Called “the most important critic of his time” by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has only become more influential over the years, as his work has assumed a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A “natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature,” writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword to this volume; and Benjamin’s correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas, while also offering an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived.
Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Max Brod, and Bertolt Brecht, Benjamin elaborates on his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, and expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as Marxism and French national character. Providing an indispensable tool for any scholar wrestling with Benjamin’s work, The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin, 1910–1940 is a revelatory look at the man behind much of the twentieth century’s most significant criticism.
From Library Journal
Drawing on sources as disparate as Jewish mysticism and Marxism, Benjamin (1892- 1940) created one of the 20th century’s most distinguished bodies of literary and cultural criticism. While much of his correspondence to editor Scholem has appeared in English before, this collection offers newly translated letters to Hannah Arendt, Bertolt Brecht, Martin Buber, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Horkheimer, Rainer Maria Rilke, Theodor Adorno, and others. Although these letters tell us virtually nothing about the trying times that afflicted and tragically shortened Benjamin’s life (he committed suicide while fleeing German-occupied France), they are filled with the erudite and heady intellectual atmosphere that so completely absorbed this unique and creative mind. For both lay readers and specialists.
Michael T. O’Pecko, Towson State Univ., Md.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Demanding yet eloquent and immensely rewarding personal documents of one of the century’s leading literary and aesthetic critics. It’s the grimmest of ironies that one of the earliest letters here should find the young philosopher standing metaphorically “at a border crossing”–for Benjamin would end his life by his own despairing hand at a Spanish frontier post in 1940, his entry barred as he fled the advancing Nazi armies. Yet that image of the perpetual traveler on the threshold well suits the writer portrayed in these letters: equally a self-professed materialist devoted to the modern age and a bibliophile immersed in the literary past; close to many circles–Adorno and the Frankfurt School, Brecht’s literary collective, Gershom Scholem’s Zionism (the three men were among his correspondents, as well)–yet fully a member of none; a voracious consumer of the world yet always something of an outsider. The most bleakly memorable section here is the letters- -almost half the total–recording Benjamin’s long and lonely years of exile, beginning with Hitler’s seizure of power and ending with his own death. Here Benjamin faces up to his own uncertain prospects, as the material means for his work–living space, even the writing paper he coveted–dwindle and vanish. Constantly changing postmarks bear witness to his peripatetic and increasingly desperate search for refuge; above all, he bears witness to his growing sense of emotional and intellectual isolation. Yet he sets to his work, “the shelter I step beneath when the weather grows rough outside,” to recover something from the very culture whose collapse is about to engulf him–a quixotic venture that nevertheless compels our admiration. Unfortunately, this volume–simply a translation, with no new editorial apparatus, of the 30-year-old German edition–is a little unforgiving on the general reader: It’s a shame the publisher hasn’t supplied more biographical, historical, and cultural context to encourage nonspecialists to make Benjamin’s fascinating acquaintance. — Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From the Back Cover
Called “the most important critic of his time” by Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin has emerged as one of the most compelling thinkers of our time as well, his work assuming a crucial place in current debates over the interactions of art, culture, and meaning. A “natural and extraordinary talent for letter writing was one of the most captivating facets of his nature,” writes Gershom Scholem in his Foreword; and indeed, Benjamin’s correspondence reveals the evolution of some of his most powerful ideas. Published here in English for the first time, these letters offer an intimate picture of Benjamin himself and the times in which he lived. Written in a day when letters were an important vehicle for the presentation and development of intellectual matters, Benjamin’s correspondence is rich in insight into the circumstances behind his often difficult work. These letters provide a lively view of Benjamin’s life and thought from his days as a student to his melancholy experiences as an exile in Paris. As he defends his changing ideas to admiring and skeptical friends – poets, philosophers, and radicals – we witness the restless self-analysis of a creative mind far in advance of his own time. Writing at length to Scholem and Theodor Adorno, and exchanging letters with Rainer Maria Rilke, Hannah Arendt, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Max Horkheimer, Max Brod, Bertolt Brecht, and Kafka’s friend Felix Weltsch, Benjamin elaborates his ideas about metaphor and language. He reflects on literary figures from Kafka to Karl Kraus, the “Jewish Question” and anti-Semitism, Marxism and Zionism. And he expounds his personal attitudes toward such subjects as the role of quotations in criticism, history, and tradition; the meaning of being a “collector”; and French culture and the national character. In sum, this magnificent collection is an exceptionally rich source of information and an essential key to understanding one of the preeminent figures of modern culture.
About the Author
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German philosopher, writer, and literary critic.
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