(P/B) BERLIN CHILDHOOD AROUND 1900

Παρουσίαση

Begun in Poveromo, Italy, in 1932, and extensively revised in 1938, Berlin Childhood around 1900 remained unpublished during Walter Benjamin's lifetime, one of his "large-scale defeats." Now translated into English for the first time in book form, on the basis of the recently discovered "final version" that contains the author's own arrangement of a suite of luminous vignettes, it can be more widely appreciated as one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century prose writing.
Not an autobiography in the customary sense, Benjamin's recollection of his childhood in an upper-middle-class Jewish home in Berlin's West End at the turn of the century becomes an occasion for unified "expeditions into the depths of memory." In this diagram of his life, Benjamin focuses not on persons or events but on places and things, all seen from the perspective of a child - a collector, flaneur, and allegorist in one.
This book is also one of Benjamin's great city texts, bringing to life the cocoon of his childhood - the parks, streets, schoolrooms, and interiors of an emerging metropolis. It reads the city as palimpsest and labyrinth, revealing unexpected lyricism in the heart of the familiar.
As an added gem, a preface by Howard Eiland discusses the genesis and structure of the work, which marks the culmination of Benjamin's attempt to do philosophy concretely. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Translator's Foreword
Hope in the Past: On Walter Benjamin [by Peter Szondi]
Berlin Childhood around 1900
Final Version
Loggias
Imperial Panorama
Victory Column
The Telephone
Butterfly Hunt
Tiergarten
Tardy Arrival
Boys' Books
Winter Morning
At the Corner of Steglitzer and Genthiner
Two Enigmas
Market Hall
The Fever
The Otter
Peacock Island and Glienicke
News of a Death
Blumeshof 12
Winter Evening
Crooked Street
The Sock
The Mummerehlen
Hiding Places
A Ghost
A Christmas Angel
Misfortunes and Crimes
Colors
The Sewing Box
The Moon
Two Brass Bands
The Little Hunchback
The Carousel
Sexual Awakening
From the 1932-1934 Version
Departure and Return
The Larder
News of a Death
The Mummerehlen
Society
The Reading Box
Monkey Theater
School Library
New Companion of German Youth
The Desk
Cabinets
Beggars and Whores
The Moon
Complete Table of Contents, 1932-1934 Version
Notes
Credits for Illustrations
Index
Illustrations:
Walter Benjamin and his brother Georg
The Victory Column on Konigsplatz
The goldfish pond in the Tiergarten
Berlin's Tiergarten in winter
Market hall on Magdeburger Platz
Interior of a middle-class German home
Courtyard on Fischerstrasse in Old Berlin