Walter Benjamin's posthumously published collection of writings on hashish is a detailed blueprint for a book that was never written--a "truly exceptional book about hashish," as Benjamin describes it in a letter to his friend Gershom Scholem. A series of "protocols of drug experiments," written by himself and his co-participants between 1927 and 1934, together with short prose pieces that he published during his lifetime, On Hashish provides a peculiarly intimate portrait of Benjamin, venturesome as ever at the end of the Weimar Republic, and of his unique form of thought.
Consciously placing himself in a tradition of literary drug-connoisseurs from Baudelaire to Hermann Hesse, Benjamin looked to hashish and other drugs for an initiation into what he called "profane illumination." At issue here, as everywhere in Benjamin's work, is a new way of seeing, a new connection to the ordinary world. Under the influence of hashish, as time and space become inseparable, experiences become subtly stratified and resonant: we inhabit more than one plane in time. What Benjamin, in his contemporaneous study of Surrealism, calls "image space" comes vividly to life in this philosophical immersion in the sensuous.
This English-language edition of On Hashish features a section of supplementary materials--drawn from Benjamin's essays, letters, and sketches--relating to hashish use, as well as a reminiscence by his friend Jean Selz, which concerns a night of opium-smoking in Ibiza. A preface by Howard Eiland discusses the leading motifs of Benjamin's reflections on intoxication.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis.
Howard Eiland is an editor and translator of Benjamin’s writings.
Marcus Boon is Associate Professor of English at York University, Toronto.
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Book Description Soft cover. Condition: New. 1st Edition. Pristine, clean & tight copy, attractive in NEW condition. Introductory essay by Marcus Boon & 50 pages of Addenda, notes & index. "Benjamin's [hashish] experiments correspond quite precisely to the specific cognitive intentions articulated in his most fully developed philosophical texts, intentions that would find expression above all in the extraordinary ARCADES PROJECT. [He perceived] 'how deeply certain powers of intoxication are committed to Reason and its struggle for freedom.' Benjamin accurately saw how in the epoch of the decline and self-destruction of bourgeois society, both 'the more common productive forces of nature' and 'the more remote' forces---the powers of ecstasy---are 'perverted and spoiled.'"---Hermann Schweppenhauser. "The cultural context for ON HASHISH includes Marx, the Symbolist poets, Kafka, the emergence of mass culture, and the rise of fascism. The result is a one-of-a-kind fusion of grand ideas, longings for community, and the twists and turns of cannabinoid perception."---Gene Heyman, McLean Hospital researcher. Beautiful edition in French flaps, quite presentable & illuminating. Seller Inventory # RUB843
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Book Description Paperback / softback. Condition: New. New copy - Usually dispatched within 4 working days. Provides an intimate portrait of Walter Benjamin, venturesome at the end of the Weimar Republic, and of his unique form of thought. This English-language edition features a section of supplementary materials - drawn from Benjamin's essays, letters and sketches - relating to hashish use, as well as a reminiscence by his friend Jean Selz. Seller Inventory # B9780674022218
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