Dream The End » Walter Benjamin

Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting

tania — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:13:24 +0000

UNPACKING MY LIBRARY: A TALK ABOUT BOOK COLLECTING

“… one thing should be noted: the phenomenon of collecting loses its meaning as it loses its personal owner. Even though public collections may be less objectionable socially and more useful academically than private collections, the objects get their due only in the latter.”

Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting

tania — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:11:33 +0000

UNPACKING MY LIBRARY: A TALK ABOUT BOOK COLLECTING

“You have all heard of people whom the loss of their books has turned into invalids, or of those who in order to acquire them became criminals.”

Unpacking My Library: A Talk About Book Collecting

tania — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:03:23 +0000

UNPACKING MY LIBRARY: A TALK ABOUT BOOK COLLECTING

“For… a real collector, a collector as he ought to be – ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them.”

Walter Benjamin – Bio

tania — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:32:39 +0000

Walter Benjamin was born in 1892 in Berlin. He was an intellectual, functioning as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster, and essayist. He coined the term “auratic perception”, which describes the aesthetic faculty by means of which civilization may recover an appreciation of myth. He was a member of the Institute of Social Research, which included Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Otto Kirchheimer. He passed away in 1940.

Excerpted from “Illuminations”, published by Schocken in 1969.

Walter Benjamin is featured in Edition: Guest Editor, Bryan Leitgeb