Walter Benjamin Illuminations: Essays And Reflections

Illuminations includes Benjamins's views on Kalfa, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust, his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study on "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," a cultural assessment of the interrelation of art, technology, and mass society; an illuminating discussion of translation as a literary mode; and his thesis on the philosophy of history.