WALTER BENJAMIN: SELECTED WRITINGS: VOLUME 1: 1913-1926 - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing - ONLY COPY OF THE TRUE FIRST ONLINE

Benjamin, Walter (Translated by Various Contributors)

ISBN 10: 0674945859 / ISBN 13: 9780674945852

Editore: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996, 1996

Riguardo questo articolo

1st Printing. 520 pages. Published in 1996. Volume One of the author's collected essays. One of the greatest literary collections of the 20th century. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only and as part of Harvard University's Complete Works of Walter Benjamin. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Walter Benjamin's "Selected Writings: Volume 1: 1913-1926" in a felicitous English translation. The inaugural volume of the Series, a landmark publication in the history of modern thought and literary criticism. "Against conformism, homogeneity, and gentrification of all life into a new world order, Benjamin made the word his sword. Brings together essays long and short, academic treatises, reviews, fragments, and privately circulated pronouncements. Includes a number of his most important works: 'Two Poems by Friedrich Holderlin', 'Goethe's Elective Affinities', 'The Concept of Criticism In German Romanticism', 'The Task of The Translator', and 'One Way Street'. He is as compelling and insightful when musing on riddles or children's books as he is when dealing with weightier issues such as the philosophy of language, symbolic logic, or epistemology. We meet Benjamin the youthful idealist, the sober moralist, the political theorist, the experimentalist, the translator, and, above all, the virtual king of criticism, with his magisterial exposition of the basic problems of aesthetics" (Publisher's blurb). Walter Benjamin's personal heroism wasn't just some egotistical idea he had about himself. He lived and then died as a hero: He committed suicide on September 26, 1940 at the French-Spanish border while trying to escape the Nazis with a group of fellow Jews. They were all arrested by the Spanish police (Franco was one of Hitler's closest allies). Moved and humbled by his desperate yet principled stand, the Spanish police, defying Franco's orders, allowed his fellow Jews to escape. An absolute "must-have" title for Walter Benjamin collectors. This title is a great book. As far as we know, this is the only copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online are ALL subsequent printings or have serious flaws. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. The greatest literary/cultural critic of the 20th century. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER WALTER BENJAMIN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0674945859.

Codice articolo 20601

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: WALTER BENJAMIN: SELECTED WRITINGS: VOLUME 1: 1913-1926 - Rare Fine Copy of The First Hardcover Edition/First Printing - ONLY COPY OF THE TRUE FIRST ONLINE
• Editore: Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996
• Data di pubblicazione: 1996
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0674945859
• ISBN 13: 9780674945852
• Rilegatura: Hardcover
• Edizione: 1st Edition.
• Condizione: Fine
• Condizione della sovraccoperta: Fine
• Firmato: no

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Walter Benjamin was one of the most original and important critical voices of the twentieth century, but until now only a few of his writings have been available in English. Harvard University Press has now undertaken to publish a significant portion of his work in definitive translation, under the general editorship of Michael W. Jennings. This volume, the first of three, will at last give readers of English a true sense of the man and the mans' theets of his thought. A separate volume will consist of his book The Arcades Project, the magnum opus of his Paris years.

The writer Walter Benjamin emerged our of the head-on collision of an idealistic youth movement and the First World War, which Benjamin and his close friends thought immoral. He walked away from the wreck scarred yet determined "to be considered as the principal critic of German literature." But the scene as he found it was dominated by "talented fakes," so-to use his words-"only a terrorist campaign would I suffice" to effect radical change. This book offers the record of the first phase of that campaign, culminating with "One-Way Street," one of the most significant products of the German avant-garde of the Twenties. Against conformism, homogeneity, and gentrification of all life into a new world order, Benjamin made the word his sword.

Volume I of the Selected Writings brings together essays long and short, academic treatises, reviews, fragments, and privately circulated pronouncements. Fully five-sixths of this material has never before been translated into English. The contents begin in 1913, when Benjamin, as an undergraduate in imperial Germany, was president of a radical youth group, and take us through 1926, when he had already begun, with his explorations of the world of mass culture, to emerge as a critical voice in Weimar Germany's most influential journals.

The volume includes a number of his most important works, including "Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin," "Goethe's Elective Affinities," "The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism," "The Task of the Translator," and "One-Way Street." He is as compelling and insightful when musing on riddles or children's books as he is when dealing with weightier issues such as the philosophy of language, symbolic logic, or epistemology. We meet Benjamin the youthful idealist, the sober moralist, the political theorist, the experimentalist, the translator, and, above all, the virtual king of criticism, with his magisterial exposition of the basic problems of aesthetics.

Benjamin's sentences provoke us to return to them again and again, luring us as though with the promise of some final revelation that is always being postponed. He is by turns fierce and tender, melancholy and ebullient; he is at once classically rooted, even archaic, in his explorations of the human psyche and the world of things, and strikingly progressive in his attitude toward society and what he likes to call the organs of the collective (its architectures, fashions, signboards). Throughout, he displays a far-sighted urgency, judging the present on the basis of possible futures. And he is gifted with a keen sense of humor. Mysterious though he may sometimes be (his Latvian love, Asia Lacis, once described him as a visitor from another planet), Benjamin remains perhaps the most consistently surprising and challenging of critical writers.

Product Description

Book by Benjamin Walter