The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem, 1932-1940 / Edition 1

by Gershom Scholem, Gary Smith, Andre LeFevere, Anson Rabinbach

Overview

The legendary correspondence between the critic Walter Benjamin and the historian Gershom Scholem bears indispensable witness to the inner lives of two remarkable and enigmatic personalities. Benjamin, acknowledged today as on of the leading literary and social critics of his day, was known during his lifetime by only a small circle of friends and intellectual confreres. Scholem recognized the genius of his friend and mentor during their student days in Berlin, and the two began to correspond after Scholem’s emigration to Palestine. Their impassioned exchange draws the reader into the very heart of their complex relationship during the anguished years from 1932 until Benjamin’s death in 1940.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674174153
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/01/1992
Edition description:	1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Gershom Scholem (1897–1982), a close friend of Walter Benjamin, was Professor of Jewish Mysticism at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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

Editorial Reviews

An immense sadness shadows even the more informal and momentarily optimistic of these letters. They were sent as Europe went into nightmare… And yet this is, in its own way, a book of rejoicing. It celebrates the elixir of intellectual passion—the capacity of the human mind and nervous system to plunge into abstract speculative interests even in, or most particularly in, the face of personal adversity and sorrow.

New Yorker - George Steiner

The relationship between Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem is surely one of the extraordinary friendships of the twentieth century. It is not only that each—Benjamin as critic, Scholem as historian—was an innovative thinker of the first order, transforming the intellectual horizons of his field, or that they wrestled for twenty-five years over intellectual and spiritual issues that still seem urgent. It is also that, on a human level, the moral fiber of their friendship proved so tough and so resilient despite their drastically divergent paths, and despite the most soul-trying historical circumstances… The letters of Benjamin and Scholem are written out of a loneliness stoically sustained—not quite isolation, but the solitariness of genius pursuing its own way against the grain of the times, making ‘radical demands’ that political reality would not meet.

New Republic - Robert Alter

An immense sadness shadows even the more informal and momentarily optimistic of these letters. They were sent as Europe went into nightmare... And yet this is, in its own way, a book of rejoicing. It celebrates the elixir of intellectual passion--the capacity of the human mind and nervous system to plunge into abstract speculative interests even in, or most particularly in, the face of personal adversity and sorrow.--George Steiner "New Yorker"

The relationship between Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem is surely one of the extraordinary friendships of the twentieth century. It is not only that each--Benjamin as critic, Scholem as historian--was an innovative thinker of the first order, transforming the intellectual horizons of his field, or that they wrestled for twenty-five years over intellectual and spiritual issues that still seem urgent. It is also that, on a human level, the moral fiber of their friendship proved so tough and so resilient despite their drastically divergent paths, and despite the most soul-trying historical circumstances... The letters of Benjamin and Scholem are written out of a loneliness stoically sustained--not quite isolation, but the solitariness of genius pursuing its own way against the grain of the times, making 'radical demands' that political reality would not meet.--Robert Alter "New Republic"

From the Publisher

An impassioned glimpse into the death throes of the German-Jewish tradition can be gleaned from the correspondence between Walter Benjamin, the great literary-social critic who lived in exile in Paris, and Gershom Scholem, scholar of the Jewish mystical tradition who migrated to Palestine in 1923. These close friends might seem totally dissimilar: Benjamin was a Marxist, comrade of Brecht, Scholem a Zionist who found in the Kabbalah the seeds for an anarchist spiritual renewal of Judaism. Yet both exiles sought divine sparks in profound texts and the ruptures of history. Their dialogue on Kafka is instructive: for Benjamin, the Czech writer was a prophet of planetary annihilation, while Scholem read Kafka as a latter-day Jewish gnostic commentator on divine judgment. The letters end in early 1940, a few months before Benjamin fled to the Spanish border and committed suicide. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly