Early writings, 1910-1917

✍ Scribed by Benjamin, Walter;Eiland, Howard

• Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 307
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Walter Benjamin became a published writer at the age of seventeen. Yet the first stirrings of this most original of critical minds--penned during the years in which he transformed himself from the comfortable son of a haute-bourgeois German Jewish family into the nomadic, uncompromising philosopher-critic we have since come to appreciate--have until now remained largely unavailable in English.Early Writings, 1910-1917rectifies this situation, documenting the formative intellectual experiences of one of the twentieth century's most resolutely independent thinkers.

Here we see the young Benjamin in his various roles as moralist, cultural critic, school reformer, and poet-philosopher. The diversity of interest and profundity of thought characteristic of his better-known work from the 1920s and 30s are already in evidence, as we witness the emergence of critical projects that would occupy Benjamin throughout his intellectual career: the role of the present in historical remembrance, the relationship of the intellectual to political action, the idea of truth in works of art, and the investigation of language as the veiled medium of experience.

Even at this early stage, a recognizably Benjaminian way of thinking comes into view--a daring, boundary-crossing enterprise that does away with classical antitheses in favor of the relentlessly-seeking critical consciousness that produced the groundbreaking works of his later years. With the publication of these early writings, our portrait of one of the most significant intellects of the twentieth century edges closer to completion.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Title Page......Page 2
Copyright......Page 3
Table of Contents......Page 4
Abbreviations. and a Note on the Texts......Page 6
Translator's Introduction......Page 7
1. The Poet (1910)......Page 20
2. At Night: Thoughts Suggested by a Schumann Composition (1910)......Page 22
3. The Three Who Sought Religion (1910)......Page 24
4. Storm (1910)......Page 28
5. Spring's Hideaway (1910)......Page 30
6. Sleeping Beauty (1911)......Page 32
7. Diary, Pentecost 1911......Page 39
8. The Free School Community (1911)......Page 45
9. The Pa11 of Evening (ca. 1911)......Page 52
10. Curriculum Yitae (1911)......Page 55
11. Epilogue (1912)......Page 59
12. School Reform: A Cultural Movement (1912)......Page 63
13. Dialogue on the Religiosity of the Present (1912)......Page 68
14. Quiet Story (ca. 1912)......Page 91
15. Estranged Land (1913)......Page 94
16. Teaching and Valuation (1913)......Page 96
17. Romanticism: An Undelivered Address to Students (1913)......Page 107
18. Moral Education (1913)......Page 113
19. "Experience" (1913)......Page 122
20. Thoughts on Gerhart Hauptmann's Festival Play (1913)......Page 126
21. The Aviator (ca. 1913)......Page 132
22. Death of the Father: A Short Story (1913)......Page 134
23. Romanticism: Reply of the "Unsanctified" (1913)......Page 138
24. Youth Was Silent (1913)......Page 141
25. Conversation on Love (ca. 1913)......Page 145
26. The Metaphysics of Youth (1913-1914)......Page 150
27. Student Authors' Evenings (1913-1914)......Page 167
28. Erotic Education (1913-1914)......Page 172
29. The Religious Position of the New Youth (1914)......Page 174
30. Two Poems by Friedrich Holderlin (1914-1915)......Page 177
31. The Life of Students (1914-1915)......Page 203
32. A Child's View of Color (1914-1915)......Page 217
33. The Rainbow: A Conversation about Imagination (ca. 1915)......Page 220
34. The Rainbow, or The Art of Paradise (ca. 1915)......Page 230
35. The Happiness of Ancient Man (1916)......Page 234
36. Socrates (1916)......Page 239
37. On the Middle Ages (1916)......Page 244
38. Trauerspiel and Tragedy (1916)......Page 247
39. The Rofe of Language in Trauerspiel and Tragedy (1916)......Page 252
40. On Language as Such and on the Language of Man (1916)......Page 257
41. Aphorisms (ca. 1916-1917)......Page 276
42. Balzac (ca. 1916-1917)......Page 279
43. Dostoevsky's The Idiot (1917)......Page 281
44. On Seeing the Morning Light (1911)......Page 287
45. The Centaur (1917)......Page 289
Credits......Page 292
Index......Page 295

✦ Subjects

Philosophy;Theory