Walter Benjamin's Archive: Images, Texts, SignsThe work of the great literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin is an audacious plotting of history, art and thought; a reservoir of texts, commentaries, scraps and fragments of everyday life, art and dreams. It comprises myriad smaller archives, in which Benjamin gathered together all kinds of artefacts, assortments of images, texts and signs, themselves representing experiences, ideas and hopes, each of which was enthusiastically logged, systematized and analyzed by their author. In them, Benjamin laid the groundwork for the salvaging of his own legacy. This unique book, produced in association with the Benjamin Archive, delves into these archives. They include carefully laid-out manuscripts; photograps of a home with luxurious furniture, arcades, Russian toys; picture postcards from Tuscany and the Balearics; meticulous and unconventional registers, card indexes and catalogs; notebooks, in which every single square centimeter is covered; a collation of his son’s first words and sentences; riddles and enigmatic Sibyls. Everything here is subtly interlinked with everything else. Intricate and intimate, Walter Benjamin’s Archive leads right into the core of his work, yielding a rich and detailed portrait of its author. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
amongst ander appears Arcades Project archive asks Baudelaire Benjamin wrote Benjamin-Archiv Benjamin's bequest Berlin brainteasers cardboard box Catalogue collection collector colored Compare GS 11.3 concept Correspondence denen deren doll Dora drafts dream Elective Affinities essay everything fairytale figure Fourier Franz Kafka Germaine Krull German Gershom Scholem Gimignano Grandville Grete GS IV.2 habe Heinle Ibiza Julien Green Kafka Karl Kraus Kraus language layout letters manuscript material Moscow Moscow Diary motifs Mummy notebook notes novel objects once One-Way Street Papa paper Paris Arcades Passagen passion picture postcards play published recto Rose of Success Russian toys San Gimignano says schon scraps script Selz sheet Sibyl side Siena Stefan Steffe story things thought unserer verso viel Volterra wall Walter Benjamin weiß Werk Werner Kraft wieder Wissen words writing