Walter Benjamin: Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (1955-) [EN, ES, SK]

“Walter Benjamin was one of the most original cultural critics of the twentieth century. Illuminations includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt a close personal affinity; his studies on Baudelaire and Proust; and his essays on Leskov and on Brecht’s Epic Theater. Also included are his penetrating study “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” an enlightening discussion of translation as a literary mode, and Benjamin’s theses on the philosophy of history.

Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and introduces them with a classic essay about Benjamin’s life in dark times. Also included is a new preface by Leon Wieseltier that explores Benjamin’s continued relevance for our times.”

First published in German as Illuminationen. Ausgewählte Schriften, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt a.M., 1955

English edition
Translated by Harry Zohn
Edited and with an introduction by Hannah Arendt
First published in 1968
Preface by Leon Wieseltier
Publisher Schocken Books, a division of Random House, New York, 2007
ISBN 0805202412, 9780805202410
278 pages

Publisher (EN)

Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (English, 1968/2007, updated on 2020-3-16)
Iluminaciones II: Baudelaire: un poeta en el esplendor del capitalismo (Spanish, trans. Jesús Aguirre, 1972, added on 2013-6-11)
Iluminácie (Slovak, trans. Adam Bžoch and Jana Truhlářová, 1999, added on 2013-6-11)