Benjamin attracts such metaphorical fancies, symbols of a life's
work at once supernaturally precise and rigorously mysterious. His
own favoured symbol for the scattered unity of his writing was that
of the constellation: a stellar array of apparently unrelated
points rendered into magical coherence by the powers of thought and
intuition. This third volume in Harvard's essential selection from
his huge corpus offers something like a deep-space photograph of
Benjamin's enigmatic universe: a book as fascinating for scholars
as it is enrapturing for any reader as yet unseduced by this most
sensitive and audacious of writers...Benjamin's autobiographical
masterpiece ['A "Berlin Childhood Around 1900"'] might alone
justify this sedulously edited and beautifully translated volume.
But here, too, alongside an outline of "The Arcades Project" and an
early version of the 'Work of Art [in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction]' essay, are his thoughts on a wondrous variety of
subjects--Kafka, Brecht, painting and photography, carnivals, the
problem of translation--as well as a host of supposedly 'minor'
writings (fragments, letters, diary entries) which often turn out
to be among his most beautiful or thought-provoking...It is no
exaggeration to say that Benjamin's writing changes lives, lights
up unknown landscapes of art and politics, even at this historical
remove. If his thought lives on...it does so in the sense that
Baudelaire's 19th century survived for Benjamin in the 20th: less a
reminder of the past than a signpost to the future. There is no
more incisive or elegant guide to that territory.--Brian
Dillon"Irish Times" (03/08/2003)
Howard Eiland's translation [of "Berlin Childhood around 1900"] in
Harvard University Press's "Selected Writings, Volume 3" is
incomparable.--Charles Mudede"The Stranger" (12/02/2010)
The quintessential Benjamin gesture of Volume 3 is the 1936
selection of letters by a wide assortment of figures from the
German Romantic era, together with his brief, meticulously
sympathetic commentaries, contained in German Men and Women...It is
the story primarily of friendships amidst the passages and
misfortunes of time, and of ideas as the substance of friendship:
Their exchange becomes the fabric that connects one individual to
another, and binds each to their precarious, uncertain
lives.--Howard Hampton "Village Voice "
This latest volume of Harvard's majestic annotated edition of the
essays and fragments includes reflections on Brecht, Kafka and the
collector Eduard Fuchs, an early version of the famous analysis of
art in the age of mechanical reproduction (here more accurately
translated as "technological reproducibility") and the equally
exhilarating inquiry into the nature of narrative, "The
Storyteller." You feel smarter just holding this book in your
hand.--Michael Dirda"Washington Post" (12/01/2002)
Over the past few years, Harvard's systematic presentation of the
work of German cultural critic Benjamin has proved a
revelation...This third of four planned volumes...offers two major
texts that are new to English...as well as a fascinating
re-translation of one of the cornerstones of Benjamin's reputation,
here rendered as the essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Its
Technological Reproducibility.,."This is another splendid volume
that will leave aficionados on campus and off awaiting the final
installment.
While the Harvard Series does include Benjamin's epochal
contributions to Marxist theory and literary criticism, it also
does English-language readers a great service by emphasizing his
more accessible writings: fanciful personal essays, journalistic
articles, and book reviews. These pieces are, at times, giddily
delightful; at other moments, they offer lightning-quick, piercing
insights.
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