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Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

walter benjamin harry zohn hannah arendt leon wieseltier

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Studies on contemporary art and culture by one of the most original, critical and analytical minds of this century. Illuminations includes Benjamin's views on Kafka, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust (both of whom he translated), his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater.

Also included are his penetrating study on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," an illuminating discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his thesis on the philosophy of history. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and prefaces them with a substantial, admirably informed introduction that presents Benjamin's personality and intellectual development, as well as his work and his life in dark times. Reflections the companion volume to this book, is also available as a Schocken paperback.

Unpacking My Library, 1931
The Task of the Translator, 1913
The Storyteller, 1936
Franz Kafka, 1934
Some Reflections on Kafka, 1938
What Is Epic Theater?, 1939
On Some Motifs in Baudelaire, 1939
The Image of Proust, 1929
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936
Theses on the Philosophy of History, written 1940, pub. 1950

278 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1955

This edition

Format
278 pages, Paperback
Published
January 13, 1969 by Schocken Books
ISBN
9780805202410
ASIN
0805202412
Language
English

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About the author

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walter benjamin

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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.

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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 99 votes)
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99 reviews All reviews
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The_TEKnician
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I read this set of essays primarily for "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction". The lengthy introduction by Hannah Arendt is very good, though dense. The essays are mostly good, some are terrific, though Benjamin chases his tail a bit throughout each (particularly writing on Baudelaire). I'm not emotionally prepared to read 6 volumes of Proust to appreciate the the nuances of Benjamin's essay on remembrance, but the essay on Kafka is substantial and thought-provoking enough to warrant some supplement. The final essay, "Theses on the Philosophy of History" is a bit too Marxist and aphoristic for me, but you do you. I highly recommend reading WoAitAoMR in tandem with his "A Small History of Photography", which dives much deeper into the nitty-gritty of aura.
Overall, a damn fine set of essays.
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BiscoitoArabio
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Read as a continuation from Larry McMurtry at th Dairy Queen. Also started my 2021 summer drink — Lime Dr Pepper.
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Loveop
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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A must read for anyone interested in art and ideas and the confluence of the two.
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AnmolNegi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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De lo mejor que me ha pasado este curso, la prueba definitiva de que se puede ser marxista y agradable al mismo tiempo.
Por otro lado sobre la cuestión de la mística y el interés por la cábala, la verdad que sin palabras, es el verdadero "intensito". Lo adoro.
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plasthicbag
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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This book was heading towards five stars just as quickly as I could read it until I got to the last 2 essays, when Benjamin decides to get really political and Marxist and tries to convince the reader that the cut and paste nature of film reflects the industrialized blah blah blah blah. The first part, actually almost all this book is 5-star material, GREAT, simple, modest essays and thoughts on various aspects of art, books, etc. And I can't wait to read Reflections, but I don't know if I can stomach any more chapters about exploding states of historical crisis and all this god-awful Frankfurt school rhetoric. Walter Benjamin, along with alot of those German communists during that time, was a spoiled Jewish brat with a rich, capitalist father who sent him to school and gave him monthly stipends, freeing him from any kind of real work. What the hell would he know about the proletariat? He didn't even have the balls to actually even walk into that part of town. Politicizing art, what a dumb expression.
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sidewayssix
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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"Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli".
- verse 1286 of De litteris, De syllabis, De Metris by Terentianus Maurus; literally, "According to the capabilities of the reader, books have their destiny"

Difficult to rate when one finds oneself halfway either agreeing with or being bewildered by Walter Benjamin.

His 'Unpacking the Library' essay is, obviously, my favourite, it's pleasant to find oneself nodding along to the sentences, we see eye to eye, Walter and I, in terms of Books: Walter argues that buying an old book is rebirth, that a collector's desire is to renew an old, possibly forgotten world. To a book collector, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves. There is no sense of (vulgar) 'ownership', the books do not come alive in the collector, it is he who lives in them.

"And the non-reading of books owned, you will object, should be characteristic of collectors? This is news to me, you may say. It is not news at all. Experts will bear me out when I say that it is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, 'And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?' 'Not one-tenth of them. I don't suppose you use your Sevres china every day?' "

The Baudelaire essay taught me of Engels having an unpleasant aesthetic reaction to the crowds of London, as opposed to the French masters (Delvar), but where Engels is just a peasant boy from Barmen (yes, the very place where one of the first concentrations camps was opened in Germany), with daddy-money (that was coming from owning a large textile factory in Britain), who would always be bothered by crowds, for the Parisians moving in a crowd is a natural thing.

Some random, personal thoughts on reading 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction' essay:

Yes, even the most perfect reproduction of art is lacking one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.

But what a thing to ponder in our contemporary world. How many physical copies are there of Fiammetta ? How many duplicates of these? How many digital duplicates of these? Has Fiammetta  lost its soul? Or has it merely stretched itself out, giving a small piece of itself to every owner of every copy? And do I answer my own question simply by being conflicted whether to use the pronoun 'it' or 'she' in the last sentence?

We have two scholars of the Viennese school, Piergl and Wickehoff to thank for being the first to point out that human sense changes with humanity's entire mode of existence and that social transformations were moulded by these changes of perception (photography).

In this world of contemporary perception, a world in which the tradition of Art/Book ownership is rendered invalid by the Internet, how can one still debate the soul of Fiammetta , without sounding like one is off one's meds?

Mankind, which in Homer's time was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, now is one for itself.
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RIO_WARLOCK
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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I never realized the heights to which literary criticism could soar before I read Benjamin, and his work is worthy of Bolaño's assertion that literary criticism is another valid branch on the literary tree along with the novel, poetry, etc., etc. Comparing Benjamin with the mostly North American criticism I've read, the latter seems to shrink to the status of mere informative journalism, a literary mode Benjamin critiqued for its limits in time and space (the news almost always only addresses the near and now) as compared to the story, which embodies the experience of the teller and is embodied in the experience of the attentive listener. Benjamin is best read carefully to the point where one loses oneself, just like the listeners of the storytellers in his essay on Leskov listen intently in the rhythm of their work; as a result the story is absorbed in their experience, allowing them to remember it and pass it on. An altogether different experience than reading the news, and a traditional practice that has all but perished in our West. As someone somewhere already said, Benjamin’s sentences seem to slow to a near stillness in order to contemplate their object, and require the contemplation akin to that of the flâneur, another personage who captivated Benjamin’s interest.

Benjamin’s essays on Proust, Kafka, Baudelaire, translation, and other topics develop specific theses about their objects but also correspond through shared contemplations about experience, tradition and memory, which give us a window into Benjamin’s concerns & thought. Benjamin’s way of finding correspondences, between diverse material and historical aspects of an epoch and the production of its artists, between the substructure and superstructure, is done often metaphorically, and Hannah Arendt describes his way of thinking as poetic. Benjamin brings a poetic aspect to analysis rooted in marxist concerns, which is really fantastic to experience.

It’s not that I’ve read much, but I’ve never read anything so unique, and I’m looking forward to reading more Benjamin. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, do yourself a favor and pick up some Walter Benjamin. It is to be read extremely attentively, and even then much may pass you by. With regard to technique: pretend you don’t live in the dawn of the 21st century and try to slow down the passing of your time so much you can actually see. (Of course, Benjamin also has some interesting things to say about the masses, art, and distracted perception, but that’s if you make it to the end of the last essay).
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vorumzo
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Benjamin bu dünyadan gelmiş geçmiş en tatlı, en naif ruhlardan birisi. Rüya gibi onun yazılarını okumak. Gerçeküstü ve salt gerçeğin birbirinin içinde eridiği bir rüya.

Çeviri yaklaşımını inanılmaz feci buldum. Benjamin'in içinden bir Nietczhe çıkarmış adeta çervirmen. ''ırzına geçmek'' gibi tabirlerin kullanılmasının metnin dokusunu ve Benjamin'in üslubunu zedelediğini düşünüyorum.
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