Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, part 2, 1931-1934

Translated by Rodney Livingstone and others

Edited by Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland, and Gary Smith

    The Destructive Character, 1931

    In Parallel with My Actual Diary

    Criticism as the Fundamental Discipline of Literary History

    Critique of the New Objectivity

    We Ought to Reexamine the Link between Teaching and Research

    Hofmannsthal and Aleco Dossena

    Left-Wing Melancholy

    Theological Criticism

    Karl Kraus

    Literary History and the Study of Literature

    German Letters

    May-June 1931

    Unpacking My Library

    Franz Kafka: Beim Bau der Chinesischen Mauer

    Diary from August 7, 1931, to the Day of My Death

    Little History of Photography

    Paul Valéry

    The Lisbon Earthquake

    The Destructive Character

    Reflections on Radio

    Mickey Mouse

    In Almost Every Example We Have of Materialist Literary History

    The Task of the Critic

    Ibizan Sequence, 1932

    Experience

    On Ships, Mine Shafts, and Crucifixes in Bottles

    On the Trail of Old Letters

    A Family Drama in the Epic Theater

    The Railway Disaster at the Firth of Tay

    Privileged Thinking

    Excavation and Memory

    Oedipus, or Rational Myth

    On Proverbs

    Theater and Radio

    Ibizan Sequence

    A Berlin Chronicle

    Spain, 1932

    Light from Obscurantists

    The Handkerchief

    In the Sun

    The Rigorous Study of Art

    Hashish in Marseilles

    The Eve of Departure

    On Astrology

    "Try to Ensure that Everything in Life Has a Consequence"

    Notes (IV)

    Thought Figures, 1933

    The Lamp

    Doctrine of the Similar

    Short Shadows (II)

    Kierkegaard

    Stefan George in Retrospect

    Agesilaus Santander (First Version)

    Agesilaus Santander (Second Version)

    Antitheses Concerning Word and Name

    On the Mimetic Faculty

    Thought Figures

    Little Tricks of the Trade

    Experience and Poverty

    The Author's Producer, 1934

    Once Is as Good as Never

    The Newspaper

    Venal but Unusable

    The Present Social Situation of the French Writer

    The Author as Producer

    Notes from Svendborg, Summer 1934

    Hitler's Diminished Masculinity

    Franz Kafka

    A Note on the Texts

    Chronology, 1927-1934

    Index

  • Cover: Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2, part 2, 1931-1934
  • A photo of the author

Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) was the author of many works of literary and cultural analysis.

Michael W. Jennings is Professor of German, Princeton University.

Gary Smith is an editor at work on the Einstein Papers project.

Howard Eiland is Lecturer in Literature at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.