![]() Ignoring the epistemological character and political intent of Benjamin's approach, in fact, undercuts any determination of how his enterprise furthers or hinders the critical enterprise. Simply enjoying his diverse insights into the seemingly insignificant details of everyday existence, suggesting that he is engaged in a postmodern form of "playing" with language," dishonors his achievements. Too many admirers avoid dealing with the gaps in his thought as well as the specific nature of his contribution or the contradictions in his peculiar form of messianic materialism. 37ff.)Īll this would be well and good if the reception did not subvert the critical quality in his thinking. ("The Beatification of Walter Benjamin" in The New Criterion (June, 1990), pgs. In a superficial piece of intellectual biography, which actually confronts none of Benjamin's important works other than a single essay, an insulting and unscholarly attempt to debunk his influence and achievements was undertaken by Richard Vine. This has now produced a response from the right. Indeed, beyond the intrinsic worth of his works, external factors of this sort have helped turn Walter Benjamin into an intelectual cult figure. And then there is a prevailing intellectual cultural climate which not only prizes these values, but renders suspect the very attempt to formulate an internally consistent argument. Other factors are at work: his spirituality, his personal idiocyncracies, his preoccupation with the most varied esoteric interests, his Marxism, his submersion in everyday life, his life as an outcast. Ironically, however, his extraordinary fame does not simply derive from that. Excellent work on his legacy has, in fact, been done by a host of scholars. He is embraced by everyone from linguistic formalists to fashionable marxists and postmodernists. Benjamin has become a pillar of the literary establishment. His intellectual standing has now reached almost mythical proportions, and it is not Marxists alone who quote him like "holy writ." (Gershom Scholem, "Walter Benjamin and His Angel" in On Jews and Judaism in Crisis ed. Nevertheless, it was only with the popularity gained by the Frankfurt School during the student movement of the 1960s that this wish of Walter Benjamin was truly fulfilled. They wrote reminiscences and spread his name around academic networks. They published his correspondence, individual works, and volumes of his selected writings in the 1950s. Harry Zohn (New York, 1969) it was also included in her own essay collection Men in Dark Times (New York, 1973). Decisive for the reception of Benjamin in America was the article, which originally appeared in The New Yorker by Hannah Arendt and then served as the introduction to her edition of Benjamin's Illuminations trans. Adorno, Hannah Arendt, and Gershom Scholem - who themselves only rose to genuine fame after the war - was his work rediscovered. Only due to the efforts of friends like Theodor W. ![]() 47ff.) Similarly, while his acquaintances ranged from Brecht and Hoffmansthal to Gide and Valery, he was always on the verge of poverty and died fleeing the Nazis in 1940 at the age of 48, virtually unknown. Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, 1991), pg. But his greatest work, the thousand page compilation of notes and citations for The Arcades Project, was never completed. 72-3 also note the similar reception of Karl Kraus regarding Benjamin's laudatory essay on his work, pg.120ff.) Some unique autobiograpical writings for what would become Berlin Childhood Around 1900, a compilation of aphorisms entitled One-Way Street, a few scholarly books, a remarkable set of literary studies, and numerous articles for major newspapers. The translator of Baudelaire and Proust, he had authored The Origin of German Tragic Drama, (Note the evaluations regarding its incomprehensibility by Hans Cornelius and Franz Schutz in Walter Benjamin 1892- 1940: Eine Austellung bearbeitet von Rolf Tiedemann et. Adorno (Frankfurt/Main), 1966 2:505.) His output was already impressive. He wished, in 1930, "to be considered as the premier critic of German literature." (Benjamin, Briefe 2 Bde.
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