Benjamin Walter. Selected Writings, vol. 3: 1935-1938

Belknap Press, 2006. — 472 p.Radical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness, yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie—such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930s. This volume, the third in a four-volume set, offers 27 brilliant pieces, 19 of which have never before been translated.The centerpiece, A Berlin Childhood around 1900, marks the first appearance in English of one of the greatest German works of the twentieth century: a profound and beautiful account of the vanished world of Benjamin’s privileged boyhood, recollected in exile. No less remarkable are the previously untranslated second version of Benjamin’s most famous essay, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,” with its striking insights into the relations between technology and aesthetics, and German Men and Women, a book in which Benjamin collects 26 letters by distinguished Germans from 1783 to 1883 in an effort to preserve what he called the true humanity of German tradition from the debasement of fascism.Volume 3 also offers extensively annotated translations of essays that are key to Benjamin’s rewriting of the story of modernism and modernity, such as “The Storyteller” and “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century”—as well as a fascinating diary from 1938 and penetrating studies of Bertolt Brecht, Franz Kafka, and Eduard Fuchs. A narrative chronology details Benjamin’s life during these four harrowing years of his exile in France and Denmark. This is an essential collection for anyone interested in his work.Paris Old and New, 1935
Brecht's Threepenny Novel
Johann Jakob Bachofen
Conversation above the Corso: Recollections of Carnival-Time in Nice
Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century
Exchange with Theodor W. Adorno on the Essay "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century"
Problems in the Sociology of Language: An Overview
The Formula in Which the Dialectical Structure of Film Finds Expression
Rastelli's Story
Art in a Technological Age, 1936
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility: Second Version
A different Utopian Will
The Signifcance of Beautiful Semblance
The Signatures of the Age
Theory of Distraction
The Storyteller: Observations on the Works of Nikolai Leskov
German Men and Women: A sequence of Letters
Letter from Paris (2): Painting and Photography
Translation-For and Against
The Knowledge That the First Material on Which the Mimetic Faculty Tested Itself
Dialectics and History, 1937
Addendum to the Brecht Commentary: The Threepenny Opera
Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian
Fruits of Exile, 1938 (part 1)
Theological-Political Fragment
A german Institute for Independent Research
Review of Brod's Franz Kafka
Letter to Gershom Scholem on Franz Kafka
The Land Where the Proletariat May Not Be Mentioned: The Premiere of Eight One-Act Plays by Brecht
Diary Entries, 1938
Berlin Childhood around 1900
A Note on the Texts
Chronology, 1935-1938
Index