Preface by Gershom Scholem Moscow Diary Appendices 'Russian Toys" by Walter Benjamin Letters from Walter Benjamin Afterword by Gary Smith Index
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis. Gary Smith is an editor at work on the Einstein Papers project. Richard Sieburth is Associate Professor of French, New York University. Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), a close friend of Walter Benjamin, was Professor of Jewish Mysticism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
In the ’20s and ’30s, [Benjamin] was a Jew in Berlin, a visitor to
the Russian Revolution, a refugee in France, a citizen of the world
in flames. More a man of letters than scholar, and more poet than
either one, he wandered through Western culture as if it had been
destroyed centuries earlier, and he were a revenant poking through
its remains. He amassed quotations and collected books and toys,
with no illusion of finding a living civilization, but seeking the
artifacts of a shattered one… Love, mixed with obsession, is at the
heart of Moscow Diary, the private record of Benjamin’s two-month
visit to the Soviet Union in the winter of 1926. Edited and with an
afterword by Gary Smith and lucidly translated by Richard Sieburth,
it is a many-faceted jewel: a portrait of the Russian revolution in
its still unsettled transition to Stalinism, a vivid picture of
Moscow life, Benjamin’s intellectual journal, and above all, the
tragicomic story of his pursuit of the Estonian actress, Asja
Lacis.
*Los Angeles Times Book Review*
The German literary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, who
died in 1940, was one of Europe’s grandest thinkers. This diary
covers only two months in the winter of 1926–1927, but it feels
like a lifetime. His meticulous, almost macabre attention to detail
gives his perceptions a kind of scientific brilliance, whether he
is describing the streets of the city, a curious shop sign, the
sanatorium where his friend Asja Lacis is a patient, the wash table
in his hotel room, or the ragged beds that stand at every street
corner in ‘the open air sick bay called Moscow.’ The book is a
supreme example of the kind of mental equipment any traveller would
like to take with him, to any place.
*The Independent*
[An] unsurpassably quirky memoir of Bolshevik literati as Stalin
consolidated power.
*New Society*
Moscow Diary is chiefly interesting not for what it tells us about
Moscow during December 1926 but for what it tells us about Walter
Benjamin, who has by now emerged as both a major figure in modern
German literature and criticism and as the preeminent
poet-historian of the modern European city. Moscow Diary is the
longest of Benjamin’s autobiographical writings… [Benjamin’s]
insights into Russia’s struggle to define its cultural identity are
often compelling. Above all, the Diary is the story of the triangle
among Benjamin, Asja [Lācis], and the expatriate German playwright
Bernhard Reich. Their story of emotional instabilities and
obstacles provides a fascinating counterpart to the story of
Russia’s cultural dilemma. The edition is superbly translated,
annotated, and illustrated, and contains a fine preface and
afterword.
*Choice*
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