The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Selected Writings: Volume 1 1913-1926 by Walter Benjamin
Irving Malin

Walter Benjamin. Selected Writings: Volume 1 1913-1926. Ed. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings. Harvard Univ. Press, 1996. 520 pp. $35.00.

Although many of our lovers of theory demand French citizenship—they keep quoting Kristeva, Lacan, Foucault, and other usual suspects—they usually do not know what to make of this brilliant, possessed German Jew. (They, indeed, tend to refer to one or two essays on “mechanical reproduction.”) This volume, the first of three to be published in the next few years, contains many untranslated essays written by Benjamin in his early years (from ages twenty-one to thirty-four). It is an enigmatic, fascinating collection.

Benjamin offers discussions of Goethe, Schlegel, “Fate and Character,” “On Language as Such,” and a series of notes entitled “One-Way Street.” All of these texts are wonderfully obscure; they move beyond mere “criticism.” I must give a few examples that are especially intriguing, “mystical,” and strange. On books and harlots: “Books and harlots love to turn their backs when putting themselves on show.” On happiness: “To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.” On evil: “Every unlimited condition of the will leads to evil. Ambition and lust are unlimited expressions of will. As the theologians have always perceived, the natural totality of the will must be destroyed.” On color: “Color is something spiritual, something whose clarity is spiritual, so that when colors are mixed, they produce nuances of color, not a blur” (I think of Gass’s On Being Blue; in fact, Gass is our Benjamin, the critic as contemplative visionary).

I do not know how to classify Benjamin. Is he more or less than a “critic”? What does he mean? The very fact that I cannot place him into any rigid category affirms that he is an extraordinary writer. [Irving Malin]