Benjamin, Walter

Selected Writings Vol. 1 1913-1926 with: Ephemera

ISBN: 9780674945852
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. First Edition. “In tragedy the hero dies because no one can live fulfilled in time. He dies of immortality…When the tragic development suddenly makes its incomprehensible appearance, when the smallest false step leads to guilt, when the slightest error, the most improbable coincidence leads to death, when the words that would clear up and resolve the situation and that seem to be available to all remain unspoken—then we are witnessing the effect of the hero’s time on the action…it is almost a paradox that this becomes manifest in all its clarity at the moment when the hero is completely passive, then tragic time bursts open, so to speak, like a flower whose calyx emits the astringent perfume of irony.”-- “On Tragedy,” from back of dust jacket. Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German–Jewish philosopher, cultural critic, media theorist, and essayist. Deeply influential to the Critical Theorists and the Frankfurt School of philosophy, Benjamin melded German Idealism, Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and neo-Kantianism in his analysis and explorations of aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and historical materialism. Going on to influence the likes of Theodore Adorno (1903–1969), Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), and Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), Benjamin’s philosophical impact completely altered and re-imagined the milieu of Marxist theory and literary criticism. Among his litany of important works, perhaps Benjamins most well-known or impactful works, include: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935), Theses on the Philosophy of History (1940), and his essays on Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), Franz Kafka (1883–1924), Karl Kraus (1874–1936), Nikolai Leskov (1831–1895), and Marcel Proust (1871–1922). Offered today is the 1996 collection, Selected Writings: Volume 1, 1913–1926. As the inside front flap of the dust jacket states: “Volume 1 of the Selected Writings brings together essays long and short, academic treatises, reviews, fragments, and privately circulated pronouncements. Fully five-sixths of this material has never before been translated into English. The contents begin in 1913, when Benjamin, as an undergraduate in imperial Germany, was president of a radical youth group, and take us through 1926, when he had already begun, with his explorations of the world of mass culture, to emerge as a critical voice in Weimar Germany’s most influential journals.” From the collection of Laurence Goldstein (1943-2023), a renowned American author, film critic, poet, editor & academician here at the University of Michigan. We have found and retained, between front cover and first paste-down page, a printed out article from the Harvard University Press in 1996 that reviews and synopsizes Benjamin’s Selected Writings: Volume 1. Hardcover in unclipped dust jacket. First edition though not explicated as such at copyright page, presumed first printing though similarly not explicated as such thereon. Book is in very fine condition with minimal wear to fine edges; dust jacket is in very fine condition with light wear to fine edges and minor smudging to front and back covers. An extra handling fee of $1.00 will be added for shipping due to the size and weight of this item. Very Fine / Very Fine. [Item #7042]

Price: $40.00