Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings

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.

Meet my friend WalterA bit in the manner of Conrad, Benjamin invites the reader to join him for a chat, and then proceeds to spin a complicit web of observations and images difficult to put down.Ideal companion for a voyage or a quiet afternoon, short sketches grow and grow, perceptive European cityscapes from the 30's (Naples, Marseille, Moskow) amuse and inform, while thoughtful reflextions return to the reader many days later. Bon voyage

Lincoln said it first: if this is the kind of thing you like, this is the thing you will like. I'm a writer who admires the great critical essayists/philosspher theorists. Benjamin is universally acknowledged to be among the very best.

This was is a beautiful introduction to critical theory, by a writer who's worldview was shaped by the horrors of the Holocaust. Never stops being relevant.

Kraus and Critique of Violence are essential.

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

Very dense writing. A great intellect, but you have to hang in there. It's easier when Benjamin is writing about cities, or personal experiences.

As signs that what was really desired a hundred years ago like the promise of a new age could be put into words as the lack of what users of the internet now get for stump, stomp, snort, and chortle, is an attempt to picture the crisis of the arts then. Walter Benjamin quotes the following words from Apollinaire's L'esprit nouveau et les poetes (1918);For the speed and simplicitywith which we have all becomeused to referring by a single wordto such complex entities as a crowd,a nation, the universe, there is nomodern equivalent in literature. But today'swriters fill this gap; their synthetic workscreate new realities the plastic manifestationsof which are just as complex as those referredto by the words standing for collectives. (p. 184).The conquests of science rest far more ona surrealistic than on a logical thinking. (p. 185).

Wonderful. What can be said, it's Walter Benjamin! It begins with Proust like remembrances of Benjamin's Berlin youth and progresses to his theoretical - though that term hardly suits Benjamin’s eclectic style - essays on violence, Karl Kraus, Brecht and so on. Great compliment to Illuminations, which contains the seminal texts of Benjamin; his Theses on History and his work on Baudelaire. For some equally illuminating secondary literature, see Susan Buch-Morrs work, especially her book on Benjamin's Arcades Project.

E sempre bello leggere questo libro e il pensiero di Benjamin. È una buona pubblicazione tra l'altro, assieme alla prefazione.

a bit used as seller described, but not much. I really needed this for an exam and it arrived quickly and it was cheap :)