Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (18921940) var en tysk filosof och litteraturkritiker. I december 1926 reste han mot Moskva. Väl framme förde han under två månader dagbok över sin vistelse. Tiden är bara inte politiskt turbulent utan också estetiskt omvälvande. Även Benjamins bekymmer med såväl kärlek, ekonomi och skrivande ges stort utrymme. Moskvadagbok är kanske det mest öppenhjärtiga som Benjamin skrivit. Denna utgåva har kompletterats bland annat med Benjamins stora essä »Moskva« , en intervju han gjorde på plats med en sovjetisk tidning, ett antal brev, och ett förord av Gershom Scholem. Christian Nilsson har översatt och skrivit omfattande noter.

The relationship between philosopher-critic Walter Benjamin and playwright-poet Bertolt Brecht was both a lasting friendship and a powerful intellectual partnership. Having met in the late 1920s in Germany, Benjamin and Brecht both independently minded Marxists with a deep understanding of and passionate commitment to the emancipatory potential of cultural practices continued to discuss, argue and correspond on topics as varied as Fascism and the work of Franz Kafka. Faced by the onset of the 'midnight of the century', with the Nazi subversion of the Weimar Republic in Germany and the Stalinist degeneration of the revolution in Russia, both men, in their own way, strove to keep alive the tradition of dialectical critique of the existing order and radical intervention in the world to transform it.In Understanding Brecht we find collected together Benjamin's most sensitive and probing writing on the dramatic and poetic work of his friend and tutor. Stimulated by Brecht's oeuvre and theorising his particular dramatic techniques-such as the famous 'estrangement effect'-Benjamin developed his own ideas about the role of art and the artist in crisis-ridden society. This volume contains Benjamin's introductions to Brecht's theory or epic theatre and close textual analyses of twelve poems by Brecht (printed in translation here) which exemplify Benjamin's insistence that literary form and content are indivisible. Elsewhere Benjamin discusses the plays The Mother, Terror and Misery of the Third Reich, and The Threepenny Opera, digressing for some general remarks on Marx and satire.Here we also find Benjamin's masterful essay "The Author as Producer" as well as an extract from his diaries that records the intense conversations held in the late 1930s in Denmark (Brecht's place of exile) between the two most important cultural theorists of this century. In these discussions, the two men talked of subjects as diverse as the work of Franz Kafka, the unfolding Soviet Trials, and the problems of literary work on the edge of international war.

La obra de arte en la era de su reproducibilidad tecnica es un breve tratado sobre el potencial liberador del cine o un aviso contra los riesgos de la comunicacion de masas. O viceversa. Walter Benjamin comprendio que el fascismo busca su salvacion en dejar que las masas se expresen mientras impide que hagan valer sus derechos. Y vio venir ya, a lo lejos, los quince minutos de fama para todos vaticinados por Warhol, la pornografia de la pobreza del reality show y las esteriles discusiones de las redes sociales. Uno de los textos mas influyentes del siglo XX, ahora rejuvenecido por la nueva y flamante traduccion de Jose Anibal Campos. Algo que queda claro ya desde su mismo titulo.

En la obra de Walter Benjamin, fundamental para comprender el siglo ¬¬, destaca esta breve pero contundente reflexi n en torno al objeto art stico y la comunicaci n de masas. Sostiene aqu el pensador que, con las nuevas posibilidades t cnicas para su reproducci n, el arte puede transformarse en un poderoso instrumento para la revoluci n pol tica. Una innovaci n que, a la vez, har que la obra pierda su car cter nico, el «aura , y abrir , as , una nueva dimensi n para el objeto art stico. Un texto fundamental en torno al arte, la reflexi n est tica y la filosof a de la imagen In the work of Walter Benjamin--essential for understanding the 20th century--this brief yet powerful reflection on the art object and mass communication stands out. Here, the thinker argues that with new technical possibilities for reproduction, art can become a powerful tool for political revolution. At the same time, this innovation causes the artwork to lose its uniqueness--its "aura"--thus opening a new dimension for the artistic object. A key text on art, aesthetic reflection, and the philosophy of the image.

‘We must see to it that we put the best of ourselves in our letters; for there is nothing to suggest that we shall see each other again soon.’ So wrote Walter Benjamin to Gretel Adorno in spring 1940 from the south of France, shortly before he took his own life. The correspondence between Gretel Adorno and Walter Benjamin, published here in its complete form for the first time, is the document of a great friendship that existed independently of Benjamin’s relationship with Theodor W. Adorno. While Benjamin, alongside his everyday worries, writes especially about those projects on which he worked so intensively in the last years of his life, it was Gretel Karplus-Adorno who did everything in her power to keep Benjamin in the world. She urged him to emigrate to the USA and told him about Adorno’s plans and Bloch’s movements, thus maintaining the connection between the old Berlin friends and acquaintances. She helped him through the most difficult times with regular money transfers, and organized financial support from the Saar region, which was initially still independent from the Third Reich. Once in New York, she attempted to entice Benjamin to America with her descriptions of the city and the new arrivals from Europe – though ultimately to no avail.

The Origin of German Tragic Drama is Walter Benjamin's most sustained and original work. It begins with a general theoretical introduction on the nature of the baroque art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, concentrating on the peculiar stage-form of royal martyr dramas called Trauerspiel. Benjamin also comments on the engravings of Durer and the theatre of Calderon and Shakespeare. Baroque tragedy, he argues, was distinguished from classical tragedy by its shift from myth into history. Georg Lukacs, an opponent of Benjamin's aesthetics, singled out The Origin of German Tragic Drama as one of the main sources of literary modernism in the twentieth century.

Tämä valikoima Walter Benjaminin (1892-1940) - saksanjuutalaisen esseistin, kirjallisuuskriitikon, kielen ja historian filosofin - kirjoituksia pyrkii tekemään Benjaminin ajattelua tunnetuksi suomalaiselle yleisölle. Kokoelma sisältää esseitä muun muassa kielestä, kirjallisuudesta, taiteesta ja filosofiasta.

The Storyteller gathers for the first time the fiction of the legendary critic and philosopher Walter Benjamin, best known for his groundbreaking studies of culture and literature, including Illuminations, One-Way Street and The Arcades Project. His stories revel in the erotic tensions of city life, cross the threshold between rational and hallucinatory realms, celebrate the importance of games, and delve into the peculiar relationship between gambling and fortune-telling, and explore the themes that defined Benjamin. The novellas, fables, histories, aphorisms, parables and riddles in this collection are brought to life by the playful imagery of the modernist artist and Bauhaus figure Paul Klee.