benjamin’s bedside table
The NLR has some late previously-untranslated work from Walter Benjamin, a survey of French literature in 1940, that he wrote for the boys at the ISR back in New York.
Basically, you find here a map of what he was reading extrinsically while working on the “Concept of History” piece. I’m not sure what to make of that, other than the fact that surrealism was busily dying at the time and he was busy, as you’ll see, noting its death… Which surely figures in the “History” essay, but it’s going to take some thinking to say how.
(I’m not entirely sure whether the piece is available without subscription, whether I’m getting auto-logged into the NLR site or not. But if you don’t have a subscription and you can afford it you prolly should just get one….)
ads without products 
Leave a Reply