Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life Paperback – 21 Nov. 2016

I have recently received this book; I look forward to reading / re-reading this wonderful book. I don't suppose that even then I could envisage myself writing a review to do it justice.

RE the review "what happened to his ideas?", by Ali Sadeghi. That was very misleading review. This book achieved exactly what the reviewer said is missing: a thorough exposition of Benjamin ideas, from all his relevant works, short, long, finished, unfinished, etc. Even some lesser known and yet important texts are thoroughly discussed. And to say that "his private life", unlike Hitler’s' or Stalin's, is NOT interesting (Capri, Ibiza, Moscow, Berlin, Paris, Italy, Spain?) is really strange. Through his life you may see a whole epoch reflected, along with so many other important figures. And if something is missing then it's exactly more details from his private life or about his relations with various persons (at least with some of them). This is an excellent book, a great panoramic essay. There are some problems - some cracks in chronology (Marseilles episode, 1928-1929, for instance, along with few more repetitions) - but it's a minor fault, and maybe it could be corrected in next edition. It's simply impossible to cover a life so rich in ideas, works and events, in all its aspects, even in 700+ pages. But this is the best take so far. And it's so good that doesn't even need to be surpassed: after this book or along with it, one should continue with Benjamin himself. This is the best companion piece one could find.

Earlier this year I was in Paris, a city I find, like Benjamin did, endlessly fascinating. On a beautiful spring morning I made my way to Benjamin's last Paris address on the Rue Dombasle off of the Rue Vaugirard in the 15th Arrondissement. The small apartment block at no.10 is still very much as Benjamin would have known it, although the letting rates and property value are now astronomical! There is a small plaque above the main entrance giving the philosophers dates and telling us that he was a translator, philosopher and literary critic. I asked the proprietor of a pet shop at the apartment entrance whether or not she was aware that a prominent philosopher once lived there. I even pointed the plaque out to her. She had absolutely no idea, she looked at me as I was an oddball or worse!'Je ne sais pas', she repeated! The location was almost picturesque with bijoux snack bars and elegant boutiques. There was a quasi park area with children playing on a carousel. I thought how different this scene was from the dark days of 1940, with the German invasion, occupation from which Benjamin had to escape from. He was certainly on the Gestapo death list. But then I thought of the picturesque scene, in the now-time,'jetztzeit' as Benjamin would term it, and the way this pleasant scene was in some way 'mythical'(another Benjamin key term) in the present context of conflict, carnage in the Ukraine, in Gaza and Syria, global protests against 'austerity', sanctions against Russia, what some are calling an imminent Third World War. Benjamin, in his constellative mode of critique, always related any historical event, atrocity, to the now, and even to the future. Those 'dark days' of 1940 are re-emerging now especially with the widespread rise of fascism/Nazism. As Benjamin often said 'There is no document of civilization which is not, at the same time, a document of barbarism.'Benjamin's critical thought is as relevant now as it was at the time he was writing. All this might seem an odd way of starting a review of a new major biography of Benjamin. But in a sense it is this insight of 'now-time' which is lacking in this work. Eiland and Jennings write a very conventional narrative chronology of Benjamin's life. The title 'A Critical life' seemed to promise more. They position themselves in a kind of hermetically sealed Kantian, detached space where the 'now' culture/politics has no time or space. In fact the kind of Bourgeois narrow field of perception, vision Benjamin detested. But having said this it was mostly a hugely enjoyable read. Hopefully it will attract a wider readership outside of academia. Eiland and Jennings provide lucid and readable overviews of most of Benjamin's complex theories like: the early and enormously pivotal 'Trauerspiel'book ('The Origin of German Tragic Drama'); 'The critique of Violence', his work on particularly Goethe, and, of course 'The work of Art in the age of its Mechanical Reproduction. But having read its nearly 800 pages I felt no closer to Benjamin. Perhaps like Kafka, Benjamin was never going to be open to standard chronological/linear biography. More than almost every important intellectual of recent decades, with the possible exception of Michel Foucault, Benjamin's life, his sometimes cryptic work, was/is the least amenable to narrative continuity. Benjamin, as far as I know, never encouraged any kind biography (although I think Scholem contemplated one after Benjamin's death). Like, Freud he seemed to be critical of the very form. If he had contemplated any kind of biography it surely would have been cast in the mode of montage with no logos, no continuing narrative to old age and death. Benjamin's actual death, suicide, which has been much written of, was, as with his life, an enigma. The book recounts his fiendships, colleagues, quite well, among them: Gershom Scholem, Bertold Brecht, Gustav Wyneken, Seigfried Kracauer, Franz Hassel, and of course Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. Adorno comes over as one of Benjamin's best friends, despite his acerbic responses to essays Benjamin submitted. It was Adorno who arranged several stipends for Benjamin, a lifeline for one who increasingly faced financial disaster. Scholem comes over as a life-long friend, but one Benjamin kept his distance from, especially in matters Judaism, and his insistence that Benjamin move to Jerusalem. It is perhaps in his relationships with women that we learn more about the 'real' Benjamin. More than other accounts we learn that Benjamin tended to love affairs with complex, difficult, highly intelligent women like the extrovert Latvian revolutionary Asja Lacis, and Dora, who became his wife. All these relationships were complex and acrimonious. I don't think there was a strong sexual attraction for Benjamin but women were stimulated by his intellect and erudition. It also seems that there was an element of immaturity in Benjamin's amorous make-up, as when he become infatuated with Olga Parem, a Russian/German woman. He proposed to her and was abrubtly rejected. We also have a revealing account of Benjamin's secretive affair with Greta, Adorno's wife, through a number of intimate letters between them, although we don't know whether or not this became an intimate affair in the sexual sense. In another review from a prestigious newspaper the idea was projected that Benjamin was a frequent visitor of prostitutes, but this is hardly mentioned. There might have been a half truth here, he wrote extensively on prostitution especially in the Arcades Project, but in his later years Benjamin would not have been able to afford such luxuries. The notion that he had a gambling addiction is only mentioned a couple of times.Much of the book is devoted to quite detailed accounts of Benjamin's attempts to initiate the production of critical journals, or to submit critical articles/essays, here such eminent figure as Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Thomas Mann were involved in these ventures. But very few of them materialised. No doubt all this material is valuable in understanding Benjamin as a critical journalist in the mould of Karl Kraus who he admired from a critical perspective. But I had the impression that much of this reads more like a list of literary efforts rather than anything adding to our understanding of Benjamin either in the affective sense, but also in the sense of his actual critique of conventional discourse. Indeed his work on allegory and the evasiveness, aporetic movement of discourse and language, sometimes sounds like deconstruction and Derrida 'Avant le lettre'. Even though Benjamin here comes over as a much more engaging, illuminating writer than Derrida, who can sometimes sound pedantic and willfully abstruse.Before I read the book I was looking forward to learning more about Benjamin's notion of experience; moreover the experience of the city. Benjamin mentions several times, in letters, in the various Konvolut's of the Arcades Project', his love of mostly great European cities; including Naples, Moscow, Riga, Marseilles and of course the city of his birth Berlin. But it is Paris in exile where Benjamin found his most radiant and chiaroscuro affection, love of the city. But strangely Eiland and Jennings include the city (Paris) more a kind of occasional opaque backdrop. All we get are tantalising allusions to a favourite hotel, or bar,the Hotel Istria on the Rue Champagne, or the Hotel Regina de Passy on the Rue de la Tour, but nothing much more. Benjamin's muultifarious deployment of 'experience' has much to do with actual locations in Paris, partly taken from Breton and Aragon. He was undoubtedly a kind of Flaneur, collecting myriad city experiences. The Arcades Project is full references, exposures, histories of Paris. For instance he describes how early one clear morning he is looking down on this 'gigantic' city from one of the towers of Notre Dame and wondering how long it will last, will it also become a mass of ruins, just like one of the lost or devoured cities of antiquity? A note of prismatic allegory here from the 'Trauerspiel'. Also a note on the Place du Maroc in the 19th arrondissement, how it projects the tones, illuminations (profane) of French colonialism. He adores Paris in a way he could never do in a city like London. The ghost's (he was fascinated with revenants, spectral images, aparitions) of Paris are vibrantly resonant for him: the Great 1789 Revolution, 1848, 1871 and the Paris Commune. These 'past' events are very much in the now jetztzeit', as are the forgotten events, the voices of the dead. Conversing with the dead. Here he is not talking of official monuments (he admires the Commune for pulling down the ossified memorial to French oppression and imperialism, the Column Vendome .)Here his affinity with Marxism is resonant. He was never a rigid orthodox Marxist although his work on the Trauerspiel and allegory probably had more influence on Adorno's Marxism, especially 'negative dialectics' than is commonly acknowledged. He is not concerned with the 'great' men of history, but of those erased out of official history; the detritus, discarded objects, all within the prismatic vision of Klee's 'Angel of History'. Also, there is not very much on Benjamin as a collector; a collector of toys, ballet shoes, medical instruments, post cards of Paris. He also collected Paris street (Rue) names. Fascinated by such names as the Avenue de la Motte-Piquet, or the Boulevard Arago, and those named after Saints such as the Boulevard St Michel All part of his sometimes elliptical notion of 'experience', the 'colour of experience'.I know of no other modern writer who can so capture the 'Aura' the tonality and, and physiognomy, experience of the city-scape, but little of this is mentioned. The sections on Baudelaire are correctly detailed and thorough - although there is not a great deal here I did not know already. Also very little mention of Freud and psychoanalysis, of which Benjamin was increasingly fascinated: the whole resonance of dreams, which goes back to his Berlin childhood. I could go on with the omissions, and this review has its obvious omissions. The account of Benjamin's tragic last days/hours in the small port town of Port Bou, on the French/Spanish border are surprisingly lacking in detail. Indeed the much smaller biography of Esther Leslie (2007) gives a far more interesting and detailed account .Before I had any knowledge of this Benjamin Biography I was hoping that an enterprising film maker would produce a film about Benjamin shot on location in Paris and other cities. Indeed I am very surprised that a film, or even a TV documentary on Benjamin has not, as far as I know, been attempted. More than most intellctuals Benjamin, in 'reality' and in myth is the most amenable figure for TV, filmic projection. It would probably be best directed by someone like Jean Luc Godard, who has an instinctive empathy with Brechtian Epic, and montage effects. But he is probably too advanced in years now for such an undertaking. Benjamin was probably the most fascinating and important theorist of vision (in the city) of the 20th century. One important part of experience and illumination is what he called the 'dialectics of seeing' The momentary recognition and illumination of past and present. I can't imagine an event like ' Apocatastasis' ( the restitution of all things after the end of time) being projected in words, as it could be on the screen. I have no doubt that Benjamin would have relished the idea of his life - or, in a more germane light, fragments of his life, being recast, re-projected on film, he was a great film goer, mostly 'silent', and took a keen interest in the technology of film and film production. But as it stands this new biography, despite some reservations, is overall the best general work/biography on Benjamin to have emerged. In terms of standard biography, it is unlikely to be surpassed for a long time.

I have long been fascinated by the life story and the writings of Walter Benjamin. Benjamin's life and works have taken on mythical powers over the past decades. This book combines a painstakingly detailed account of his life with deep critical analyses of his works, richly contextualized within the framework of his life story. It is a stunning work of scholarship, which reconstructs his life through his own letters and other documents as well as those of his friends and others in the circles in which he traveled. The book traces the odyssey of Walter Benjamin, including all of the places he lived in or visited, his relations with other writers and artists, his love affairs, his broken marriage, and his long phase of exile in Paris, leading to his final moment in Port Bou, where he took his own life in 1940. Of particular interest to me was his relationship with Bertolt Brecht and the long periods they spent together. Benjamin comes across as an intellectual vagabond, constantly seeking but never finding a permanent home in this world. He stubbornly maintains his integrity, refusing to take on any work outside of his calling as an intellectual and a writer, even though he is snubbed repeatedly by academia. His desperate efforts to sustain his own lifestyle, particularly in his later years, make him resemble his own figure of the "ragpicker"--hunting for scraps to support himself, and left to the largesse of his friends and associates, particularly those who recognized his genius. As the progression towards WWII picks up, the story becomes a Gravity's Rainbowesque tale full of picaresque characters who hinder or aid Benjamin in his quest to survive long enough to publish his greatest works. This book thus reads as much like a novel as a biography. No stone is left unturned--the authors even recreate the interior decor of the apartments he inhabited, including the artworks that he lovingly fixed to their walls. Among them is the famous Angel of Paul Klee, which he carried around almost to the end of his life, and which becomes the allegorical figure in one of his most chilling passages on history--the angel who is blown forward in time by the winds, but always looking back to the wreckage of history as it accumulates before him. This metaphor well describes Benjamin's own precarious existence as he hurtles towards his demise, pursued by Hitler's Furies.

As is freely admitted by Eiland & Jennings, Walter Benjamin is not the easiest of reads. This biography, securely anchored in Benjamin's writings, shines a bright, illuminating light on some of WB's most difficult works. Situating the texts in his specific life circumstances and in relation to his many illustrious interlocutors, these 2 Benjamin scholars have written one of the finest intellectual biographies of the postmodern period.

One of the truely most fascinating figures of the 20th century. And influential Critical Thinker who had virtualy gone unnotice during his own life time. Not unliked so many of the great intellectual artisans throughout history whose affect has been much later discuss and felt. His contribution to notion of Modernity, Technological Advancement and Art is so precient that its applicability even some 80 years later is very much relevant in this most chaotic of times. This is a Tribute not to just an extraodinary person but to a complex individual who refuse to be limited by the constraints of the societal norms of his constellation. I must and will take a much greater indebt view of his works.

Very good and complete biography

This is a compelling, well-written, and accessible biography of an uncompromising and enigmatic writer and public intellectual.I have been seeking such a literary biography to help me get a better handle on the influences and background to Benjamin's works such as Critique of Violence and the Arcades Project. The book provides this and much more, drawing judiciously on a multitude of sources, including his decades-long, sometimes prickly correspondence with dear friends. And what reader wouldn't be fascinated by his life? Without giving anything away, I can only say this biography offers surprising details and welcome nuances to the basic outline that many readers may already know. I think I will return to this book again and again in the coming years.

J'ignore s'il existe une traduction française de cet œuvre remarquable. Sinon, il faudrait se hâter de le faire.La biographie de Benjamin d'Eiland a l'immense intérêt, au-delà d'un récit pondéré, distancié, et néanmoins chaleureux de la vie du philosophe, d'exposer avec clarté et un grand respect pour sa complexité, voire pour sa paradoxalité, sa pensée dans toute son envergure. C'est une lecture longue et exigeante mais qui vaut la peine que l'on se donne.J'ai abordé cette lecture suite à un "pèlerinage" sur les traces de Benjamin, qui nous a amenés à travers les Pyrénées de Banyuls à Port Bou, jusqu'au lieu où il se serait donné la mort en fuyant les Nazis. Nous l'avons accompagné alors avec nos corps par une torride journée d'été, nous l'avons accompagné avec notre esprit en lisant cette remarquable biographie.