Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 1: 1913-1926

534 Pages·1996·37.43 MB·English

by  Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin
SELECTED WRITINGS
VOLUME 1
1913-1926
Edited by Marcus Bullock
and Michael W. Jennings
THE BELKNAP PRESS OF
HARVARD UN|VERS|TY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
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Copyright© 1996 bythePresidentandFellowsofHarvard College
All rights reserved
Printed intheUnited States ofAmerica
Fifthprinting, 2002
Thisworkisa translationofselectionsfromWalterBenjamin, GesammelteSchriften, unterMitwirkung
uon Theodor W. AdomoundGershomScholem, herausgegebenvon RolfTiedemannundHermann
Schweppenhzliuser, copyright© 1972, 1974, 1977, 1982, 1985, 1989 bySuhrkampVerlag. “TheTaskof
theTranslator" originallyappearedinEnglishinWalterBenjamin,Illuminations, editedbyHannah
Arendt,Englishtranslationcopyright© 1968 byHarcourtBracejovanovich,Inc. “On Language asSuch
andtheLanguageofMan,” “FateandCharacter," “CritiqueofViolence,” “Naples,” and “One-Way
Street” originallyappeared inEnglishinWalterBenjamin, Re ections,Englishtranslationcopyright
© 1978 byHarcourtBraceJovanovich.Inc.Publishedby arrangementwithHarcourt Bracejovanovich,
Inc. “One—WayStreet” alsoappearedinWalterBenjamin, “One—WayStreet”andOther Writings (Lon-
don: NLB/Verso, 1979, 1985). “Socrates” and “OntheProgram ofthe ComingPhilosophy” originally
appeared inEnglishin The PhilosophicalForum 15,nos. 1-2 (1983-1984).
Publicationofthis bookhas been aided by agrant from InterNationes, Bonn.
Frontispiece:WalterBenjamin,Paris, 1927.PhotobyGermaineKrull. CollectionGarySmith,Berlin.
Library ofCongress Cataloging—in—Publicati0nData
Benjamin, Walter, 1892-1940.
[Selections. English. 1996]
Selectedwritings/WalterBenjamin;edited byMarcus Bullock and MichaelW.Jennings.
“Tph.iscwmo.rk isa translationofselectionsfromWalterBenjamin, Gesammelte Schriften . . .
copyright 1972 . . . by SuhrkampVerlag”-—T.p. verso.
Includesindex.
Contents: v. 1. 1913-1926.
ISBN 0-674-94585-9 (v. 1: alk. paper)
I. Bullock, MarcusPaul, 1944- . II.Jennings, MichaelWilliam. III. Title.
PT2603.E455A26 1996
838291209-—dC20 96-23027
Designed by Gwen Ftankfeldt
ontents
METAPHYSICS OF YOUTH, 1913-1919
“Experience” 3
The Metaphysics of Youth 6
Two Poems by Friedrich Holderlin 18
The Life of Students 37
Aphorisms on Imagination and Color 48
A Child’s View of Color 50
Socrates 52
Tmuerspiel and Tragedy 55
The Role of Language in Trauerspiel and Tragedy 59
On Language as Such and on the Language of Man 62
Theses on the Problem of Identity 75
Dostoevsky’s The Idiot 78
Painting and the Graphic Arts 82
Painting, or Signs and Marks 83
The Ground of Intentional Immediacy 87
The Object: Triangle 90
Perception Is Reading 92
On Perception 93
vi Contents
Comments on Gundolf’s Goethe 97
On the Program of the Coming Philosophy 100
Stifter 111
Unlimited Condition of the Will 114
Every
Types of History 115
The Concept of Criticism in German Romanticism 116
Fate and Character 201
Analogy and Relationship 207
The Paradox of the Cretan 210
The Currently Effective Messianic Elements 213
ANGELU5 NOVUS, 1920-1926
The Theory of Criticism 217
Categories of Aesthetics 220
On Semblance 223
World and Time 226
According to the Theory of Duns Scotus 228
On Love and Related Matters 229
The Right to Use Force 231
The Medium through Which Works of Art Continue to In uenceLater
Ages 235
Critique of Violence 236
The Task of the Translator 253
Notes for a Study of the Beauty of Colored Illustrations in Children’s
Books 264
Riddle and Mystery 267
Outline for a Ha/vilitation Thesis 269
Language and Logic (I—III) 272
Theory of Knowledge 276
Truth and Truths / Knowledge and Elements of Knowledge 278
Imagination 280
Beauty and Semblance 283
\.)\JllI.\ol1|.3 V11
The Philosophy of History of the Late Romantics and the Historical
School 284
The Meaning ofTime in the Moral Universe 286
Capitalism as Religion 288
Announcement of the Journal Angelus Not/us 292
Goethe’s Elective Af nities 297
Baudelaire (II, III) 361
Ca1derén’s El Mayor Monstruo, Los Celos and Hebbel’s Herodes und
Mariamne 363
Letter to Florens Christian Rang 387
Stages of Intention 391
Outline of the Psychophysical Problem 393
Even the Sacramental Migrates into Myth 402
On the Topic of Individual Disciplines and Philosophy 404
“Old Forgotten Children’s Books” 406
Naples 414
Curriculum Vitae (I) 422
Re ectionson Humboldt 424
Review of Bernoulli’s Bacbofen 426
Johann Peter Hebel (I): On the Centenary of His Death 428
Johann Peter Hebel (II): A Picture Puzzle for the Centenary of His
Death 432
A Glimpse into the World of Children’s Books 435
One—Way Street 444
A Note on the Texts 489
Chronology, 1892-1926 490
Index 516
Metaphysics
of Youth, 1913 -1919
Walter Benjamin as a student, 1912. Photographer unknown.
Werkbund Archiv, Berlin.
xperience”
In our struggle for responsibility, we ghtagainst someone who is masked.
The mask of the adult is called “experience.” It is expressionless, impene-
trable, and ever the same. The adult has always already experienced [erlebt]
everything: youth, ideals, hopes, woman. It was all illusion.—Often we feel
intimidated or embittered. Perhaps he is right. What can our retort be? We
have not yet experienced [erfubren] anything.
But let us attempt to raise the mask. What has this adult experienced?
What does he wish to prove to us? This above all: he, too, was once young;
he, too, wanted what we wanted; he, too, refused to believe his parents, but
life has taught him that they were right. Saying this, he smiles in a superior
fashion: this will also happen to us—in advance he devalues the years we
will live, making them into a time of sweet youthful pranks, of childish
rapture, before the long sobriety of serious life. Thus the well—meaning, the
enlightened. We know other pedagogues whose bitterness will not even
concede to us the briefyears ofyouth; serious and grim, they want to push
us directly into life’s drudgery. Both attitudes devalue and destroy ouryears.
More and more we are assailed by the feeling: our youth is but a briefnight
(fill it with rapturel); it will be followed by grand “experience,” the years
of compromise, impoverishment of ideas, and lack of energy. Such is life.
That is what adults tell us, and that is what they experienced.
Yes, that is their experience, this one thing, never anything different: the
meaninglessness of life. Its brutality. Have they ever encouraged us to
anything great or new or forward-looking? Oh, no, precisely because these
are things one cannot experience. All meaning—the true, the good, the
beautiful—is grounded within itself. What, then, does experience signify?—