(3.5 stars.) I've been hearing hyperbolic praise for this guy for many years, so I decided to finally work through the main essay collection -- surprised by how much he reminds me of New Yorker staff writers (the bibliophile essay could literally have been written by Adam Gopnik) but maybe that's more an explanation of the New Yorker style.

Benjamin is definitely not bad -- e.g., the Proust essay is solid -- but I'm not seeing anything that is head-and-shoulders above other European literary critics in the 1920s-1940s (TSE, Pound, and Wilson are somewhat better).

introduced and edited by Hannah Arendt? I'll take that any time.. on top of the fabulous Benjamin himself..

I just LOVED this.

I love this SO MUCH!

SO!

SO!

MUCH.

I LIVE.

IT GIVES.

WE LOVE

I've read a significant chuck of this before, in classes and on my own, and quite a few of these essays are total classics. Benjamin's intelligence is quite unusual, and he can work around ideas in ways that normal folks (and for that matter, normal intellectuals) would just approach head on. Instead of writing about Proust's novels or Baudelaire's poems, he dances with them. It's a style I've only seen in Susan Sontag, and it's a style that she largely inherited from him.

there is something lovely in questioning the seeming futility of a proustian gesture. it wad recalled that Proust wrote a letter to a person he just visited: "My dear Madam, I just noticed that I forgot my cane at your house yesterday; please be good enough to give it to the bearer of this letter. P.S. Kindly pardon me for disturbing you; I just found my cane."

why not just leave the letter unsent? the gesture is funny as it is clever, because it slams the commonsensical, only with the cost of some paper. Does receiving a letter warm the heart?

about kafka, benjamin seemed to be speaking of himself as well, "once he was certain of eventual failures, everything worked out for him en route as in a dream." in these writings, benjamin appears ambivalently lonelier than the typical intellectual poring over dusty manuscripts and coughing in libraries and also a bit luckier than them. he writes like baudelaire turned academic or adorno, his frenemy, turned a bit more literary and lively. somewhere he described the stroyteller as "the man who would let the wick of his life be consumed by the gentle flame of his story." Benjamin's candles are dancing forgotten; no one recalled to blow it off; thank goodness, we are blessed.


https://nordis.net/2021/04/11/article...

As per Walter, History has an angel/agent witnessing the destructive power of “progress,” building dams and trains and nuclear weapons and faster cars and slower Internet service as more people get hungrier and angrier and more terrified and more insecure. “A pile of debris” in both a physical and a symbolic sense. As per Ta Luch, it is History itself that is “turning into a pile of debris;” there’s no angel to do the witnessing of the paninira, ng panggugunting, ng pangwawasak.

Some of these essays are very good, some rely too much on unfounded generalizations. In my opinion, "Translator" and "Bookshelf" were the worst and "Kafka" was the best. Benjamin shines in finding clever images to convey his points, but the concomitant expository passages can be tedious. The best image comes from his essay on Proust, where he compares Proust's bed (upon which he wrote In Search of Lost Time) to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. On an unrelated note, sometimes it felt like what was being said could only really resonate with Europeans - Benjamin is very much a fruit of the Old World.

Hannah Arendt's 50-page introduction is very well written, interesting, and helpful in understanding Benjamin.

56
در زبان ناب آغازین "نام تنها جنبه ناب وجودی هر چیز را نشان میداد" ... ژولیت شکسپیر از خود می پرسید: "چه چیز در یک نام پنهان است؟" و می اندیشید که نام گل سرخ هر چه باشد تفاوتی در حضور آن نمیدهد و نام رومئو هر چه باشد تفاوتی در واقعیت هستی او نمیدهد: "پس رها کن نامت را، رومئو". بنیامین نیز می گوید: "در بهشت هنوز نیازی به مبارزه با معانی نشانه گونه واژه ها نبود. منظورم معانی موجد ارتباط است". تنها با رهایی از مفاهیم اخلاقی و ارزشی که با هر نام هستند، می توان راه را به سوی "شناخت ناب" گشود

37
تناقضی که نوگرایی با روح آفریننده آدمی دارد بیرون توان تحمل آدمی است. می توان فهمید که چگونه انسان خسته و از پا افتاده به سوی مرگ رانده می شود. نوگرایی را باید با نشان خودکشی شناخت. نشانی بر کنشی قهرمانی

36
درحالیکه در دهه 1930، بنیامین، بلوخ و اندیشمندان مکتب فرانکفورت "تاریخ و آگاهی طبقاتی" را ستایش می کردند، خود لوکاچ زیر فشار رژیم پلیسی شوروی و رهبران کمینترن عقایدی که در این کتاب ابراز کرده بود را مردود میشمرد و در انتقاد از خود می نوشت که "روحیه و مباحث ایدئالیستی کتاب را باید انحرافی دانست"

This book is a valuable collection of essays and reflections by the German literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin. The collection is enhanced by the excellent introduction provided by Hannah Arendt. Of the ten essays in the collection by far the most famous is The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. In this essay Benjamin discusses the impact of mechanical reproduction through photography and film on the nature of works of art, even so far as to shape the design of new works. From comments on the "authenticity" of a work of art to the nature of the "masses" views of art this essay encompasses a wide range of ideas. My favorite essay of the collection, however, is Unpacking My Library - a personal excursion into the life of a book collector and how each book intersects with one's life and effects the direction of that life. With other essays on Kafka, Proust and Baudelaire this collection is one of my favorites - one to which I return from time to time.

The essays collected here are all good to excellent. However, Harry Zohn's translations are appalling! The piece on translation is garbled into nonsense, basically, and the less said about the rendering into English of the artwork essay the better. Best to stick to the edition put out by Harvard University Press fairly recently.

"No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener."

Benjamin's writing is elegant, disinterested, and devoid of resentment. For a man with a life such as his, that's a wonder. These essays together make a superb and thoughtful read, particularly for folks interested in historical materialism, kafka, proust, baudelaire, books, art, and translation. Arendt's intro essay is a great addition too.

Hmm, this book was a very interesting read, but difficult to rate. I skipped several of his essays on Proust, and others whose works I have not yet read. I liked his conversational almost 'dear diary' style of writing these comments, but I was very surprised by his messianic leanings at the very end. I also felt very glad that I had read about his life prior to reading these commentaries, or essays, as it puts much of his thinking into context. A rather sad context, as he highlights the fact that we human beings really could Do Better.