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A review by jonfaith
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin
5.0
For every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter.
There are hardly enough superlatives for this amazing collection of essays concerning Baudelaire, Proust, Kafka, messianism and the aesthetic tension between the cultic and the exhibitional. I had read Unpacking My Library a half dozen times previously and it still forces me to catch my breath. The thoughts on Kafka explore the mystical as well as the shock of the modern. The shock of the urban and industrial is a recurring theme in these pieces. Likewise is the dearth of actual experience and the onslaught of involuntary memory. It was a strange juxtaposition that this very morning I put down Illuminations and was enjoying my breakfast. Before me in the recent Bookforum was an article by Geoff Dyer about August Sander's People of the Twentieth Century https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/473219.August_Sander_1876_1964. Benjamin's idea of aura has likely morphed into something strange over the intervening 70 odd years.
There are hardly enough superlatives for this amazing collection of essays concerning Baudelaire, Proust, Kafka, messianism and the aesthetic tension between the cultic and the exhibitional. I had read Unpacking My Library a half dozen times previously and it still forces me to catch my breath. The thoughts on Kafka explore the mystical as well as the shock of the modern. The shock of the urban and industrial is a recurring theme in these pieces. Likewise is the dearth of actual experience and the onslaught of involuntary memory. It was a strange juxtaposition that this very morning I put down Illuminations and was enjoying my breakfast. Before me in the recent Bookforum was an article by Geoff Dyer about August Sander's People of the Twentieth Century https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/473219.August_Sander_1876_1964. Benjamin's idea of aura has likely morphed into something strange over the intervening 70 odd years.