![]() ![]() Nor can it be said that it is the bitter reward of those who were ahead of their time-as though history were a race track on which some contenders run so swiftly that they simply disappear from the spectator’s range of vision. Posthumous fame is too odd a thing to be blamed upon the blindness of the world or the corruption of a literary milieu. ![]() And since mere reputation, however high, as it rests on the judgment of the best, is never enough for writers and artists to make a living that only fame, the testimony of a multitude which need not be astronomical in size, can guarantee, one is doubly tempted to say (with Cicero), Si vivi vicissent qui morte vicerunt-how different everything would have been if they had been victorious in life who have won victory in death. Fifteen years later a two-volume edition of his writings was published in Germany and brought him almost immediately a succès d’estime that went far beyond the recognition among the few which he had known in his life. There were few who still knew his name when he chose death in those early fall days of 1940 which for many of his origin and generation marked the darkest moment of the war-the fall of France, the threat to England, the still intact Hitler-Stalin pact whose most feared consequence at that moment was the close co-operation of the two most powerful secret police forces in Europe. Such posthumous fame, uncommercial and unprofitable, has now come in Germany to the name and work of Walter Benjamin, a German-Jewish writer who was known, but not famous, as a contributor to magazines and literary sections of newspapers for less than ten years prior to Hitler’s seizure of power and his own emigration. The one who stood most to profit is dead and hence it is not for sale. Posthumous fame is one of Fama’s rarer and least desired articles, although it is less arbitrary and often more solid than the other sorts, since it is only seldom bestowed upon mere merchandise. The Hunchbackįama, that much-coveted goddess, has many faces, and fame comes in many sorts and sizes-from the one-week notoriety of the cover story to the splendor of an everlasting name. Introduction Walter Benjamin: 1892–1940 I. Hannah Arendt, appeared originally as an article in The New Yorker. This reprint omits pages 141–144 of the original Harcourt, Brace & World edition. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ![]() copyright © 1955 by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a.M.įor information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016. Originally published in Germany by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. Introduction copyright © 1968 by Hannah Arendt He was at times associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and was also greatly inspired by the Marxism of Bertolt Brecht and Jewish mysticism as presented by Gershom Scholem.Įnglish translation copyright © 1968 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. ![]() Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was a German-Jewish Marxist literary critic, essayist, translator, and philosopher. Leon Wieseltier’s preface explores Benjamin’s continued relevance for our times. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin’s life in a dark historical era. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode and his theses on the philosophy of history. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity his studies on Baudelaire and Proust and his essays on Leskov and Brecht’s epic theater. Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy. Essays and reflections from one of the twentieth century’s most original cultural critics, with an introduction by Hannah Arendt. ![]()
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