Sooooo beautiful…..skipped the essay on Leskov bc I’ve never heard of him lol. But I really liked his analyses of Baudelaire and Proust’s works, have heard work of art in the age lectured to me like a billion times by literature profs, and wow unpacking my library is really great. “How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!” Bought this at a used bookstore in Paris hehe

This is a hard one to score, as on the one hand this guy was obviously a genius of a thinker and had a mind that made me look like a retarded cow in comparison whilst reading him, but on the other hand I'm not somebody, politically speaking, that can big up Marxism. The pieces on Brecht, Proust, and Kafka were the highlights for me.

Exploring my Water Benjamin era. I didn't really understand the hype around Benjamin, but he appeared to be a melancholic figure, someone who glimpsed at the world from a very unique perspective, a lonely sight. And some of his essays I didn't care for too much, although they are probably of great interest if you're into German literature. But when Benjamin writes something good, it's supreme. These small fragments that pop out of nowhere, sometimes standing out like a sore thumb, they are just fantastic. The final fragment in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, where Benjamin skips from a study of film and the apparatus to, suddenly, Fascism as the aestheticisation of politics and Communism as the politicisation of aesthetics/art. He is taken over by brilliance and ends the essay on an explosive note. Similarly with the Angel of History, just great, powerful writing that retroactively changes how the rest of the essay is read.

The strongest essays are definitely his rethinking of translation hierarchies in "Task of The Translator"; his writings on crowds in "On Some Motifs In Baudelaire" (and his comparison with workers in a factory, brilliant); of course, the great inspiration for John Berger's *Ways of Seeing*: "The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction", *especially* the final fragment on Fascism; and finally, "Theses on The Philosophy of History" and its iconic imagery of the angel of history.

Illuminations, originally published in 1955, is a collection of Walter Benjamin’s essays and other writings compiled by Hannah Arendt. Arendt also introduces the collection. She presents Benjamin as hard to classify: everything he wrote “always turned out to be sui generis” (3). Benjamin “thought of himself as a literary critic” (4), but he was also a “flaneur” (12); a collector of fragments, quotations, and books (8). Arendt depicts Benjamin as stuck in the twentieth century with nineteenth century sensibilities, a poetic critic who sympathized deeply with Kafka as he searched for what Goethe termed an “Urphanomen, an archetypal phenomenon, a concrete thing to be discovered in the world of appearances” (12). Of Benjamin’s own essays, “The Task of the Translator” has perhaps the most obvious relevance for rhetoricians. He claims “[t]ranslation is a mode” and that “translatability must be an essential feature of certain works” (70, 71). The translator’s task “consists in finding that intended effect [Intention] upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of the original” (76), balancing “fidelity and license” in order to “turn the symbolizing into the symbolized” (80). Two essays on Kafka focus on the theme of hope and argue that, in Kakfa, “It is for … the unfinished and the bunglers, that there is hope” (117). Benjamin glosses this group as Kafka’s “assistants,” and notes they are often students (139). Also included is his well-known “Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” which examines the distracted, habit-forming, and tactile modes characteristic of collective audiences’ engagement with such mechanically reproduced artforms as film. The collection concludes with his “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in which Benjamin argues that historical materialists, unlike traditional historicists, turn to the past as a form of remembrance--an idiosyncratic remembrance that interrupts universalized narratives complicit with history’s victors--in order not to be seduced by the promise of the future and “progress.” Such histories and historians preserve a sense of urgency by refusing to forget past injustices.

Nepabeidzu. Audible šodien audiogrāmatu izņēma no aprites. Šī grāmata jālasa, nevis jāklausās, un tā nav piemērota lajiem. Daudz ko nesapratu. Slavenākā eseja - "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" - ir arī vispieejamākā. To iesaku.

This is how an intellectual must be! Just like Walter Benjamin. With the kind of responsibility he wrote and thought really influences me a lot. In this book,there are ten collected essays. He wrote on so many topics,even on an unusual one like Unpacking my library. In that particular essay, he talked about his passion on books and collecting books. And here he gave some memorable reflections on the relation between books and their readers.

“Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.”

Besides,he wrote an essay on translation as well(which influenced postmodern philosopher Derrida a lot). And he gave some unique insights on it. He says,“Translatability is an essential quality of certain works, which is not to say that it is essential that they be translated; it means rather that a specific significance inherent in the original manifests itself in its translatability. It is plausible that no translation, however good it may be, can have any significance as regards the original. Yet, by virtue of its translatability the original is closely connected with the translation; in fact, this connection is all the closer since it is no longer of importance to the original. We may call this connection a natural one, or, more specifically, a vital connection.”

So for him translation isn’t a weakening process of the original at all. On the contrary, the original text,if it is powerful, by its very existence have that quality to be translatable. So when i am translating any text,it doesn’t have to be literal at all,the translator is also a creative writer in his own right.

Then he had an essay called The storyteller, which i loved so much. Here we realise how the evolution reading and writing culture effects us in our own era. And how the role of a storyteller and a novel writer are quite different. Besides, he wrote two essays entirely on Kafka. And we could see he loved Kafka wholeheartedly just like us.

And wouldn’t you want to read Benjamin's view on Baudelaire and Proust? Yes,he deeply analysed their works as well.
One essay which i loved the most was The work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction. It was just MARVELLOUS how he could see through the modern time and also could see into his near future. It felt as if he was talking about this twenty First century era. I would even say this essay is more relevant now than his own time. We can see the consumption of art in so many public platforms in front of our own eyes. And what is role of art if it is being consummated by so many people, just for the reason that they could be distracted from their frustrated life. And isn’t the very meaning of the word “art” changing in our time? Just imagine those higher spectacle films coming out almost every week.

All in all, Walter Benjamin is a thinker we miss so much nowadays. At least we can learn by what he left behind him.

These essays are chiefly memorable for:

1) The one about the dwarf that lives under the chessboard.
2) The one about how he has too many books but they are all his children.
3) The one where Kafka has a headache, but everyone keeps asking him for favors.
4) The one where Proust eats a cookie.
5) The one in which they lose the aura.
6) The one where the gang all wear translations as baggy coats.
7) The one where Baudelaire gets lost in a crowd.
8) The one with the Hannah Arendt encomium to Walter Benjamin.
9) The one where he cites Lukacs on the novel.

These are all "voluntary memories" though. Please eat a cookie to access the involuntary ones.

-Onlar dosttular: Birbirlerine kendi gibileri arasında olduğundan daha fazla inanma özlemi ya da inandırma sevgisi vardı; her hesap ve her yüzeysel saygıdan uzak konuşurlar, iyiliklerini katıksızca istemeleri dışında da birbirlerinden bir şey beklemezlerdi.

-Meslek ideolojisi üniversite öğrencisinin vicdanını nasıl zincirle bağlıyorsa, aile fikri de Eros üzerinden varılan karanlık bir uzlaşma olarak aynen o umursamazlıkla öğrencinin üstüne çöküyor.

-Üniversite hocasının, hem icraatçı hem filozof hem hoca olması gerekir ki bunlar onun belirleyici özünde yatar.

-Dürüstlük, alçakgönüllülük, sevgi ve merhamet, ahlâkın neredeyse resmen onaylanmış istemleridir; bunlar arasındaki bağlantı yolu nezaket, nezaketin ise canalıcı noktası sabırdır.
Sabır, tüm erdemlerin içinden hiç bozmadan seçip alınan belki de tek erdemdir.

-İyi yazar düşündüğünden fazlasını söylemez. Kötü yazarın ise aklına o kadar çok şey gelir ki kötü ve eğitimsiz bir koşucunun gevşek ve coşkun hareketlerle kendini yorup helak etmesi gibi harcar ömrünü bunlarla. O yüzden de düşündüğü şeyi söyleyemez soğukkanlılıkla.

-Her bilgide bir damlacık terslik olmalı; bu onun sahcilik işaretidir.

-Tatilden her seferinde vatansız biri gibi dönüyordum.

Iluminaciones, Walter Benjamin
Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: سال 1988 میلادی
عنوان: نشانه ای به رهایی: مقاله های برگزیده؛ نویسنده: والتر بنیامین؛ مترجم: بابک، احمدی، تهران، تندر، 1366؛ در 292 ص؛ موضوع: مقالات نویسندگان - سده 20 م
گزیده‌ ای از مقالات «بنیامین» با عنوان: نشانه‌ ای به رهایی، در سال 1366 هجری خورشیدی با ترجمه جناب «بابک احمدی» توسط نشر تندر منتشر شده‌ است. فهرست: مقدمه ای طولانی از مترجم؛ مقاله تصویر پروست؛ درباره ابله داستایوسکی؛ فرانتس کافکا؛ سوررآلیسم واپسین عکس فوری از اندیشه گران اروپایی؛ حکایت گر: اندیشه هایی در باره نیکلای لسکوف؛ اثر هنری در دوران تکثیر مکانیکی آن، پسگفتار، پانوشتها، و نمایه ها؛ ا. شربیانی

I love Walter Benjamin!!! I'm less fond of his literary criticism, but I'm very interested in reading Baudelaire after his essays on the writer. Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Theses on the Philosophy of History are famous for a reason—they are phenomenal. The Task of the Translator is fascinating, especially in the context of this collection of essays being translated from German to English. Benjamin's work has cracked open a totally new genre of philosophy for me, that I am in love with!!!

the two most widely read pieces from this collection are probably "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" and "theses on the philosophy of history," both of which are, in my opinion, absolutely necessary works to scrutinize for any student of cultural studies, be it in the guise of film, literature, history, and whathaveyou.

benjamins prose is lean; as with many theorists, there are parts that will leave you scratching your head and reading over and over again to make sense of his crazy, confusing symbolisms. yet what never falters is his precise parsing out, at least in those two essays, of how modernity affects the production of a cultural memory and/or forgetting, and specifically how memories are made into histories on a collective, state level.

this is not a fun read, per se. it is not a book youll want to read on a lazy sunday afternoon after eating brunch with a group of friends and cackling about the stupidity that went down on the dancefloor the night before (and those brunches are always the most fun!). but it is a book to be read when writing papers, analyzing films, or simply thinking big thoughts.

I thought this book was very illuminating