Walter benjamin illuminations essays for scholarships

He owned a number of investments in Berlin, including ice skating rinks.

Jul 09, Sebastien rated it really liked it These are meandering thoughts on the book especially on Benjamin's Mechanical Reproduction essay. If you have any thoughts, insights, critique on my view I appreciate any comments. The topic of art is something I'm endlessly fascinated by and always love discussing!

I loved the preface by Hannah Arendt, gives insight into mindset and analytical style of Benjamin.

Illuminations Quotes by Walter Benjamin

Offers perceptive bio framing his life against historical issues and cultural landscape including situation of Jewish bourgeoisie i These are meandering thoughts on the book especially on Benjamin's Mechanical Reproduction essay. I had no idea of this backstory. There are several essays on Kafka and Proust.

Very interesting, Proust is kind of a weird guy but Benjamin offers a lot of insightful commentary on his life and how this influenced Proust's work and his way of dealing with time, memory, past, present, and how this all plays a role in examination of the self.

Makes me want to read some Proust but not sure I have the patience for it either, seems very solipsistic and maybe a different time and place in my life I would have been more intrigued This is a very good essay as it hits upon a lot of interesting insights but I have some issues.

Let me preface this by saying that I think Benjamin truly knows how to dance around and with a subject, poking and prodding it allowing him to expertly and gradually drill to core issues.

So sometimes I disagree with his tone or view, but his insights are keen. In this realm he references Alduous Huxley, who brandishes a viewpoint I find mindblowingly elitist and aggravating to my sensibilities. To reduce it, Huxley comes across as the type of guy who thinks only one type of person genius is fit to produce art his example is based on the art of writinghis view is that a greater amount of people creating due to greater amount of reading public has led to a high output of garbage art literally he calls it garbage!

How can one apply such qualitative assessments on what is good and therefore deserves to be made? I know there are things I think are good but it doesn't mean it is universally good, it merely means it speaks to me and has some meaning for me. I tend to gravitate towards things that fit my tastes based on style, technique, themes, but I also search for work where the artist seems to have managed to put some truth of their life or experience within their work which I always consider an accomplishment.

Yes it transcends mere passing of information, it is often more ethereal and abstract, nebulous. Of course I judge art based on my time, place, upbringing, experiences, views, tastes, and am influenced by the people and culture around me, but I will never say something is universally good or great, tastes wax and wane and vary across cultures, all that matters is that something speaks to us.

Essays and reflections from one of the twentieth century’s most original cultural critics, with an introduction by Hannah Arendt. Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and philosophy/5(6). For readers whose familiarity with Benjamin does not extend far past well-worn sections of Illuminations or Reflections, the essays in the first section are a welcome addition to the ongoing effort to understand a notoriously dense entry in his canon. Illuminations includes Benjamin's views on Kafka, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust (both of whom he translated), his essays /5(7).

He is more about looking at issues and stripping the veneer off the subject matter to get a better look at it, look at how the machinery works and how it has evolved. It is a very good essay and hits so many interesting points, and there is just so much to talk about.

He seems to place traditional art forms painting on a pedestal, I feel he has a lot of nostalgia for this mode.

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In his eyes the modern art techniques like film are not all bad, in fact they have a lot of potential due to the force of their democratizing possibilities, but they also feature a capacity to exploit, dominate, indoctrinate, and subjugate people.

In a similar vein in these eras many paintings were commissioned by powerful elites to project power. And acknowledging this doesn't mean I don't like this work, in fact there is a lot of art from this era - most especially the Northern Renaissance - that I love for multiple reasons, including craftsmanship and style of certain works but also the historical and cultural aspects of the works.For readers whose familiarity with Benjamin does not extend far past well-worn sections of Illuminations or Reflections, the essays in the first section are a welcome addition to the ongoing effort to understand a notoriously dense entry in his canon.

private study, scholarship, or research. If electronic transmission of reserve material is used for purposes the Translator" originally appeared in English in Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, edited by Hannah Arendt, English translation copyright© by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.

"On Language as Such Benjamin, Walter, in English. In French a different selection of Benjamin's essays published in , also called Illuminations, excited little interest except for a cloudy essay by Pierre Missac in Critique (23 [], ).

In German there is now a large body of comment, partly collected in a little Suhrkamp volume, Uber Walter Benjamin ().

Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings by Walter Benjamin

Essays and reflections from one of the twentieth century’s most original cultural critics, with an introduction by Hannah Arendt. Walter Benjamin was an icon of criticism, renowned for his insight on art, literature, and caninariojana.coms: Illuminations includes Benjamin's views on Kafka, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust (both of whom he translated), his essays /5(29).

Hannah Arendt called Walter Benjamin "the outstanding literary critic of the twentieth century" when she introduced him to English-language readers in with the selection of essays entitled Illuminations.

Since then, his life and work have entered the domain of literary legend.