Illuminations: Essays and Reflections

A selection of works from one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth centuryas selected by Hannah Arendt and including a classic essay of her own about Walter Benjamins life and philosophy. There has been no more original, no more serious critic and reader in our time.George Steiner An icon of criticism, Walter Benjamin was renowned for his insights on art, literature, and philosophy. This volume includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brechts epic theater. Illuminations includes two of Benjamins best-known, deeply enlightening essays, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and Theses on the Philosophy of History, as well as Hannah Arendts own essay about her subjects life as a German-born Jew during a dark era.