![]() "A man who concentrates before a work of art is absorbed by it.the distracted mass absorbs the work of art" (239). The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction ".from the honeycombs of memory he built a house for the swarm of his thoughts" (203). In such case translations are called for only because of the plurality of languages" (82). "Where a text is identical with truth or dogma, where it is supposed to be the 'true language' in all its literalness and without the mediation of meaning, this text is unconditionally translatable. Today, in our own dark time, Arendt’s work is being read with a new urgency, precisely because it provides such illumination. "Languages are not strangers to one another, but are, a priori and apart from all historical relationships, interrelated in what they want to express" (72). From behind paywall: In the preface to her 1968 collection of essays, Men in Dark Times, Hannah Arendt wrote: Even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination. A theme in this essay, as in others, is that the collector exists inside the collection the collection possesses the collector. "Writers are really people who write books.because they are dissatisfied with the books which they.do not like" (61). Illuminations includes Benjamins views on Kafka, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust (both of whom he translated. "Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories" (60). Authors: Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Harry Zohn Summary : Studies on contemporary art and culture by one of the most original, critical and analytical minds of this century. The best of the lot were his essay on Proust and the essay on art during the age of mass-production, the latter of which I will be returning to when I concentrate on William Gaddis's for my dissertation. Overall, his thoughts were stimulating, though they may not last. Out of all 10 essays, I felt that I was in a jungle of thoughts, only to happen upon shining treasure once in a while. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin’s life in a dark. This (or perhaps Harry Zohn's translation) could account for what I feel to be a lack of congruence in these essays. Illuminations also includes his penetrating study The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history. He did literary criticism but was not a literary critic he engaged in theological discourse, but was not a theologian, etc. Arendt sheds light on the crucial fact that Benjamin was nearly unclassifiable, especially in his lifetime. Essays and reflections from one of the twentieth centurys most original cultural critics, with an introduction by Hannah Arendt. Hannah Arendt's 51-page introduction is one of the finest introductions I've ever read-scholarly, compassionate, engaging it is not to be skipped, though I suggest that it be read after the compendium of Benjamin's essays. This, then, was my first experience with the German polymath. Walter Benjamin is a name, a thinker that I've encountered over and over throughout my years of reading-yet, I've never read his work directly.
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