism to his times, and identifies him as possessing the rare ability to think poetically.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #22244 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-07
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

From the Publisher
A now legendary collection of seminal essays by one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.

About the Author
Walter Benjamin was born in Berlin in July 1832 into a prosperous Jewish family. As a student, he came under the influence of Messianic and cabbalistic ideas, and produced a brilliant, esoteric thesis on German baroque drama, which contrived to fail to win him academic tenure. Thereafter, he made a precarious living as a literary journalist, and, under the influence of Ernst Bloch and Georg Lukács. Turned towards Marxism; in the late 1920s, he befriended, and championed, Bertolt Brecht. Driven from Germany in 1933 by the political triumph of the Nazis, he went to Paris, where he immersed himself in Surrealism and the study of Baudelaire. When the Wehrmacht rolled into Paris too, in 1940, he fled for the Spanish border, only to doe by his own hand in a tragic-comic fashion at the age of forty-eight.
His literature legacy is greater in stature than in size: he published only two full-scale books in his lifetime, one thesis The Origin of German tragic Drama, the other The Concept of Art Criticism in German Romanticism. Three other books since made available are Charles Baudelaire: A Lyric Poet in the Era of High Capitalism, Moscow Diary and Understanding Brecht. Besides these, he was the author of two books of collected reflections, One-Way Street and A Berlin Childhood Around 1900, and numerous literary and critical essays and commentaries, the finest among them collected in the present volume.

Customer Reviews

One of the great, unclassifiable writers of the century
Walter Benjamin is easily one of the great German prose writers of our century, despite being almost impossible to classify. His subject matter is frequently literary, but he always transcends his subject matter to touch upon issues in philosophy, art, history, Marxism, and Western culture, illuminating (no pun intended) all he discusses. His essays on Proust and Kafka are priceless, and his essays on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and the theses on the philsophy of history, are classic.

But the best reason to read Benjamin is his prose. There are images in his essays on Proust and Kafka that are as superb as anything in Proust and Kafka. That is saying a lot, but it is true. As a philosopher, I value his example which proves that one can write meaningfully on philosophical topics, and yet write well. This collection of his essays, ILLUMINATIONS, is preferable to the second collection to appear in English, REFLECTIONS, though that one is also worth the time and effort.

Dense, dated, and stodgily translated
With his love of flâneurs, his intense introspection, his ambiguous relationship with technology and mass society, and his championing of Kafka and Proust, Walter Benjamin ought to be remembered as one of the great minds of the inter-war years. That he is, in fact, barely remembered at all becomes less of a mystery upon reading this collecton of essays.

Whereas other polymaths might delight us with their intelligence and cosmopolitanism, Benjamin's precise texts seem to contain ideas without revealing anything about the man behind them. A peculiar combination of aesthete and literary revolutionary, stylist and solipsist, many of the ideas in Benjamin's prose are perceived rather than explained: the result is statements that can seem flimsily argued and sound rather certain of themselves. History has, alas, not been kind to most of them.

Benjamin's dry, rather abstract modernism is a challenge in its own right. But Harry Zorn's translation does him no favors, complicating his twisting prose with bizarre literalisms and convoluted syntax. The result feels flat and academic and exhausting to read.

The best collected Benjamin's essays in one volume.
Walter Benjamin, melancholically described as a Jewish-German philosopher, who anticipated the fate of the modern society, is often regarded as an obscure writer. But this book depicts the map of his thinking very clearly, so that I can understand well the original mind of Benjamin. I was very interested in Benjamin's commentary on Kafka. He described Kafka as the figure in 'the purity and beauty of a failure.' The intimacy between Benjamin and Kafka also frequently quoted as the example saying Benjamin's disposition of mysticism. However, it is not easy to accept that Jewish mysticism influences his account of Kafka more than his own interests in allegory. Although his commentary of Kafka seems to be obscure, his attention to Kafka can be caused not so much by mystical affection but rather by Kafka¡¯s allegorical aspects. The letter to Gerhard Scholem, 'Some Reflections on Kafka', clearly shows what Benjamin originally intends to point out in Kafka¡¯s works: the work of art in which only the products of wisdom¡¯s decay remain. It would do justice to Benjamin that we think his commentary of Kafka to be derived from his interests of allegory. For in allegory, as Benjamin says, truth is just to be a rumor. In this respect, Benjamin¡¯s commentary on Kafka would give a clue by which his project could be unveiled in terms of dialectical thinking. I'd like to recommend this book for whom wants to know one of the most unique cultural and Marxist theorist in 20th century.