Correspondence 1930-1940ISBN: 978-0-7456-3669-6
Hardcover
336 pages
March 2008, Polity
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“Throughout the volume’s 180 letters, the
editors’ scrupulous referencing and the extensive footnotes
help us to decode the hermetic web of enquiries about close
friends, in-jokes and mutual favours spun by the correspondents.
The English translation skilfully navigates Benjamin’s
effusive idiosyncrasies and softens the clipped directness of both
authors to reveal the comfortable familiarity beneath.”
Times Literary Supplement
Times Literary Supplement
“The correspondence between Gretel Karplus Adorno and
Walter Benjamin documents a remarkable friendship. Benjamin valued
“Felizitas” as a critic who was at once acute and
sympathetic, and these letters bristle with some of the most
challenging formulations of his thought in the 1930s. Yet their
relationship also enabled Benjamin to reveal aspects of his life
that remained hidden from even his closest male friends, including
Adorno himself and Scholem. The letters thus offer a moving and
surprisingly intimate account of the fate of a great intellectual
struggling to survive – and to write – in
exile.”
Michael Jennings, Princeton University