Early Writings (1910–1917)

Walter Benjamin, Howard Eiland

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780674024458
  9780674049932
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674269286
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Art Theory & Criticism

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, 1910-1917 rectifies 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
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations and a Note on the Texts
• Translator’s Introduction
• Chapter 1. The Poet (1910)
• Chapter 2. At Night: Thoughts Suggested by a Schumann Composition (1910)
• Chapter 3. The Three Who Sought Religion (1910)
• Chapter 4. Storm (1910)
• Chapter 5. Spring’s Hideaway (1910)
• Chapter 6. Sleeping Beauty (1911)
• Chapter 7. Diary, Pentecost 1911
• Chapter 8. The Free School Community (1911)
• Chapter 9. The Pan of Evening (ca. 1911)
• Chapter 10. Curriculum Vitae (1911)
• Chapter 11. Epilogue (1912)
• Chapter 12. School Reform: A Cultural Movement (1912)
• Chapter 13. Dialogue on the Religiosity of the Present (1912)
• Chapter 14. Quiet Story (ca. 1912)
• Chapter 15. Estranged Land (1913)
• Chapter 16. Teaching and Valuation (1913)
• Chapter 17. Romanticism: An Undelivered Address to Students (1913)
• Chapter 18. Moral Education (1913)
• Chapter 19. “Experience” (1913)
• Chapter 20. Thoughts on Gerhart Hauptmann’s Festival Play (1913)
• Chapter 21. The Aviator (ca. 1913)
• Chapter 22. Death of the Father: A Short Story (1913)
• Chapter 23. Romanticism: Reply of the “Unsanctified” (1913)
• Chapter 24. Youth Was Silent (1913)
• Chapter 25. Conversation on Love (ca. 1913)
• Chapter 26. The Metaphysics of Youth (1913–1914)
• Chapter 27. Student Authors’ Evenings (1913–1914)
• Chapter 28. Erotic Education (1913–1914)
• Chapter 29. The Religious Position of the New Youth (1914)
• Chapter 30. Two Poems by Friedrich Hölderlin:“The Poet’s Courage” and “Timidity” (1914–1915)
• Chapter 31. The Life of Students (1914–1915)
• Chapter 32. A Child’s View of Color (1914–1915)
• Chapter 33. The Rainbow: A Conversation about Imagination (ca. 1915)
• Chapter 34. The Rainbow, or The Art of Paradise (ca. 1915)
• Chapter 35. The Happiness of Ancient Man (1916)
• Chapter 36. Socrates (1916)
• Chapter 37. On the Middle Ages (1916)
• Chapter 38. Trauerspiel and Tragedy (1916)
• Chapter 39. The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and Tragedy (1916)
• Chapter 40. On Language as Such and on the Language of Man (1916)
• Chapter 41. Aphorisms (ca. 1916–1917)
• Chapter 42. Balzac (ca. 1916–1917)
• Chapter 43. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot (1917)
• Chapter 44. On Seeing the Morning Light (1917)
• Chapter 45. The Centaur (1917)
• Credits
• Index