Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings | Walter Benjamin

Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings | Walter Benjamin | "A Highly Polished Mind"

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Reflections: Essay...

	Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings Walter Benjamin Schocken, 1986 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 6 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A companion volume to Illuminations, the first collection of Walter Benjamin's writings, Reflections presents a further sampling of his wide-ranging work. Here Benjamin evolves a theory of language as the medium of all creation, discusses theater and surrealism, reminisces about Berlin in the 1920s, recalls conversations with Bertolt Brecht, and provides travelogues of various cities, including Moscow under Stalin. He moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography to philosophical-theological speculations, cementing his reputation as one of the greatest and most versatile writers of the twentieth century. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin's continued relevance for our times.

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A Portable Benjamin

There is much to love about Walter Benjamin. His is a supple, syncretic, synthetic mind, and his prose just sings-even in translation. Because Benjamin roamed about in whole territorities of thought, it's nearly impossible to draw together a representative selection of his essays without overlooking something important. The collection Illuminations is a delgith; Reflections, a kind of companion volume, includes much material that reflects the Benjamin corpus from a non-Illuminations trajectory.

Benjamin's essay "Critique of Violence" is worth the price of the book on its own; while I disagree with his idea that a state must have a monopoly on violence (more likely that a state desires such a monopoly but has to play make-believe because it can't complete a monopoly...), Benjamin's analysis is crisp and precise. It's as good as the "Treatise on Nomadology" of Deleuze and Guattari, which covers the same kind of ground.

This sounds cheesy, but I really think Benjamin's example of ranging far and wide and deep into detail when inquiring into something, not letting his hang-ups hinder his thinking, is something for an intellectual to aspire to. And he's a joy to read.

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"A Highly Polished Mind"

Reflections presents for the reader the great range that Benjamin had as a writer, critic and occidentalist. This collection further demonstrates Benjamin's acute awareness of the literature of his time, as evidenced by his essay on 'Surrealism', which is as fine a reflection on its themes as the manifestos of Andre Breton. Furthermore, his writings and conversations with Bertolt Brecht show Benjamin to be very close to the thinking of the author himself. Also included is his celebrated essay on Karl Kraus,"the Jewish Swift of Vienna". But what I like most about this collection are the amorphisms and autobiographical sketches of 'Marseilles' and 'One-way Street'. In his images of Marseilles Benjamin creates an "exegesis of the city" that is as fine as any poet could offer; spellbinding, acute, and beautiful. As well, his wit and insight into social phenomena is detailed in 'One-Way Street', and also in the piece on Moscow, which lets the western reader experience a rare witnessing of the Russian city in the years after the Revolution in a way that recalls Dziga Vertov. Finally, the inclusion of several pieces of Benjamin's philosophical-theological speculations show that he was a man of great breath and wisedom, and further showcase the wide range of his highly polished mind.

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Wise and witty, with a keen eye for detail

This collection of Benjamin essays was selected and introduced by Peter Demetz based on an order prepared by Hannah Arendt. It is a companion piece to Illuminations, a siimilar volume prepared and introduced by Arendt in the late sixties. Unlike Illuminations, which focuses on the literary essays Benjamin wrote, Reflections is intended to present a wide variety of subject and style.

In his introduction, Demetz urges the reader to listen to Benjamin in a musical rather than a literary way. Indeed, this book works very well if you approach it as an impressionistic meander through the style and range of thought present in the essays. I would be hard-pressed to describe how to rationally link the autobiographic travel writing of "A Berlin Chronicle" with the aphorisms of "One Way Street" or the Marxist thought in the essays on Brecht. All the same, they feel linked as a reading experience. That linkage may be more on the sound than the subject-- the sound of a very smart man thinking very hard and with great elegance.

Benjamin is never a dry writer. Some other reviewers have remarked on his humor, which definitely exists. It is also worth highlighting his keen eye for detail, his openness to self-examination, his practical advice about writing, and his distinctive turn of phrase which somehow survives through the translation process.

It would be difficult to find a book that I would recommend more highly.

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Criticism at its best

Benjamin is an extremely powerful writer. I bought this book specifically for Zur Kritik Der Gewalt, but I've enjoyed other essays.

reviews: page 1, 2

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