Benjamin Walter Translated Howard Eiland (11 results)

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.

Soft cover. Condition: Fine. No Jacket. 1st Edition. * AS PICTURED * FIRST EDITION, First Printing Thus, 2006. A tight, bright, clean copy with no markings or inscriptions and minimal evidence of wear to laminated wraps. Spine uncreased. Not price-clipped ($14.95). FREE POSTAGE WITHIN THE U.K. Buyers from outside the U.K. quoted Shipping cost before commitment. (proceeds donated to the Motor Neurone Disease Association).

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. NEW: First Edition (Orig. 1999) First Printing: NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, NEW jet-black library-durable coated linen-over-boards cover w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, NEW blued-gray end-papers on light card-stock (Marred only by a discrete name penned in the inside-front upper-right corner), IMMACULATE unmarked smooth-cut text-block exterior MARRED only by moderate incidence of slight rust-spotting, NEW perfect binding w/ tight signatures & uncreased spine, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 2.06", 1.36 kg, x+870 (880) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: In the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse & mourning political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic & public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of "Selected Writings", covering the years 1927 to 1934, displays the full spectrum of Benjamin's achievements at this pivotal stage in his career. Previously concerned chiefly w/ literary theory, Benjamin during these Years does pioneering work in new areas, from the study of popular Culture (a discipline he virtually created) to theories of the media & the visual arts. His writings on the theory of modernity--most of them new to readers of English--develop ideas as important to an understanding of the 20th century as an contained in his widely anthologized essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility.This volume brings together previously untranslated writings on major figures such as Brecht, Valéry & Gide, & on subjects ranging from film, radio, & the novel to memory, kitsch, & the theory of language. We find the manifoldly inquisitive Benjamin musing on the new modes of perception opened tip by techniques of photographic enlargement & cinematic montage, on the life & work of & Goethe at Weimar, on the fascination of old toys & the mysteries of food, & on the allegorical significance of Mickey Mouse. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL (or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee) & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to all international destinations.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. NEW: First Edition (Orig. 1996) First Printing: NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, NEW jet-black library-durable coated linen-over-boards cover w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, NEW blued-gray end-papers on light card-stock (Marred only by a discrete name penned in the inside-front upper-right corner), IMMACULATE unmarked smooth-cut text-block exterior, NEW perfect binding w/ tight signatures & uncreased spine, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 2.06", 1.36 kg, x+870 (880) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: In the frenzied final years of the Weimar Republic, amid economic collapse & mourning political catastrophe, Walter Benjamin emerged as the most original practicing literary critic & public intellectual in the German-speaking world. Volume 2 of "Selected Writings", covering the years 1927 to 1934, displays the full spectrum of Benjamin's achievements at this pivotal stage in his career. Previously concerned chiefly w/ literary theory, Benjamin during these Years does pioneering work in new areas, from the study of popular Culture (a discipline he virtually created) to theories of the media & the visual arts. His writings on the theory of modernity--most of them new to readers of English--develop ideas as important to an understanding of the 20th century as an contained in his widely anthologized essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Technological Reproducibility.This volume brings together previously untranslated writings on major figures such as Brecht, Valéry & Gide, & on subjects ranging from film, radio, & the novel to memory, kitsch, & the theory of language. We find the manifoldly inquisitive Benjamin musing on the new modes of perception opened tip by techniques of photographic enlargement & cinematic montage, on the life & work of & Goethe at Weimar, on the fascination of old toys & the mysteries of food, & on the allegorical significance of Mickey Mouse. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL (or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee) & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to all international destinations.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. NEW: First Edition (Orig. 2002) First Printing: NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, NEW jet-black library-durable coated linen-over-boards cover w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, IMPECCABLE blued-gray end-papers on light card-stock, IMMACULATE unmarked smooth-cut text-block exterior, NEW perfect binding w/ tight signatures & uncreased spine, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.24", 0.86 kg, viii+462 (470) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: Radical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness, yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie--such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930s. This volume, the 3d in a 4-volume set, offers 27 brilliant pieces, 19 of which have never before been translated. The centerpiece, "A Berlin Childhood around 1900", marks the first appearance in English of one of the greatest German works of the 20th century: a profound & beautiful account of the vanished world of Benjamin's privileged boyhood, recollected in exile. No less remarkable are the previously untranslated second version of Benjamin's most famous essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility," w/ its striking insights into the relations between technology & aesthetics, & "German Men and Women", a book in which Benjamin collects 26 letters by distinguished Germans from 1783 to 1883 in an effort to preserve what he called the true humanity of German tradition from the debasement of fascism.Volume 3 also offers extensively annotated translations of essays that are key to Benjamin's rewriting of the story of modernism & modernity--such as "The Storyteller" & "Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century"--as well as a fascinating diary from 1938 & penetrating studies of Bertolt Brecht, Franz Kafka, & Eduard Fuchs. A narrative chronology details Benjamin's life during these four harrowing years of his exile in France & Denmark. This is an essential collection for anyone interested in his work. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL (or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee) & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to all international destinations.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. NEW: First Edition (Orig. 2003) First Printing: NEW mylar-protected jacket w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, NEW jet-black library-durable coated linen-over-boards cover w/ sharp NEW edges & corners, IMMACULATE unmarked smooth-cut text-block exterior, IMPECCABLE blued-gray end-papers on light card-stock, NEW perfect binding w/ tight signatures & uncreased spine, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed on EXCELLENT unblemished archival paper * 6.50" x 9.50" x 1.22", 0.86 kg, vi+477 (483) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: "Every line we succeed in publishing today . . . is a victory wrested from the powers of darkness." So wrote Walter Benjamin in January 1940. Not long afterward, he himself would fall prey to those powers, a victim of suicide following a failed attempt to flee the Nazis. However insistently the idea of catastrophe hangs over Benjamin's writings in the final years of his life, the "victories wrested" in this period nonetheless constitute some of the most remarkable 20th-century analyses of the emergence of modern society. The essays on Charles Baudelaire are the distillation of a lifetime of thinking about the nature of modernity. They record the crisis of meaning experienced by a civilization sliding into the abyss, even as they testify to Benjamin's own faith in the written word. This volume ranges from studies of Baudelaire, Brecht, & the historian Carl Jochmann to appraisals of photography, film, & poetry. At their core is the question of how art can survive & thrive in a tumultuous time. Here we see Benjamin laying out an ethic for the critic and artist--a subdued but resilient heroism. At the same time, he was setting forth a socio-historical account of how art adapts in an age of violence & repression. Working at the height of his powers to the very end, Benjamin refined his theory of the mass media that culminated in the final version of his essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility." Also included in this volume is his influential piece "On the Concept of History," completed just before his death. The book is remarkable for its inquiry into the nature of "the modern" (especially as revealed in Baudelaire), for its ideas about the transmogrification of art & the radical discontinuities of history, & for its examples of humane life and thought in the midst of barbarism. The entire collection is eloquent testimony to the indomitable spirit of humanity under siege. * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL (or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee) & via USPS FIRST CLASS INTERNATIONAL AIRMAIL to all international destinations.

Hardcover. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. 1st Edition. META-CLASSIC: MONUMENTAL: NEW First Edition hardcover (Orig. 1999) Unstated First Printing, NEW handsomely-designed unpriced mylar-protected jacket, NEW cover w/ library-durable navy-blue fabric wrapping spine & extending 2.36" onto front & back panels covered in slate-blue paper w/ a portrait of Walter Benjamin printed blue-on-blue on front panel, STRIKING "electric-blue" card-stock end-papers, EXCELLENT unblemished smooth-cut text-block exterior, NEW sewn binding w/ tight signatures, PRISTINE interior handsomely printed in Adobe Bethold Baskerville Book & Bodoni on 45-pound Glatfelter Offset Hi-Opaque paper * 6.86" x 10.18" x 2.12", 1.86 kg, xiv+1074 (1098) pp * ABOUT THE BOOK: "To great writers," Walter Benjamin once wrote, "finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives." Conceived in Paris in 1927 & still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, "The Arcades Project" (in German "Das Passagen-Werk") is a monumental ruin, meticulously constructed over the course of 13 years: "the theater," as Benjamin called it, "of all my struggles & all my ideas." Focusing on the arcades of 19th-century Paris--glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centers of consumerism--Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, & reflections on, 100s of published sources, arranging them in 36 categories w/ descriptive rubrics such as "Fashion," "Boredom," "Dream City," "Photography," "Catacombs," "Advertising," "Prostitution," "Baudelaire," & "Theory of Progress." His central preoccupation is what he calls the commodification of things--a process in which he locates the decisive shift to the modern age. "The Arcades Project" is Benjamin's effort to represent & to critique the bourgeois experience of 19th-century history, &, in so doing, to liberate the suppressed "true history" that underlay the ideological mask. In the bustling, cluttered arcades, street & interior merge & historical time is broken up into kaleidoscopic distractions & displays of ephemera. Here, at a distance from what is normally meant by "progress," Benjamin finds the lost time(s) embedded in the spaces of things. * HIGHEST PRAISE: "Quite simply, 'The Arcades Project' is one of the 20th-century's greatest efforts of historical comprehension, even in its fragmentary form. And the fragmentary form is in any case not untrue to Benjamin's over-all intentions. The book would surely have remained a palimpsest of quotations, for reasons Benjamin several times explains in his writings: the palimpsest is Benjamin's form, his own eccentric effort at totalization." -T.J. Clark, author of "Farewell to an Idea" * "More than half a century after it was composed, Walter Benjamin's fragmentary 'Arcades Project' still surpasses all other historiographic projects on the 19th-century & its capital, Paris. 'The Arcades Project' remains unequaled in the wealth of perspectives it offers, & no other study has come close to its methodological inventiveness or so exemplarily met its demand that history writing be reinvented for every topic & on every occasion. Benjamin's work is the most advanced, most complex, & most comprehensive study of the dominant motifs of the 19th century--motifs that continue to be critically important for us today." -Werner Hamacher, author of 'Premises' * SHIPPING: MNEMOSYNE carefully wraps, labels & custom-packages this fine book for FREE domestic shipment via USPS MEDIA MAIL or USPS PRIORITY MAIL for a below-cost additional fee & due to its weight to international destinations via postal-regulation-mandated USPS INTERNATIONAL PRIORITY AIRMAIL at nation-by-nation rates available on request.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. First edition. Date on title page. No additional edition or printing indicated. Fine, if not new hardback in fine, if not new unpriced, unclipped dust jacket. Dust jacket has a 5/8 inch closed tear to bottom of rear fore-edge fold.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. 477 pages. Published in 2003. Volume Four of the author's collected essays. One of the greatest literary collections of the 20th century. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only and as part of Harvard University's Complete Works of Walter Benjamin. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Walter Benjamin's "Selected Writings: Volume 4: 1938-1940" in a felicitous English translation. The fourth and final volume of the Series, a landmark publication in the history of modern thought and literary criticism. "However insistently the idea of catastrophe hangs over Benjamin's writings in the final years of his life, the victories wrested in this period nonetheless constitute some of the most remarkable twentieth-century analyses of the emergence of modern society. The essays on Charles Baudelaire are the distillation of a lifetime of thinking about the nature of modernity. They record the crisis of meaning experienced by a civilization sliding into the abyss, even as they testify to Benjamin's own faith in the written word. Ranges from studies of Baudelaire, Brecht, and the historian Carl Jochmann to appraisals of photography, film, and poetry. At their core is the question of how art can survive and thrive in a tumultuous time. Here we see Benjamin laying out an ethic for the critic and artist, a subdued but resilient heroism. At the same time, he was setting forth a socio-historical account of how art adapts in an age of violence and repression. Working at the height of his powers to the very end, Benjamin refined his theory of the mass media that culminated in the final version of his essay, 'The Work of Art In The Age of Its Technological Reproducibility' " (Publisher's blurb). Walter Benjamin's personal heroism wasn't just some egotistical idea he had about himself. He lived and then died as a hero: He committed suicide on September 26, 1940 at the French-Spanish border while trying to escape the Nazis with a group of fellow Jews. They were all arrested by the Spanish police (Franco was one of Hitler's closest allies). Moved and humbled by his desperate yet principled stand, the Spanish police, defying Franco's orders, allowed his fellow Jews to escape. An absolute "must-have" title for Walter Benjamin collectors. This title is a great book. As far as we know, this is the only copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online are ALL subsequent printings or have serious flaws. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. The greatest literary/cultural critic of the 20th century. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER WALTER BENJAMIN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0674010760. no.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. 1073 pages. Published in 1999. The author's unfinished master project. One of the greatest books of the 20th century. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only and as part of Harvard University's Complete Works of Walter Benjamin. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Walter Benjamin's "Das Passagen-Werk" in a felicitous English translation. The definitive critical study of the 19th century, "the greatest modern effort at historical comprehension", and at 1073 pages, still an unfinished masterwork. "Conceived in Paris in 1927 and still in progress when Benjamin fled the Occupation in 1940, 'The Arcades Project' is a monumental ruin, meticulously constructed over the course of thirteen years: 'the theater of all my struggles and all my ideas'. Focussing on the arcades of nineteenth-century Paris - glass-roofed rows of shops that were early centers of consumerism - Benjamin presents a montage of quotations from, and reflections on, hundreds of published sources, arranging them in thirty-six categories with descriptive rubrics such as Fashion, Boredom, Dream City, Photography, Catacombs, Advertising, Prostitution, Baudelaire, and Theory of Progress" (Publisher's blurb). The genius - and achievement - of the book lies in Benjamin's prescient identification of the Paris Arcades (thereby superseding Baudelaire) as THE microcosm of our modern, contemporary life. That is to say, the life we are living today, both "micro", and through the so-called global economy, "macro". About his extreme, ambitious project, this is what the author himself had to say: "To great writers, finished works weigh lighter than those fragments on which they labor their entire lives" (Walter Benjamin). Walter Benjamin's personal heroism wasn't just some egotistical idea he had about himself. He lived and then died as a hero: He committed suicide on September 26, 1940 at the French-Spanish border while trying to escape the Nazis with a group of fellow Jews. They were all arrested by the Spanish police (Franco was one of Hitler's closest allies). Moved and humbled by his desperate yet principled stand, the Spanish police, defying Franco's orders, allowed his fellow Jews to escape. An absolute "must-have" title for Walter Benjamin collectors. This title is a great book. As far as we know, this is the only copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online are ALL subsequent printings or have serious flaws. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. The greatest literary/cultural critic of the 20th century. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER WALTER BENJAMIN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 067404326X. no.

Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. 1st Printing. 462 pages. Published in 2002. Volume Three of the author's collected essays. Possibly the greatest literary collection of the mid-20th century, published in English posthumously, more than fifty years later. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only and as part of Harvard University's Complete Works of Walter Benjamin. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Walter Benjamin's "Selected Writings: Volume 3: 1935-1938" in a felicitous English translation. The third - and most important - volume of the Series, a landmark publication in the history of modern thought and literary criticism. "Radical critic of a European civilization plunging into darkness yet commemorator of the humane traditions of the old bourgeoisie: Such was Walter Benjamin in the later 1930's. Twenty-seven brilliant pieces, nineteen of which have never before been translated. The centerpiece, 'A Berlin Childhood Around 1900', marks the very first appearance in English of one of the greatest works of the twentieth century: A profound and beautiful account of the vanished world of Benjamin's privileged boyhood, recollected in exile. No less remarkable are the previously untranslated second version of Benjamin's most famous essay, 'The Work of Art In The Age of Its Technological Reproducibility', and 'German Men And Women', a book in which Benjamin collects twenty-six letters by distinguished Germans from 1783 to 1883, in an effort to preserve what he called the true humanity of the German tradition from the debasement of Fascism" (Publisher's blurb). "The Storyteller" and "Paris, The Capital of The Nineteenth Century", which poignantly anticipates his massive "Arcades" Project, as well as crucible-essays on Bertolt Brecht and Franz Kafka, among other major figures, written during his excruciating years in exile (France and Denmark), are also contained in this epochal volume. Individually and collectively, these pieces describe and sum up Benjamin's single most devastating insight: "There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism" (Walter Benjamin). Walter Benjamin's personal heroism wasn't just some egotistical idea he had about himself. He lived and then died as a hero: He committed suicide on September 26, 1940 at the French-Spanish border while trying to escape the Nazis with a group of fellow Jews. They were all arrested by the Spanish police (Franco was one of Hitler's closest allies). Moved and humbled by his desperate yet principled stand, the Spanish police, defying Franco's orders, allowed his fellow Jews to escape. An absolute "must-have" title for Walter Benjamin collectors. This title is a great collection. As far as we know, this is the only copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online are ALL subsequent printings or have serious flaws. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. The greatest literary/cultural critic of the 20th century. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER WALTER BENJAMIN TITLES IN OUR CATALOG) ISBN 0674008960. no.