Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice book in great condition. Pages in excellent unsed condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> The goal I had set for myself has not yet been totally realized but I am finally getting close. The goal is that I be considered the foremost critic of German literature. The problem is that literary criticism is no longer considered a serious genre in Germany and has not been for more than fifty years. If you want to carve out a reputation in the area of criticism this ultimately means that you must recreate criticism as a genre. ( COR p. 359) This is a particularly ironic and peculiarly appropriate statement. It is ironic because of Benjamin’s own precarious marginal situation at the time of writing: the enforced withdrawal of his Habilitations- schrift’ a few years earlier had ended any hope of an academic career and he was now limited to eking out an indigent living as a freelance writer reviewer and translator and even as the author and narrator of radio broadcasts for children. Indeed Benjamin was to return to Paris only a couple of years later in the even more impoverished guise of a refugee fleeing Nazi tyranny. If Benjamin was to become the ‘foremost critic of German literature’ it was to be an expertise in exile. (SP)